DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Continental Philosophy Society
HTML https://continentalphilsociety.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Plato and Aristotle
*****************************************************
#Post#: 82--------------------------------------------------
Aristotle's "Metaphysics"
By: xavierhn Date: September 28, 2017, 10:58 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I recently bought a bilingual version of Aristotle's complete
work the "metaphysics". I plan to work through it slowly.I'll
post on here and google drive.
In the meantime I'll be working out 'definitions' of key words
for Aristotle. The first major problem is acquainting ourselves
with the basic determination and sense of 'Greek words'.
Whenever we have a translation of Greek if we are to leave words
untranslated or put them back into Greek, the same problem
arises we must uncover the Greek understanding beyond the word.
This is something we come across as a major problem in all our
studies - philosophical 'terms' whether translated or left
untranslated without a transportation into the 'understanding'
behind the word give us no access into the words themselves, nor
the text itself. If we cannot be transported into the word we
won't be able to begin learn about what the text wants to tell
us.
I've come to the desire now of writing up our strategy for
'reading' - how we go about it and what it means. Our motto will
be: Philosophy is its history.
So our first exercise should be to gain a basic awareness and
understanding of the Greek words in its difference to what is
translated. This will be an ongoing skill to develop. Our basic
approach should be disentangling the Greek from the Latin.
That's broad yet intuitive way of putting what 'destruction' in
Heidegger's use means. For example, what does
ουσιας mean for Aristotle? He says
in the metaphysics book XII that his inquiry is on
ουσιας
(ουσιας ή
θεωρια, 1069α). Our reception
of Aristotle is mediated by the 'scholastic', who preserved
Aristotle's texts by translating
ουσιας into substantia. To get at
what Aristotle is talking about, we have no other way than to
engage in order to dismantle the Scholastic meaning of
substantia. Why? First, the Latin translation is an event in the
history of Philosophy. All philosophers after the scholastics do
not question the relationship between
ουσιας and substantia. The
ramification is that, the Greeks, therefore, are thought in a
scholastic way, i.e., a Christian way "metaphysically". This is
true for even Hegel, the first to take Greek thought seriously.
All our studies at university fall prey to this situation, where
philosophers are not thought in their element, but always
mediated through a thinking that does not belong to them. E.g.
think of Parmenides thought with Wittgenstein!
We must unpack the relationship between
ουσιας and substantia in order to
snap it apart from each other. We first do this by figuring out
what the Scholastics thought about substantia , and its
importance. From there we will be able to start dismantling, the
Latin from the Greek. This means that the Latin in some sense
preserves what the Greek is in itself. Without this assumption,
we would have no way, at least no way I can think of right now,
to retrieve or at least show what is proper to the Greek way of
thinking.
Our task there, generalisable you might say to all our research,
is to differentiate the Greek way of thinking from the Christian
way. There is no other genuine methodology for philosophy today
than this.
A place to start is a small text by Aquinas "On Being and
Essence" (De Ente et Essentia). Here's a link to a bilingual
copy:
HTML http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeEnte&Essentia.htm
HTML http://dhspriory.org/thomas/DeEnte&Essentia.htm
The bracket terms reference (page section and the book from
Metaphysics). For each word we must situate it within its
Scholastic origin and, then, Greek origin.
[hr]
καθόλου - translated as
'universals'. (1078 b 31, XIII)
ορισμούς - translates as
'definition'. (1078 b 31,XIII)
το τι εστιν -
translates as 'essence'. (1078 b 25, M XIII)
ειδη - translates as 'Form' (1059 b 6, XI).
From Plato, meaning rather the 'outward appearance' of a thing.
[list]
[li]"τά μεν γαρ
ειδη οτι ούκ
έστι" (1059 b 2, XI)[/li]
[li]Ouk is a negative indicative of the verb esti (to be).[/li]
[li]The outward appearance does not posses a primary kind of
'being' - is this a better way of putting it?[/li]
[/list]
τά
μαθηματικά -
translates as 'mathematical objects' (1059 b 2, XI). We know
from Heidegger's essay on mathematics, something of learning is
meant by the mathematical.
ενεργεία - "actualitas",
"actuality"
δινάμει - "potentia",
"potential"
τό όν - "et esse", "being"
το έν - (Not sure what the Latin is for it),
"unity"
γένη - "genera"
BOOK IV
SECTION I. GREEK - ENGLISH
[list]
[li]ἔστιν
ἐπιστήμη
τις ἣ θεωρεῖ
τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν
καὶ τὰ
τούτῳὑπάρχ&#
959;ντα
καθ᾽ αὑτό.
αὕτη δ᾽
ἐστὶν
οὐδεμιᾷ τῶν
ἐνμέρει
λεγομένων ἡ
αὐτή:
οὐδεμία γὰρ
τῶν
ἄλλωνἐπισκ&#
959;πεῖ
καθόλου
περὶ τοῦ
ὄντος ᾗ ὄν,
ἀλλὰ
μέροςαὐτοῦ
τι
ἀποτεμόμεν	
45;ι
περὶ τούτου
θεωροῦσι
τὸσυμβεβηκ	
72;ς,
οἷον αἱ
μαθηματικαP
54;
τῶν
ἐπιστημῶν.
ἐπεὶδὲ τὰς
ἀρχὰς καὶ
τὰς
ἀκροτάτας
αἰτίας
ζητοῦμεν,
δῆλονὡς
φύσεώς
τινος αὐτὰς
ἀναγκαῖον
εἶναι καθ᾽
αὑτήν.
εἰοὖν καὶ
οἱ τὰ
στοιχεῖα
τῶν ὄντων
ζητοῦντες
ταύτας
τὰςἀρχὰς
ἐζήτουν,
ἀνάγκη καὶ
τὰ στοιχεῖα
τοῦ
ὄντοςεἶναι
μὴ κατὰ
συμβεβηκὸς
ἀλλ᾽ ᾗ ὄν:
διὸ καὶ
ἡμῖν
τοῦὄντος ᾗ
ὂν τὰς
πρώτας
αἰτίας
ληπτέον.[/li]
[li]There is a familiarity with things that thoughtfully
speculates what is as what is in terms of the source of its
self-sameness. There is not one kind of picking out that lays in
the same manner as the looking upon on the whole of what is as
what is, rather, the former way only severs off way is
co-present alongside what is: such as the mathematical
familiarity of beings. Concerning the beginnings
(ἀρχὰς) and the farthest point of
responsibility
(ἀκροτάτας
αἰτίας) of such beginnings that
we can sight, we are after the self-emergent origins
(φύσεώς) of what belongs to itself
in its self-emerging way (εἶναι
καθ᾽ αὑτήν).
Elements of what is are sought after in beginnings and are
constrained as elements of beings not in a copresencing way
(κατὰ
συμβεβηκὸς)
but with regards to how themselves are: even through this
account it must be the primary responsibility
(πρώτας
αἰτίας) of what is is
grasped[/li]
[/list]
*****************************************************