History of Aristotle's Metaphysics: The unexpected ancestry of Western Cultural DNA
Institutional Communication Service
Date: 22 August 2018 / 18:30 - 20:00
Auditorium, USI Lugano campus
Lecture with Giovanni Ventimiglia, full Professor of Philosophy and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Lucerne, and e Visiting Professor of Medieval Philosophy at Università della Svizzera Italiana (Master in Philosophy).
“We have to admit that the differences between Western and Middle Eastern cultures are substantial. The categories of mind within western and middle eastern thought are by definition essentially contradictory. The act of bringing them together is a waste of time and money and even potentially dangerous to the very essence of our western identity”. This typical outburst from a contemporary politician testifies to the fact that western culture is impregnated by Greek philosophy. In fact some expressions used in this discourse could not exist at all without Aristotle’s philosophy and in particular his Metaphysics, where he introduced and defined for the first time in the history of western culture words such as: substance, category, definition, essence, contradiction, act, potency. So Aristotle’s Metaphysics is an essential – again an Aristotelian word - part of our cultural DNA. Being proud of these important roots of our culture - as some contemporary politicians nowadays surely would be -, I will tell the beautiful, glorious story of the book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In doing that, I suspect we will have some unexpected surprises.
