In this paper I deal with chapters 16-30 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book Δ (V). The main aim is to provide a map of their argument. Despite each chapter seems to be devoted only to the analysis of the meanings of a single philosophical term, I shall demonstrate how their ordering is far from being accidental. Each chapter is indeed thematized by its previous one/s and meant to deny relations of convertibility between concepts.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Terms, Concepts, Convertibility

In Isnardi Parente’s re-edition of Xenocrates’ fragments (2012), in the commentary to fr. 126 we read that the information reported ‘indicates the departure by Xenocrates and presumably the Academy from Plato’s tripartite psychology’ (my translation). This paper offers an analysis of fr. 126 IP2 and the information ascribed to Xenocrates by Theodoret. The aim is to show that an attentive examination of the information preserved does not allow us to determine whether Xenocrates and the Academy did, in fact, abandon Plato’s tripartite psychology.

Xenocrates, Psychology, Soul, Bipartition, Tripartition.

Walter Burley’s Commentary to the Nicomachean Ethics is commonly considered little more than an expositio littere. Nevertheless, in some notanda he raises open questions about the crucial gap between the conclusion of the practical syllogism and action. Within the interpretative framework of Saarinen’s and Wood’s works, I will focus on Burley’s analysis of akrasia in book VII. The first point will be some questions related to a notandum, concerning the gap between intellect and will as typical of akrasia. Secondly, I will analyze it in the light of Burley’s semantics, where conceptual tools developed in one science prove useful in solving problems of another discipline, in this case ethics. Finally, I’ll address the Commentary’s brief gloss about heroic virtue, as example of Burley’s first steps in the use of measure languages in ethics, by analogy with the Oxford Calculators’ techniques. 

Walter Burley, Akrasia, Aristotle, Practical Syllogism, Semantics.

This article aims to examine the question of the moi in Montaigne analyzing the shifting of first person pronoun between story and theory, biography and philosophy. This critical problem agitates indeed the thought of Montaigne, who is sensible to the rights of the individual moi and the experience of the subject but at the same time, to the definition of a possible universality starting from a specific and singular situation: «la forme entière» of the human condition, entirely immersed in the perennial movement of the world and in the temporality of existence, «la nihilité de l’humaine condition»

A Philosophy at the First-Person; Montaigne’s Les Essais; Skeptical phenomenalism; The multiple versions of the moi.

The essay discusses the historiographical thesis, still hegemonic, according to which Adam Smith was a convinced supporter of the progressive nature of human history. From this perspective it reiterates, first of all, the conjectural status of the stadial theory exposed in the Lectures on Jurisprudence; then examines the vibrant denunciation of the human costs of modernization contained in the Wealth of Nations. The last part of the paper finally addresses the vexed question of the (alleged) theological inspiration of Smith’s historical-social analysis, which is still the subject of a heated interpretative dispute today.

Adam Smith, Progress, Conjectural History, Stadial Theory, Providence.

This essay aims to examine some aspects of the deleuzean interpretation of Spinoza, not only in regards to his major works on the philosopher – namely Spinoza and the Problem of Expression and Spinoza. Practical Philosophy – but also in regards to the general understanding of his theoretical heritage. The paper starts with a global consideration of the methods employed by Deleuze in his works on the history of philosophy and then focuses on the concepts of ‘Anamorphosis’ and ‘Fold’ as two useful tools to deepen Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza’s thought. The ‘Anamorphosis’ is used in order to explain and frame the great variety of images of Spinoza presented in Deleuze’s texts. Within such variety, the concept of ‘Fold’ can be employed to better understand the underlying unity of Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza and its connection with the stages of his own theoretical path.

Deleuze, Spinoza, History of Philosophy, Leibniz, Fold.

This essay proposal is to think of the Anthropocene as an existential change: that is, as the moment in which the whole Earth exists, for us, as a political space. To do this, I place myself at the crossroads between geography and philosophy, firstly criticizing a certain “negative” idea of geography, which brings with it a certain idea of the political. Secondly, I briefly introduce what I consider to be some fundamental lines of the thought of the French geographer Augustin Berque. Against this background, and by crossing his reasoning with some of Merleau-Ponty’s now classic reflections on the relationship between Culture and Nature, I finally come to criticize the idea of Nature as the other space par excellence, the outside of the human animal.

Onto-geography, Anthropocene, Nature, Politics, Berque.