Die Aristotelische Modaltheorie (review)

250 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY mirror a similar constancy in his metaphysics. In the Republic "[t]he Forms are... treated as paradigms which the things of this world imperfectly resemble" (~l) whereas in the later dialogues, including the Laws (135-36), "the Forms, if they appear at all, are no longer treated as paradigms" (21). Stalley's developmental interpretation of Plato's metaphysics does not mesh well with his unitarian interpretation of Plato's political philosophy. First of all, Stalley says that Plato's point at Laws 739 A-E is that the city of the Republic "would be possible only among gods or children of gods but it isstill theparadigm, or standard, of a constitution" (93, my emphasis). Does Plato, then, in the Laws believe in paradigms but not in paradigmatic Forms? If so, what account are we to give of these paradigms? Secondly, Plato's theory of paradigmatic Forms provides the metaphysical underpinning of the city of the Republic. How can this city remain a theoretical ideal in the Laws when PlatO no longer believes in paradigmatic Forms ? How are we to conceive of the city of the Republic without paradigmatic Forms? Thirdly, there is the question of the metaphysical underpinning of the city of the Laws itself. The laws of this city are "an embodiment or expression of reason" (~8), in particular the reason of the original lawgiver and the senior members of the nocturnal council. In formulating or revising law what do these individuals think about? The primary object of their thought is the end or goal of correct law--virtue (37). Consequently, Plato insists at the climax of the Laws that these individuals must understand how the four virtues are one (963AI-964A5) and be able to explain what virtue is (964A5-966B9). It is plausible to suppose that in this passage Plato is referring to his theory of paradigmatic Forms. If Stalley is correct in thinking that Plato no longer subscribes to such a theory in the Laws, he owes his reader an account of the basis of the "objectivist view of morality" (41) he does find there. The question whether Plato posits paradigmatic Forms in the Laws is not a side issue in the interpretation of the dialogue; it is the central issue. The city of the Laws is more closely related to the city of the Republic than Stalley claims. Although he correctly points out that the city of the Laws is to some extent an ideal (93-95), he does not appreciate the extent to which the city of the Republic is a practical possibility (Rep. 499C7-D6). The relation between the two is not that of theory to practice but that of two degrees of practicality and ideality. The city of the Republic is more ideal than that of the Laws because it is more unified, and the city of the Laws is more practical since it is closer to the institutions of fourth-century Greece. DAVID KEYT The Institute for Advanced Study and The University of Washington Gerhard Seel, Die Aristotelische Modaltheorie. Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie, vol. 16. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 198~, Pp. xix + 486. NP. The expressed aim of this book is "to reconstruct for the first time the whole Aristotelian theory of the modi on the basis of an actual analysis of the crucial texts" (xiv). BOOK REVIEWS 251 The author stresses the fact that the reconstruction has to take into account at least On Interpretation, Prior Analytics I, 3 and 8-22, and Metaphysics ix; but passages from other works should also be examined. He sets for himself two criteria: (a) the reconstructed theorem should be consistent with the proved Aristotelian usage of modal concepts; (b) the reconstructed theorem must not be in contradiction with the explicitly formulated theorems (xvi). Seel's reconstruction is linked with the modal theory of Nicolai Hartmann, using the theorems and the investigative postures of the latter as a pattern and, at the same time, critically reappraising Hartmann's own interpretation of Aristotle's modal theory. Seel utilizes for his purposes primarily the general modal theory which Hartmann had offered in his M6glichkeit und Wirklichkei~as...