Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 3or the ill-proved but accepted chronological ordering of the dialogues, or think to call for a dramatic ordering of those dialogues with wordings which permit itY Many contributors do, however, challenge the systematicist or idealist conceptions of philosophy that have led readers to mistake dramatized communicative interactions for expository, monological tractates. Philosophic practitioners interested in developing or learning the dialogical way of reading the dialogues will heed Dalfen's point that "Plato tries to show.., by means of the fiterary-artistic form of the dialogue, that philosophy is... the convergence of the subject-matter with concrete people in particular situations, and that its questions and possible answers.., relate.., to... their existence" (924). They will heed Roochnik, in his response to Irwin's doxographic anticontextualism, when he says, "there is no such thing as a distorting context in the.., dialogues. Every... detail that describes the characters, every example a speaker uses,.., all the jokes, need to be taken in... when the reader attempts to understand the philosophical import of the dialogues" (187). They will heed Bowen's statement that: "Given the double nature of the dialogues , to interpret them requires first the study of each as intellectual drama, a study that includes.., its language, style.., as well as examination of the.., dialectical structure of the.., conversation constituting the action of the dialogue" (6o). Such readers will implement heuristically his stronger statement that "there is no intrinsic difference between such analysis.., and that of a tragedy by Euripides or a comedy by Aristophanes." And they will be grateful to Griswold for having sought, in this volume, to do something about the fact that "surprisingly little has been done in the way of detailed readings of the texts.., in their literary integrity" (15) and for seeking to explore "the sense in which Plato felt that dialogue is the appropriate response to the human condition" (l 4).3 VICTORINO TEJERA SUNY, Stony Brook Jonathan Lear. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xi + 328. Cloth, $39.5o. Paper, St 2.95. Lear describes this book as a "philosophical introduction" to Aristotle. He intends it to be accessible to nonspecialists, and to enable them to read Aristotle (in translation) themselves. He does not attempt to tell all, nor does he attempt a defense of his interpretations. Rather, he wants to enable the reader to encounter Aristotle for himor herself. For the most part, he succeeds. Lear takes seriously Aristotle's claims that all men by nature desire to know and that philosophy begins in wonder. I mean seriously: he is not repeating these well- " See, e.g., E. Munk, Die natiirlicheOrdnungderplatonischen Schriften (Berlin: Dfimmler, t857). Bythe "natural" ordering Munk meant much the same as the "dramatic" ordering of the dialogues. Like Dostoyevsky, I would add, and his dialogical interpreter Mikhail Bakhtin. 302 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:2 APRIL 1991 known phrases in order to spur small groups of wide-eyed eighteen-year-olds ever forward in a quest for peripatetic wisdom. His book explains what it is for Aristotle-and others--to desire by nature to know. As a result, Lear discusses nature, desire, and knowledge, in addition to what knowledge is supposed to be knowledge of. Indeed, Lear suggests that his book be seen as an explication of that first line of the Metaphysics. First, the would-be student of Aristotle needs to know what it is to have a nature. This takes up the second chapter. Since Aristotle believes that a thing's (or a creature's) nature is an inner principle of change, Lear devotes the second chapter to Aristotle's account of change, and includes Aristotle's discussion of the infinite and of time. Next, Lear takes up man's nature, leading the reader through On theSoul. A discussion of desire (including happiness, virtue, and incontinence) follows. Finally, having taken the reader through nature, change, man's nature and desire, Lear takes on the understanding of the structure of reality. In his sixth and final chapter, Lear guides the reader through Aristotle's logic, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics and theology . It has been a fast tour, but it makes good sense...