{"id":64549,"date":"2025-10-07T07:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T06:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/?p=64549"},"modified":"2025-10-07T15:47:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:47:47","slug":"a-fragment-of-aristotles-lost-eudemus-in-tertullians-de-anima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2025\/10\/07\/a-fragment-of-aristotles-lost-eudemus-in-tertullians-de-anima\/","title":{"rendered":"A fragment of Aristotle\u2019s lost Eudemus in Tertullian\u2019s De Anima"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Aristotle is certainly one of the most foundational, influential, and therefore heavily commented on and thoroughly studied figures in the history of philosophy. One would think that we have the full picture by now and there wouldn’t be much to add beyond further nuance or clarification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, what if I were to say that most of Aristotle\u2019s writings have been the subject of little study?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, such a comment would seem plainly absurd. It is, however, entirely accurate, first and foremost, because the greater part of Aristotle\u2019s output \u2013 including everything he himself published \u2013 has been lost. What remains extant is a set of lecture notes, heavily edited and of unsure origin, which only overtook Aristotle\u2019s published writings in popularity and widespread dispersion towards the end of the third century AD. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding those lost writings, contemporary scholarship has come to a dead end: relying heavily on late-ancient authors, who only had second-hand access to Aristotle\u2019s lost writings and were committed to the task of synthesising the views of Aristotle with those of Plato, we end up with the picture that the views contained in Aristotle\u2019s lost works are apparently at odds with the positions which he arrives at in his extant writings. Scholarship has come, therefore, to the all too neat conclusion that these lost works would have represented only an \u201cearly\u201d or \u201cimmature\u201d Platonic stage in Aristotle\u2019s philosophical development \u2013 hence, not worthy of further investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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From left to right: Origen, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my article, \u201cA Fragment of Aristotle\u2019s Lost Eudemus<\/em> in Tertullian\u2019s de Anima<\/em><\/a>,\u201d I aim to remedy both methodological and philosophical problems in previous approaches to the reconstruction of Aristotle\u2019s lost works, here focusing on the content of one lost dialogue in particular, titled \u201cEudemus, or, On the Soul.\u201d I show that the best way to access the content of Aristotle\u2019s Eudemus<\/em> is by examining a set of earlier<\/em> figures who have been greatly overlooked as reporters of Aristotle\u2019s lost writings, namely the Fathers of the Church, who have long been understood as uninterested in and lacking access to the thought of Aristotle. Of particular importance among them is Tertullian, who is the first theologian to write in Latin and is in many ways the father of Western theology. Tertullian devotes a long section of his treatise, de Anima<\/em>, to discussing the positions of Aristotle which, on my view, he found in the Eudemus<\/em>. Moreover, Tertullian\u2019s account is paralleled in two central figures of early Greek Christianity, Clement and Origen of Alexandria, both of whom also discuss Aristotle\u2019s views in similar terms, and yet whose comments have likewise been overlooked by scholars working on the fragments of Aristotle\u2019s lost works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In looking to these earlier readers of Aristotle\u2019s lost works, we find invaluable reports that show that the understanding of the soul put forth in the Eudemus<\/em> is \u2013 contrary to earlier scholarship \u2013 rather in harmony with Aristotle\u2019s extant treatise on the soul, de Anima<\/em>: namely, while de Anima<\/em> hints at the separability and immortality of the intellect, the Eudemus<\/em> developed this view in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My study serves then not only to provide new information about one of Aristotle\u2019s most important dialogues, but also to give us new insight into how his writings were distributed across the Roman empire and how his ideas were being interpreted and utilised in the early Christian Church. Here, we have the opportunity to peer into the libraries of three of the founding figures of Christian thought, in Roman North Africa and in Alexandria. Therein we find a dialogue, the name of its author familiar to us, Aristotle \u2013a dialogue aiming to answer some of the most basic yet most profound questions about the nature of the human soul \u2013 yet, which is lost to us today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The article “A fragment of Aristotle\u2019s lost Eudemus in Tertullian\u2019s De Anima<\/a>“, by Franziska van Buren-Penev, is out now in the Classical Association’s journal, The Classical Quarterly<\/em>. Access is free for a limited time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Aristotle is certainly one of the most foundational, influential, and therefore heavily commented on and thoroughly studied figures in the history of philosophy. One would think that we have the full picture by now and there wouldn’t be much to add beyond further nuance or clarification. Yet, what if I were to say that most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":64553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6],"tags":[7088,212,1897,56],"coauthors":[11909],"class_list":["post-64549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-humanities","tag-caq","tag-classical-association","tag-classical-studies","tag-classics-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64549"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64785,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64549\/revisions\/64785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64549"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=64549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}