Andrew Payne

Gracia and Aquinas on The Principle of Individuation

I RECENT YEARS Jorge Gracia has developed a nuanced and sophisticated account of the nature of individuality and of the principle of individuation. He has developed this view in part by criticizing the standard Thomistic account of the principle of individuation as dimensive quantity. The present essay seeks to rehabilitate dimensive quantity by arguing against Gracia that, rightly understood, it does explain the individuation of material substances. This requires a two-part strategy. First, the meaning of dimensive quantity must be recovered by examining the roots of this concept in Aristotles Categories and Physics. The standard Thomistic presentation of dimensive quantity in the writings of Joseph Owens and Joseph Bobik is vulnerable to objections raised by Gracia, and this makes necessary a review of selected passages from Aristotle dealing with quantity. In particular, the notion of position contained in these texts must be elaborated in order to grasp the distinctive content of the concept of dimensive quantity. Second, Gracias objections to the Thomistic principle of individuation must be considered in light of this fuller understanding of dimensive quantity. It will be seen that these objections are not compelling, and that dimensive quantity provides a satisfactory principle of individuation for material substances. In particular, Aquinass discussion of numerical difference in his commentary on Boethiuss De Trinitate will be

The Teleology of the Ascent in Plato's Symposium

Diotima’s speech in the Symposium contains a distinctive picture of actions being performed for the sake of an end. In the ascent passage (Symp 210a-212a), she describes the progressive stages of love for beauty. The lover/philosopher expands and redirects his love for beauty by moving from love for beautiful bodies through love for beautiful souls, practices, and sciences before arriving at insight into the form of beauty. This ascent exhibits a teleological structure, since the earlier stages of the ascent occur for the sake of the fi nal vision. Diotima introduces the vision of the form of beauty as the stage which completes a life spent in philosophy, the erotic pursuit of wisdom:

The Division of Goods and Praising Justice for Itself in Republic II

In Republic II Glaucon assigns to Socrates the task of praising justice for itself. What it means to praise justice for itself is unclear. A new interpretation is offered on the basis of an analysis of Glaucon’s division of goods. A distinction is developed between criterial benefits, those valuable consequences of a thing which provide a standard for evaluating a thing as a good instance of its type, and fringe benefits, valuable consequences which do not provide such a standard. Socrates is expected to praise justice by describing the benefits it constitutes as a valuable activity of soul. He may also use the criterial benefits of justice but not its fringe benefits. This account of Socrates’ task is superior to those interpretations which rule out all use of valuable consequences in praising justice and to those interpretations which fail to preserve the distinction between the second and third classes of goods.