The Discovery of Things Aristotle's Categories and Their Context / Wolfgang-Rainer Mann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mann, Wolfgang-Rainer., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aristotele. Categorie.

Categorie.

Genre:

Filosofia greca e romana -- Aristoteles, 384-322 a.C. -- Studi.

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 231 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2000.

Summary:

Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the "Late-Learners" of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle. The author's argument consists of two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement. Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on Citations

INTRODUCTION

PART I. SETTING THE STAGE: THE "ANTEPRAEDICAMENTA" AND THE "PRAEDICAMENTA"

1. Preliminary Remarks: The Role of the First Two Chapters of the Treatise

2. The Definition of the '-onymies'

3. The Four Kinds of Eponymy

4. The Distinctions of Chapters 2 and 3

Appendix 1: Difficulties with the Received Text and a Role for Chapter 4

Appendix 2: Speusippus, the Speusippean '-onymies', and Topics 1, 15

PART II. PLATO'S METAPHYSICS AND THE STATUS OF THINGS

1. Preliminary Remarks

2. Forms and Participants in Plato's Middle Dialogues

3. The Problem of Becoming

4. Three Difficulties for the Proposed Account of Becoming

5. Plato's Introduction of the Distinction between Being and Becoming

6. The Background to Plato's Special Use of 'Becoming'

7. The Participants: Plato and Anaxagoreanism

8. Self-Predication

9. The Being of the Participants: Preliminaries

10. The First Objection: Does Plato Distinguish between Essential and Accidental Properties?

11. The Second Objection: The Extent of Forms (and a Methodological Digression)

12. The Second Objection Continued: Forms and 'Incompleteness'

13. A Third Objection: Can Forms Be 'Ingredients'?

14. The Participants: Being and Becoming

15. The Late-Learners: Real Being for Ordinary Things

16. Does Plato Modify His Picture in Some Late Dialogues?

PART III. THE CATEGORIES PICTURE ONCE MORE: AN ALTERNATIVE TO PLATONISM AND LATE-LEARNERISM

1. Aristotle's Introduction of Paronymy

2. Some Difficulties

3. The "Antepraedicamenta" as an Introduction to the "Praedicamenta": The Project of the Categories Reconsidered

EPILOGUE

Select Bibliography

Index Locorum

Index Rerum

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691221595

0691221596

OCLC:

1033662586