If any branch of linguistic analysis has in recent times been expansive and successful, it is pragmatics. This sector of the study of meaning concerns itself with what utterances achieve in interactive communication; that is, with how speaker works on hearer in real exchanges. The objects of this research are signs and their users (not signs-plus-designata, which is semantics, or expressions-plus-relations, which is part of semantics and all of syntax). It emerged as a riposte to both logical positivism and Carnapian formalism, out of the observations of John Austin, as elaborated by John Searle, and the maxims of Paul Grice. Many have since contributed and the discipline has its own chefs d'oeuvre and its own journal and several series. To put in a nutshell what is conveyed in volumes, this approach has been by five avenues, as follows.

Traditionally, discussion of Aristotle's metaphysics, including his theory of form and the ‘what it is to be’ any given substantial object, has dealt extensively with relevant texts in the Categories, Physics, De anima and, of course, the Metaphysics itself. But the biological works have been largely neglected as sources for knowledge about and insight into Aristotle's theory. This seems to me unfortunate. In his biological works Aristotle invokes the form of an animal constantly and in interesting physical and, one would have said, metaphysical detail, as the explanation for much, and that the crucial part, of what happens to it as it develops to maturity and maintains and reproduces itself. One would expect these explanations to reveal something about the character of Aristotelian forms and perhaps even to help resolve some of the many questions not clearly settled by him in his metaphysical writings. It might, I suppose, be argued, on the contrary, that Aristotle thought that the notion of form needed for metaphysical purposes is quite distinct from that needed in order to explain the biological phenomena addressed in the Parts and the Generation of Animals. Conceivably there is no, or only a very loose, systematic connection between what is said about forms in the two sets of works, so that one is not entitled to infer metaphysical consequences – consequences for the nature of forms as they appear and are argued about on metaphysical terrain – from what forms are taken to be like in the biological context. I will not attempt to argue against this line of interpretation here. In the belief that the philosophical interest of doing so will be sufficient justification, I will simply proceed on the natural assumption that Aristotle did intend his biological theory of forms to be a continuous development and extension of whatever theory of substantial forms he meant to be the upshot of his discussion in the central books of the Metaphysics.

Thirty-three lines in the Ion are devoted to describing the tent in which Ion celebrates his new-found status as heir to Xouthos and the royal line of Athens. The passage may properly be called an ἔκφρασις, a description in language of an artistic object constructed in another medium. An ἔκφρασις in drama differs from those occurring in narrative because material objects in drama retain the potential to be made material, i.e. to appear on the stage, thus dramatically closing the gap between word and world that the ἔκφρασις so patently opens. While this gap remains, the ἔκφρασις makes especially complex demands on the audience's imagination, and in the Ion on their patience too – for the ἔκφρασις must be the antithesis of the action and drama, the progression of the play, a version of which the audience presumably wants and expects from the panting messenger.

At Aeneid 1.148–56 Neptune's stilling of the storm roused against Aeneas and the Trojans by Juno is compared with the calming of a mob by a great statesman:

ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est

seditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgus

iamque faces et saxa uolant, furor arma ministrat.

tum pietate grauem ac meritis si forte uirum quem

conspexere silent arrectisque auribus astant;

ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet:

sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam

prospiciens genitor caeloque inuectus aperto

flectit equos curruque uolans dat lora secundo.

As has been often remarked, this simile, prominently placed as the first in the poem, is evidently programmatic for the value system of the Aeneid. The ‘pietate grauem ac meritis…uirum’ standing up to and defeating the violence of the mob gives a highly Roman rôle-model (not always successfully followed) for Aeneas, the destined hero overcoming the forces of irrationality, something confirmed by the details of the poem as well as the events of its plot; Aeneas is similarly proclaimed by the Sybil in the Underworld as ‘pietate insignis et armis’ (6.402), while the soothing words of the statesman to the mob (153 ‘ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet’) are clearly echoed in the soothing words Aeneas addresses to his storm-shaken sailors in the very next scene of the poem (197 ‘dictis maerentia pectora mulcet’).

For over 2000 years views of the Persian empire founded by Cyrus c. 550 B.C. and conquered by Alexander in the space of ten years between 334 and 323 have been constructed on the basis of Greek literary sources (in which I would include historical works, such as Herodotus' histories) and some sections of the Old Testament. Despite the fundamental ‘honesty’ of Herodotus' account, the fact that the focus of his history centered on the Greco-Persian conflict of 480/79 and aimed to explain the unexpected Persian defeat which had such enormous repercussions for Greek political and cultural development, means that his work serves to commemorate for us the ineffectiveness of the Achaemenid style of imperialism and to emphasize its ultimate failure. A failure epitomized at the very end of Herodotus' work (9.122), where Cyrus, the wise ‘father’ of the empire, is made to utter a prophetic warning about the enfeebling dangers of successful imperial expansion particularly when connected with the system of ‘oriental despotism’. The implication, given the detailed descriptions of Xerxes and the huge Persian army's defeat at the hands of a small number of Greeks, is that by the time of the Persian wars the rulers of the empire had lost their former rugged strength and had been seduced by the soft life offered them by the countries they had defeated: the conquerors had been taken captive by their victims and emasculated.

In this paper I will discuss what Aristotle has to say on the relation between τὸ ἕν and τὸ ὄν. Stated briefly the relation is that τὸ ἕν and τὸ ὄν are (a) transcendental predicates: each applies in all the categories; (b) convertible predicates: each implies the other and adds nothing to the other. For Met. 1003b23–4 claims that being and unity are one and the same thing in that they are implied in each other, τὸ ὂν καὶ τὸ ἕν ταὐτὸν καὶ μία φύσις τῶι ἀκολουθεîν ἀλλήλοις. This is clearly meant to apply in every category, since the convertibility claim is functioning as a premiss in an argument whose conclusion is that there are exactly as many types of being as of unity. At Met. 1061a17–18 there is an equally explicit statement of convertibility, καὶ γὰρ εἰ μὴ ταὐτὸν ἄλλο δ' ἐστίν, ἀντιστρέφει γε· τό τε γὰρ ἓν καὶ ὄν πως, τό τε ὄν ἔν. I will try to say more precisely what these claims mean, and come to some view on their philosophical plausibility.

There are a number of reasons for discussing these topics. First, it is a prolegomenon to a comprehensive discussion of all those predicates which came to be thought of as convertible and transcendental.

In this paper I shall be considering the relationship between the shape or structure of the world and the moral position occupied by human beings, particularly with regard to man's attitude towards and use of the natural resources of the material world he inhabits.

1. The shape of the world

There are two basic spatial metaphors that we frequently use in analysing notions of value and morality: one is the scale of up and down, with high and low or top and bottom as alternative ways of referring to the same type of hierarchy; the other is the notion of a centre, the bull's eye: if we are self-centred we value ourselves more highly than other things; if we have an anthropocentric view we value humanity above other animals. Thus we usually suppose that we put whatever we value most highly (on the one set of metaphors) at ‘the centre of things’ (on the other set).

In his excellent treatment of comic dicola, M. L. West provides a schema of the eupolidean:

adding that initial ◡◡ − theoretically admitted by the symbol o) is not actually found: ◡◡ at the beginning of either colon is always followed by ◡. At first sight, this is a mind-boggling rhythmic structure. One can make a start towards comprehension by noting that the two cola begin with aeolic base, in its Attic versio − −, − ◡, ◡ − or ◡◡◡, for which I shall here use Hermann's symbol: .. ... There is, then, no difficulty about the first half of the verse. It consists of base + − × − ◡◡ −, the colon known variously as choriambic dimeter, wilamowitzian (-us), polyschematist, anaclastic glyconic, etc. With some reluctance, I adopt ‘polyschematist’, partly on grounds of length; it is not short, but the alternatives are longer. Its close relationship with the glyconic is evident from its first appearance, which is in correspondence with glyconic in Sappho (LP 96.7).

Our disagreements concern points of some importance. There is the question whether the soul in itself is blank like a writing tablet on which nothing has as yet been written – a tabula rasa – as Aristotle and the author of the Essay maintain, and whether everything which is inscribed there comes solely from the senses and experience; or whether the soul inherently contains the sources of various notions and doctrines which external objects merely rouse up on suitable occasions, as I believe and as do Plato and even the Schoolmen, and those who understand in this sense the passage in Saint Paul where he says that God's law is written in our hearts (Rom. 2:15). The Stoics call these sources Prolepses, that is fundamental assumptions or things taken for granted in advance.