Comentário sobre as conclusões e em defesa de Aristóteles contra as calúnias de Pedro Ramo (review)

Abstract

382 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY we are faced with views very like those of Socrates but arrived at through a kind of inquiry which has as much (if not more) claim to be "scientific" as that of Socrates. The fact is that though we are told at the outset that Socrates is to be treated "in the context.., of the philosophic preoccupations of his own century" (323) this turns out to mean merely that he is to be viewed as "squarely set in his contemporary world of the Sophists, Thucydides and Euripides" (325). And this is not enough. We need to see the thought of Socrates in relation to the tradition from which he broke loose. Take, for example, "the conception of a divine mind as a universal and purer counterpart of our own" (474). This, as Guthrie points out, had its roots in the Ionian tradition. But Socrates did not merely share "the vague pantheism of contemporary intellectuals"; he "spiritualized" it and adapted it to his own teaching (475). This sounds promising; but all it appears to mean is that Socrates insisted on god's "loving care for mankind." In what sense was this an improvement over pantheism? Socrates was, in fact, rather naive in religious matters, and Guthrie rightly contrasts him more than once with the vastly more sophisticated Plato. If we were to view Socrates in the context of fifth-century thought, instead of retrospectively through the eyes of Plato, would we attach the importance to him that prompts Guthrie to devote almost two hundred pages to him? I must end by raising explicitly the question implicit in much of what I have said: What equipment must the historian o/philosophy bring to his work? That Guthrie has felt this question is clear from the occasional footnotes in which he refers to the writings of Hare on ethics or Popper on the logic of science--writings to which he has turned in an effort to determine how philosophers deal with such matters. But the tone of these footnotes is tin~id and uncertain, and at the end of one he speaks of returning "to the safer ground of history" with evident relief. How far is this sense of relief justified? Can the historian, unless he is himself a philosopher, hope to assess the "philosophical significance" of Socrates, or of Gorgias, or of any other philosopher? It is a question of fundamental importance, and one which the present volume frequently raises despite its very great merits. JOHN MANSLEY ROBINSON Windham College Comentdrio sobre as conclus6es e em de[esa de Arist6teles contra as cah~nias de Pedro Ramo. By Ant6nio de Gouveia. Estabelecimento do texto e tradugao de Miguel Pinto de Meneses. Introdugao de A. Moreira de S~i. (Lisboa: Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1966. Pp. xxxviii+207) This is another publication of the Instituto de Alta Cultura in Lisbon, under the direction of Professor A. Moreira de S~i. Devoted to the study of the history of philosophy in Portugal, this group has produced numerous valuable publications and reprints. The volume we are here considering consists of reprints of two of Gouveia's works, Portuguese translations of them, and a useful detailed introduction on Gouveia's life and activities. While Ant6nio de Gouveia was not one of the most important intellectual figures of the sixteenth century, it is good to have a modern edition of these writings and the accompanying introduction which places him in the context of his time. Gouveia was at Paris at the time when both Calvin and Ramus were dominant figures. He may have encountered the former during student days at the Coll~ge de BOOK REVIEWS 383 Sainte-Barbe and engaged in open polemic with the latter. Like other eminent Portuguese humanists and philosophers of the century (e.g., Damiao de Gois and Francisco Sanches) he spent a large part of his mature life in France. The two works reproduced here are his very brief De conclusionibus commentarius (Paris, 1543) and the more substantial Pro Aristotele responsio adversus Petri Rami calumnias (Paris, 1543). Both are quite rare in the original editions and to have them more generally available again is certainly welcome. Particularly...