There is no general agreement among scholars that Aristotle had a unified concept of phantasia. That is evident from the most cursory glance through the literature. Freudenthal speaks of the contradictions into which Aristotle seems to fall in his remarks about phantasia, and explains the contradictions as due to the border position which phantasia occupies between Wahrnehmung and thinking. Ross, in Aristotle, p. 143, talks of passages on phantasia in De Anima 3. 3 which constitute ‘a reversal of his doctrine (...) of sensation’ and perhaps do not ‘represent his deliberate view’. This is a serious state of affairs, since De Anima 3. 3 is Aristotle’s main discussion of phantasia. Of passages on phantasia, appearances and images in De Anima 3. 3, Hamlyn says: ‘There is clearly little consistency here’. Even Schofield, who is more optimistic about saving the unity of Aristotle’s concept than the last two scholars, grants that ‘some of the inconsistencies of Aristotle’s account seem more than merely apparent’.1 He thinks of Aristotle’s phantasia as a ‘loose-knit, family concept’. My purpose here is to suggest that Aristotle is more consistent in his use of phantasia than his critics will allow him to be. The translation of the term as imagination frequently adds unnecessarily to the confusion, so I shall avoid it and use transliteration instead. (shrink)

Professor Guthrie was confronted with a number of problems when he came to write this third volume of his History of Greek Philosophy. He had intended to include Plato but this proved impossible. So we are given an account of the fifth-century enlightenment, the Sophists and Socrates. The next problem was whether to deal with thinkers separately, as he had done in the first two volumes, or to order the chapters by subjects. He chose the second method, adding to the (...) discussions a brief account of each of the principal participants. (shrink)

Greek philosophy had formed the minds of the educated classes of the Roman Empire for centuries before the early Christians set out to spread their message there. If they wished to gain a hearing, therefore, the language of Greek philosophy was the language they had to speak. This venture was to have a long history and an enduring effect both upon Christianity itself and on the world that it was seeking to convince and convert.

THE most influential figure in Aristotelian scholarship in modern times was undoubtedly Werner Jaeger. There had been great original thinkers about Aristotle in the hundred years before Jaeger: one need only mention Brandis in Germany and Case in England. There were also fine scholars contemporary with Jaeger, like Sir David Ross, the editor and commentator on Aristotle. But no Aristotelian scholar made such an impact as Jaeger. His arguments for Aristotle’s development, for his declining Platonism and growing empiricism, started a (...) sort of revolution in Aristotelian studies. Jaeger’s position has been very much questioned since but it would be ungenerous to call his work on Aristotle anything other than a great contribution to scholarship. But Jaeger did not attempt an extended analysis and criticism of central problems in Aristotle’s philosophy. And the same must be said of other prominent contributors to Aristotelian scholarship in this century. Ross’s editions and commentaries on Aristotle are invaluable but his commentary often seems to leave off just when the problem is getting interesting. This may be explained by his reported answer to the question of whether he actually agreed with Aristotle: ‘Oh, my dear child, I am a scholar, not a philosopher’. This might not be the answer of Ingemar During who has written the latest big scholarly book covering all aspects of Aristotle’s thought but one feels at times that it should be, and particularly when Düring is dealing with Aristotle’s metaphysics. (shrink)

Mommsen is reputed to have said: ‘In spite of his beautiful style, Renan was a true scholar’. Books on the Symposium are rare, perhaps because it is thought that its beauty takes from its philosophical earnestness. Rosen’s work is all the more welcome for that reason, but he also manages to throw light on much else in Plato’s thought. He tries to show that the cliché about Plato’s style being an important part of his meaning is to be taken seriously. (...) Rosen goes through the prologue and the various speeches in the dialogue analysing them and showing their relationship to Platonic and a wide range of other philosophic thought. (shrink)

It should be stated first that the title is accidental for, as the editor explains, the contributors were invited to write on topics in Greek philosophy that were connected with philosophical issues that are still debated by contemporary philosophers, and all happened to write on either Plato or Aristotle. Consequently, the essays are all absolutely independent, and the emphasis on ‘Greekness’ or ‘modernity’ falls differently in different essays. Perhaps the most successful fusion is Owen’s essay ‘Aristotle on the snares of (...) ontology’, an attempt to chart the basic patterns of Aristotle’s analysis of existence, his account of the verb ‘to be’ in what is ordinarily called its ‘existential’ sense. Owen shows that we can distinguish at least three existential uses of the verb ‘to be’. Two of them are found in an example like the following: ‘while Arrowby is in existence there is at least one man still in existence, but if Arrowby dies there is one man who is no more’. The third is that involved in a question such as ‘Does time exist?’. Aristotle himself gives no express recognition to these distinctions. (shrink)