Title The discovery of things : Aristotle's Categories and their context / Wolfgang-Rainer Mann

Published Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2000

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 231 pages) Contents Cover Page -- Half-title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Citations -- Introduction -- 1. The Project -- 2. The Problem -- 3. The Task of Part I: The Problem of Categories 1 and 2 -- 4. The Task of Part II: Plato's Metaphysics and the Status of Things -- 5. The Task of Part III: The Categories Once More-The Role of the '-onymies' -- 6. Final Methodological Preliminaries -- Part I. Setting the Stage: The ""Antepraedicamenta"" and the ""Praedicamenta -- 1. Preliminary Remarks: The Role of the First Two Chapters of the Treatise 2. The Definition of the '-onymies' -- 3. The Four Kinds of Eponymy -- 4. The Distinctions of Chapters 2 and 3 -- Appendix 1: Difficulties with the Received Text and a Role for Chapter 4 -- Appendix 2: Speusippus, the Speusippean '-onymies', and Topics 1, 15 -- Part II. Plato's Metaphysics and the Status of Things -- 1. Preliminary Remarks -- 2. Forms and Participants in Plato's Middle Dialogues -- 3. The Problem of Becoming -- 4. Three Difficulties for the Proposed Account of Becoming -- 5. Plato's Introduction of the Distinction between Being and Becoming 6. The Background to Plato's Special Use of 'Becoming' -- 7. The Participants: Plato and Anaxagoreanism -- 8. Self-Predication -- 9. The Being of the Participants: Preliminaries -- 10. The First Objection: Does Plato Distinguish between Essential and Accidental Properties? -- 11. The Second Objection: The Extent of Forms (and a Methodological Digression) -- 12. The Second Objection Continued: Forms and 'Incompleteness' -- 13. A Third Objection: Can Forms Be 'Ingredients'? -- 14. The Participants: Being and Becoming -- 15. The Late-Learners: Real Being for Ordinary Things 16. Does Plato Modify His Picture in Some Late Dialogues? -- Part III. The Categories Picture once More: an Alternative to Platonism And Late-Learnerism -- 1. Aristotle's Introduction of Paronymy -- 2. Some Difficulties -- 3. The ""Antepraedicamenta"" as an Introduction to the ""Praedicamenta"": The Project of the Categories Reconsidered -- Epilogue -- Select Bibliography -- Index Locorum -- Index Rerum Summary Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the "Late-Learners" of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle. The author's argument consists of two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement. Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas Analysis Abstract Nouns Academy, The Aspect, verbal Becoming Beings Cave Analogy Clusters Common Sense Count Terms Divisibility Dream Theory, the so-called Elements Entities Essentialism: mereological Expressions Features Genera Heteronymy: generic notion of Homonymy: Aristotle's notion of Identity (through time) Incompleteness Ingredients: Anaxagoras's conception of Late-Learners, the Linnaean Trees Mass-Terms Mixtures Multiformity: Anaxagorean version of Names Natural Kinds Natures Non-Count Terms Nonsubstance Categories Objects One-Over-Many Principle Ordinary Language Parmenides Paronymy Participation Platonic Forms Predicate Nouns Qualified Things Qualities Receptacle, The Replacement, versus Change Self-Predication (SP) Sortal Terms Stuffs and Quasi-Stuffs Tests, Linguistic Things Uniformity: Anaxagorean version of Unity: genuine Whole(s) Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and indexes Subject Aristotle. Categoriae. Aristotele. Categorie SUBJECT Categoriae (Aristotle) fast Subject Categories (Philosophy) -- History PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical Categories (Philosophy) Genre/Form History Form Electronic book LC no. 2021694881 ISBN 9780691221595 0691221596

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