Alexander Aphrodisias Analytics: On Aristotle "Prior Analytics 1.23-31"

193 Pages·2006·10.8 MB·English

ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS
On Aristotle
Prior Analytics 1.23-31
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Alexander of
Aphrodisias
On Aristotle
Prior Analytics 1.23-31
Translated by
Ian Mueller
B L O O MS B U RY
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First published in 2006 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition first published 2014
© Ian Mueller, 2006
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Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-3407-3
PB: 978-1-4725-5780-3
ePDF: 978-1-4725-0133-2
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Acknowledgements
The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative
funding from the following resources: the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Division of Research Programs, an independent federal agency of the USA; the
Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal
Society (UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia della Spazio e del Tempo
(Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University; the Leventis Foundation; the Arts and
Humanities Research Borad of the British Academy; the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable
Trust; the Henry Brown Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation
for Scientific Research (NWO/GW), Dr Victoria Solomonides, the Cultural Attache
of the Greek Embassy in London. The editor wishes to thank Jonathan Barnes,
Katerina lerodiakonkou, Ben Morison, and Tobias Reinhardt for their comments,
Inna Kupreeva for preparing this volume for press and Deborah Blake who
has been Duckworth's editor for all volumes in the series since the beginning.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
Translation 29
1.23 That every syllogism reaches a conclusion through one of 31
the figures
1.24 Some formal consequences of the result of 1.23 44
1.25 Simple and compound syllogisms 51
1.26 Establishing and refuting categorical propositions 70
1.27 A technique for finding direct proofs of categorical 74
propositions—1
1.28 A technique for finding direct proofs of categorical 88
propositions-2
1.29 Finding proofs from a hypothesis 107
1.30 The universal scope of syllogistic 122
1.31 Criticism of Platonic division 126
Notes 135
Appendix: The Stoics in this Part of the Commentary 154
Bibliography 155
Textual Questions 156
English-Greek Glossary 159
Greek-English Index 165
Index of Passages 180
Index of Names 181
Subject Index 183
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Preface
The first draft of this translation was mainly composed in the spring of
2002 while I was participating in a seminar on the history of mathemati­
cal proof organized by Karine Chemla with the support of the Maison
des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, and the Columbia Institute for Scholars
at Reid Hall. I would like to thank the Maison for its generosity and the
Institute, its Director, Dr Danielle Haase Dubosc, its Research Coordi­
nator, Dr Mihaela Bacou, and the other members of its staff, for provid­
ing ideal working conditions and arrangements at Reid Hall. But my
deepest thanks for my time in Paris go to Professor Chemla, who
organized a rigorous series of sessions on the subject of proof, while
giving the participants the time and freedom to pursue their own
particular projects. The final draft benefited greatly from the criticisms
and suggestions from two sources: first, several anonymous readers, two
of whom I have particularly thanked in notes on passages on which they
worked, and secondly, Dr Inna Kupreeva. The final version was pre­
pared for publication in the fall of 2005 while I was a visiting scholar at
Christ's College, Cambridge. I would like to thank the Fellows of the
College and its Master, Professor Malcolm Bowie, for granting me a
marvellous opportunity to participate in the vigorous intellectual life of
Cambridge University and to pursue my own research.
Cambridge, October 2005
Abbreviations
Aldine = the first printed edition of the Greek text. On the title page
above the device of the Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio one reads in
Greek: Alexandrou tou Aphrodisieos eis ta tou Aristotelous protera
analytika hypomnema, and in Latin: Alexandri aphrodisiensis in
priora analytica Aristotelis commentaria. A subscription at the end
of the text indicates that it was printed by Aldo Manuzio and Andreas
Torresanus de Asula in 1520.
B = Vatican manuscript Urbinas Graecus 51.
CAG = Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Berlin: G. Reimer, 1882-
1909.
Elements = Euclid's Elements = Heiberg, J.L., and Menge, Hermann (ed.
and trans.) (1883-5), Euclidis Opera Omnia, vols 1-4, Leipzig: Teub-
ner.
LSJ = Liddell, Henry George, and Scott, Robert (eds) (1940), A Greek-
English Lexicon, revised by Henry Stuart Jones, Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Hulser = Hiilser, Karlheinz (1987-8), Die logischen Fragmente zur
Dialektik der Stoiker, 4 vols, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.
Ross = Ross, W.D. (ed.) (1949), Aristotle's Prior Analytics: A Revised Text
with Introduction and Commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Smith = Smith, Robin (trans.) (1989), Aristotle's Prior Analytics, Indian­
apolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
Theophrastus: Sources = Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M.,
Sharpies, Robert W., and Gutas, Dimitri (eds and trans.) (1992),
Theophrastus ofEresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought, and
Influence (Philosophia Antiqua 54), 2 vols, Leiden and New York: E.J.
Brill.
Wallies = Wallies, Maximilian (ed.) (1883), Alexandri in Aristotelis
Analyticorm Priorum Librum I Commentarium (= CAG 2.1).
Introduction
1. Text and translation
This is the first of two volumes in which what might be called the third
and last part of the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on book 1
of Aristotle's Prior Analytics is translated, the commentary on the first
two parts (chapters 1-7 and 8-22) having been previously translated in
Barnes et al. (1991) and in Mueller and Gould (1999) and (1999a). The
reader can consult the Introduction of Barnes et al. for information
about Alexander and the general character of his commentary on the
whole of book 1. This translation is based on Wallies' text of Alexander's
commentary, and I have taken Ross as the standard for the text of the
Prior Analytics.
Many of the manuscript sources for Alexander's commentary do not
contain the third part. In his apparatus for this part Wallies cites only
the editio princeps of the Greek text, the Aldine edition of 1521, which
he takes to be an adequate representative of a number of fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century manuscripts, and the fundamental Vatican manu­
script which Wallies calls B,1 together with the corrections of it, whose
authors are labelled, B1 (the scribe himself, whose corrections Wallies
usually adopts) B2 (who made corrections from the archetype) and B3
(whose corrections may very well not have had manuscript authority).
One of the issues confronting the translator of any commentary on
Aristotle is to decide when the original text is being quoted and when it
is not. I have been more sparing in my use of quotation marks to indicate
such quotations than Wallies is. I have used quotation marks in cases
where Alexander is clearly discussing the meaning of a word or phrase,
but otherwise I have only used them when there is a string of, say, at
least five words which correspond exactly to the text of Aristotle. Even
in this connection there have to be some arbitrary decisions, since a
string may be interrupted by a 'he says' or a parenthetical explanatory
comment; or a particle may be eliminated or changed to fit the context.
In the case of a text like the one translated here there is an additional
problem which arises frequently, the question whether an assertion
such as 'Health is said of human being' is about the words 'health' and
'human being' or about health and human beings (or humanity). My
general goal has been to minimize the use of single quotation marks and
so I normally write: