Abstract
98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Augustine: De dialectica. Ed. and trans, by B. Darrell Jackson. (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1975. Pp. xi+151. 522.00) Professor Jackson hasmade an outstanding contribution to scholarship with this first English translation of the De dialectica, a work that has often been ascribed to Augustine. The translation of the De dialectica is precise, uniformly excellent, and extremely well annotated. As for the treatise itself, this will be of interest primarily to those humanists and logicians concerned with the history of dialectic. The De dialectica is quite elementary, a type of school text that adds little to the status of dialectic in antiquity and would offer little interest to modern logicians. The scholarship of Jackson is best evidenced in his thorough study of the several manuscripts and printed editions of the De dialectica. However, the more valuable contribution, moot though his conclusion may be, is Jackson's very solid effort to establish Augustine as the author of the De dialectica. To this end he devotes a lengthy introductionwhich comprises one half the book and clearly oveshadows in importance the text and the translation. Following a detailed study of the history of the De dialectica Jackson is convinced that the revived Augustinian tradition, which holds that Augustine wrote the De dialectica, is sound. Yet it is admitted that "complete certainty eludes us, of course, but we can say that it is more probable that it is Augustine's work than that it is not" (p. 30). Before turning to the more positive task of giving greater credence to the probability that Augustine wrote the De dialectica, Jackson deals with the objections of the Maurists that the work is not in dialogue form, that it is of mediocre quality, and that it does not embody the typical Augustinian theme of reaching incorporeal things through corporeal things. In the author's opinion the Maurists failed to sustain their conclusion that the De dialectica is spurious. But a negative verdict that the Maurists are wrong (I am inclined to side with the Maurists) does not yield the positive conclusion that Augustine did in fact write the De dialectica. To attempt to reach a more positive conclusion Jackson devotes the second half of his introduction , in which he endeavors to apply quantitative methods--statistical techniques including data processing--to the authorship of the De dialectica. Here he strives to give "some substance to the judgment of Wilhelm Thimme that the style of the De dialectica is unmistakably that of the young Augustine" (p. 43). Whether we agree with this judgment or not, Jackson's analysis is certainly provocative and persuasive. Beginning with the contention that there is a prior probability (prior possibility would be better) that Augustine wrote the De dialectica and using such statistical techniques as the measurement of word length, vocabulary, syntax, and high frequency function words, Jackson constructs what appears to be a strong case for his general conclusions. However, I have certain reservations. The evidence submitted on "word length" is tenuous at best, for it is granted that this "does not distinguish all the authors tested from each other" (p. 48). Going beyond the mean and standard deviation of word length, the author turns to the criterion of frequency distribution for word length. Buttressing his argument with tables and graphic formulations, he concludes that "the De dialectica is much more similar to Augustine'searly writings than to the writings of the other authors" (p. 58). Yet the conclusion that "the analysis of the word length distribution yields evidence not incompatible with the view that Augustine wrote De dialectica " (p. 58) is a conclusion so negatively stated that it almost seems to reveal a hesitancy on the part of the author to accept his own conclusion. To me it seems to offer at best only a slight probability that Augustine may have written the De dialectica. Finally,that section of the introduction dealing with vocabulary study is self-admittedly weak. At best the author "has discovered some words characteristic of Augustine which are also characteristic of De dialectica" (p. 70). In conclusion the author admits that an "evaluation of the quantitative evidence yields nothing like statistical...
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