Substance and Prediction in Aristotle (review)

484 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:3 JULY I99 4 Though Ferber's discussion of the dialogues leaves unclear whether the "Unwissenheit des Philosophen" is simply a contingent fact or an inescapable fate, his excellent analysis of the Seventh Letter (more than half the book!) clearly supports the latter option.S Our four means of knowing something (words, images, logoi, and even "knowledge ") express how a thing is qualified (poion tO rather than simply what it is (ti esti). Since these means, then, cannot provide the philosopher with knowledge of a thing's true being, such knowledge can never be attained (43ff.). Ferber recognizes two important implications of this argument: 1) it makes a "theory of Forms" strictly speaking an impossibility (5o) and ~) it shows that Socrates' "What is X?" question is in principle unanswerable (47)Ferber is much more faithful to this text than are the "esoterics" who consider Plato's unwillingness to write about what he "takes most seriously" to be caused by a fear of being misunderstood by the philosophically unprepared and completely ignore the above argument, which P/ato sees as the decisive one (342a, 343a).4 In fact, Ferber's thorough (not selective) interpretation of the text on which the "esoterics" themselves rely so heavily/s suffic/ent by/tse~ to refute their attribution to Plato of an axiomatic system of principles. But is not Ferber's conclusion too pessimistic? What in fact necessitates it is his view that knowledge would involve an infallible /ogos or definition 06; 8o n.139). The Seventh Letter makes clear, however, that knowledge of the Forms, divine or human, must transcend logos with its inherent weakness, i.e., must be some sort of"nonpropositional " insight: an "infallible/ogos" is a contradiction in terms. Once we recognize that this insight, and not some logos, is Plato's ideal, we can see in the Seventh Letter indications that Plato thought we could attain this knowledge, though only "barely," fleetingly , and incommunicably. FRANCISCO J. GONZAL~Z Skidmore College Frank A. Lewis. Substance and Prediction in Aristotle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xvii + 37o. Cloth $44.5o. This book traces the development of Aristotle's views on substance and prediction from the Categories to the middle books of Metaphysics. It is divided into four parts. Part I: In the Categories Aristotle operates with two fundamental forms of predicasThe analysis of the SeventhLetter is in fact the part of the book that is completely new, a shorter version of the rest having been presented at the SymposiumPlatanicumin 1989 and now available in Understandingthe "Phaedrus":Pr~edings of the H symposium Pl~micum, ed. Livio Rossetti (Sankt Augusdn: Academia Verlag, 199~), i38-53. 4See K~mer's review of Ferber's PiatosIdee des Guten, 200: "Daft die Zurfickhaltung des Ungeschriebenen nicht 'ira Wesen der Sache', sondern in den Rezeptionsbedingungen der Subjekte begrOndet liegt, stellt Platon im 'Phaidros' und im 7. Brief eindeudg klar." Has Kr~maer ever read beyond 341e in the latter work? For the same error, see Giovanni Reale, P/at0 am/ Aristotle,trans. John R. Catan (Albany: State Univerrsity of New York Press, 199o), a5. BOOK REVIEWS 48 5 tion, the said-of and present-in relations, only the latter being a form of accidental predication. Concrete individuals such as individual men turn out to be primary substances because they are the basic subjects of every predicate. A notable feature of Lewis's interpretation of these forms of predication is that everything predicated of a primary substance is directly predicated of that substance. If Socrates is pale, then pale is not present-in him in virtue of a particular pale present-in him; it is directly presentin him. One motivation behind this one-step dependency is that it provides Aristotle with a response to the Third Man Argument. Part II: From this theory of predication Lewis constructs a theory of accidental compounds--for example, the compund of a man and pale. This compound is not identical with the man, since it ceases to exist when the man ceases to be pale. A consequence of this theory is that it allows Aristotle to explain what lies behind the fallacy...