Part-Whole Interdependence and the Presence of Form in Matter According to Some Fifteenth-Century Platonists (2022)
Andrew W. Arlig (Author)
Bruniana & Campanelliana: Ricerche Filosofiche e Materiali Storico-testuali
Volume: 28
Issue: 1
Pages: 103-122
This essay offers a preliminary exploration of how some fifteenth-century philosophers addressed certain issues about parts and wholes, that is, about certain mereological themes and problems. It focuses on the kind of Platonic mereological thinking found in Marsilio Ficino and Nicholas of Cusa. This Platonic mereology is contrasted with Scholastic mereology, a framework adopted by the Schoolmen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Platonic mereology is compared with Scholastic mereology with respect to the categorization of wholes and parts. The exploration then turns to the question of whether parts and wholes depend upon one another. The Platonists distinguish wholes that are made out of and thus depend on their parts from wholes that are not dependent upon any parts. The latter are wholes in the primary sense. This Platonic theory of transcendent, independent wholes raises the problem of how these wholes can be the cause of unity for the parts that they unify, given the commonplace assumption that causation requires ‘presence’. It is suggested that the problem can be resolved in some measure by emphasizing the top-down nature of the Platonic metaphysical scheme. The exploration ends with a quick survey of the puzzling Platonic thesis that all the parts are in each part.
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