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The article explores kabbalistic philosophical concepts and systems of thought with regard to the rabbinic and biblical notion of wisdom as a feminized entity. Topics discussed include the characteristics of the divine female according to the Jewish mystical doctrine Kabbalah, the concept of prime matter in Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions, and the rabbinic literature focusing on the divine attributes to judgment and mercy.

On close inspection, Themistius' rephrasing of two passages in Physics IV 2, in which Aristotle compares Plato's Timaeus and the 'unwritten doctrines', suggests that he was guided in his understanding by a loose association with the account of Plato's Ideas in the Metaphysics. Themistius also interprets Aristotle's remarks about 'place' in Timaeus as pointing to the main feature of 'prime matter', namely indetermination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The view that prime matter possesses extension as an essential feature offers one way to explain the traditional role of prime matter while avoiding the twin charges of incoherence and vacuity. In this paper, I show that attributing extension to prime matter as an essential feature is not a viable interpretation of Aristotle, and indeed, is at odds with the concept of extension in his physical works. Nonetheless, one need not entirely reject Aristotle's commitment to prime matter; I suggest that the paradoxical nature of prime matter is not problematic, so long as the role of prime matter is restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the prime matter that Leibniz posits in every created monad is understood by him to be a mere defect or negation, and not something real and positive. Further, I argue that Leibniz's talk of prime matter in every created monad is inspired by the thirteenth-century doctrine of spiritual matter, but that such talk is simply one way in which Leibniz frames a point that he frequently makes elsewhere--namely, that each creaturely essence incorporates a limitation that is the ultimate source of an original imperfection that affects the creature from the first moment of its existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We often predicate capacities of substances in such a way so as to modify the way that they exist (e.g., the barbell has the capacity to bend). However, sometimes a capacity is not for the modification of a substance but for the existence of one. Moreover, we have reason to think that these capacities are just as real as other capacities. If that's right, then the question arises: if these capacities (for the existence of substances) are real features in the world, what they are real features of? Part I argues that they can't be capacities of substances, and so they must be capacities of some part of substances. Part II argues that they can't be capacities of the substance's integral/substantial parts. Part III argues that a possessor of such capacities would have to be a lot like prime matter in not being characterized by substantial forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been traditionally held that the idea of a prime matter of metals was abandoned in the eighteenth century, especially after the failure of Hermann Boerhaave to find it in mercury. However, documents tell a different story: the search for the metalliferous principle, in the form of an odd substance known as Gur, Guhr, Ghur or Bur, was very much alive in the 1700s. This was a project that involved Boerhaave himself, as is shown by his correspondence with J.B. Bassand. The first mention of this strange material appears in Sarepta, a collection of sermons by the sixteenth-century Bohemian preacher Johannes Mathesius, sometimes mentioned in the specialized literature but rarely studied. This paper discusses the various conceptions of this material held as the prime matter of metals, from Mathesius to the eighteenth century, involving reputed authors such as John Webster, Jan B. van Helmont, Georg E. Stahl and Boerhaave. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle rejects the very possibility of such a thing as Anaximander's apeiron. Characterized as a kind of intermediate stuff, the apeiron turns out to consist of contraries and as such is impossible. Commentators have rightly noted this point and some have also indicated that Aristotle offers an argument of sorts for his negative estimate. However, the argument has received scant attention, and it is fair to say that it remains unclear exactly why Aristotle rejects Anaximander's intermediate stuff. Indeed, it is unclear how Aristotle's argument is supposed to run in the first place. This paper offers a reconstruction of Aristotle's argument for the impossibility of the apeiron, and on this basis offers to explain Aristode's grounds for rejecting Anaximander's interme-diate stuff. This is especially called for in light of the fact that Aristotle himself thinks that there can be intermediate stuffs. Finally, some attention is given to the parallel between the apeiron and Aristotle's prime matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper examines the view held by Francesco Piccolomini (1523-1607) on the relation between prime matter and extension. In his discussion of prime matter in the Libri ad scientiam de natura attinentes Piccolomini develops a theory of prime matter that incorporates crucial elements of the viewpoint adhered to by the Neoplatonist Simplicius. The originality of Piccolomini's undertaking is highlighted by contrasting it with the ideas found in Jacopo Zabarella's De rebus naturalibus. The case of Piccolomini shows that, in order to classify early modern metaphysical theories of prime matter, the category 'prime matter as sheer dimensionality' is indispensable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To avoid reification of prime matter, or the indeterminate, yet determinable, substrate underlying all change, many readers of Aristotle have identified this per se unknowable "stuff" with its functional identity, i.e., as a conceptual placeholder of the sum of formal potencies abstracted from concrete particulars. Despite the appeal of this reduction, a case will be made in reference to Siger of Brabant's Metaphysics for the irreducibility of prime matter. This entails granting an extra-formal reality to prime matter beyond its functional role as a correlate passively receiving forms imparted by an agent without contributing anything of this own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the theory of a primordial substance called "ether," articulated by 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his final work, "Opus Postumum," and the significance of his frequent references in the text to the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The author argues that these are actually references to the "Spinozism" of another German philosopher, Johann Gottfried Herder, whom Kant is taken to be criticizing.

For Thomas Aquinas, man and woman express human reason differently. The female-mother, material and embodied reason, is identified with nature and resembles prime matter. The male resembles form, encloses the fullness of being, and tries to be a pure and disembodied reason, separated from nature, and necessary to complete woman. Axiologically, woman is whatever is indecent and dirty, and the instrument to make man stumble, while man is whatever is good and desired, for he was created before woman to mean his superiority in dignity and government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I address both the interpretive and philosophical issues concerning prime matter. My aim is to show that a philosophically interesting account of prime matter can be articulated that strongly coheres with, even if it is not necessitated by, Aristotle's texts. In articulating the interpretation, I first examine a view defended by both Richard Sorabji and Robert Sokolowski according to which prime matter is extension. Such a view, I argue, is problematic for a number of reasons. Nonetheless, it provides a convenient starting point for the view I defend according to which prime matter is intimately linked to, though not identical with, extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues for the plausibility of Pierre Bayle's interpretation of Baruch Spinoza. Challenges to Bayle's interpretation; Continuity of the Baylean interpretation with the Spinozan concept of prime matter; Role of prime matter in scholastic metaphysics; Cartesian understanding of prime matter; Examination of Spinoza's understanding of prime matter in his "Ethics"; Defense of the Baylean interpretation of Spinoza's monism.

Examines the concept and theory of part and whole as material substances. Criteria for distinguishing substances from aggregates; Properties of prime matter; Arguments offered by Scotus that a substance is an object over and above the sum of if parts; Ockham's theory of a composite substance.

The article presents abstracts of articles related to philosophy which were published in "Phronesis," Vol. 54, No. 4-5 including "Diotima's Eudaemonism: Intrinsic Value and Rational Motivation in Plato's Symposium," by Ralph Wedgwood, "A Synchronic Justification for Aristotle's Commitment to Prime Matter," by Margaret Scharle, and "The Stoic Ontology of Geometrical Limits," by Anna Eunyoung Ju.