In Sources of the Self, Taylor suggests that the ancient Greeks, despite possessing various linguistic devices for reflexive self-reference, did not have a way of making “self” into a noun. This nominalization of the self is, in his view, characteristic of the modern sense of selfhood. In fact, Aristotle does nominalize autos, the intensifier that functions in Greek much as “self” does in English, in three passages in Nichomachean Ethics IX where he describes a friend as another self. Taylor cites one of these passages in a footnote, commenting that “this doesn’t have quite the same force as our present description of human agents as ‘selves’”, but does not elaborate. This chapter considers what force it does have, exploring three senses of self in Aristotle. Two of them are familiar – the social self expounded in the first nine books of the Nicomachean Ethics and the more contemplative self emerging predominantly in EN X and in De Anima III. Much less familiar is the bodily self that can be discerned at various points in the De Anima and Metaphysics, and that is rather prominent in the Generation of Animals. This conception of the self has its source in the intimate connection between a psuchê and the particular body of which it is the form.

The conclusion examines more contemporary versions of anthropology’s dominant current of antiformalism. Tracing this pattern across diverse approaches – embodiment, assemblage thinking, infrastructure – it reveals how a certain sort of Wittgensteinian antiformalism has become orthodox. While scholarship focussed on form exists, it remains largely subordinate to an implicit picture that finds ethnographic facts ‘unanalysable, specific, indefinable’. By contextualzing this stance, the conclusion suggests holding commitments – formalist or antiformalist – more lightly in order to recover explanatory power without sacrificing reflexivity.

This chapter introduces the book’s central argument about the parallel development of ideas about context in anthropology and Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It situates both within broader ‘cultures of context’ in twentieth-century thought, while establishing key themes about form and formlessness. The introduction argues that anthropology’s current antiformalist stance represents not progress but a particular historical development that deserves examination. It outlines how the book will trace shifts from logic to language to life as models of context in both Wittgenstein and anthropology.

This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its model of logical context. Against readings that see it as purely anti-contextualist, the chapter shows how logic functions as a form of context in early Wittgenstein. Through biographical and historical context, it demonstrates how the Tractatus emerged from and responded to specific intellectual environments, while setting up the book’s broader argument about parallel developments in anthropology and philosophy.

In the final chapter, the general account of the artifactual paradigm at work in Hegel’s thinking is extended to explain the shape of his overall philosophical position. Speaking loosely, Hegel sometimes suggests that everything is conceptual. However, it is here contended that Hegel’s idealism essentially involves an asymmetry in the domains of Geist and nature that is rooted in Hegel’s theory of concepts. Geist is that which is conceptually constituted; nature is that which is not conceptually constituted. This asymmetry between the two domains is the “inversion” of philosophy that Hegel’s concept-centric metaphysics inspires. In this chapter, evidence is assembled from Hegel’s so-called Realphilosophie – specifically his works on political philosophy, natural philosophy, and aesthetics – to show that Hegel’s treatment of these topics indeed demonstrates an inverted conception of philosophy, one that is rightly considered a humanism.

This chapter concerns the relation of the Concept Logic to the prior main division of the Logic, the Objective Logic. Hegel’s goal in the Objective Logic is not to develop a theory of the entities it discusses. Instead, Hegel’s work should be read as employing a device here called suspended reference, a way of using a concept without being committed to the reality of its referent. Since Hegel does not offer a metaphysical theory in the Objective Logic, that book can be primarily critical in function. It is then argued that the Concept Logic aims to demonstrate the grounds of the metaphysical concepts of the Objective Logic. It does so by showing that each of them are based in the mere form of thought, especially in judgment and syllogism. This makes Hegel’s conception of metaphysics non-theoretical in the sense that its objects are not separable from the thought that thinks them.

Chapter 3 concerns Hegel’s use of the term “the Concept” (der Begriff) in the Doctrine of the Concept. The chapter argues that the use of this term is closer to its ordinary philosophical meaning than is claimed by standard metaphysical readings of the Logic. In particular, the singular use of “the Concept” is a synecdoche for the structure of conceptual thought as exemplified in philosophy in general. Hegel argues that conceptual thought has a formal structure of universality, particularity, and singularity. However, in contrast to many interpretations, these are not treated as properties that all concepts must have to be concepts. Rather, these formal features are exhibited variously in different concepts, judgments, and syllogisms. Hegel’s discussion of the formal dimension of thought sets up his attempt to show that some structures of thought more perfectly exemplify the form of the Concept than others.

Having established the basics of a Pascalian, “cordate” epistemology, this chapter explores the implications for how the world works and applications to some pressing problems today. The way the world looks, and so the reasons your experience gives you, depends on the state of your heart. But the fact that the world can be seen in these ways, according to the different states of heart, is a significant fact about it. Pascal infers much from this built-in ambiguity in the world when it comes to religion. That the world can be seen as both a Godless mechanism and mediating a loving relationship with God confirms one theology (the Augustinian Fall), and disconfirms the rest. A similar situation arises for us today, where the facts about the world can seem equally obvious to both sides of our polarized society, even though they are looking at the same world, albeit from their own “echo chambers.” This chapter explores the relevance of Pascal’s views on ambiguity to the deep disagreements we encounter in society today, applying insights about how the heart influences the way things appear as well as how to communicate with those who profoundly disagree with us.

Is mind a proper topic of investigation in Aristotle’s science of nature? The question is surprisingly vexed. Although some evidence suggests that mind should be studied by natural philosophy as well as first philosophy (metaphysics), Parts of Animals I.1 (641a32−b23) presents a series of arguments often construed as decisive evidence that he excludes mind from natural philosophy. This chapter goes through the relevant text and argues that Aristotle presents three arguments to exclude mind from nature but all in the voice of an opponent. Then in a final argument (641b23−642a1) he responds directly to the third argument, with indirect implications for the second argument as well.

One of the conversion stories related to Augustine in the run-up to his own conversion was that of the philosopher and orator Marius Victorinus, who had translated the “books of the Platonists” that Augustine encountered in Book 7. What he does not tell us, however, is how important Victorinus was, not only as an exemplar of boldness in confessing Christ, but in shaping Augustine’s own reading of Plotinus. This chapter compellingly lays out Victorinus’ influence on Augustine’s Trinitarian theology as expressed in a brief and bewildering passage in Book 13. It shows that wherever Augustine departs from Plotinus, he does so in a way that he found in Victorinus; Victorinus also taught Augustine distinctions and arguments from Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics that he could not have known from other Latin texts available to him. Through Augustine, then, Victorinus had a much larger influence on the history of metaphysics than has been appreciated up to now. Moreover, we find that “Augustine’s common designation as ‘Platonist’ would be more precise if it were revised to ‘Victorine Neoplatonist.’”

One of the sciences comprised in Hume’s Science of Human Nature is metaphysics, understood as the science of the most general features of the world as it appears to us. I show how Hume’s metaphysics in the Treatise can be “methodized, or reduced to general principles.” Those principles are: (I) The Contradiction Principle: The distinctly conceivable implies no contradiction. (II) The Possibility Principle: What implies no contradiction is possible. (III) The Conceptual Separability Principle: Things are different if and only if separable in conception. On these principles the rest of Hume’s metaphysics is based, including his atomistic ontology and his denial of necessary connection: only single, individual, simple, unaltering, determinate, particular, metaphysically independent things exist.

This chapter presents a portrait of study and teaching at the Faculty of Arts in Paris during the first half-century of the university's existence: from enrolment under a master to obtaining a licence, entering the corporation of the Magistri Artium and, eventually, enrolment in one of the higher faculties (theology, canon law or medicine).

Chapter 5 explores some relations between rhetorical models for speeches in praise of the gods and Platonist texts relating to metaphysics, or ‘theology’, the science of divine first principles. As rhetoric distinguishes different modes and styles in discourse about the gods, so do the Platonists, both in their own works and in those of their ancient authorities (Pythagoras and Plato), distinguish in corresponding ways between different modes of teaching in theology. And as rhetoric prescribes, for speeches about the gods, genealogies of the gods, their actions and benefactions, so too do Platonist theological texts expound the metaphysical genealogy of first principles, a hierarchy of causes and their effects. But speech expresses the limitations of human souls: to approach what is divine and transcendent, which is ineffable, is to be silent, to practice the silence of Pythagoras and of Socrates.

Chapter 25 introduces Alexander of Aphrodisias’ systematic reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I show how Syrianus took over Alexander’s reading of Aristotle, combining it with Plato’s references to a supreme knowledge, ‘dialectic’, and explaining the possibility of scientific knowledge of the objects of metaphysics – transcendent divine first principles – in terms of concepts innate in the soul which both image these first principles and are available to discursive reasoning as sources of knowledge of these principles. The primary text for metaphysics, according to the Platonists, was Plato’s Parmenides. I show how Proclus’ interpretation of the Parmenides, inspired by Syrianus, underlies the composition of Proclus’ metaphysical masterpiece, the Elements of Theology. Finally, Damascius is shown to have brought out to the fullest extent the limits of human reasonings about transcendent divine principles, reasonings which incessantly lead to contradictions and impasses, the aporetical ‘birth-pangs’ of the reasoning soul where it meets what transcend it.

The introduction to this Critical Guide offers some background to Hume’s classic A Treatise of Human Nature, originally published in three books in 1739 and 1740. The introduction then briefly broaches the debate whether Hume leaves the doctrines of the Treatise behind with his later works, and it defends the importance of the Treatise to Hume’s corpus and to subsequent and contemporary philosophical thought. It presents a summary of the fourteen critical essays contained in the volume, which include seven articles on Hume’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, six articles on the passions and ethics, and one essay on the early reception of the Treatise. Several of these essays highlight the unity of Hume’s approach in the Treatise, showing how the principles of Hume’s epistemology and psychology in Book 1 are foundational to his discussion of the passions and of morality in Books 2 and 3.