On Aristotle, On Interpretation, 1–3 by Boethius, and: On Aristotle, On Interpretation, 4–6 by Boethius (review)

Boethius, “the first of the scholastics,” had an influence on the Latin Middle Ages that is difficult to overestimate. His translations of and commentaries on Aristotle’s philosophical and logical works were the main conduit between the Greek classical culture and the early Middle Ages. His two commentaries on Aristotle’s Peri Hermenias (“On Interpretation”), the longer of which is translated in the present two volumes (the first covering Books 1–3 and the second Books 4–6), were particularly influential.

Unfortunately, those seeking to understand this aspect of Boethius will find little to encourage them here. Aquinas is mentioned once (on the book jacket), and Augustine only a few times. About other great writers of the Middle Ages this work is silent.

The translation is robust, although there are a number of incorrect page references to the Meiser edition of the Latin text. The translator has been careful, for the most part, to translate the same Latin term by the same English one and (equally important) to have the same English term translated by the same Latin term. For example, ‘statement-making sentence’ is used to translate only ‘oratio enuntiativa’ and ‘single statement-making sentence’ translates only ‘una oratio enuntiativa’ (although, on 1:80, ‘de eo quod est aliquid vel non est’ is translated as both ‘about something being or not being’ and ‘about what is or is not something’). The translation is also so literal as to be clunky: for example, on 1:89, ‘quoniam autem sunt haec quidem rerum universalia’ is translated as ‘since of things some are universal.’ But there are no obvious or serious errors.

The main problem is the lack of an apparatus. There are many places where footnotes would have been helpful. Although Boethius’s work is a commentary and an explanation of Aristotle’s text, his Latin is often difficult to understand in translation, and his explanations often require further explanation. For example, on 1:82, ‘enuntiatio alicuius ab aliquo’ is translated as ‘stating something from something else.’ But this is Aristotle’s shorthand for ‘stating something by removing some term from some other term.’ Those who are familiar with the subject will follow what is going on, but then they are likely to be reading it in the original Latin, rather than in a translation aimed at a general audience. In this regard, the work compares poorly to works like John Longeway’s masterly translation and discussion of Ockham’s treatment of the Posterior Analytics (Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham, Notre Dame, 2007). Longeway is dealing with a text of similar size, but also provides a 140-page introduction, a 16-page glossary, and over 70 pages of notes, with the entire book retailing for a relatively modest $58.00, whereas the present work has an 8-page introduction, a 3-page glossary, and 9 pages of notes, but costs $260.00 for the two volumes.

The introduction (by Richard Sorabji) is short, and duplicated in the second volume. It covers many of the points that intrigued the scholastic writers, but without explaining how they developed them. For example, his discussion of Boethius’s distinction between written/spoken names, which signify by convention, and mental names, which signify naturally, does not mention Ockham, even though Boethius’s text (1:30) was the main inspiration for Ockham’s nominalism, that is, the thesis that we should not multiply entities according to the multiplicity of conventional terms. This is because (1) there is not always an exact correspondence between conventional language and mental language— sometimes a proposition in conventional language may have more terms than the mental proposition corresponding to it—and (2) we only have to postulate the existence of a being or ontological category...