Please join us for a Spring Forum talk by distinguished visiting scholar Anna Marmodoro (co-sponsored with the Center for Philosophy of Religion)! Her presentation is titled "Can a ‘such’ be a ‘this’? Aristotle’s Parmenideanism."
Abstract: An Aristotelian substance is a ‘such’ that is a ‘this’. This is a challenge for Aristotle: can a ‘such’ be indivisibly ‘this’? The challenge arises because, I argue, in developing his theory of substance, Aristotle is driven by two commitments, which are irreconcilable and yet, each non-renounceable for him: a substance is a Parmenidean one (an incomposite kind), which is particular (an instantiated kind). Accordingly, underlying Aristotle’s hylomorphism is his attempt to maintain that each substance is a Parmenidean unity of kind and particularity.
Parmenides and Plato thought that substances are just kinds, unified qualitatively. Aristotle, on my understanding, revolutionised ontology by aiming to show that concrete substances, too, are just kinds, unified qualitatively. I will identify and examine Aristotle’s brilliant innovations in his effort to achieve this.
What Aristotle needs to achieve is to explain the ontology of substances as unities that are one, but not related into one, not even by essential predication. I show that Aristotle introduces several
metaphysical ‘mechanisms’ for the oneness of substances (holism is not one of them), that have not been hitherto identified in the literature. I identify such mechanisms, I describe how Aristotle uses them to argue for the Parmenidean oneness of a ‘such-this’, but I argue that these mechanisms cannot ultimately assimilate particularity into kind.
Originally published at historyofphilosophy.nd.edu.