DOCSLIB.ORG

A Round Generation in the Timaeus

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Round Generation in the Timaeus AROUND GENERATION IN THE TIMAEUS By JONATHAN WRIGHT, M.D. PLEASANTVILLE, NEW YORK N turning to a former issue of pupil derived from his master. Aristotle Annals of Medical History I repeatedly calls himself a Platonist. A find that I began an essay on the modern commentator2 on Aristotle has “Timaeus” of Plato with a refer­ recorded references to a number of passages ence to Aristotle.1 In the present article, in his works where the younger man pays a Owhich will find its mainspring also in the tribute of respect to Plato and acknowledges “Timaeus,” but which deals largely with himself as his follower. the subject of some of the modern ideas on In reading Galen the medical historian the birth of man, we shall again have to take perceives how much more he was inspired by up some of the ideas of Aristotle, as well as Plato than by Aristotle. He places Plato and those of Plato, on the birth of matter. It is not Aristotle side by side with Hippocrates this which leads us into the “Timaeus” in his treatise on their dogmas.3 Robin4 points again. I presume without the criticism of out that Plato gave birth scarcely less to Aristotle on the “Timaeus,” especially of Aristotle than to Plotinus. In the former all his master’s books, subsequent commen­ paper I referred to the very dark corner in tators would less frequently, certainly less the “Timaeus” which deals with generation intelligently, have made a study of it. For and which Plato calls the Receptacle. This many of the formative years of his life Robin regards5 as “the nurse of generation.” Aristotle was a pupil of Plato, for seventeen It is the place where not only the birth of years of his youth, it is said. This familiarity the world takes place, but also the birth of with Plato’s doctrine, thus derived and thus the soul of man. It not only shapes and gives extending far beyond an acquaintance only form to all things, but, being the mould of with what we have of Plato, in addition to them, it is also shaped by them; the child the ability derived from his own transcen­ becomes the father of the man. There is dent genius, made Aristotle able to elucidate nothing which takes shape that does not many dark points in the “Timaeus.” His impart shape to the mould from which it familiarity, • too, with the personality of springs. A man may write an essay on Plato must have given the pupil the courage education but he is educated by writing it. subsequently not only to criticize, but also Practice makes the doer perfect in what he to use the mind Plato trained as a superb practices. It is well to remember this when weapon with which to refute some of the we arrive at modern Lamarckism. It is the details of the latter’s philosophy. So much doing that does it. has he criticized, so much has he refuted, It was Plato and Aristotle who blazed the that the average reader of the “De Anima” trail to the Infinite through the wilderness and “The Metaphysics” of Aristotle some­ of the ancient materialistic theories of the what naturally comes to the opinion that 2 Ross, W. D. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Oxford, the Aristotelian teaching is diametrically 1924, 11, 406. opposed to that of Plato. But when the 3 De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis. Claudii careful student turns from these works to Galeni Opera Omnia. Ed. by Kiihn. v, 181. 4 Robin, L. La Pensee Grecque et les Origines de those of Plato himself, his diligence will I’Esprit Scientifique. Paris, 1923. enable him to appreciate how much the 5 Robin, L. Etudes sur la Signification et la Place 1 Wright, J. A medical essay on the Timaeus. de la Physique dans la Philosophic de Platon. Paris, Annals of Medical History, N. Y., 1925, vn, 117. 1919. Nature Philosophers who preceded them, discourse on the soul? Plato interpreted for Plato’s Receptacle has no more of the much of physiological phenomena in the mystical about it than Aristotle’s Unmoved same way as Empedocles, but he strove to Mover, who is the Origin of all motion. The adapt this interpretation also to the geo­ modern materialist need not lose interest in metrical figures and arithmetical equations them because he does not understand them. of Pythagoras, but what we have to take No one does. The modern materialist does notice of here is that the soul of man is not not understand the mystery at the end of all divine. It is compounded in the Recep­ the trail modern science has blazed to the tacle of the divine elements and of the Infinite, but he also has arrived and he does elements of matter also. not attempt to resent the lure to examine Nearly every genetecist who knows any­ the meaning of the mystery there. thing of the historical background of his However fascinating these Platonic and science will recognize that our concepts of Aristotelian cross word puzzles may be to the agents of generation trace their ancestry the metaphysical “fan” it is natural for the to the homoiomeres of Anaxagoras through medical historian to seek something more the pangenesis of Darwin and the pansper­ material than the mysticisms and the mia of Aristotle. As I understand it, in spiritual affinities of the Receptacle and the Aristotle’s exposition8 they are the first or Unmoved Mover. All the training of modern most rudimentary combinations of the science bids him to avoid such immateriali­ elements struggling into existence in the ties, yet he will find not only the ideas of the shape of their ultimate form. They belong elements and the forms of elementary mat­ primarily to the generation of matter, it ter, but the ideas of generation and heredity would seem. Although the panspermia of inextricably mixed up with what he, because Aristotle belonged to the same order of of his bad training, cannot but regard as thought, he ridiculed the idea that metal is esoteric imaginings. He will find there is a made up of small bits of metal, bone of small proportion and a harmony, an arithmetical, spicules of bone, flesh of particles of meat a geometrical symmetry, of the combina­ too small to be seen, for what then are these tion of the elements of matter worked out in small things made of? It appears no less these “imaginings” which foreshadow the absurd to us, more absurd when armed with chemical formulae and the stereoscopic high-power microscopes, but we are looking arrangements of molecular structure in the at the chromomeres and asking the same science of this, a vastly more materialistic, question. What are these bearers of heredity epoch than that of the Nature philosophers made of? in the history of thought. This I will not It is clear from the discourse in the “Com­ attempt here to develop. ing to be and the Passing away,”9 as The body of man “was created in har­ Joachim remarks, that Aristotle distin­ mony and therefore having the spirit of guished quite clearly between the different friendship.”6 This is but an echo of Empedo­ forms in the alteration of matter, but the cles, though he is not mentioned in connec­ distinction between the living and the non­ tion with it. It is the Love and the Hate of living did not impress primitive men and Empedocles, which are the moving forces in ancient men as it does us. Spontaneous the shaping of the forms of all living things, generation did not mean for Aristotle, as a and on these depend the proportional affini­ modern man of science once soberly told ties of the elements. The existence of this proportion between the elements in the 7 De Anima, 406a. Ed. by Hicks. Cambridge, 1907. See the commentary, p. 269. composition of matter in the body seems to 8 Coming to be and passing away. Ed. by Joachim. have been the thought of Aristotle too in his Oxford, 1922, 3i4a-i6. 6 Timaios, 32. 9 318a, 13-21. See commentary, p. 120. me, that a worm was created out of nothing, There is a lot of living matter in the hand. it was simply an alteration of matter. We It all came from the outside, if we drop the know that alteration occurs. In the change germ plasm for a moment, for its contribu­ from matter to force and back again the tion was inconsiderable. I had salad for modern man sometimes comes perilously supper and beef for breakfast. When did it near to conceiving of matter as made from begin to live again? I had salt on it, when nothing. We are quite familiar now with the did it begin to live at all? That my hand or a thought of the transformation of matter, beef steer or a salad leaf drawing mineral but for the most part we revolt from the from the soil, that the ancestry of matter thought of the creation of matter or kinesis living or dead as I see it here can be traced out of nothing. In parthenogenesis we are back to chaos (one can possibly believe that) familiar with the virgin birth and we know, but back to nothing? no one can conceive as Aristotle knew, that at some time the it! We must reform our definitions. Huxley’s animate was created out of the inanimate in term, biogenesis, is not much better. the sea, as was Venus and her earlier Our definitions take for granted that representative in Hindu mythology.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death
    The University of Akron IdeaExchange@UAkron Williams Honors College, Honors Research The Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Honors Projects College Spring 2020 St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death Christopher Choma [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/honors_research_projects Part of the Christianity Commons, Epistemology Commons, European History Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, History of Religion Commons, Metaphysics Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Please take a moment to share how this work helps you through this survey. Your feedback will be important as we plan further development of our repository. Recommended Citation Choma, Christopher, "St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death" (2020). Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects. 1048. https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/honors_research_projects/1048 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by The Dr. Gary B. and Pamela S. Williams Honors College at IdeaExchange@UAkron, the institutional repository of The University of Akron in Akron, Ohio, USA. It has been accepted for inclusion in Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects by an authorized administrator of IdeaExchange@UAkron. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 1 St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Mind, Body, and Life After Death By: Christopher Choma Sponsored by: Dr. Joseph Li Vecchi Readers: Dr. Howard Ducharme Dr. Nathan Blackerby 2 Table of Contents Introduction p. 4 Section One: Three General Views of Human Nature p.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Aquinas' Argument from Motion & the Kalām Cosmological
    University of Central Florida STARS Honors Undergraduate Theses UCF Theses and Dissertations 2020 Rethinking Causality: Thomas Aquinas' Argument From Motion & the Kalām Cosmological Argument Derwin Sánchez Jr. University of Central Florida Part of the Philosophy Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the UCF Theses and Dissertations at STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Undergraduate Theses by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Sánchez, Derwin Jr., "Rethinking Causality: Thomas Aquinas' Argument From Motion & the Kalām Cosmological Argument" (2020). Honors Undergraduate Theses. 858. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses/858 RETHINKING CAUSALITY: THOMAS AQUINAS’ ARGUMENT FROM MOTION & THE KALĀM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT by DERWIN SANCHEZ, JR. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors in the Major Program in Philosophy in the College of Arts and Humanities and in the Burnett Honors College at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2020 Thesis Chair: Dr. Cyrus Zargar i ABSTRACT Ever since they were formulated in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas’ famous Five Ways to demonstrate the existence of God have been frequently debated. During this process there have been several misconceptions of what Aquinas actually meant, especially when discussing his cosmological arguments. While previous researchers have managed to tease out why Aquinas accepts some infinite regresses and rejects others, I attempt to add on to this by demonstrating the centrality of his metaphysics in his argument from motion.
    [Show full text]
  • Ten PROBLEMS with AQUINAS' THIRD
    Ten PROBLEMS WITH AQUINAS' THIRD WAY Edward Moad 1. Introduction Of Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs of the existence of God, the Third Way is a cosmological argument of a specific type sometimes referred to as an argument from contingency. The Aristotelian argument for the existence of the First Unmoved Mover was based on the observation that there is change (or motion), coupled with the principle that nothing changes unless its specific potential to change is actualized by an actual change undergone by some other thing. It then arrives at the conclusion that there exists something in a constant state of pure activity, which is not itself moved but sets everything else in motion. The operative sense of contingency this argument turns on, then, is that of motion. That is, things have the potential to change in certain ways (depending on the kind of things they are), but may or may not do so; whether they actually do being contingent on whether they are acted on in the right way by something else. For this reason, Aristotle’s argument delivers a first mover, which brings about the motion in all that exists, but not a being that brings about the very existence of everything else. The argument referred to specifically as the argument from contingency, by contrast, turns on the idea of the contingency of the very existence of anything at all. That is, if something exists which may not have existed, and the fact that it does exist rather than not is contingent on the action of other existing things which are themselves contingent, then the existence of the whole lot of contingent things, taken together, is also contingent.
    [Show full text]
  • Is Aristotle's Unmoved Mover Causally Redundant?
    Bridget Brasher IS ARISTOTLE’S UNMOVED MOVER CAUSALLY REDUNDANT? On dunamis in the heavenly bodies I. Introduction: understanding the redundancy problem That Aristotle believes an unmoved mover both enables and brings about motion in the universe is taken as basic by interpreters. Throughout Physics VIII and Metaphysics Lambda 6–10, Aristotle assigns a superlative importance to this eternal, imperceptible substance. It is uniquely pure energeia, is absolutely prior, and is ultimately, indirectly responsible in some way for all generation and destruction and change throughout the celestial and sublunar realms. Aristotle considers the unmoved mover, in this way, to be a kind of primordial necessary condition. Moreover, the unmoved mover is said to maintain this role by directly exerting some sort of causal influence on the heavenly spheres, such that the spheres thereby move eternally, and in turn transmit changes downward through the celestial and sublunar realms. Upon getting the spheres to move, then, the unmoved mover’s vast influence is mediated by and transmitted through the spheres’ own motion.1 The problem that I will address in this paper is that, it seems, the spheres are apparently bound to move in any case—for it seems that, in virtue of a fact about themselves, they can never stop moving. And thus, Aristotle’s primordial necessary condition appears to be little more than a mere redundancy. 1 That the unmoved mover’s alleged causal influence is exhaustively mediated by the heavenly spheres is not uncontroversial. For some interpreters have read a kind of cosmic teleology directed towards the unmoved mover in Aristotle (See Kahn, 1985, Lear, 1988).
    [Show full text]
  • Three Argument's for God's Existence Kant's Criticisms O
    Kant’s Arguments for God’s Existence Introduction Background: Three Argument’s for God’s Existence Kant’s criticisms of these three arguments Ground vs. Cause: Kant’s reason for rejecting constructive proofs of God’s existence Kant’s first argument for God’s existence: God’s existence as the foundation of causal explanation Kant’s second argument for God’s existence: Natural orderliness as being grounded in the coherence of God’s mind Kant’s third argument for God’s existence: morality as grounded in the coherence of God’s mind Kant’s arguments for God as transcendental arguments Introduction Kant puts forth three arguments for God’s existence---or, what might be more accurate, three very different versions of a single such argument. Each is original and none has any obvious flaws. This is not to say that they prove what they are meant to prove, only that, if they fail to do so, it is not immediately clear why. Background: Three Argument’s for God’s Existence When philosophers try to prove God’s existence, it is almost always by way of one of the following three arguments: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and the teleological argument. Kant rejects each of these arguments, and his own arguments are to be understood in terms of this fact. Right now, I will state and evaluate these arguments, and then I will state and evaluate Kant’s arguments. The ontological argument: God is by definition perfect; failure to exist is an imperfection; therefore, God must exist. Analysis: This argument is a total failure, since all it shows is the truism is that if God existed, then, having as he would every conceivable perfection, he would exist— since, in other words, all it shows is that if God existed, then God would exist.
    [Show full text]
  • Rational Vs. Mystical Readings of Aristotle's Nous
    #0# „Analiza i Egzystencja” 39 (2017) ISSN 1734-9923 DOI: 10.18276/aie.2017.39-02 SONIA KAMIŃSKA* RATIONAL VS. MYSTICAL READINGS OF ARISTOTLE’S NOUS POIETIKOS. INTRODUCTION TO THE SUBJECT AND OVERVIEW OF CENTRAL POSITIONS Keywords: nous poietikos, mystical and rational readings, Aristotle, psychology, God/Deity, immortality, intellectual soul, unio mystica Słowa kluczowe: nous poietikos, interpretacje mistyczne i racjonalistyczne, Arystote- les, psychologia, Bóg/Bóstwo, nieśmiertelność, dusza rozumna, unio mystica Introduction Nous poietikos, introduced by Aristotle in De Anima 3.5, has always been one of the central issues of philosophical reflection. It is vital not only to understand Aristotle, but also his pupils (both immediate and the ones who came later), as well as his predecessors (see: the manifold analogies to * Sonia Kamińska, Ph.D. – Jagiellonian University, Institute of Philosophy. Funding: My research (2015/19/D/HS1/00969) was financed from the assets awarded by The Na- tional Science Centre, Poland upon the decision no. DEC-2015/19/D/HS1/00969. Current project: Mystical and rational readings of Aristotle’s psychology, and especially of nous poietikos, National Science Centre, Poland, 2016–2019. Address for correspondence: Jagiellonian University, Institute of Philosophy, Grodz- ka 52, 31-044 Kraków. E-mail: [email protected]. 20 Sonia Kamińska Anaxagoras and his ruling nous, for instance). The urge to grasp the essence of intellectual soul has always driven our civilisation towards new ques- tions and theories. It was vital even in the age of retreat from Aristotelian thought. Despite all this unflagging interest, the question of its true nature is still far from being solved.
    [Show full text]
  • God's Life-Generating Power and Its Transmission in Aristotle's Biology
    1 God’s Life-Generating Power and Its Transmission in Aristotle’s Biology and Cosmology Is it possible that Aristotle presented three very different phases in his philoso- phy and that only one of these was scientifically important? Such was Werner Jaeger’s claim in 1923, and still there is no alternative theory. Is it likely that, during his lectures in the Peripatos, Aristotle talked about a vital pneuma connected with the soul as the principle of life, but that pneuma plays no role in his seminal work On the Soul? Is it conceivable that he called God the “Great Leader” of the cosmos, but saw no divine governance in Nature? These critical questions about the standard theory on Aristotle have spurred the author of this book to develop a perspective on Aristotle’s philosophy that breaks with the accepted view. A crucial part is assigned to pneuma as the vital principle in all that lives. Pneuma is the fine-material carrier of all psychic functions and is governed by the soul as entelechy. The soul is the principle that controls the activity of pneuma in a goal-oriented way (oriented, that is, to the form of the living being). The entelechy is a cognitive principle that acts on the vital pneuma and is active from the very beginning of life, as a kind of automatic pilot. In human beings, however, the entelechy can also be “awakened” to intellectual- ity. All entelechies of living beings, including those of the stars and planets, are actuated by the Power that proceeds inexhaustibly from the divine, tran- scendent Intellect.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dissertation
    Plotinus and Aristotle on the Simplicity of the Divine Intellect Exam No.: B029330 MSc Ancient Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2013 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Chapter 1: The Requirement of the First Principle and Simplicity’s Role 7 1.1 Aristotle’s Search for the First Principle 7 1.2 Aristotle on Unity and the Simplicity Sought for the First Principle 10 1.3 Plotinus on Unity as the First Principle 14 1.4 Conclusion: Comparing the Unmoved Mover and the One 18 Chapter 2: Divine Intellect and Self-Thinking’s Unity or Duality for Aristotle and Plotinus 20 2.1 Aristotle on the Unmoved Mover as Divine Intellect 20 2.2 Human and Divine Intellection Compared 23 2.3 Plotinus on Intellect 25 2.4 Plotinus on the Necessity for Intellect’s Duality 27 Chapter 3: Comparing Divine Intellect’s Self-Thinking and Simplicity Between Aristotle and Plotinus 33 3.1 The Epistemological Necessity for Identity and Distinction 33 3.2 Reconsidering Aristotle 35 3.3 Conclusion 37 Primary Sources 39 Secondary Sources 40 2 Abstract Aristotle and Plotinus both demonstrate the existence of a first principle as cause of the existence of all things. Aristotle puts forward that this first principle is a divine intellect which thinks on itself, and in being the highest being in complete actuality and without potentiality, it is also absolutely simple. Plotinus, on the other hand, sees reason to assert that the divine intellect can not be absolutely simple but a duality of some sort, and thus the first principle, as a cause of unity for all things, must be beyond the divine intellect and thus beyond being in being, itself, absolutely simple.
    [Show full text]
  • Ghasem Kakaie IBN 'ARABI's GOD, ECKHART's GOD
    444 Philosophy of Religion and Kalam * Ghasem Kakaie Ghasem Kakaie (Shiraz University, Iran) IBN ‘ARABI’S GOD, ECKHART’S GOD: GOD OF PHILOSOPHERS OR GOD OF RELIGION? 1. Prelude It is difficult to provide such a definition of God in which all various views are included and all schools agree upon. The dominant view is that Religion’s God is the Origin of the universe and enjoys some kind of transcendence and sacredness. In philosophy, however, there are various images for God: the Gods of ancient Greece, the unmoved mover of Aristotle, the necessary Being of Avicenna, the God of Aquinas’s theism, the God of Spinoza’s the pantheistic, panentheism God in some mystical philosophies, the One in Neoplatonism, the God of process philosophy, the God of existential philosophies, ultimate concern of Tillich, God as the impersonal ground of Being, and aspects of Heidegger’s Dasein are different concepts of deity.1 The God of philosophy is often an object, not a person; something, not some- one, unchangeable, absolute and unlimited. But the God which is worshiped in ordinary religion “is a person and to be a person, an entity must think, feel, and will. In spite of being called unchangeable, he is angry with us today, pleased with us tomorrow.”2 The meaning of God, of course, is to some extent different in the ordinary versions of various religions and even between Abrahamic religions. The God who has no son according to Islam, for example, may differ from the God who has a son as is believed in Christianity.
    [Show full text]
  • J. B. S. Haldane and the Thomistic Argument from Motion for the Existence of God
    Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations 1941 J. B. S. Haldane and the Thomistic Argument from Motion For the Existence of God Cletus F. Hartmann Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Hartmann, Cletus F., "J. B. S. Haldane and the Thomistic Argument from Motion For the Existence of God" (1941). Master's Theses. 203. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/203 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1941 Cletus F. Hartmann J.B.S.Haldane and the Thomistic Argument from Motion for the Existence of God by Cletus F. Hartmann, S.J., A.B. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master ·of Arts in Loyola University Chicago, Ill. June, 1941 • • • • • l'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stella. (Par. XXXIII, 145) ~ Auctoris Cletus Francis Hartmann, S.J., A.B., was born at Belle­ vue, Ky., August 22, 1912. He received his elementary train­ ing at St. Anthony's School, Madisonville, Cincinnati, o., 1918-1919; at St. Joseph's School, Toledo, o., 1919; at St. Michael's School, Toledo, o., 1919-1921; and at St. Charles' School, Toledo, o., 1921-1926.
    [Show full text]
  • “Creatio Ex Nihilo” – a Genuinely Philosophical Insight Derived from Plato and Aristotle? Some Notes on the Treatise on the Harmony Between the Two Sages
    Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2012 “Creatio ex nihilo” – a genuinely philosophical insight derived from Plato and Aristotle? Some notes on the treatise on the harmony between the two sages Gleede, Benjamin Abstract: The article aims at demonstrating that in attributing the creatio ex nihilo to both Plato and Aristotle as their unanimous philosophical conviction the Treatise on the Harmony between the Two Sages deeply depends upon the Neoplatonic reading of those two philosophers. The main obstacles for such a view in the works of the two sages are Plato’s assumption of a precosmic chaos in the Timaeus and Aristotle’s denial of any efficient causality to the unmoved mover in the Metaphysics. Both of these points had been, however, done away with by the Neoplatonist commentators already, especially by Ammonius in his lost treatise on efficient and final causality in Aristotle the use of which in the Harmony isshown by a comparison with Simplicius. Christian and Muslim readers just had to transfer those arguments and hermeneutical techniques into an anti-eternalist context in order to make the two philosophers agree with one of the basic tenents of their face, a hermeneutical technique considerably different from the one employed by al-Fārābī in his exposition of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy which is compared to the Harmony in a briefly sketched concluding section. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423911000117 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-69967 Journal Article Published Version Originally published at: Gleede, Benjamin (2012).
    [Show full text]
  • Object of Desire but Qua Object of Love In
    Muğla Üniversitesi SBE Dergisi Güz 2000 Cilt:1 Sayı:2 THE ABSOLUTE SUBJECT : OBJECT OF DESIRE BUT QUA OBJECT OF LOVE IN ARISTOTLE * Hatice Nur ERKIZAN ** ÖZET Aristoteles Metafizik' in XII. kitabında evrendeki hareketin kaynağına ilişkin bir soruşturma başlatır: Ona göre her ne kadar her bir varlık kendi hareket ilkesini kendi içinde taşımış olsa da varlığın bütünündeki hareketin nedeni olan birşey var olmak zorundadır; çünkü olumsallığın sözkonusu olduğu varlık alanında hareketin kendisi de olumsal bir nitelik gösterir. Đşte, Aristoteles'e göre evrendeki hareketin ilk kaynağı ,ilkesi olan bir varlık vardır ve bu varlık Đlk Hareket Ettirici, Yetkin Varlık veya Tanrı'dır. O , evreni kendisi hareket etmeden hareket ettirir; ama bu hareketin biçimi mekanik fizikselliğin ötesindedir. Aristoteles'e göre Tanrı evreni bir sevgi objesi olması bakımından harekete geçirir; ve O bu anlamda evrendeki hareketin ilk nedeni olduğu gibi ereğidir de denilebilir. In Metaphysics XII.7 it is said that an object of desire moves without being moved itself. 1 And in Book V, of discussing the notion of potency , Aristotle distinguishes different meanings of it, and in essence for Aristotle to act on is prior to being acted upon ; further, the former is superior to it , since what is moved is by nature passive, whereas what acts upon something is active . Here what we discover is that ''passivity '' corresponds to the moved and ''activity '' to the mover . 2 A thing which is moved is open to certain sorts of affection and, therefore Aristotle calls it impotent in that respect. Beings could be said to be impotent or potent in virtue of these reasons: I.
    [Show full text]