[SydPhil] CHOP Research Seminar, 14 May: Timothy Clarke (Yale)

[David Bronstein]

Dear All,



The Centre for the History of Philosophy (CHOP) at the University of Notre Dame Australia warmly invites you to our next Research Seminar.



SPEAKER:



Associate Professor Timothy Clarke (Yale University)



‘Aristotle on Nature as Demiurge’ (abstract below)



Timothy Clarke is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Yale University. He is the author of Aristotle and the Eleatic One (Oxford University Press, 2019) and recent articles on political justice in Plato’s Republic, the defence of the principle of non-contradiction in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and Aristotle’s ‘third man’ argument against Platonic forms.



DATE:

Wednesday 14 May 2025



TIME:

1:00 pm-2:30 pm (Sydney time)



IN-PERSON LOCATION:

Moorgate Room

The University of Notre Dame (Sydney)

10 Grafton St, Chippendale, NSW



ONLINE:

https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/ujrtC81V0PTYYzzj1UnfGfy0_mJ?domain=notredame-au.zoom.us

Passcode: 531121



Registration is not required.



Abstract: The principle that ‘nature does nothing in vain’ is one of the guiding principles of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The standard view in contemporary scholarship has been that the principle should be interpreted as a generalization over the individual natures of particular substances, and as claiming that, in the process of development, these individual natures operate so as to bring about the best results for the substances in question. The motivation for this interpretation is that (1) there is no place in Aristotle’s metaphysics for a single, demiurgic ‘Nature’ that is responsible for the creation of natural substances; and (2) Aristotle clearly thinks of individual natures as efficient causes of biological processes (playing a causal role analogous to that of the builder’s craft in the process of building a house). Despite its plausibility, however, the ‘individual natures’ interpretation is unable to account for all of the ways in which Aristotle puts the principle to work. My aim is to defend an interpretation which fits the full range of explanatory contexts in which the principle is deployed, and then to ask about the broader implications for how we should think about the character of Aristotelian natural teleology.


--
David Bronstein, PhD
Co-Director, Notre Dame Centre for the History of Philosophy<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/wCTqC91WPRT22MMmQsEh5fqh8JG?domain=notredame.edu.au>
Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Ethics and Society
University of Notre Dame Australia (Sydney)
Australian Research Council Future Fellow, 2023-26
Associate Editor, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Recently published:
Aristotelian Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of David Charles (OUP)<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/C-NKC0YKPvimmMM2VC2irf9-bqT?domain=global.oup.com>
Definition and Essence from Aristotle to Kant (Routledge)<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/OQL5CgZ0N1iGGmml9i3sNf44qg4?domain=routledge.com>

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