{"_index":"sire","_id":"751","_score":null,"_source":{"id":751,"authors_free":[{"id":1116,"entry_id":751,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":81,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Ellis, John","free_first_name":"John","free_last_name":"Ellis","norm_person":{"id":81,"first_name":"John","last_name":"Ellis","full_name":"Ellis, John","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Trouble with Fragrance","main_title":{"title":"The Trouble with Fragrance"},"abstract":"By 'in a subject' I mean what (a) is in something, not as a part, and (b) cannot exist separately from what it is in. (Aristotle, Categories 1a24-5)\r\n\r\nThese lines have been extensively discussed in recent years. The crux of the debate is whether the existence clause (b) is to be construed in a way that commits Aristotle to particular, non-sharable properties. On the \"traditional\" interpretation, a property is in an individual thing as in a subject, say, Socrates, only if it cannot exist apart from Socrates. This implies that the properties of an individual thing are peculiar to it or non-sharable, in the sense that they cannot be in any other thing. The particular white in Socrates, for example, ceases to exist when he gets a tan. It does not move on to inhere in Callias or any other subject, nor is the white in Callias numerically the same white as the white in Socrates. Although both are white, perhaps even the same shade of white, nonetheless, they are numerically distinct particulars inhering in different individual things.\r\n\r\nMany recent commentators have tried to \"rescue\" Aristotle from the alleged commitment to such Stoutian particulars. Their strategy has been to weaken (b) so that the particular inherent property is not existentially dependent on the very particular substance it inheres in. G.E.L. Owen opened the debate by arguing that (b) can mean \"cannot exist without something to contain it,\" and thus Aristotle is only committed to the view that particular properties need some substance or other in order to exist. A particular white, for example, would be a particular shade of white, which could, of course, be exemplified by more than one particular substance.\r\n\r\nThe task I\u2019ve set for myself in this paper is not to argue for either the weak or the strong interpretation of inherence in Aristotle. That is already a well-trodden path. Instead, I shall look at what the ancient commentators on Aristotle had to say on the subject. Which interpretation, the strong or the weak, do they support? My strategy is to focus on one of the many problems they consider, that of fragrance, and to see if their treatment of it yields an answer.\r\n\r\nThe fragrance problem attacks the basis of Aristotle's ontology\u2014the distinction between substance and accident. Didn\u2019t Aristotle say that accidents cannot exist apart from that in which they inhere? But fragrances seem to travel to us from their subjects, and aren\u2019t they accidents? In the attempts, from Porphyry (232\u2013309 AD) to Elias (fl. 541), to save Aristotle\u2019s ontology from this objection, we shall find, I hope to show, an interesting development in the complexity of the discussions. Not surprisingly, given the nature of the problem, the discussions move into psychological theory, and we find that, in order for his ontology to be saved, Aristotle\u2019s psychological theory must be deepened.\r\nConcluding Remarks\r\n\r\nThere seems to be a clear development in the way the commentators construed \"in a subject.\" Starting with Porphyry\u2019s tense solution, it is possible to see a gradual movement away from that solution and the weak construal it implies, toward the stronger reading implied by the other solutions. Ammonius introduces an alternative, the effluence solution, albeit without indicating his preference. His students, Philoponus and Simplicius, add further developments or modifications to his view: Simplicius, by rejecting the tense solution and offering new alternatives; and Philoponus, by turning the discussion more toward psychology and revealing both the conflict between the effluence and diosmic theories and his preference for the latter.\r\n\r\nThis shift in the discussion toward psychology is evidenced by Olympiodorus, who responds to the fragrance problem only with alternative psychological theories, making no mention of the tense solution. Finally, Elias, although mentioning the tense solution, devotes most of his energy to evaluating the alternative psychological answers to the fragrance problem. [introduction p. 290-291; conclusion p. 302]","btype":3,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/HQWPG36viwyMCbr","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":81,"full_name":"Ellis, John","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":751,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Phronesis","volume":"35","issue":"3","pages":"290-302"}},"sort":["The Trouble with Fragrance"]}