Professional Documents
Culture Documents
/ ~ O T E S ON BOOKS
ETA AND THETA
OF
ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS
being the record
by
MYLES BURNYEAT and others
of a seminar held in London, 1979-1982
i.
PREFACE
This monograph is a sequel to Notes on Zeta, published in 1979
by the Oxford Philosophy sub-Faculty. The London Group, started by
G.E.L. Owen in 1976, and described by Christopher Kirwan in the preface
to Notes on Zeta, has continued its discussions of the text of Aris-
totle's Metaphysics in the Institute of Classical Studies in Gordon
Square, and we were encouraged, by reviewers of Notes on Zeta among
others, to publish the record of our discussions of Books Eta and Theta.
The form in which the material is presented is much the same as
before. No major revisions have been made; but I have rearranged
some of the material so as to bring together all the discussions of
a given passage of the text (and accordingly deleted references to
the dates on which the sessions occurred), and tried to achieve some
consistency of presentation; but some inconsistencies remain - for
example in the transliteration of Greek words.
The majority of the minutes of sessions are the work of Myles
Burnyeat, and a substantial number of others are by Bob Sharplesi others
were recorded by Lesley Brown and Alan Lacey. Apart from those per-
sons, the meetings were attended fairly regularly by Julia Annas, Bob
Heinaman, Gerald Hughes, Christopher Kirwan, Jonathan Lear, Geoffrey
Lloyd, Malcolm Scholfield, Richard Sorabji, Julius Tomin, Kathleen
Wilkes, and Michael Woodsi and most of them were presided over by Gwilym
Owen.
A focus to our discussions was given by some characteristically
incisive and challenging Introductory Notes on individual chapters
circulated or tabled by Gwilym Owen. These have been included in
this Monograph in the appropriate place, as have been contributions
by Bob Heinaman, Richard Sorabji and Bob Sharples. There is also
included a paper read to one session by Sarah Waterlow, though, of
course, the full development of her ideas on the subject of the paper
can now be found in her Passage and Possibility (Oxford, 1982).
The meetings of the Group that discussed these two books of the
Metaphysics took place between May
our discussions of Book Theta were
1979 and November 1982. Thus,
almost complete when Gwilym Owen
died in July 1982. We should like to dedicate this Monograph to his
memory. The debt to him, as the person who established the London
Group and presided over it for seven years is only one of many that
we, like so many other Aristotelian scholars, owe to him.
clay 1984 MICHAEL WOODS
ii.
ABBREVIATIONS
The works of Aristotle are sometimes referred to by the following
abbreviations:
An. Post. or A. PQ.
An. Prior
Cat.
De Gen. An. or GA
De Gen. et Corr. or G&C
De Int.
DMA
De Mem.
E.E.
E.N.
Met.
neteor.
PA
Parv. Nat.
Phys.
Rhet.
So ph. El. or SE
Top.
Posterior Analytics
Prior Analytics
Categories
De Generatione Animalium
De Generatione et Corruptione
De Interpretatione
De Motu Animalium
De Memoria
Eudemian Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
Metaphysics
Meteorologic a
De Partibus Animalium
Parva Naturalia
Physics
Rhetoric
De Sophisticis Elenchis
Topics
Capital Greek letters refer to books of the Metaphysics unless
otherwise specified.
Unprefixed page numbers, as in 'l019a 10' refer to the Metaphysics.
Other references:
Ackrill
Apostle
Bonitz
Aristotle's Categories and De-
Interpretatione, translated with
notes by J.L. Ackrill, Oxford,
1963.
Aristotle's Metaphysics, trans-
lated with commentaries by Hippo-
crates G. Apostle, Indiana, 1966.
Index Aristotelicus, H. Bonitz,
Berlin 1870.
lr
Aristotelis netaphysica, H. Bo-
nitz, Bonn 1848-9.
D.K.
Jaeger
Kirwan
Oxford translation
Ps. Alexander
Reale
Ross
The convention has usually been
Greek words without inverted commas.
111.
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed.
H. Diels and W. Kranz, Berlin.
1903.
Aristotelis Metaphysica, W.Jaeger,
Oxford Classical Texts, 1957.
Aristotle, Metaphysics
translated with notes by Christo-
pher Kirwan, Oxford 1970.
Volume VIII (Metaphysica, trans-
lated W.D. Ross) in The Works of
Aristotle translated into English,
Oxford 1928.
Commentary on Z (in fact by a
later hand) in Alexander of Aphro-
disias, In Aristotelis Metaphy-
sica Commentaria, ed. M. Hayduck,
Berlin 1891.
Aristotelis, la Metafisica, tra-
duzione, introduzione e commento,
Giovanni Reale, Loffredo 1968.
Aristotle's Metaphysics, text and
commentary, W.D. Ross, Oxford 1924.
followed of writing mentioned
CHAPTER
l042a 3-24 The first sentence as placed strongly suggests we are
to have a summary of Z, but the next jolts our expectations. Where
was it e[pT'J'ta.l. that the object of enquiry is the causes and principles
and elements of substance? Not Zl Ross). Not El (Apostle),
which seeks principles and causes of 'tciiv Ov-rwv as including not just
substances but everything. r l-2 (cf. l003b 18)? A 1-2 fits better
still, offering several parallels to what is to come in Hl.
Further difficulties: (1) 1C42a 6-10 goes against Zl6 on parts
and the elements ('agreed by all' might mean 'agreed by all but the
speaker' but l042a 24 resumes talk of substances as if the list
had not contained controversial items). (2) It seems remarkably
bland to set 'tC fiv eTvcu. and side by side as cases of sub-
stance which are established by argument I which are arrived at by
consideration of what people will say under dialectical pressure.
It is going back to where we started out at the beginning of Z3, before
the hard work of Z was done. Still worse (3) to conjoin these with
genus and universal. If the latter also are cases of substance esta-
blished by argument ( it is not by Ar I 5 arguments in z, nor
even by his opponents
1
arguments in Z. For these do not urge that
genus is more substance than roo,, universal more than particular
( 1038b 7 is the nearest parallel but not enough). You really
have to go back to B for that line of argument.
sible to take xa.e6Xou "= yfvo,, 1:Wv
15 advance just one case of substance, not two.
[It was thought pos-
c!6wv so that 14-
If, however, two
cases are intended, there is a problem as to how a single argument
can yield both: e.g. definability selects universal over particular,
plus Forms (1. 16), but not genus over eT6o<;. Further, the two case
reading would break with the narrower use of x.ae6Aou as found in Zl3.]
More generally, (4) nothing is said to recall the challenge to Uxox(-
f..l.vov as substance (27-8 blandly accepts UXn with a justification
in terms of the actual/potential distinction to which again nothing
in Z corresponds). Nothing recalls Z 7-9. The hard work on essence
h"as disappeared from memory. The conclusion of Zl7 has gone for nought.
! 042a 3
But now, having got to tile point of being ready to consider chat
1042a 3-24 may not be a summary of Z (we even tried, without plausible
success, to make 1042a J-4 look ahead rather than back), one meets
the unmistakable backreferences L!.WpL<T't"aL (1. 18), 7!;Ept )J.lpout;; ?iv
!6etv (l. 20 ) . The second is especially telling because nowhere
else in the corpus is there anything like the discussion in Zl0-11.
Again, 21-2, denying that universal or genus is substance, fits 213.
So what we seem to have is (a) a summary of Z which (b) is not
the sort of summary that a careful reader of Z would expect. Possible
conclusions: (1) the summary is an connecting work (Andro-
nicus is known to have indulged in such). (2) There was a proto-
z without e.g. the critique of which adhered more closely
than our z to the 'keep all candidates but universal in play' line
'../hich predominates in H 1 (cp. the Hay 24 starts as if essence was
merely the next candidate on a list of equals, without recognition
of Z3's elimination of b1toxECI-1VOv/\SAT')). Problem: '.Yhat is then left
for proto-Z to C'1ntain? (3) Proto-Z = H: the editor got H and Z
in the -wrong order, put the hard work before the soft, and spliced
in the patchwork connection. ( 4) Z 'NBS essentially designed to remove
onesided overemphasizing of various candidates for substance, and that
done Ar leads off again on a positive note, not so much summarizing
z as reformulating the position he wants to start from after Z.
Note that some of these suggestions would have the consequence
that l042a 3-24 is no longer available as evidence for the 'be fair
to all candidates' interpretation of Z.
l042a 31-b 8 The argument is: is olxYCa. because it is
as shown by a I type examination of change. (Phys. I type be-
cause tiXXoCu.x:r1.<; is the model, not Ar's alternative model of motion,
which concentrates on the continuity of and is free of the
existential worries pressed by Elea.) Note that Wt;;
is not redundant: the subject in question is not the bronze
as such but the bronze as unshaped.
r"heir previous roles.
vUv - in 1042b 2-3 switch
fhe thesis at 1042 b 3-4 is not that substantial change is presup-
posed by the others, which would contradict 5-6, but that it entails
the others, i.e. any substance which comes to be is liable to the other
3 types of change.
Surprisingly perhaps, this thesis looked to be
true.
Attention was called to M 1076a 8-10, where Ar says that the sub-
stance of perceptible things has been explained in two stages: matter
in the Physics, substance as actuality later ( OOn:pov ).
refers later to ZH9, but wl}ile a concern with substance as actuality
is the mark of H, it is conspicuously not a mark of z.
On the other
hand, Ml fits well as looking back to Hl (which itself refers forward
to M at 1042a 22-3), while HI in turn looks back to (1042b 8).
Could there have been at some time a course which went from (some of)
via H (e) to M?
The difficulty we had in relating Hl to z
would then be due to Z having been grafted on to H, with the help of
the one bit of decent Z-summary provided in Hl, viz. 1042a 17-22. (Fur-
ther evidence that Hl is patched together might be seen in the fact
that within the space of a few lines we are in effect twice (a 11-
12, 23-4) given the information that some people hold that Forms and
mathematicals are substances.)
The objection that H3 1043b 16-18
refers back to Z7-9 was met with the reply (a)
occurs in a passage usually thought to be highly
that the reference
parenthetical, (b)
that Z 1-9 are anyway to be regarded as having been pressed into z from
another context (see Notes on Zeta p.54). The question was also raised
whether the fact that 'substance as actuality' is not part of the wor-
king vocabulary of Z would prevent Ar using it to refer to his dis-
cussions in z.
The suggestion was noted rather than accepted, but it seemed to
raise interesting questions about how an Aristotelian 'course' should
be conceived.
For the more patching together of material we find,
the stronger the presumption that Ar is his own tailor.
1042b 5 6uot'v : what other change is such that yEverrL<:;;/tpBopci. tloes not
follow it?
None in Ar's scheme of things, but the rarefaction and
condensation of Anaximenes' air would serve.
b 7-8 The reference to V. I may be editorial, but perhaps a
I 042a Jl
1!)42b 7 ;!OfES )N ETA
linking to the might alleviate some of the pro h) ems of linking
Ht to Z.
CHAPTER II
l042b 9-25 The long list of differentiae at 15 ff. is structured as
follows: under which are subsumed L
(rhough xpC<rLc; usually contrasts ..Jith O""l>v6e:cn.c; - see Ross' note), 6e:cr)..liil
,,, J<).dcx:n 'to6'twv (concluding the subsection) (b) et<rEL, (c) xp6v<Jl
(d) 't6"'J' (e) the last section on xae'Tl 21-s summed up by Ohulc; b-xe:p-
ox;;'!/ lA.\e:C+L,which last therefore refers to the note and the less
(rather than excess defect) in qualities (cf. differentiation by the
and the less in Ar
1
s biology).
This open-ended list compares with Democritus
1
three geometrical
d.tfferentiae (unlike Plutarch, Ar makes no mention of the weight of
aroms). dS illustrated by the letters of the alphabet in Met. A4.
These distinguish kinds of atom and atomic .:trrangments, so only indi-
rectly microscopic types of thing, this he entirely relevant
to Ar
1
s discussion if he is concerned with something closer to real
rhan to nominal (linguistic) definition. is it part of the ordi-
nary speaker's notion of a book that it is constituted by gluing
sheets to one another to make a roll? If not, a more theoretical
rype of definition is indeed to the point. Democritus can tell you
of the atomic constitution which makes stone, or which makes something
soft enough to eat, but his story cannot differentiate hetween threshold
and lintel, breakfast and dinner, nor presumably between other, scienti-
'lll y more significant, examples.
l'l42b 25-l043a l Is a6't6 in l7 an objection to the account offered
hy )..;en in 'Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology', to r;he effect that
passage is giving an explanation of existence claims for specimen
.ingular subjects (a particular threshold. etc.)? It is an objection
if, oU66c;; being masculine, o6't6 introduces a different subject, viz.
r he \)).11 . But can pick up a masculine subject, and if Ar
<:HAPTER 2 1042b 25
analyzing what it means to say of a stone that it is a threshold, of
some water that it is ice, etc., he would not need a different
in each case ('Snares' p. 81).
Owen's story requires not only singular subjects but also a tens,ed
to avoid the charge that the analysis makes 'X tautological
(for if 'The ice on the pond is no longer solidified' is not self-
contradictory, 'The ice on the pond is {now] solidified' is not a tau to-
logical analyzans for 'The ice on the pond exists'). Some qualms
were felt about Ar giving no explicit indications either of his subjects'
singularity or of his relying on the present tense. However, the
perfect tense 7t1tuxvUxr6a.L etc., goes some way to ease both difficul-
ties. Ar is generalizing over singular statements such as 'The ice
on the pond exists', not analyzing the general statement 'Some ice
exists'. Thus at l043a 3 is specimen particulars, not species.
At the generalizing level there remains the problem that 'no ice exists
1
should be contingent, while 'No ice is ice
1
would appear to be self-
contradictory in a logic which has 'All A is A' as a theorem. But
NB it was a main thesis of 'Snares' that in the present context neither
'The ice on the pond exists' nor the generalization 'Ice exists' is
to be rendered, tenselessly, by the existential quantifier.
l043a 2-7 These lines encapsulate the difficulties of the chapter,
difficulties which come to a head when one inquires into the reference
of (a 3), 1:o61:wv (a 3), 'tOU'tWV (a 4).
Ross translated: 'We must seek in these differentiae (lv
what is the cause of the being of each of these things (-rol>-roov = thres-
hold, etc.). Now none of these differentiae ( ob5v "tol>-rwv is sub-
stance
1
In the end we preferred this to the alternative of trying
to 'llake all three references to be to the threshold and other examples
of things differentiated by the differentiae. For on the latter rea-
ding abo-Ca. (a 4) means substance in the Cat. sense of primary substance.
and it is hard then to make sense of <Juv6ua1:,61J,vov or -tO &.vtiXoyov
lv tx60""'ttp.
The attempt to_ find an alternative reading to Ross' had been moti-
vated by a worry about its being implausible to have Ar recommend that
we look for substance tbc;; lvtpye:La lv = among the type of dif-
l04Ja 2
listed
' 1hat c11ance 11..1s a tarted-up version
of Democritus of explaining real Aristotelian substances (living organic
things), not merely artefacts and such thin;s as the ice on the pond?
that at l042b 31 hand and foot, which hut for their incompleteness
would be proper substances, only get ln on an abstract promise of 'other
differentiae'.)
What would it take to redo the argument of 1042b
ll-43a 1 in terms of proper substances? For Ar to turn round in a
4 and say that o66Ev -to6-rwv is substance only seemed to make matters
worse.
What, in that case, is the point of 1042b ll-43a l, '>Jhich
must appear something of a digression if all it leads to is a lame
admission that we're still a good way off our goal of discovering the
c:,, lvtpyELC1 of sensible things (1042b 10-11)?
These worries can be alleviated conjointly by a closer under-
standing of the sequence of thought tn l043a 2-7, read in accordance
with the Ross translation. The limitations of the threshold type
of example are already acknowledged a 3: in these differentiae
(tv 't'OU-tat.C:) seek the a.f'tt.OV 'tOU erva.c. of these examples, although
of course (a 4) finding the 'ton of these examples is not
finding substance proper (for these examples are not - in the other
sense nf
'substance' - proper substances). Nevertheless, given that
substance
is at-eCa. 1'oU eTvaL (a 2), finding the a.r-e1.ov 'toU e:!va.L of
these examples is finding what in them is anaJogous to substance (a
5).
It is laying bare a structure which, when transferred to real
substances, will put us on the track, not of these illustrative dif-
ferentiae, but of the differentiae which are the object of our search.
The steps towards this general interpretation go as follows. l042b
l1-43a 1 i.s an essay on <ipx11l o!vC1L (b 32-3), one of its chief
lessons being that there are a good deal more of these than Dernocritus'
three (on the importance of nnmbers, see below). This turns out to
be closely relevant to the theme-question of the chapter, 'What is
f)Ua-Co &>c;; tvtpye:Ln of things?', when we are reminded (a 2)
rhat substance a('tCa. 't'OU e:lva.t. (cf. Zl7). !';ranted that (e;Lx.e:p),
it is clear from the earlier remarks (a 2) that it is to differentiae
!_hat we must look: to these differentiae for the crJ1:1. OV 'tOU erva.L
Jf these examples, to others for that of other examples.
(a 4) the saving qualification: none of these differentiae
are properly substance. (a) 'nor /nor even is
CHAPTER 2
coupling of them', or (b) 'nor/nor even when coupled matter'
(Ross), this latter to be understood either (i) in terms of a particu-
lar bit of matter, or (11) in terms of a sort of matter such as gets
into the definitions of Zl0-11 and those here at 7-11.
does function as a technical term for 'T60e l.v 'tii>Oe at ZS 1030b 16,
3la 6, but it also applies to coupling generally. Against (a} (with
or without 'even') is the consideration that it is hard to see how cou-
pling the illustrative differentiae might be thought to improve the
chance of achieving substance proper. Against (b) (i) is the conside-
ration that it would involve switching mid-sentence to another sense
of to get in a denial that the concrete whole is o60""Ca.. Con-
tinuing then with (b) (ii) (which could, if necessary, bear 'nor even':
water thickened does look somewhat more substantial than thickening
by itself), how do we construe <ivdXoyov !v (a 5)? The sub-
ject is easily got from o()Otv 't'OU't'oov: the differentia in some specimen
case. This is not substance but it is nevertheless, says Ar, what
is analogous to substance (weakened by Bonitz to 'etwas ana loges',
tempting Jaeger to write 1:1. for 1:6, but Ale enforces 't6- see Jaeger's
apparatus).
Next (a 5-7) the analogy is spelled out (no need to be disturbed
by the fact that the case of proper substances is placed first): 'as
in substance that which is predicated of the matter is the actuality
itself, in all other definitions also it is what most resembles full
actuality'. So Ross, but how does he get the idea of approximation
out of (not eLd'XL<r'tC1 but) .-1'XL<r'tC1? It won't do to leave j.jd.'A..L<T"t'a
unsupplemented, for then Ar would be saying that you get the best cases
of actuality in the examples which are not proper substances. So
supplement as follows: in the other definitions (that which is predi-
cated of the matter is) J,!d:Ac.crta. (the actuality itself) ,i.e. as compared
with other elements in the definition it is what is predicated of the
matter which is most of all the actuality. In context this implies
that the item in question is the closest you will get to actuality
without the idea of approximation having to come into the meaning of
eLd'XLcrra..
To sum up: '"e won't dignify every differentia with the title
0f substance or actuality (the et'?tep clause of a 2 is not convertible),
l04Ja
Jl'C::-J :N t.TA
but since the differentia is the a.ruov tuU el'.la.L , as is shown suffi-
ciently clearly by the threshold type of example, and since the of>crCa.
are seeking, vtz. o6aCa. We;, is a.l"tCa. "taU eTva.L we must
look for of>o-Ca. We; lvE'pyeLa. in the differentia which a definition dis-
plays as predicate of the matter.
1043a 7-11 This doctrine is then exemplified in some specimen defini-
tions, three of which (threshold, house, ice) reaffirm the relevance
of 1042b 11-lda 1. That being so, methodologically no doubt the chap-
ter is an example of Ar progressing from things yvWpqJ.a. +n.itV to things
Proper substances are what we want to understand,
but the structure whereby to understand them is more accessible to
us in familiar, not to say homely, examples like the threshold of our
house and the ice on the road outside.
1043a 12-14 So we come to the main conclusion of the chapter. There
is no one answer to the question 'What is substance as actuality?'
(nor a mere three answers as Democritus supposed), but as many as the
differentiae which our definitions connect with the equally various
types of matter. On the variety of the types of matter, note that
a lO-ll includes the high-low range of sound as matter in the definition
of Ca. But presumably we do not want to stop the same matter
connecting with different differentiae, as e.g. a stone can become
either a threshold or a lintel (l042b 19). Likewise, a given
0f actuality, such as o-6v9cnc; or (a 13), will admit of different
realizations (cf. a 10-11: 1-1n;t.c; ). liA.AT1
5,),.'X.n<;;: at a 12 is thus vague, but 1042b 31-6 shows Ar interested in
a systematic classification of differentiae under their most general
<i.").hll<: is vague in another again. The interpretation
so far defended would not like Ar to state his conclusion in terms
that every definition, including those of proper substances,
<Jill rely on a differentia drawn from the sensible contrarieties and
modes 11f etc., \Ve have been working with. Does 5.\A.o 'tl.
tWv e:lon1Jtvwv (a 14) imply that? [t need not. a l3's yd.p shows
C:HAPTER l 1tJ43a l2
that 13-14 serve to recap the grounds for the main conclusion of 12-
13, and the grounds are indeed to be found in the preceding analysis
of the illustrative examples. We can suppose that ... 'tWv 6' ..
6l gives a summary coverage of all the illustrative examples without
having to suppose that it thereby covers all the examples there are.
General points
side one takes
( 1) All this can be said without prejudice to which
on the question whether the essay on d.pxa.C "tOU eTva.Lat
l042b ll-43a 1 is about existence or the copula. We noted, however,
that the shift to the notion of what something is at 7-11 need be no
embarrassment to Owen's existence story. The conn2:ction between what
it is for a patch of ice to exist and what sort of thing ice as such
is is explicitly drawn at a 2: the olxTC displayed in a definition
of ice precisely is the o('tCa. -ro1'S e!va.L, what you get when you say
what it is for a patch of ice to exist (so 'Snares', p. 82). This
is a substantive thesis, and moreover it is a thesis that has to be
understood, as Ar would understand it, with some appropriate restriction
on the range of terms for which it is claimed true. For it is not
the case that the definition of bachelor tells you what it is for a
bachelor to exist; a bachelor does not cease to exist when he ceases
to be an unmarried man.
(2) The chapter began by throwing the emphasis
on the potentiality-actuality distinction, picking up on H1 1042a 27-
8. If this is to be the route whereby we will make some advance on
Z, or at least, more neutrally, if it is in terms of potentiality and
actuality that H is to make its contribution, one might expect the
distinction to do some work in H2. But does it?
We start off promisingly enough, with out thoughts focussed on
the recipe for honey-water, or what you have to do to bits of papyrus
to make an actual book, or such natural processes as the formation
of ice. We seem to be thinking, by and large, in of the physical
affections or operations which are needed to make matter into a deter-
minate something. Which both makes it reasonable to start from Demo-
critus and holds out the promise that we shall find work for the con-
ll)41a 12
r:ept of actuality which could not be done just as well by the notion
of form or shape. But it was not clear to us, at the end of the day,
that he couldn't have said it all with the matter-form distinction.
The more dynamic aspect of the potentiality-actual! ty distinction has
not - as yet - come into play.
l043a 14-26 A coda to the chapter. That there are two elements is
a definition, one on the side of potentiality and the other on the
side of actuality, is illustrated by the way some people emphasize
one at the expense of the other when defining and others find a place
for both. 66 which is why: it is because there are these two
elements that people define as they do (cf. 19-21).
at 12-13 explains this, and is thereby confirmed.
The conclusion
l043a 21-2 Archytas He is not credited with a theory of definition
(an early theory of definition which recognized both matter and form
would surely have featured prominently in Ar' s surveys of his prede-
cessors). but with accepting certain definitions which had both elements
in them. Are subsequent examples of still weather and a calm Archytan
(so Ross, Commentary p. 229 and DK 47A2)? Or should we think of some-
thing more mathematical such as 'a line is twoness in length' (cf.
1043a 34), which might be represented as an improvement on the traditio-
nal Pythagorean habit of defining things by numbers alone? It is
hard to believe that. if the cited definitions are his, they were of
interest to him for their own sake and not for their connection with
some wider thesis. ( as olxrCa. (a 24) is no worse than many
another Aristotelian casualness, though Ps.-Alex. took the precaution
Jf writing instead. A different sort of casualness is seen
in the duplicated of 1043a 2-3 - if we leave both in, with Ross,
tather than excise the second with Jaeger.)
Attent1on was called to DK 23A 23 (sequel in 58B 32 - cf. Burkart,
Lore dnd Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, 47 n. 106) where Eudemus
reports that Archytas made 'tO &.6pLO"''t'ov, 'tb and the like
J.l'tCa. XLvfp-eu.u;: which was better than Plato's identifying xCv"'")'"Lc; with
l0
these. This might indicate Archyta.s <)tiginal interest lO d<.:!fining
and yaA.fJvn. If calm is due to st lllness and evenness (cp.
1043a 24 Hith -rO Eudemus), then conversely uneven-
ness or indefiniteness of shape will '0xplain' motion - and the explana-
tion of motion was a subject nn earlier Pythagoreans had had
embarrassingly little to say (990a 8-12). fhere would not, on this
suggestion, be any need for Archytas himself to have aimed at distin-
guishing matter and form (contra Burkart, 47), even embryonically.
It would even suit Ar's context better to have a pair of theory-innocent
definitions which theory of definition can explain.
lU43a 21
l043a 26-8 The search is over. AWe;; (a 27) corresponds to We; ox
11
, etc.,
meaning 'in how many senses/ways it exists'.
CHAPTER [Il
1043a 29-b 4 Ar records that an a1nbiguity may lurk in words like 'house'
and 'line': :r"rl!-la.CvEL (29-30) is r:teaning, not reference, since the
evidence adduced is alternative definitions - 'A house is a shelter
of bricks and stones thusly arranged' vs. 'A house is a shelter'.
'A line is two in length' vs. 'A line is two'. So far dS H3 is con-
cerned, it is a question whether in a given case this ambiguity lurks
(cp. Zll l037a 8 and the discussion in 211 of the definition 'A line
is two'), but where it does, something needs to be said about the rela-
tion between the two meanings. On the supposition (possibly counter-
36) that 'animal' is ambiguous between 'soul'
dnd 'soul in a body', the two kinds of thing animal are so called
not in virtue of a single definition but Ws "'tpbc;; The two kinds
are so called in relation to a single thing. of us agreed that
this was best construed without importing a third thing besides the
two kinds of ':tnimal'. Rather, one of the two definitions presupposes
ur makes reference to the other. is which?
(A) 'Soul' is included
be thought to imply that the
in 'soul in a body' , and 1043b 3-4 might
use of '::lan' to mean just 'soul' is some-
ll
,,-iir:ary use of nan' to r:".t:!d.n h-'3
c-an only understand
j'}St 'soul' if ,.,-e under-
-;tand this as secondary to <t,l,j der (by from its use
::.o mean 'soul in a body'. -whiCll ;__;;, t.her:!iore che in '0t; 1tpbc
(B) The claim that you do nJt ttnderstdnd c0mposite man = 'flesh
dlld bnnes animate in J. cerLain '.Hay' un1';3S _/Otl understand 'animate
in a certaln ..Jay', so that the prtJr :1.eantng of 'man' is just 'soul'.
r)bjection: that claim is the l.Jirn yuu .lo not undecstand composite
:tan unless you understand not che ..:ldim that you do nut under-
stand composite 'man' unless you compos it!..'! 'man'.
Reply:
if fiJU must understand 'soul'. chat precisely shows that you must under-
stand nonct)mposite 'man', th011gh IOU not of co;1rse understand
it as the meaning of th1.t ..;orr:l.. F1\L-ther tJroblem: nut thi.i line
11f thought give us, '..lith validity, ..1 third :-:teaning of ';nan'
'flesh dnd bqnes'? Well, look dt J2lh 20 ff.: flesh and bones
1nd ,;!.' snch parts i.s 6vt-c0Y, :;ATlt:Ep 't,l.L tiUv O':f...\w\1 rWv tv
f:xOv-rwv xa.l yO.p J, \))._., \.ty't"O.\. XC' ... tO Er(sos n
Can we decide tetween (,\) il.i\l ( 8) by the in.}ependently puzzling
:-;tato2ment "l.t 37-b i bat Lhe of (ta:n'ta., 37)
lS fact irreif':vant to the -Lnquiry into substance? The
reason t;tven is that essence or 'tr,c: to', ,.,r\uch :rtusc. here ;;1ean
'is identical \.J'ith
1
, form and actuality. Does that indicate (a) that
because we are asking about substance we shall only be con-
<Yith 'man' as tne :Jmposite?
J.re .1sklng about :.>Ubstance as actuality ,_,,e
'man' as mt!aning form or soul? lhere
Or (b) that because we
shall he concerned
was some Lnclination to
narry (d) (.-\),(b) with (B). decision here.
\ ; hird not ;:,)nsLiered is hat 1hat W'e Uo not 'leed
LO settle for ')resent purposes l3 .;her:. her 0r any oLher Hord
is 1.:1 tdCt l_fl tne r,tarmer ,;<etcned. 2-4 as explai-
that '..Je have a !Jerfectly .J,OIJd . .;ccd for r:he form, \'iZ.. ',:;oul',
. ,nd '-:an' for the composite, ;o :Lc dnes :lot .Jn occasion 'man'
ts
that 1C:
1
db 6 presupposes che
definltion of 'house' "' ':;ht:lr-,er nf bricl<.s'.
r,(h,;'S Ar himself Lhin:t r-ilar 1n 1 rnal L> ,l.'lbi guous La L.ll 1 ,-, 3 ?a 7
it is Sf)!Tie ;vho r:hink 1 h,Jt SJLH\.'!S is his ">oul ,md import
an ambiguity into the name 'Socr:tces' h Wuxf)again, l. 6).
At
ZlO l036a 16-17 lt is Ar himself wno the thought that 'dnimal'
is .J.mbiguous, but dS a hypothetical supposj t inn (NB xa.(,
1.7 - these
support (A)).
with this problem:
The passage remains to be considered, together
on the face of it the .1mbiguity thesis is simply
false, so v.hy is it believed, 'vhether !Jy Ar or another?
Or is it
less a thesis actually espoused than a consequence deducible (on Aris-
totelian principles) from the type of Platonist definition discussed
in Zll.
Here, as elsewhere in the chapter, ,,..,e face questions about
the relation between H3 and ZlO-ll.
Yet .1nother reading would be
that
what is doubtful is which is the right definition, not whether
the term is ambiguous.
(But then what would be the point of 36-7?)
The ambiguity thesis would commit one to view Lha.t 'There's a man
in the house' is 4-ways ambiguous - ttnless it can happen that a given
sentential context one of the t::"NO meanings of the term. This
possiiJility is '2xploitell in a p!lper by Lolx in !'!_ind,
.Jan. 1979.
4-14 We approached this with some dismdy, but eventually con-
eluded that perhaps its bark was uorse than its bite.
Ar's general
purpose seemed reasonably clear; the ctifftculties were those of detailed
lnterpretation. Ar seems to 11ake two main points: (a) Neither a
::r6v8EO'"I.C,: nor a iJ,tl;1.<; is simply a r:onjunction of the ingredients con-
cerned; when we have listed the ingredients, ,..re have still to specify
..;hat sort of a cr6v8e:rrt!; or )J.t'f;i.c; is tntended, e.g, in ratio.
(b)
fhe crUv8crLt; or ;nust not he treated as itself an ingredient,
either in the mh:tt:re ,,rhicb it itself i.s or a sort of second-order
mixture whose are the first-order mixture and the original
ingredients. 7he point is s:lmildr ;:hal '1lade 'lear the end of Z1.7
(l041.b 11 ff.), though did not 9urs1te this in detatl, nor whether
it bore on the relations between L. H .
The ;Ttain questions of r!etail that puzzled us were these:
([)
Does l:x have the sdme meaning throughout the passage, 0r
it first '"'lean 'crHlsist 0f' (h 5) Jnd then adequately defined
c3
1043b 4
in terms of (b 1 )? 'fhis Litter view enables che yd.p c2lause to
a reason for the one before it. Again at Ar is presumably saying
,10t that either a threshold or a iJOSition
1
COt1515tS in
1
the Other 1
but that reference to position is more important for understanding
threshold than reference to a threshold is Eor understanding position.
(104lb 23, incidentally, says that something could:1.'t be !:.x ( = consist
in?) jt1st one thing without being identical it.)
(2) Does (b8) imply that all the that fail to do
so for the same reason? If we are right under ( 1) we can presumably
say yes, at any rate so far as the ensuing threshold example goes.
't'Wv O:XN..uv presumably refers to the cases mentioned at 1042b 15 f f
(cf. 1043a 7-12). o!,O!: Ot} introduces yet a not her kind of case, where
a genus and differentia are in; but this sentence and the next
need a section to themselves.
(3) bl0-4 raises textual issues. Jaeger drops n olxrCo. at
bl2 (Christ dropped &xx as r..;ell, but Jaeger thinks the oU'te: clause
requires he also reads abo-Ca.,, "tOU'to at bl3 (with Bonitz), and
drops o6 at b14, with some mss.; Alexander seems to support Jaeger
in the last two cases. (Jaeger's apparatus seems to attribute contra-
dietary readings to x; thoughx is a conjunction of two mss., E and
J, we wondered whether the first nccurrence of '-x' in the apparatus
was a misprint. J has ob unambiguously; E's position is less clear.)
Ross follows Jaeger's text in his translation. hut in his commentary
(and in his translation as revised for the l-::cKeon volume) he returns
to the traditional text.
from Alexander
1
s support,
All '"'e could find in Jaeger
1
s favour, apart
was the awkwardness of iS referring back to
an immediate preceding -11 o6o-Ca. Alexander takes with
-rt)v \5\:nv, but Ross thinks it irrelevant to br1ng in a reference to
people who ignore the matter; we agreed, and thought that if tt;nt.poUv't'e:c;
referred to a new group of people, as Alexander's view suggests, it
...mulct need ot before it. We therefore interpreted as follows: 'nor
is man animal - two-footed, but [if people 3hould think he is, they
find that] something else Ls needed, if these (animal and two-
footed) are matter - which neither 1s nor consists of an
element, but substance, which such peonle would be ignoring, mentioning
unly the matter. So if this (additional element:.) is responsible for
and this is 511bstance, they would not be stating the substance
itself'.
Since Ar himself does not think of animal + two-footed as
the matter, we wanted to make the sentence, from AX\.d. 1'1. onwards, coun-
terfactual, despite the indicative 6e:t; the solution given would be
not Ar' s but one forced on anyone who thought man was dnimal ... two-
footed.
We thought e:( 'taU6'\SXTJ perhaps justified such an interpreta-
tion.
1043b 14-23 The ground for treating these lines as parenthetical is
that Wo"te in 23 related to 4-14 (so Ross ad 23-5); but there may be
questions to raise about this in due course.
The context of the passage was discussed in the light of R. Heina-
man' s paper
1
Aristotle
1
s Tenth Aporia'. Two main theses of that paper
were taken up: ( 1) If the E !Oo, is perishable, at least in the case
of artefacts and other cases not excluded, then it is not the species
but the substantial form which is referred to; for Aristotelian species
are eternal. (2)
If the is pecishable, it is individual, not
11niversal (general, shareable, etc.),
There was some question, first, as to whether Ar in the present
passage does actually assert the perishability of the forms of arte-
facts.
What he asserts is that these forms are not xwpLCT"t'a.( and not
Heinaman argues that this means they do not survive
the destruction of the composite, i.e. they are perishable.
His chief
grounds are (i)
cp. with K2 l060b 23-8; to which it can be objected
that strictly speaking that passage says only that perishability is
a consequence of not being or 'M.p& -rb CJ6voXou not that the
two things are one and the same; (ii) the claim that the target here
could not be Platonic separation (existing apart) since after ZB (cf.
esp. l033b 20-1) and Zl3-16 Ar could not say it is 'not at all clear
yet' (1. 19) whether there are Platonic forms of perishable things.
(ii) was challenged by reference to HI, . ..;hich does not regard the
'{Uestion of Platonism as wholly settled.
One could suggest that a
reference to Platonism could be quite in keeping with Ar 's present
agnosticim on whether forms are eternal or perishable without process
l)f perishing.
If forms are eternal,
they can separately
-::-0. 'Uvd., as the Platonist Hants, hence (contraposition) if arte-
facts it is clear that they do not exist separately Jtnp6. "tt\ 't'Lvd., in
15
1 041b 10
l 'J4Jh
1
4
Lhose cases they must be perishab1,_!, lOt (the same inference
as K2). ( [ f the clause in l. 20
be xwpLcr-"ta.(, it looks to be tautological:
specifies which forms cannot
those forms cannot be sepa-
rate cannot exist besides the particulars.
Better. therefore,
to construe 15ou not as specifying lvCwv but as epexegetical to xwp
'except that it is clear that the substance of some perishables cannot
be separate, that is to say, cannot exist besides the particulars,
e.g. house'.)
But the antecedent of (l) and (2) can stand as Ar's own Hithout
this passage. So what of the theses themselves?
In connection with ( 1) it was emphasized that the eternity of
an Aristotelian species is Heraclitean rather than Platonic: one man
succeeds another without any single entity enduring. Is this the kind
of eternity which Ar here denies for artefacts and leaves open for
other perishable things?
It may be doubted, yet to doubt it is not
to dispute the truth of (1) but to agree that Ar's topic is forms rather
than kinds of species.
Discussion of (2) took us i.n two directions. First, can the
opponents of individual forms f .lnd :1 satisfactory sense for this and
other
passages (e.g. ZlS 1039b 20-7, A3 l070a 15-17) where forms are
and are not or come to be and perish in a 5pecial way?
Second, we
looked at one of the key passages that have been adduced on behalf
of individual forms.
As to the first, some at least of the opponents were anxious not
to be stuck with defending, on Ar's behalf, a tame version of Platonism.
The Aristotelian principle 'A universal exists if something instantiates
it' should not be taken to assert a mysterious biconditional connection
between two indistinguishable states of affairs, the existence of the
universal and its instantiation. The existence of a universal just
is its instantiation, it exists just insofar as it is instantiated
somewhere. From this point of view its ceasing to be instantiated
in a particular thing its ceasing to exist there - though it may,
of course, still exist as instantiated somewhere else.
lhe opponents
nf individual forms should not be required to explain how Ar can both
propound the above principle for the existence of nni.versals and, compa-
r_ibly with that, say that (universal) forms are and are not -as
there were two separate tasks difficult to reconcile. Talk of the
being and not being of forms is part and parcel with Ar s dedication
to the proposition that universals do not exist except as realized
in this particular individual or that. Consequently, the perishability
of the forms of perishable things is not a difficulty for those who
would view these forms as universal (in that they are predicable of
multiple parcels of matter), but belongs with a committed Aristotelian
understanding of that view. If the instance is perishable, that is
the end of that realization of the form, and the form is nothing 7ta.pd.
its realizations here and there. This, of course, is compatible with
Heraclitean eternity, but perhaps it will be thought an objection to
the above that it allows for eternity and being/not being to hold of
the same thing.
As to the second, AS 107la 27-29 is a favourable text for indivi-
forms: 'The causes of different indi victuals [ sc. of the same
3pecies] are different, xa\ xa\
dual
while in their universal definition they are the same'. Opponents
must press hard the objection that you and I may be siblings from the
same x LvT')a'ov and insist that Ar does not actually assert that
of the various causes (as opposed to the total causal story) is diffe-
rent, so as to leave themselves room to insinuate that the form may
he the same so long as there is a different matter (note the feminine
a-ft, l)J.ft :: different to supply the required causal difference.
Alternatively, talk of your form and mine may be admitted on condition
that it is construed as 'the form of you as a composite being', i.e.
as identificationally posterior to the composite, not as prior to and
explanatory of it. To the objection that form as universal is not
needed to explain coming to be, since another concrete individual is
all that is required, the reply was made that the same argument would
apply to form as individual.
Another passage considered was A 3 l070a 13-17, but we deadlocked
,Jn whether the items such as 'house without matter', which are and
;tre not, were to be taken as individual or as universal. So no help
here on the preceding statement that the form of ho115e does not exist
the composite.
[7
-----------------------l(ll!!i'Ol:;-------:--------:---------------.... -..
l04lb 23
In 23-32 qnly 2.J -d r_o ,\ntlSthenes.
28-32, which was once commonly used to father the Dream
theory on to Ant., is Aristotelian in language and content and its
allowing definition for composites could not be the consequence (ilx;-r',
28) of an d.JtopCa. about defining anything. This 1vas accepted from
Burnyeat 's paper in ?hronesis 1970, together with (i) a disinclination
to think it necessary to follow Jaeger's emending of 26-l [xa.C]
<6p(<TCl.CT6CLL 6' o6), (ii) Ross' translation for xaLp6v, 'timeliness'
as against 'point' or 'plausibility', so that Ar should not himself
endorse the d.xopCa. or the grounds for it. Less dpproved was Burnyeat' s
understanding of xotov as part of the (deriving
from the Socratic -r(-Jto'tov contrast), not a concession of some sort.
The objection here was that 'Silver is like tin'seems a striking example
which should have some part to play. whereas (m 8urnyeat 's reading
any non-definitional descriptive statement would serve. 'Silver is
like tin' does not say -r( l:cru, but unlike, say, 'Silver is found plen-
tifully in Cyprus', it could be an (imperfect) instrument for getting
someone to attach the name 'silver' to the right thing (note 6 Liidl;a.L,
27). In this sense it might be the nearest one can get to definition.
The next question was how l043b 23-8 fits with tJ.29 l024h 32-4,
which specifically names Ant. where H3 has the more diffuse reference
'the Antisthenians and similarly uneducated persons'. Perhaps Ant.
was enough of a paradox-monger for there to be no call to make a con-
sistent position out of the two passages, but if one does try, two
problems arise at once: (1) A 29 can be read as saying that (so far
from definition being impossible) only a thing's proper definition
can be said of it, nothing else; (ii) even if X6yoc:; is broader than
definition, only one X6yo.; is admitted for each thing, so: in the silver
case, either that "X.6yo< is 'It is like tin', which would mean excluding
a.ll other comparisons, or it is not, which would mean that &29 disallows
the very thing that H3 allows. Any solution must be such as to explain
further, 'Nhy in consequence of his thesis Ant. was committed to the
impossibility of contradicting and practically to the impossibility
0f falsehood ( 1024b 33-4). The suggested solutions we discussed can
be distinguished by what they take to be the 11nit in f.<P' lv6<; ( 1024b
J 3).
'.-\t- ft:;R ,
(A) The units are e.g. silver, Socrates, 8:
roughly, su bj ec t s
for description, about loihich the thesis is that only one description
"lpplies.
This fits Ant. into the context in 629, 'double' is
2's own \6yo;, hence something else's X..6yo<; \vhen you say '8 is double'
(b 35-a l).
'8 is double'.
Thus understood, Ant. allows '2 is double' and rejects
The impossibility of &.v-n.).tyeLv would then follow
either because 'not double' is not the of 2 (would negative de-
scriptions be the X6yot; of anything?) or because e.g. 'treble' is the
of 3, not 2, so that 'not double'/'treble' cannot be meaningfully
applied to 2.
is that this
And if not meaningfully, nor falsely.
The trouble
coherence with the rest of .629 spells incoherence with
H3.
For 'Silver is silverish' (or something of the sort) should be
an acceptable of silver by (A) and 'Silver is like tin' should
fail to say anything about silver.
(B) The units are states of affairs (cf. nho 10),
e.g. silver's being like tin. dv-rLXyEav would involve saying silver
i.s not like tin, which fails to describe that state of affairs at all,
even falsely.
This makes the remarks about Ant. somehwat digressive
to A29, cued by the thought (31-2, where perhaps the parentheses should
be removed) that a false is not the '\6yo<; of anything. Ar 's point
is that if you take that thought the wrong way, Ant's olxet'oc;; the-
sis results.
Consistency between !129 and H3 is achieved because while
excludes all false statements, leaving true ones intact, H3 excludes
a subclass of the latter, viz. definitional truths.
One objection
is that (B) allows an acceptable X6yot; to be as long as you
',.Jish, which was thought not to be a natural reading of the rubric ev t<p'
(C) The units are essences (cf. l024b 29) and the thesis is that
there is no room for between rival definitions, nor such
a thing as a false definition.
This is outr_ight inconsistent with
113, fits less well than (A) with 629, and does not yield the general
rlenial of falsehood indicated prima facie in the text.
Note that it would be compatible with (A), supposing (A) ran cope
-vith H3 at all (see above), to take \6yov ua.xp6v (l043b 26) as any
\ . .5yo<; longer than one word, rather than in the specialized proverbial
:-teaning (cf. Ross ad 109la 7, Burnyeat p. 113, 115) 'evasive verbiage
such as slaves tell to cover up failure to rio the job assigned to them'.
' 9
I Jh 2 3
l.Ydb L8
l043b 28-32 28's Uxrt.' has to be understood in conjunction -..;ith the
Wo--te: of 23 and its reference to 4-14. Burnyeat's account was accep-
ted: the trick is to relate ii.xrt' to the preceding sentence's main
clause Bxe:L xat.p6v, not to the subordinate d.Jtop'a. and to see
that the clause 30-3 (which shares the same consequent with We--t'
for which reason Burnyeat punctuates with
after in 30) clarifies the connection.
comma rather than a colon
Thus: the moral of .4-14
is that we must recognize a certain complexity or predicative structure
in a definiens. Just this complexity or predicative structure is
what puzzles the Antisthenians and makes them say a definition cannot
achieve 1ts goal. Their is timely as focussing the very struc-
ture Ar wishes to affirm. The consequence - the consequence, that
is ( r7!:e:p X'tX., 30-3), of this predicative structure in which one ele-
ment stands to another as matter to form - is that only complex items
can be defined.
If this is right. it confirms that 14-23 is parenthetical. The
only difficulty is that 14-23 is mentioned in the terminal summary
to the chapter, 1044a 11-14. But the summary (puzzlingly enough)
refers 9_tg_y to 14-23 and to 104 3b 32ff., not to 1043b 4-14, 23-32,
so it remains that 14-23 is parenthetical to the chunk of the text
into which it is sandwiched.
What are the Kpoi't<t (cf. <tOLCl(pE'<<t, 35)? Perhaps all we
can say (as with Wittgenstein) is that there must be some. Definition
comes to an end somewhere (and not usually with a category) - cf. 35-
6. Of this we can be certain even if we cannot give examples of inde-
finables.
l043b 32-44a 11 The points of analogy between ob<rC<tL and are:
(1) Both are divisible until you come to indivisibles; (2) Neither
will suffer subtraction or addition without loss of identity; (3)
Both stand in need of a principle of unity, something in virtue of
which it is Ev l.-x. -n:oA.XWv (text of 1044a 3 hard hut sense clear); (4)
:ieither admit of more/less. We are of +J xa"t'i\ -rO eTboc; abo-Ca.
20
l04Jb 32
(l0-1) or 't( e!vnL (44a 1): in what sense of &pL9J..1,6.:; is this
being compared to Jaeger worries about the text of 34. Ross
p. 231 mistranslates 33-4 as 'If numbers are substances, it is in this
way and not as assemblages of units'. Keep J..i.Ovdbwv and translate:
'If substances are in a certain way 6.pL61J.oC, it is in this way, viz.
as (numbered or numerable) complexes of elements, not as some say as
collections of abstract units.
are what we call numbers, and this the Platonists) substance/es-
sence is not (cf. 8). But substance/essence is, as has been seen
and referring back) in a certain way a number of elements
which is one common use of the Greek (cp. in 34
with the same phrase famously in the definition of time, 219b
5). So we are not to ask 'Is one of the substances, for instance,
8?' nor to seek analogies between substance/essence and e.g. 8, but
to appreciate that one may, with some justice, say that is
- provided one takes it in the right sense of not in the
Platonists' sense of '(abstract) number'. For the preceding discussion
has made it clear why (q>a.vEpov xn\ OLo'tL 32-3) substance is in
a certain way a number of elements.
We further discussed Burnyeat 's contention that Aristotle is here
maintaining that substance is a numbered collection of elements, rather
than that by which we number. Against this it was argued that Aris-
totle is concerned to draw an analogy between substance and number
as that by which we number.
(i) Of the four analogies he states (ibid. p. 4), (3), that a principle
of unity is required (1044a 1-9) l! something which he asserts elsewhere
of !!umber, not in the sense of a numbered collection (Metaph. A 9 992a
l; M 1082a 15 ff., 20 ff.). We agreed that we found it paradoxical
that he should assert this even of number-by-which-we-number (see be-
low); but he apparently did, and, it was maintained, there is no evi-
dence that he asserted it of numbered collections (where also we found
it difficult to see in .1hat way a principle of unity could plausibly
he required).
(ii) Analogies (2) (l043b 3ft.1044a l) and (4) (l044a 9-11) are applied
elsewhere to number rather than to numbered collections. at Metaph.
t.27 1024a 12 ff. and Cat. 6a 21 ff, respectively. It was agreed that
2l
l043b 32 .e;TES ON ETA
this point was weaker, in that these analogies '.vould apply also to
numbered collections (and indeed the point was raised: if the threes
of which one is no more three than another 6a 22) are not numbered
collections, what are they?). But
(iii) in the context of the dicussion in H3 as a whole, the point
that a principle of unity is needed for substances is of more importance
than the distinction between numbers and numbered The
important point about the analogy between substances and numbers is
not the of elements in a given essence, but the fact that there
is something that unifies them.
Difficulties were r<'lised against this interpretation. It was
felt awkward that the first analogy (1043b 34-36) applies "!!re easily
to numbered collections than to numbers. The analogies between sub-
stance and number were felt to be rather weak to justify the assertion
that substances numbers in 1043b 33-34, even though this is quali-
fied by i'l'.oH; and nc:. e:r-xep in 33 was not felt to express much of
a qualification, especially as it is followed up by the non-hypothetical
statement in 34.
1043b it was argued that q>a.ve:p6v in 32 and in 33 referred
forward rather than back, l044a 7 being advanced as a parallel in the
case of the latter.
1044a 2-9 The sense given by the various corrections in a 3 is con-
firmed by 1044a 7. It would in any case be odd to say that the number
seven (e.g.) was a principle of unity among the things it numbered.
Ihe Platonists referred to in l043b 34 have a different under-
standing of number, and so can't, in Aristotle's view, meet his demand
for a principle of unity (cf. M7 l082a 20 ff.); but does he himself
have an answer to this demand, and does he have to have an answer of
his own in order to make the objection against the Platonists? H6
l045a 7f. refers to the problem again, but the discussion that follows
is concerned with substances rather than numbers, and it was suggested
that xa.t dpL8uo6<;; might even be
gloss inspired by the
22
present passage.
At !17
or the definitions of in subordinate catego-
ries.) Wi.thout such 'lUalifications 'good' and 'pleasant' are to be
understood haplOs (1236a 7-10), but does not appear in the
recurring formula of
66v;H<;(Ouvo.-t6v in 9 1
There is no sequence of
_
4
corresponding to dunaton
2
._
4
in !J. 12,
hut it is on
that 91 builds its account (l046a 4-19).
;ource of change in another or (in the same thing) qua
other (l046a 10-11)
- source in patient of change effected by another or (by it-
qua other ( 1046a 11-13. Hut is riunamis
1
in
We are not to extract, monkeying with an inflection,
'source ... of change ... another or( ... itself) qua vther' .
Rather, as in dunamis
3
(1046a 14-15), after 'by another
or (by itself) qua other' supply 'viz. by a source of change
(something which is/has dunamis
1
)'.)
-settled state of not being affected for the worse or dest-
royed by another or (by itself) qua other, viz. by what
Ls/has
(1046a 13-15:
ts >!xplicit)
here the last complement
As in dunamis
1
_
3
bllt adding 'well' (in some grammatically
1ppropr1ate form) to exPresslon5 of acting/being acted on
( l046a 16-19. 'These dunameis'
Lo .dl the three: but
;,e introduced wtthotlt :J.bsurdity
.1tfected well for the worse',
in 1046a 16 seems to refer
h1)W can the qualification
tn riunamis ?
-"---3
'Not being
affected for the worse or
l<:stnJyed by a or v,o0d :hange'? The k.1i in l046a
refers back to l046a 15-16. 1.Jhere the ev1dently
,,)vBrs
of 1::.12. 1046a 6-9 insists that the relation between derivative and
primary cases is more than m:J:re similarity, which '.-muld produce homo-
nymy. (Contrast EE VII l236a 7-33 explains by focal
meaning without invoking similarity and EN \'Ill 1156b 19-21, 35-1157a
J, which invokes similarity without using focal meaning; and explain
as you will.)
vative?
What is the str0nger relation bP.tween primary and deri-
(1) A case of in a derivative sense coincides directly with
one of
viz. iatros. (iii) A case of hugieinvn in one derivative sense ('pre-
servative of h.') requires and may coincide with one of hugieinon
1
,
in others (e.g. 'sign of h.') rloubtful. (iv) A case of philia_ in
a derivative sense does not expressly require one of philia
1
. (v)
cases of dunaton and dunamis in derivative senses seemingly require
may coincide with some of dunar:on
1
, dunamis
1
with dunaton
4
if the qualification 'partly' or inadequately is allowed). So here
is no regular requirement, logical priority does not entail natural
priority.
1045b 27-32 The backreference: e:tpma.r.
xpcirtor.c;; "X.6yor.t; to Zl in particular.
to ZH in general, lv "tott;
z 1 asserted ( 1028a 35-6), as
rz did not (pace Notes on Zeta, p. 6) 1 that the account of substance
will enter into the account of the derivative cases, as is implied
here at 31-2 (cp. 46a 15-16). Other backreferences to ZH in 8: (i)
1049b 27--9 'It was said lv 1tp\ o!xrCn.; [cf. ep\ -roil
l'l:p<irt(o' Ov-toc:. I+Sb 271 that everything that becomes {is becoming)
becomes ( i.s becoming) something from and by the agency of
something, and that this l..s the same in form', referring to ZB l033a
24-8, b 29-34a 5; (ii) back in 1 i045b 35-46a 1, "'hat is most useful
for the business in hand is evidently the notion of dunamis - paten-
tiality taken from H6, esp. l045a 20-33: that what we expect to
have discussed, which is why Ar warns us the discussion is to be post-
tJ<JOed until 6. All this suggests that ZH existed as a unit, "uegin-
ni.ng with Zl (tv l7-9 be already a proper
part of Z; which is compa(ible Y-'ith the hypothesis of H's pre-existence,
us discussed earlier.
<.+:
in the strictest
.-\[" j)!"\ T'llses Llrsl 'I) di::;cnss
sense, viz. which l,as reference to at
l048a 25-6 he says he has done this.
!046a 2-4 promises, secondly,
to treat nther sorts of in distinctions r .. o be m<1de about ener-
geia; 6 1048a 26-7 uses the same expression for '"hat he is about to
do,
In general the contrast is mar-kerl by the dominance of dunamis
in the earlier chapters and of '!2:1namei later (thus i.n dunamei at
l048a 32 (2), b 10, 14, 16, and in 87 at l048b 37, 49a 1, 5, 6, 8-
9. 11. 16. 17. 21, 2 l, 49b 2). In both sections dunaton occurs:
in the first in connection with dunamis, in the second (e.g. 1048a
27, 34, b 6, 14, 16, 49a 4) in connection with In '.:18
But in the
r akes over as a general ter-m ( 1049b 5, 0, l050a 3, 9).
first section at 93 l047a 24-47b 2 (note 1047b l) and the con-
sequent 94 he enlarges the scope of in anticipation nf the
second section.
We
had before us Owen's comparison of 6 12 and 91. li 12 is fairly
forward. It offers a focal analysis of dunaton, with dunamis occur-
ring in each derivative case. One could p;o on to define
on the basis of but Ar does not actually do so, even though
he had distinguished the corresponding senses 0f dunamis earlier in
the chapter (1019a 15-33) and had defined senses of therefrom
(33 ff.). In 8t, by contrast, he proceeds from the noun dunamis,
allowing the verb ( l046a 5) and the adjective to tag along.
A new development is the suggestion ( 16-17) that the xa\Wc;; modification
applies to all of and is not j11st a case on its own as at
6 12 1020a 3-4. fh..i.s gave rise to some discussion:-
He are first introduced to the case as the sense of 'can' in which
rme may deny that a lrunk man staggering and slurring can and
calk ll\12 1019a 24-6), Ihe rhoHght lS that ther-e is a sense in which
it may be said that he can do these thin!<;s (for there he is doing them)
<tnd therefore, i..f it is also correct to denv that h8 can, lt must be
Ln a different sense of can , viz. 'can properly' nr something of
the sort. rhus the adverbial aodifier xa.AWc;, xa.-tl\ etc.
1
)h 14
1046a 4
1:N THETA
occur in analyzanst not in the ordinary language analyzandum. The
drunk's walking and talking is an example of a denial of dunamis
1
modi-
fied. /J. 12 1019a 26 .already indicates that dl1namis
2
can be similarly
modified, e.g. perhaps 'This land can be cultivated [sc. with a fair
level of success I'. But '"'heredS 1:!.12 deals with this before going
on to .. , &.xa.eeCa.c; at 1019a 26, 91 reverses the order in such a way
that it is hard not to think that &.xa.BeCao::; is included among these
buvd.J..!1.<.; at 16 and covered by ll.Od'}OU.I. f} 1ta.8e!v at 17.
an example be of an adverbially modified
What would
Start, as
before, with a denial: 'this plant can't stand feast' - it is not
that it is dead in the morning but that it does not look at all happy;
thus in one sense it can stand frost (it does not die), but not in
the sense in which we say of a plant which still looks fresh and bloo-
ming that it can stand frost. We also thought of the distinction
between 'combustible' (can be burned) and 'tnflammable' (can easily
be burned).
Nevertheless, it is a question whether, for any of these cases
(dunamis
4
_
6
), an adverb in the paraphr.:tse is sufficient proof of a
distinct sense of 'can'. Perhaps they belong with 'There's a man
for you [ sc. a real man]' and should be explained in terms of what
a speaker can do with the ordinary sense.
Another doubt abnut Ar' s present project was whether adding a
reference to dunamis
1
or, if need be. the account of actually
helped to elucidate dunamis
2
or dunamis
3
. Being changed is of neces-
sity being changed by some agent, but why put that into the definition
of the capacity to undergo or to resist change?
1046a 6-9 fhe cases 'Which are excluded to avoid homonymy can scarcely
be understood except by reference to 4 12, just alluded to. Two cases
seem to be envisaged. (a) the geometer's :se of for 'square',
explained 0!-10<6-rmC nv< (46a 7) or xa.-riJ. L<ETO.q>op<iv 1612 10l9b 33-4)
[Alex. liet. 394, 34-6: it is 0 66va.'fal. f1 11::\.eupd., similarly Anon.
in Plat. Theaet. 27, 31 ff .}. (b) certain things we say are Ouvo't&
"<.'l.t a.OUva.'ta. 'tif e:Tva.t ?tWc; 11 ).Jh e:Tva.l., which seems Lo refer t0 what
l:.l2 1019b 14 calls Ouva:tl'L o6 xn'tO. C<o!tt.::lin ar"} possible
and imposslble not 1n
not being the case in
'Tletry - at t::. 12 l019b
virtue of a capacity but in virtue ot being or
the manner discussed - with an example from geo-
22-33. But the discussion itself is full of
difficulty:
see Kirwan
On (a), note that the likeness in
terms of which it is explained rests on the use of 6Uva.crea.,;
the mathematical sense is not derived via likeness or metaphor from
a non-mathematical one.
1046a 19-29
On the question tvhether the dunamis of poiein and cor-
related paschein is the same or different, cf. III 3 on the ques-
tion whether the kinesis in teaching-being taught is
the same or diffe-
rent.
The latter, after familiar paradoxes,
is solved by arguing
the change is the same but under different descriptions appropriate
to the two parties involved (202b 19-22: i..e. not identical kuriO's).
This change however, is located in the patient, whereas the active
dunamis 0f our present chapter remains in the agent.
\S\11 as O.px-ri (23) does not mean it is an
is a passivity.
agent but that it
at 216 l040b 15, in view ofA 3 1070a 10-11,
we first thought it better to afterq>6a'et. , as
heLonging to natural formations (Aquinas supplies complantatio, grafting,
which seems neutral); but editors recur toGA 773a 2, where
are connected with 't'tpa.'ta (773a 3-4) and with some non-evident as well
JS evident <iv<b:11pa. ( 77 3a 13).
This would lead us to believe that
ilt l040b 15-16 ailuq>IJO"'I.c; could be taken as xT!poxnt:.
(But we were not
moved to excise )Jl] at 1070a 10).
Here ln 8 there is no suggestion
of malformation, and this with A may make the transposition at l0
4
0b
15 (nnt recorded in the Notes on Zeta) persuasive.
!G46a 19-35 Incapacity.
To be compared with i.\ 12 l019b 15-21.
'tL-\i'iER i l
l046a 36-46b Ross does not annotate the lines, Lut two pages on
them will introduce the chapter.
of logvs/ logon echon: (a) EN
Cumpare some familiar 0ccurrences
13 also contrasts (1102a 30,
h 14-15, 17, 24-28) and to logon echJn (1102a 28, apparently identified
with l102b 14-15) with another element in the soul, to alogon
(1102a 26-28).
11) and (lt02b 28-31) of which the first is a dunamis and
marion of the soul (1102a 34, b 4-5). To logon echon, both in its
prime sense and in its derivative use of the obedient ( 1103a
1-3), is considered in terms not of gunamis but of and a rete
(!lOla 9-10). So there is no consideration here of as providing
a dunamis tOn enantiOn, as there is in 8 2 (l.OI16b 4-24). The
enkrates and akrats are equally praised for the it: ( 1102h 14-
16); what provides the opposition is t.he horma.!_ which
defeat prohairesis (1102b 16-21).
(b) It may lJe reflection on this lumping of all logos under good logos
that prompts EN VI 13 to stress orLhos log(JS (1144b 23-28). V 1 ll29a
ll-13 has already pointed out that is and unlike hexeis,
are of opposites (just as in Met. 9 2 1046b 7-14 is the
of opposites); so EN VI 13 insists on the orthos which turns the
into a hexis (or at least a well-directed piece of rPasoning) confined
to producing one opposite (e.g. health. for the doctor). This does
not of course imply two types or parts of a logos, any more than the
:;kill in hurting-or-healing is a different sk.ill from that of the depen-
dable healer: the of the first can be channelled into the
hexis of the second.
(;:) If this ts so, the logos which is embodied in meta logou
,:1 is the unrestricted implied by the contrast
wtth orthos in r:N VI 13 ll44b 27-28. 9 2 does not indeed speak
oi but later in 95 1048a 13-15 Ar. proposes qrexis or prohai-
C?Sis as factors which determine che rational in one of its
t direct ions. EN VI LJ on the other hand does n("_ "'-peak of h_1_2_8.Q_
dunamis tOn enantion; but earlier in VI 12 1144a 6-11 Ar says
t!"lat phronesis and ethik! arete respectively make the means and the
dim (}rtha, and then says that of the fo'J.rth part of the soul. the tJ1rep-
-:_!--ls:_O_f.!. there iS !10 such for this part has nothing Which it iS
:2
in its power to do or not to Jo.
The other three parts in this con-
text - epistemonikon, 12..s.ist iko_!! and - are therefore by
con-
t rast rational dunameis in the sense given in 92.
So EN VI 12-13
and Net. 8 2 are compatible and imply the same scheme, and both are
more sophisticated in their account of than EN I 13.
But at one point 82 may seem less sophisticated than EN VI 13:
meta logou This recalls the insistence of EN VI 13 that
is a not merely kat a ton orthon logon but meta tou or thou
l.OJ>.211 (ll44b 26-27, 30).
It does not merely conform to, it C!mbodies,
the right logos.
component. But
So in 8 2 rational dunameis have logos as an essential
subsequently at A2 l046b 22-23 Ar reverts to kata
logon; and similarly in AS he uses kata logon as well as meta logou
(l048a 2, 13; l048a 3) in discussing the operation of rational dunameis.
But this does not mark the greater sophistication of EN VI 13.
For
Ln both 02 and Rs Ar is careful to use logou of the dunameis but
i_.;_ata logon of the dunata possessed of such dunameis.
The logos is
a defining component of the rational dunamis but not so, or not directly
so, of what has the
This may be because .-Jhat is now dunaton
:nay subsequently l<)Se the_dunamis and therewith the logos, or vice
versa ('by forgetting, or some accident, or the lapse of time', 93
l047a 1); but the cannot lose the logos. Alternatively, con-
->ider the examples of kath' ho given in 6 18 1022a 14-17: that in virtue
qf '...rhich a man is good is the good itself (here called the eidos and
:>usia: ps. Alex. supplies handier examples, statue and man, 414. 31-
32); that in virtue of which a thing is coloured is the natural primary
possessor of colour, the surface.
Thus that in virtue of which a
thing is dunaton enantiOn is the logos or logon echon which primarily
houses the dunamis tOn enantiOn.
It may he objected that the
is not the primary_ dunaton, since it Ls rather than has the dunamis.
But this may be met by (a) referring to the good-itself in 1022a 14-
16 (property an<! prime possessor?), or (b) observing that the
'lre themselves described in language appropriate to agents, e.g. at
.q5 1048a 5-10, or (c) recalling the interchangeability of and
_logon echon, the latter hein.g evidently a possessor 0f the relevant
1-2., etc.: Ln EN I 13 Ross consistently translates
':-"ltional princlple',
doubt dVotding 'reason' part of the old
o3
l\J46b 1
'10TES ON THETA
debate he cites in his note on the tr. Jf EN J '3 1U95a 10. In EN
VI 13 he translates it 'rule or r<J.tional principle' (l144b 29-30),
and orthos logos 'right rule' (l141b 23, 26-28). In VI 13 logos is
indeed put into the plural, 1 i.ke episteme, in reporting Socrates' views
(1144b 29), but Ar. keeps to Lhe singular e.g. in identifying
phronesis with at 1144b 27-2&. In 9 2 and 95 Ross
tr. logos 'rational formula', though he lr. loe>on echon at 1046b 1
as simply 'rational'.
If logos is put on a footing with threptikon-phutikon-orektikon
in EN I 13 and with phronesis in EN VI 13, it is natural to translate
it 'reason' or '(power of) reasoning', with the possible addition of
'about ... ' for a dependent e.g. in 92 1046b 8-13. It is
not a 'formula' (or 'rule' or 'principle') which uses denial and removal
to exhibit the opposite; it is reasoning about e.g. health which must
mark it off from its enantion or is, though health must remain
the basic idea (92 l046b 10-15).
l046a 36-b}_ What does mean? Thert?: are two main views, that
it means rational principle or rule (Ross), and that it means reasoning
or power of reasoning, sometimes
subject (see end of Owen's note).
specified as being about a certain
We preferred the 1 at ter. One
might ask how a power of reasoning about something could &TJA.oiiv things
(1046b 8, 14): doesn't Ross have the advantage here, since a formula
could already 'exhibit' something, without needing to be put into words?
But to exhibit opposites seems to need rather a bunch of formulas,
and tt seems better to say the power of reasoning exhibits them via
such a bunch. Similarly reasoning about health could exhibit both
health and disease, which a single formula couldn't, as it rioesn't,
so to speak, carry its negation in its pocket. Nor need we be troubled
by the thought that, with \.6yot; as 'reasoning'. A6yoc; 6 a.i>'"r6t;; at b 8
ought to be replaceable by something like rpp6vry:nc; 1'1 a.b't""ft which would
sound odd: b 7-8 shows a shift from reasoning as a power to reasoning
about something, i.e. a specific exercise of the power. How could
knowledge have a power of reasoning (b 17)? Well, it could 'have'
(in an etiolated sense) powers of about a subject.
llAPTF:R 1.
In fact, since is often interchangeable \.Jith \6yov Exov, b 17
could have had --rijl \6yot:; Eiva.c. as easily as -rq, A6yov 'XLVa Of course
we are not saying A.Oyoc; never means formula (at 1032b 2-6, where it
is again associated with opposites, it seems to mean form); but ..;hen
it does mean formula an 61t6(pcunc; gives a different formula, which it
doesn't here (b 13: incidentally we saw no significant distinction
between t:7t6q:Kl.O'LC: and d.1tocpopd.).
At b Alexander reads 1tOLll'Hxa.t xa.l 11t (xat without
a!: recc.), which separates the crafts from the sciences.
We preferred
the standard 7t:Jt..TJTLxat with the preceding xnC being epexege-
tic. We thought Ar didn't bring in 7tpax-rc.xat l7tLO"'t"-r,)..la.c. here because
he was concerned with 0:\Ao lv U\Xql cases, and also the txc.<Tt-r,-
f.lO..L are concerned to oppose doing to not doing, not to oppose doing
something to doing its opposite.
On the xa.-rn \.Oyov I A6you question (b 2: j..l-rd, , b 22: xa-cd )
agreed in the main with Owen's note, though we thought the point
mj_ght be simply the one about Xct-rd, unlike 1-lE'td., not applying to a
defining component, so that 618 wasn't needed.
We noted noncommittally
the view of Hardie (Ar's Eth. Theory, pp. 236-9, preceded by J.A. Smith
[CQ, 1920]) that Nic. Eth. says not that j..J.E't"d.. gives a stronger condition
than x.a.-cd.,
one which
but the reverse, and that there are two types of virtue,
is both -.:a.'td and iJ.E"td , and one which i.s merely ;...i't<i, the
\l_rthos logos.
1046b 3-24
1046b 13: ''va signifies the way in which
knowledge of, say, health also involves knowledge of diseases.
1046b 15 The premise introduced by lxe:( doesn't seem to be used in
this chapter. But it is relevant in 9 5, where the thread is taken
up again from after a diversion in 93 and A4, and it is effectively
repeated at 1048a 9. The point there is that somet.hing is needed
to decide which way the rational potencies act. and 5p;;L c; and JtpoaCpe::-
are offered. This could have been said in q 2, and could per-
'5
i D4fla 36
lQip')b l:) 'WTES THETA
1aps have been 11sed against tl)e '1egarians in 9 3, Lhough they might
just deny that any deciding had to be rl.one. The C.pxh x L v'licrf;wc;; of
b 17 and b 21 doesn't seem L') do the trlck, and seems to be simply
the A.6yoc; itself, if <ipx1'! at b 24 has the same reference. A" 2 also
doesn't raise the analogous quest1on about the nonrational potencies:
,;hat triggers them off? - though here the trigger may be something
external, as something is heated by being pushed towards a fire.
{Indeed the nonrational potencies too can be potencies of opposites,
though only per accidens, as in the rather unfair example of hot gas
working a refrigerator, or as when healing, especially Greek healing,
involves hurting.) Anyway when the heating 5'6vn)JLC:: is triggered it
produces heat. Analogously a cational potency when triggered should
produce both the relevant opposites, which, as b 15 says, is absurd.
Something more is needed, which doesn't come till 95, while 82 turns
to elaborating rational at b 20 ff. One suggestion was
that b 20 itself provides a role for the l1teC clause by answering it:
the opposites are united by a single A6'(oc:: which shows how powers
for opposites are pvssible despite the l1teC clause. But it was pointed
out that if the l:xsC clause is relevant at all it should affect the
nonrational potencies too, in so far as the heating 66vnf ..Hc; covers
cold as well as hot, albeit per accidens. b 15 f f. would anyway be
awkwardly expressed if the above suggestion lay behind it.
What does 1tpbc; 'tO nb't6 refer to? Two suggestions: ( i)
1\n object we are operating on, e.g. a piece of paper we are making
black or white. The soul, starting from one and the same i.e.
\6yoc;, sets both the opposite processes in motion, connecting them
with a view to putting now one now another (or: putting one
or the 0ther) of the alternatives (black and white) into the same piece
,1f paper. (ii) The same thing as aJ<o <Lb-rijc; <ipxn<: refers to (cf.
':he equivalence of 1tp0c; ttv and in focal meaning, and other
,onnections between 1tp6' and The soul, starting from the \6yoc;
(.as above) sets the opposite processes in motion, -:::onnecting them with
to that same d.p):'..,C, or )..6yot; only not (o6x 6J....l.o(wc;:
c\1oo<>es nne :Jlternative rathr!r than the other). ( i) seems to
)6
cHAPTER 2
involve taking as obx t'f!-la, which would seem to require some-
thing like l:v )JfpEL rather than o-uv<i+aou. Also (i) doesn't explain
how the asymmetry ( 6jJ.oCwc; applies to the A.6yoc; itself (b 20),
even granting that there is an asymmetry in the sense of a difference
between 'the processes themselves (blackening and whitening). ( i)
also reads a lot into 7tp6<;;, and one would expect rather the dative
for 1tp0c; -,;0 We therefore inclined towards (ii), re-
ferring for o6x to b 9-10 (f.'ll"l-"l.ov) and b 12-3 HVIL );
the asymmetry there will be that, whatever it may be, which is involved
in ( (ii) might read more easily if CL)J<PUJ is taken only with
a-uvd.+-a..aa., xLvf,o-eL having no expressed object; but this would give
the clause an awkward structure.)
EJAb read 'pb<; for "Pb <;
We noted en passant that at b 22
l046b 22-3 similarly evoked two views. (a), in the spirit of (i)
above, says the rational Ouva.'td. do opposite things to the nonrational
Ouva:td. (taking 'totc; Ouva:totc; with 1tOLEt'), while (b) says the rational
6uva't0. do the opposite to what the nonrational 5uva'td. do (taking 'tote;; ...
Ouva:toi:'t:; with 'td.vav'tCa.). (a) treats the object of rational action
as passive Ouva'td. and seems committed to calling all passive Ouva'td.
nonrational (if not indeed vice-versa); it deals with this by saying
that passive powers that seem to be rational (e.g. the ability to be
taught by one method in preference to another) are really active powers.
(a) perhaps has the advantage that the fJL9- clause follows on more
naturally, the subject of 1tEpLfxe:'tac. being the nonrational Ouva.'td.,
if we can think of them as being encompassed in their capacity as pas-
sive 5uva.'t({ by the ).6yoc; (the power of being whitened is, being non-
rational, a different power from that of being blackened, but they
are united by being both subject to a A.6yoc; which decides whether to
whiten or to blacken). Also 'td.vnv't'Ca seems a rather strong
phrase for (b) - though perhaps it is just a stock phrase meaning 'acts
differently'. For (b) the subject of 1{pLtXE'tal. is the rational
Ouva'tci, which is awkward unless one can taken the 6 L6 clause as paren-
thetical with the yd.p referring back across it. On the other hand
(b) fits the chapter as a whole better for the nonrational powers must
be being thought of as active because of uta tv6' at b 6: this
57
l046b 2l
l_l)'t6b 22 :;JTES ON THETA
won't apply to the passive powers if paper can be blackened as well
as whitened, (We did not discuss thE: nominative reading of AbJ:
,...Cn d.pxt].) We all agreed, however, that Ar is showing that in
s()me sense there is the same <ipxf! of opposites.
l046b 24-28 In the first clause (24-26) d.xo)...ov8E! can be taken
in the sense of 'is implied by' , but in the following clause ('ta.U't";J 6'
obx &.e:C, 26) this seems difficult - in most cases it isn't just
that the ability to do something doesn't always imply the ability to
do it well; it doesn't it at all, though it may sometimes be
accompanied by it. We considered four possibilities:
a) = 'accompanies' throughout, and ri C is to be understood
in the first clause.
b) &.xaA.ouBe:;t "" 'is implied by' in the first clause, but is understood
only as meaning 'accompanies' in the second.
(c) Aristotle is thinking of cases where to be able to do something
at all does imply being able to do it well. But in such cases the
qualification 'well' is redundant.
(d) It was pointed out that, in ordinary speech, 'isn't always implied'
might be natural enough, though inexact, for 'isn't ever implied, but
sometimes is the case'.
But what are these remarks doing at this point in any case? They seem
to relate to e1 l046a 16-19, but not, apparently, to anything earlier
in 92. We concluded that they are a note which had been placed here
for want of a more appropriate place; or, perhaps 1 an answer to a point
made by one of Aristotle's audience?
CHAPTER THREE
Note by G.E.L. Owen
The Megarians:
(to school it now appears that Diodorus Cronus did not belong:
Sedley, Proc. Camb. Philol. Soc. cciii (1977) 74-120; so Sorabji,
I Cause and=-__t
58
I) Q
11)46b 29
64, 106.
But Diodorus may rear a head on one interpretation elf 1047a
13-14 sub infra,
l046b 29-30 X can F only when X does F; when X does not F X cannot
f. (i) For values of verb 'F' cf. 1047a 28-29: they include not
only kineseis and staseis but einai and gignesthai and their negations,
and these were introduced at l047a together with the quite general
kinesis kai genesis at l047a 14.
In other words 1 although 93 begins
with examples (building, seeing) that would suit the account of dunamis
in R 1-2, as a whole it covers all forms of and so
belongs with A4.
As takes up from 92.
(ii) Notice that Ar is interested only in the form 'cal>'jdoes',
not in 'does"'*-an', which is not in question.
(iii) X can F at time t ...... X does F at time t: this brings out
a possible ambiguity, between can jump-at-t and can-at-t jump.
(a)
The arguments in l046b 33-47a 10 about house building and seeing etc.
seem to need only the second formula:
X is not now a housebuilder
because he cannot-now house build.
(b) The comparable construction
with pephukenai (see under !. below) seems rather to want the first
formula, is naturally apt to F-at-t. (c) At l047a 12-17 Ar uses
against the Megarians the idea of can-now F-in-the-future; given the
choice between and can-now F, this is more naturally an appli-
cation of the
distinction:
X can F-at-t:
second,
But the Megarians can surely not allow the
for them X can-at-t F stands in mutual implication with
when X has the power, it is the power of doing what
X does at that time.
Confusing the two may be one source of their
thesis, and the confusion is not met by amending 'doing what X does
at that time' to 'doing what X could do (sc. has the power to do) at
that time', which threatens circularity or regress,
activity is entailed by capacity .
So concurrent
l046b 34-36