Aristotle: Posterior Analytics

325 Pages·2016·16.74 MB·English

by  Jonathan Barnes

CLARENDON ARISTOTLE SERIES
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ARISTOTLE
Posterior Analytics
Translated
with a Commentary
by
JONATHAN BARNES
Second Edition
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ISBN 0-19-824089-9
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
The major part of this book was written in the autumn of 1972,
when I was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton. I am deeply grateful to the Institute for offering me
ideal conditions in which to work on Greek philosophy. And I
thank my College, Oriel, for enabling me to accept the offer by
granting me a term's Sabbatical leave.
Many friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic
have helped and encouraged me. In Princeton, Professor Harold
Cherniss allowed me to draw on his unparalleled knowledge of
ancient philosophy; and Willis Doney regularly sustained my
spirits with alcohol and advice. Parts of my notes, badly disguised
as a paper, were read to groups at Princeton University, at
Brooklyn College, at Dartmouth College, and at the University
of Massachusetts in Amherst: my audience invariably pounced on
my errors and improved my thoughts. Peggy Van Sant produced
a beautiful typescript of the translation.
In Oxford I have received valuable aid from Lesley Brown,
Christopher Kirwan, Nicholas Measor, and Richard Robinson.
Parts of an early draft were gently mauled by the members of the
Oxford Aristotelian Society. A paper based on my notes to A 3
was read to a seminar in London organized by Professor D. M.
Balme. The Librarian, and the Acting Librarian, of Oriel allowed
me to browse freely among the books from Sir David Ross's
library. Mrs E. Hinkes typed out the notes with her customary
care and skill.
My greatest debt is to Professor John Ackrill. As editor of the
Clarendon Aristotle series, he has patiently overlooked my pro
crastinations and has been in constant and kindly attendance
at my labours; he annotated a first, stuttering translation; and
his detailed and meticulous criticism has brought numerous and
substantial improvements to the notes. As my mentor, he first
guided my stumbling footsteps along the steep and stony path of
Aristotelian studies. I thank him warmly.
JONATHAN BARNES
Oriel College, Oxford
v
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In the Introduction to the first edition of this book I lamented the
fact that the Posterior Analytics was often misprized, or even
ignored, by Aristotelian scholars. The lament was overblown; but
it was not groundless. How things have changed. In the same
year as my own book, there was published the monumental
commentary on Book A by Mario Mignucci. A year earlier
but too late for me to consult-there had appeared Wolfgang
Kullmann's Wissenschaft und Methode; a year later followed
Gilles-Gaston Granger's La Theorie aristotelicienne de la science;
and in 1978 the eighth Symposium Aristotelicum was devoted
to the Posterior Analytics. Since then there have been over a
hundred articles or books dedicated to one aspect or another of
the work; and numerous publications on other parts of Aristotle's
philosophy have made more than passing reference to the Post
erior Analytics. Many of these studies have been primarily exe
getical in purpose; but there has also been a revival of strictly
philosophical interest in the Posterior Analytics, and more than
one author has urged that Aristotle's philosophy of science is no
more antiquated than his ethics or his metaphysics.
Much of this recent stuff is shoddy-such now is the way of
things in the learned world. But a part of it has been far from
despicable; and amateurs of the Analytics may reasonably believe
that the object of their love has become both more widely ad
mired and more deeply understood.
The second edition differs from the first in several respects.
The translation has been entirely redone. The original version
was a creature of its time. Professing a stern fidelity to Aristotle's
Greek, it betrayed a profound misconception of that delicate
virtue. It was written in a sort of dog English: always inelegant
and sometimes barbarous, it appeared here as comic or disgusting
and there as merely incomprehensible.1 The new translation is
more faithful to Aristotle. It is also-and by the same token-
1 The translation was justly castigated by reviewers: see e.g. S. Mansion,
Antiquite Classique, 46 (1977), 627-8; STRIKER (1977); Dorothea Frede,
Philosophical Review, 87 (1978), 288-91; EBERT (1980). (The list of
Supplementary References gives details of works referred to by capitalized name
and date.)
vi
PREFACE
less vile in expression. The new Note on the Translation indicates
the principles on which it is based. 2
The notes have not been rewritten in the same thoroughgoing
fashion; but they have all been revised. Some of what I wrote still
seems to me to be true, and it stands as it was. In other places
I no longer believe my original text but have been unable to
hit upon anything more satisfactory; and here too the original
matter stands. More generally, the style of the commentary is
unchanged-it is as abrupt and unattractive as it ever was. 3 None
the less, the revisions are extensive: I have corrected (or sup
pressed) a number of manifest errors; I have come to hold-and
hence to express-a different opinion on a number of substantial
issues and on very many points of detail; and I have added a
certain amount of new matter. Much of all this derives from
discussions with friends and colleagues; some of it derives from
the publications of other scholars. (And although I do not pretend
to have read-let alone to have pondered-everything which has
come out in the last fifteen years, I have tried to be a little more
generous than before in my bibliographical references.)
The Introduction remains as it was; but I have added a few
supplementary notes. The Note on the Translation is new. The
Synopsis and the Note on the Commentary are unchanged. Sup
plementary references have been adjoined to the List of Refer
ences. An English-Greek Glossary has been added, and the
Greek-English Glossary has been appropriately modified.
All in all, about a third of the revised version is new. I think
that it warrants the title "second edition". What other titles it
warrants, the reader will decide.
I am grateful to the General Editors of the Clarendon Aristotle
series, and to the Clarendon Press, for encouraging me to under
take a new edition. And I am indebted to the members of my
1991 Chalet reading party, who made the initial stages of the task
far more fun than such things usually are.
JONATHAN BARNES
Les Charmilles
July 1992
2 A lightly amended version of the original translation was published in my
revision of the Oxford Translation of Aristotle: The Complete Works of Aristotle
(Princeton, NJ, 1984).
3 After some thought, I have decided to leave the various symbolical
formulations in the text, although they have distressed several readers (and
perhaps helped none). And I have not had the time or the space to add the more
general reflections on Aristotle's arguments and theories which several reviewers
of the first edition desiderated.
Vll

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION xi
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION xxiii
TRANSLATION
I
SYNOPSIS 75
NOTE ON THE COMMENTARY 79
COMMENTARY 81
REFERENCES
GLOSSARIES
INDEXES
IX