Aristotle's theory of substance : the Categories and Metaphysics zeta
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Bibliographic Information
Aristotle's theory of substance : the Categories and Metaphysics zeta
（Oxford Aristotle studies / general editors, Julia Annas and Lindsay Judson）
Oxford University Press, c2000
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Note
Bibliography: p. [455]-464
Includes indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this long-standing puzzle, arguing that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works. The theory of Metaphysics Zeta is meant to explain central features of the standing doctrine of the Categories, and so presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. The Categories offers a theory of underlying ontological configurations, while book Zeta gives form the status of primary substance because it is primarily the form of a concrete object that explains its nature, and this form is the substance of the object.
So when the late theory identifies primary substance with form, it appeals to an explanatory primacy that is quite distinct from the ontological primacy that dominates the Categories. Wedin's new interpretation thus allows us to see the two treatises as complementing rather than contradicting each other: they are parts of a unified theory of substance.
Table of Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- I. THE PLAN OF THE CATEGORIES
- II. NONSUBSTANTIAL INDIVIDUALS
- III. COMMITMENT AND CONFIGURATION IN THE CATEGORIES
- IV. TALES OF THE TWO TREATISES
- V. THE STRUCTURE AND SUBSTANCE OF SUBSTANCE
- VI. FORM AS ESSENCE
- VII. ZETA 6 ON THE IMMEDIACY OF FORM
- VIII. THE PURIFICATION OF FORM
- IX. GENERALITY AND COMPOSITIONALITY
- X. FORM AND EXPLANATION
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEXES
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