Form and Matter: Themes in Contemporary Metaphysics

Recent years have seen a revival of interest in philosophy from a broadly Aristotelian perspective. Aristotelianism is an important corrective both to the naturalistic reductionism prevalent in philosophy, and to the extravagances of Platonism which are reappearing in places. This collection brings together six papers by leading philosophers working within the Aristotelian tradition, covering a number of topics in contemporary metaphysics. The subjects examined include substance, material constitution, the metaphysics of the mind, the nature of mixture, and the analysis of what it is to be a living thing. Contributors: Jonathan Lowe; Peter Simons; John Haldane; Kit Fine; Joshua Hoffman, Gary Rosenkrantz and Michael Rea.

Introduction. 1. Form Without Matter (E.J. Lowe). 2. Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leave–Taking (Peter M. Simons). 3. A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind (John Haldane). 4. Mixing Matters (Kit Fine). 5. On the Unity of Compound Things: Living and Non–Living (Joshua Hoffman & Gary S. Rosenkrantz). 6. Sameness Without Identity: An Aristotelian Solution to the Problem of Material Constitution (Michael C. Rea). Index.

David S. Oderberg is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Reading. Author of The Metaphysics of Identity over Time (1993); co–editor of Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics (1997).