Some More Notes on Aristotle's Metaphysics



The difference between a particular horse and the kind.  This particular horse, Mr. Tripps, may have three legs; but horses (as a kind) have four legs.

Some points to stress from A.E. Taylor's Aristotle (Dover, 1955).  [Available in the Le Moyne College library at B485 .T27 1956]

1.  Matter & Form, form the most recent formal character (e.g., the roundness of a silver dollar), with the silver being the matter which was thus shaped.  Lurking behind all this is the idea of a prime matter. (47-48)

2.  Discuss the relationship between the matter which is potentially a thus and so and the actual thus and so. (48-49)

2a.  Acorns and oaks; the natural end of a kind.  AET points out the connection between this and the end of life in Aristotle's Ethics. (49)

3.  Motion:  generation, decay, corruption, alteration, augmentation, diminution, motion through space (including  transference, rotation).  (56)
3a.  Eternality of motion. (56-57)
3b.  The prime mover, pure form/actuality, object of universal conation; G as thought thinking itself. (57-60)



M. Kagan
Le Moyne College
2/27/01
 
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