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Aristotle on Platonic Efficient Causes. A Rehabilitation

  • Rareș Ilie Marinescu EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: December 11, 2024
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Abstract

In this paper I show that Aristotle’s widely criticised exclusion of Platonic efficient causes at Metaph. A 6.988a7–17 is defensible as an interpretation of Plato, and that alternative accounts are unpersuasive. I argue that Aristotle is only interested in – what he supposes to be – Plato’s first principles and that the usual candidates that are brought forward in scholarship as possible first principles and efficient causes (e.g. from the Timaeus and the Philebus) all fall short in crucial respects according to Aristotle. This reading has the dual benefit of illuminating Aristotle’s strategy in book A and of letting him appear as a more trustworthy doxographer of his predecessors’ views.


Corresponding author: Rareș Ilie Marinescu, Department of Classics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

Drafts of this paper have been presented to audiences in Cologne and Toronto. I would like to thank especially Lloyd Gerson, Roberto Granieri, Kasra Abdavi Azar, Christian Pfeiffer, Christoph Helmig and Jan Opsomer for engaging with my arguments and for making valuable suggestions. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees of this journal for their comments.

  1. Research funding: Research for this paper has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. [885273]) / Advanced Grant, acronym: PlatoViaAristotle.

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