Volume 50, Issue 2 -

This paper addresses alleged contradictions between the use and theory of metaphora in Aristotle. Some authors claim that these inconsistencies are resolved by showing that the use of metaphorai is allowed in the technai and forbidden in the epistemai . This paper instead unpacks Aristotle’s view on language, as it is contained in the semantics of metaphora , to make sense of Aristotle’s statements on metaphora . My proposal is that Aristotle refers to metaphora under different nomenclatures ( metaphora , metapherein , and metaphorikon einai ) as they relate to the level of linguistic expression, to the perception of similarities, or to the ability to produce metaphors. This threefold distinction helps us understand that the use of metaphora by Aristotle is guided by his idea of the lexis as a means to show the dianoia , and express reality in energeia . This use does not contradict his methodological principles. Lastly, this interpretation also enlightens Aristotle’s understanding of the relations between language, thought, and reality.

In De Sophisticis Elenchis 4–5 Aristotle argues that there are thirteen modes of apparent refutation. However in Chapter 6 he claims to prove that all thirteen may be reduced (ἀναλῦσαι, 168a19-20) to one of these, viz., ‘ignorance of the definition of refutation’ (IE). The reduction proof raises a number of problems whose resolution has eluded commentators. I argue that the key to their solution is noting Aristotle’s subtle distinction between the cause of a refutation being ungenuine and the cause of its appearance of being genuine. The appearance of refutation in IE is produced by a missing question which disguises the refutation’s defect. That IE involves such an elliptical performance on the part of the questioner is confirmed by certain passages in Plato’s Euthydemus and Theaetetus wherein ignoratio elenchi in its original mode is on display. Since Aristotle takes a missing question to operate in all apparent refutation, the thesis of reduction entails that the other twelve heterogeneous modes of sophism must be solved on the model of IE. So understood the reduction proof ensures that a solution to apparent refutation will be fully explanatory: since the spur to an answerer’s dialectically appropriate objection to a sophism is its missing question, his objection will explain both the source of the appearance of refutation as well as its defect.

Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry is widely interpreted as a reaction against a Platonic realist conception of mathematics. Here I argue to the contrary that Aristotle is concerned primarily with the methodological question of how universal inferences are warranted by particular geometrical constructions. His answer hinges on the concept of abstraction, an operation of “taking away” certain features of material particulars that makes perspicuous universal relations among magnitudes. On my reading, abstraction is a diagrammatic procedure for Aristotle, and it is through imagined variation of diagrams that one can universalize spatial inferences. In order to shift the discussion of Aristotle’s work on geometry from ontological to methodological questions, I argue in the first section that geometrical properties for Aristotle are necessary accidents of the particulars, canonically diagrams, in which they inhere. I then consider a line of research that shows how diagrams in ancient geometry are not illustrations of the textual proof but are in part constitutive of geometrical inference, an insight I claim can shed light on Aristotle’s philosophical project. Next I substantiate this assertion by giving an alternative interpretation of abstraction according to which it is a diagrammatic procedure that allows a part of a particular diagram to stand in for a universal. In the last section, I consider Aristotle’s account of mathematical cognition, arguing that there is evidence for the view that imagination is necessary both for the construction of figures, and for their presentation as abstractions subject to universal inference.

Although there are recent studies on the problem of unity and on the continuous taken separately, none of them focuses on the relationship between continuity and unity in Aristotle. Based on the analysis of relevant passages from the Metaphysics and the De anima , I show how the Aristotelian notion of continuity (holding together), which is essential to his account of change, also plays a major role in distinguishing different degrees of unity among composite substances (including artifacts). Continuity also helps to describe and articulate the unity exercised by the efficient causality of the form and the soul.

I argue that Aristotle’s discussion of changes in shape and external form as well as changes in somatic and psychic states in Physics VII.3 suggests a hylomorphic account of events. On this account, an event consists of two parts: the coming-to-be into a state of excellence at the formal level and the genuine qualitative change at the material level. In the first half of the paper, I consider the substance-based account of coming-to-be (γίγνεσθαι), in which what comes to be in a non-genuine qualitative change is construed as either a substance or something quasi-substantial. As passage 246a4-9 does not clarify why changes in shape and external form are non-genuine qualitative changes, except they are accompanied with the material qualitative changes of the proper affections, I argue that an in-depth account is offered in passage 246a10-b3, which we should take as the general account of coming-to-be. Through construing τελείωµα and τελείωσις as perfectness token and perfectness type in passage 246a10-b3, I argue that what concerns Aristotle in Physics VII.3 is the coming-to-be of perfectness, i. e., actuality (ἐνέργεια), in which the subject exhibits its excellence most in accordance with its nature, which I call the actuality-based account of coming-to-be. This explains why it is absurd to assert that changes in shape and external form and changes in somatic and psychic states are genuine qualitative changes, because they are neither changes in respect of substance, nor changes in respect of quality, or in general any kind of change at all (246b12). In the second half of the paper, I consider the one-directional supervenience interpretation, in which the coming-to-be into a state of excellence such as becoming healthy at 246b3-20 is construed as something that supervenes upon the concomitant genuine qualitative change at the material level. Through highlighting the actuality-based account of coming-to-be that suggests excellence plays a much stronger role than moderating the material affections within the organism, I give an alternative interpretation that in Physics VII.3 Aristotle has offered a two-directional hylomorphic account of events: (i) the coming-to-be of actuality that imposes the formal constraint from the top down, and (ii) the concomitant genuine qualitative change of the proper affections at the material level that bestows the material necessitation from the bottom up. This shall help us move toward establishing an overall picture of Aristotle’s theory of event.