Les Cyniques Grecs. Fragments et témoignages (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 347 Dancy ignores is simply that it forces one to attribute to Aristotle a realist principle9 But is any instance of "Ifx is G then x is necessarily DG" true where DG is the definition of G and the "if 9 . . then" is read as entailment? For Aristotle, the answer is yes, if G is restricted to (secondary) substance terms9 There have been disagreements among commentators about whether or not we should understand 1006b28-34 as generalizable only to terms (or things) such as man--that is, secondary substances. Dancy ignores this too. He is also disinclined to take seriously Aristotle's indications that his opponent is a monist9 Why? The last part of the book, chapters 3-6, is the most interesting9Regrettably, it is marred, as is the whole book, by the air of a private discussion to which the public is admitted only reluctantly . Still, this is the best part of Dancy's book. He takes seriously Aristotle's caveat that the arguments for noncontradiction are elenctic, and alone among those who have discussed the passage, he makes an effort to reconstruct the precise position against which Aristotle argues9 Oddly enough, Dancy does not deal with the Eleatics and Heraclitus9 Perhaps this is because he misinterprets the direction of the argument in 4.4: he takes Aristotle as claiming monism to be a consequence of denying noncontradiction, a consequence in which he is not interested9 But what Aristotle really says is that it is a cause of denying it or perhaps a consequence of a cause (see Ph. 1.2). Whatever the reason, Dancy chooses to concentrate on the presuppositions of one group of opponents only--those parodied in Plato's Euthydemus and in the De Sophisticis Elenchis . The treatment is interesting. The main point is that sophists cannot accomodate change-they do not desire to, of course, but Aristotle, a natural scientist, does. The sophists cannot understand how one and the same thing could be not-P and then P. For what, in such circumstances , would constitute the sameness of the thing? This position can be articulated in various ways. The sophists might be said to think that all the attributes of a thing are essential to it, so that every change would be a destruction9 Or they might think that a thing is nothing but a collection of attributes, and it follows that nothing survives change. But in either case contradiction is impossible since, appearances notwithstanding, "a is P" and "a is not-P" do not have the same subject9Aristotle's objections to these positions seem to be that they violate common sense and, moreover, cannot account for the operations of language and understanding. His reasons for the latter claim are the subject of chapters 4 and 6, in which the motivations for Aristotle's views on reference are sympathetically examined. Dancy has the ability to recreate for us Aristotle's intellectual situation, the problems he faced, and the alternatives available to him for their resolution9 In this lies the book's value9 It is not however simply a cavil or somehow "unphilosophical" to complain of the book's style, which seriously affects its accessibility9 MOHAN IVIATTHEN University of Calgary Les Cyniques Grecs." Fragments et tdmoignages. By L6once Paquet. Collection ~ Philosophica, no. 4. (Ottawa: Editions de l'Universit6 d'Ottawa, 1975. Pp. 304) Die hier anzuzeigende Sammlung verdankt ihre Entstehung der Uberzeugung, dab das Interesse an den Zeugnissen der antiken Philosophie auch heute noch keineswegs auf den Kreis der die alten Sprachen beherrschenden Spezialisten beschr~inkt sei und dab daher ein Bedtirfnis nach l]bersetzungen dieser Zeugnisse bestehe. Dieses Bediirfnis werde hinsichtlich der Koryph~ien der antiken Philosophie--Paquet nennt als Beispiele Platon, Aristoteles, Cicero und Plotin--seit langem befriedigt. Aber auch for die schwerer zug/inglichen Bereiche der antiken Philosophie wie for die Philosophie der Vorsokratiker, der Stoiker, der Epikureer und der Skeptiker' l~igen i Paquet hatte auch noch die Sophisten nennenkOnnen,ftir die Jean-Paul Dumont, Les Sophistes."Fragments et tdmoignages traduits et prdsentds (Paris: P.U.F., 1969)eine entsprechende Sammlung publiziert hat. 348 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY jetzt Sammlungen vor, in denen die hauptsachlichen Texte in Ubersetzung--gemeint ist immer...