writing up Giordano

His metaphysics seems to me about as diametrically opposed to the truth as possible (for realists, that is; correlationism is much worse). But he’s always a pleasure to read.

There’s also one example of archaic backsliding in his metaphysics– his assumption that something must be permanent to count as substance. One of the highlights of Aristotle compared with earlier Greek thinkers was his breaking of the link between substantiality and permanence. In fact, this link is perhaps the most regrettable feature of all the pre-Socratics as well as Plato. Aristotle broke it. Bruno’s back with it, as are Descartes, Spinoza, and (unfortunately) Leibniz.

Bruno wasn’t the first to backslide on it, of course. Most of Christian philosophy and neo-Platonism did the same thing. But point your finger at “natural kinds” in Aristotle all you like; at least he lets individual frogs and trees be substances without having to last forever. Bruno blows that sky high, and Leibniz too, but even more comically so (dead animals still live somewhere, invisible, attached to tiny bodies).

Permanence: a bad criterion for substance.

I’m starting to think that “towards a weird Aristotle” is the right rallying cry for the next wave of European ontology. He’s pretty much nobody’s ally and everybody’s hanging effigy in our circles at the moment. Only Husserl is more scorned (and Aquinas, I suppose; it’s very cool to cite Scotus, very uncool to cite Aquinas; I avoid the dilemma by citing Suarez, anyway).

I also tend to agree with the remark of Julian Marías that the greatest periods in first philosophy have all come through some sort of intimate contact with Aristotle’s works. Ignore the initial (and misleading) impulse to feel bored while reading Aristotle, and you’ll start to feel yourself very close to the truth very often when reading him. And he really is a comic genius, believe me.