“Separación de la sustancia y separación de las Ideas platónicas en Aristóteles”

DI CAMILLO, SILVANA

REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE FILOSOFíA

CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIONES FILOSÓFICAS

Lugar: BUENOS AIRES; Año: 2010 p. 235 - 258

0325-0725

ABSTRACT: Some scholars maintain that Aristotle misrepresents the meaning of “separation” given by Plato to the Ideas, identifying it with the separation that he attributes to the substance.  In this work we attempt to prove that there are more than one sense of separation for the substance, including ontological independence, conceptual separation and spatial one, and that none of these senses operates in the criticism of Ideas. First, we address the notion of “separation” of the Aristotelian substance to show that the criterion applicable to the substantial form is different from the one that characterizes the compound of matter and form; it is not possible, therefore, to establish an unique criterion of "separation" for the substance.  Secondly, after reviewing and rejecting that any of the proposed senses can be applied to the separation of Ideas, we intend to establish, by analyzing the argument that leads to the “third man”, to what extent the separation of the Ideas involves homonymy, i. e., Ideas and sensibles share the name but not their nature, so having a common name does not guarantee any real connection, and Ideas would be deprived of their causal and cognitive function.