Abstract

In Alexander of Aphrodisias' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics A 9 we learn that Aristotle wrote a work against the Forms. This work, the Peri Ideon, retailed and rebutted various arguments which the Platonists used to prove that there are Forms. My dissertation is concerned with the first set of arguments in the Peri Ideon, the three arguments 'from the sciences'. ;I translate and analyze the arguments. Then I defend the claim that they may be understood against the background of passages in Plato's middle period dialogues . ;Aristotle lodges two criticisms: First, the arguments do not prove that there are Forms although they prove something weaker, namely that there are objects 'apart from' the individual things making up the sensible world. And Aristotle claims that his own theory of the sciences gives a correct account of what these objects are like. In explicating this criticism I discuss differences between Forms and Aristotelian universals. ;Aristotle's second criticism is that the considerations which the Platonists advance in favor of Forms as objects of the sciences apply equally to them as objects of the arts and productive crafts. But on other grounds the Platonists do not believe that there are few Forms of artefacts. In discussing this inconsistency I face the following problem: What allows Aristotle to assert that the Platonists do not believe that there are Forms of artefacts, given that certain passages in Plato mention such Forms? I discuss and evaluate previous views; then I offer a new solution. My suggestion is that a close reading of this second Aristotelian objection allows us to understand the Platonic disbelief in Forms of artefacts as still committing the Platonists to there being Forms for some artefacts, namely those which Plato himself posited