Witt Ways of Being

Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle's Metaphysics
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5017-1150-3
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten, WEB PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 228 mm

Charlotte Witt continues her highly regarded exploration of Aristotle's metaphysics in a book devoted to the ontological distinction between potentiality and actuality. She focuses on Metaphysics book ix, which provides the most sustained discussion of this distinction. Witt rejects the conventional reading of this key text—that Aristotle differentiated between the two concepts solely to further the investigation of substance. Instead, in an original interpretation of his work, she argues that his development of the distinction between "being x potentially" and "being x actually" allowed Aristotle to develop an intrinsically hierarchical and normative vision of reality.For Witt, Aristotle's views about being shed light on his puzzling use of gender language in his descriptions of reality. This language has become an important issue for feminist scholars who have noted that in Aristotle's metaphysics of substance form is sometimes associated with the male, and matter with the female. Witt's interpretation that Aristotelian reality is intrinsically hierarchical and normative, but not intrinsically gendered, offers a new, important understanding of a controversial aspect of Aristotle's metaphysics.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Witt, Charlotte

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Über Autor(innen)

WittCharlotte:
Sally Haslanger is Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Charlotte Witt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of Ways of Being: Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle's Metaphysics and Substance and Essence in Aristotle: An Interpretation of Metaphysics VII-IX (both from Cornell).