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Full Description
This volume brings together 12 essays exploring the history of theories of definition and essence in Western philosophy from Aristotle to Kant. Definition and essence have been central to philosophical theorising since antiquity and remain so to this day. This volume presents a series of explorations of key authors and themes connected by a common set of questions: What are definitions and essences? What are the connections between them? What are their logical and metaphysical properties? What sorts of things have definitions and essences and what sorts of things do not? What functions do definitions and essences serve in the physical, mathematical, and human sciences? How, if at all, can we come to know them? This volume shows that answering these questions allows us to see in a new light key figures and movements in the history of Western thought. The volume's broad historical sweep also facilitates comparisons between different figures. And it reveals important connections between different subfields of philosophy as these were developed over the centuries - logic, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and natural philosophy among them.
Definition and Essence from Aristotle to Kant will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in the history of philosophy, history of logic, history of mathematics, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Contents
Introduction Peter R. Anstey and David Bronstein 1. Aristotle on the Relation between Definition and Demonstration David Bronstein 2. Definition and Demonstration in the Category of Quantity and the Ancient Search for the Definition of Ratio James Franklin 3. Stoic Definitions Without Forms Katja Vogt 4. Proclus' Hierarchy of Definitions Marije Martijn 5. Principles and Essences in Robert Kilwardby's Science of Logic Paul Thom 6. Aquinas on the Unity of Definition Gabriele Galluzzo 7. Definition, Hobbes, and Medieval Nominalism Calvin G. Normore 8. Does Descartes' Mind-Body Union have a Real Definition? Deborah J. Brown 9. Four Theories of Definition: Hobbes, Pascal, Port-Royal, and Locke Peter R. Anstey 10. The First Rule of Geometers: Arnauld and Nicole's Theory of Definition Laura Kotevska 11. Proof by Experiments in Newton's Opticks Kirsten Walsh 12. Kant on Essence and Nature Michael Oberst
