Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics: Readings

CAM=Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics

MP=The Metaphysics of Powers

SO=The Structure of Objects

Weeks One-Three: Theseus’ Ship Sails Again

  • Week One: A Puzzle about Identity
    • Tahko, ‘Introduction, CAM, 1  
    • Shields, Aristotle, Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy
  • Week Two: Flat vs. Privileged Ontology
  • Week Three: A Categorial Scheme
    • Aristotle, Categories 1-5
    • Studtmann, ‘Aristotle's Categories,’ Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
    • Bird, ‘Are Any Kinds Ontologially Fundamental?’ CAM 94
    • Rosenkranz, ‘Ontological Categories,’ CAM 83
    • Heil, ‘Are Four Categories Too Many?’ CAM, 83
    • Simons, ‘Four Categories—and More,’ CAM 126
      • Recommended: Lowe, The-Four Category Ontology (Oxford University Press: 2006)


Weeks Four-Six: Hylomorphism



Weeks Seven-Eight: Causation and Powers

  • Week Seven: Powers and Properties
    • Lowe, ‘On the Individuation of Powers,’ MP 8
    • Heil, Powerful Qualities,’ MP 58
  • Week Eight: Powers and Causation 
    • Mumford and Anjum, ‘A Powerful Theory of Causation,’ MP 143
    • Bird, ‘Causation and the Manifestation of Powers,’ MP 160


Week Nine: Mid-semester Break


Weeks Ten-Thirteen: Aristotelian Essentialism

  • Week Ten: Challenges to Essentialism
    • Quine, Word and Object (MIT Press: 1960) [excerpts]
    • Van Cleve, 'The Moon and Sixpence,' in Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, ed.Hawthorne, T. Sider, and D. Zimmerman (Blackwell, 2008), 321-40.
  • Week Eleven: Merely Modal and Aristotelian Essentialism
    • Fine, ‘Essence and Modality,’ Philosophical Perspectives 8 (1994), 1–163
    • Matthews, ‘Aristotelian Essentialism,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (1990), 251-262
    • Fine, ‘Unified Foundations for Essence and Ground,’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2015), 296-311
  • Week Twelve:The Role of Essence in Ontology
    • Inman, ‘Essential Dependence, Truthmaking, and Mereology: Then and Now,’ in L. Novak et al. edd., Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag: 2013),  73-90
    • Lowe, ‘Essence and Ontology,’ in L. Novak et al. edd., Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag: 2013), 93-111


Weeks Thirteen-Sixteen: The Structure of Objects

  • Week Thirteen: The Privilege of Life
  • Week Fourteen: Constituent Ontology
    • Wolterstorff, ‘Bergmann’s Constituent Ontology,’ Nous 4 (1970), 109-134
    • Loux, ‘What is Constituent Ontology?’ in L. Novak et al. edd., Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic, 43-57
    • Loux, ’Substances, Concidentals, and Aristotle’s Constituent Ontology,’ in C. Shields ed, The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle (Oxford University Press: 372-399  
  • Week Fifteen: Aristotelian Mereology
    • Koslicki, SO
  • Week Sixteen: Aristotelian Mereology 
    • Koslicki, SO


© Christopher Shields 2014