Between Actuality and Nonbeing: Prime Matter Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-584
Author(s):  
Lee M. Cole
Keyword(s):  
Prime Matter

Aquinas on the Individuation of Substances

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey E. Brower
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Prime Matter

Aquinas has much to say about individuation over the course of his career. Although certain aspects of his views appear to undergo development, there is one aspect that remains constant throughout—namely, his commitment to assigning both prime matter and quantity an essential role in the individuation of substances. This paper examines the vexed issue of how either prime matter or quantity, as Aquinas understands them, could have any role to play in this context. In the course of doing so, the author attempts to put to rest a number of longstanding worries about the coherence of Aquinas’s views about individuation, as well as to draw out some of his broader commitments in metaphysics and natural philosophy that have yet to be fully appreciated.

Maimonides and the Pre-Maimonidean Jewish Philosophical Tradition According to Hermann Cohen

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron W. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Prime Matter ◽  
Hermann Cohen ◽  
Aristotelian Metaphysics ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper examines Hermann Cohen’s idiosyncratic construction of a medieval Jewish philosophical tradition, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on his Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis. This construction, not unlike modern accounts, is filtered through the central place of Maimonides. For Cohen, however, Maimonides’ centrality is defined not by his systematization of Aristotelianism, but by his elevation of ethics over metaphysics. The ethical and pantheistic concerns of Maimonides’ precursors, according to this reading, anticipate his uniqueness. Whereas Shlomo ibn Gabirol’s pantheistic doctrine of emanation, for example, assigned little weight to ethics, Abraham ibn Daud rebelled against such a doctrine. Ibn Daud—much like Bahya ibn Paquda and Abraham ibn Ezra—becomes part of a Jewish philosophical tradition that culminates in Maimonides’ rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, this paper examines the way in which Cohen envisaged the pre-Maimonidean philosophical tradition, putting his highly critical reading of Shlomo ibn Gabirol and his pantheistic obsession with prime matter in counterpoint with his more favorable readings of Abraham ibn Daud and Bahya ibn Paquda.

Prime Matter and Physical Science

2013 ◽  
pp. 285-303
Author(s):  
Albert G. A. Balz
Keyword(s):  
Physical Science ◽  
Prime Matter

Hylomorphism

2021 ◽  
pp. 148-161
Author(s):  
John Heil
Keyword(s):  
Downward Causation ◽  
Causal Interaction ◽  
Prime Matter ◽  
Nature Of Matter

The chapter provides a discussion of hylomorphism, a doctrine associated with Aristotle and his medieval followers according to which objects are compounds of matter and form. Two strands of contemporary hylomorphism are examined, one of which invokes a kind of downward causation. Another ‘modest’ strand regards forms as essences, the what it is to be (what it takes to be) something of a particular kind: a tree, a rabbit, an electron. This leaves open the nature of matter. Aristotle might or might not have embraced ‘prime matter’, but his account of change appears to call for a material something underlying changes among the elemental stuffs. The upshot is a seamless ‘blancmange’ universe apparently inhospitable to motion and to causal interaction among distinct objects.

Spinoza and Prime Matter

2004 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Huenemann
Keyword(s):  
Prime Matter
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