Aristotle's Understanding Research Articles

The codification of false refutations in Aristotle's De Sophisticis Elenchis

My aim in this paper is to examine the general conception and the detailed problems in Aristotle's comments in the S.E. on how to organise the handling of false refutations. The influence of Aristotle's work in this area has been immense, as C. L. Hamblin has recently shown: the discussions of fallacious and illicit reasoning in books of logic down the centuries are dominated by the aim of adhering to what their authors conceive to be Aristotle's divisions of the subject. Even after the logical and metaphysical bases on which the Aristotelian treatment rests had been abandoned, logicians persisted with a codification of fallacies the very purpose of which had become obscure. Hamblin has well exposed the distortions to which the servile but misconceived tradition has subjected Aristotle's insights. Now that modern developments in formal logic enable us to appreciate that Aristotle's syllogistic occupies a small, albeit paradigmatic, part of the calculus of relations, we are better placed to understand the character of the non-syllogistic areas of his logical work. At the same time there has been a growth in the historical understanding of Aristotle's dialectic. So the way should lie open to a better appreciation of Aristotle's conception of errors in argument, and to a clearer grasp of the actual phenomenon.

Tempo, Coscienza e Essere nella filosofia di Aristotele (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 111 One fascinating item is the author's extensive account of the most violent and extended controversy in the history of aesthetics---the veneration of images and the disputes between the Iconoclasts and the Iconophiles. This sometimes physical battle raged for over 100 years! The Byzantine society, obviously, took art seriously. Tatarkiewicz' great labor is an object lesson in historiography and bibliographic technique. At one and the same time it demonstrates how much of value remains to be discovered by careful adherence to the detail of scholarship, while it also displays how much fruitful scholarship depends upon a brilliant and profoundly informed mind. Such a work, in short, could only have descended from a fully mature scholar. Publication of these volumes underscores the continuing need for publication of significant translations waiting to be made. When can we return to those conditions which make possible this kind of international scholarly achievement? The Humanities Press is now offering these two volumes for $10.00. ALLAN SHIELDS Cali/ornia State University, San Diego Tempo, Coscienza e Essere nella filosofia di Aristotele. By Luigi Ruggiu. (Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 1970. Pp. xxviii+662. L. 6,000.) Ruggiu gives us here a careful and extended account of Aristotle's view of time with special attention to the necessary connections that obtain between time and consciousness, and time and beilag. Ruggiu is also interested in saying something about the origins of later Western conceptions of time and what he calls the nihilistic tendency which runs through them. The reader who (wishing to follow Ruggiu in this 690 page enterprise) begins by trying to get a sense of the architectonic of the essay, is immediately advised to skip E. Severino's somewhat misleading preface. In his own very useful Introduction, Ruggiu rightly notes that Aristotle's review of the aporia in the notion of time found that his predecessors had tended to assimilate (or reduce) time to non-being. But Ruggiu neglects to emphasize something that would have been very helpful at this stage, and which is altogether required, for the understanding of Aristotle's view of time. This is, that Aristotle himself assimilates time, not to non-being but to change and motion. It is also fundamental to Aristotle's philosophy of time, just as it is to his philosophy as a whole, that it acknowledges the primacy of change in the realm of the conditional. Let it be emphasized, then, that generation or change in Aristotle are not from nothing into something, or from something into nothing but from one thing into another. Ruggiu is trying to recover the sense of being in Aristotle which transcends the oppositions between idealism and naturalism, subjectivism and objectivism, and which is the matrix of Aristotle's sense of, and doctrine about, time. He finds that from Plotinos to the present, the prevailing interpretation of Aristotle's conception of time has been a spatial one in which, for instance, temporal succession has been reduced to spatial co-existence. Plotinos, of course, accepted the distinction found in Aristotle between the eternal sort of being which is outside of time and the being which is in time. But in trying to deduce temporal being from eternal being Plotinos is found guilty, by Ruggiu, both of equivocating between radically opposed senses of being and of developing his notion of time on the basis of the denial of time (quite like some modern mathematical philosophers of physics). Others have been equally mistaken in approaching Aristotle with the belief that consciousness is the basis of time. But the substrate of time, in Aristotle, is change, not conscious being. According to Ruggiu time in Aristotle is more than just a mode of being whose essence consists in succes- I 12 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY sion, for the reason that time conditions the very way in which we conceptualize being. The relations between being, time, and consciousness are, so to say, intrafoundational. Existing things or processes can, of course, be thought of as not existing; so, there is a sense or mode (namely, possibility) in Aristotle in which things disappear. Ruggiu (p. 411) understands Aristotle to mean by "the possible" that which does not now exist...

The good man and the good citizen in Aristotle's "Politics"

The distinction between the good man and the good citizen is of some importance for the understanding of Aristotle's political theory. This distinction, however, does not seem to have been fully understood. This paper will attempt to throw a little light upon the subject, essentially by means of an examination of the words used in the text. Aristotle begins, in chapter 4 of Book 3,1 discussing the excellence of the citizen. Just as each man in a ship's company has his own excellence (ope-r a term to be discussed later) which is peculiar to him, while each contributes to the same end the safe passage of the sea -, so citizens,

Aristotle: the Growth and Structure of His Thought (review)

Book Reviews Aristotle: the Growth and Structure of His Thought. By G. E. R. Lloyd. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Pp. ix+324. $7.00) When one sees yet another book on the philosophy of Aristotle, one is entitled to ask, why has this book been written? The answer Lloyd gives to this question is, to provide an introductory study of Aristotle's thought which will be useful to undergraduates in philosophy and to that dwindling (if not mythological) class of interested laymen. Insofar as Lloyd has dealt with the variety of philosophical and scientific enterprises which Aristotle concerned himself with, he has satisfied his original intention . A secondary concern is to show the development of Aristotle's thought d la J. E. Raven's short work on Plato's Thought in the Making. As one might expect, Lloyd deals with the early influence of Plato on Aristotle and the gradual breaking away of Aristotle from this standpoint, especially in regard to his concern with empirical data, ta phainfmena, or the problematic opinions of men in general. The author divides his study into a brief discussion of the early writings of Aristotle, the development of the Lyceum (there is such a great deal of space spent on this subject that one wonders what kind of introductory students of Aristotle the author has in mind), the 'evolution' of Aristotle's fundamental presuppositions and metaphysical categories, the range of his interests, and discussions of most of his major works. While generally agreeing with Werner Jaeger's thesis concerning Aristotle's development , Lloyd holds that Jaeger's distinctions between Aristotle's dogmatism and his empiricism, his metaphysical concerns and his attention to research reveal an oversimplification of Aristotle's intellectual development. Although it is said (p. 41) that Aristotle adhered to Plato's theory of forms for only a relatively short period of time (since he rejected it in his early work On Forms), no mention is made of the account given of Plato's theory of forms in the Metaphysics, an account which stresses the concept of mathematical forms. The obvious discrepancy between the traditional accounts of the theory of the forms and Aristotle's delineation of it in the Metaphysics is rarely analyzed in Aristotelian studies even though it raises a number of questions about Aristotle's understanding of Plato, the nature of Plato's theory, or the evolution of the theory after Plato. At any rate, Lloyd provides a brief, but interesting, exposition of the development of Aristotle's thought in antagonism to Platonism. En passant, he makes some interesting comments about the notion of ousia. In ordinary Greek usage ousia meant wealth or property, consonant with the English usage, 'a man of substance'. However, Aristotle reversed the Platonic priorities by averring that substance in its primary sense meant 'this man', 'this individual'. A view diametrically opposed to the notion that invisible forms are prior to, and superior to, concrete particulars (pp. 52-53). Despite the brilliance of his analysis of the different modes of ousia, Lloyd quite rightly points out that the notion is ambiguous (e.g., matter is said [793 80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY both to be and not to be ousia). The underlying paradox generated by Aristotle's view that particular beings are substances in the primary sense, but that knowledge (in the strictest sense) is of universal forms does, as Lloyd points out, lead to a fundamental problem in Aristotle's metaphysics. Unfortunately, the author has nothing illuminating to say about this problem. This is a persistent weakness in Lloyd's book: that is, everytime a serious problem is encountered in his analysis of Aristotle's thought he simply points to it and leaves the reader to work it out for himself. For this reason one will find little of interest in this study if one is looking for philosophical analysis. This might seem an unfair criticism of a book of this type, but it is legitimate if an author raises purely philosophical questions and not merely questions of textual accuracy. In regard to his biological studies, Lloyd maintains that Aristotle did not develop the concepts of form and matter or potentiality and actuality on the...

" Three German Commentators on the Individual Senses and the Common Sense in Aristotle's Psychology"

This paper is undoubtedly pedantic but the point at issue is important for the understanding of Aristotle's psychological writings. It is that the De Anima is an incomplete and immature working-out of Aristotle's views on sense perception, whereas Aristotle's matured and crystallized views on this subject are to be sought in the Parva Naturalia, particularly in the De Memoria, De Somno, and De Insomniis. This is a long point and has been argued elsewhere.' fulcrum of that argument turned on showing that as we read from the De Anima through the Parva Naturalia we note a development in the notion of the common sense, and see the rise of a more sophisticated and adequate outlook on the relation between the individual senses and the common sense. Here I wish to bolster that argument by giving an account of a discussion that took place among three German scholars in the latter part of the 19th century. Their discussion, detailed and keen in its way, illustrates the frustrations and contradictions awaiting anyone who accepts the De Anima as Aristotle's final word on the nature of the senses. In conclusion I will indicate how their apparently insoluble difficulties disappear when the viewpoint we propose is embraced. discussion was initiated by Herman Schell in 1873 in a book entitled Die Einheit des Seelenslebens aus den Principien der Aristotelischen Philosophie Entwickelt. As the title suggests, Schell maintained that the primary or common sense is the only genuine sense faculty, the individual senses being aspects or functions of it. A few years later in 1877 C. Baeumker's Des Aristoteles Lehre von den dussern und innern Sinnesvermogen appeared in which he criticizes Schell and claims that the individual senses are distinct from the primary sense and are seated in the external organs of the eye, ear etc. A year later in 1878 J. Neushauser published his volume on Aristoteles' Lehre von dem Sinnijchen I See The Order of Aristotle's Psychological Writings, American Journal of Philology, Jan. 1961.

Magna Moralia and Nicomachean Ethics

In what relation the Magna Moralia stands to the genuine works of Aristotle, and to what phase of Peripatetic doctrine it belongs, are questions which have been discussed with a fair measure of agreement by living scholars. Jaeger described the revolution within the Peripatos which, within two generations, led Dicaearchus to reject the ideal of the contemplative life, making human happiness depend on moral virtue and the life of action. Walzer showed beyond reasonable doubt that the M.M. was influenced by Theophrastus's terminology and statement of problems, and was led to infer that the writer, in his treatment of phronesis and sophia, had formed an uneasy compromise between the views of Theophrastus and Dicaearchus (p. 191). Brink proved from the terminology and style of the treatise, and in amore general way from the structure of its argument, that the author was expounding, probably at an interval of several generations, a received doctrine which he failed to think out properly for himself. Building upon their results, Dirlmeier boldly tried to fix the absolute date of the work within half a century. He argued that it must have been in existence before the first century B.C., since it was used as an authoritative text by the Peripatetic writer from whom Arius Didymus took his compendium of Peripatetic ethical doctrine. On the other hand, a terminus post quem can be obtained from 1204a23, where we read that ‘some persons either equate happiness and pleasure, or regard pleasure as essential to happiness; others, unwilling to reckon pleasure as a good, nevertheless add absence of pain (sc. to ἀρετή in their definition of happiness). Who then were these others? Cicero provides the answer: Diodorus, eius [Critolai] auditor, adiungit ad honestatem vacuitatem doloris (de Finibus V 5, 14, cf. Tusc. Disp. V 30, 85). Now this Diodorus lived in the second half of the second century B.C., and the M.M. mustbe nearly contemporary with him. In confirmation of this, Dirlmeier showed that the writer uses without comment terms which are unquestionably of Stoic origin, such as προθετικός, ἐπιτευκτικός, κατόρθωμα, ἀποκατάστασις, which are coinages not of the earliest Stoicism but of Chrysippus or his followers. Both Walzer and Dirlmeier have called attention to the fact that the writer shows himself to be wholly without understanding of Aristotle's theology, and actually becomes polemical, refusing to contemplate a God who contemplates himself (1212b37–13a10).