Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

L'Erario, Aldo, Grasping the Essence: Aristotle's Epistemological and Psychological Conception of the Knowledge of Essences. (Symposion 142) 330 S. 2024:8 (K. Alber, GW) <733-38>
ISBN 978-3-495-99253-1 hard ¥21,817.- (税込) EUR 94.00

This volume reconstructs Aristotle's view of the cognition of essences and engages with the current debate on it. Its main thesis is that the source of some current interpretive tensions lies with Aristotle himself, who holds both that knowledge of essence is gained a posteriori and that it is irreducible to perceptual experience. The aim of the book is to show, by contrasting Aristotle's philosophy of science and his philosophical psychology, that his position is coherent. While this strategy has often been neglected in more recent studies for methodological reasons, this study aims to show how fruitful it is.

Mesquita, Antonio Pedro, Aristotle on Natural Simultaneity of Relatives in the Categories. (Routledge Focus on Philosophy) 102 pp. 2024:10 (Routledge, UK) <733-39>
ISBN 978-1-032-90095-7 hard ¥14,076.- (税込) GB￡ 49.99 *

This book addresses the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15- 8a12. Natural simultaneity is a form of symmetrical ontological dependence that holds between items that are not causally linked. In this section of the Categories, Aristotle introduces this topic in his analysis of relatives and maintains that although relatives seem to be for the most part simultaneous by nature, there seem to be some exceptions. He mentions two pairs of relatives as exceptions, namely the pairs knowledge/knowable and perception/perceptible, and argues at length for the priority of the second relative over the first one in each case. Through a close reading of this text, the author analyses Aristotle's arguments for the thesis of the exceptional character of these pairs and shows that all of them are unsuccessful in supporting the thesis. In order to draw this conclusion, the author highlights and carefully considers the properties that Aristotle is committed to attributing to relatives, taking into account the metaphysical framework of the Categories as well as their specificities within the set of nonsubstantial categories. Then, he shows that Aristotle's mature views on relatives in the Metaphysics can be construed as committing him to the rejection of such a thesis.Although the issue of natural simultaneity is just one of several that Aristotle considers in his discussion of relatives throughout Categories 7, it is a particularly relevant issue, since it involves a number of puzzles whose analysis allows for a better understanding of the very notion of relativity in Aristotle. This is the first book to explore this issue from the perspective of illuminating the Aristotelian views on relatives.Aristotle on Natural Simultaneity of Relatives in the Categories will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Aristotle, ancient philosophy in general, and metaphysics.

Vogel, Moritz, Platons Philosophie der Zahlen: Eine systematische Rekonstruktion anhand der Dialoge Platons und der Pragmatien des Aristoteles. (Academia Philosophical Studies 87) 308 S. 2024:8 (Academia Vlg., GW) <733-40>
ISBN 978-3-9857218-4-9 paper ¥17,175.- (税込) EUR 74.00

Die Studie untersucht die Bedeutung von Zahlen in Platons Metaphysik und Philosophie der Mathematik mit dem Ziel einer Neubewertung der Platon-Zeugnisse bei Aristoteles. In eingehenden Interpretationen zu Platons Dialogen Politeia, Timaios und Parmenides wird die Bedeutung von Zahlen fuer die Bestimmtheit unseres Denkens herausgearbeitet. Auf dieser Grundlage werden die aristotelischen Zeugnisse zu Platons Prinzipien-, Zahlen- und Mathematiktheorie kritisch bewertet und neu interpretiert. Teilweise, z. B. hinsichtlich des Verhaeltnisses von platonischen Ideen und Zahlen, wird Aristoteles’ Darstellung substantiell korrigiert. Ausserdem weist die Studie detailliert Einfluesse der antiken Mathematik auf Platons philosophisches Denken nach.

Zavaliy, Andrei G., Motivation in the Ancient Greek Ethos: Punishment, Shame, and Moral Guilt. 310 pp. 2024:12 (Lexington Books, US) <733-41>
ISBN 978-1-6669-2054-3 hard ¥25,740.- (税込) US$ 120.00 *

Motivation in the Ancient Greek Ethos: Punishment, Shame, and Moral Guilt explores motivational techniques that were utilized in the Ancient Greek culture (from Archaic to Classical periods) to channel the reluctant agent's behavior in a desirable direction. Structured around several types of "appeal to fear" strategies--including an appeal to fears of divine retribution, earthly punishment, public disgrace, or oblivion--, this book analyzes these strategies with regard to their efficiency, practical applicability, and normative priority. In addition, Andrei G. Zavaliy argues that towards the end of the Classical period of Greek history the repertoire of the standard motivational strategies was enriched by a new possibility: an appeal to fear of self-shaming and, in general, to fear of painful inner qualms as a consequence of misbehavior. The latter type of incentive was clearly present in Democritus and appeared somewhat tangentially in Plato but was emphatically restated by Aristotle. Zaviliy further suggests that the type of psychic discomfort experienced by a wrongdoer, according to Aristotle, is structurally similar to the "pangs of conscience" in the way this phenomenon was developed during the late Hellenistic period, and, this Aristotelian psychic discomfort can thus be reasonably correlated with the feeling of moral guilt.

Gili, Luca, Aquinas on Change and Time: A Philosophical Analysis of the Commentary on Aristotle's "Physics" III and IV. (Europaea memoria: Studien und Texte zur Geschichte der europaeischen Ideen. Reihe I: Studien 138) 111 S. 2024:5 (Olms, GW) <733-36>
ISBN 978-3-487-16703-9 paper ¥9,051.- (税込) EUR 39.00

How can God know the future if future things are not actual? Would there be time if no change were to occur in the universe? What allows us to identify a direction in the order of changes independently of the series of instants in time? Aquinas answers all these questions in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. According to him, only entities located in the present exist. The present is nothing but the intermediate between past and future points on the line of time. Time, in turn, is ontologically dependent on change, but despite being its measure, it is mind-independent: time is what makes a changing thing suitable of being understood in a series of successive stages by a possible mind. This revolutionary commentary is nevertheless faithful to the nuances of Aristotle’s text and mark a milestone in the medieval reflection on the natural world. This book explores the core ideas outlined by Aquinas in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics.

Glauthier, Patrick, The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome: Manilius, Seneca, Lucan, and the Aetna. 288 pp. 2025:2 (Oxford U. Pr., US) <733-37>
ISBN 978-0-19-778755-7 hard ¥21,235.- (税込) US$ 99.00 *

The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome charts the role of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. It shows how the sublimity of the study of nature--the scientific sublime--animates Manilius' Astronomica, Seneca's Natural Questions, Lucan's Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna, and explores how these authors inflect and deploy the scientific sublime in their respective historical and socio-political contexts. Imbued with the triumphal optimism of the Augustan moment, Manilius takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the expanses of the heavens, reveling in the infinite dimensions of the cosmos and the astounding ability of his mathematical calculations to uncover the mind of god; this is the ultimate intellectual pursuit. The instability and paranoia of the Neronian period fundamentally compromise this posture. In Natural Questions, Seneca rejects Manilius' celestial adventure and redirects the reader's gaze to atmospheric phenomena. The turbulence and tumult of meteorological inquiry do not lead to certain knowledge, but Seneca hopes that its electric vitality might counteract the allure of morally corrupt pastimes and of political power itself. For Lucan, the Manilian and Senecan projects are delusional fantasies. The study of nature, stripped of the illusion that it serves some higher purpose, constitutes a distraction from the urgent necessity of civil war, and those characters who understand nature's mechanics appear laughably irrelevant or downright deadly. In the early Flavian period, the Aetna poet rehabilitates the ecstatic charge of natural inquiry. Dismissing the lofty aspirations of Manilius and Seneca, the author careens over Sicily's jagged terrain and plunges the reader into the depths of the earth searching for terrestrial knowledge. By the poem's conclusion, however, sheer awe before the amphitheatrical spectacle of nature supplants the rush of philosophical analysis as the goal of studying the earth; this attitude connects the poet with Longinus and the Elder Pliny. Through close readings, this book tells a new story about the study of nature at Rome. It locates the sublimity of that study at the center of early imperial Latin literature and thereby renders the classical sublime more expansive, dynamic, and contested.