DOCSLIB.ORG

The Metaphysics of Personhood in Plato's Dialogues

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Metaphysics of Personhood in Plato's Dialogues University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy Philosophy 2017 The Metaphysics of Personhood in Plato's Dialogues Daniel T. Sheffler University of Kentucky, [email protected] Author ORCID Identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9308-2679 Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2017.142 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Sheffler, Daniel T., "The Metaphysics of Personhood in Plato's Dialogues" (2017). Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy. 16. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/philosophy_etds/16 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STUDENT AGREEMENT: I represent that my thesis or dissertation and abstract are my original work. Proper attribution has been given to all outside sources. I understand that I am solely responsible for obtaining any needed copyright permissions. I have obtained needed written permission statement(s) from the owner(s) of each third-party copyrighted matter to be included in my work, allowing electronic distribution (if such use is not permitted by the fair use doctrine) which will be submitted to UKnowledge as Additional File. I hereby grant to The University of Kentucky and its agents the irrevocable, non-exclusive, and royalty-free license to archive and make accessible my work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I agree that the document mentioned above may be made available immediately for worldwide access unless an embargo applies. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of my work. I understand that I am free to register the copyright to my work. REVIEW, APPROVAL AND ACCEPTANCE The document mentioned above has been reviewed and accepted by the student’s advisor, on behalf of the advisory committee, and by the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), on behalf of the program; we verify that this is the final, approved version of the student’s thesis including all changes required by the advisory committee. The undersigned agree to abide by the statements above. Daniel T. Sheffler, Student Dr. David Bradshaw, Major Professor Dr. Clare Batty, Director of Graduate Studies THE METAPHYSICS OF PERSONHOOD IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES DISSERTATION A dissertation submied in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By D. T. Sheffler Director: Dr. David Bradshaw, Professor of Philosophy Lexington Kentucky Copyright © D. T. Sheffler 2017 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION THE METAPHYSICS OF PERSONHOOD IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES While most scholars know, or think they know, what Plato says about the soul, there is less certainty regarding what he says about the self. Some scholars even assert that the ancient Greeks did not possess the concepts of self or person. This dissertation sets out to examine those passages throughout Plato’s dialogues that most clearly require some notion of the self or the person, and by doing so to clarify the logical lineaments of these concepts as they existed in fourth century Athens. Because Plato wrote dialogues, I restrict myself to analyzing the concepts of self and person as they appear in the mouths of various Platonic characters and refrain from speculating whether Plato himself endorses what his characters say. In spite of this restriction, I find a number of striking ideas that set the stage for further philosophical development. After an introductory chapter, in Chapters 2 and 3 I argue that the identification of the person with the soul and the identification of the human being with the composite of soul and body make possible a conceptual split between person and human being. In Chapter 4, I argue that the tripartite account of the soul suggests an ideal identification of the person with the rational aspect of the soul rather than the lower aspects of one’s psychology. Finally, in Chapter 5 I argue that the analogical link between rationality in us and the rational order of the cosmos leads to the conclusion that the true self is, in some sense, divine. KEYWORDS: Plato, Platonism, self, person, personhood D. T. Sheffler April 17, 2017 THE METAPHYSICS OF PERSONHOOD IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES By D. T. Sheffler Dr. David Bradshaw Dissertation Director Dr. Clare Bay Director of Graduate Studies April 17, 2017 For Rose ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am especially grateful to to David Bradshaw for agreeing to act as my advi- sor on this project. He has undoubtedly put more hours than anyone else into help- ing me complete it and pushing me toward excellence in doing so. I am also grateful to Eric Sanday for his invaluable courses on Plato, where I learned to read, and for agreeing to serve on my commiee. Timothy Sundell taught me more than anyone else about analytic philosophy and encouraged me to think rigorously about logic. Robert Rabel taught me to love Greek poetry and I will never forget the enthusi- asm with which he marched us through the Argonautica. I would also like to thank Keith Buhler and Eric Peterson for being kind fellow travelers through graduate school. Outside the academy, I am profoundly grateful to my wife, Rose, for her love, friendship, support, and comfort. Writing this dissertation would not have been possible apart from the beautiful culture that my parents and extended fam- ily have created around me all my life. Finally, I would like to thank Jack Luckey and Billy Henderson for teaching me what it means to love wisdom and imparting some of theirs to me. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments iii 1 Previous Scholarship, Terminology, and Method 1 1.1 Previous Scholarship on Greek Thought About the Person . 2 1.2 Previous Scholarship on Plato ....................... 9 1.3 Core Concepts ................................ 17 1.4 Method .................................... 21 1.5 Division of Chapters and Selection of Texts . 26 2 Body, Soul, and Self 32 2.1 Laws ..................................... 34 2.2 Alcibiades .................................. 40 2.3 Soul as Subject at the Beginning of the Phaedo . 46 2.4 Us and Humans in the Recollection and Kinship Arguments . 57 2.5 The Polluted versus the Ideal Self ..................... 63 2.6 Historically Available Notions ....................... 71 3 Afterlife and Metempsychosis 74 3.1 If You Can Catch Me ............................ 78 3.2 Capability and Intelligence ......................... 83 3.3 The Myth of the Gorgias ........................... 90 3.4 The Myth of the Phaedo ........................... 98 3.5 The Myth of Er ................................103 3.6 The Myth of the Phaedrus . 107 4 Tripartition 115 4.1 Self-Control .................................118 4.2 Explaining Internal Conflict . 123 4.3 The Human Being Within . 132 4.4 What Survives? ...............................141 4.5 Conclusion ..................................152 5 Νοῦς and the Divine in Us 154 5.1 Background .................................156 iv 5.2 Divinity and Νοῦς in the Timaeus . 162 5.3 Divine Νοῦς in the Philebus . 177 5.4 Our Divinity in the Phaedrus . 183 5.5 Self-Knowledge and the Divine in the Alcibiades . 193 Bibliography 206 Vita 209 v Chapter 1 Previous Scholarship, Terminology, and Method Anyone who has the least familiarity with the philosophy of Plato will have heard something or other about the soul. The literature on the tripartite theory of the soul alone runs to many thousands of pages. Many undergraduate students will have some notion, more or less vague, that Socrates preaches an opposition between body and soul before he dies. Despite the ease with which we speak about the soul in Plato’s dialogues, however, we may find it rather difficult to speak about the self. We may intelligibly ask whether all the things Socrates says about his soul are things he would say about himself. Before we can answer this question and engage in the serious business of working out Plato’s theory of the person or the self, we must confront a tricky historical problem. On one interpretation of intellectual his- tory the concept of the self or the person only arises within the context of modern, especially post-Cartesian, thought. On another interpretation of this history, these concepts come from Christian theological reflection. Both interpretations pose a difficult problem for the scholar who wishes to work out Plato’s theory of the self, since it may be that such a scholar would simply be searching in vain, anachronis- tically imposing upon texts a concept that would be foreign to their author. Hence, any such interpretive project must first ask whether these concepts are available to 1 Chapter 1, Section 1: Previous Scholarship on Greek Thought About the Person Plato and if so the specific forms in which they are available before undertaking the more difficult task of identifying Plato’s own views about them. This disserta- tion will aempt the first task by looking closely at those passages throughout the dialogues that most clearly seem to require some notion of the self or the person. I hope that this effort will enable more precise work both in the interpretation of Plato and in telling the history of these Concepts. 1. Previous Scholarship on Greek Thought About the Person Beyond Plato, the claim is sometimes made that the ancient Greeks more gener- ally did not have a concept that corresponds to what we today mean by “person.” Those that make this claim, however, do not always agree on precisely which fea- tures fail to appear in Greek anthropology (whether implicitly in literature or ex- plicitly in philosophy).1 Having the concept of person, one might say, requires a deep awareness of oneself as a pure res cogitans or as a noumenal being somehow free from the laws of necessary causation that we observe in the phenomenal realm.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Aristotelian Metaphysics: Essence and Ground
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto Editorial Aristotelian Metaphysics: Essence and Ground Riin Sirkela, Tuomas Tahkob aDepartment of Philosophy, University of Vermont bDepartment of Philosophy, University of Helsinki is special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica centers around Aristotelian metaphysics, construed broadly to cover both scholarly research on Aristo- tle’s metaphysics as well as work by contemporary metaphysicians on Aris- totelian themes. Aristotelian metaphysics is a growing tradition. ere are increasingly more metaphysicians identifying themselves as ‘Aristotelians’, and there are more scholars looking at work in contemporary metaphysics to advance scholarship. Indeed, there have already been a number of vol- umes showcasing this ‘Aristotelian turn’, including Daniel D. Novotný’s and Lukáš Novák’s Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (óþÕ¦), Edward Feser’s Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics (óþÕì), and Tuomas Tahko’s Contempo- rary Aristotelian Metaphysics (óþÕó). e contribution this special issue makes to the ongoing discussion is twofold. First, the special issue promotes a deeper interaction between schol- ars of Aristotle and contemporary metaphysicians. We hope that the pa- pers encourage people working in the history of philosophy to relate to con- temporary discussions and people working in contemporary metaphysics to engage with Aristotle and Ancient scholarship. Second, the special issue is unied in its focus on two themes in Aristotelian metaphysics, essence and grounding. e papers address questions concerning fundamentality and dependence, ontological independence or priority, the causal priority of forms, the unity of grounding, the reduction of grounding to essence, the unity of essence, the roles of essence, and explanation and denition.
    [Show full text]
  • Hendrik Lorenz/Benjamin Morison Aristotle: Metaphysics Z PHI501, Fall/Spring 2018/2019
    Hendrik Lorenz/Benjamin Morison Aristotle: Metaphysics Z PHI501, Fall/Spring 2018/2019 Aims of the course In this class, we aim to go through systematically the 17 chapters of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, book Z (sometimes called book VII), and chapter 1 of book H of the Metaphysics (the one immediately following Z), since we hold, as do many other scholars, that it is best read as a continuation of book Z. The goal is to understand Aristotle’s famous theory of ‘substance’ as presented in book Z. Substances are the central items in Aristotle’s ontology, and there are a cluster of other notions in the vicinity of ‘substance’ which we will also be trying to clarify: ‘being’, ‘account’, ‘form’, ‘this’, ‘subject’, ‘matter’, ‘essence’ or ‘being what it is’, etc. We also want to assess what kind of treatise Metaphysics Z is: its train of thought is notoriously hard to follow, with apparent digressions, or even insertions, so it might not even have been considered a unified treatise by Aristotle. There is also the question of its relation to the science of metaphysics: is it a preliminary contribution to it, or an actual exposition of (a fragment of) it? Is there even a science of metaphysics (in the sense of ‘science’ defined in the Posterior Analytics) to which it could be related? Brief list of some themes of Metaphysics Z Fall: Z1: Being is said in many ways; the central one is being as substance; so the question ‘what is being’ is the question ‘what is substance?’; Z2: Catalogue of some items which philosophers have thought count as substances;
    [Show full text]
  • God As Both Ideal and Real Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics
    God As Both Ideal and Real Being In the Aristotelian Metaphysics Martin J. Henn St. Mary College Aristotle asserts in Metaphysics r, 1003a21ff. that "there exists a science which theorizes on Being insofar as Being, and on those attributes which belong to it in virtue of its own nature."' In order that we may discover the nature of Being Aristotle tells us that we must first recognize that the term "Being" is spoken in many ways, but always in relation to a certain unitary nature, and not homonymously (cf. Met. r, 1003a33-4). Beings share the same name "eovta," yet they are not homonyms, for their Being is one and the same, not manifold and diverse. Nor are beings synonyms, for synonymy is sameness of name among things belonging to the same genus (as, say, a man and an ox are both called "animal"), and Being is no genus. Furthermore, synonyms are things sharing a common intrinsic nature. But things are called "beings" precisely because they share a common relation to some one extrinsic nature. Thus, beings are neither homonyms nor synonyms, yet their core essence, i.e. their Being as such, is one and the same. Thus, the unitary Being of beings must rest in some unifying nature extrinsic to their respective specific essences. Aristotle's dialectical investigations into Being eventually lead us to this extrinsic nature in Book A, i.e. to God, the primary Essence beyond all specific essences. In the pre-lambda books of the Metaphysics, however, this extrinsic nature remains very much up for grabs.
    [Show full text]
  • Advancing the Aristotelian Project in Contemporary Metaphysics a Review Essay
    Philosophia Christi Vol. 21, No. 2 © 2019 Advancing the Aristotelian Project in Contemporary Metaphysics A Review Essay Robert C. Koons University of Texas at Austin Abstract: In a recent book, Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar, Ross Inman demonstrates the contemporary relevance of an Aristotelian approach to metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. Inman successfully applies the Aristotelian framework to a number of outstanding problems in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of physics. Inman tackles some intriguing questions about the ontological status of proper parts, questions which constitute a central focus of ongoing debate and investigation. Ross D. Inman. Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo- Aristotelian Mereology. New York: Routledge, 2018. 304 pages. $140.00. Ross Inman’s book is an excellent new installment in the ongoing renais- sance of Aristotelian metaphysics in analytic philosophy. Central Aristote- lian notions, such as substance, essence, causal powers, dependent parts, and matter/form combination, have reemerged in recent years, beginning with the work of Teodore Scaltsas, Peter van Inwagen, Kit Fine, David Oderberg, and Michal Rea in the 1990s.1 Te movement began to develop and fourish afer the turn of the millennium. Kit Fine, David Oderberg, Michael Loux, and E. J. Lowe built upon their own earlier work,2 while new collaborators 1. See Peter van Inwagen, “Material Beings,” Philosophy 67 (1990): 126–7; Teodore Scalt- sas, Substances and Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Kit Fine, “Tings and Teir Parts,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23 (1999): 61–74; David S.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphysics of Soul and Self in Plotinus Gwenaëlle Aubry
    Metaphysics of soul and self in Plotinus Gwenaëlle Aubry To cite this version: Gwenaëlle Aubry. Metaphysics of soul and self in Plotinus. P. Remes; S. Slaveva-Griffin. The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism, pp.310-323, 2014. hal-02387195 HAL Id: hal-02387195 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02387195 Submitted on 29 Nov 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 20 Metaphysics of soul and self in Plotinus Gwenaëlle Aubry One of the great singularities of the philosophy of Plotinus consists in thinking of the self1 for its own sake and, in particular, in producing a concept of it diff erent from that of soul.2 Th is philosophical breakthrough is inseparable from the discovery of immedi- ate refl exivity, that is, the subject’s ability to apprehend itself independently of its rela- tion to an object or to another subject.3 In Plotinus, however, this refl exivity occurs only in an interrogative form, which can be read, in particular, in Enn. I.1[53] and Enn. VI.4[22]. In other words, it does not, as in Descartes, assume the form of an intuition by means of which the subject, grasping itself as consciousness, would, at the same time, have an evident revelation of its essence.
    [Show full text]
  • Metempsychosis (Tanasukh) in Mulla Sadra's Thought*
    METEMPSYCHOSIS (TANASUKH) IN MULLA SADRA'S THOUGHT* Shigeru KAMADA** I The idea of metempsychosis (tanasukh)(1) with its complicated manifesta- tions appeared in the various aspects of Islamic thought and gave rise to heated controversies on its position in the Islamic framework among Muslim scholars. The idea can be divided into two types.(2) The first is that on its separation from a body one's soul takes a different form by its new at- tachment to another body of a higher or a lower species according to one's conduct in the life just ended. This type is found in Indian and Greek thought, which may be termed as metempsychosis in a general sense. The second is that the divine soul permeates through and indwells in all or particular existents in the physical world, which may be termed as metempsychosis in a special sense. The latter type of the metempsychosis often finds its expression in extreme Shi'te thought (ghulat) and Islamic mysticism, the manner in which it appears is that the Imam inherits a spark of the divine light (nur ilahi) through his preceding prophets or Imams from the first prophet Adam, or embodies Divinity through the incarnation (hulul) of the divine spirit in him.(3) The idea of incarnation gave birth to a series of incarnationists condemned among Islamic mystics.(4) The main purpose of this paper is to clarify Mulla Sadra's concept of metempsychosis. Mulla Sadra (d. 1050/1640) was a mystic philosopher in Safavid Iran.(5) First we would like to survey the common understanding of metempsychosis in Islam before our reading of Mulla Sadra's text.
    [Show full text]
  • Metempsychosis in Aeneid Six Author(S): E
    Metempsychosis in Aeneid Six Author(s): E. L. Harrison Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Feb. - Mar., 1978), pp. 193-197 Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296685 . Accessed: 12/02/2013 21:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:07:57 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions METEMPSYCHOSISIN AENEID SIX The purposeof this note is to suggest that, in orderto understandmore clearly the lines in which Virgil preparesthe way for his paradeof heroes in Book Six (679-755), we need to appreciatethe difficulties presentedby the introduction of such an episode, and consider how he handled them.' Although we can only surmise, it seems highly probablethat, influencedby the practice at the funerals of prominentRomans of having relatives walk in processionwearing portrait-masks of the dead man's ancestors,2Virgil decided to stage a similar spectacle on a granderscale, including in its scope the great figures of Rome's past.
    [Show full text]
  • Plato's (Metaphysics))
    ~o v . A. Vntcrnational Library of Philosophy Studies in and ScientificMethod)C (".1 FOUNDED BY: A. J. AYER PLATO'S EDITOR: BERNARD WILLIAMS ASSISTANT EDITOR: E. R. D. HONDERICK (METAPHYSICS) INDUCTIVE PROBABILITY by John Patrick Day. ) SENSATION AND PERCEPTION: A History of the Philosophy of Perception by D. W. Hamlyn. TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS: Ludwig Wittenstein's Logiseh- philoJrJphiseheAbhandlung with a new Translation by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness and with the Introduction by Bertrand Russell. PERCEPTION AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD by D. M. Armstrong. HUME'S PHILOSOPHY OF BELIEF: A Study of his First Inquiry by Antony Flew. KANT'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: An Outline of One Central Argument in the Critiqueof Pure Reasonby Graham Bird. CONDITIONS FOR DESCRIPTION by Peter Zinkernagel, translated from the Danish by Olaf Lindum. AN EXAMINATION OF PLATO'S DOCTRINES by I. M. Crombie. Two volumes. I: Plato on Man and Society. II: Plato on Knowledge and Reality. PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION by M. Merleau-Ponty, translated from the French by Colin Smith. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND THE PROBLEM OF ARGUMENT by Ch. Perelman, translated from the French by John Petrie. LECTURES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH by C. D. Broad. Incorporating the Perrott Lectures given in Cambridge University in 1959 and 1960. THE VARIETIES OF GOODNESS by George Henrik von Wright. METHOD IN THE PHYSICAL SOENCES by G. Schlesinger. METHOD IN ETHICAL THEORY by Abraham Edel. SOENCE, PERCEPTION AND REALITY by Wilfrid Sellars. NORM AND ACTION: A Logical Enquiry by Georg Henri, von Wright. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM by J. J. C.Smart. STUDIES IN METAPHILOSOPHY by Morris Lazerowitz.
    [Show full text]
  • The Two Solons in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
    The Two Solons in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Studies of Aristotle’s engagement with Solon in the Nicomachean Ethics 1.10 typically focus solely on the philosophical arguments (e.g. Irwin, 1985), not questioning the sources of the relevant ideas (or seeing this as besides the point). But, if we do just this, something quite intriguing comes to light. This paper argues that Aristotle knowingly refutes the Solon of Herodotus’ Histories, distinct from the historical Solon of the extant poems, with an idea found in the very poems of Solon himself. Aristotle invokes Solon and his maxim, “look to the end” (τέλος ὁρᾶν), as a natural conclusion to the fact that man can cease to live well, i.e. lose his eudaimonia (1100a10). Eudaimonia is not merely a thing of chance nor God-given, but severe misfortune can deny eudaimonia to a man previously eudaimôn, like Priam (1099b8- 1100a9). But eudaimonia is lasting (μονίμη), so shouldn’t we wait to see that man’s life ends eudaimôn before declaring it truly so (1110a25-1100b7)? No, Aristotle argues, for, among other reasons, the stability (βεβαιότης) of virtue (ἀρετή) and its essentialness to eudaimonia enables us to declare a living man eudaimôn despite the possibility of its negation (1100b8-1101a21). It seems clear that Aristotle refers explicitly to the Herodotean Solon and not Solon himself (that they are not the same: e.g., Chiasson, 1986; Irwin, 2012). The maxim “look to the end” is found only in Herodotus’ account, and this notion of telos is substantively distinct from the telos in Solon’s poetic fragments (Chiasson, 1986).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 the Aristotelian Method and Aristotelian
    1 The Aristotelian Method and Aristotelian Metaphysics TUOMAS E. TAHKO (www.ttahko.net) Published in Patricia Hanna (Ed.), An Anthology of Philosophical Studies (Athens: ATINER), pp. 53-63, 2008. ABSTRACT In this paper I examine what exactly is ‘Aristotelian metaphysics’. My inquiry into Aristotelian metaphysics should not be understood to be so much con- cerned with the details of Aristotle's metaphysics. I am are rather concerned with his methodology of metaphysics, although a lot of the details of his meta- physics survive in contemporary discussion as well. This warrants an investigation into the methodological aspects of Aristotle's metaphysics. The key works that we will be looking at are his Physics, Meta- physics, Categories and De Interpretatione. Perhaps the most crucial features of the Aristotelian method of philosophising are the relationship between sci- ence and metaphysics, and his defence of the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). For Aristotle, natural science is the second philosophy, but this is so only because there is something more fundamental in the world, something that natural science – a science of movement – cannot study. Furthermore, Aristotle demonstrates that metaphysics enters the picture at a fundamental level, as he argues that PNC is a metaphysical rather than a logical principle. The upshot of all this is that the Aristotelian method and his metaphysics are not threatened by modern science, quite the opposite. Moreover, we have in our hands a methodology which is very rigorous indeed and worthwhile for any metaphysician to have a closer look at. 2 My conception of metaphysics is what could be called ‘Aristotelian’, as op- posed to Kantian.
    [Show full text]
  • Reincarnation
    Reincarnation Swami Abhedananda The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reincarnation, by Swami Abhedananda Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Reincarnation Author: Swami Abhedananda Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7377] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 22, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REINCARNATION *** Produced by Dave Maddock, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY FIVE LECTURES ON REINCARNATION BY SWAMI ABHEDANANDA _Author of "India and her People", "Self-Knowledge", "How to be a Yogi", "Divine Heritage of Man", etc._ CONTENTS I.--REINCARNATION II.--HEREDITY AND REINCARNATION III.--EVOLUTION AND REINCARNATION IV.--WHICH IS SCIENTIFIC, RESURRECTION OR REINCARNATION? V.--THEORY OF TRANSMIGRATION I.
    [Show full text]
  • Aristotle Metaphysics 2014
    METAPHYSICS Aristotle Translated by W. D. Ross BOOK I (A) 980a22-980a27 p. 1552 1 · All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. 980a28-980b25 p. 1552 By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others. And therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than those which cannot remember; those which are incapable of hearing sounds are intelligent though they cannot be taught, e.g. the bee, and any other race of animals that may be like it; and those which besides memory have this sense of hearing, can be taught. 980b26-981a12 p. 1552 The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. And from memory experience is produced in men; for many memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. Experience seems to be very similar to science and art, but really science and art come to men through experience; for 'experience made art', as Polus says, 'but inexperience luck'.
    [Show full text]