#  Colloquium Lecture: Gabriel Shapiro, "Aristotle’s Argument for Essentialism" 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **January 22, 2025** 

 03:00PM - 05:00PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Emerson Hall 305**  



 

 



 

Abstract: Aristotle is an essentialist. He claims that (at least some) objects have some of their properties essentially. Moreover, his essentialism is foundational, pervasive, and systematic. He relies on it to develop foundational aspects of his philosophical framework, it does heavy lifting throughout his philosophical corpus, and he subjects essentialist notions themselves to systematic investigation. One might, then, be surprised to find that Aristotle offers very little direct evidence for essentialism. In fact, there is only one explicit argument for essentialism in the Aristotelian corpus (*Metaphysics* Γ.4 1007a29–b18). Perhaps due to the difficulties presented by its context, this argument has received very little scholarly attention. In this talk, I will reconstruct Aristotle’s argument for essentialism and discuss some problems that arise for it.



 

 



 

 

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