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.
E-mail: boat.mary@gmail.com
|
| 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. |
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.
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© Maria Varlamova, 2018
