A Brief Account of the Reconstruction of Aristotle's Protrepticus

Abstract

THE several ancient authors attesting to the fact that Aristotle composed a work entitled Protrepticus (in one book) are Joannes Stobaeus,l Alexander of Aphrodisias,2 Olympiodorus,3 Elias,4 David,5 Diogenes Laertius,6 Hesychius,7 and Ptolemy (El-Garib).8 Needless to say, so large a number of authoritative testimonia sooner or later would tempt some venturesome scholar to go in search of the surviving fragments of this Protrepticus in order to undertake its reconstruction, provided such a reconstruction should at all be possible. Anyone attempting this arduous task was faced with three major problems: first, locating authentic fragments, excerpts or, at least, reliable references or allusions to the lost Protrepticus; secondly, establishing the proper order in which these fragments should be arranged; and, thirdly, interpreting these fragments, once they have been located and arranged. That there would be wide disagreement among scholars as to the selection, arrangement, and interpretation of fragments was to be anticipated. As early as 1863 J. Bernays,9 who flatly denied any and all elements in Aristotle's exoteric writings, advanced the theory that the Aristotelian Protrepticus must have been a hortatory work advocating the necessity of (speculative) philosophy and stressing the advisability of studying and practicing philosophy. In addition, Bernays conjectured that the Protrepticus was probably a polemic work attacking and denouncing such opponents of purely speculative philosophy (and the Platonic Academy in general) as, for instance, Isocrates and his followers, as well as their professed cultural and educational ideal, and that it was addressed to Themison of Cyprus pleading with the latter to dedicate himself and perhaps his whole regime to the practice of true philosophy in the spirit of the Platonic philosopher king. Bernays also believed that Cicero's Hortensius in all likelihood was but an imitation of the Aristotelian Protrepticus.10 Accordingly, he proposed that any attempt to recover and reconstruct the Protrepticus would have to be based on, or begin with, the surviving fragments of the Ciceronian Hortensius.1 He was also the first to suggest that P Oxy., IV, 666 (Grenfell-Hunt), probably was part of the original Protrepticus,12 or of some other early work of Aristotle.13 In 1869 I. Bywater, who like Bernays before him refused in principle to rec-