© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden,
2005
Phronesis L/3
Also available online – www.brill.nl
1
Themistius On Aristotle’s Physics 4, translated by Robert B. Todd (series The
Ancient Commentators on Aristotle), Ithaca NY (Cornell University Press) 2003; x
+
150 pp.; ISBN 0 8014 4103 X; $ 62.50.
Book Notes
Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition
KEIMPE ALGRA
This will be my last set of booknotes on ‘Aristotle’: I am handing over
this task to Ben Morison. Four of the books which I kept for this occa-
sion concern aspects of the Aristotelian tradition (ancient, medieval and
modern) rather than Aristotle himself, and I shall start with these. Robert
Todd’s annotated translation of Themistius’ commentary on, or rather
interpretative paraphrase of, Aristotle’s Physics IV, published in Richard
Sorabji’s series ‘The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle’, is dedicated to
the memory of Henry Blumenthal, to whose careful scholarship on the
Aristotelian commentators we owe so much.
1
T.’s translation appears to
be clear and reliable and his explanatory notes are brief (in accordance
with the general format of the series) but generally adequate. In his intro-
duction he characterizes Themistius’ paraphrases as targeted at readers
who wished to revisit Aristotelian treatises with which they were already
familiar, and as pitched at a level somewhere between strictly elementary
expositions on the one hand and more expansive commentaries of the kind
written by Alexander of Aphrodisias on the other. In a separate preface
Sorabji more or less qualifies Blumenthal’s characterization of Themistius
as a (or in fact: the last) ‘Peripatetic commentator’, by noting that there
are some occasions where Themistius does side with contemporary
Neoplatonism, as in his commentary on the DA where he rejects Aris-
totle’s empiricist account of concept formation. True though this may
be, such occasions are few and far between. In general Themistius stays
pretty close to Aristotle, although he sometimes includes digressions offer-
ing material that does not correspond with anything in Aristotle’s text. In
the commentary on Physics IV we find two examples of this procedure,
both directed against Galen’s attacks on Aristotle. One (149, 4-19) con-
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251
2
R. Pozzo (ed.), The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy (Studies in
Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, vol. 39), Washington D.C. (The Catholic
University of America Press) 2003; xvi
+ 336 pp.; ISBN 0 8132 1347 9; £50.50.
cerns the alleged circularity of Aristotle’s attempt to define time. The other
(114, 7-12) discusses a thought experiment adduced by Galen to prove the
existence of a self-subsistent three-dimensional space. Imagine a vessel
with its contents removed and no other body flowing in. What are we to
suppose will be left between its extremities? According to Themistius,
Galen is begging the question by just assuming the existence of the void
space which he is supposed to prove. In his Corollary on Place (576, 12 ff.)
Philoponus will later claim that Galen is not assuming any such thing, but
that he is just exploring the consequences of the assumption that no other
body flows in. Themistius himself, by the way, brings in his own presup-
positions: ‘eliminating the mutual replacement of bodies is no different
from completely eliminating body’. In other words, he claims that Galen’s
thought experiment ignores a fundamental principle of physics, viz. the
theory of antiperistasis. As Todd suggests in his notes ad loc., there is a
strong possibility that these anti-Galenic passages go back to Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who is known to have attacked Galen’s views on place
and time. So even here ( pace Sorabji’s introduction, p. vii) ‘originality’
need not be the correct term. But of course in the history of ideas lack of
originality does not entail insignificance, and instead of desperately look-
ing for traces of originality we may simply value Themistius’ commen-
tary on the Physics for what it is: a clear and intelligent survey which
constituted an important link in the transmission of Aristotle’s ideas. It is
good to have this part of it available in translation.
As for the significance of Themistius in general, his paraphrases enjoyed
great popularity among the Aristotelian commentators of late antiquity and,
in Latin translations, in the Aristotelian tradition in the later Middle Ages and
the early modern period. His commentary on the De Anima, for example,
played an important role in the late medieval debate on the immortality of
the individual intellect. In the 15th century Nicoletto Vernia’s Padovan lec-
tures on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics made constant reference to Themistius,
and claimed that no one could be found who was more learned: ‘proinde ado-
rate verba Themistii’. I owe this reference to Edward Mahoney’s contribution
(‘Aristotle and Some Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers’) to the
volume The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, edited by Ric-
cardo Pozzo.
2
The book presents the papers of a 1999 conference on the
Rezeptionsgeschichte of Aristotle’s conception of the intellectual virtues, but
only some of the articles actually address this theme. One of these is Stanley
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252
BOOK NOTES
Rosen’s ‘Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger’, which focuses on
Heidegger’s 1924/5 Marburg lectures on Plato’s Sophistes and on how they
misinterpret or adapt (the difference is not always clear in Heidegger)
Aristotle’s conception of phronêsis by taking it as ‘der Ernst der bestimmten
Entscheidung’ and as the silent call of Gewissen (consciousness). Heidegger
shifts the focus of application of phronêsis from the practical to the ontolog-
ical level and by doing so rather blurs the Aristotelian distinction between
theory and practice, while actually ‘transforming both into poetry’ (thus
Rosen, on p. 258). And of course this ontology derives all significance of
human life from its finitude, and the terror of its obliteration (Angst vom
Tode), to which man may respond by deciding to act ‘authentically’. It is here,
in fact, that phronêsis comes in – an odd appearance, if one takes into con-
sideration that Aristotle instead emphasizes the possibility of leading a supra-
human life and that for him eudaimônia rather than Angst is the central theme.
In fact the general incompatibility between the two theories makes one won-
der why Heidegger insisted on building on Aristotle in the first place. And
what, in the end, is the net result? Rosen, for one, concludes that when com-
pared to Aristotle’s conception of phronêsis with its orientation towards
everyday life, ‘Heidegger’s existential ontology, however brilliant, and per-
haps because of its very brilliance, can bring nothing to human affairs but
blindness’ (p. 265). I am not quite sure I understand what this means, but I
have no doubt it is right. Hans-Georg Gadamer happens to have been among
those who attended Heidegger’s lectures on the Sophist, but, as Enrico Berti
shows in his essay ‘The Reception of Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in
Gadamer and the Hermeneutic Philosophy’, Gadamer’s Wahrheit und
Methode as well as his 1998 commentary on NE VI remained much more
faithful to Aristotle’s text and intentions, though Gadamer appears to have
over-emphasized the practical element in Aristotle’s ethics, while playing
down the role of theôria.
With Michael Davis’ ‘defense’ of Aristotle against Nietzsche on tragedy
(‘Tragedy in the Philosophic Age of the Greeks: Aristotle’s Reply to
Nietzsche’) we move away from the main topic. Nietzsche’s critique, as is
well known, centered on Aristotle’s rationalizing and cognitivist approach to
tragedy. The upshot of D.’s defense seems to be that the Poetics is not just
about poiêsis in the sense of ‘making poetry’, but also directly about human
behaviour (p. 216: ‘poiêsis understood as action’) a curious claim which to
my mind gets insufficient support from the juxtaposition of Doric dran and
Attic prattein and poiein in Poet. 1048b1-2. D. concludes, if I understand him
correctly, that the Poetics, in so far as it is about action, shows us how the
action on stage (even when irrational) can figure as somehow exemplary, so
that in this respect ‘Nietzsche does seem to have erred in underestimating
Aristotle’s grasp of the intimacy of the relation between the rational and the
irrational’ (p. 226). I am not sure whether this interpretation succesfully res-
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3
Other contributions: John P. Doyle, ‘Wrestling with a Wraith: André Semery, S. J.
(1630-1717) on Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable’; Christia Mercer,
‘Leibniz, Aristotle and Ethical Knowledge’; Richard L. Velkley, ‘Speech, Imagination,
Origins: Rousseau and the Political Animal’; Riccardo Pozzo, ‘Kant on the Five
Intellectual Virtues’; Alfredo Ferrarin, ‘Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect’;
Richard Cobb-Stevens, ‘The Presence of Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy’.
cues Aristotle from Nietzsche’s critique; though it provides some room for the
irrational, it still appears to do this in some sort of moralizing context. But
perhaps I missed something, as in fact did the editor, who in his Introduction
(p. xiv) claims that D. ‘points out that Nietzsche is right [my italics] in min-
imizing Aristotle’s grasp of the intimacy of the relation between the rational
and the irrational’ – the exact opposite of what the above quotation seems to say.
I single out three further contributions all of them broadening their scope
beyond the issue of the intellectual virtues, but all of them well worth read-
ing. Mahoney’s article ‘Aristotle and Some Late Medieval and Renaissance
Philosophers’, already referred to above, offers a selective but informative
overview of the reception of Aristotle and his ancient commentators in
medieval and renaissance philosophy, of course without breaking much new
ground for those acquainted with the author’s own earlier work and with
Charles B. Schmitt’s classic study Aristotle in the Renaissance. Also the solid
contributions of Antonino Poppi (on ‘Zabarella or Aristotelianism as a
Rigorous Science’) and William A. Wallace (‘The Influence of Galileo’s
Logic and Its Use in His Science’) basically take up and summarize earlier
work by the same authors. They demonstrate a common ground between
Zabarella and Galileo in their use of the Aristotelian regressus i.e. the com-
bination of analysis (starting from the effects, ‘better known to us’, arriving
at a mere approximate or hypothetical discovery of principles and supplying
knowledge quia) and synthesis (moving from principles to the effects deriv-
ing from those principles, and supplying knowledge propter quid). Between
the two stages there is a reflective pause which should allow one to deter-
mine that the cause found is really the one that is true and necessarily bound
to the effect. This is what Zabarella calls a mentale ipsius causae examen. I
would maintain that in Aristotle’s own works this role is being played by
dialectical scrutiny. Zabarella rather seems to have thought of something like
mathematical analysis. Galileo, who remains committed to the overall frame-
work of the Aristotelian regressus, introduces a crucial innovation in linking
the examen of this intermediate stage to attestation by the senses and to exper-
iment ( periculum). It is clear, however, that both Zabarella and Galileo
thought of the doctrine of the Posterior Analytics, on which the conception
of regressus was based, as offering essentially a methodus for scientific inves-
tigations (on which more below).
3
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4
R. W. Sharples (ed.), Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?, Aldershot
(Ashgate) 2001; ix
+ 181 pp.; ISBN 0 7546 1362 3; £ 35.00.
5
Other contributions: Helen S. Lang, ‘Philoponus’ Aristotle: The Extension of
Place’; Ahmed Hasnawi, ‘Topics and Analysis: the Arabic Tradition’; William
Charlton, ‘Aquinas on Aristotle on Immortality’; there are also responses by François
de Gandt to the contributions of Jonathan Barnes and Monique Dixsaut.
6
Porphyry’s Introduction, edited by Jonathan Barnes, Oxford (Clarendon Press) 2003;
xxvi
+ 415 pp.; ISBN 0 19 9246149; £ 50.00.
A similar volume, which appeared a few years earlier, edited by Bob Sharples,
is Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?
4
It features, among other contri-
butions, fine essays by M. W. F. Stone on ‘The Debate on the Soul in the
Second Half of the Thirteenth Century’ (which in passing has valuable things
to say about the origin and limitations of the notion of ‘Aristotelianism’), by
Jonathan Barnes on ‘Locke and the Syllogism’, and by Enrico Berti on Brentano’s
influential interpretations of Aristotle’s metaphysics and theology (‘Brentano
and Aristotle’s Metaphysics’). Monique Dixsaut (‘Is There Such a Thing as
Nietzsche’s Aristotle?’) offers a clear and systematic survey of Nietszche’s
reaction(s) to Aristotle’s Poetics, including his views on katharsis, the role of
the chorus and the importance of dramatic performance, and his negative view
of Aristotelian ethics as the ethics of ‘Aristotle and everyone’.
5
My next book could in principle have been covered in the book notes on
Neoplatonism as well, but may be better at home here. For many centuries
Porphyry’s Introduction (Eisagôgê) played a key role in the philosophical cur-
riculum, although nowadays it is no longer among the favourites of students
of ancient philosophy. We are fortunate to have a translation – the first one
to be published in English – with introduction and extensive commentary (288
pages on 19 pages of translated text) by Jonathan Barnes, published in the
Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers series.
6
As is well known, this little
treatise discusses five items (genus, species, difference, property, accident)
which later became known as the praedicabilia or the pente phônai or quinque
voces, i.e. ‘the five words’ (on the history of these terms, see further L. M.
De Rijk, Aristotle. Semantics and Ontology, vol. 1, Leiden/Boston/Köln 2002,
491-498). According to Porphyry’s preface, knowing what these items are is
necessary ‘even for a schooling in Aristotle’s predications [. . .] and also for
the presentation of definitions, and generally for matters concerning division
and proof’. B. is probably right in characterizing this text as an introduction
to logic, and hence to philosophy in general, rather than as just an introduc-
tion to the Categories (the view of many earlier commentators, such as
Ammonius; note, however, that not too much is at stake here, since the Cat.
was itself generally regarded as an introduction to philosophy). The Platonist
Porphyry claims that he has taken his material from ‘the old masters – and espe-
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255
7
Orna Harari, Knowledge and Demonstration. Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics,
Dordrecht (Kluwer Academic Publishers) 2004; ix
+ 158 pp.; ISBN 1 4020 2787 7;
€
90.00.
cially the Peripatetics among them’, but then again the relevant Peripatetic
material had by this time become part of the philosophical koinê, and deeper
metaphysical issues are left undiscussed. Accordingly, and paradoxically, the
Introduction, which became the starting point for all medieval discussions of
the ‘problem of universals’, itself declines to deal with this question. As Porphyry
puts it in his preface: ‘about genera and species – whether they subsist, whether
they actually depend on bare thoughts alone, whether if they actually subsist
they are bodies or incorporeal and whether they are separable or are in perceptible
items and subsist about them – these matters I shall decline to discuss, such
a subject being very deep and demanding another and larger investigation’.
It might be thought that with such general philosophical questions out of
the way, what remains is a short and rather bland elementary text, which
hardly deserves a commentary of a few hundred pages. This would be wrong.
Not only is the text itself at times crabbed and obscure, it also, for all its
brevity, raises important and wide-ranging philosophical questions. On both
accounts ancient students were no doubt helped by the fact that they were
supposed to study this text under the guidance of a teacher. B.’s commentary
takes on a similar guiding role vis-à-vis his readers. He manages to put Porphyry’s
text in perspective by explaining the many issues of Aristotelian logic, ontol-
ogy and semantics which are raised by it, and by guiding us through the var-
ious ways in which these matters were discussed by later ancient philosophers,
such as Alexander, Galen, Ammonius, Dexippus, Marius Victorinus, Boethius
and Simplicius. He thus offers a marvellously rich and engaging context – a
context which is in many respects more interesting than Porphyry’s actual
text. The book winds up with some very useful ‘Additional Notes’ – one of
them succesfully defusing claims concerning Stoic influence on the Introduction,
another offering a welcome survey of the various possible references of the
term ‘the old masters’ (hoi palaioi or hoi archaioi). B. ends his Introduction
(p. xxiv) by expressing the hope that ‘anyone who reads this commentary will
be half persuaded that Porphyry repays the ride’. In the end, however, it is
surely B. who makes the ride worth while.
From Porphyry we move back to Aristotle. Orna Harari’s book Knowledge
and Demonstration re-examines the role of syllogistic logic in Aristotle’s the-
ory of demonstrative knowledge.
7
Her main claim is that we should view the
Posterior Analytics not as an attempt to analyse the structure and methods of
scientific practice (on which see the remarks above on Zabarella and other
early modern thinkers), but as an attempt to articulate a general notion of
knowledge, viewed as conceptualization, within the constraints set by
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256
BOOK NOTES
8
Ian Bell, Metaphysics as an Aristotelian Science (International Aristotle Studies
vol. 2), Sankt Augustin (Academia Verlag) 2004; 261 pp.; ISBN 3 89665 292 3;
€
44.50.
Aristotle’s metaphysical theory and his conception of substance in particular.
In her view it is the fact that Aristotle conceives all objects of knowledge as
quasi-substances that determines the form of reasoning – focusing on the relations
subsisting between subject and predicate of demonstrative conclusions –
which underlies the theory of demonstration. Against this background H. con-
nects the distinction between ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing the reason why’
with the distinction between what she labels ‘perceptual understanding’ on the
one hand and ‘conceptual understanding’ on the other. Just as induction (i.e.
induction as presented at APo II, 19, which H. distinguishes from the ‘argu-
mentative’ conception of induction which Aristotle employs in dialectical con-
texts) involves moving from the sensual acquaintance with the material manifold
to an apprehension of the form (essence), apodeixis leads from perceptual
understanding (i.e. of the hoti) to conceptual understanding (i.e. of the dihoti),
thus in a sense covering both ways of what renaissance philosophers (in their
methodological interpretation of the same material) called regressus.
Apart from having the merit of emphasising the link between the theory of
demonstrative knowledge on the one hand and Aristotle’s ontology and
semantics on the other, this interpretation offers some sort of a solution to the
familiar problem that the extant works of Aristotle do not exhibit the method
allegedly presented by the APo, because what the APo has to offer is now no
longer regarded as a method. On the other hand this in itself does not make
it any easier to see how then the APo should be related to actual scientific
practices. In fact what is arguably the most interesting chapter of the book is
designed to show that even Aristotle’s formalizations of mathematical proofs
(which surely are meant to examplify his general theory of apodeixis) do not
match the practice of Euclidean geometry (where proofs are conceived as the
results of construction). But even if questions and doubts remain, H. does
offer a challenging interpretation which in passing has some valuable obser-
vations to make on such subjects as the ambiguity of the term archê or the
nature of epagôgê. On the other hand, the ‘Select Bibliography’ and the cov-
erage of rival scholarly views in the text (and the footnotes) are arguably a
bit too selective. I noticed, for example, the absence of Patrick Byrne’s
Analysis and Science in Aristotle (1997), and A. Bäck’s Aristotle’s Theory of
Predication (2000).
Another book which focuses on the relation between Aristotle’s meta-
physics and the Posterior Analytics’ conception of scientific knowledge –
approaching it, so to speak, from the other direction – is Ian Bell’s Metaphysics
as an Aristotelian Science.
8
It is basically an attempt to show that Aristotle’s
account of the science of being as developed in what he calls the ‘method-
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257
9
Scott G. Schreiber, Aristotle on False Reasoning. Language and the World in the
Sophistical Refutations, New York (SUNY Press) 2003; xv
+ 243 pp.; ISBN 0 7914
5659 5 (hc.) / 0 7914 5660 9 (pbk.); $ 68.50 (hc.) / $ 22.95 (pbk.).
ological’ books of the Metaphysics (books 1, 3, 4, and 6) is influenced by
the conception of scientific knowledge outlined in the APo, or even that ‘the
Metaphysics represents an attempt to construct a science of being along the
rigorous lines proposed in the Posterior Analytics’ (p. 241). Here there is no
hint of a conflict between theory and practice, presumably because B. focuses
on the explanatory framework underlying these books of the Metaphysics,
rather than on their investigative procedure. B. goes on to show that his inter-
pretation of the ‘methodological’ books, which allows us to conceive of meta-
physics as a true ‘science’ of being (rather than as a kind of second-order
inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of first-order sciences), also
throws light on the conclusions of the so-called ‘central’ books. In addition,
he claims it helps us clarify the relation between the conception of a science
of being qua being and the conception of first philosophy, conceived of as
dealing with separate, eternal and unmoved entities as causally prior to, and
explanatory of, susbstantiality in the sense required by the APo (even if a
truly generic account of the principles of substance is impossible, given the
fact that there is no genus of substance). Incidentally B.’s conception of meta-
physics as a ‘science’ in the sense of the APo, dealing with principles of being
qua being, forces him to follow Ross and Owens in excluding Metaphysics
Lambda from the earlier ten-books version of the work, because (in his view)
it does not present god as a principle of the being of things. Whether we
needed another attempt to map this rough but nevertheless much travelled ter-
ritory is a question I do not dare to answer. Yet I do think that, given the
enormous number of existing interpretations, any book on this subject should
at least attempt to position itself systematically against the background of the
status quaestionis. I hope I am not just being cantankerous if I say that I
missed such an overview in the Introduction, or elsewhere in the book.
The Sophistical Refutations is certainly not among the most studied works
in the corpus aristotelicum. Reason enough to welcome Scott Schreiber’s
Aristotle on False Reasoning which appears to be the first modern book-length
study in English of this text.
9
In the S.E. Aristotle has a double project: he
aims to identify the various sources of false but ‘apparent’ reasoning, and
then to provide the means to resolve the resultant confusion. His analysis is
based on a distinction between false reasoning ‘due to language’ (para tên
lexin) and false reasoning ‘outside of language’ (exô tês lexeôs). Commen-
tators have tended to regard this distinction (and the way in which Aristotle
assigns examples to the various sub-classes) as arbitrary, and have even
often regarded the arguments ‘outside of language’ as basically reducible to
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BOOK NOTES
10
Richard Bodéüs, Aristote. Une philosophie en quête de savoir, Paris (Vrin) 2002;
267 pp.; ISBN 2 7116 1564 2; € 18.00.
arguments ‘due to language’. S.’s main aim in this clearly written and well
organized book is to argue against this reductionist view and to show that
most types of false reasoning (including all those ‘due to language’ that are
based on ‘double meaning’) derive their persuasiveness from some sort of
extralinguistic misconception. Proper reasoning, in other words, requires a
proper ontology. This is not to say that S. defends Aristotle’s approach in the
S.E. at all costs: he also shows, for example, that Aristotle’s account of mul-
tivocity is confused in failing to see the multivocity of “multivocity” (i.e. by
not distinguishing between semantic multivocity in the strict sense and mul-
tivocity which is due to the same signifier making reference to multiple indi-
viduals under one universal). All in all, this book offers a clear and overall
persuasive account of the logic of the S.E. as not being metaphysically neutral.
I move on to the new general introduction to Aristotle’s philosophy by
Richard Bodéüs.
10
It think it is fair to say that it tries to distinguish itself from
most existing introductions by a slightly more historical approach, focusing
on what was at stake for Aristotle himself in doing philosophy. Central ques-
tions are: what is the nature of the corpus aristotelicum, how did Aristotle
work and how did he see his philosophical project (a question which also
involves the issue of the interrelation – or lack of it – between the various
parts of philosophy). The book consists of three parts which do not correspond
to any of the traditional ways of carving up Aristotle’s philosophy, but rather
work out three key aspects of Aristotle the philosopher: the student of nature,
the student of Plato, the promoter of the complete life. The first part
(‘l’Asclépiade’) deals with Aristotle’s physics and biology, rightly stressing
that this area represents the main focus of Aristotle’s philosophical activity
(something which modern exegesis, with its predilection for the problems of
‘first philosophy’ tends to forget); the second part (‘Le Platonicien’) charts
the continuity and discontinuity between Plato and Aristotle, covering not only
Aristotle’s criticism of the theory of the Forms, but also dialectic, rhetoric,
logic and scientific method (one misses a treatment of the Poetics); the third
part (‘Le philosophe de l’intelligence’) focuses on the two intellectual virtues
that are most crucial for human happiness: ‘sagacité’ (phronesis) and
‘sagesse’ (sophia) and on the more or less corresponding disciplines of prac-
tical philosophy and metaphysics or first philosophy. Because of its unortho-
dox structure the book may be a bit inaccessible as a primer, and the
‘bibliographie sélective’ contains some odd choices. All in all, however, what
we get here is a very decent and historically accurate introduction to Aristotle.
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11
Frans de Haas & Jaap Mansfeld (eds.), Aristotle On Generation and Corruption,
Book 1, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 2004, viii
+ 347 pp.; ISBN 0 19 924292 5;
£
45.00.
12
Contents: M. F. Burnyeat, ‘Aristotle on the Foundations of Sublunary Physics’;
Jacques Brunschwig, ‘On Generation and Corruption I, 1: A False Start?’; David
Sedley, ‘On Generation and Corruption I, 2’; Keimpe Algra, ‘On Generation and
Corruption I, 3: Substantial Change and the Problem of Not-Being’; Sarah Broadie,
‘On Generation and Corruption I, 4: Distinguishing Alteration’; David Charles,
‘Simple Genesis and Prime Matter’; Alan Code, ‘On Generation and Corruption I, 5’;
Carlo Natali, ‘On Generation and Corruption I, 6’; Christian Wildberg, ‘On
Generation and Corruption I, 7: Aristotle on poiein and paschein; Edward Hussey,
‘On Generation and Corruption I, 8’; Michel Crubellier, ‘On Generation and
Corruption I, 9’; Dorothea Frede, ‘On Generation and Corruption I, 10: On Mixture
and Mixables’; John M. Cooper, ‘A Note on Aristotle on Mixture’.
13
Perhaps I may add a small correction: Algra’s contribution does not claim that
Aristotle did have a ‘philosophical motivation to posit prime matter’, as the Editor’s
Introduction (p. 3) seems to suggest. It just claims that such a motivation is not
unthinkable; for the rest it suspends judgement on the general issue, which it claims
should be treated as an empirical question, rather than as a matter of principle.
B. includes a fairly extensive discussion of Aristotle’s concept of matter
(pp. 61-66), pointing out that it is ‘un concept relatif’ and signalling the dif-
f
erence between ‘matière prochaine’ and ‘matière lointaine’. Yet he has no
qualms in speaking of ‘matière première’ and – probably in line with his gen-
eral tendency to keep his discussion of Aristotle as free as possible from mod-
ern philosophical and exegetical preoccupations – he does not even allude to
the recent debate on the feasibility of the very notion of materia prima. From
the point of view of the earlier Aristotelian tradition this may be defensible,
and it should be said that modern discussions of the problem are sometimes
irritatingly pedantic as if it is clear to any objective observer what Aristotle
himself actually believed and as if the whole ancient and medieval tradition
consisted of fools who didn’t realize that they were saddling Aristotle with a
basically incoherent notion. Those interested in this problem and in recent
attempts to deal with it may be especially interested in the volume Aristotle’s
On Generation and Corruption, Book I, edited by Frans de Haas and Jaap
Mansfeld, which contains the proceedings of the XVth Symposium Aristotelicum,
held in Deurne (The Netherlands) in August 1999.
11
Since I am myself among
the contributors, I refrain from discussing its contents here in any detail. Let
me just signal that the book contains a chapter-by-chapter discussion of the
whole of GC I, as well as an introductory chapter by Myles Burnyeat, and
an additional note on Aristotle on mixture by John Cooper,
12
and that the
problem of prime matter figures prominently – and is treated in different
ways – in three of the contributions (Algra, Broadie and Charles).
13
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BOOK NOTES
14
Robert Mayhew, The Female in Aristotle’s Biology, Chicago (The University of
Chicago Press) 2004; x
+ 136 pp.; ISBN 0 226 51200 2; $ 28.00.
Finally, I turn to Robert Mayhew’s The Female in Aristotle’s Biology.
14
It
is a small book – actually in a sense more of a pamphlet – designed to deflate
the often repeated claim that Aristotle’s biological works are thoroughly con-
taminated by misogynist prejudice. Part of the book apparently grew out of
an article on entomology (‘King-bees and Mother-wasps: a Note on Ideology
and Gender in Aristotle’s Entomology’) published in this journal in 1999. M.’s
starting point, in trying to salvage Aristotle, is an ‘ideology test’ which he
takes over, in a slightly modified form, from an article by Charles Kahn.
According to this test we are entitled to interpret a certain claim as ideolog-
ically biased if (1) it does in fact tend to promote a certain ideological agenda
or justify particular social interests, and (2) if it either (a) rests upon arbi-
trary or implausible assumptions or unusually bad arguments, or (b) conflicts
with other fundamental principles held by the same thinker. Armed with this
litmus test M. attacks a variety of feminist interpretations of Aristotle’s bio-
logical works. Thus he shows that in entomology Aristotle is open-minded
rather than just intent to show male superiority (against (1)), and that his argu-
ments are not unusually bad, for he relies, as he so often does, on traditional
views and common names (against (2a)). As for embryology, M. convincingly
argues that Aristotle allows for a specific contribution of the female in the
formation of the foetus (defusing the rather common interpretation according
to which she merely offers a receptacle, or inert matter) and that the argu-
ments used by Aristotle are non-arbitary. He also argues that Aristotle’s claim
that the female is ‘as it were a mutilated male’ is supported by evidence of
sorts (i.e. by the kind of evidence Aristotle is in general prepared to admit in
biology), rather than based on mere bias. M. goes on to show that also in the
area of anatomy, where we encounter some notorious views (for example that
women have smaller brains and fewer teeth), Aristotle may have had the
wrong reasons for his beliefs, but that these reasons were not ideologically
biased (the claim about smaller brains, for example, crucially depends on
Aristotle’s conviction that the brain is supposed to cool the pericardial blood,
coupled with the claim that in the male the region around the heart is more
sanguine and hotter than in the female; contrary to what many critics suggest,
it is nowhere connected with a difference in cognitive capacities, which after
all are located in the heart). Finally, claims on women being softer and ‘less
spirited’ (which, by the way, even to Aristotle is not necessarily a bad thing)
are to be explained not by reference to any particular gender bias on
Aristotle’s part, but by the boring fact that contemporary Greek culture as a
whole tended to view women in this way. And of course Aristotle’s philo-
sophical method, making ample room for popularly held beliefs, arguably did
not foster a particularly critical attitude on his part in this respect.
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All this seems pretty sound, even if M.’s argument is not always elegant
(we hardly need the repeated assertion that Aristotle and his contemporaries
lacked the microscope), and even if he is sometimes a shade too apologetic
on Aristotle’s part. Thus, I think Bertrand Russell’s famous remark that ‘Aristotle
could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than
men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open
while he counted’ (quoted on p. 81) is hardly a mark of ‘breathtaking arro-
gance’ (M., ibidem). It is just funny and actually rather to the point (given
the fact that in other cases Aristotle the biologist does appear to be capable
of the kind of straightforward and careful observation Russell had in mind).
Anyway, the bottomline of the story seems to be that Aristotle lived and
worked in a different era and in a different culture, whereas his concept of
‘evidence’ was broader than what we would be willing to accept. M. winds
up his concluding chapter by claiming that Aristotle ‘would have changed his
mind about the capabilities of women (e.g. concerning their ability to be sci-
entists or philosophers) after one conversation with a female scientist or
philosopher – though not with some of his harshest feminist critics, whom he
might easily have taken as evidence for his original position’. He is probably
right on both accounts.
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