Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ.8 argument for the priority of actuality to potentiality poses an immediate interpretive problem: the argument uses two distinct tests for priority, one of which threatens to reverse the results of the other. This paper argues that the standard approach to this passage, according to which one thing is prior to another when it satisfies the ontological independence test from Metaphysics Δ.11, fails to secure the argumentative unity of the passage. It introduces a new, causal account of priority (...) which explains both Aristotle’s claims about priority and the way he argues for them. (shrink)

Aristotle is often taken to define priority in being in Metaphysics Δ.11, where he says that those things are prior in being which “admit of being without other things, while these others cannot be without them: a division which Plato used” (1019a3-4). But Aristotle’s pattern of arguments about priority – some of which use Plato’s Test and others of which use distinct, causal tests – looks puzzling if Plato’s Test is his definition. This paper offers a new interpretation of Δ.11 (...) on which it offers a guide to the Aristotelian use of Plato’s Test, given that being is said in many ways, rather than endorsing it as Aristotle’s own definition of priority. This reading illuminates Aristotle’s pattern of arguments in the corpus – explaining why Aristotle uses Plato’s Test in some cases and departs from it in others – and suggests a plausible story about how these arguments were shaped by engaging with Plato. (shrink)

The Laws x argument that the gods attend to humans has a surprising structure: the Athenian offers an argument that ‘forces’ the interlocutor to agree that he was wrong, then says he needs a myth in addition. I argue that the myth responds to the interlocutor’s motivation for thinking that the gods ignore human beings, and that although it is not an argument, it is a vehicle for rational persuasion.