A History of Greek Philosophy. Volume Six. Aristotle: An Encounter (review)

Book Reviews W. K. C. Guthrie. A History of Greek Philosophy. Volume Six. Aristotle: An Encounter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1981. Pp. vi + 456. $59.5 o. Fifty years after Guthrie's first publications on Aristotle, this monument of scholarship has reached its final volume because of "a stroke in the summer of 1979," as the author tells us in his Preface. The work lacks chapters on the Politics and the Poetics, but there are no other obvious signs of incompleteness. The bibliographies are full and up-to-date. The treatment of topics is well-rounded. Like the earlier volumes, this one is aimed explicitly at the serious student, and read along with Aristotle, it will be a great help. Greek is quoted freely, though never without accompanying translations into English. The book begins with a long and thorough discussion of Aristotle's life, resting on a careful study of the evidence. It then proceeds to report what is known about the doctrines contained in Aristotle's early writings. Thirdly, comes a brilliant essay, "The Mind of Aristotle," which contains observations especially useful to one who is beginning the study of this author. Guthrie remarks on Aristotle's characteristic way of making a "tentative ... approach to an enquiry and ... readiness to proceed by ... trial and error." (9o) In this way Aristotle will "carry a line of thought as far as it will go, and if it leads nowhere, simply drop it and try another." (9~) There is "constant anxiety to give due consideration to the opinion of others." (9 l) These features of Aristotle's writings produce apparent inconsistencies which confuse the unwary. A further source of apparent inconsistency lies, Guthrie cautions us, in Aristotle's sense of humor. In many passages, even though he "speaks gravely," (355 n) he "pokes fun." (247) The remaining three-quarters of the volume present "a more systematic consideration of the various branches of Aristotelian philosophy." (5) Guthrie begins with a discussion of what he calls "Aristotelian teleology." Though he does not avail himself of recent discussion of teleology by philosophers of science, he quotes some philosophizing biologists, Monod, Bernard, Needham, and Thorpe, to the effect that Aristotle was right in holding that nature is teleological. His close knowledge of Aristotle leads him to defend the correct view that the concept of purpose does not require any awareness of the purpose to be achieved. Thus he rejects the claims of philosophers of the generation before his, among them, Alfred Cyril Ewing, for example, whom Guthrie quotes as saying that "it is extraordinarily difficult to see what such a thing as unconscious purpose could be." (lo 7 n) In addition Guthrie rebuts Mrs. Grene's claim that for Aristotle "purposive action.., is action involving deliberate choice. Nature, on the other hand, does not deliberate." (quoted by Guthrie, 0o9), by quoting Aristotle: "Art does not deliberate either." Physics, 199 b 26, quoted on ao9) [~891 390 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The section on Aristotle's logic begins with a quotation of Lukasiewicz's warning that philosophers should "cease to write about logic or its history before having acquired a solid knowledge of what is called 'mathematical logic.' It would otherwise be a waste of time for them as well as for their readers." (135 n) Guthrie acknowledges his fear that he is wasting our time by expressing the "hope that a historian of Aristotle's thought in general may be excused this test." (135 n) In this chapter, as elsewhere, however, the defects result not from ignorance of twentiethcentury philosophy but from knowledge of so-called traditional logic and other nineteenth -century lore. When Guthrie is faithful to Aristotle's Greek, he is enlightening. When he tries to explain Aristotle by reference to Stebbing's Modem Introduction to Logic, where Guthrie thinks that we can find "the rules of the syllogism simply set out," (156 n) he fails to notice that these rules are not Aristotle's rules. What the reader of Aristotle needs are comments chapter by chapter on his logical writings, and Guthrie's bibliography lists some of the twentieth-century scholars who are little by little following the mind of Aristotle in his writings...