Data: de 3 a 5 de Julho de 2024 | 10h00-18h00

Local: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

Organização: CFUL - Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa

Mais informações: c.filosofia@letras.ulisboa.pt | CFUL

Conference “Features of Substantiality in Aristotle”

It is a central question in Aristotle’s ontology what it is for something to be a substance. Aristotle characterises substances as such in different ways, including as being: separate, or separable (choriston); a this-something (tode ti) and what something is (ti esti); what it is in its own right (kath’hauto); something definite (horismenon); and a subject or substrate (hypokeimenon). However, among these ‘features’ of substantiality, some are notoriously hard to grasp and have sparked considerable debates in the literature. It is also not fully clear how all these features relate to each other. For example, there is a long-lasting controversy about what it means for a substance to be separate, whether this should be understood in terms of existential independence, or in terms of essential independence, or in some other way. And it is disputed whether substantial forms are separate or not. Another controversy concerns the question of what it means to be a this-something (tode ti), whether it just means to be a particular (falling under a substance kind), or to be something definite and determinate, or to be such that no element of the account of the thing is predicated of another, or something else. And it is disputed whether it is the individual sensible substance, or the form, that is a this-something in the primary sense. The aim of the conference is to discuss the different features of substantiality as they figure both in Aristotle’s ontological works and also in his other (biological, ethical etc.) works, in order to gain a better understanding of them, and their relation to each other.