De Anima by Aristotle (review)

This is the overdue replacement of D. W. Hamlyn’s somewhat dismissive 1968 translation and commentary of the first two books of Aristotle’s De Anima. Hamlyn hardly did justice to this foundational treatise of Aristotle’s science of living beings: not only did he mistake it for a treatise on “the” philosophy of mind (then chastising Aristotle for not having addressed adequately “the” problems of “the” philosophy of mind), he also did not bother to translate the first book apart from two snippets.

Shields’s replacement is entirely free from such vices. It provides a new translation and commentary on the whole argument of De Anima, and offers a much more philosophically satisfying interpretation, which is based on a precise, charitable and tolerant, yet by no means uncritical, analysis of the text. The book also includes a general introduction, a note on the text, a discursive outline of the argument, a short but very useful glossary, bibliography, and indexes. If one takes into consideration the intricate textual issues, the enormous difficulty of the subject matter, and the veritable explosion of secondary literature since Hamlyn, Shields is remarkably concise.

The general introduction locates De Anima in the Aristotelian oeuvre and introduces the principles of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature, that is, his four-causal scheme, and his psychological hylomorphism. It also contains a relatively extensive discussion of a metaphysical problem construed for Aristotle’s application of the form-matter distinction to body and soul in De Anima (“Ackrill’s problem”). Here, Shields’s intent may be in part didactic: the discussion adverts that Aristotle’s conceptualization of the soul-body relation is—like all good philosophy—actually difficult. Next comes a discussion of the faculties of the soul: faculties in general, then the “main” faculties (nutrition, perception, and reason) in turn. Everywhere, Shields proceeds carefully. He gives brief and, as far as possible, uncontroversial characterizations, then canvasses possible difficulties and interpretive options.

Of course, I cannot go into a discussion of the details of the translation here, for there will always be particular passages on which experts will disagree. But, where I checked, I found it an astoundingly precise, faithful, and also clear rendering of the Greek text. I trust, therefore, that future Anglophone scholarship will accept Shields’s translation as a solid basis for future discussion. (Shields’s choice of David Ross’s 1961 Greek text, and also his positive assessment of Pawel Siwek’s critical 1965 edition invite further discussion. Arguably, Ross’s text is a critical edition only in an attenuated sense: he simply adopted Aurelius Foerster’s 1912 collations, to which he added many emendations but almost no manuscript evidence; whereas Siwek’s edition, though based on the collation of an unsurpassed 65 manuscripts out of slightly less than 100, seems to require independent codicological confirmation [see Paul Moraux’s 1968 Gnomon review of Antonio Jannone’s 1966 edition]. Siwek identifies nine independent, yet, as he claims, also mutually contaminated, manuscript groups. This result is problematic, inviting eclecticism in picking out the most convenient reading. We lack a critical edition of the De Anima that lives up to the standards of modern textual criticism.)

Shields’s commentary is likewise a solid basis for future discussion. Its reconstructions of the arguments are concise, undogmatic, and altogether genuinely helpful (which is not to say that it does not occasionally venture ambitious interpretations!). In particular, the identification and elucidation of structuring concepts, such as separability and homonymy, equip the reader with the right tools for an independent study of this difficult and engaging treatise. The commentary, I am sure, will serve as an indispensable aid for students as well as a stepping-stone for future research: it is all you need to bring yourself up-to-date on De Anima’s argument and the main interpretive currents.

Notwithstanding the undogmatic and tolerant attitude, neither the introduction nor the commentary is philosophically neutral. How could they be? Shields is...