8/10/2019 Aristteles. Frags. Gigon, O. (Ed., Berln - N. Y., 1987) - GOTTSCHALK, H. B. (1991)

1/5

The Fragments of Aristotle

Aristotelis Opera III: Librorum Deperditorum Fragmenta by Olof GigonReview by: H. B. GottschalkThe Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1991), pp. 31-34Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/712566.

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8/10/2019 Aristteles. Frags. Gigon, O. (Ed., Berln - N. Y., 1987) - GOTTSCHALK, H. B. (1991)

2/5

311

HE

CLASSICAL

REVIEWHE

CLASSICAL

REVIEW

leads

her

to

accept

hat certain

groupspass

fromone section o another

of

Aristotle's

fundamental ivision.

She

appears

o think thatAristotledoesthis

deliberately.

t is

easierto

accept

Kirwan's

approach.

N. follows more familiar

paths,entering

nto the standard

arguments

bout the

interpretation

f this book and its

place

nAristotle's

hought.

He relates t

especially

to

Plato,

and

in

particular

o

the

Theaetetus nd the

Sophist.

The

danger

of the

approach

of both

C.

and

N. is

to

think

of Aristotle

as

primarily

oncernedwith the

Presocratics,

he

Sophists

and

Plato,

and less with the

subject

about which he is

arguing,

and

with his

students o whom

he

is

trying

o

make

his

points

clear.It

is

true

that since he believed hat hecouldlearn romhis

predecessors

e did

bring

hem

n,

but

philosophy

n his time had reachedthe

point

where it was

possible

to see a

problem

as a

problem,

and the

ustification

f the

principles

f

non-contradictionnd

of the excludedmiddlewould be

questions

n theirown

right

whoeverhad

dealt with

them before.Further, heyarenaturallyinkedwith the problemsabout the nature

of

reality

alsoconsidered n both Platoand

Aristotle,

and

especially

onnectedwith

the name of

Protagoras.

C.

claims

originality

or the idea that all Aristotlewants n order o

refute

sceptics

is

significance

nd not affirmation r denial from his

supposed

nterlocutor,

who

could,

for

instance,

ust

say

'Good

morning',

and that would be

enough

to

get

Aristotle

started.She

is

interesting

n

the

word

semainein,

istinguishing

etweena

man as

signifier

and a word as

signifier.

Men

use words to

signify

things:

words

signify

a

meaning

or

a

definition,

and

significance

ere

s

a

relationbetweenwords.

She

brings

in the treatmentof

goatstag

in

Post. Anal.

2.7,

denying

that

we must

divorcethe two treatments f meaning,and rangeswidelyover Aristotle'sremarks

about

semantics.

University

of

Liverpool

P

A M E L

A M. H U

B

Y

THE

FRAGMENTS OF ARISTOTLE

OLOF

GIGON

(ed.):

Aristotelis

Opera

(ex

recensione I.

Bekkeri,

ed.

2),

III: Librorum

Deperditorum

Fragmenta. Pp.

viii

+

875. Berlin and

New York: De

Gruyter,

1987. DM 780.

Gigon's long-awaited eplacement

or

Rose's collection

of

Ar(istotle)'s

ragments

s

a

massive

quarto

volume,

nearly

ourtimesas

long

as its

predecessor; llowing

or the

inclusion of a

good

deal of

explanatory

matterin the form

of introductions nd

headnotes o various

groups

of

fragmentsbut

no

commentary;

his is

promised

or

later),

it

must

contain

more than three times the amount of text. Even

so G. has

excluded ome texts

printedby

Rose. Rose believed hat all the

writings

ttributed o

Ar in

antiquity, xcept

for

the extant

pragmateiai,

were

apocryphal,

nd when he

set

out

to

collect their

remains,

ncludedsome

fragments

which no-one

ever

seriously

regardedas Ar's work, some of them not even ascribed o Ar in our sources.G.

howeverwould claim that

all

the texts in

his

collection are

connected,

directly

or

indirectly,

with

genuine

ost

writings

of

Ar,

even if

few

give

Ar's own

words,

andhe

has omitted hose which

fail to

satisfy

this

criterion.Most of

these are

unimportant

remarksabout

non-philosophical

ubjects

not

attributedto

Ar in

the

sources,

including

some

ascribed

o

-Theophrastusfrom

the

Hepi

iLErdAAcov

nd even the

Hist.

Plant.);

also omittedare Ar's

apophthegms

nd

the

fragments

f his

speeches

0009-840X/91

3.00

?

Oxford

University

Press 1991

leads

her

to

accept

hat certain

groupspass

fromone section o another

of

Aristotle's

fundamental ivision.

She

appears

o think thatAristotledoesthis

deliberately.

t is

easierto

accept

Kirwan's

approach.

N. follows more familiar

paths,entering

nto the standard

arguments

bout the

interpretation

f this book and its

place

nAristotle's

hought.

He relates t

especially

to

Plato,

and

in

particular

o

the

Theaetetus nd the

Sophist.

The

danger

of the

approach

of both

C.

and

N. is

to

think

of Aristotle

as

primarily

oncernedwith the

Presocratics,

he

Sophists

and

Plato,

and less with the

subject

about which he is

arguing,

and

with his

students o whom

he

is

trying

o

make

his

points

clear.It

is

true

that since he believed hat hecouldlearn romhis

predecessors

e did

bring

hem

n,

but

philosophy

n his time had reachedthe

point

where it was

possible

to see a

problem

as a

problem,

and the

ustification

f the

principles

f

non-contradictionnd

of the excludedmiddlewould be

questions

n theirown

right

whoeverhad

dealt with

them before.Further, heyarenaturallyinkedwith the problemsabout the nature

of

reality

alsoconsidered n both Platoand

Aristotle,

and

especially

onnectedwith

the name of

Protagoras.

C.

claims

originality

or the idea that all Aristotlewants n order o

refute

sceptics

is

significance

nd not affirmation r denial from his

supposed

nterlocutor,

who

could,

for

instance,

ust

say

'Good

morning',

and that would be

enough

to

get

Aristotle

started.She

is

interesting

n

the

word

semainein,

istinguishing

etweena

man as

signifier

and a word as

signifier.

Men

use words to

signify

things:

words

signify

a

meaning

or

a

definition,

and

significance

ere

s

a

relationbetweenwords.

She

brings

in the treatmentof

goatstag

in

Post. Anal.

2.7,

denying

that

we must

divorcethe two treatments f meaning,and rangeswidelyover Aristotle'sremarks

about

semantics.

University

of

Liverpool

P

A M E L

A M. H U

B

Y

THE

FRAGMENTS OF ARISTOTLE

OLOF

GIGON

(ed.):

Aristotelis

Opera

(ex

recensione I.

Bekkeri,

ed.

2),

III: Librorum

Deperditorum

Fragmenta. Pp.

viii

+

875. Berlin and

New York: De

Gruyter,

1987. DM 780.

Gigon's long-awaited eplacement

or

Rose's collection

of

Ar(istotle)'s

ragments

s

a

massive

quarto

volume,

nearly

ourtimesas

long

as its

predecessor; llowing

or the

inclusion of a

good

deal of

explanatory

matterin the form

of introductions nd

headnotes o various

groups

of

fragmentsbut

no

commentary;

his is

promised

or

later),

it

must

contain

more than three times the amount of text. Even

so G. has

excluded ome texts

printedby

Rose. Rose believed hat all the

writings

ttributed o

Ar in

antiquity, xcept

for

the extant

pragmateiai,

were

apocryphal,

nd when he

set

out

to

collect their

remains,

ncludedsome

fragments

which no-one

ever

seriously

regardedas Ar's work, some of them not even ascribed o Ar in our sources.G.

howeverwould claim that

all

the texts in

his

collection are

connected,

directly

or

indirectly,

with

genuine

ost

writings

of

Ar,

even if

few

give

Ar's own

words,

andhe

has omitted hose which

fail to

satisfy

this

criterion.Most of

these are

unimportant

remarksabout

non-philosophical

ubjects

not

attributedto

Ar in

the

sources,

including

some

ascribed

o

-Theophrastusfrom

the

Hepi

iLErdAAcov

nd even the

Hist.

Plant.);

also omittedare Ar's

apophthegms

nd

the

fragments

f his

speeches

0009-840X/91

3.00

?

Oxford

University

Press 1991

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32

THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

and

letters,

except

for those included

in

his Lives

(which

are

reprinted

entire),

and the

Peplos.

On the

other hand G. has admitted some

passages

not attributed to Ar

by

name where there are

grounds

for

believing

that

they

referto his lost

writings, e.g.

fr.

712;

the

most numerous of these are from Ar's own extant works

(together

with the

relevant ancient

commentaries), referring

to the

IlEpi

T-j

loEas

(as

G.

prefers

to call

it),

I7ep[

TOV

yaOov,

Anatomai,

Problemata

Physica,

Iep[

ckv-Tbv

etc. Other

major

additions

come from

papyrus

texts discovered since Rose's last edition was

published,

including

the whole of the

Ath. Pol.

(fr.

474),

a

large part

of the

Anonymus

Londinensis

(fr. 355)

and a section of Philodemus' Rhetorica

(fr. 130-2).

A

welcome

feature

of the

edition

is that G. has

generally printed

more of the context than

previous

editors.

Nearly

one third of the work

(pp.

1-254)

is

devoted to

testimonia: the ancient Lives

and other

biographical passages; Dionysius'

Letter to

Ammonius;

the Arabo-Latin

dialogue De pomo; various reportsconcerning the fate of Ar's works after his death;

the

Neoplatonic

prolegomena

to Ar's

pragmateiai;

the Aristotelian

doxographies

of

Areius

Didymus

and Aetius and three

passages

of

Cicero

dealing

with Aristotelian

philosophy

(Acad.

1.1343,

Fin.

4.2-13,

5.6-96);

the

fragments

of Atticus'

Against

Ar;

finally

those

passages

in

Ar's

pragmateiai

containing

references to his exoterikoi

logoi,

with the extant Greek

commentaries thereon and a selection of other relevant

texts. Here we have most of the available

material for a

Rezeptionsgeschichte

of Ar's

philosophy

in the Hellenistic and

early

Roman

period.

The

prolegomena

to this

section

(pp.

3-17)

gives

an indication of the

way

in which

G. would have

these texts

understood;

his views on the main issues are

judicious

and

balanced,

although

there

is room for disagreement on details.

Unlike

Rose,

G. tries to

assign

the extant

fragments

to known titles as far as

possible,

and has succeeded

in

grouping

788

texts in this

way;

a further 232 are

printed

at the

end of the collection

as

Fragmente

ohne

Buchangabe (789-982)

and

Nachtrage (983-1020).

Each known

title is treated as

belonging

to a

separate

work;

G. is

chary

of

identifying any

of

the titles in the ancient

catalogues

with others

from

the same lists or

with

extant

works

or

parts

of extant works

(p.

213).

With each

title,

including

those

for which there

are no

surviving

texts,

G. has furnished

a headnote

listing

works

by

other authors with the same

or related titles

and

discussing

the

meaning

of

the terms which occur

in

them,

and an end-note

listing passages

in Ar's

extant writings dealing with the same or related subject-matterand suggesting what

topics

may

have been raised

in

the lost

work. These hints are

valuable,

although

their

scope

is limited. G.

does not claim

to

give

anything

like a 'reconstruction'

of

Ar's lost

works,

but

only

to set the

limits which such a reconstruction

must observe.

This

warning

is

particularly

necessary

in the case of

Ar's

dialogues.

As G.

explains

in

his

Prolegomena (pp.

236ff.),

he believes that

many

of the fundamental

doctrines of

the

pragmateiai

were also

discussed,

often

in

greater

detail and

in

a

more

systematic

way,

in the

dialogues

and that

the

pragmateiai

presuppose

a

knowledge

of these

discussions. The

danger

of

falling

into

a circular

argument

is obvious and

I do not

find G.'s view

entirely

convincing:

if the

dialogues

were so

important

for

understanding the pragmateiai, why did later Aristotelians not refer to them more

often and more

explicitly

in

their

commentaries?

It is

in

assigning

fragments

to the extant

titles that a

degree

of arbitrariness

creeps

in. G.

rightly

insists that the

starting-point

for such decisions

must be the

ascription

of

fragments

in

our

sources,

but

since these are

comparatively

rare,

he uses the context

in which

unassigned

fragments

are

quoted

as an additional

criterion

(see

pp.

216f.).

This sounds

reasonable

enough,

but

the result can

be

disconcerting.

For

example,

of

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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

33

the four references

to

Sardanapallus

traditionally

assigned

to the

Protreptikos(fr.

16

Ross)

one,

from

Athenaios,

is

placed

with the

fragments

of

the

/epl

8LKamoav71S

by

G.

(fr. 5),

enlarged by

a

long quotation

from

Archestratos whose

immediate

source

is given as Chrysippus, not Ar; two from Cicero are printed among the unplaced

fragments

and

the

last,

from

Strabo,

is

dropped

(rightly);

but a scholion on

Juvenal,

which

says only

that Cicero made a

derogatory

remark about

Sardanapallus

in

the

De

republica

which

echoes,

but

does not

reproduce exactly,

the one attributed

to

Ar

by

Athenaios,

is

accepted

as

/7.

tK. fr. 4. The link between the

passages assigned

to the /7. 8iK.

is

that Athenaios

quotes Chrysippus

on

Sardanapallus immediately

after

Ar,

and Plutarch

reports

that

Chrysippus

wrote

against

Ar

~repi

3tKatoo6vvrs;

but

it is not certain that these

words

refer

to

the title of a

book,

and G.'s

assumption

that

Ar

must have referred

to

Sardanapallus

in

several different

works,

but all the

non-Platonic material

in

Cicero's

De

republica

was taken from his

/7.

&IK.,

s

unproved and unprovable. The 'fragments' of this work are further bulked out by

four columns of miscellaneous information about the

burglar

and/or

traitor

Eurybatos

and

other

rogues

associated with him in the

tradition;

of all this

only

one

anecdote

is attributed

to Ar

by

our sources and

deserves to be

included in a collection

of his

fragments

(fr.

2

Ross,

84

Rose3).

Similarly,

G. includes all the

words and

phrases

from

Ar,

except

those from his

letters,

quoted

by

Demetrius to illustrate

stylistic

points, although they

are scattered

over

many

pages

and

only

the first

(28

=

fr. 8

G)

is

said to have

come from the

/7.

&K. In both cases

G.'s

'principle

of

economy',

that our authorities are

unlikely

to have

used more than one source for

each

work,

makes too little allowance

for

the

magpie

habits of ancient

grammarians.

By way of contrast, only the first two of the fragments traditionally assigned to the

Protreptikos

have survived as

such,

the others

being relegated

to the

'unplaced'

fragments

or a

special appendix

of

Tortot

rrporperTmKol

(fr. 73-83).

This

category

is

stretched to include the so-called Aristotelian Divisiones

(fr. 82-3);

in his headnote G.

argues

that these consist of extracts from the

dialogues,

but he

gives

no cross-

references to them in his

end-notes,

not

even in what

would be obvious cases such as

the

/7epl

evyevefa~

and

Div.

10.

Among

the other

fragmentary

writings

G.'s

treatment of

the

/ep[

~cov

is most

striking

and

a

good

example

of his

approach. Diogenes

lists this work as

having

nine

books and

has

generally

been

thought

to

refer to a work

consisting

of books 1-9 of

the extant HA. On G.'s reckoning there are 115 'fragments' (180-294) occupying,

with

their

contexts,

72

quarto pages,

derived from this

work;

some of

these are so

close to

passages

of Ar's

extant

zoological

works that

they

have

usually

been

regarded

as

quotations

of

them,

while others

do not

correspond

to

anything

in them

(the

situation is

similar

in

the

case of

Theophrastus'

botanical

writings).

Our

only

authority

to attach

any

titles to his

quotations

is

Athenaios and

he

gives many

variants which

may

or

may

not

belong

to the

same work.

G.

despairs

of

finding any

order

in

this confusion and

reprints

the

fragments

in

the order

in

which

they

occur

in

Athenaios and the

other

sources;

but true

to his

'principle

of

economy'

he takes

the view

that all the

fragments

are derived

from the same

original,

a Hellenistic

recension of Ar's zoological works much of which coincided closely with the text of

the

pragmateiai

as

edited

by

Andronicus,

but

which also

contained

matter not

included in

the later

recension,

and that the

title

77?pi

co3wv

efers to the

older

recension,

not the

extant one.

In

his choice of

text

G.

generally

follows

the standard modern

editions,

with

some

modifications;

he is

especially

prone

to

postulate

short

lacunas or to insert odd

words

which

certainly

make the

text read

more

smoothly,

but are

often not

really

necessary.

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