Chronos in Aristotle’s Physics: On the Nature of Time

This year’s Central APA featured an author-meets critics session on Chelsea Harry’s book Chronos in Aristotle’s Physics: On the Nature of Time. In this post the author describes the book, then each critic discusses their thoughts on it, followed by the author’s responses to them.

By Chelsea C. Harry, Sergio Barrionuevo, António Pedro Mesquita, Rachel Parsons

In the past ten years, there has been a resurgence of work on Aristotle’s Treatise on Time. Ursula Coope’s and Tony Roark’s books, titans among the work coming out of this resurgence, provided many helpful insights for arguments I make in my book, and I think this influence shows itself in my critics’ comments.  However, my approach is different from these two fine studies.  I take this is because I start from the perspective of life, and from what I understand to be Aristotle’s enthusiasm for developing a comprehensive understanding of life and nature, as a result both of his engagement with earlier thinkers and of what must have been his own curiosity about the being of living things.  In the book’s Preface, I speak about this in more detail.

I argue that Aristotle’s Treatise on Time (Physics iv 10-14) is a contextualized account of time insofar as it is not a treatment of time qua time but a parallel account to Aristotle’s foregoing studies of nature, principles (192b13-22), motion (201a10-11), infinite (iii 4-8), place (iv 1-5), and void (iv 6-9) in the Physics i-iv 9.  As a result, I do not treat Aristotle as a philosopher of time.  Frankly, I don’t think Aristotle was too interested in time.  Rather, Aristotle was interested in natural beings, and this interest led him to a discussion of the nature of natural beings, which he understood to be a capacity for self-motion and rest, and thus arguments about the attributes of motion originally considered by prior thinkers.  My book then offers a reading of Physics iv 10-11 with the aim of showing that time, chronos, here has to do with time as an attribute of motion, as an interval, i.e., the type of time that, as Aristotle describes at 218a1, “is taken.” With support from a reading of Physics iv 14 and evidence from Aristotle’s greater philosophy of nature, I argue that time for Aristotle is derivative of the modal change of natural being.  Time, like the other attributes of motion studied in the first four books of the Physics, exists for the most part potentially.  I try to show that it is actualized when the change of natural beings is apprehended, in most cases, by the working together of perception and intellection in human beings and, in some cases, by perception alone, even in some cases by non-human animals.

Comment on Context and Methodology by Sergio Barrionuevo:

I would like to make an observation about the methodological framework of the book. The ‘contextual approach’ proposed by Chelsea Harry is an interesting contribution to the study of Aristotle’s Physics. According to her, the chapters of book IV dedicated to the ‘Treatise on Time’ should be read in the general framework established by Physics as a whole. For this, her proposal delimits the ‘context’ in two ways: the text of Physics as a whole gives meaning to the ‘Treatise on Time’ as a part of a greater work, and it gives meaning to the philosophy of Aristotle — specifically in Metaphysics and the treatises of the Organon, but mainly in his treatises on natural philosophy (Parva naturalia and De anima) (Harry, xvi-xvii) this leads him to conclude an interpretation by analogy between the treatment of time and other natural beings. (Harry, xviii)

This concept of ‘context’ is reduced to a textual coherence; the structure of Chelsea Harry’s book and the construction of her argument make this clear. The book organizes the focus of information in a logical way. First, it establishes the scopes, goals, and methods of Physics, then it analyzes the structure of the ‘Treatise on Time’ (chapters 10-14), after which Harry proposes this framework is Aristotle’s interpretation of ‘taking time.’ A reading is proposed in which consistency prevails between different statements (Harry, 52): the principles of Physics and the treatise of time, the analogy between the Aristotelian argument about time and other topics, and the positions of Aristotle in this treatise and other biological works. The problem with this perspective is that it presupposes the systematic unity of Aristotelian thought and the logical coherence of its statements as a starting point upon which all arguments are constructed.

I think this is problematic, as the philosophical ideal of systematicity is neither a condition of ancient thought, nor is it merely a goal. The ideal is the result of a later tradition that is applied retrospectively to Aristotelian thought, which rises from both the corruption of texts and rationalist hermeneutics. Working with this assumption implies an interpretation strategy that seeks to explain or avoid the inconsistencies present in the Aristotelian texts (with the aim of constructing a coherent image free of contradictions), or to subsume them into a rational model that gives them meaning. This concept of ‘context’ is problematic. To demand systematicity and coherence in a work that has been corrupted and manipulated by the manuscript tradition, as well as by the interpretations of some ‘Aristotelians,’ discards both the historical character in the construction of Aristotle’s thought itself, in the transmission and preservation of their texts.

Response by author, Chelsea Harry:

I agree that there are difficulties with reading Aristotle as if there is consistency across texts, and I don’t mean to advocate for systematic unity across Aristotle’s treatises. I agree with scholars (Polansky, Gerson, etc.) who take seriously Aristotle’s separation of the sciences and understand his works in theoretical, productive, and practical sciences to be intended toward different ends.   I also take seriously Sergio’s concern about expecting or assuming even textual coherence, given the obvious difficulties associated with the transmission of these texts over time.  Still, I remain committed to understanding Aristotle as having had an original and, yes, coherent worldview across his natural philosophy.  Instead of thinking of this coherence as the result of a well-articulated logical system, I understand it to be the result of a general way to have seen the natural world as something knowable because it had a certain predictability about it as the result of all the beings of nature being directed towards certain ends.

But, though it was an original contribution, Aristotle’s project did not begin in a vacuum, and in fact the influence of the Presocratic natural philosophers and Plato play an incalculable (insofar as we have an even more unreliable transmission of texts from the earliest Greek thinkers) and indissoluble role in Aristotle’s work.  We all know how important the commonly held views, or endoxa, feature in Aristotle’s texts, in particular in his natural philosophy, but I would like to propose that it is precisely the previous work of these early Greek thinkers that began Aristotle’s impulse to develop the coherent worldview I see in his work.

In the Metaphysics (983b18-27), Aristotle differentiates Thales’ method of inquiry from previous ways of knowing.  Whereas Hesiod and Homer attributed the cause of natural phenomena to the gods and invoke the Muses for the right account, Thales sought answers via rational inquiry.  For Aristotle, Thales’ inquiry marks an approach to nature where there is an underlying unity that can be known—a unity of which even we are part—and so while Thales is not yet what I would consider a systematic thinker, we see him, via how Aristotle saw him, as a thinker looking at facts about individual beings whence can be drawn a universal conclusion to explain what appears necessary and in common about them.  Thus, Thales is already finding nature in one of the many Aristotelian senses of the term.

The Ionians of course were what we call “material monists,” meaning that they seemed to think all nature was composed of one underlying substance, which was also its own source of change. This position began a conversation about worldview and predictability in nature, which spanned nearly three-hundred years prior to Aristotle’s entering the conversation, first as a student of Plato’s at the Academy.  Or, as some scholars have noted, perhaps earlier as these Presocratic conversations had become likely part of the general cultural consciousness of the time.  From Ionian monism to Eleatic speculative monism, which denies that we can obtain truth from observing the natural world, to the dualism we see in the atomists, or the sophisticated, yet still speculative, view we see argued for by Empedocles, we can trace a general conversation both about what exactly we can know about the natural world, if anything, and when we accept that we can know the natural world, as Aristotle declares is self-evident in the Physics, we can then see a real working out of concepts previously noted but not expanded on.

We also see, I think, a genuine curiosity and passion for individual natural beings.  While Aristotle was not the first to try and explain diversity in nature, he was the first thinker to spend time getting to know the individual beings who compose the whole of nature—from bees to birds to dolphins to cuttlefish, Aristotle worked tirelessly to understand the parts and capabilities of these creatures for change directed toward an end.  As I read Aristotle, he had an earnest interest in knowledge for its own sake.

Returning to this idea of worldview; I want to appeal to Aristotle’s picture of reality and trying to understand that as internally consistent, in the sense that his natural philosophy is directed to the goal of identifying and explaining natural phenomena in the context of a larger conversation with the Presocratic natural philosophers and Plato.  I want to say that Aristotle’s interest in nature was not a logical game, or admittedly, as Sergio points out, directed toward the goal of the philosophical ideal of systematicity.  Instead, I see a general interest and commitment to developing a rational way to understand an underlying regularity in nature on the basis of the assumption that we can know natural beings as well as this underlying regularity.  This then leads Aristotle to expand previous ideas about necessity, change, and the modality of being.

Returning to the specific issue of time, my argument for reading Aristotle’s theory of time contextually has to do with my understanding that he is engaged in this broad and historical conversation about how to know the natural world, which is to say the perishable world, including natural beings in all their diversity, and thus that developing a concept of time comes out of this project.

Comment on Taking Time by Pedro Mesquita:

One important point in Chelsea’s interpretation is that Aristotle, in his Treatise on Time, is not talking about the present day abstract conception of time – the infinite succession of moments -, but of ‘time taken’, that is to say, the time that is concretely taken by a natural being to change from A to B (whether this change be alteration, locomotion or whatever change it may be), or, better still, on her account, the time that is taken by the soul to count the change occurred from A to B.

Her chief argument for attributing this distinction to Aristotle (in fact, her only argument) is the introductory text of the Treatise on Time, where the philosopher says the following (this is Ph. IV 10, 217b29-218a3, in the revised Oxford translation, which I will always follow here):

Next for discussion after the subjects mentioned is time. The best plan will be to begin by working out the difficulties connected with it, making use of the current arguments. First, does it belong to the class of things that exist or to that of things that do not exist? Then secondly, what is its nature? To start, then: the following considerations would make one suspect that it either does not exist at all or barely, and in the obscure way. One part of it has been and is not, while the other is going to be and is not yet. Yet time — both infinite time and any time you like to take — is made up of these. One would naturally suppose that what is made up of things which do not exist could have no share in reality.

In a great number of occasions, and from the very beginning of the book, Chelsea clearly takes this text, and specifically the words in line 218a1 – “both infinite time and any time you like to take” (καὶ ὁ ἄπειρος καὶ ὁ ἀεὶ λαμβανόμενος) – as if Aristotle was introducing in it a theoretical distinction between two different conceptions of time.

I sincerely wonder whether this line of interpretation is fair to the text and to Aristotle’s intentions in writing it.

First of all, Aristotle’s wording here seems to be a hapax. Now, if ho aei lambanamenos chrόnos is indeed a hapax, it is hardly acceptable to use it as indicating a significant way of understanding time.

But let us look at the text itself. Instead of “time taken”, which of course suggests the time that someone takes to do something or the time that is taken to count the process of doing it, and which therefore automatically conveys Chelsea’s interpretation, wouldn’t it be more natural to read lambanamenos chrόnos as “any time you want to take into consideration”? Something like “pick a card, any card”: pick a time interval, whichever you want? Now, if this is indeed the more natural reading of the clause, as it seems, then Aristotle is not saying that time is two things or has two different senses, infinite time and “time taken”, in Chelsea’s words, but just that, when considering time, we may regard it in its fullness – the infinite succession of time – or rather pick a specific moment in time.

Further, this passage seems to me much simpler than what Chelsea sees in it. What Aristotle, in my opinion, is saying here is just that whether you consider time in general, as a continuous succession, or any concrete piece of time you like, it will always appear to you as being composed of what-has-been and what-is-going-to-be, of past and future. He is therefore appealing to common sensual, everyday notions of time, which fully agrees with the endoxical section of the treatise he is initiating. Of course, this does not commit him in the least with the admission that time is really a whole whose parts are the past and the future. The argument works, on the contrary, as an ad hoc argument (in fact, a reductio ad absurdum) against all those who do consider time to be so, that this to say, all those, philosophers and non-philosopher alike, who share this naive view of time.

Response by author, Chelsea Harry:

218a1 is a disjunction, differentiating two different senses of time: “and time, whether infinite (ho apeiros chronos) or time taken (ho aie lambanamenos chronos).” Though Aristotle does not here explicitly lay out a proposal that there is more than one sense of time, I understand the line to be suggesting that there is more than one sense of time, and that Aristotle was taking this for granted.  Given that I read the Treatise in the context of the other treatises for the attributes of motion explored previously, I go on to say that infinite time would have been likely outside the scope of things examined in the Physics (at least in books i-iv).  I then focus my work on understanding what exactly this taken time is for Aristotle, especially as regards what he makes of the ‘now’ and what taken time implies about who or what is taking it.

On this point that Aristotle does not explicitly propose a difference between two senses of time, I sympathize with Pedro’s worry that the construction ho aie lambanamenos chronos is a hapax, meaning it occurs only once in the text.  Indeed, Pedro is correct that this particular construction, where lambanamenos is qualifying chronos, only occurs once.  Given that the construction is a hapax, Pedro suggests an alternative translation: “any time you want to take into consideration”; understood in the sense, “pick a card, any card”. On this translation, we might understand Aristotle, as Pedro seems to suggest, is telling us to consider either the whole of time (infinite time) or any given “moment” in time.

I thank Pedro for bringing attention to the way I read 218a1, and for calling into question this notion of “time taken,” which I take to be so central to Aristotle’s treatise, and also to the first four books of the Physics.  The way Pedro suggests we translate lambanamenos in 218a1 is of course perfectly consistent with other uses of the participle, which is to say read it in the sense that it means “consider” or “understand,” which are metaphorical uses of another of its other possible meanings, literally “take” or “apprehend.”  When I consider this new proposed translation, “any time you want to take into consideration” I understand it to mean, “any time you would like to consider,” and thus an implied commitment to a view of time that can be “cut” and that these cuts can be considered and analyzed on their own.  On the other hand, I have suggested the literal “take,” in the sense of apprehension—and, to be more precise, “taken,” as Aristotle is using the participle of λαμβάνω.  I’m not sure the more metaphorical view is consistent with what Aristotle is arguing for the definition of time.

While the construction ho aie lambanamenos chronos is a hapax, lambanamenos and its cognates appear relatively frequently in the corpus aristotelicum, including seventeen times in the Physics and of those seventeen, eleven in books i-iv.  Some of these occurrences can, I believe, shed light on the way Aristotle uses the term at Physics 218a1.  Indeed, I think even some of these usages help to support my claim that Aristotle’s treatise on time is a parallel account to his previous treatises on attributes of motion.

Curiously, in Physics I, we see forms of λαμβάνω used as verbs, and these verbs do not seem to mean, “take,” but rather, “accepted” (185a9), “give” (186a7), “recognized” (189a1), and “assumed” (189a26).  In books iii and iv, however, there are various occurrences of participle forms of λαμβάνω, and some of these do indeed seem to mean “taken”.

Line 204a22 in Physics book iii, for example, helps to make a strong case for reading the participle of lambano, here ὸ λαμβανόμενον, as “taken” in the sense of direct apprehension, rather than in the metaphorical sense of “consider” because Aristotle is asking his reader to imagine a specific division of infinity as itself having the attribute of infinity.  He is thus using the example of “taking infinity,” and of its impossibility –since it is impossible to have an infinite finite, which would be the case with a “taken” part of the infinite.  If we apply this lesson to time, we see too that time cannot be subsistent because its own “cuts” or parts would then be subject to their own time, and thus their own capacity for change.  Even implying the possibility for something like the temporality of time seems to belie what Aristotle is aiming at in Physics 10.  Rather, finite times are not considered and are not subsistent, they are taken qua the apprehension of number as the result of natural change.

Lines 206a28 and 207a8 seem to suggest that there is a concept of eternal, or sempeternal time, suggested as an analogue to the continuity of the human race, where we can then follow the analogy to understand individual perishing humans as the analogue to individual finite times.  Like individual humans, individual times mark a specific time and place in the natural world, a time and place that will not endure forever.  The infinite possibility of time, as that which has the possibility for always being, as long as the conditions for its possibilities exist, exists as long as it has not been made whole or complete.  If time is the number of change with regard to before and after, and those which are changing are individual natural beings, taking time is going to be possible so long as these individual beings are changing as a necessary course of their life.

In Physics book iv, a reading of line 208a21 indicates that taking time depends on the experience and apprehension of change by a being who has the ability to apprehend change and the enumeration of before and after.  This line seems to acknowledge that infinite time is outside the scope of such a project because it cannot be experienced, nor apprehended, by a natural, or perishable, being.

Taking stock of these passages, and possibilities for reading them, I think we do see even more reason to suspect consistency in Aristotle’s discussion of the attributes of motion and of how he begins quite early in his discussion to speak of the difference between finite and infinite, or parts and wholes as regards the constitution, or even lack of subsistent constitution of these attributes.  I think the issue of part and whole as regards non-subsistent natural being calls us to visit the role modal concepts, specifically potentiality and actuality, play in Aristotle’s positive accounts of nature and natural beings in the first four books of the Physics. In the book, I claim that 218a1 has not been sufficiently discussed in the literature—that it has been neglected.  I maintain this suggestion, and thus am so pleased that even if Pedro and I remain in disagreement about how to read ho aie lambanamenos chronos in Physics iv 10, we have begun this discussion.

Comment on The Circularity of Time by Rachel Parsons:

In my comments I chose to focus on an issue that has troubled many interpreters of Aristotle’s account of time, which is whether Aristotle’s account of time is circular.  Chelsea Harry does not devote extended time in the book to presenting and addressing this question, though she does make clear that she takes her account to avoid the pitfall of attributing a circular account of time to Aristotle.  As she says, “The diversion to establish the primacy of magnitude to time benefits Aristotle’s account because it establishes that there is a before and after in time, but not in the circular sense in which temporality has to be assumed in order to conclude the existence of time as an attribute of kinêsis” (Harry, 43). In a footnote to this claim, Harry endorses Tony Roark’s response to that question, albeit with some qualifications:

My reading here has benefited greatly from Roark’s account of the “before” and “after” as nontemporal (Roark 2011, 95–119). Roark argues against the majority view that Aristotle’s definition of time is circular because it uses seemingly temporal terms, i.e., “before” and “after” in the definition (Cf. Annas 1975; Owen 1975; Ross 1936 for the alternative view). But, as helpful as Roark’s account is, it does not seem necessary to accept Roark’s hylomorphic reading of Aristotle’s Treatise on Time to understand Aristotle to intend an underlying material continuum to provide non-temporal “relata” expressed in the relation “before” and “after.” Roark argues that priority and posteriority are already present in Aristotle’s account of kinêsis (Roark 2011, 95). I agree, but they are present only insofar as there is a natural being undergoing kinêsis. (Harry, 43, fn. 27)

The question of circularity comes down to understanding the directionality of motion (‘before and after in motion’) in a way that does not make reference to or presuppose the existence of time.  This, in turn, depends on similarly understanding ‘before and after in magnitude’, since Aristotle suggests that ‘before and after in motion’ somehow depends upon or follows ‘before and after in magnitude’.

According to Roark, the solution is to recognize the inherent teleology of Aristotelian motion.  Per Roark, Aristotelian motion is the actualization of the telic properties of substances, in which case “the direction of the kinetic continuum is not derived from time, but rather from the essential nature of motion itself” (Roark 2011, 92).  A given motion can be traced or plotted on a spatial continuum.  For any two points along this continuum, one is ‘before’ and the other ‘after’ relative to the telos of the motion.  For Roark, each spatial point corresponds to what he terms a ‘kinetic cut’–an extensionless point of motion.  One kinetic cut is before another insofar as its corresponding spatial point is before that of the other (Roark 2011, 87, 91-94).  Thus we see how the ‘before and after in motion’ is determined by that of magnitude.

Roark’s solution is on the right track, yet he does not do justice to Aristotle’s claim that “before and after holds primarily … in place” and that “[s]ince … before and after hold in magnitude, they must hold also in movement, these corresponding to those” (Physics 4.11, 219a14-21 [emphasis added]).  On Roark’s account, ‘before and after’ seem to hold primarily in motion, since it is with reference to the telos of motion that a given spatial point is ‘before’ and another ‘after’.

As we saw above, Harry agrees that “priority and posteriority are already present in Aristotle’s account of kinêsis”. She qualifies, however, that these relata “are present only insofar as there is a natural being undergoing kinêsis”.  Her point here, I take it, is that the teleology of motion ultimately derives from the essential teleology–or, the essential modality, as she might put it–of natural substances.  Indeed, Harry’s claim seems even stronger than that.  For if I have understood Harry correctly, the before and after in both motion and magnitude (place) are derivative of the essential modality of natural substances.  Thus, ‘before and after in magnitude’ and ‘before and after in motion’ are together defined by reference to the telos in question.  Consider, for example, some X’s desire to eat a donut from the local donut shop.  In this case, ‘before and after’ in both magnitude and motion are defined relative to X’s end or telos, which centrally includes the donut’s primary place.

Harry’s account allows us to avoid Roark’s mistake of defining before and after in magnitude with reference to the telos of the motion. Yet, we still want an explanation for why the before and after holds primarily in magnitude (place).  I suggested that we might look to the account of hypothetical necessity in Physics 2.9 for help on this question, though I did not take the matter further than that.

Response by author, Chelsea Harry:

I appreciate Rachel’s donut shop example, and I agree that it illustrates my position that ‘before’ and ‘after’ pertain to the modal or telic process of the being moving toward its end—in this case, in its arrival at the donut shop (and, with any hope, obtaining the donut!).

In order to offer an explanation about the primacy of place in Aristotle’s account, acknowledging that the connection between magnitude (megathos) and place (topos) is not always clear in the Physics, I want to say something about Aristotle’s Treatise on Place (topos) in the Physics.  For Aristotle, all bodies, which move from one place to another or bodies that increase or decrease in size, are per se in place.  For Aristotle, unlike his predecessors, place is not a substantial being itself; rather, it is an attribute or accessory of motion.  As I discuss in the first chapter of the book, place for Aristotle is found anywhere we find a moveable body. (Harry, 30) It is the limit of a moveable body, only potentially existent unless a body exists to help actualize it, serving as that which is limited.  When the body moves in space, its limit—and thus its place—changes.  In this sense, if we can accept topos as the limit of a specific magnitude, the limit of any given natural being undergoing change is both the natural external limit by which we can identify the actual location of the being, and that which will no longer actually exist when the being moves or is moved.  The being exists in this natural limit per se, but this limit is rendered meaningless and then re-actualized as a condition of the being’s modal or telic change, e.g., its locomotion proper to its very being.  The specific place of a natural being is both primary and derivative—a being must be in place, but the actuality of the specific place is contingent on the existence of the natural body in the world.  Even when non place-based, or locomotive, change occurs for the natural being, the being is always already in place per se.

Recall as well 211b30-212a2, where Aristotle relates place first to hypokeimenon, or the intermediate that undergoes change, before he proceeds to define it as limit.  Since I argue both that Aristotle works to extricate the temporal character from the concept of “now” in his Treatise on Time and that now for him is a generic name for the hypokeimenon of the individual natural being undergoing change, it makes sense that place—think “here”— and “now” have this primary character of that which underlies motion, or change.  Place will underlie all modal or telic processes of natural life, but only because natural life must always already be in place as a condition of existence.  The body is “here” “now” and then it is “here” “now,” where here is designating its non-temporal limit in space and now is naming its modal state through a natural process of change.  On my reading, the modal character of natural beings—that they can and do change as a course of life—is primary to motion and time. This means that both place and a being’s modal character seem to be co-primary to change or motion.

Rachel’s proposal that we look further at Aristotle’s discussion of hypothetical necessity in Physics ii.9 is helpful.  If I have thought about it along the same lines as she has, Aristotle’s claim at 200a14-15, that material necessity vis-à-vis something’s purpose or telos is a hypothetical necessity insofar as the material does not necessitate a particular end, but instead something’s end requires certain material(s), maps on to his discussion of the primacy of magnitude where magnitude is hypothetically necessary not only for the motion of natural beings, and thus for time, but also for the very existence of the natural beings themselves.  Insofar as a natural being is per se in place, any telic process undergone by the natural being requires motion, and thus being originating—even when not moving locally—from that place.  Being in place per se, a requisite of simply existing, does not however necessarily result in either the initiation or the fulfillment of any telic process.  This means that place, given that beings are always already in place as a condition of existence, is primary to every other way that they will change, grow, move, etc.  Here, we see that place both undergirds the possibility of being, and thus motion and time, but also that it is the modal or telic character of natural beings that is primary in a different sense, insofar as being in place does not initiate or cause a being to move or change.

Chelsea Harry wishes to thank the APA Executive Committee, the APA Blog Editor, and especially her critics, Professors Sergio Barrionuevo, Antonio Pedro Mesquita, and Rachel Parsons, for taking their valuable time and immense scholarly talents to consider my work. Thanks also go to Justin Habash for chairing the panel discussion at the APA Central Division Meeting and to Kelsey Ward and David Pettigrew for their photos, featured here.

Author Chelsea Harry is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Critic Sergio Barrionuevo is Researcher-Teacher at the Institute of Sciences (National University of General Sarmiento) and Assistant Professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

Critic António Pedro Mesquita is Associate Professor of Philosophy and a researcher at the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon.

Critic Rachel Parsons is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.