Ways of being

Sobre el libro Ways of being de Charlotte Witt publicado por Cornell Up al 2003:

Potentiality and actuality in Aristotle´s Metaphysics.
Charlotte Witt continues her exploration of Aristotle´s metaphysics in a book devoted to the ontological distinction between potentiality and actuality. She focuses on "Metaphysics" book ix, which provides the most sustained discussion of this distinction. Witt rejects the conventional reading of this key text - that Aristotle differentiated between the two concepts solely to further the investigation of substance. Instead, in an original interpretation of his work, she argues that his development of the distinction between "being x potentially" and "being x actually" allowed Aristotle to develop an intrinsically hierarchical and normative vision of reality.For Witt, Aristotle´s views about being shed light on his puzzling use of gender language in his descriptions of reality. This language has become an important issue for feminist scholars who have noted that in Aristotle´s metaphysics of substance form is sometimes associated with the male, and matter with the female. Witt´s interpretation that Aristotelian reality is intrinsically hierarchical and normative, but not intrinsically gendered, offers a new understanding of a controversial aspect of Aristotle´s metaphysics.
Contents: Aristotle´s defence of Dunamis; Power and potentiality; Rational and non-rational powers; The priority of actuality; Ontological hierarchy, normativity and gender.