Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy, and: The Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna (review)

aOOK REVIEWS 605 establish the semantic parameters, endless confusion might have been forestalled" (297) . Is the Christian doctrine of virgin birth really dependent upon faulty semantics? Goodman further opines that Job should not be faulted for owning slaves, nor Saadia for being insensitive to that fact, because neither the author of Job nor Saadia "holds Job responsible for social offenses lying beyond the horizon of social consciousness accessible to a conscientious householder of Job's day" (164). One almost expects to be told that the suffering of Job was patently unfair despite his cruelty to animals, as evidenced by his offering them as sacrifices. Goodman's overwhelming erudition is evident on every page; the reader may have been better served by a small dose of selfrestraint ." If Goodman is overgenerous in his search for parallels and illustrative materials, he is quite sparse when it comes to textual information. The reader is informed only by a hint in the Preface (xiv) that Goodman's work is a translation of Joseph Kafih's Arabic edition and Hebrew translation of Saadia's Commentao (Jerusalem, 1972/73 ). Despite that acknowledgment of Kafih's work, and the mention of his name in the notes quite often, no explicit bibliographical reference is ever given. Goodman ignores all textual problems, including the fact that the name The Book of Theodicy, which he uses as the tide of his work, appears in Kafih's edition only as a superscription which may not even be Saadia's (since it is followed by a reference to Saadia in the third person). Goodman 's interests run to the theological/aesthetical, yet some technical information would have been most welcome. All in all, Goodman's rendition of Saadia's Job is a very important contribution to theological discourse in English, to Biblical studies, and to philosophical exegesis. It will help make this important Medieval Jewish composition available to a wider audience , and for this Prof. Goodman is to be commended. DANIEL J. LASKER Ben-Gurion Universityof the Negev Deborah L. Black. Logic and Aristotle'sRhetoric and Poeticsin Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Texts and Studies, Volume VII. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 199o. Pp. xii + 289. Cloth, $69.~ 3. Salim Kemat. The Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna. Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science, Texts and Studies, Volume IX. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. Pp. vi + 283. Cloth, $74.36 . These texts are commendable additions to the current scholarship on the treatment of topics in the aesthetics of Aristotle's Poeticsand Rhetoricin the classics of Islamic philosophy from Al-Kindi to Averroes, being natural successors to the pioneering research in Goodman's introduction, which is overlong and diffuse, could also have benefitted from a strong editorial hand. 606 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:4 OCTOBER 1992 this field by Ismail Dahiyat and Charles E. Butterworth? Both authors restrict their domain to the aesthetics embedded in the Arabic version of the Aristotelian type of organon which was transmitted to the Muslims by the Alexandrian schools. The authors focus on the question of the philosophical import of the adoption by Muslim scholars of the Alexandrian context theory. The latter theory classifies both "rhetoric" and "poetics" as belonging to the organon of Aristotle. Adoption of the context theory influences Muslim views on the cognitive dimensions of poetry as well as the semiotic significance of the grammar embedded in ordinary language and logic. The text by Black is a meticulous scholarly investigation of the relevant primary Greek and Alexandrian sources as well as the poetics and rhetoric of AI-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. To begin with, she successfully refutes and hopefully once and for all buries the misinterpretation that the Muslim adoption of the context theory was due to a misunderstanding of Aristotle's logical work, as has been claimed by Wolfhart Heinrichs and others. Instead, using the two main facets in Islamic logic of "conception" and "assent," she examines the various ways in which the aesthetics of poetics and rhetoric are related to imaginative concepts and a special type of assent. According to her, the adoption of context theory was due to "a serious and sophisticated interest in the semantics of poetical and rhetorical...