What does it mean for something to be ontologically prior to something else?
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shared3 (
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October 25th, 2010
What does it mean for X to be ontologically prior to Y?
I’m reading Aristotle’s Politics, and he says, “The city-state is also prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually, since the whole is necessarily prior to the part.”
Thanks guys!
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8 Answers
Thing X is ontologically prior to Thing Y if and only if Thing X does not depend on Thing Y in order to be, but Thing Y does depend on Thing X in order to be.
Thing X does not depend on Y, but Y depends on X.
You do not have to have healthy, well-adjusted children in order to be a healthy, well-adjusted adult, but in order to be a healthy, well-adjusted child are generally raised by healthy, well-adjusted adults.
X has to exist in order for Y to exist, basically.
Or to be more specific, what @BarnacleBill said. :)
Should read but in order to be a healthy, well-adjusted child, you are generally raised by healthy, well-adjusted adults.
I suspect that Aristotle is using the word “prior” to mean “over” or “above,” not prior in time. This would render the issue moot.
@CaptainHarley Ontology deals with existence, so it almost certainly does deal with time: one thing is a necessary pre-condition for the other thing to exist. There is no way to avoid sequencing here, and sequencing implies time.
”...the whole is necessarily prior to the part.”
Think of it this way, you can’t have a piece of an apple pie without having first made an entire apple pie. In this case, the whole apple pie is ontologically prior to a piece of it. Aristotle is saying the same thing about households and individuals being a part of the city state—you can’t have households and individuals of a place without first having a city-state.
@gorillapaws
Even if that’s what he’s saying, it makes no sense. Individuals and families came first, closely followed by tribe and clan. The human race lived in this manner for millennia before ever the first “city/state” was concieved.
@CaptainHarley It makes sense to Aristotle. For the most part, I also disagree with Aristotle’s argument for the same reasons you put forth, but the original question is more about trying to understand Aristotle’s position than analyze the veracity of his claims (unless I’m missing something).
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