Ep. 337: Aristotle on Primary Being (Part Two)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
Continuing on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book 7 (Zeta), on essences and what sorts of things have them.
Contrasting with Plato, Aristotle believes that some changing, visible things have forms. How do they get them? Well, they're received from some previous thing that has a comparable form, e.g. a child from its parents, or perhaps a form could come from a creator's mind.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just want to let you know about our book coming out on April 25th, just in time for our 15th anniversary. |
| 0:06.4 | It includes chapters for 18 of our episodes with such guests as Lucy Lawless and Michael Sandel, Peter Singer, and Arthur Danto. |
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| 0:24.0 | book. |
| 0:25.0 | You're listening to the Parts of Examine Life. |
| 0:34.7 | Episode 337, Part 2, we've been discussing Book Zeta, or 7 of Aristotle's metaphysics, we were up to what chapter four yeah |
| 0:46.2 | we're just about that should start chapter four here which starts out with saying hey |
| 0:50.4 | maybe substance is essence. |
| 0:53.0 | Let's try that. |
| 0:54.0 | That's one of the options he described in the previous chapter. |
| 0:57.0 | It's going to be his favorite answer. |
| 0:59.0 | It's going to be the one he starts with. |
| 1:00.0 | So why does he want to say that? |
| 1:02.0 | One of the possibilities is essence, we must investigate this. |
| 1:05.0 | I'm reading at the very beginning of the chapter. |
| 1:08.0 | And first let us make some linguistic remarks about it. |
| 1:11.0 | The essence of each thing is what it is said to be in virtue of itself. |
| 1:15.4 | For being you is not being musical since you are not by your very nature musical. |
| 1:21.2 | What then you are by your very nature is your essence. So why is that important to him? |
| 1:26.0 | I mean we're just distinguishing incidental properties from from essential properties. |
| 1:32.0 | I think we've said in several places that this causes problems. |
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