Volume 101, Issue 3

This paper reconsiders a much-discussed passage in de Anima 3.2. In that passage, Aristotle discusses the dilemma whether we perceive that we see by sight or by some other sense. The paper focuses on a problem that arises from the received understanding of the second horn of the dilemma. The problem is why Aristotle takes the hypothetical other sense to perceive not only seeing but also colour even if he claims elsewhere that sight is the only sense that can perceive colour. This problem is particularly severe for those interpreters who understand the dilemma in the way just given, that is, in terms of sensory capacities rather than sense activities. By proposing an alternative understanding of the structure of the dilemma, the aim of the paper is to resolve the problem and hence place the capacity reading on a firmer footing.

In this paper, we study the possibility of accepting a plurality of spaces in Leibniz – a question which was already tackled by Yvon Belaval and Nicolas Rescher, both of whom answered it positively. Starting from a famous passage in the Principes de la Nature et de la Grâce  where God is said to have chosen a world “with terrain, place, and time arranged in the best way possible”, we ask ourselves whether this implies that God chooses amongst a variety of spatial settings and, if so, whether this variety would imply a plurality of spaces. We recall a first existing solution to this issue, which consists in distinguishing between an “abstract” and a “concrete” space. After a quick survey of the many variants of this interpretation, we demonstrate that this disctinction is neutral, in the best case scenario, with regard to our initial problem. We then confront the question of the necessity of geometrical truths – which are, for Leibniz, eternal truths inscribed in divine understanding. At first glance, this seems to prevent the possibility of a plurality of geometries (i. e. of spatial structures endowed with incompatible properties). We show that this is not the case and that one must pay attention to the “conditional” nature of geometrical truths, which Leibniz insists upon in some places and which appears compatible with their being absolutly necessary. Finally, we confront the results of the two preceding sections with the current knowledge on the project of an analysis situs . We put particular emphasis on the way in which metaphysical principles were put forward by Leibniz in the elaboration of his geometry.

In this article I argue that Kant considered Hume’s account of causality in the Enquiry to be primarily relevant because it undermines proofs for the existence of God and, moreover, that this interpretation is plausible and text-based. What the Prolegomena calls ‘Hume’s problem’ is, I claim, the more general question as to whether metaphysics can achieve synthetic a priori knowledge of objects at all. Whereas Hume denied this possibility, I show how the solution Kant develops in the Critique of Pure Reason is in agreement with Hume’s critique of dogmatic metaphysics, but salvages the synthetic a priori principles he takes to be constitutive of empirical cognition.

A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen ( LU ) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU . Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that is also deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid an objection raised by Walter Hopp – that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress.

This paper presents and discusses the notice on the life and work of Andronicus of Rhodes by the famous Arabic philosopher Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, which has been transmitted by the historian of medicine Ibn Abī ʿUṣaibiʾa. This text, which has never been discussed by modern scholarship on Andronicus, is our only direct source on the life, the time and the place of Andronicus’ famous edition of Aristotle. The paper argues that the informations in this passage must stem from a rather well informed Greek source, which presented an alternative and more complete account than the informations we have from Plutarch. We learn that Andronicus taught Aristotelian philosophy in Alexandria before 30 B.C. and based his editorial work on old Aristotelian manuscripts from the library there. After that date, he accompanied Augustus to Rome where he may have completed his edition. Thus, the late dating of Andronicus’ edition is confirmed by an independent source.