Aristoteles, "Metaphysik Z." Erster Band: Einleitung, Text und Übersetzung. Zweiter band: Kommentar (review)

6o2 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:4 OCTOBER 199o I. F. Stone's Weekly was a legend for its attention to detail. It questioned the intentions of our politicians from McCarthy to Vietnam, gathering facts from here and there to piece together a jigsaw of deceit. Stone gave little credence to the ability of politicians to act from principles,just as he gives little credence to the power of philosophy to influence the values of a state. And so Socrates' antidemocradc students are said to be more responsible for the indictment than his scepticism. Academic philosophy today may be effete, but it was not so for Socrates. Nor it is true today for those who practice their ideas on the street. Socrates' persistent questioning revealed a dearth of values, the fact that no one knew himself nor human nature. It is the content of our speech that matters, not just our right to speak. I. F. Stone ignores Socrates' philosophy as plain foolishness. I. F. Stone was often one-sided, telling the story of a Political debate as the struggle between good and evil, and he does the same here. But reality does not work out this way. North Vietnam was no better than the South. Some McCarthy so shamelessly reviled were Stalinists. The democracy of Athens that Plato so disdained was corrupted to its core. But Stone prefers to let that scandal rest. The investigative technique that I. F. Stone perfected compiled information from independent sources until it formed a picture of the facts. This process has been known as fictionalization, because it involves projecting onto Persons motives and even thoughts they may not actually have had. Stone tries the same with Socrates, and we see his technique fail. We have no sayings left from Socrates. So the facts we piece together are themselves all taken from interpretations. Stone borrows from Xenophon and Plato willy-nilly, when it proves convenient. The result is not a picture that solves a jigsaw puzzle but a collage fashioned from different storytellers. Only now and then does Stone acknowledge the Socratic problem, which undoes Stone's technique, and worse, questions all that Stone has written. It may not be so bad to tell the story of a scandal as if it were a piece of fiction. But that is not how the goods are sold. D^VlD K. GLInDEN University of California, Riverside Michael Frede and Giinther Patzig. Aristoteles "'MetaphysikZ." Erster Band: Einleitung, Text und Obersetzung. Zweiter Band: Kommentar. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988. Pp. 121 (Vol. 1); 345 (Vol. 2). DM 148 (both volumes). Aristoteles "Metaphysik Z," by two eminent scholars of ancient philosophy, Michael Frede and Giinther Patzig, provides a Greek text and German translation of Book Z of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with a comprehensive commentary. Understanding of MetaphysicsZ--which explores the notion of o~o(~ct(commonly translated "substance")--is crucial for the assessment of Aristotle's metaphysics more generally and of his influence on later philosophical thought. Yet anyone who has seriously studied the text will acknowledge the difficulty of finding a coherent interpretation that accommodates the various claims to which Aristotle seems committed. If one thinks that Metaphysics Z BOOK REVIEWS 60 3 elaborates Aristotle's own position through criticism of alternative views, the task is to determine which claims are fundamental and to explain the apparent conflicts. Michael Frede and Gimther Patzig offer a powerful defense of a systematic reading of Metaphys- /cs Z and argue that their interpretation can be reconciled with the text as a whole. Their book is distinguished both by its richness of interpretive detail and by its sustained development of the controversial but deeply interesting view that Aristotle identifies oaSo(.awith individual form. The analysis is consistently subtle and illuminating. I shall confine my discussion to the main thesis. Scholars have suggested that Metaphysics Z revises the doctrine of the Categories, which treats individual physical objects as primary oa3os and have argued that Z awards the title instead to that which makes such objects be what they are--their essence or form. Form is traditionally conceived as a universal common to members of a species. This conception of form...