Aristotle

ARISTOTLE - Encomia prefixed to the editio princeps, edited
by Aldo Manuzio, Venice 1495.

in its simplicity admitting no change, "possesses
itself" in the indivisible identity of the eternal (Met.,
XII, 9). As one who is an end unto himself, no practical or poetic activity can be attributed to him (E. N.,
X, 8; De caelo, II, 12), and if "the envy of the divinity"
is a fable of poets (Met., I, 2), it would be ridiculous to
claim that He loves us as we love Him (E. E., VII, 12;
E. N., VIII, 9; cf. on the other hand ibid., X, 8, 1179 a 22).

As cause of motion, God directly moves only
the "first heaven," and with circular motion, which alone is
one and continuous (Phys., VIII, 5-7; De caelo, II, 6;
12), and he moves it "as an object of love (ὡς ἐρώμενον)"
(Met., XII, 7). For the other heavens A., who, in the
period of Assos, had conceived them as animated (De caelo, II, 2;
cf. 12; 6), in the later Athenian period, accepting
and provisionally by way of hypothesis completing the systems of spheres of Eudoxus (d. 365) and Callippus (in
Athens in 330), assigns to each a proper immobile, unextended and eternal mover, the future intelligences
of the Scholastics (Met., XII, 8). This theory, left
unfinished, already an object of dispute in the School, gave
trouble to interpreters in all ages. It seems, however,
to be excluded that A. abandoned the principle of the uniqueness of God professed in Met., XII, 10.

7. PHYSICS

Nature. Nature is the substantial form
(ὡς ἄλθις) of things that have in themselves the principle of
movement, it is this same principle insofar as it is
form (Met. V, 4, 1015 a 13; cf. St. Thomas, in h. l.).
From art, which imitates and completes it, it is distinguished
in that the latter is in another and is free, while
nature is in the same thing and is necessary (Met., XII,
3). Both are directed toward an end, but, bound
to matter, they do not always attain it (Phys.,
II, 1; 8); and both can at times, without the action
of the form, accidentally arrive at effects that
normally presuppose it (Met., VII, 9). There then occurs
that kind of chance which A. calls "the spontaneous
(τὸ πῦν ἄλθις)" and from which he distinguishes, as opposed
to deliberate will, fortune (τὸ ἄλθις, Phys., II,
5-6).

That which passes from potency to act, as long as this
lasts, is in movement. Movement is "the act of
potency insofar as it is potency" (ibid., III, 1). They admit movement: substance, quantity, quality,
place; whence arise: generation and corruption, increase and diminution, alteration, and translation,
the first movement and the condition of all the others (ibid.,
V, 1-2; VII, 7). Every movement taken in itself is continuous (συνεχῆς), and therefore divisible to infinity. And since
all, presupposing translation, are in space
and all are measured by time, connected with the problem
of movement are those of the infinite, of space
and of time (ibid., III, 1). The infinite is nothing that
exists in act, neither as a thing in itself, nor as an attribute
of a magnitude or of a number. Magnitudes do not
in fact exist except for bodies, but bodies are limited, and
number is, on the other hand, numerable. But magnitudes
are infinitely divisible and numbers infinitely
increasable: and since the number of divided parts
increases proportionally as the magnitude decreases, the one fact
is the aspect of the other. The divided parts
are always finite both in number and in magnitude, but beyond
them there is always another: the infinite therefore is
nothing but potency, a potency that can never come to
act (ibid., III, 4-8). Space is that in which things are
contained. The atomists identified it with the void,
but the void is nothing and would make movement impossible (ibid., IV, 8-9). Since it is not the void and cannot
be a body, it remains that it is a limit: "the
immediate and immobile limit of the containing body." It
follows that since everything is contained by the heaven, but the heaven
by nothing, the universe is in space as regards its parts,
but not as regards the whole (ibid., IV, 1-5). In space
there is an order: this matters for the movement that
traverses it and that is determined only with respect to it,
a before and an after. "The number of movement according to
the before and the after is time." But not of any
movement, because time is one and continuous, therefore
of a movement that is such: that of the first heaven.
Outside of it there is no time (ibid., 10-14). Every magnitude, being divisible to infinity, is continuous. Continuous is "that whose extremities make one." The point, the
line, the surface are limits: potency and not act:
division tends toward them without reaching them, but at every
instant passes beyond them (ibid., V, 3; VI, 1). Continuous the magnitude, continuous the movement and consequently
time. But the converse is also true. For movement
is always between two terms and therefore always divided, and the instant (τὸ νῦν), common limit of past and future, is
absolute continuity (ibid., 2 ff.). Hence its infinity (ibid., IV, 13) and with it the continuity and infinity of movement (ibid., VIII, 1; Gen. et corr. II,
10).

The universe. - From these principles A. deduces the form
and the parts of the universe. Since movement can be
rectilinear, circular and mixed, and perfect motion, insofar as
it is one and continuous, is circular, there must
be bodies of which it is the natural movement:
these are the heavens, simple and eternal and having no other
matter than that of place (De caelo, I, 1-4; II, 3; Gen.
et corr., II, 10). By their form and by their motion they must have a center: there must therefore be a body that
tends toward it following the straight line: it is the earth. But one contrary calls for the other: here is fire, which moves in the opposite direction. Earth is dry and cold, fire dry and hot. There remains the moist, contrary of the dry: combining it with the cold and with the hot, we have two other simple bodies, water and air, whose natural places must be respectively above the earth and below the fire. From these four elements are formed the mixed bodies (ibid., 2-8; De caelo, II, 3; IV, 4), qualitatively indivisible or homoeomerous and the matter of organic bodies (Gen. et corr., I, 10).

The soul. - With organic bodies we enter the realm of life. Every organ, in fact, has a function, and life is the complex of the functions of a body furnished with organs. But the organs have them only in potency: their form, the act of such potency is the soul: an act which, since it is not their uninterrupted activity, is only a habit (ἔξις). Hence the definition of the soul as "first entelechy" - that is, not always in activity - "of an organic body having life in potency" (De anima, II, 1). As many as are the forms of life, so many are those of the soul. The lowest, common to all living beings and proper to plants, is the nutritive soul. With sensibility, accompanied by locomotion, we have the animal; with reason, man. To the first are therefore added the sensitive soul and the rational soul. Of these the higher always includes the lower, but not as a soul within a soul: the soul is one, and the distinction of its parts is logical, not of being or local (ibid., 2; III, 9). Only to the intellect belongs a position of privilege.

The natural scale. - From plant to man, living beings form a continuous series (Hist. an., VIII, 1; Part. an., IV, 5), where each degree is teleologically ordered in relation to the growing specification of the end (Part. an., I, 1). Generation, which belongs to the nutritive soul and is common to all living beings, is the end through which they participate, each in its own measure, in the eternity of the divine (De an., II, 4); it is also the principle of their classification. From the plant, in which the sexes are confused (Gen. an., I, 23) and individuality is undefined (De an., II, 2), one ascends by degrees to the zoophytes, the ostracoderms, the vermiparous animals (such as A. believed insects to be), the oviparous, and finally the viviparous (A. was unaware that mammals are generated from an egg), at the summit of which is man (Hist. an., I, 6; II, 15; Gen. an., II, 1). The animals classified by A. (the classification of plants was made by Theophrastus) amount to 495 (cf. A. Mieli, Manuale di storia delle scienze, Rome 1925, p. 70 ff.), a very large number for his time. On his value as a biologist it will suffice to cite Darwin, who considered Linnaeus and Cuvier schoolboys in comparison with the old A.

Man. - Of the three perfect species of the viviparous (besides man, the terrestrial and the marine mammals), man is the most perfect (Gen. an., II, 4). He alone is endowed with reason, and for this reason he alone is upright (Part. an., II, 10). And since his end is not only to live but to live well, he also has the most varied and harmonious forms (ibid., IV, 10). The first degree of knowledge is the sense: its form in act is sensation, which is the act of two powers, a sensible object and a sensory organ, which undergoes its action, as wax does the seal (De an., II, 5; 12). For each of the sensible qualities there is a special sense, a mean and measure of the contraries in which that quality has its limits (ibid., 6-12; III, 1). For the common sensibles the five senses unite in a common sense, to which also belong sensory consciousness and the imagination (ibid., III, 1-3; De somn., 2). The center of the physio-psychic functions is the heart (Part. an., III, 4; Vita et m., 3), their organ the pneuma or vital heat, a substance similar to that of the stars, the active principle of generation and the vehicle of the soul (Gen. an., II, 3; De an. motu, 10).

The imagination (φαντασία), the immediate reflection of sensation in act, which when preserved gives memory, is the last form of the sensitive soul and the first of the rational soul (De an., III, 3; De mem., 1-2). Above it is the intellect (νοῦς), the faculty of universals and of discourse (διάνοια). Since universals do not exist except in particulars, the intellect grasps them in images (ibid., 8). But they are there only in potency, just as the intellect itself is in potency before thinking them (ibid., 4). Hence the necessity of a cause which, by actualizing the former, brings the latter too into act. This is another kind of intellect, which, like that to whose action everything is due (τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν), stands to the first, which becomes all things (τῷ πάντα γίγνεσθαι), in the same relation in which the efficient cause (τὸ κίτιον καὶ ποιητικόν) stands to matter, and is « a kind of habit (ὡς ἔξις τις), which operates as light does on colors » (ibid., 5), the intellect that the commentators called agent, while they gave to the other the name of possible (from De an., III, 4, 429 a 21). Of both A. says that they are impassible, pure of all mixture and separate (χωριστός, chaps. 4, 5). But when he writes that, « once separated (χωρισθείς) only this is what it is, and only this is immortal and eternal », and adds that « we have no memory of it, because this is impassible and the passive intellect (παθητικός) is corruptible, and without this there is no thought », is it, given the context, the agent intellect that is immortal and eternal, or the whole intellect, as is also affirmed, among other places, in De an., II, 2, 413 b 25 and in Gen. an., II, 3, 736 b 27, where he writes that « only the intellect enters from outside (θύραθεν, cf. De an., I, 4, 408 b 18) and is divine »? And is the passive intellect to be identified with the possible intellect or not? Given the texts, it is difficult to answer with certainty. The opinions of interpreters, both ancient and modern, are divided, and the disagreement seems to have begun already with Theophrastus and Eudemus. Because of the consequences that one or the other interpretation entails with respect to the immortality of the individual, the problem assumed, from the Middle Ages onward, capital importance, and, with the diffusion of the thought of Averroes (v.), divided the Aristotelians into two camps. It is certain that neither is the agent intellect God, as Alexander of Aphrodisias wanted, nor is the intellect in potency one for the whole human species, as Averroes later taught. According to the interpretation of St. Thomas, the intellect is part of the soul and not a substance distinct from it. Among the moderns, Brentano, Rolfes, De Corte, etc., follow the Thomistic interpretation. The others attach themselves, with greater or lesser modifications, to one or the other of the interpretations of the ancient commentators (v. H. Kurfess, Zur Gesch. d. Erkl. d. A.s Lehre vom sogen. νοῦς ποιητικός und παθητικός, Tübingen 1911).

The principle of practical activity is the appetite or orexis which, in the twofold direction of appetition and aversion, follows immediately upon the pleasure and pain that every state and operation of the soul entails. It is always preceded by representation, distinguished into sensitive and ratiocinative or deliberative; neither sense nor intellect moves as such (De an., III, 7-11). Since pleasure is the unimpeded activity of a habit, and pain its contrary (E. N., VII, 13, 1153 a 13), it is in the tendency inherent in the habit that the one and the other have their cause (ibid., I, 8, 1099 a 8; X, 6, 1176 b 14). This tendency is the will or βούλησις, which, as motion toward the form, is always of the universal and therefore of the good or of what seems such (ibid., III, 6) and hence also, in its principle, every orexis as motion toward the particular good whose presence pleasure discloses (De an., III, 7, 431 a 8; 9, 433 a 15). The act of will therefore involves, even in its lowest form, a syllogism (ibid., II, 434 a 17; De motu an., 7, 701 a 8; E. N., VII, 5). As appetition of the immediately pleasant, orexis is desire, which is limited to sensitive representation alone. In the animal, action follows upon desire, but man deliberates. And it is then that, against the irrational orexis of desire, there arises that in which the will, which is nevertheless the presupposition of the former, takes concrete form in the face of the new object offered to it by ratiocinative representation. This often generates a conflict, and « sometimes the rational orexis wins, sometimes the irrational, in cases of incontinence, and drives it out as ball drives out ball » (De an., III, 10, 433 b 5: cf. II, 434 a 7).

8. ETHICS

Il problema dell'etica è quello del bene, e come il bene del singolo e quello della città è il medesimo, essa rientra nella politica (E. N., I, 1). Bene è il fine, ma poiché le attività dell'uomo sono molte, molti sono anche i fini ed i beni. Tra essi vi è però una gerarchia, e il bene di cui si cerca è il sommo bene, il fine ultimo al quale la volontà in ogni suo atto è rivolta. Determinarne apoditticamente il concetto non è possibile: è un principio. Ma neanche l'induzione può condurre ad altro che a una delineazione generica (ibid., 1-2; 7). Si tratta di un principio pratico, non teoretico (ibid., I; II, 2), la cui forma è in ciascuno correlativa alla volontà di cui, in rapporto agli abiti, egli è dotato, e solo in quanto è voluta è conosciuta (ibid., III, 6). E come la sua realtà è nell'azione e questa è nel contingente (ibid., I, 1; 4; 8), la sua applicazione dipende dal giudizio individuale e la misura non può esserne fornita se non da chi già è buono (ibid., VI, 7-10). Ciò non vuol già dire che il bene non sia un universale, ma, come l'essere, è un universale sui generis: diverso secondo le diverse categorie, esso non è reale che nel concreto (οἰκεῖον τι καὶ δυσαφαίρετον, ibid., 3, 1095 b 25). Su questi principi, accettata l'identificazione da tutti fattane con la felicità (εὐδαιμονία) intesa come vita e attività in possesso del bene (εὖ ζῆν, εὖ πράττειν), e partendo dalla determinazione di quello che l'uomo, in base alla sua natura, ha in proprio di fare, A. ne dà la seguente definizione: « bene dell'uomo è l'attività (ἐνέργεια) dell'anima secondo virtù, e, se le virtù sono più d'una, secondo la migliore e più perfetta » (ibid., I, 2-3; 6). La parte migliore essendo l'intelletto, che è quanto in noi v'è di più divino, o addirittura il divino, la vita senza confronto più felice è la vita contemplativa (ibid., X, 7). Questa definizione, mentre comprende quante altre definizioni gli altri filosofi hanno date del bene, non esclude quella che lo identifica col piacere (ibid., I, 9). Come non impedita attività di un abito, il piacere infatti è inseparabile da ogni forma d'attività (ibid., VII, 13). Non va però scambiato col fine, esso è non l'atto, ma la perfezione dell'atto « un fine aggiunto, come alla giovinezza il suo fiore » (X, 3). Che i più lo cerchino nei sensi, è dovuto al fatto che la loro attività non oltrepassa la sfera dell'animale: « a ciascuno è infatti piacevole ciò di cui è detto amatore » (ibid., I, 9), ed è « delle cose a cui tendono che gli uomini fan sé stessi capaci di godere » (ibid., X, 6). Più alta la forma di vita, più puro il piacere: tale quello della contemplation, through which man enjoys for brief moments the condition that is normal for God (ibid., X, 7; VII, 15; Met., XII, 7).

The virtues are divided by A. into dianoetic and ethical (E. N., I, 13; II, 1; 7). Among the dianoetic virtues, prudence (φρόνησις) has a particularly practical value, "a true practical habit accompanied by discourse and concerning what is good or bad for man" (ibid., VI, 5). It depends entirely on experience, and, as regards the end, on the goodness of the habits, the ensemble of which constitutes the character (ἔθος), and it is from this that the ethical virtues take their name (ibid., 8-13). The ethical virtues have the passions as their matter (II, 4; 1-2), and, as each of these involves an excess and a defect, the corresponding virtue consists in a mean between the two extremes and is opposed to two vices. While passion is involuntary, virtue is the effect of free choice, a conscious and permanent habit, which each person voluntarily forms for himself by the repetition of similar acts. The same holds for the vices, which are the contrary habits (ibid., 6; 3-9). The voluntariness (τὸ ἐκούσιον) of virtue poses the problem of the freedom of the will (τὸ ἐφ' ἡμῖν), which, in the terms in which it had been formulated by Socrates and Plato, is nothing other than the problem of practical error: namely, how it happens that, since βούλησις is of the good, the act of determinate will can be of evil. The act of will has the form of a syllogism, whose premises are: one universal (the major), the other particular. The first is of the good, the second, of which the judge is the sense and on which the action depends, is of the particular object that provokes the oresis (E. N., VII, 5). The form of the good is correlative to the habits, but since the habits are formed by the repetition of similar acts, if the error is in the major, tracing back the series of these, one arrives at a first action, in which, the habits not yet being consolidated, the will was still good and the major correct, so that the error was in the minor (ibid., III, 7; 8, 1114 b 31; VI, 5, 1140 b 19). In what does this error consist? In an act of incontinence (ἀκρατεία): the will, which always has it in its power to act or not (ibid., III, 7), either did not wait for the light of discourse and yielded to the immediate pleasure of the sensory representation (προπέτεια), or, though deliberating, yielded to it through weakness (ἀσθένεια) (ibid., VII, 2; 5; 8, 1150 b 19). In either case there follows what Socrates denied: "video meliora proboque - deteriora sequor."

9. POLITICS

Among the ethical virtues A. devotes a long treatment to justice (E. N., V) and to friendship (ibid., VIII-IX). With these one passes from the sphere of the individual to the social sphere, whose first form is the family, which, in the need for procreation, unites, by a necessity common to all living beings, male and female, and, in the need for preservation, master and slave. A slave is anyone who is not by himself capable of attaining the good, so that slavery is by nature, and the end of master and slave coincide (Pol., I, 2; 4). From the family, which suffices for the needs of the day alone, one passes, driven by necessity, to the village, and from this to the city (πόλις), "in which autarkeia reaches its term, and which, having arisen from the mere necessity of life, now has as its end the happy life" (ibid., 2). It is therefore by nature, just as "by nature man is a political animal" (ibid., I, 2; E. N., I, 5). Citizens are those who enjoy the deliberative and judicial right, a right that varies with the constitutions (τάξις) from which the constitution (πολιτεία) of the city is formed (Pol., III, 1-5). In book III, which belongs to the oldest redaction, the constitutions are divided, in Platonic fashion, into three correct and three degenerate ones. According as power is exercised by one, by few or by many, one has in the first category: monarchy, aristocracy, and politeia (per excellentiam); in the second, in which the interest of the rulers is substituted for that of the city: tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. To number, however, must also be added the difference of wealth: in oligarchy power belongs to the rich, in democracy to the poor (ibid., 7-8). The best form is monarchy, and after it aristocracy, but they demand men such as are difficult to find on this earth: under normal conditions, a city is to be preferred in which, with the law ruling, power is in the hands of the many (ibid., 11-13; 15-16). This does not prevent philosophy from having to pose the problem of the absolutely best State (ibid., 18), and A. confronts it, following the example and in correction of Plato, in books VII and VIII, but the treatment has remained unfinished. Since virtue in its higher forms demands men free from manual occupations, A. admits among the citizens only warriors, magistrates and priests (ibid., VII, 8-9). He rejects both the community of women and the community of goods willed by Plato. For lands, however, he wants one part to belong to the State for the exercise of cults and for the common meals, which he retains (ibid., 10; II, 2-5).

In books IV-VI, A., without renouncing on the theoretical plane the "most desirable" constitution, assigns to politics the task of investigating: 1) which among the constitutions already realized is the most suitable; 2) given a constitution, what is the way to preserve it the longest (and it is here that he precedes Machiavelli); 3) which is the generically best and practicable constitution (ibid., IV, 1). Having placed himself on the plane of positive research, he corrects several times and in various ways the classificatory criterion of the preceding books. The principles to which, amid various oscillations, he most commonly adheres are two: wealth and freedom. The first is constitutive of oligarchy, the second of democracy (ibid., 3-4). A third principle is virtue, the foundation of aristocracy. But virtue in the absolute sense is that defined by ethics, and aristocracy is in that case the ideal State. Taken in a relative sense, it is the excellence of education and of the social position proper to the rich, and then aristocracy is reduced to oligarchy (ibid., 7-8). According to the relation between the classes and the forms of the State, oligarchy and democracy oscillate between a minimum and a maximum of the principle on the basis of which they are defined (ibid., 4-6). From the mixture of the different forms come the mixed forms, and it is among these that the relatively best constitution or politeia is to be sought (ibid., 8-9). Founded on the principle of the golden mean, it has its basis in the middle class, equally distant from oligarchic arrogance and democratic license, which, when they reach the extreme, pass over into tyranny (ibid., 11; cf. 10; V, 5-7). Books V and VI, dedicated to revolutions and to the way of preserving States, are one of the masterpieces of political literature of all times.

10. RHETORIC

All the arts, insofar as they aim at the production of a good, are subordinate to politics, and among them rhetoric, which is the art of "discovering what is capable of persuading on any given subject" (Rhet., I, 2). From politics it even borrows a part, that relating to customs (ἔθη), which belongs to ethics, while in its other part it is "the counterpart of dialectic" (ibid., 1; 2, 1356 a 25; 3, 1359 b 8). The means it employs are partly non-artistic (ἄτεχνα τίστες), partly artistic (ἔντεχνα). Among the former fall testimonies, the results of investigation, documents and the like. The latter are of three kinds: 1) those relating to the ethos of the speaker; 2) those relating to the state of mind (διέθεσις) of the listener; 3) those relating to argumentation. The last are the most important, and it is for their sake that rhetoric is a part of dialectic. They are: the enthymeme, which corresponds to the syllogism, and the example, which answers to induction. Rhetoric and dialectic have in common that they argue on any theme for and against, independently of any specific knowledge, in a purely generic form (ibid., 1). As for the ethos of the speaker, it is not a matter of his personal character, but of that with which he, as a speaker, presents himself to his listeners. As regards the state of mind of the latter, rhetoric must know all the forms of the affections and the means to provoke and calm them. The treatise that has come down to us devotes the greater part of books I and II to the study of "topics" and of the passions. Book III, which, as H. Diels demonstrated (Über d. 3 B. der Aristot. Rhetorik, in Abh. d. K. preuss. Ak., 1886), was a separate work, is devoted to style and to the arrangement of the parts of the speech.

11. POETICS

In a broad sense every art (τέχνη) is poetic, but by pre-eminence the name is given to poetry and to the arts that accompany it in its various forms: auletic, citharistic, dance. With the figurative arts they have in common that they are imitations (μυρῆσις), but they differ from them in their means: word, rhythm, harmony. These, however, if they distinguish the species, are not enough to constitute the genus. The poems of Empedocles are such only in form, but in themselves they are prose. Conversely, the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues of Plato, although they do not use meter, are imitations and therefore poetry. The object of poetic imitation are "characters, passions, actions", but passions and characters must be taken in the act in which action manifests them: the object of poetry is "man in action" (Poet., 1). This object, however, it does not take from "what has historically happened": the events it imitates are those "which could happen: possible events according to the verisimilar and the necessary". "Therefore poetry is more philosophical and more elevated than history, inasmuch as it has rather the universal as its object, while history is confined to the particular" (ibid., 9). According as the imitation is of common men, or worse or better, and is made by way of representation or of narration or by mixing the two modes, as in epic, and uses one or all three of the means listed above, we have the different genres into which poetry is divided (ibid., 2-5). The most complete, in which it attains its end, is the drama, in the twofold form of tragedy and comedy. Tragedy is "the imitation of an action of elevated character, complete in itself and having a certain magnitude, in language embellished with different embellishments according to the different parts, in dramatic and not narrative form, and which through pity and terror arrives at the purgation that is proper to such passions (ἐν' ἐλθὼν καὶ φῶον περσίνοντα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν [ibid., 6], where in the many translations that are given of it no attention at all is paid to the attributive position of the genitive τῶν π.)". The last words have been since the Renaissance the object of endless discussions and battles, and the question is still sub indice. That both the term and the notion of catharsis derive from medicine is evident from Pol., VIII, 7, 1341 b 38; II, 7, 1267 a 5, and from Probl., I, 42, 864 a 32. It must not, however, be interpreted in such a way as to make of tragedy a kind of homeopathic remedy. Tragedy, which has as its own property that of arousing pity and terror (the definition goes back to the 5th century: cf. M. Pohlenz, Die Anfänge der griechischen Poetik, in Nachr. d. Gesell. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, phil.-hist.-Kl., 1920, p. 142 ff.), at the same time effects their purgation, in the manner that such affections entail. This is said by A. as a correction of Plato's doctrine. Whether this happens through the pleasure that is proper to this kind of poetry (Poet., 14, 1453 b 10) or through the outlet that the passion finds in its very excess, is another question.

12. OVERALL JUDGMENT

A. was one of the greatest intellectuals who have ever existed. In the history of Greek thought he marks a summit, to which only Plotinus would later raise himself. But Plotinus was only a philosopher. A. was also the greatest scientist and the organizer of all the knowledge of his time. The schemes he created remained through the centuries and are still today at the basis of our language. The golden mean, in which he places virtue, characterizes his intelligence, which united two opposite attitudes: the meditated yearning for the ideal, nourished, in the years of his first formation, by the religiosity of Plato, and the taste for minute observation, which came to him from the ancestral tradition of the Asclepiads, to whom he belonged. The one and the other were articulated and kept in motion by a problematicalness, which the acute analytical sense of his incomparable nature as a logician and his habit of dialectic continually renewed. Goethe's judgment is well known: to Plato the heavens, to A. the earth. It is only partly true. A. rummages through the earth to find there the heavens, to which his soul is always turned. Nothing better characterizes his position as thinker and as man than what he wrote in that "discourse on method" (Jaeger) which is ch. 5 of De part. an., I. After saying that of divine realities we can know only a little, but yet that little is far more pleasant to us than what we find on earth, just "as with things that are loved, if one succeeds in glimpsing even a small part, this is sweeter than seeing with all precision many other things, even important ones", he continues: "in all beings of nature there is something wonderful. And as it is told that Heraclitus said to those who had come to visit him and, seeing him warming himself at the stove, had stopped on the threshold, and he told them to take heart and enter, because even there there were gods, in the same way one must proceed in the study of each animal and not feel repugnance, for in all there is a part of nature and of beauty. The law indeed by which the things of nature are governed is a law of finality and not of chance, and the end in view of which a being is constituted or is born is precisely its beauty". But nature, as he teaches, draws the principle of all its motion from God. The universe is not today for us as he saw it and as Dante sang it. The principles and the problems, however, are still the same, and unchanged is the demand for that transcendent Being, which in his thought is, not indeed, as Jaeger would have it, an unresolved residue of Platonism, but the necessary and inevitable complement of his metaphysics and of his physics. All Greek thought, oriented toward the ideal, tended toward the affirmation of God (not even Epicurus could eliminate him from his worlds of atoms), but it also ran the risk of making of him an abstract principle. A. made of him a person. Revelation gave him a content, making him, besides object, subject of love and Father.

BIBLI: Fonti per la vita: D. Laersio, V; Dionigi d'Alicarnasso, Lettera ad Amneo, cap. 5; Vita Menagiana, dal Menagius, che la pubblicò per primo: risale a Esichio; Suida (concordanze letterali con la Vita Men.): una Vita di origine neoplatonica, in 3 redazioni: a) Vita Marciana (dal cod. marc. 257); b) Vita Pseudomnoniana; c) Vita latina (in corrispondenza con a e b messa insieme da V. Rose di su un traduttore del sec. XIII). La fonte prima è il peripatetico Tolomeo (1 o 11 sec. d. C.), che risale ad Andronico di Rodi. Per le biografie siro-arabe v. A. Baumstark, Arist. bei den Syrem vom V-VIII Jahr, herausg., übers. u. unters., I, Lipsia 1900. Altri testi antichi: W. Dittenberger, Syll. Inscr. Grac., 3ª ed., Lipsia 1915, n. 275; Filodemo, Acad. philos. Ind. Herc., pp. 23, 34, 38; Mekler: id., in Pap. Herc. 1015, 832; v. S. Sudhaus, in Rhein. Mus., 48 (1893), p. 552 sgg. Nuovi elementi sono stati forniti dal Commento di Didimo a Demostene, di su pap. egiz. edito da H. Diela e W. Schubart, Lipsia 1904.

Edizioni: A) Complete: A.s Opera ed. Acad. Ros. Borussica, 5 voll., Berlino 1831-70; voll. I-II: testo, ed. I. Bakker (1831); vol. III: trad. lat. di varii (1831); vol. IV: scolii, ed. Chr. Brandis ed. H. Usener (1836); vol. V: A. squiferebantur librorum fragmenta, ed. Val. Rose, Supplementum scholiorum, ed. H. Usener, Index a cura di H. Bonitz (1870). Un Supplementum Aristotelicum in 3 voll. (Berlino 1885-1903) contiene, oltre varie opere di commentatori, la Res publica Atheniensium a cura di F. G. Kenyon (vol. III, II). A.s Opera omnia, ed. F. Duebner, U. Bussemaker, E. Heitz, 4 voll., Parigi 1848-69; vol. V, continentis indicem nominum et rerum, ivi 1874. Incompleta è a tutt'oggi l'edizione delle singole opere della Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Trukneriana; B) Ed. speciali: A. griech. u. deutsch mit sacherbl. Anm., von Prantl, Aubert, Wimmer, Susemihl, Frantzius, 7 voll. (incompleta), Lipsia 1854-79. Nella Collection des Universités de France (Ass. G. Budé) sono finora apparsi (testo, trad. e note): la Fisica, la Retorica, I e II, la Costituzione d'Atene e la Poetica. Fra le edizioni commentate delle singole opere vanno ricordate: l'Organon di Th. Waitz, 2 voll., Lipsia 1844-46; la Fisica di W. D. Ross, Oxford 1936; il De gener. et corrupt. di H. H. Joachim, Oxford 1922; per il De anima, 1 ed. di E. Wallace (con trad.). Cambridge 1882; per la Metafisica le edd. di H. Bonitz, 2 voll., Bonn 1848-49; di W. D. Ross, 2 voll., Oxford 1924; per l'Etica Nicomachea 1 ed. di A. Grant, 4ª ed., Londra 1885; il solo commento di J. A. Stewart, Oxford 1892; per la Politica è fondamentale l'ed. di W. L. Newman, 4 voll., Oxford 1887-1902; per la Retorica 1 ed. di E. M. Cope e J. E. Sandys, 3 voll., Londra 1877; per la Poetica le edd. di J. Vahlen 3ª ed., Lipsia 1885; di S. H. Butcher, 4ª ed., Londra 1920; di A. Rostagni, Torino 1927, 2ª ed., ivi 1934; una versione araba della Poetica è stata edita con trad. lat. da D. S. Margoliouth, Londra 1911. Per la Costituzione of Athens, restored to us by two Egyptian papyri, the editio princeps is that of Kenyon, London 1891 (3rd ed., Oxford 1920), who in the same year published the papyrus in facsimile. For the Fragments, to his first ed. of 1870 Rose had a second follow in 2 vols. in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana: A. pseudepigraphus, Leipzig 1883, ed. A.s qui fer. libr. fragm., ibid. 1886. The studies of Jaeger and Bignone having notably increased their number, a new edition was prepared for the dialogues alone by R. Walzer, A.s dialogorum Fr. in 1934 in Florence.

Translations: A complete translation is the French one by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Paris 1879-92, but it is almost unusable. The English translation begun in 1923 under the direction of J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross is similarly incomplete. An annotated French translation is in progress, the work of J. Tricot. In the Laterza Collection of ancient philosophers (Bari) the following have appeared in Italian: the Metaphysics by A. Carlini, the Politics by V. Costanzi and the Poetics by M. Valgimigli. Partial translations are found in various school collections: the best is that of the Casa Laterza.

The richest bibliographic repertory is that of Moïse Schwab, Bibliographie d'A., Paris 1896, with more than 3700 entries. For the period up to 1926 see the manual of Fr. Ueberweg, 12th ed. edited by K. Praechter, Berlin 1926. For later years, the Année Bibliographique of J. Marouzeau. Among the general histories of ancient philosophy it will suffice to mention: Ed. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, II Teil, 2 Abt., 3rd ed., Leipzig 1879, and Th. Gompers, Griechische Denker, Bd II, 3rd ed., ibid. 1912 (French trans., vol. III, Paris 1910).

Opere d'insieme: G. Grosz, Aristotle, 3ª ed., Londra 1883; E. Wallace, Outlines of the Philos. of A., 3ª ed., Cambridge 1887; Cl. Piat, Aristote, 2ª ed., Parigi 1912; A. E. Taylor, Aristotle, 2ª ed., Londra 1919; O. Hamelin, La système d'A., Parigi 1920; H. Siebeck, Aristoteles, 4ª ed., Stoccarda 1922 (trad. ital. Palermo 1911, con ampia bibl.); L. Robin, Aristote, Parigi 1944.

Per lo sviluppo storico d'A. è fondamentale W. Jaeger, Aristoteles, Grundlegung einer Gesch. seiner Entwicklung, Berlino 1923 (trad. ital. con aggiunte dell'autore, Firenze 1933). Vanno aggiunti: J. Stenzel, Zahl u. Gestalt, Lipsia 1924; F. Solmsen, Entw. d. arist. Logik u. Rhetorik, in Neue Philolog. Unters., Berlino 1929; E. Bignone, L'A. perduto, 2 voll., Firenze 1936.

Special studies: U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Die Philosophenschulen u. die Politik e Die rechtliche Stellung der Philosophensch., in Antigonus von Karvatos, Berlin 1881; H. Chernica, A.s criticism of Pres. Philosophy, Baltimore 1935; id., A.s Criticism of Plato and the Academy, Baltimore 1944; A. Trendelenburg, Elementa logica aristotelicae, 9th ed., Berlin 1892 (selection of texts with commentary); C. Prantl, Gesch. der Logik im Abendlande, I, Munich 1853 (v. id., in Abh. Beyer, Ab. Phil.-hist. Kl., VII, 1 [1853]); H. Maier, Die Syllogistik des A., 3 vols., Tübingen 1896-1900; G. Calogero, I fondamenti della logica aristotelica, Florence 1927; Fr. Wolmsen, op. cit.; J. M. Le Blond, Logique et méthode chez A., Paris 1939; F. Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d'A., 2 vols., Paris 1837-46; W. Jaeger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des A., Berlin 1917; J. Stenzel, op. cit.; R. Mugnier, La théorie de Premier Moteur et l'évol. de la pensée d'A., Thèse Clermont, Paris 1930; A. Manson, Introduction à la physique aristotélicienne, 2nd ed., Louvain 1947; J. Nuyens, L'évolution de la psychologie d'A., Louvain 1948 (of great importance for the refutation of Jaeger); M. De Corte, La doctrine de l'intelligence chez A., Paris 1934; L. Ollé-Lapruno, La morale d'A., Paris 1881; U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, A. und Athen, 2 vols., Berlin 1893; E. Barker, Political thought of Plato and A., London 1906; M. Defourny, A., Etudes sur la politique, Paris 1932; J. Bernays, Grundzüge der verlor. Abhandl. des A. über die Wirkung der Tragedie, Breslau 1857, 2nd ed., under the title Zwei Abhandl. über die arist. Theorie des Dramas, Berlin 1880; C. Giacon, Il divenire in A., Padua 1947.

Carlo Diano

II. THE PEDAGOGY OF ARISTOTLE

A. did not fail to take an interest also, like his great master Plato, in the problem of education. In books II, VII and VIII of his Politics he left us a concrete plan concerning the education of the young; a plan which, having come down to us unfinished, does not tell us of higher education, which certainly must have paid particular attention to the learning of the positive disciplines such as mathematics and physics. Education in A. is centered entirely in the State. Like Plato, A. wants the State to involve itself in the life of the citizens and to regulate their education, without however going so far as the Platonic vision that held women, children and property in common within the sphere of state life, thereby abolishing the family and every particular ethical function of it within the state organism. The happiness of the State, for A., depends on the virtue of the citizens. Virtue is not born of fortune but of free will and intelligence. The State must attend to the education of the citizens in order to direct them to be virtuous, because it is by the virtues that external goods are acquired and not vice versa. Now there can be no virtue in the State if virtue itself is lacking in the citizens who compose it; it is therefore in the particular interest of the State that the citizens be directed, through education, to virtue. A. therefore traces his educational plan, of which these are the essential lines.

A. thinks that soul and body are two distinct things, whence he sees in the soul, as it were, two parts: the rational and the irrational, and two forms in which the two parts manifest themselves, namely instinct and intelligence. And just as the body precedes the generation of the soul, so too the irrational precedes the rational. The education of the body must therefore precede that of the soul. The end of the State, of the legislator, says A., is that children grow up prosperous and physically vigorous. But in order that this end may be attained it is necessary that the generation of children not be abandoned to the irrational forces of human nature but be regulated by laws. And so one must attend to the opportune time of marriages, to the persons who contract them, and moreover to a whole series of hygienic, sanitary and moral norms: to the age of the spouses, which must be for the man around 37 years, for the woman around 18; to the most propitious season, to the winds, etc. Good parents are those who have a physical structure tempered to toils, not however excessive, nor of a single kind, but suited to all exercises worthy of free men. Pregnant women must, in order to generate healthy children, take care of their bodies, must not be lazy and must not take meager food. The legislator will have to prescribe for them that every day they make a visit to the altars of the goddesses who have the patronage of childbirth. A. considered opportune a law that forbade the rearing of the maimed and wanted, because of the multitude of children, the exposure of the newborn. He then admits abortion in the case that the parents procreate beyond the limit, an abortion that must be induced before the fetus has acquired sensibility and vitality. For him the innocence or the guilt of the act is relative to sensibility and vitality. Procreation must be regulated: it may be permitted up to the maximum development of the intelligence which, for man, is around fifty years; anyone who has passed this age by four or five years must be forbidden to bring children into the world. Once children are born, nutrition is of great importance for making the body vigorous: that done with milk is good. Wine is harmful. Physical exercises are useful to children, provided they are proportioned to their age. It is good to accustom children from infancy to the cold. A. praises in this regard the custom of certain peoples of immersing newborns in a course of cold water. After infancy, up to five years, an age still immature for imparting any teaching to them or making them endure any toil, children will take exercise, as much as is needed to overcome, with childish games, the torpor of the body. The magistrates, whom A. calls "pedonomi", will also have to concern themselves with the speeches and stories that are to be heard by the children: they constitute a propaedeutic to mature age, because it is the first impressions that leave a more lasting trace in the soul. The cries and shouts of children are not to be prevented, they are indeed of benefit to their development. The pedonomi must further take care that the children, given that up to the age of seven they must be educated in the family, do not associate with slaves because, being still of tender age, they would easily, with their ears and with their eyes, be led to learn bad habits. The legislator should moreover banish foul language from the city. The young should not have contacts with those who use obscene words because short is the road from word to deed. But to banish foul language one must also prohibit spectacles of obscene figures and representations. The spectacle of iambics and of comedies must therefore be forbidden to children, and that up to the age when they will be admitted to the syssitia (common messes in which children did not participate)

and until education has made them wary of drunkenness and of the harm that comes from such spectacles.

According to A., there are two ages into which education must be divided: from the age of seven to puberty, and from puberty to the twenty-first year. The State cannot be indifferent to the education of the young, because if education is neglected in the polis, the State itself will suffer all the harmful consequences. The State educates according to the concept that informs its constitution. A democratic education of the young tends to preserve democracy, an oligarchic one oligarchy. Since the end of the State is one, education must also be one: this is why, according to A., education must be entrusted to the State. The exercise of the activities of individual citizens must be subordinated to the collective interest, because the citizen is not absolute master of himself, but like all others belongs to the city, since each one is a part of it and the care of each part is subordinated to the care of the whole. The State, therefore, must not be indifferent to education, and this must be imparted in common. Among the useful disciplines, those that do not debase the spirit of those who practice them must be taught. Those disciplines are debasing which render the body, the soul or the intelligence useless for the use and practice of virtue, as are the works that are performed for material gain. This does not mean, however, that a free man cannot acquire notions concerning illiberal disciplines; what matters is that they retain the proper character of a non-utilitarian end. The disciplines, then, that are customarily taught are four: letters, gymnastics, music and drawing. Letters and drawing are useful for life and beneficial for many purposes; gymnastics disposes one to valor; music produces concord. A. considers music in a narrow sense, not including poetry in it, as Plato had done. Music is the best recreation of the free man; it must be imparted without any regard for utility or necessity, «but for its intrinsic spiritual beauty which makes it worthy of a free man». Music, which by its nature is among the most delightful and sweet things, is a source of innocent pleasures and can give the soul a formation, but pleasure cannot constitute the principal aim of this teaching. Music is suited to the formation of character because it speaks a universal language that can express and communicate all the movements of the soul; it awakens in listeners feelings that are capable of being translated into inner habits, which then make themselves felt in virtuous action. Music is harmony and finds an immediate counterpart in the soul, which some sages say is a harmony, others that it contains a harmony. Education must aim at education, not at musical performance. It will not be bad for children from their earliest age to practice music in order to acquire competence in judging and, once they have grown in age, to enjoy, with the refinement of judgment, the fruits of practice. In other words, musical learning must not aim at profit, but must be a means of enriching one's culture and refining one's spirit. It has value if it succeeds in making us better and if it contributes to harmonizing within the powers of reason the irrational that is in us. Free men must devote themselves to simple and tranquil music, choosing certain instruments and excluding others, such as the flute. In public performances a livelier music may be admitted, while for the common people and for slaves a freer music may be used.

The principle affirmed concerning musical learning, that it must be imparted not only because it is useful but above all because it contributes, in the final analysis, to the moral formation of the young, is affirmed by A. also for the other disciplines. Drawing, in fact, must be taught not in order to avoid being deceived in the purchase of paintings, but because it refines taste in the contemplation of the beauty of bodies. To seek utility everywhere does not befit the loftiness of mind and the liberal spirits of a well-born man. And since the body must be educated before the soul, it follows that gymnastics acquires particular importance in the education of children: children must first be accustomed to gymnastics and to pedotribic exercises. Gymnastics increases the robustness and comeliness of the body, the other exercises the ease of movement. Physical education itself translates into a moral education insofar as it must aim at strengthening courage, which is proper to the virtuous man, and which is distinguished from ferocity. The Spartans, in fact, by giving great preference to gymnastics for the purpose of strengthening the body and hardening it to make it fit for the labors of war, awakened in the young a ferocity that came to disturb that equilibrium between soul and body in which true education consists. So that it may bring no physical harm, A. wants gymnastics to begin from adolescence; one understands, with light exercises suited to the age of the children.

As can be seen, in A.'s educational vision the State is placed at the center of education, but A. recognizes in the family, which finds no place at all in the ideal Platonic republic, a particular ethical function of its own, because it is only in the family that the best and deepest human feelings live and are strengthened, feelings that would hardly find in a communistic society the ground favorable to their growth and affirmation.

Nino Sammartano