Philosophy 290-2

The topic of this seminar is Aristotle’s Peri ideôn or On Ideas, his lost treatise on Platonic Forms. In this treatise Aristotle described and then criticized a series of Platonic arguments for the existence of Forms. (One of Aristotle’s criticisms was the famous “Third Man” objection.)

Our knowledge of the Peri ideôn is largely dependent on Alexander’s commentary on the first book of the Metaphysics. We will be reading the relevant part of Alexander’s commentary alongside related passages in Aristotle and in Plato.

Required text: Gail Fine, On Ideas (Oxford)