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Aristotle as historian of philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. G. Stevenson
J. G. Stevenson
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Extract

Doubts about the reliability of Aristotle's accounts of his predecessors have been current for some time, at least since Heidel's 1906 paper in which he aimed to show that the presocratics did not, pace Aristotle, have Aristotle's conception of ἀλλοίωσις, involving as it does the notions of unchanging substance or essence, and attribute. Such doubts were given massive substantiation in Cherniss' famous book. More recently McDiarmid has shown that Theophrastus' Physical Opinions, the main source for the subsequent doxographical tradition, while it may quote extensively from the writings of the presocratics, is heavily dependent (in wording, selection of quotations from the presocratics, and organisation of material) on Aristotle's account. I only mention McDiarmid's work here because some of what he says provides the point of departure for Guthrie's defence of Aristotle, which I want chiefly to examine. My thesis is that there are some misunderstandings and pseudo-issues which crop up among what may be referred to as the three parties (Cherniss, McDiarmid, and Guthrie) to the dispute over the trustworthiness of Aristotle's accounts of the presocratics; but that once these are cleared away there remains a genuine disagreement over the reliability of Aristotle's interpretations; and that in this disagreement Guthrie has not given arguments sufficient to prove his point.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 94 , November 1974 , pp. 138 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1974

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References

1 Heidel, W. A., ‘Qualitative Change in Pre-Socratic Philosophy’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 19 (1906), 333–79Google Scholar.

2 Cherniss, Harold, Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (Baltimore, 1935)Google Scholar. Henceforth cited as ACPP.

3 McDiarmid, J. B., ‘Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 61 (1953), 85–156Google Scholar; reprinted, with abridgments, in Furley, David J. and Allen, R. E., eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, Vol. I: The Beginnings of Philosophy (London, 1970), 178–238Google Scholar. (The abridgments are of a couple of detailed philological comparisons of passages [pp. 88–91, 135–6 of the original], and discussions of Hippo, Hippasus, Archelaus, Xenophanes, and Metrodorus the Chian [on pp. 92–3, 95–6, 114–15, and 128–9, respectively, of the original] are omitted.) McDiarmid's monograph will be cited as TPC, and references will be to the reprinted version.

4 More precisely: McDiarmid attempts to show this only of the first book of the Physical Opinions (see TPC, 181), and he also attempts to show that there are certain features of Theophrastus' work which derive, not just from his use of Aristotle, but from his method of using Aristotle (see TPC, 233–7).

5 Guthrie, W. K. C., ‘Aristotle as a Historian of Philosophy: Some Preliminaries’, JHS 77 (1957), 35–41Google Scholar; reprinted as ‘Aristotle as Historian’ in Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, Vol. I, 239–54. Henceforth cited as AHP, with references to the reprinted paper.

6 A convenient summary presentation of this picture can be found in Cherniss', ‘The Characteristics and Effects of Presocratic Philosophy’, Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951), 319–45Google Scholar; reprinted in Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, Vol. I, 1–28.

7 Furthermore, the answer to the quasi-moral question is surely also obvious: no blame attaches to Aristotle for proceeding in the manner he did. No one can expect a philosopher to write of his fellow philosophers with the expectation that their works will be lost, and that his will have to serve as a main source for the reconstruction of their doctrines and arguments! This is not to deny that Aristotle was sometimes guilty of carelessness in statements about other philosophers, bending or omission of recalcitrant facts which refused to fit generalizations he wanted to make, and other human frailties.

8 Although I cannot find that either Cherniss or McDiarmid mention this fact, they would no doubt agree that it is a fact. Guthrie rightly emphasises it (AHP, 242–3) (as does Suzanne Mansion, ‘Le rôle de l'exposé et de la critique des philosophies antérieures chez Aristote’, Aristote et les problèmes de la méthode (Louvain & Paris, 1961), 36).

9 Taylor, A. E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), 405Google Scholar.

10 For instance, Aristotle's convictions about what the important problems are in a particular area usually lead him to look for solutions to just these problems in older systems, although these problems may have been unimportant or even quite foreign to the thinkers examined. As Cherniss emphasises, this fact, among others, makes it imperative that statements about presocratics be not just lifted out of Aristotle without further ado.

11 Cherniss gives some examples of this: ACPP, 355–66. When Guthrie comes closest to discussing this practice, he does not deny it of Aristotle, but is concerned to claim that no one can be completely free of it. (AHP, 244–6.)

12 Guthrie is at pains to point out that he is not denying that this is true: AHP, 247 and note.

13 Between the two sentences, parts of which are here quoted, Guthrie cites what he takes to be McDiarmid's criticism of Aristotle's interpretation of Anaxagoras (Metaph. 989a 30). However, McDiarmid is not there (TPC, 217–18) criticising Aristotle's interpretation, but Theophrastus' use of it.

14 Following this quotation (AHP, 244–6), Guthrie goes on to talk about ‘philosophical presuppositions’ and their influence upon the statements of ‘the modern interpreter’. As an instance he gives a statement by J. E. Raven to the effect that the presocratics were ‘striving’ to reach the distinction between the corporeal and the incorporeal. However, this is not an instance of interpreting the presocratics ‘from our own point of view’; Raven is saying that they were ‘striving’ to reach a distinction which was in fact reached not long afterwards, by persons in the same tradition of thought. It is because of these considerations that Guthrie is right in saying that ‘no blame attaches to Mr Raven for putting it in that way’, not ‘since we can only study these philosophers in the light of our own conceptions’. (AHP, 246.)

15 Besides its inclusion in Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, a German translation of Guthrie's paper appears on pp. 212–31 of Aristoteles in der Neueren Forschung (Darmstadt, 1968), hg. Moraux, Paul. In A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. I (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar (henceforth cited as HGP I), after having repeated many of the things mentioned above (although not the two arguments which I characterized as invalid), Guthrie says: ‘These remarks about Aristotle's merits as an historian are expanded in Guthrie, , JHS, 1957 (i), 35–41’ (p. 43 n.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See his remarks on some of Aristotle's interpretations of Heraclitus. HGP 1, 437–8.

17 ‘The one certain point from which we must start is the incompatibility of the thesis, “things are numbers,” with the other two’. (ACPP, 387.)

18 See Cornford, F. M., ‘Mysticism and Science in the Pythagorean Tradition’, CQ, 16 (1922), esp. 142–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Ross, , Aristotle's Metaphysics, ad 986a16Google Scholar.