Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 395 not wish to redate the Timaeus and finds Forms in other late dialogues, including the Sophist, where they are "principes de r~alit~ et de connaissance." Here he opposes all unidimensional interpretations and identifies three levels of investigation: the ontological analysis of the communion of Forms, the epistemological analysis of 86~ct, and the logical analysis of the nature of propositions. These combine to provide an explanation of the referent of false opinion--non-being understood as otherness--and of the mechanism of erroneous judgment, which completes the Platonic theory of opinion while defending it against the Protagorean claim that all beliefs are true and retaining the reference to objective reality insisted upon in the middle dialogues. There is an appendix listing the occurrences of 86~ct and 8o~t~etv in the dialogues , a topical bibliography, four indices (citations of ancient texts, citations of modern texts, Greek terms, major subjects), and an analytical table of contents. This extensive scholarly apparatus, which would itself suffice to make this a useful book, is a welcome adornment to a work carefully researched and lucidly written. JAMES WAYNE DYE Northern Illinois University Hippocrates G. Apostle. Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Translation with Commentaries and Glossary. Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1981. pp. xi + 3~8. $19.~o (cloth); $9.6o (paper). This most recent of Apostle's commented translations of Aristotelian treatises appears at a time of heightened interest in the Posterior Analytics, the most recent evidence of which is the latest Symposium Aristotelicum proceedings (Aristotle on Science: the "Posterior Analytics," ed. E. Berti: Padua, 1981 ). However, it would not be accurate to say that Apostle's work is a part of the current wave, for his interests and methods differ significantly from those of other scholars. I will return to his style of interpretation in a moment, after discussing the translation. Apostle's version of the text is evidently done with care and aims in general at a readable, if not always graceful, English (this is, after all, the Posterior Analytics). Explanatory phrases or augmentations which do not strictly correspond to any Greek expressions are frequently included in the translation but enclosed in square brackets , a useful practice which alerts the reader to the more interpretative aspects of the rendering. On the whole, Apostle uses standard English equivalents for Aristotle's more technical expressions, although there are some significant variations such as 'whatness' for ~ ~oxt (e.g., "in the whatness" for ~v ~(0xt ~oxt). In an effort to give those who do not read Greek as much information as possible about the text, Apostle sometimes differentiates between uses of the same English word to translate distinct Greek terms by italicizing one use: thus, 'knowledge' is yv6)otg while 'knowledge' is g~tto~tr I. (Unfortunately, ovlxl3e[3rln6gis sometimes rendered in English as 'accident' and sometimes as 'attribute'). Greek-English and English-Greek glossaries provide a key to the principles of the translation; the latter of these is actually a lexicon, including discussions of the meanings of Aristotle's technical terms (and some more 396 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ordinary terms, also). In a few cases, the italicized/roman distinction is used in a misleading way. We find both 'substance' and 'substance,' suggesting distinct Greek expressions, when what we actually have is cr0o~et in all cases: Apostle has simply marked two different senses of the same word by in effect opting for two different translations (the same thing happens with 'universal'/'universal' and xct06~.ov). Since these are matters of interpretation, they should not be presented in a way which suggests that they rest on textual distinctions. Apostle's commentary is in a number of ways rather idiosyncratic. In general, he has comparatively little to say about the interpretations offered by other commentators (he makes a very sweeping criticism of Jonathan Barnes on p. iii, but he only sees fit to say where he differs with Barnes on a few occasions, and then usually not very thoroughly). Instead, he seems to find it presumptuous to suggest that Aristotle may have made mistakes (especially logical ones), and he devotes most of his comments either to indicating difficulties of interpretation (sometimes with suggestions...