Maria Varlamova. Foreword to translation of Michael Psellos’ commentary on chapters 1–3 of the book III and chapter 10 of the book VIII of Aristotle’s “Physics”. Vol. 4. No. 2. 2019

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Maria Varlamova. Correlation of universal properties and nature of being in Alexander of Aphrodisias. Vol. 3. No. 2. 2018

Publication Details

Correlation of universal properties and nature of being in Alexander of Aphrodisias
Title in the language of publication: О соотношении кафолических свойств и природы сущего у Александра Афродисийского
Author:
Maria Varlamova
PhD in Philosophy, Research Fellow at the Research and Education Center for Religion, Philosophy, and Culture Studies at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Associate Research Fellow at the Sociological institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Address: 67A Bolshaya Morskaia str., Saint-Petersburg, 190000, Russia.
Issue:
P. 347–357.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
Acknowledgments:  The present study is a part of the project № 16-03-00047, “The followers of John Duns Scotus in the XIVth–XVIth centuries Scholasticism: Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics”, implemented with a financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
 
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Abstract

The subject of the present article is the problem of katholou (universals) in the metaphysics of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the correlation of universals, particular things and common nature, on the basis of which universals is predicated to the things. In the article, the problem of the definition of soul in comparison with the definition of animal as a common genus, which Alexander considers in the quaestio 1.11 of “Quaestiones”, is examined. Alexander distinguishes the universlity of the genus, which is predicated to the nature identical in each being belonging to this genus, and the universality of the soul. He affirms that, although the soul is not a genus, predication of soul to the different souls is not homonymic, but is grounded on the unity of nature. In this case the common nature resides in different things not equally but diversely, and the correlation of universals and particulars is specified by Alexander as a relation of prior to posterior or as predication pros hen. By that, universals is attached to the nature of the thing as something posterior. The structure of universal predication, described in the quaestio 1.11, corresponds with the problem of predication of the being and the one in many ways in the commentary on the book IV of Aristotle’s “Metaphysics”. The being and the one as the per se accidents of being are predicated in many ways pros hen, and this hen is the one substrate or one essence. However, the unity and the being as the most universal is predicated to particular thing non-homonymically not on the basis of the unity of this thing, but on the basis of the unity of essence as the nature of being.

Keywords

Metaphysics, Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, katholou, essence, nature, the one.

References 

Bruns I. (ed.) (1892) Alexandri Aphrodisensis “Quaestiones”. Alexandri Aphrodisensis praeter Commentaria Scripta Minora: Quaestiones, De Fato, De Mixtione. Berlin: Reimer (Supplementum Aristotelicam. Vol. 2. Pars 2): 1–163.

Castelli L. M. (2011) “Greek, Arab and Latin Commentators on Per Se Accidents of Being qua Being and the Place of Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Iota”. Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale. Vol. XXII: 153–208.

Goris W. (2015) Transzendentale Einheit. Leiden; Boston: Brill (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters. Bd. 119).

Hayduck M. (ed.) (1891) Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis metaphysica commentaria. Berlin: Reimer (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Vol. I).

Jaeger W. (ed.) (1957) Aristotelis Metaphysica. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kalbfleisch C. (ed.) (1907) Simplicii in Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium. Berlin: Reimer (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Vol. VIII).

Knebel S. K. (1989) In Genere latent Aequivocayiones. Zur Tradition der Universalienkritik aus dem Gaist der Dihäerese. Hildesheim; Zuerich; New York: Georg Olms Verlag (Philosophische Texte und Studien. Bd. 20).

Lloyd A. C. (1981) Form and Universal in Aristotle. Liverpool: Francis Cairns (Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs).

Moraux P. (1942) Alexandre d’Aphrodise: Exégète de la noétique d’Aristote. Liege; Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Pines S. (1961) “A New Fragment of Xenocrates and Its Implications”. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. New Series. Vol. 51. No. 2: 3–34.

Ross W. D. (ed.) (1956) Aristotelis de Anima. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Oxford Classical Texts).

Sharples R. (2005) “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Universals. Two Problematic Texts”. Phronesis. Vol. 50. No. 1: 43–55.

Sirkel R. (2010) The Problem of Katholou (Universals) in Aristotle (PhD dissertation. University of Western Ontario. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. Paper 62).

Sirkel R. (2011) “Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Account of Universals and its Problems”. Journal of the History of Philosophy. Vol. 49. No. 3: 297–314.

Sorabji R. (2006) “Universals Transformed: the First Thousand Years after Plato”. Universals, Concepts, and Qualities. New Essays on the Meaning of Predicates. Ed. by P. F. Strawson, A. Chakrabarti. Aldershot: Ashgate: 105–125.

Tweedale M. (1984) “Alexander of Aphrodisias ‘Views on Universals’”. Phronesis. Vol. 29. No. 3: 279–303.

Varlamova M. (2017) “On the Unity of the Being as the Object of the First Science in the Commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Metaphysics of Aristotle”. Esse: Filosofskie i teologicheskie issledovaniya. T. 2. № 1/2 [ESSE: Studies in Philosophy and Theology. Vol. 2. No. 1/2]: 289–305. (in Russian).

© Maria Varlamova, 2018

Maria Varlamova. Foreword to translation of Michael Psellos’ commentary on chapters 1–3 of the book II of Aristotle’s “Physics”. Vol. 3. No. 1. 2018

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Sven K. Knebel. Tradition as an archeological category. Vol. 3. No. 1. 2018

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Publication Details

Tradition as an archeological category
Title in the language of publication: Традиция как археологическая категория
Author:
Sven K. Knebel
Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin.
Address: Habelschwerdter Allee, Berlin 14195, Germany.
Translated from German
Vitaliy Ivanov
Research Fellow at the Research and Education Center for Religion, Philosophy, and Culture Studies at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Associate Research Fellow at the Sociological institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Address: 67A Bolshaya Morskaia str., Saint-Petersburg, 190000, Russia.

Maria Varlamova
PhD in Philosophy, Research Fellow at the Research and Education Center for Religion, Philosophy, and Culture Studies at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Associate Research Fellow at the Sociological institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Address: 67A Bolshaya Morskaia str., Saint-Petersburg, 190000, Russia.
Issue:
P. 15–33.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
 
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Abstract

Sven K. Knebel (born 1958) is a renowned German hictorian of philosophy, a specialist in Late Scholasticism and peripatetic philosophic tradition. He is a disciple of Wolfgang Hübener and Jacob Taubes. The essay “Tradition as an archeological category” was published by Knebel with the subtitle “A hermeneutic afterword” as a methodological afterword to his book “In genere latent aequivocationes. On the tradition of critique of universals over the spirit of dieresis” (1989), dedicated to the history of the concept of universal unity of genus and to a research of complicated interaction of Platonic and Aristotelic tradition within the frames of teachings on univocation and equivocation of genus and species in the period from Plato and Aristotle to the High Scholasticism of the XIV century. In this essay, Knobel attempts to rehabilitate the concept of tradition, namely its paradigmatic case which the metaphysical tradition of philosophic knowledge appears, in respect of the methodological frames of Michel Foucault’s archeology of knowledge. He demonstrates that the tradition of metaphysics as a special discourse on “beings as beings” in its contiuity is neither an echo of primordial meaning of Being represented in a philosophical statement, nor a sign of primordial authorial intention (traditional hermeneutics), nor a mystery of signifier disavowing this primordial sense (deconstruction) or transforming it into an allegory of “unspoken between the lines”, into a latent discourse of unconscious (psychoanalysis), nor a speculative assertion (idealistic dialectics). On the contrary, as an empirically given order of terminological differentias, the logical and metaphysical tradition proves to be a type of non-representing discourse, which, instead of representation of the transcendental signified, is from the very beginning ever present beyond its own significations. For the metaphysical discourse, its elements, continuity of tradition and terminological differentias, correlate as a continuity of illusion of representation of pure signified and as an order of discourse constantly differentiating this continuity in the empirically fixated significations of terms and thus disclosing the illusiveness of this illusion of continuity, that is, its a priori necessity, which varies in each case. The practice of archeology of knowledge claims to detect within the orders of empirically given discourses their historical a priori, that is, an irreducible to the normativity of utterances condition of reality of actually uttered and, thus, it methodologically embodies proper form and actuality of the discourse of logical and metaphysical tradition.

Keywords

Archeology of knowledge, hermeneutics, history of concepts, tradition, historical a priori, terminology of metaphysic.

References 

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Duns Scotus (1960) “Ioannis Duns Scoti OFM Lectura prologus; Lectura I, dist. 1–7”. Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera omnia. T. XVI. Studio et cura Commissionis Scotisticae ad fidem codicum edita, praeside Carolo Balić (ed. a C. Balić, M. Bodewig, S. Bušelić, P. Čapkun-Delić, B. Hechich, I. Jurić, B. Korošak, L. Modrić, S. Nanni, I. Reinhold, O. Schäfer). Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis.

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© Sven K. Knebel, 2018  © Vitaliy Ivanov, transl., 2018  © Maria Varlamova, transl., 2018

Maria Varlamova. On the unity of being as the subject matter of first philosophy in Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Vol. 2. No. 1/2. 2017

Publication Details

On the unity of being as the subject matter of first philosophy in Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Title in the language of publication: О единстве сущего как предмета первой науки в комментарии Александра Афродисийского на «Метафизику» Аристотеля
Author:
Maria Varlamova
PhD in Philosophy, Research Fellow at the Research and Education Center for Religion, Philosophy, and Culture Studies at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Associate Research Fellow at the Sociological institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Address: 67A Bolshaya Morskaia str., Saint-Petersburg, 190000, Russia.
Issue:
P. 289–305.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
Acknowledgments:  The present study is a part of the project No. 16-03-00047, “The followers of John Duns Scotus in the XIVth–XVIth centuries Scholasticism: Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics”, implemented with a financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
 
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Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of the unity of being in Alexander’s Commentary of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and considers the question about the unity and possibility of the first philosophy as the study of being qua being. Aristotle denies that the being is a single genus for all reality and insists that the universality of being transcends any universality of genus. If the being is not a genus then it is not univocal but equivocal, from which follows that being qua being cannot be the subject matter of any science. Alexander demonstrates that the unity of being is not equivocal because all the parts and categories of being which is said in many ways depends on the universal nature of being, and shows that the nature of being is the substance (ουσία) which is the universal principle of unity.

Keywords

Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotle, sameness, one, many, being, essence, metaphysics.

References 

Alexander of Aphrodisias (1994a) On Aristotle’s “Metaphysics 4” (tr., intr., notes by A. Madigan). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press (The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle).

Alexander of Aphrodisias (1994b) On Aristotle’s “Metaphysics 5” (tr., intr., notes by W. E. Dooley). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press (The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle).

Aubenque P. (1987) «Zur Entstehung der pseudoaristotelishen Lehre von der Analogie des Seiens». Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung (hg. v. J. Wiesner). 2 Bde. Bd. 2. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter: 233–248.

Berti E. (2001) “Multiplicity and Unity of Being in Aristotle”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Vol. 101: 185–207.

Bruns I. (ed.) (1887) Alexandri Aphrodisensis praeter Commentaria Scripta Minora: De Anima Liber cum Mantissa. Berlin: Reimer (Supplementum Aristotelicam. Vol. 2. Pars 1).

Bruns I. (ed.) (1892) Alexandri Aphrodisensis “Quaestiones”. Alexandri Aphrodisensis praeter Commentaria Scripta Minora: Quaestiones, De Fato, De Mixtione. Berlin: Reimer (Supplementum Aristotelicam. Vol. 2. Pars 2): 1–163.

Castelli L. M. (2010) Problems and Paradigms of Unity. Aristotle’s Accounts of the One. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag (International Aristotle Studies. Bd. 6).

Dooley W. E. (1994) “Notes”. Alexander of Aphrodisias. On Aristotle’s “Metaphysics 5” (tr., intr., notes by W. E. Dooley). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press (The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle): 129–185.

Elders L. (1961) Aristotle’s Theory of the One. A Commentary on Book X of the Metaphysics. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Fonfara D. (2003) Ousia-Lehren des Aristoteles. Untersuchungen zur Kategorienschrift und zur Metaphysik. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Halper E. (2005) One and Many in Aristotle’s Metaphysics: The Central Books. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Halper E. (2009) One and Many in Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Books Alpha-Delta. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Hayduck M. (ed.) (1891) Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis metaphysica commentaria. Berlin: Reimer (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Vol. I).

Jaeger W. (ed.) (1957) Aristotelis Metaphysica. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Moraux P. (2001) Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen. Von Andronikos Bis Alexander Von Aphrodisias. Bd. 3. Alexander von Aphrodisias (hg. v. J. Wiesner). Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Ross W. D. (ed.) (1924) Aristotle’s Metaphysic. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sharples R. (2005) “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Universals. Two Problematic Texts”. Phronesis. Vol. 50. No. 1: 43–55.

Sirkel R. (2011) “Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Account of Universals and its Problems”. Journal of the History of Philosophy. Vol. 49. No. 3: 297–314.

Sorabji R. (2006) “Universals Transformed: the First Thousand Years after Plato”. Universals, Concepts, and Qualities. New Essays on the Meaning of Predicates. Ed. by P. F. Strawson, A. Chakrabarti. Aldershot: Ashgate: 105–125.

Tweedale M. (1984) “Alexander of Aphrodisias ‘Views on Universals’”. Phronesis. Vol. 29. No. 3: 279–303.

© Maria Varlamova, 2017

Maria Varlamova. The One and the Same as the Properties of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Vol. 1. No. 2. 2016

Publication Details

The One and the Same as the Properties of Being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Title in the language of publication: Единое и тождественное как свойства сущего в «Метафизике» Аристотеля
Author:
Maria Varlamova
PhD in Philosophy, Research Fellow at the Research and Education Center for Religion, Philosophy, and Culture Studies at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation.
Address: 67A Bolshaya Morskaia str., Saint-Petersburg, 190000, Russia.
Issue:
P. 305–328.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
Acknowledgments:  The present study is a part of the project No. 16-03-00047, “The followers of John Duns Scotus in the XIVth–XVIth centuries Scholasticism: Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics”, implemented with a financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
 
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Abstract

The article addresses the issue of the one/multiple and identical/different in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Unity and sameness are the two most significant properties of beings, which in Aristotle’s view should be considered in the first philosophy along with being as such and substance. In the introduction the role of the same as a kind of being in Plato’s dialectics is demonstrated. Then the article explicates different contexts of discussing unity and sameness in Aristotle’s treatises such as Metaphysics, Topics and On categories. Several aspects are underlined, necessary to understand the role of these properties of being in Aristotelian science. Firstly, the one and the same are considered together with their opposites, the multiple and the different, the same and the different being reduced to the one and the multiple. Secondly, much like being itself, they are predicated in many ways, but always related to one thing, which is substance. Essence or quiddity expressed in a definition is a principle of a being and the basis of predication of its properties: something that has an essence is one and the same. Both the same and the different reduce to the one and the multiple; however, if unity accompanies a being, is interconvertible with it and is said about the being absolutely, without relation to multiplicity, then the same and the different are related opposites: sameness is predicated about many beings, different in some aspect, and sameness as commonality in some respect is necessary for stating difference. In the final part of the paper the issue of the unity of essence as an object of definition and knowledge and as a substrate one in number is addressed within the problem of one and identical.

Keywords

Aristotle, sameness, one, many, distinction, being, essence, metaphysics.

References 

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Berti E. (2001) “Multiplicity and Unity of Being in Aristotle”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Vol. 101: 185–207.

Berti E. (2002) “Being and Essence in Contemporary Interpretations of Aristotle”. Individuals, Essence and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics (ed. by A. Bottani, M. Carrara, P. Giaretta). Dordrecht; Boston; London: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 79–107.

Castelli L. M. (2010) Problems and Paradigms of Unity. Aristotle’s Accounts of the One. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag (International Aristotle Studies. Bd. 6).

Charles D. (1994) “Matter and Form: Unity, Persistence, and Identity”. UnityIdentity and Explantion in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (ed. by T. Scaltsas, D. Charles, M. L. Gill). Oxford: Oxford University Press: 75–105.

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Elders L. (1961) Aristotle’s Theory of the One. A Commentary on Book X of the Metaphysics. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Fonfara D. (2003) Ousia-Lehren des Aristoteles. Untersuchungen zur Kategorienschrift und zur Metaphysik. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Frede M., Patzig G. (1988) Aristoteles Metaphysik Ζ. Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Bde. I–II. Munich: C. H. Beck.

Gill M. L. (1989) Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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© Maria Varlamova, 2016