NOW AVAILABLE: Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, an anthology I've edited for Palgrave Macmillan’s Philosophers in Depth series, is now available.  The book is a collection of new and cutting-edge essays by prominent Aristotle scholars and Aristotelian philosophers on themes in ontology, causation, modality, essentialism, the metaphysics of life, natural theology, and scientific and philosophical methodology. Grounded in careful exegesis of Aristotle's writings, the volume aims to demonstrate the continuing relevance of Aristotelian ideas to contemporary philosophical debate.

The contributors are Robert Bolton, Stephen Boulter, David Charles, Edward Feser, Lloyd Gerson, Gyula Klima, Kathrin Koslicki, E. J. Lowe, Fred D. Miller, Jr., David S. Oderberg, Christopher Shields, Allan Silverman, Tuomas Tahko, and Stephen Williams.  Here are brief descriptions of each of the essays:

The first three essays in the volume are concerned with the questions of what metaphysics is and what method is appropriate to it.  In “The Phainomenological Method in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” Christopher Shields considers the role that appearances (phainomena) -- what seems to be the case -- play, for Aristotle, in determining what is the case, whether in metaphysics or in other contexts.  As Shields explains, Aristotle is committed to a “Principle of Phainomenological Conservatism” according to which the fact that something appears to be true provides considerable evidence for believing that it is true, though not infallible evidence. 

Stephen Boulter’s “The Aporetic Method and the Defence of Immodest Metaphysics” defends the traditional view that metaphysics is indispensible to philosophy, that at least some substantive metaphysical claims can be justified without appealing to science, and that some accepted interpretations of mature scientific theory can justifiably be rejected on metaphysical grounds.  Central to his defence is an appeal to what Aristotle called “aporia” -- real or apparent conflicts between claims that we have independent reason to accept, and which must therefore be resolved in some way.

In “Metaphysics as the First Philosophy,” Tuomas E. Tahko addresses the question of what it is for metaphysics to be “the first philosophy” (as the Aristotelian tradition characterizes it), and examines its relationship to natural science.  He considers the notion that metaphysics is “first” insofar as it deals with what is fundamental in the sense of being ontologically independent or not grounded in anything else, but argues that it is the notion of essence rather than fundamentality that is key to the priority of metaphysics.

The next several essays examine some of the central notions of Aristotelian metaphysics -- being, essence, substance, necessity, and the like.  Robert Bolton’s “Two Doctrines of Categories in Aristotle: Topics, Categories, and Metaphysics” argues that there are two different and incompatible doctrines of categories in Aristotle.  Bolton maintains that this is not because of a development in Aristotle’s thought, but instead reflects the different needs which these doctrines were intended to meet, in one case the needs of the practice of dialectic and in the other the needs and practice of metaphysical science.

In “Grounding, Analogy and Aristotle’s Critique of Plato’s Idea of the Good,” Allan Silverman examines the ways in which Aristotle and some contemporary Aristotelians have spelled out the idea that some entities are grounded in more fundamental, foundational, or basic entities.  He appeals to the notions of focal meaning and analogy, particularly as these are applied by Aristotle in explicating his notion of energeia or actuality and in critiquing Plato’s Idea of the Good, as a way of making sense of grounding relations.

In Aristotle’s thought, the notion of essence plays both a definitional role, specifying what it is for a thing to belong to a certain natural kind, and an explanatory role, accounting for why a thing has and must have certain properties.  In “Essence, Modality and the Master Craftsman,” Stephen Williams and David Charles consider why essence should play both roles, how the explanatory role figures in Aristotle’s account of essence, and how essences might be said to explain why things of a kind necessarily have certain properties.  In doing so they make use of the notion of what the “master craftsman” or artisan uncovers about the natural materials he works with.

Gyula Klima’s “Being, Unity, and Identity in the Fregean and Aristotelian Traditions” compares the understanding of the notions of being or existence, identity, and unity operative in post-Fregean logic and metaphysics, on the one hand, and in the work of Aristotelian thinkers like Buridan and Aquinas on the other.  In Klima’s view, precisely because these respective notions of being, identity, and unity are so different and address different questions, we are not forced to choose between them, and in any event we ought not to suppose that the post-Fregean notions are “the” right ones merely because they are modern. 

According to the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism, unified wholes (for example, organisms) are composites of matter and form.  Substances, in Aristotelian thought, are taken to be ontologically independent in the sense of not being “said of” or “in” anything else.  In “Substance, Independence and Unity,” Kathrin Koslicki considers the apparent tension that exists between these doctrines insofar as hylomorphism might seem to make substances dependent on their matter and form, and explores some possible resolutions.

E. J. Lowe’s “Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Brief Exposition and Defence” examines how a complete metaphysical foundation for modal truths can be provided by combining a neo-Aristotelian account of essence with Lowe’s neo-Aristotelian “four-category ontology” of individual substances, modes, substantial universals and property universals.  Lowe argues that such an account avoids any appeal to “possible worlds” and renders modal truths mind-independent but humanly knowable.

The next two essays in the volume examine the relationship between Aristotelian metaphysical ideas and some key issues in modern science.  In “Synthetic Life and the Bruteness of Immanent Causation,” David S. Oderberg provides an exposition and defence of the Aristotelian doctrine that living things are distinguished from non-living things by virtue of exhibiting “immanent” causation, causation that originates with an agent and terminates in that agent for the sake of its self-perfection.  He argues that life, so understood, cannot be given a purely naturalistic explanation, and argues against claims to the effect that synthetic life has been or is bound to be created in the laboratory.

Edward Feser’s “Motion in Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein” considers whether the Aristotelian principle that whatever is in motion is moved by another is incompatible with Newton’s principle of inertia, or has been falsified by Einstein insofar as the latter is sometimes held to have shown that change is an illusion.  Feser argues that the Aristotelian principle (better expressed as the thesis that any potential that is being actualized is actualized by something already actual) is not only compatible with Newton’s, but that there is a sense in which the latter presupposes the former; and that relativity at most affects how we apply the Aristotelian principle to the natural world, not whether it is applicable.

The final two essays in the volume raise questions about ultimate explanation and Aristotelian natural theology.  In “Incomposite Being,” Lloyd P. Gerson examines Aristotle’s notion of a divine Prime Unmoved Mover which just is perfect actuality without any potency, which is thinking itself thinking of itself, and yet which is in no way composite.  Gerson considers the views of later Platonists who objected that thinking cannot be attributed to that which is incomposite, and discusses the difficulties facing possible responses to this objection.

Fred D. Miller, Jr.’s “Aristotle’s Divine Cause” considers whether Aristotle’s Prime Mover is supposed to be merely the final cause of motion or also its efficient cause, and if the latter, then what the relationship is between the Prime Mover’s final and efficient causality.  Miller examines various approaches to these issues that have been defended over the centuries, and concludes that the main interpretations all present difficulties.