The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy

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The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy THE IMPACT OF ARISTOTELIANISM ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY General Editor: Jude P.Dougherty STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY VOLUME 39 The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy Edited by Riccardo Pozzo THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, ansi z39.48-1984. ∞ library of congress cataloging-in-publication data The impact of Aristotelianism on modern philosophy / edited by Riccardo Pozzo. mmmp. cm. — (Studies in philosophy and the history of philosophy; v. 39) mmIncludes bibliographical references and index. mmisbn 978-0-8132-3202-7(alk. paper) mm1. Aristotle—Influence. 2. Philosophy, Modern. I. Pozzo, Riccardo, 1959– II. Series. b485 .i525 2003 149' .91—dc21 2002014872 Contents riccardo pozzo, Introduction vii 1. edward p. mahoney, Aristotle and Some 1 Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 2. antonino poppi, Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as 35 a Rigorous Science 3. william a. wallace, The Influence of Aristotle 64 on Galileo’s Logic and Its Use in His Science 4. john p. doyle, Wrestling with a Wraith: 84 André Semery, S.J. (1630–1717) on Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 5. christia mercer, Leibniz, Aristotle, and 113 Ethical Knowledge 6. richard l. velkley, Speech, Imagination, Origins: 148 Rousseau and the Political Animal 7. riccardo pozzo, Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 173 8. alfredo ferrarin, Hegel’s Appropriation of the 193 Aristotelian Intellect 9. michael davis, Tragedy in the Philosophic Age 210 of the Greeks: Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 10. richard cobb-stevens, The Presence of Aristotelian 231 Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy v vi contents 11. stanley rosen, Phronesis or Ontology: 248 Aristotle and Heidegger 12. daniel o. dahlstrom, Wittgenstein’s 266 Intellectual Virtues 13. enrico berti, The Reception of Aristotle’s 285 Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer and the Hermeneutic Philosophy Contributors 301 Bibliography 307 Index of Names 329 Introduction RICCARDO POZZO This volume presents the papers delivered during the Fall 1999 lec- ture series of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. It originates from the wish to trace across the centuries the continuous presence of the five intellectual virtues set forth by Aristotle in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. All speakers were asked to consider their author’s position as regards the concepts of art, prudence, science, wisdom, and understanding; and look for reactions to Aristotle’s origi- nal understanding of them. Of course, this was a very specific question, and although the speakers were encouraged to consider this issue, they were not required to do so. It was rather suggested they looked into the general issue of the impact of Aristotle on the philosophers they were familiar with, namely two dozen late Scholastics and Renaissance Philosophers, and Zabarella, Galilei, Suárez, Semery, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Gada- mer. For the sake of precision, the scope of the volume was limited to modern philosophy, i.e., to the period that begins with the Renaissance and ends with the twentieth century. It is true that many representative philosophers are considered in the volume, but just as many are miss- ing. On the other side, the inclusion of Hellenistic1 or early and late me- dieval philosophy2 would have made a thorough reconstruction of the impact of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues a sheer impossibility. Obviously, the restriction of the diachronic scope does not bring with itself a claim 1. See first and foremost Paul Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen: Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973); idem, Die Renaissance des Aristotelis- mus im 1. Jahrhundert vor Christi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973); idem, Der Aristotelismus im 1. und 2. Jahrhundert nach Christi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984). 2. See especially Fernand van Steenberghen, Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1980); Husain Kassim, Aristotle and Aristotelianism in Medieval, Jewish, and Christian Philosophy (Lanham, Md.: Austin & Win- field, 2000); Cary J. Nederman, Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th–15th Centuries (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997). vii viii riccardo pozzo at completeness. Finally, it needs to be recognized that it was not only and not simply Aristotle who influenced modern philosophy. The im- pact the contributors have written about is rather the impact of a tradi- tion, the tradition Renaissance Aristotelianism, which was first molded by Aldo Manuzio’s edition of Aristotle’s Opera (Venice, 1495–98), found its standing in the monumental edition of the Giunti with Averroes’ commentary (Venice, 1550–52), and reached its blossoming by means of the European diffusion of the results of the Paduan School.3 It has never been obvious to deal with Aristotle, and Sir Anthony Ken- ny’s recent essays on Aristotelianism, the volume on the questions “whose Aristotle? whose Aristotelianism?” edited by R. W. Sharples, and the volume on the impact of the Paduan School on early modern phi- losophy edited by Gregorio Piaia prove that.4 Aristotle is both the most praised and the most condemned philosopher of all times. At the begin- ning of the twentieth century, Ernst Cassirer described the shift that took place from sixteenth- to seventeenth-century philosophy as a shift from the concept of substance to the concept of relation.5 As long as the concept of substance and the idea that a property is predicated of an in- dividual subject maintained scientific primacy, Aristotelianism was in great demand and was able to defeat threatening alternatives such as Ramism; but as soon as Descartes established the convenience of ex- pressing all scientific problems in terms of function, i.e., in terms of the relation of two or more ideas or bodies in space and time, Aristotelian- ism began an inexorable descent. By the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, Aristotelianism virtually disappeared from university curricula and from scientific publications all over Europe. This did not mean, however, that Aristotle was forgotten. Kant kept referring to Aristotle all of his life, and the sections dedicated to Aristo- 3. Wilhelm Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holz- boog, 1964–70), vol. 1, 12. See also Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal XIV al XVI secolo (Florence: Sansoni, 1958); Antonino Poppi, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano, 2d edition (Padua: Antenore, 1991); idem, L’etica del Rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele (Naples: Città del Sole, 1997); idem, Ricerche sulla teologia e la scienza nella Scuola Padovana del Cinque e Seicento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2001). 4. Sir Anthony Kenny, Essays on the Aristotelian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?, ed. R. W. Shaprles (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001); La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padua: Antenore, 2002). See also L’attualità della problematica aristotelica: Atti del convegno franco-italiano su Aristotele (Padova, 6–8 Apr. 1967), ed. Carlo Diano (Padua: Antenore, 1970). 5. Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, trans. William Curtis Swabey and Marie Collins Swabey (New York: Dover, 1953), 9. Aristotelianism and Cartesianism are at the origin for Cassirer of two “chief forms of logic, which are especial- ly opposed to each other in the modern scientific development,” and they “are distin- guished .l.l. by the different value which is placed upon thing-concepts and relation-concepts.” Introduction ix tle in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy6 prepared the Aris- totelian Renaissance of the early nineteenth century, which was made possible by Immanuel Becker’s edition of the Opera (Berlin, 1831–36).7 Finally, that Aristotle experienced a further Renaissance all over the twentieth century was due to Leo XIII’s proclamation of Thomism as the official doctrine of the Catholic Church in the encyclical letter Aeterni Patris of August 4, 1879; and it was also due to the reappraisal of his phi- losophy that began with Werner Jaeger8 and ended with Gadamer.9 This volume is about the history of a tradition, the tradition of Re- naissance and modern Aristotelianism. It does not aim at replacing any of the existing works that have been dedicated to the whole or to parts of the history of Aristotelianism.10 It aims, however, at tracing the impact of Aristotelianism on modern philosophy in the form of a clear line that goes through the writings of the philosophers of the Western tradition. Each paper of this volume provides an original contribution in so far as it illuminates the role played by Aristotelianism as one of the sources, if not as the dominant one, of one individual philosopher. Often, to deal with Aristotle or Aristotelianism meant to take a stance concerning an issue that was discussed in one’s own age—this was the case, e.g., for Kant when he looked into a new understanding of the concepts of art, prudence, science, wisdom, and understanding. However, one should not look into this volume for an exposition of the history of the five con- cepts that constitute Aristotle’s theory of the intellectual virtues. No in- dividual contributor has pursued this object. What they have rather 6. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: The Lectures of 1825–1826, ed. Robert F. Brown, trans. Robert F. Brown and J. M. Stewart with the assistance of Henry S. Harris (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1990).
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