This second volume of The Hellenistic Philosophers is strictly ancillary to the translations and commentaries which appear in vol. 1. Whereas vol. 1 is designed to be usable on its own, vol. 2 provides the sort of supplementary information required by readers familiar with Greek and Latin. It is not designed to be read in isolation.

The principal object of vol. 2 is to supply the originals of the texts which are translated in vol. 1. These are sometimes presented here in longer excerpts than appear in vol. 1, and in such cases the additional portions are marked by smaller print. Occasionally an entire extra text is added, also in smaller print, and designated with a lower case (instead of the usual upper case) bold letter.

The texts are accompanied by notes. These do not attempt systematic or exhaustive commentary, but offer cross-references, information on context and on further relevant texts, and discussion of obscure or controversial points of interpretation, particularly where this is required in order to justify the translations and interpretations proposed in vol. 1. If our coverage at times seems uneven, that is because we have found that some texts demand extensive elucidation, while others seem able to speak adequately for themselves.

We have not, with one or two special exceptions, attempted to obtain readings of the original manuscripts, but have relied principally on a standard edition of each work. These editions are listed in the Index of sources appended to vol. 1.

Introduction

The biological writings constitute over 25% of the surviving Aristotelian corpus. There are, first of all, the ‘big three’: Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals, History of Animals (usually referred to here by its Latin name, Historia Animalium). These comprise, respectively, some 58, 74, and 146 Bekker pages.

Then there are the smaller works, really monographs or even papers: Progression of Animals (De Incessu Animalium), 10 pages; Motion of Animals (De Motu Animalium), 7 pages; and the essays collected as Parva Naturalia, the ‘little nature studies’, of which the last two are especially ‘biological’: On Length and Shortness of Life, 3 pages; On Youth and Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration, 13 pages. (Resp. is sometimes treated as a separate work.) Other essays in PN have a clearly biological element, especially On Sleep and Waking, though scholars have tended to treat them only as ‘psychology’, placing them rather with the De Anima than with the biology. De Anima itself is something of a bridge between the biology and the more familiar treatises such as the Metaphysics and the Ethics, and though it certainly belongs with the latter so far as amount of study received is concerned, it was at some point probably intended to provide a theoretical framework for the biological studies.

The following is taken from an extended work on Aristotle's theory of material substances that is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. The course of developments leading up to the present extract is, briefly and roughly, as follows. Part I of the work (§§1–5) deals with the metaphysical theory of substance in the Categories, which is a considerably simplified and scaled-down version of the complete theory as found in various other writings of Aristotle. The most considerable simplifications are (1) the total absence of the notion of matter (8a9–11) is of no theoretical significance), and (2) a certain lack of explicitness as to whether the eidos (in the Categories, usually Englished as ‘species’) of a substantial individual is something essential to that individual, so that anything describable as its ceasing to have or belong in that eidos is tantamount to that individual's ceasing to exist. The question then naturally arises why these features of the full theory, as usually interpreted, should be thus effaced in the Categories version, if, as seems to me highly probable, the Categories is an authentic and mature Aristotelian work; and some suggestions are hazarded along these lines.

Part II (§§6–5) is a ‘first approximation’ of the complete theory of substance, necessarily somewhat attenuated and abstract in the absence of a rich intuitive conception of what a ‘full’ substance actually is – something that the Categories cannot possibly furnish.

Aristotle's teleology is a central component of his philosophy, and interpretations of it often heavily influence evaluations of the significance of his thought, both in science and in philosophy. Much has been written about this aspect of his philosophy, but surprisingly little sustained attention has been directed to what is clearly the fundamental question: what, precisely, does Aristotle mean when he asserts that something is, or comes to he, for the sake of something?

If we are to answer this question with both historical accuracy and philosophical precision, how must we proceed?

The place to begin, of course, is with the text – ideally, with Aristotle's own statement of an answer. One would expect to find, somewhere in the vast Aristotelian corpus, a thorough analysis and explicit definition of this central notion. Surprisingly, it is not there to be found. Readers of the corpus will search in vain for a detailed analysis of what it is to be (or come to be) for the sake of something.

The longest continuous passages on final causality, Physics 11.8 and (sections of) Parts of Animals 1.1, while containing much that eventually proves helpful, do not address themselves directly to this issue. In each case, the purpose is to argue for the applicability to nature of a conception of final causality whose precise meaning and statement is largely taken for granted.

The reform of diairesis

Aristotle's comments on logical division (diairesis) evidently refer to a more regular method than the examples given in Plato's late dialogues, but unfortunately no reliable evidence survives of Academic practice between the dialogues and Aristotle's Topics. We cannot know how much of the rules that Aristotle lays down may represent a codification of existing methods, and how much is correction of them. It is clear, however, that the criticisms and rules, which he sets out with great profusion of detail in the Topics and Analytics, are intended to ensure a good method, not merely to demolish bad ones, so that the picture which they build up may be taken as the form of diairesis of which he himself approved. It is very different from that set out by Plato, and the difference is exactly what we should expect after the change in philosophical viewpoint from Plato's theory of forms to Aristotle's theory of the substantial tode ti. Aristotle presents three major innovations: (i) the ontological distinctions between genus, differentia, species, property, essential and inessential accident, and other formal categories, which Plato did not distinguish; (ii) the insistence on successive differentiation, to preserve the unity of definition; (iii) division by a plurality of differentiae simultaneously, instead of by one at a time. These improvements are made respectively in (i) Topics and Categories; (ii) Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics; (iii) De Partibus Animalium 1.

Aristotle's biological writings have happily been the subject of an increasing amount of attention of late. This interest has developed primarily among scholars of ancient philosophy, and has focused in the main on the lessons these treatises might provide for our understanding of central areas of Aristotle's general philosophical thought. In the book before you we present some of the most interesting recent work in this vein, in hopes of stimulating yet wider and deeper attention to this still largely untapped core of Aristotelian writing.

Though the book is addressed primarily to students of Aristotle's philosophy, its extensive attention to the whole of the biology, in matters both of detail and of general purpose and direction, should make it of interest to historians and philosophers of biology as well. We hope this is so, as we think that additional attention from these quarters to Aristotelian biology, and its relations to Aristotelian philosophy, would be beneficial both for Aristotelian studies and for the history and philosophy of biology. As in most other areas, there is much in Aristotle here that remains alive, even vital, for contemporary study. But the focus of this volume is, as we say, on the lessons of Aristotle's biology for our understanding of his philosophy.

The kind of essentialism that has been attributed to Aristotle's biology either identifies form and species, or recognizes individual forms merely as variations from a basic specific form. The essentialist holds in particular that each animal's growth is directed primarily towards the form of the species; that its essence prescribes its form; and that animal form excludes material accidents such as eye color.

These views, although apparently supported by various statements in Aristotle's logic and metaphysics, are directly opposed to some of his most mature and carefully argued theories in biology. Moreover those theories agree closely with one plausible interpretation of the disputed books Metaph. ZH. In this paper I confine myself to the biology; but I would suggest that there is ground here for supporting those who have recently been questioning the ‘essentialism’ in the logic. Here I argue that in the GA Aristotle holds that the animal develops primarily towards the parental likeness, including even non-essential details, while the common form of the species is only a generality which ‘accompanies’ this likeness. In PA he argues for teleology with the question ‘What benefits an animal of this kind?’, not with the question ‘What benefits all animals of this kind?’. He treats species as merely a universal obtained by generalization. While it is true that species-membership may help to explain the features of individuals, this is not because species is an efficient cause of individual formation, but because individuals in like circumstances are advantaged by like features.

Introduction

Some years ago, Jonathan Barnes introduced a discussion of ‘Aristotle's theory of demonstration’ with the following statement:

Barnes argued against three traditional attempts at reconciliation, and provided a radical diagnosis for these failures: the scientific treatises report the tentative explorations of ongoing inquiries, while the Posterior Analytics provides a theory of how to present already acquired knowledge. On this view, the attempt to shed light on the APo. theory of scientific knowledge by a close study of the biological treatises is doomed at the outset.

Barnes has himself drawn back from this conclusion (1981), reviving Friedrich Solmsen's thesis that there is a presyllogistic theory of demonstrative science within APo., which may after all be reflected in the scientific treatises. Both of these papers presuppose that unless one first accounts for the absence, in Aristotle's zoological explanations, of an overtly syllogistic form, one cannot proceed any further in exploring the relationship between his theory of science and his scientific practice.

Introduction

In their contributions to Part I, David Balme and Montgomery Furth have given us reason to think that Aristotle's systematic study of animals might help us to understand those concepts at the center of his metaphysical analysis of substance: form, matter, essence, substratum, kind, universal, differentia, actuality, potentiality, perhaps even nous. Each of the papers in this Part attempts to illustrate that thesis by bringing Aristotle's biological works directly to bear on such central themes of his metaphysics.

The keynote paper of Part IV is a slightly revised version of David Balme's rich and provocative ‘Aristotle's biology was not essentialist’, first published in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie in 1980. Balme argues that the essentialist identification of form and species traditionally attributed to Aristotle is not to be found in his biological works. According to GA, an animal's development is ‘primarily towards the parental likeness, including even non-essential details, while the common form of the species is only a generality which “accompanies” this likeness’. Animal form includes material accidents and is to be distinguished from essence, which ‘picks out only those features for which a teleological explanation holds’. Both are to be distinguished from species, which is a generalization over individual composites, over forms as actualized in matter.