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Aristotle: Posterior Analytics PDF

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CLARENDON ARISTOTLE SERIES General Editors J. L. ACKRILL AND LINDSAY JUDSON Also published in this series Categories and De lnterpretatione J. L. ACKRILL De Anima Books II and III D. W. HAMLYN Second edition with supplementary material by Christopher Shields De Generatione et Corruptione C. 1. F. WILLIAMS De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I D. M. BALME New impression with supplementary material by Allan Gotthelf Eudemian Ethics Books I, II, and VIII MICHAEL WOODS Second edition Metaphysics Books r, L1, and E CHRISTOPHER KIRWAN Second edition Metaphysics Books M and N JULIA ANNAS Physics Books I and II WILLIAM CHARLTON New impression with supplementary material Physics Books III and IV EDWARD HUSSEY New impression with supplementary material Other volumes are in preparation ARISTOTLE Posterior Analytics Translated with a Commentary by JONATHAN BARNES Second Edition CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability OXFORD UN!VllRSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford NewYork Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto with an associated company in Berlin Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©Oxford University Press 1975, 1993 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer 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

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