Removing Matter: Aristotle’s Criticism of Socrates the Younger
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Andrea Argenti
Abstract
This study is concerned with a crucial passage in Metaphysics Z.11. After having established that only the formal parts of an object are stated in its definition and thus constitute its essence, Aristotle warns us against the process of separating the formal from the material parts. In doing so, he rejects the comparison proposed by Socrates the Younger. Mathematicals (e. g., shapes) cannot be equated to natural objects (e. g., animals) because some material parts must be included in accounting for the latter but not in accounting for the former. The goal of this article is to understand to what extent matter is essential to an object by examining the content of Aristotle’s criticism. My reconstruction shows that Aristotle is still committed to a formalist view. Socrates’ comparison is rejected because it removes matter not from the definitions of the subjects of metaphysics (substances), but from the definitions of their attributes.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- The Second Best City and its Laws in Plato’s Statesman
- Removing Matter: Aristotle’s Criticism of Socrates the Younger
- Reciprocity and Political Justice in Nicomachean Ethics Book V
- Descartes’ Sum-Res-Cogitans-Argument in der Zweiten Meditation
- The Human Vocation and the Question of the Earth: Karoline von Günderrode’s Philosophy of Nature
- Christian Wolff über motivierende Gründe und handlungsrelevante Irrtümer
- The Less Said The Better: Dewey, Neurath, and Mid-Century Theories of Truth
- Book Reviews
- Frede, Dorothea: Aristoteles: Nikomachische Ethik. Übersetzung mit Einleitung und Kommentar. (Aristoteles. Werke in deutscher Übersetzung, Bde 6.1 und 6.2). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2020, xvii + 1016 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- The Second Best City and its Laws in Plato’s Statesman
- Removing Matter: Aristotle’s Criticism of Socrates the Younger
- Reciprocity and Political Justice in Nicomachean Ethics Book V
- Descartes’ Sum-Res-Cogitans-Argument in der Zweiten Meditation
- The Human Vocation and the Question of the Earth: Karoline von Günderrode’s Philosophy of Nature
- Christian Wolff über motivierende Gründe und handlungsrelevante Irrtümer
- The Less Said The Better: Dewey, Neurath, and Mid-Century Theories of Truth
- Book Reviews
- Frede, Dorothea: Aristoteles: Nikomachische Ethik. Übersetzung mit Einleitung und Kommentar. (Aristoteles. Werke in deutscher Übersetzung, Bde 6.1 und 6.2). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2020, xvii + 1016 pp.
