Abstract

Diogenes Laertius relates the tale that Aristotle, upon being reproached for giving alms to a debased fellow, replied, ‘It was not his character, but the man, that I pitied.’ Some such reply is equally apt in apology for a paper paying homage to an idea long discredited in the philosophical world, Aristotle's theory of Place. I have been moved, not indeed by the apparent character of Aristotle's theory, for that is easily reproached, but by what has proved for the philosophical tradition of infinite worth, what we may call the theory's ‘latent virtue’. There is a danger, of course, as hard-headed philologists and commentators are always reminding us, that in attending to this latent virtue we may be paying sentimental homage to the dead. Thus it will be important that we first carefully and coldly examine the overt character of the Aristotelian doctrine before attempting to justify any philosophical compassion felt in its presence. More than likely in such a disinterested inquiry it will be found that our ‘debased fellow’ is a good deal more of a man than the modern reformers have allowed