Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption I. Symposium Aristotelicum (review)

The Fifteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, held in 1999 in Holland, concentrated, as has become usual, on one text, the first book of On Generation and Corruption. Twelve prominent specialists in ancient philosophy, supported by constructive criticism of the other (no less prominent) participants, offer their interpretative essays on the separate chapters of GC I. Though addressed primarily to scholars with some expertise in Aristotle's philosophy, this book is definitely a good read also for graduate students interested in the subject.

The essays do not aim at a running commentary of the text but concentrate on the fundamental physical concepts Aristotle tried to clarify in GC I: generation and corruption, alteration and growth, action and passion, contact and mixture, etc. Coming both chronologically and logically after Physics and De caelo, and before Meteorologica and most of the biological writings, GC I provides a refined conceptual ground for Aristotle's theory of the four elements (GC II) and thus for his general qualitative theory of nature. As often is the case, he proceeds from the theories of the Presocratics (mostly Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and the atomists) and Plato, so that GC I is doxographical material and criticism. Accordingly, many essays deal with two recurrent issues: how consistent is Aristotle's argumentation with relation to his other writings on nature and how to evaluate his exposition and criticism of the Presocratics.

For reasons of space, I will not try to mention all the individual contributions to the volume. Suffice is to say that this valuable collection, filled with original readings and interpretations of the text, represents the state of the art of current Aristotelian studies as pursued by analytically minded scholars—the majority of the contributors. This means that such issues as the structure and cogency of the Aristotelian argument are analyzed in depth, whereas other issues like Aristotle's intellectual development or relative chronology of his works are set aside. Indeed, in the introduction to the volume Myles Burnyeat offers a nonchronological interpretation of the Aristotelian corpus:

Never mind in what order the several treatises were composed. Perhaps they were all composed concurrently, gradually, over a considerable period of time, with constant adjustments to fit each to the others and to the evolving overall plan. . . . In a certain sense, then, all of them are contemporaneous with each other.

(21–22)

Meanwhile, in the sequence of Aristotle's "physical" writings, logic and chronology seem to coincide, which relieves us from the need to prefer one at the expense of the other. Aristotle's overall plan to expose his physical philosophy was made in advance both because he was a systematical philosopher and because he relied on the scheme peculiar to many Presocratic writings (Plato followed it in Timaeus): from archai to cosmology and further through "meteorology" to "physiology," "embryology," etc.

Though much disagreement remains among the authors concerning some specific issues, many essays reveal a common tendency to save Aristotle from inconsistencies. None of them is concealed, but as a rule their thorough discussion ends up with a harmonizing conclusion that makes Aristotle look more consistent than he was thought before. Thus, Jacques Brunschwig finds that chapter 1.1 is contradictory and believes that Aristotle disliked this, too; that is why, after this "false start," he wrote a more consistent introduction, 1.2 (60). David Sedley greatly improves Aristotle's discussion of Democritus by a purely philological method: he relocates the lines 316b9–14 to a more suitable place (72–75). Keimpe Algra argues, against previous commentator C. J. F. Williams (Aristotle's De Generatione et Corruptione [Oxford 1982]), that no inconsistency remains between GC I.3 and Physics II.8, where Aristotle discusses not being simpliciter (110–20). Sarah Broadie and David Charles, dealing with a controversial issue of prime matter as a material substratum of the elements' change, come to different conclusions, both of which, however, tend to explain away this intrinsically incoherent concept.

I...