Aristotle and His School: An Inquiry Into the History of the Peripatos with a Commentary on Metaphysics Ζ, Η, Λ and Θ

228 Pages·1974·3.39 MB·English

by  Felix Grayeff

ARISTOTLE
AND HIS SCHOOL
An Inquiry into the History
of the Peripatos
With a Commentary on
Metaphysics Z, Η, Λ and Θ
Felix Grayeff
Published in the U.S.A. 1974 by
Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.
Barnes & Noble Import Division
© 1974 by Felix Grayeff
ISBN 06 492531 5
Printed in Great Britain
CONTENTS
Preface 7
List of Abbreviations 8
Introduction 9
Part One
1. Life of Aristotle 13
2. The Peripatos after Aristotle’s Death 49
3. The Emergence of New Philosophical Schools during the
Fourth and Third Centuries B.C. 57
4. The Library of the Peripatos and its History 69
Part Two
5. The Structure of Metaphysics Z
(a) The Parts of Z 89
(,b) The Composition of Z in
6. Peripatetic Ontology according to Metaphysics H 127
7. Peripatetic Ontology according to Metaphysics Λ 143
Excursus: The Theory of the Proper Place 183
8. A Volume on Potentiality and Actuality: Metaphysics Θ 187
Select Bibliography 213
Index of Passages Quoted in Text 219
General Index 225

PREFACE
It gives me great pleasure to record my gratitude to Professor
D. J. Allan who read the manuscript of this book and was good
enough to send me some critical notes on various aspects of it. His
suggestions have been most valuable to me and they have led me, in
several instances, to modify my text or add to it.
I further wish to express my thanks to Mr Simon Marks for his
efficient help in preparing the manuscript for the press; to Mrs
Janet Rayner of Watford for her much appreciated assistance,
especially with regard to the first chapter; and to my daughter
Leonie who in reading the proofs suggested several stylistic im­
provements and also compiled the two indexes.
ABBREVIATIONS
An. Post. Analytica Posteriora
An. Pr. Analytica Priora
Cat. Categoriae
Eth. Eud. Ethica Eudemia
Eth. Nie. Etilica Nicomachea
Gen. Corr. De Generatione et Corruptione
Hist. An. Historia Animalium
De Interpr. De Interpretatione
Mag. Mor. Magna Moralia
Metaph. Metaphysica
Mete. Meteorologica
Part. An. De Partibus Animalium
Inc. An. De Incessu Animalium
Phys. Physica
Phygn. Physiognom onica
Pol. Politica
Rhet. Rhetorica
Soph. El. De Sophisticis Elenchis
Top. Topica
INTRODUCTION
This book on Aristotle and the Peripatos aims at elucidating the
origin and growth of the Aristotelian treatises and it poses the
question whether the treatises are the work of Aristotle himself, or
of some of the outstanding members of his school.
It had been assumed for many centuries that the work of Aristotle
formed a unitary system to be understood as a whole, but as early
as the beginning of the nineteenth century critics became
increasingly aware of the difficulties inherent in this assumption.
As they devoted their attention to a detailed study of the text they
discovered inconsistencies, variants, repetitions and doublets,
interrupted arguments and excursions, references to passages that
could not be found, even manifest contradictions. It became the
objective of Aristotelian scholarship to open a way to the under­
standing of Aristotelian thought by removing or at least explaining
the inadequacies which had been detected. On the one hand, scholars
tried to cure the flaws of the text, sometimes by altering or deleting
words or clauses, often by transposing passages in an effort to
establish a satisfactory reading, that is, one showing a consistent
flow of thought. On the other hand, there were critics even in the
nineteenth century who suspected a deeper cause of the deficiencies
encountered. E. Zeller spoke of a ‘basic dualism’ in Aristotle’s
philosophy—an antinomy between idealism and realism. The
English philosophers J. Cook Wilson and R. Shute were the first
to call Aristotle’s authorship of the treatises into doubt.1 Then, in
the early decades of our own century, W. Jaeger2 proposed that the
1 See J. Cook Wilson, Aristotelian Studies i, Oxford 1879, and On the structure
of book vii of the Nicomachean Ethics, chapters i-ix’, Göttinger Gelehrter
Anzeiger 1880 (1); R. Shute, A History of Aristotelian Writings, Oxford 1888.
Both these authors came to the conclusion that the text of the Corpus Aristoteli-
cum as we read it was compiled by later Peripatetics and contains little of
Aristotle’s own words.
2 W. Jaeger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles,
Berlin 1912, and Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung,
Berlin 1923. Jaeger’s Aristoteles has been translated into English by R. Robinson
under the title Aristotle: Fundamental: of the History of his Development, Oxford
1948,2nd ed. (quoted in this book). T. Case is another early exponent of the view
that the Aristotelian philosophy developed gradually. See his article on Aristotle
in Ency. Brit., 14th ed.
9
IO Introduction
Aristotelian text with its inherent difficulties should on the whole be
accepted, and its conflicting statements understood as the varying
expressions of the philosopher’s gradually developing thought,
maturing from Platonic idealism to his own realism. At first much
acclaimed, this thesis has since met with growing opposition.1 It
was felt that the progress of Aristotle’s thought could not have been
as simple and straightforward as that envisaged by Jaeger. More
particularly, it has been pointed out that several of the treatises
expressing eidetic views are, by clear criteria, later than some of those
showing a realistic tendency. Still, it is Jaeger’s merit to have
shown a way by which to free Aristotelian scholarship from the
vain search for system. In this he has been followed—Aristotle’s
development in its various stages is still a much-debated question—
though, lately, the study of Aristotle has to some extent reverted to
the methods of the earlier scholars.
In making this new attempt at explaining the Aristotelian con­
tradictions I intend to analyse the structure of Metaphysics Z, Η, Θ
and Λ—-a task greatly facilitated by W. D. Ross’s commentary on
Aristotle’s works. The analysis, which forms the main part of this
book, is preceded by an introductory section on Aristotle’s life and
the history of the Peripatos after Aristotle’s death, and on the history
of the school library, especially after the closure of the school.
Both sections of the book are designed to throw light on the genesis
of the treatises, which must not be read as though they had been
composed in a void, but as lectures delivered before often critical
audiences of students, in the consciousness of changing trends of
thought.
1 See H. von Arnim, ‘Die Entwicklung der aristotelischen Gotteslehre’, in
Sitzungsberichte der Akad. d. Wissensch. in Wien 212, 5 (1931); G. R. G. Mure,
Aristotle, London 1932; W. K. C. Guthrie, ‘The development of Aristotle’s
theology’, in Classical Quarterly 27 (1933) and 28 (1934). More recently:
F. Dirlmeier, ‘Zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Aristoteles-Forschung’, Wiener
Studien 76 (1963), pp. 52 ff. and G. E. L. Owen, ‘The Platonism of Aristotle’,
British Academy Lecture 1965.
Part One