Transcript
  • 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

    This content downloaded from 212.128.182.231 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 05:07:23 AMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions

    http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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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

    This content downloaded from 212.128.182.231 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 05:07:23 AMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions

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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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