Aristotle

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude…” Francis Bacon

Thus also the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually. For the whole must necessarily be prior to the part; since when the whole body is destroyed, foot or hand will not exist except in an equivocal sense, like the sense in which one speaks of a hand […]

• By Philippe Theophanidis on August 18, 2014 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: animal, Aristotle, city, coexistence, community, crowd, fellowship, fragment, Francis Bacon, god, individual, love, part, politics, solitude, state, whole

Gilbert Simondon and the Aristotelian sunolon

Selon cette voie de recherche, l’individu constitué ne pourrait apparaître comme un être absolu, entièrement détaché, conforme au modèle de la substance, comme le σύνολον pur. L’individuation ne serait qu’un des devenirs possibles d’un système, pouvant d’ailleurs exister à plusieurs niveau et de manière plus ou moins complète; l’individu comme être défini, isolé, consistant, ne […]

• By Philippe Theophanidis on August 16, 2014 ― Published in Communication, Technology | Tagged: Aristotle, being, individuation, metaphysic, ontology, quiddity, Simondon, sunolon

Hand-written note Montaigne’s Essais, Bordeau Copy, 1588, §XXVIII, p. 72.

“O friends, there are no friends”: on a quote attributed to Aristotle

It is an analogous, and probably conscious, sense of discomfort that led Jacques Derrida to choose as a leitmotif for his book on friendship a sibylline motto, attributed to Aristotle by tradition, that negates friendship with the very same gesture by which it seems to invoke it: o philoi, oudeis philos, “O friends, there are […]

• By Philippe Theophanidis on January 25, 2014 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: Agamben, Aristotle, community, Derrida, Diogenes Laertius, friendship, Montaigne, Nietzsche, philology

Image of the original French version from 1580 of Montaigne’s comment on sneezing (Essays, Book III, c. VI.)

Sneezing and slavery in Aristotle and Montaigne

Do you ask me whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze? We produce three sorts of wind; that which comes from below is too foul; that which comes through the mouth implies some reproach of gluttony; the third is sneezing, and, because it comes from the head and is blameless, we give it […]

• By Philippe Theophanidis on February 13, 2013 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: Aristotle, body, causality, human, Montaigne, physiology, slavery, sneeze, sneezing, wind