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- Dec 22, 2018"The first written record of the title, Metaphysics, comes from Diogenes Laertius around 50 BC."
Diogenes Laertius' dates are around 180 AD to 240 AD, so he would had a problem doing anything in 50 BC.
Best,Will
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Dec 22, 2018 10:46 am
Subject: Re: [hegel] metaphysics
Stephen,On the contrary -- I am sure that it wasn't Aristotle who titled the book. The first written record of the title, Metaphysics, comes from Diogenes Laertius around 50 BC.I am arguing, ultimately, that whoever first came up with that title, Metaphysics, was nevertheless not some dunce who thought, "Duhh, this book comes after the Physics in my list, so I will call it the Metaphysics."The eminent scholars from the turn of the last century who proposed that this was the source of the title, Metaphysics, would have done better to prove that such a dunce existed, and made a full confession. Without that, it is merely guesswork on the part of scholars who are tacitly admitting that they cannot make head or tails out of Aristotle's writing.All of this is a red herring! This is a Hegel List! The only real question is what the word, Metaphysics meant to Hegel himself! I aver that since Hegel was in fierce contest with Kant, that Hegel meant the term in exactly the same way that Kant meant it. And Kant meant it in exactly the same way that the scholastics meant it. And the scholastics had an ancient tradition for the word, going back to Diogenes Laertius!Let's focus please, on the actual issue. What did Hegel mean by the term, Metaphysics? It is those readers who fail to read Hegel "metaphysically" that wish to obscure the term for us, and muddy the waters by attempting to remove the traditional meaning of the term.All best,--Paul-------------------------------------------------------------------------On Friday, December 21, 2018, 5:38:17 AM CST, stephen theron stephentheron@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Paul,Are you sure it was Aristotle who titled the book, actually several books. I didn't think so. F. Inciarte, for example, identifies a single argument, for the truth of the infinite God, running through Books IV, VII-IX and concluding at XII. This in itself,suggests a later compilation. "Die Einheit der aristotelischen Metaphysik" (I quote from memory: in English it's a chapter in FI's Substance and Action, George Ohms, Hildesheim, c. 2002, I don't have the German title of this book, which I helped read through in English, to handIt is not clear at all to me that Aristotle's Physics are not metaphysical as we use the term today. Thus Book II, for example, elaborates hylomorphism, viz. the theory of form and matter (with privation as offering a surely metaphysical account of the philosophy of substantial change, substance being a metaphysical concept), such as one finds if differently in Hegel's (metaphysical?) logic. Book III outlines a concept of nature, as a "principle", arche, and that is surely metaphysical too, as is the argument for the impossibility of pure chance in Bk. IV, and so on.Again, the prefix "meta" simply means "after", most commonly, and this can of course suggest a higher grade of consideration just as subsequent. I can only say that in my attempts to understand Aristotle's metaphysics I frequently found key texts in the Physics as also in the "logical" writings such as De interpretatione. Inciarte, again, distinguishes sharpy the Aristotle of the Categories-Schrift from the Aristotle of the Metaphysics, deprecating the former.Is it worth writing more about the meaning of a word and the history of that meaning? The suggestion in that the physics without absorptiopn in the metaphysics would be "abstract", as in Hegel (his philosophy of nature). Probably in fact anyone who writes on anything has a metaphysics, "positive" or "negative" (these two terms regularly supplanting one another and back again). Is this not Hegel's suggestion (and Aristotle's?). It is also suggested when it is said that "this only is desirable for itself", hence the relative or not so relative nihilism as close cousin to the true metaphysics.Stephen Theron.From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of Paul Trejo petrejo@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 21 December 2018 00:43
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [hegel] metaphysicsStephen,I see no value in classifying the science of Physics as a topic within Metaphysics.The topic of Physics is set by tangible, solid, material facts.The topic of Metaphysics is set by intangible, ethereal, and non-material facts.Both are objective (argues Aristotle and Hegel) yet they are clearly distinct sciences.My argument goes like this. I realize that I am challenging the "canon" when I say that it is ABSURD that anybody would name Aristotle's book, Metaphysics, without reading it, or bothering about its CONTENT -- simply on the basis that it appears "after" the Physics.That to me is one of the SILLIEST arguments ever posed by professional scholars.It would make more sense if the scholars at least quoted somebody (anybody) as saying, "You know, I titled this book, Metaphysics, because it appeared after the book, Physics."That would be a smoking gun, and then I would have nothing further to say.But no.There is no such confession or smoking gun. There is simply somebody's guesswork, because they don't want to dig anymore.It is my opinion that those who came up with this ABSURD theory of the naming of Aristotle's Metaphysics, really never read the CONTENT themselves, and they were letting themselves off the hook of bothering to read it.That could only happen in a post-Kantian world. Hegel commented on something like this, when he wrote:"With Kant, the result is: 'We know onlyphenomena;' with Jacobi, on the otherhand, the result is: 'We know only thefinite and the conditioned.' Over thesetwo results there has been unmingledjoy among men, because the laziness ofReason (heaven be praised!) considereditself liberated from every call to Reflect."(Hegel, LHP, 1830, tr. Haldane, 3:476)Here Hegel recognizes that scholarship after Kant has become lazy on the topic of Metaphysics. Nobody reads it anymore, he complains in his Preface to his SL (1812).All best,--Paul--------------------------------------------------------------On Thursday, December 20, 2018, 6:29:08 AM CST, stephen theron stephentheron@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:On the other hand if the physics as a philosophy of nature could/would itself be classed as metaphysical at all then the aspect of continuation (of course though not "mere" continuation) although certainly a Part Two is strengthened, could one not say?Stephen Theron. - << Previous post in topic Next post in topic >>