Aristotle on the Matter of Form: Α Feminist Metaphysics of Generation - Paperback

by Adriel M. Trott (Author)

Adriel M. Trott challenges the wholesale acceptance of the view that nature operates in Aristotle's work on a craft model, which implies that matter has no power of its own. Instead, she argues for a robust sense of matter in Aristotle in response to feminist critiques. She finds resources for thinking the female's contribution - and the female - on its own terms and not as the contrary to form, or the male.

Front Jacket

Argues for an interdependent relationship of form and matter in Aristotle's metaphysics Adriel M. Trott challenges the wholesale acceptance of the view that nature operates in Aristotle's work on a craft model, a model that underwrites the notion that form is separate and distinct from and imposed on matter, implying that matter has no power of its own. Situating her argument in the debates between Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler over efforts to resuscitate the meaning and role of matter in the history of philosophy, she argues for a robust sense of matter in Aristotle in response to feminist critiques in order to find resources for thinking the female's contribution--and the female--on its own terms and not as the contrary to form- or the male. Using the image of a Möbius strip to consider the work of semen and menses in Aristotle's account of generation, Trott weaves together scholarship on matter, form and generation in Aristotle, on the mythological, Hippocratic and Pre-Socratic treatment of the feminine and of the elemental, and on feminist readings of material to demonstrate this interdependence of form and matter in Aristotle's biology. Adriel M. Trott is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wabash College. Her first book, Aristotle on the Nature of Community, focuses on the concept of nature in Aristotle's Politics.

Author Biography

Adriel Trott is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wabash College. She is the author of Aristotle on the Nature of Community (Cambridge University Press, 2013).