The project focused on the role the notion of body has for Aristotle conception of physical science.

Research

Christian Pfeiffer investigated the role the notion of body has for Aristotle conception of physical science. He argued that an analysis of the notion of body should be part of the conceptual investigation of basic notions of physical science we find in Physics III and IV. Although Aristotle did not devote a series of chapters to the notion of body as in the case of place, time and void, the notion of body is of equal importance for his project in the Physics and it is possible to reconstruct a unified and comprehensive theory of body. Christian Pfeiffer thereby shows (1) why the study of bodies is a genuinely physical study and how it differs from a mathematical analysis of body. (This further develops ideas from the paper he wrote together with Betegh and Pedriali for Rhizai.) (2) He further shows how the general thesis about the place of Aristotle’s arguments sets the context for Aristotle’s specific views on bodies. More specifically, Pfeiffer investigates (among others) how (2a) the priority of bodies over lower-dimensional magnitudes, (2b) the difference between continuity and contact, and (2c) the claim that the parts of a body exist potentially are all grounded in the metaphysical constitution of physical bodies.

This dissertation was successfully completed in 2012 and published with the title Aristotle’s Theory of Bodies, Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 2018