Editorial

Aristotle across Boundaries

by Silvia Fazzo, Marco Ghione and Jill Kraye

In June 2023, a group of ‘Aristotelians without Borders’ met in the splendid Villa San Remigio in Verbania, one of the beautiful premises of the University of Eastern Piedmont. Following in the footsteps of Aristotelians over the centuries, the participants were committed to the belief that engaging in dialogue has a value in itself. Our Aristotelian predecessors have collectively bequeathed to us a common language, a shared form of rationality and a grammar of thought which allow us to engage in dialogue despite our differences.

There are different types of borders: not only between geographical locations but also between languages, epochs, disciplinary fields, religious beliefs, methodological approaches and political orientations. Aristotelianism has been able to cross all these borders in different ways throughout history. As stated in the first editorial (Aristotelica 1/2022, pp. 1-4), even anti-Aristotelians are somehow Aristotelian insofar as they inevitably enter into dialogue in the context of a conceptually shared landscape. The conditions for crossing frontiers with a sense of unimpeded novelty are unprecedented today. Geographical frontiers no longer exist now that every instrument of research and of dialogue, including journals and most of our scholarly activities, is on a shared cloud that has no flag and knows no exclusions. But even historical and chronological frontiers disappear when we agree to take part in dialogues with those who have paved the way for us: the advanced tools we so avidly use drastically reduce the difficulties of documenting the past by means of access to a global web, which we hope one day to colonise with a platform dedicated to Aristotelianism.

Some of the contributions discussed at Verbania were delivered by scholars from countries where the conditions for research are notoriously difficult; these discussions, which went on at length in the conference and continued long afterwards, were among the most interesting and fruitful. Only a few of these contributions are included in this issue due to the limited time available to prepare them for peer review and publication. We intend to continue to publish ‘Aristotle without Borders’ in subsequent issues; but we wanted this specimen of the Verbania conference to serve as a prelude to the World Congress of Philosophy to be held in Rome in August 2024, the theme of which is ‘Philosophy across Boundaries’, at which Aristotelica hopes to present an international round table.

The present issue starts off with Jean-Marc Narbonne’s ‘Talking Point’. This is a version of his Argumentaire for the conference in Verbania. It especially emphasises Aristotle’s capacity to produce frameworks across a multiplicity of theoretical paths. It is followed by contributions which enter into the more technical aspects of the study of some of Aristotle’s most challenging texts, in particular, the Physics. Aristotle’s Physics, commented on by Averroes, had a powerful impact on university studies in the thirteenth century and continued to exert an extraordinary influence on subsequent developments in the discipline. It was for this reason that the Physics was one of the Aristotelian treatises most opposed by those who promoted what we now call the Scientific Revolution on the threshold of the modern age.

Yet, the more technical details of Aristotle’s Physics show still today an impressive penetration by Aristotle of problems related to the central concepts of physics, such as the continuum, magnitude, motion and time. The very different approaches taken by Gottfried Heinemann and Monica Ugaglia in their articles clearly demonstrate this. Heinemann tackles the question of whether the accounts of continuity in Phys. V 3 and Phys. VI combine to make a coherent theory: his answer is that they do not; but that they both offer accounts (or theories) which are coherent in their own ways. Ugaglia is concerned with the problem of identifying time-independent properties of natural motions: how can Aristotle conceive of motion apart from time? Greek verbal tenses seems to have played a role. It is worth pointing out that Ugaglia’s piece on time carries on from her previous contribution on circular movement as infinite and continuum; for it is one of Aristotelica’s aims to provide a venue for authors to synthesize their previous research and to share their progress. Crossing psycho-physiological borders, Giuseppe Feola’s contribution on the Aristotelian conception of animal psychology – a subject of increasing topicality – explores the extent to which infant humans and animals share the same psychic faculties; while the difficult task of crossing chronological borders is represented by Peter Swallow, who convincingly shows small but significant paths of dialogue between Aristotle and Darwin.

Our heartfelt thanks go to all those who have contributed to this issue.