Aristotle on ontological priority
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Aristotle's ambitions for ontology extend beyond determining what beings there are: he also thinks there is an order among the beings, i.e. that some things are prior in being to others. I argue that priority in being is a causal relation: one thing is prior in being to another when it is a cause of being for the latter. My causal view gives us new interpretive resources for understanding how Aristotle's apparently diverse claims about what is prior in being to what are unified: in each case, what is prior in being is a cause of being for what is posterior in being, but different prior entities make different causal contributions to the being of different posterior entities. My causal view also gives us insight into how Aristotle came to accept the claims about priority in being that he does. It allows us to draw on Aristotle's criticisms of his predecessors' views about the causes and principles of being, as well as on Aristotle's statement of the puzzles that must be solved in first philosophy, to see what philosophical pressures shaped Aristotle's view.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Meadows, Katherine |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy. |
| Primary advisor | Code, Alan Dodd, 1951- |
| Thesis advisor | Code, Alan Dodd, 1951- |
| Thesis advisor | Bobonich, Christopher |
| Thesis advisor | Netz, Reviel |
| Advisor | Bobonich, Christopher |
| Advisor | Netz, Reviel |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Katherine Meadows. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Katherine Helena Meadows
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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