History of Philosophy Commons^™

Predication And Immanence: Anaxagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, And Aristotle, Russell M. Dancy

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

A theory of predication invokes immanence if it explains why snow is white by introducing something that is in snow that accounts for its being white. Aristotle's theory of predication in the Categories is partly immanentist, see Cat. 2, 1a24-25. My object here is to shed some indirect light on this passage. I suggest that the comment is a disclaimer responding to an immanentist theory of predication under discussion in the Academy, according to which the something that is immanent in snow that makes it white is a physical ingredient. This theory was an idea of Eudoxus'. Aristotle was sympathetic …