Aristotle's Vision of Nature (review)

250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Man's Quest ]or Political Knowledge: The Study and Teaching o[ Politics in Ancient Times. By William Anderson. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1964. Pp. viii + 381. $8.O0.) Professor Anderson is a political scientist, and this book describes the early development of politics as a field of inquiry, from its origins to about 600 A.D.A planned second volume will complete what is probably the first comprehensive history of the study and teaching of politics . As Anderson explains in the Introduction, his work is a history of political science only in a very limited sense. He is not so much concerned with the findings of political study over the centuries, nor with the theories which have been formulated to explain and guide political conduct. He is primarily interested in the men, the methods, and the circumstances which have contributed most to the development of politics as a science. After tracing this development from the ancient Near East, through Greece, to the end of the Roman Empire, he concludes with a general epilogue on "Conditions Favoring Political Studies." Anderson expresses the hope that this broad historical perspective will lead to "improvement in the study and teaching of politics." The main burden of Anderson's book proves to be why "the ancient Greeks were the principal if not the sole originators of the study of politics in the West," and why this Greek impetus was not sustained during Hellenistic and Roman times. He concludes that, until the modern era, the Greeks were almost unique in enjoying the essential conditions for the scientific study of politics. These essential conditions, as he describes them, are: (1) a multiplicity of states within easy reach; (2) variety and change in governments; (3) freedom of speech and inquiry about political matters; (4) written records and accounts; (5) financial resources and educational institutions; and, most important, (6) a willingnessto adopt a social scientific attitude (his italics), which is at once secular, humanistic, and scientific. Not surprisingly, Aristotle emerges as the outstanding student and teacher of politics in the ancient world. One wonders, however, about the consistency of this choice with Anderson's depreciation of political theory and what he calls "utopian schemes" in political inquiry. These are humanistic ingredients which, regrettably, are often missing in the present social scientific attitude toward politics. Perhaps Anderson's book would be more instructive, and his avowed purpose better served, if he had let ancient political inquiry speak more eloquently for itself. JAMES F. DOYLe, Claremont Men's College Aristotle's Vision o] Nature. By Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. Edited with an Introduction by John Herman Randall, Jr., with the assistance of Charles H. Kahn and Harold A. Larrabee. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965.Pp. xi + 169.$4.50.) These four lectures on "The Philosophy of Aristotle" were delivered by the Graduate Faculties Dean of Columbia University at Union College, Schenectady, in 1930. The manuscript was not found until several years after his death in 1940. The volume includes, in addition to the lectures, a letter which Woodbridge wrote to Union College outlining his lectures, and over sixty pages of notes, which are published as an Appendix under the title "The Philosopher at Work: Preliminary Reflections." In this title, "the philosopher" refers both to Woodbridge and to Aristotle, for the author declares repeatedly that his aim is "to present Aristotle as a philosopher at work rather than to present him in his own time or in the history of thought" (p. x). The central theme is the continuity in Aristotle's thinking about the soul or life of man in the context of the other natural (physical) processes and the natural development of physical powers and capacities into society and language "as the medium in which what existence is finds its ultimate expression" (p. x). The fact that one moving body may move another is relatively unimportant (for Aristotle) BOOK REVIEWS 251 when compared with the fact that genetic processes issue in results which are so different from their origin. This view of motion carries him at last to a theology which is rather unique in the history of thought.., and which lays emphasis on...