Aristotle's Two Systems (review)

Book Reviews Daniel W. Graham. Aristotle's Two Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1987. Pp. xiii + 359. $66.oo. This book suffers from the self-conscious labors of the author to assert his thesis. That thesis, simply put, is that Aristotle had two systems, one developed in the organon based on a correlation of logic with ontology, the other the familiar hylomorphic-based system of the physical and metaphysical works. Professor Graham maintains that these systems are not only disdnct but that the first is historically antecedent to the second, and even though there is evidence of continuing appeal to the first position in the development of the second, they are "two incompatible philosophical systems" (15). Much that Graham says recommends the view that (i) the hylomorphic orientation plays little or no role in the organon. That much is solid scholarship that we all must come to terms with. It is another thing to claim (2) that Aristotle did not have hylomorphic views when he wrote the organon, and still another to say (3) that he abandoned the one conceptual scheme for the other. That (2) does not follow readily from 0) is already widely argued in the literature. The doctrinal idiom in which (3) is articulated goes back to Andronicus, and has been renounced by most scholars in this century. Interlaced with these points is the clear difference between difference, incommensurability , and incompatibility. Graham has shown difference, argued for incommensurability , and claimed incompatibility. That he persists in an equivocation between incommensurability and incompatibility obscures the difficulties and weakens his argument. Even his excellent analyses of the growth of views about causation (chap. 6) and actuality (chap. 7), which constitute the heart of the book, are more suggestive than decisive or coercive, and the bold claims of the "two systems theory," of which Graham seems so proud, detract from, rather than reinforce, the value of these central studies. This is a frustrating book. It is filled with so many abbreviations for formulas and definitions that they prove distracting rather than economical, and their significance ranges from the trivial to the esoteric, often leaving the reader to ponder whether it is worth tracing the abbreviations to their source to discover the significance of this or that occasional allusion. A linguistic model for the author's method along the lines of Saussure's diachronic/synchronic distinction, is introduced in the first chapter, but since it receives no subsequent attention it seems little more than excess conceptual baggage. Furth and Frede receive careful attention several places in the argument of the text, but stand as shadowy paradigms for unitarian and developmental approaches in ways that never seem to get cashed out in the text. Even though Graham exhibits [4391 44 ~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28" 3 JULY n99o remarkable erudition in his expositions and analyses, his claims for hns own conclusions ale not related to other scholarship, lie says he is the "'only person who holds the Two Systems Theory with all its ramifications" (ix). But P. Gohlke advanced a similar thesis m terms of the "'potentia-actuf" doctrine not being in the earlier works (which was refuted by A. Mansion): so did Tannery (refuted by Rodier). Nor does he cite Walter Lcszel, who directly denies Graham's position by showing how the "atomic substantialism " of the logical works serves as an ontological frame for the whole corpus (see Logi~ and Metaphysics in Aristotle, Padova, 197o). In claiming "Jaeger's reconstruction of the early Metaphysics is generally accepted today as a secure landmark of Aristotle's development" (l n9), he has Ross swallowing this whole in ways Ross never did. and ignores subsequent scholars, including Reale whom, though, he treats at length on other matters. In the same spot he notes Ross's own conclusions ab~mt the early character of Physics t and 2, without worrying about how this encroaches on his own two systems theory. Early on he appeals to Owen as a precursor of his theory without taking account of Owen's pluralistic hypothesis, which makes Graham's systems account basically implausible. In the course of analysis, he treats matter as "'the final substratum that...