Explanation and Hypothetical Necessity in Aristotle

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathanael Stein ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Hypothetical Necessity

ALEXANDER ON PHYSICS 2.9

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
ROBERT W. SHARPLES
Keyword(s):  
Hypothetical Necessity

Abstract In this paper, Bob Sharples considers a report regarding Alexander in Simplicius’Physics commentary, which touches on the problem of hypothetical necessity and how it relates to unqualified necessity. Simplicius seems to think that for Alexander, necessity imposed by matter is not purposive. This is why bricks do not necessarily give rise to a brick house. He here exploits the genuinely Aristotelian idea that form and end account for the matter, rather than vice versa; yet Alexander will have been motivated also by his opposition to the Stoics.

scholarly journals Aristotle on Natural Slavery

Phronesis ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Heath
Keyword(s):  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Practical Deliberation ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Hypothetical Necessity

AbstractAristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in thumos (Pol. 7.7, 1327b18-31), would be sufficient to make natural slaves incapable of eudaimonia without being obtrusively implausible relative to what Aristotle is likely to have believed about non-Greeks. Since Aristotle seems to have believed that the existence of people who can be enslaved without injustice is a hypothetical necessity, if those capable of eudaimonia are to achieve it, the existence of natural slaves has implications for our understanding of Aristotle's natural teleology.

Aristotle’s Physics

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Thematic Unity ◽  
Hypothetical Necessity ◽  
Four Causes ◽  
Aristotle's Metaphysics

The word physics comes from the Greek word for nature: phusis. As Aristotle himself uses it, the Greek term translated as physics in this context refers to natural science as a whole, including cosmology, biology, chemistry and meteorology, as well as the sort of investigation of the fundamental elements of things, and the laws that govern their behavior, for which we use the term today. The work we call “Aristotle’s Physics” was not published as a book in his own day, and it was not intended for publication as it stands. Instead, like his Metaphysics, it is a compilation—probably by Aristotle himself—of a number of separate writings: they may have been research papers and/or the basis for lectures (the ancient title for the Physics is Lectures on Natural Science, but there is no evidence that this title goes back to Aristotle). Nonetheless, the writings which make up the Physics exhibit a clear thematic unity. Aristotle explains “nature” as “an internal principle of change and rest”: change is thus central to the idea of nature as he understands it. Linked by the notions of nature and change, these writings are all concerned with foundational issues in natural science as Aristotle conceives of it. It is clear from other works that Aristotle took natural science as a whole to be a systematic body of knowledge which should be presented and studied in a systematic order (see Meteorologica I.1 338a20-26 and 333a5-9); in this order, the material in Physics comes first. Aristotle’s other works on natural science, such as De Caelo (On the Heavens), De Generatione et Corruptione (On Coming to Be and Ceasing to Be), De Anima (On the Soul), and De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals) constantly make reference, explicitly or implicitly, to notions developed and argued for in the Physics—most especially to matter and form; the four types of cause, chance, teleology, and hypothetical necessity; and the nature of change and agency. Matter and form, and the four causes, also play a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics: see especially the so-called central books (Books Ζ, Η, and Θ), and Book Λ, chapters 1–5. The Physics is divided into eight Books (perhaps corresponding to the length of a scroll of the papyrus on which Aristotle’s works would have been written); in the Renaissance each Book was divided into chapters by the publishers of printed versions, and these are still used for ease of reference.

Hobbes’s De Corpore on Modalities and Its Contemporary Critiques

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-57
Author(s):  
Martine Pécharman
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Sufficient Cause ◽  
Interesting Difference ◽  
Hypothetical Necessity

Hobbes considered as unambiguous and unproblematic his demonstration in De Corpore that every effect past, present or future is necessary, since it always requires a sufficient cause that cannot be sufficient without being necessary, so that nothing is possible which will not be actual at some time. Now, this approach to necessity and possibility was received by his contemporary readers as missing its aim. Two immediate criticisms of De Corpore by Moranus and Ward exhibit from this viewpoint an interesting difference as to their common argument that only hypothetical necessity can result from Hobbes’s premises. My essay relates this argumentative difference to the absence (Moranus) or presence (Ward) in the background of the free-will dispute between Hobbes and Bramhall. From there, I examine also different interpretations of the ‘hypothetical necessity-argument’ in the indirect critical reception of De Corpore, when the target is Hobbes’s necessitarianism in the controversy with Bramhall, based on significant material from his De Corpore project. Remarkably, although Leibniz agrees with Bramhall that Hobbes only proves a hypothetical necessity, Leibniz’s understanding of hypothetical necessity is not that of Bramhall. Another striking difference is displayed in the use of the ‘hypothetical necessity-argument’ by More, which as it were blurs the connection of the free-will issue with Hobbes’s general doctrine of causality.

Hypothetical Necessity and Fiction in the Early Renaissance

MLN ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Ullrich Langer
Keyword(s):  
Hypothetical Necessity
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