Aristotle's Metaphysics Research Articles

One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: The Central Books

One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: The Central Books

Aquinas's Interpretation of Aristotle'sMetaphysics, Book Z

The paper presents a general reconstruction of Aquinas's interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book Z, the book devoted to the notion of substance. The aim of the study is to evaluate Aquinas's reading in the light of a series of exegetical and philosophical issues debated in the contemporary literature on Book Z. Therefore, the paper focuses on four main issues: (1) the relation between Book Z's ontology and the one outlined by Aristotle in the Categories; (2) the problem of the definition of sensible substances; (3) the question as to whether a thing is identical with its own essence; (4) the ontological status (particular or universal) of the forms of sensible substances. The paper presents Aquinas's position on each of the aforementioned topics. The main thesis defended throughout is that Aquinas's interpretation of Book Z is guided by the intuition that sensible substances are ontologically prior to their substantial components, matter and form.

One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: the Central Books. By Edward C. Halper

The Heythrop JournalVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 169-169 One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: the Central Books. By Edward C. Halper , Search for more papers by this author , Search for more papers by this author First published: 27 December 2007 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00361_24.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume49, Issue1January 2008Pages 169-169 RelatedInformation

Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heidegger's Interpretation of Energeia and Dunamis in Aristotle

AbstractIn the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it.

The Rediscovery of Peter Abelard's Philosophy

My article surveys philosophical discussions of Abelard over the last twenty years. Although Abelard has been a well-known figure for centuries, his most important logical works were published only in the twentieth century and, so I argue, the rediscovery of him as an important philosopher is recent and continuing. I concentrate especially on work that shows Abelard as the re-discoverer of propositional logic (Chris Martin); as a subtle explorer of problems about modality (Simo Knuuttila, Herbert Weidemann) and semantics (Klaus Jacobi); as a metaphysician before the reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics (Peter King); and as an ethical thinker who echoes the Stoics (Calvin Normore) and anticipates Kant (Peter King).

Utrum inhaerentia sit de essentia accidentis. Francis of Marchia and the Debate on the Nature of Accidents

AbstractThis paper attempts to provide a general reconstruction of Francis of Marchia's doctrine of accidental being. The paper is divided into two parts. (1) In the first part, I begin by reconstructing the debate on the nature of accidents held before Marchia, showing that such a debate is characterised by a progressive shift concerning the way to understand accidents. While the first Aristotelian interpreters regard accidents especially as inhering modes of being of substances, the majority of theologians and philosophers in the second half of the thirteenth century regard accidents as absolute beings. For them, the problem is no longer to explain if and, if so, how accidents can be distinct from substances, but how accidents and substances can make some one thing. Metaphysically, their primary focus is on explaining what the ontological status of inherence is. Although it is especially the consideration of the Eucharistic case that induces this change, I point out that many philosophers and theologians find in Aristotle's texts the philosophical support for taking this step. (2) In the second part, I focus more closely on Marchia's doctrine, arguing that Marchia's position is a slightly revised version of Scotus's. Unlike Aquinas and Bonaventure, Marchia explains Aristotle's metaphysics of accidents by way of the metaphysics of the Eucharist and not vice versa. So, in order to explain the philosophical consistency of this miraculous case, Marchia maintains that one does not need to modify the notion of inherence by distinguishing actual from potential inherence and including the latter in the accident's essence; rather it is necessary to take the case of the Eucharist seriously and, on this basis, to remove inherence totally from an accident's essence. In conclusion, the Eucharist shows that accidents are absolute beings to which actual inherence pertains contingently, potential inherence necessarily. But like Scotus's, Marchia's doctrine faces some difficulties that remain unresolved.

ON THE ARABIC TRANSLATIONS OF ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS

The starting-point and, at the same time, the foundation of recent scholarship on the Arabic translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics are Maurice Bouyges' excellent critical edition of the work in which the extant translations of the Metaphysics are preserved – i.e. Averroes' Tafsīr (the so-called “Long Commentary”) of the Metaphysics – and his comprehensive account of the Arabic translations and translators of the Metaphysics in the introductory volume. Relying on the texts made available by Bouyges and the impressive amount of philological information conveyed in his edition, subsequent scholars have been able to select and focus on more specific topics, providing, for example, a closer inspection of the Arabic translations of the single books of the Metaphysics (books A, α, and Λ in particular), or a detailed comparison of some of these translations with the original text of the Metaphysics. A new trend of research in recent times has been the study of these versions as part of the wider context of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement.

Aristotle's Metaphysics Reconsidered

Aristotle's metaphysics has stimulated intense renewed debate in the past twenty years. Much of the discussion has focused on Metaphysics Z, Aristotle's fascinating and difficult investigation of substance (ousia), and to a lesser extent on H and Θ. The place of the central books within the larger project of First Philosophy in the Metaphysics has engaged scholars since antiquity, and that relationship has also been reexamined. In addition, scholars have been exploring the Metaphysics from various broader perspectives—first, in relation to Aristotle's natural philosophy, his physics, biology, and psychology, and to the Organon, his so-called "logical" works, which include the Categories, Topics, and Posterior Analytics; and second, in relation to the broader philosophical tradition, both Plato before him and the ancient commentary tradition in late antiquity.

Aristotle and Headless Clones

Cloned organisms can be genetically altered so that they do not exhibit higher brain functioning. This form of therapeutic cloning allows for genetically identical organs and tissues to be harvested from the clone for the use of the organism that is cloned. "Spare parts" cloning promises many opportunities for future medical advances. What is the ontological and ethical status of spare parts, headless clones? This paper attempts to answer this question from the perspective of Aristotle's view of the soul. Aristotle's metaphysics as applied to his view of biological essences generates an ethic that can contribute to moral reasoning regarding the use of headless spare parts clones. The task of this paper is to show the implications that Aristotle's view of the soul, if it is true, would have on the ethics of headless, spare parts cloning.

Wholes and Parts in Aristotle's Metaphysics V

Wholes and Parts in Aristotle's Metaphysics V

The Absent Foundation

Nihil est sine ratione, "nothing is without reason." For everything that is, there is an answer to the question why it is just so and not otherwise-and, ultimately, there is a reason (ratio) grounding the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Reality as a whole is thus "rational" or "reasonable," in the sense that everything is based on something and has a "why" or a "how come" that grounds it, rendering it comprehensible and meaningful and thus letting it be part of meaningful reality. Nothing is without something that lets it be what it is. This is the famous "principle of reason" (principium rationis)-in a slightly different formulation, the "principle of the restoration of sufficient reason" (principium reddendae rationis sufficientis)-which was first explicitly formulated in these words by G. W. Leibniz, although not as a doctrine of his own but as a fundamental and generally accepted philosophical principle. There is in Nature a reason [ratio] why something should exist rather than nothing. This is a consequence of the great principle that nothing comes to be without reason, just as there also must be a reason why this exists, rather than something else.1 Indeed, in one form or another, the principle of reason has been an integral part of Occidental metaphysics ever since antiquity. The central issue of Aristotle's Metaphysics-the question which Heidegger names the leading question (Leitfrage) of Occidental metaphysics as a whole-concerns that-which-is, beings.2 What is a being as such? What is a being insofar as it is a being? Or, as Aristotle reformulates the question, what is the being-ness (ousia), the fundamental being-character, of beings as such? For Aristotle, the first essential characteristic of being-ness is fundamentality, foundationality.3 What truly is must be a hypokeimenon (in Latin substantia, "substance," or subiectum, "subject")-literally, something that "lies beneath" as an ontological basis or foundation, letting other, dependent beings be while itself remaining ontologically independent. The most being of all beings is that on which all other beings are dependent but which is itself absolutely independent of anything beyond itself. The ontological investigation of Books Zeta, Eta, and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics thus finds its culmination in the theology of Book Lambda-a discussion of God as the absolute, the most fundamental and necessary being-ness and principle. The Aristotelian notion of God as absolute self-awareness, as perfect being in-itself and for-itself, was then taken over by medieval Scholasticism-for St. Thomas, God as the uncreated creator and the ultimate cause of things is not only the most being of beings (maxime ens) but subsistence and permanence, that is, being-ness, as such (ipsum esse subsistens).4 Heidegger's famous genealogy of modernity shows how, since Descartes, the self-conscious I, now interpreted with regard to the absolute and immediate self-certainty of the cogito, gradually replaces God as the fundamental subject of reality. As modern metaphysics unfolds, human subjectivity as the basis of meaningfulness becomes more and more absolute, and self-sufficient; this "subjectivization" culminates in Nietzsche's idea of the "superhuman" subject who no longer simply apprehends given objectivity but instead gives itself its own "truths" as fuel for its essence, i.e., the ceaseless will to self-enhancement.5 In asking its leading question concerning the being-ness of beings, the metaphysical tradition has, according to Heidegger, constantly sought a supreme, ideal form of being-ness which all beings could be referred back to and founded upon. Yet from Plato to Nietzsche, metaphysics has been unable to radically pose what Heidegger calls the "basic question" or "fundamental question" (Grundfrage) of philosophy;6 it has never really inquired into the origin of its own "rationality." What are the experience of ideal being-ness as something foundational and the subsequent metaphysical demand for foundations in themselves based on? …

Aquinas on Being. Anthony Kenny

Preface 1. On Being and Essence 2. On Being and Essence - II 3. The Commentary on the Sentences 4. The Disputed Questions on Truth 5. The Summa contra Gentiles 6. Questions Disputed in Rome 7. The Summa Theologiae 8. The Summa Theologiae - II 9. The Commentaries on Aristotle's Metaphysics 10. Conclusion: Twelve Types of Being Appendix: Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number Biblography

Thales of Miletus: The Beginnings of Western Science and Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: Thales of Miletus: The Beginnings of Western Science and Philosophy Kevin Robb Patricia F. O’Grady . Thales of Miletus: The Beginnings of Western Science and Philosophy. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp xxii + 310. Paper, $84.95. This book has a consistent thesis: Thales of Miletus was the first Western scientist and philosopher not just for what he began, but for what he himself said (or, as O'Grady believes, wrote). On this view, Thales made significant contributions to metaphysics ("He asked the question: 'What is real?' no less than Plato and Aristotle did," 249), cosmology (on the earth and earthquakes, 87 ff.), astronomy (notably the eclipse, 126 ff.), mathematics (Proclus attributes Euclidean theorems to Thales, 191 ff.), psychology (on psyche) and theology (on "full of the gods," 108 ff.). O'Grady's thesis is that we know enough about Thales' thoughts in these areas (each a treacherous minefield of scholarly dispute, as O'Grady admits) that, after a clarified understanding of "Scientificity and Rationality" (her awkward title for Chapter 11), we can confidently conclude that philosophy and science were well begun by Thales. "I believe I have drawn a clear and detailed picture of a brilliant, veracious, and courageously speculative Greek. I see him as a questioner of almost everything, an investigator of nature . . .Thales is not the mere shadowy figure of Guthrie's perception. He is a man of substance, a man of distinction and of lasting importance" (251). O'Grady had early noted that W. K. C. Guthrie considered Thales a shadowy figure historically, made all the more so, Guthrie believed, because the legend kept expanding. For example, a sixth-century Thales as the seeker after the material archê, and so the first important physikos, is unknown before fourth-century Aristotle's Metaphysics Alpha, and by the time Euclidean theorems are attributed to Thales the tendency to foist imposing discoveries on famous persons was prevalent. This raises the major issue concerning O'Grady's exhaustively researched book. To what extent can the doxographic sources (the "A" sections of Diels's 1903Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker), be used to interpret the Presocratics, especially if the original wording from a thinker perished (any "B" section quotations). It is clear that in the fourth century nothing in writing from Thales survived for the Lyceum to read and catalogue although its scholars clearly sought it; the repeated legetai ("it is said") of Aristotle in Metaphysics Alpha and elsewhere is decisive. It is his standard way of indicating that no written work on the matter survives to be consulted, but stories or oral accounts do. O'Grady's thesis requires that the "A" section material be exploited fully, especially to present Thales as a philosopher (29-70). Many historians will be unwilling to take the entire journey with her. Some (Harold Cherniss) would balk at the first step. The demand for confirming ipsissima verba (or "B" quotations) to reconstruct the thought of any Presocratic with real confidence (as once proposed by G. S. Kirk) threatens to exclude Thales from histories of philosophy, an unsatisfactory result. Even so, Harold Cherniss proposed that drastic solution in 1935 in his magisterial Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratric Philosophy. Presocratic philosophy, he argued, should begin with Anaximander (375). The heart of Cherniss's numbingly exhaustive argument (400 + pages) was that Aristotle's purpose in surveying his predecessors's views was never historical, but dialectical. His intent was to argue for a fourfold causality (on the grounds only four archai had been turned up by all his predecessors, starting with Thales' material cause), and to fit those predecessors's views into a theory of natural causality as he had finally formulated it in his sophisticated, [End Page 107] largely technical vocabulary. Aristotle's "historical" notices on which all later accounts must depend were, thus, never history; the problem and the solution, along with their language, were Aristotle's alone. If Theophrastus paraphrased what he found in Aristotle (McDiarmid), and if the post-Aristotelian doxographic notices were largely dependent on Theophrastus (so already Diels in 1879, in Doxographi Graeci), then any attempt to extract a philosophical Thales from the later doxographic sources (or Aristotle) is methodologically doomed from...

Infinity in Science and Religion. The Creative Role of Thinking about Infinity

This article discusses the history of the concepts of potential infinity and actual infinity in the context of Christian theology, mathematical thinking and metaphysical reasoning. It shows that the structure of Ancient Greek rationality could not go beyond the concept of potential infinity, which is highlighted in Aristotle's metaphysics. The limitations of the metaphysical mind of ancient Greece were overcome through Christian theology and its concept of the infinite God, as formulated in Gregory of Nyssa's theology. That is how the concept of actual infinity emerged. However, Gregory of Nyssa's understanding of human rationality went still further. He said that access to the infinity of God was to be found only in an asymptotic ascension, as expressed in apophatic theology, and this view endangered the rationality of theology. Deeply influenced by the apophatic tradition, Nicholas of Cusa avoided this danger by showing that infinity could be accessed by symbolic representation and asymptotic mathematical reasoning. Thus, he made an immense contribution in making infinity rationally accessible. This endeavor was finally realized by Georg Cantor. This rational accessibility revealed discernible structures of infinity, such as the continuum hypothesis, and the cardinal numbers. However, the probable logical inconsistency of Georg Cantor's all-encompassing Absolute Infinity points to an intuitive understanding of infinity that goes beyond its rational structures - as in apophatic theology.

Descartes's mathematical thought

Preface. List of Abbreviations and a Note on the Quotation and Translation. Introduction. Rene Descartes and Modern European Mathematics. 1: The Formation of Descartes's Mathematical Thought. 1. Descartes and Jesuit Mathematical Education. 1. Descartes and the Jesuit College of La Fleche. 2. The Curriculum at La Fleche. 3. Mathematical Studies in the Ratio Studiorum 4. Motives for the Teaching of Mathematics in the Jesuit Colleges. 2: The Mathematical Thought of Christoph Clavius. 1. Descartes and Clavius. 2. The Philosophy of Mathematics of Clavius. 3. Pappus in the Works of Clavius. 4. Diophantus in the Works of Clavius. 5. Descartes's Mathematical Background before the Encounter with Beeckman. 3: The First Attempt at Reforming Mathematics. 1. 'An Entirely New Science': The Idea for the Unification of Arithmetic and Geometry. 2. The Mathematics in the Cogitationes privatae. 3. The De Solidorum Elementis. 4. Descartes's Mathematical and Philosophical Dream of 1619. 4: The Mathematical Background of the Regulae Ad Directionem Ingenii. 1. The Old Algebra: The First Fruit of 'An Entirely New Science'. 2. The Mathematics in the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii. 3. Mathesis Universalis. 5. The Geometrieof 1637. 1. The Pappus Problem. 2. The Composition of the Geometrie. 3. Descartes's Place in the Formative Period of the Modern Analytic Tradition. 4. Beyond Cartesian Mathematics. Interim Consideration. Descartes and the Beginnings ofMathematicism in Modern Thought. II: The Concept of 'Mathesis Universalis' in Historical Perspective. 6. 'Universal Mathematics' In Aristotle. 1. Aristotle's Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics. 2. Greek Commentators: Alexander of Aphrodisias and Asclepius of Tralles. 3. Medieval Commentators: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and the Scotist Antonius Andreae. 4. Renaissance Commentators: Agostino Nifo and Pedro da Fonseca. 5. The Status of Mathematics in the Aristotelian Scheme of Learning. 7: 'Mathesis Universalis' in the Sixteenth Century. 1. Proclus Diadochus and Francesco Barozzi. 2. Adriaan van Roomen. 8: 'Mathesis Universalis' in the Seventeenth Century. 1. Reviewing Descartes's Concept of 'Mathesis Universalis' from His Philosophy of Mathematics. 2. The Leibnizian Synthesis. Conclusion: Descartes and the Modern Scheme of Learning. Bibliography. Indices. Name Index. Subject Index. Treatise Index.

Traces of a computational mind

L'image de l'écriture est singulièrement fréquente dans des explications cognitivistes du fonctionnement de l'esprit, non seulement comme métaphore mais également comme paradigme conceptuel: la machine de Turing, en particulier, montre un isomorphisme structural complet avec l'utilisation de l'écriture alphabétique. La machine de Turing effectue exactement les mêmes opérations effectuées par un homme écrivant avec le stylo et le papier et cela dépend de deux raisons: 1. il a été conçu dans l'image et la similarité de la pratique concrète humaine de l'écriture ; 2. c'est le produit typique de la rationalité occidentale, dont le développement n'a été rendu possible que par les caractères spécifiques du traitement alphabétique de l'information. Ces aspects sont utiles pour comprendre la raison pour laquelle l'esprit a commencé à être dépeint comme machine d'écriture au moment même où l'alphabet a commencé à se diffuser: une recherche généalogique montrera comment, dans des traités de mnémotechniques et dans la métaphysique de Platon et d'Aristote, nous pouvons trouver la toute première base de chaque modèle logicosymbolique de l'esprit.

Counting the Unmoved Movers: Astronomy and Explanation in Aristotles Metaphysics XII.8

Article Counting the Unmoved Movers: Astronomy and Explanation in Aristotles Metaphysics XII.8 was published on March 12, 2003 in the journal Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (volume 85, issue 1).

The Ethical Culmination of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

This article suggests that Aristotle's Metaphysics culminates not in the purity of God's self-thinking, but rather in the contingent principles found in the Nicomachean Ethics. Drawing on such contemporary thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor Adorno, and Emmanuel Levinas, the article rethinks the relationship between ethics and ontology by reinvestigating the relationship between Aristotle's Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics. It is argued that the ontological conception of praxis developed in the middle books of the Metaphysics points already to the Nicomachean Ethics where a conception of knowledge-phronesis-is developed that is capable of addressing the lacuna in the account of ontological knowledge offered in the Metaphysics.

Reflections regarding Milan manuscripts of the commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics ascribed to Georgios Pachymeres

Le but de l'article est de faire la lumière sur plusieurs mss du commentaire de la Métaphysique d'Aristote, traditionnellement attribué au Pseudo-Philoppon, qui témoigne de leçons de mss aristotéliciens perdus. L'accent est notamment mis sur le témoin récemment découvert Milan, Ambr. F 113 sup., où le traité est attribué à l'érudit byzantin Georges Pachymère. Ce ms. est un témoin indépendant de tous les représentants jusqu'ici connu de la tradition directe et de la tradition indirecte ; il permet fréquemment de combler les lacunes des autres sources disponibles. Le titre écrit dans une encre très pâle actuellement est reproduit. Quatre autres mss de Milan jusqu'ici inexplorés transmettant de plus petites parties du commentaire sont aussi présentés, parmi lesquels Ambr. C 268 inf., dont le texte montre quelques affinités avec un ms. de l'Escurial entre-temps perdu qui avait été rapporté de Chypre par l'humaniste Patritius Venetus. La tradition manuscrite de ce traité est par conséquent plus riche et, par certains aspects, plus instructive que cela n'avait été supposé auparavant, les nouveaux témoignages étant importants non seulement pour l'établissement du texte, mais aussi pour son attribution.

Intensifying Phronesis : Heidegger, Aristotle, and Rhetorical Culture

Intensifying Phronesis:Heidegger, Aristotle, and Rhetorical Culture Daniel L. Smith All too well versed in the commonness of what is multiple and entangled, we are no longer capable of experiencing the strangeness that carries with it all that is simple. —Martin Heidegger, Aristotle's Metaphysics θ 1-3 Introduction In Norms of Rhetorical Culture Thomas Farrell returns to the thought of Aristotle to develop a contemporary conception of rhetoric as a mode of practical philosophy, one that foregrounds the importance of phronesis. Returning to Aristotle's work to forge contemporary conceptions of rhetoric as practical philosophy is nothing new. What is novel about Farrell's approach, however, are his thoughts on Aristotle's conception of "phainomena," or appearances. "Appearances," Farrell states, "come to us as configurations, as ensembles of objects, habitats, paths, tools, tasks, icons, and more or less recognizable characters that engage and reassure us with their . . . familiarity" (1993, 27). Phainomena and their stability, therefore, constitute the milieux of human life. But coupled with the stability of phainomena that lends continuity and predictability to our lives is their dynamic element of mutability, contingency, and unpredictability. Therefore phainomena can also be "ambiguous or even equivocal and incomplete," according to Farrell (27). This stable-mutable aspect of phainomena, and thus human life itself, demands that we have ways of inhabiting and responding to the worlds these phainomena constitute. Farrell cites a comment by Merleau-Ponty on Cezanne as an "apt characterization" of Aristotle's thought: Cezanne, writes Merleau-Ponty, "did not want to separate the stable things which we see and the shifting way in which they appear . . ." (quoted in Farrell, 27). For Farrell, Merleau-Ponty's observation concisely expresses a fundamental aspect of Aristotle's [End Page 77] thought, namely, a focus on the relation between the being of things and their dynamic modes of appearing, which are distinct but inextricably connected. Aristotle's conception of phainomena, Farrell's work suggests, offers possibilities for thinking about rhetoric as practical philosophy, a rhetoric that would be "an art of real life" (274), one that, because of the stability-contingency of real life, features the concept of phronesis. It is interesting to note that the issue of being-appearing that Farrell attributes to Aristotle sounds like a problematic of twentieth-century European phenomenology. Given Merleau-Ponty's status as one of the preeminent phenomenologists of the twentieth century, it is surprising that Farrell makes no mention of Merleau-Ponty's—or phenomenology's—interest in the dynamics of phainomena; nor does he make any explicit connections between Aristotle, rhetoric, and phenomenology. In fact, Farrell's thoughts on the connections between rhetoric and the being-appearing of phainomena are virtually eclipsed in his book when he turns to Jürgen Habermas. Farrell claims "that Habermas's project on discourse ethics, together with his practical placement of the public sphere, offers a basis for synthesizing the normative component of practical wisdom and a rhetoric goaded by emancipatory reason" (188). Farrell's interest in theorizing the enactment of "emancipatory reason" in the public sphere, through norm-governed rhetorical practices (of argumentation, deliberation, and so forth), takes precedence over theorizing the rhetoric-phainomena connection (or at the very least, does not facilitate a phenomenological consideration of rhetorical cultures and norms). This is not a criticism of Farrell, but rather the citing of an absence that opens a possibility. More specifically, because Farrell does not see, or perhaps is not interested in, the connection between his understanding of Aristotle and the problematic of phenomenology, he is not prompted to explore the possibilities that lie in bringing rhetorical studies into an encounter with phenomenology. Furthermore, given the connection Farrell makes between Aristotle and phainomena, Farrell's work suggests that it might be interesting to see what possibilities for rhetoric might exist in readings of Aristotle by phenomenologists. This essay will attempt to look into possibilities unexamined by Farrell. My aim in assuming this task, however, is not to theorize and facilitate the enactment of "emancipatory reason" in the public sphere through discourse governed by normative standards or ideals. Rather, my goal is to highlight the ways that phenomenology and phenomenological readings of Aristotle can help rhetorical scholars to examine...