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Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima Books I and II

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Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima Books I and II Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima Books I and II Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D. University of Chicago Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, Books I & II Copyright © 2012 by Eugene T. Gendlin Published by the Focusing Institute 34 East Ln., Spring Valley, NY 10977 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. Introduction Purpose and Plan: This commentary is intended as a companion to Aristotle’s De Anima. I address someone who is reading the text, and is stopped by a puzzling spot. Look that spot up in the Commentary. Or, if you have long had certain puzzles in the De Anima, look them up here. The Commentary is designed for scholars of Aristotle, but I divided it so that it can be useful also to beginning readers. The main part aims at clear assertions that should be helpful to anyone at each line. The endnotes are only for a specialist. They will confuse someone who is just grasping what Aristotle is talking about. But experienced philosophers are also advised not to read the endnotes until they have read my comments on the text. The issues raised in some endnotes presuppose Aristotle’s careful development in the whole De Anima. In the main part I simply say what I think Aristotle means. I am aware that straight out statements about what Aristotle means are currently out of style, but I see no reason to force everyone to retrace my long path, just to read Aristotle’s page. Some intricate insights can lead to simple clarifications. Passages that seem clear are often contradicted by other passages elsewhere, until at last we find Aristotle making an odd distinction which explains both. But other passages may raise further problems which require finding still another odd distinction. After a long time, when the text has becomes quite consistent, one can clarify a line without raising erstwhile problems. In the endnotes I explain the basis for my assertions, as well as doubts and alternative readings. There I interrelate many parts of the De Anima and other works of Aristotle. In the endnotes I take up every puzzle I find. I must warn the reader that many of these are quite technical. Only an Aristotelian scholar will find them exciting. Resolving a small puzzle can clarify others and lead to implications one does not see at first. For example, one such small puzzle is the passage (428a11) where Aristotle denies that bees and ants have imagination, whereas everywhere else he affirms explicitly that all animals have it. The puzzle is well known. Before Aquinas, Albert the Great insisted that the translator must have made a mistake. Aquinas interprets the passage in relation to animals that have only one sense, but this does not explain about bees and ants who have all five senses. Some moderns (the O.C.T. and Torstrik) want to remove the trouble by emending the text. Hamlyn thinks it might mean that ants and bees lack the “deliberative” (human) kind of imagination, but according to Aristotle all animals lack that kind. From solving several other puzzles I show where Aristotle says that the kind of imagination he thinks bees and ants don't have, the kind he is discussing here, requires 2 Introduction a sense for time which only the higher animals have. They need to be able to recognize images as being from the past. How Aristotle explains the sense for time does turn out to have broad implications. It is exciting to resolve puzzles that have hung there for centuries, but I want to assure the reader that many parts of the commentary are more immediately useful. Below I discuss some of the uses and powers which a reading of Aristotle provides. I can give the reader a criterion by which to decide if I am right in any spot. My assertions are not to be taken in place of Aristotle’s assertions. A commentary should never displace the text. Please do not go out and repeat what Gendlin says and claim that it is what Aristotle says. If you have a puzzle in the text, read what I say and then return immediately to that spot in the text. You may find the text saying what the Commentary promised, or -- something else. Aristotle’s meaning must emerge for you directly from that spot in his text. Other spots should then corroborate it as well. Many commentaries I have seen are so poor that even a beginner using my test can find them wanting. Do not believe them, or me. A commentary succeeds at a puzzling spot only if, when you return to the text, AHA! now the text plainly says something that makes sense. Later you might interpret it in another way but the passage will never go back to being senseless. Currently many philosophers emphasize the fact that there is no single right reading of a text. It is true that different concerns can be rolled up to a text, in response to which the text will speak back very differently. But a text must first be recognized as a deliberately and carefully constructed thing with a plan, parts, links, and internal sense-making. The best practitioners of the slogan that “there is no text” analyze a text very carefully and accurately, in order to determine how to “deconstruct” it. That stage has not been reached as long as the text seems to contain a great deal of puzzling nonsense. There is a reason why one can be so puzzled for so long, and yet later see that the text says what it says quite plainly. To understand the text we must be able to conceive of what it says; we have to follow it with steps of our own thought. But our own thought is already structured and directed by many assumptions which we are not aware of making. We cannot imagine other alternatives. Seen through our own thinking, a passage in the text may seem to make an obvious mistake. A person of at least average intelligence such as Aristotle would not make this mistake. So we can be sure that this cannot be what Aristotle thought he wrote here, but what else could it mean? To save readers my many years of work, I tell them the unfamiliar way of thinking which, if it can be considered, lets the text make sense. But this can happen only if they turn back to the text to find out whether it now speaks plainly. Then I examine and defend my reading in the endnotes. Introduction 3 In many passages Aristotle argues explicitly against an assumption we are reading in. But since we do read it in here, we don’t notice that he is denying it here. We seem to read something else. I have often observed this in retrospect. Later I wonder: How could I have missed his explicit denial? One can never be sure of having recognized all such places. THE KIND OF COMMENTARY IT IS In the Middle Ages a long line of scholars established a deep-going reading of Aristotle. In that tradition a beginner learned many reliable statements about Aristotle’s views, which function at first like mysterious formulae. One could repeat them but one came to understand them only gradually. For example, from the start one learned that for Aristotle “matter is not bodies or particles; matter is potentiality.” Some years later perhaps one became able to tell oneself exactly how matter can be thought of as just potentiality, not as identifiable basic particles or bodies. One understood this only together with understanding other terms and assertions. With such gradually emerging understandings, scholars knew that Aristotle’s characteristic mode of thinking is very different from more familiar kinds of thought. The tradition had many drawbacks. Aristotle was discussed in Latin terms which distort his concepts. Each commentator asserted “the correct” reading without alluding to other readings. They seem to understand everything Aristotle says. When they cannot enter into the internal sense of his statement, they may repeat an old formula, still in an assertive tone. It can seem that only you, the reader, do not grasp the formula. Many Aristotelian formulae remain internally dark. In reaction, Analytical philosophers (especially scholars and translators in Oxford) have simply set the whole tradition aside, and have begun afresh. In accord with their general approach, the Analytic Philosophers strive for clarity. They accept only what they clearly understand. They often admit to being puzzled. Even when they feel sure, they still leave room for other readings. In contrast to the tone of “I am always right,” it is far more realistic and pleasant when scholars write: “If I am right, Aristotle means ...” or “How are we to understand this?” “How can we make this intelligible to ourselves?” “I will argue ....” and, “An objector might now question whether ...” These commentators have also provided invaluable clarifications of many ambiguities in the grammar of Aristotle’s compressed text. In some stretches of major works his often ambiguous referents have been carefully examined. There is now a whole literature of this kind, 4 Introduction which we will never want to do without. A new level of philological care has opened many passages. But the new way also has certain pitfalls. There are some commentators who don't attempt to understand Aristotle’s genuinely different way of thinking.
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