Reading Aristotle: Physics VII.3. “What is Alteration?” Proceedingsof the International ESAP-HYELE Conference Reading Aristotle:Physics VII.3. “What is Alteration?” Proceedings of the InternationalESAP-HYELE Conference ed. by Stephano Maso, Carlo Natali,and Gerhard Seel (review)

Mariska Leunissen

American Journal of Philology, Volume 134, Number 1 (Whole Number533), Spring 2013, pp. 155-159 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/ajp.2013.0014

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of these concepts to Plato’s ontology (not to mention Aristotle’s development of the language of predication). The combination of mistranslation due to insuf-ficient attention to the Greek and the spare commentary constitutes, at least in the case of Philolaus B 6, a double-whammy for the reader, who is likely to feel more baffled than if she had simply stayed with Huffman’s Greek text. slackness at points in the commentary might be a function of the fact that the author was asked to supply it by Cambridge University Press on the grounds that “the texts were not sufficiently self-explanatory to stand on their own” (xiv), but this must remain mere speculation. To my mind, it is hard to fathom how any of the texts of early Greek philosophy might be thought “to stand on their own.”

in summary, Graham has produced in The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy a work whose strengths achieve prominence in the relief of its weaknesses. it is my hope that if its author and Cambridge University Press were to entertain the possibility of a second edition—part 2, it is worth noting, is relatively short in page count—they would consider ways to expand beyond the volumes’ self-avowed identification as a “starting-point for further inquiry and reflection” or willing acceptance of “major gaps in the record” of a “lost conversation about the nature of things” (13–14). After all, those heavyweight contenders which Graham’s volumes seek to measure up against (krs, Barnes, and Mckirahan) all found better footing in revised and expanded editions, and there is no reason to assume the same regimen would not work here.

PhilliP SiDney horkyDurham univerSity

e-mail: Phillip.Horky@Durham.ac.uk

StePhano maSo, Carlo natali, anD GerharD Seel, eDS. Reading Aris-totle: Physics VII.3. “What is Alteration?” Proceedings of the International ESAP-HYELE Conference. Las vegas, nev.: Parmenides Publishing, 2012. xvii + 152 pp. Paper, $65.

As the editors of this excellent little volume point out from the outset, Aristotle’s Physics vii.3 is a curious, difficult, and—sadly—mostly neglected chapter. on the one hand, the chapter discusses quite important matters. offering one of the lengthiest discussions of qualitative change in the Aristotelian corpus, it starts out by restricting this type of change—not to changes in any of the four types of quality Aristotle had distinguished in Categories 8—but to change in perceptual qualities only (i.e., to change in the third type of “affective qualities” listed in Categories 8). it then proceeds by demonstrating that two seeming coun-terexamples to this refined notion of qualitative change—namely, items taking on figures or shapes, and the taking on and casting off of states (the fourth and first type of quality listed in the Categories, respectively)—are not in fact cases of qualitative change, even if their occurrence depends on qualitative changes

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taking place in something else. in the meantime, it offers a rare physiological account of the acquisition and loss of the ethical and intellectual virtues, thereby making the chapter not only crucial for our understanding of Aristotle’s phys-ics and metaphysics but also for his moral psychology and ethics. on the other hand, the chapter is demanding, does not seem to fit in well within the argument of Physics vii as a whole (although this book seems to be a bit of an anomaly itself: Aristotle’s student eudemus, who wrote his own paraphrase of the entire Physics, does not include his own version of Book vii), and the Greek has been handed down to us in two different versions (this is true also of Physics vii.1–2, but otherwise this phenomenon is unique for the Aristotelian corpus).

The volume under review goes a long way toward making this intricate chapter more accessible to scholars by putting the chapter in context, printing both versions of the Greek text with an english translation, and offering—in the form of separate essays—a running commentary on the text. The volume is a product of a conference on Physics vii.3 held in vitznau, switzerland, 12–15 April 2007, organized by the european society for Ancient Philosophy (esAP) and the HYeLe institute for Comparative studies. As stefano Maso explains in the foreword to the volume, the main purpose of these meetings (of which there have been several since the first gathering of Aristotle scholars in europe in 1995; the meetings have been annual since the foundation of esAP in 2005) is to read and interpret closely an important chapter in the Aristotelian corpus, while paying attention to textual and exegetical issues as well as to questions of more theoretical and philosophical interest. For this purpose, the text is divided into short sections, which are then translated and introduced by the participating scholars, and debated collectively during the remainder of the session.

The present volume reflects both the set up and the value of this approach: the volume consists, in addition to the foreword by Maso mentioned above, of an introduction by robert wardy (who has already done extensive work on the chapter in his The Chain of Change: A Study of Aristotle’s Physics VII [Cambridge 1990]); printed versions of the Greek texts with an english translation (first of version α, which is the version printed by w. D. ross in his 1950 oxford edition, and next of version β, which is the version known by simplicius, Philoponus, and Themistius); another set of preliminary remarks on the place and structure of Physics vii.3 by Benjamin Morison and Gerhard seel; and commentaries on the six sections of the chapter (245b3–46a9 by Benjamin Morison; 246a10–46b3 by Ursula Coope; 246b3–46b20 by istván Bodnár; 246b20–47a19 by Cristina viano; 247b1–47b13 by Frans A. J. de Haas; and 247b13–48a9 by Carlo natali). The volume concludes with two appendices: the first consists of an essay on the “Logical and semantical Background of Aristotle’s Argumentation” by Gerhard seel, and the second is a collation of the Greek of versions α and β next to each other, provided by oliver Primavesi in order to highlight the correspondence between the two versions. The volume usefully provides a bibliography (which is rather slim and consists mostly of translations of the Physics and monographs on this treatise, thereby illustrating how little attention this chapter has received

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in the scholarly literature), an index locorum, a general index, and an index of Greek terms.

The analyses provided in these chapters are all, in line with the slow and attentive reading model used at the conference, careful and informative, frequently opening up questions for further research. Depending on one’s temperament, one could find this latter feature either stimulating or frustrating: wardy, for instance, offers “an aporetic agenda” for the study of Physics vii.3 in his intro-duction (including the rather fascinating question of the nature and strength of Aristotle’s claim that the acquisition of ethical virtues depends on alterations of the sense organs), but it is not clear to what extent the individual contributors are concerned with this agenda. The solutions offered in the volume are mod-est, and three of the commentary sections conclude by raising further questions that are not settled within the volume. However, what i found especially help-ful in this volume (and what is all too often lacking in collections of essays) is the frequent back and forth between the different scholars who participated in the conference and who continued their discussions over the written versions afterwards (this dialectic context is clear in, for instance, Morison, who reports that “because of these counterexamples, the mood of the conference was to find Aristotle’s arguments insufficient for showing that changes of shape should not be considered to be alterations”). in this way, the volume exhibits both the richness of the available interpretations of this complicated chapter but also leaves room for interesting disagreements (see, e.g., Bodnár, who contends that the figures and shapes discussed in Physics vii.3 are not the fourth type of quality men-tioned in the Categories but rather the substantial forms of the Metaphysics, and Coope, who offers a balanced account of three potential solutions to a problem of interpretation that were offered during the conference, while defending one of them as her own preferred interpretation). on the downside, the commentary sections sometimes read as just that, i.e., well-worked-out discussion notes rather than independent essays (i found this especially striking in the short preliminary remarks section by Morison and seel, which seemed like it would have been better off if its contents had been integrated with the introduction provided by wardy, as it repeats some of the same information, but in a less fluid style).

instead of summarizing the different sections, including the six commentary sections, one-by-one, let me present what collectively appear to be the four main findings or insights put forward in the volume. First, even though the connections with the other chapters in Book vii are not immediately evident, the consensus as presented in the volume is that Physics vii.3 establishes the proposition that alteration requires contact and should therefore be read as an extension of the argument presented in Physics vii.1–2 against kinetic infinity, which builds on the idea that all kinds of change involve contact. in order to preserve this argu-ment, Aristotle needs to establish that the examples which violate this contact-requirement and which appear to be cases of qualitative change are not in fact qualitative changes. one should note that, as the contributors to this volume stress repeatedly, Aristotle’s notion of change appealed to in these discussions is more

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restricted than our notion, which recognizes so called russellian or Cambridge changes, defined as “if X is F at t1 and G at t2—where F and G are incompatible—X has changed from being F to being G,” as true changes, whereas for Aristotle change always involves: (a.) being in contact with the origin of change; (b.) a lapse of time; and (c.) a transition between two limiting states. Transitions from motion to rest and vice versa thus do not count as true changes for Aristotle.

second, concerning the place of Physics vii.3 in the Aristotelian corpus as a whole, the chapter is found to present a more restricted notion of qualitative change than the one suggested by Aristotle’s treatment of the category of quality in the Categories and therefore constitutes a departure from that treatise (as well as, perhaps, from other natural treatises, as is illustrated in seel’s appendix-piece). However, as is especially made clear by viano, the distinctions Aristotle draws between the different kinds of qualities in the Categories can still be made use-ful for Aristotle’s treatment of, for instance, the virtues in Physics vii.3. on the other hand, the physiological account of the ethical virtues in Physics vii.3 can, according to viano, be read as complementing and as a more fleshed out ver-sion of the physiology of, for instance, temperance as presented in Nicomachean Ethics iii.13. similarly, de Haas argues for a thematic connection between the physiological account of the intellectual virtues in Physics vii.3 and Aristotle’s account of knowledge acquisition in Posterior Analytics ii.19 (the difference being one of emphasis only, not of content). on more careful examination, the chapter thus seems to be reasonably well embedded with other texts in the corpus.

Third, some of the sections offer interesting methodological remarks about what strategies to use in interpreting underdetermined texts such as the one under discussion. For instance, Coope argues persuasively that in providing an interpretation for why Aristotle might have thought that perfections are not cases of qualitative change, our account ought to make sense not only of perfections, but also of their opposites, defects, which are also mentioned by Aristotle. in light of this, she argues for the interpretation of perfections as “manifestations to a greater degree of a property that one already has,” while interpreting defects as manifestations of that property to a lesser degree. in a similar methodological passage, natali argues that one should not pretend that Aristotle did not already know the kinds of distinctions he draws in On the Soul between “not having knowledge” and “having knowledge and not using it.” we should rather assume that Aristotle is deliberately working with a more restricted notion of qualitative change in the Physics; thus, some of our problems of interpretation turn out to be false problems.

Fourth, and finally, on the issue of whether virtues and vices are themselves relations (i.e., whether they are identical to some mixture or due proportion of elements) or are rather ontologically dependent on such relations, the contribu-tors remain divided. Bodnár, for instance, argues that there is evidence for both positions, but that the issue is more “a matter of what exactly Aristotle’s formula-tions mean, than an issue of philosophical contention.” For viano, on the other

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hand, the chapter “looks so evidently ‘reductionist’ and materialist” that it allows her to show that the proper affections of virtue and vice are ultimately physical.

i detected few editorial problems, and only two of these require mentioning: First, on page 20, the π has dropped out of the Greek text in line 246b4 (the text should read πρός, not ρός). second, on page 96 in viano’s commentary, wardy’s 1990 translation of Physics ii.3, 246b27–47a28, version β, has been reprinted (which in itself seems superfluous, since the volume already provides a translation of this passage on p. 31), but unfortunately mistakes have been added that are not in the original (line 2: second “virtues” should be “virtue”; line 4: “in” should be “its”; line 7: “for” should be “from”; line 16: “an” should be “in”; and lines 17–18: “while if . . . the cause,” which is a repetition of the earlier clause, should be deleted). However, these are only minor quibbles. overall, the volume is a fine piece of Aristotelian scholarship, and i recommend it without reservations to anyone with a serious interest in Aristotle’s physics, psychology, and ethics.

mariSka leuniSSenuniverSity of north Carolina at ChaPel hill

e-mail: mleunissen@unc.edu

tina Chanter. Whose Antigone? The Tragic Marginalization of Slavery. Al-bany: state University of new York Press, 2011. xli + 233 pp. Cloth, $90; paper, $29.95.

Tina Chanter’s book sets out to re-read sophocles’ Antigone in light of two modern reworkings of the play from sub-saharan Africa—Athol Fugard’s The Island (1974), which is based on an actual all-male performance of Antigone by prisoners on robben island (where nelson Mandela was incarcerated), and Fémi Òsófisan’s Tègònni: An African Antigone (1999), a version highlighting racial tensions that is set in British-colonial nigeria. But Chanter’s book is about much more than that, as she spends a good deal of time critiquing, on the one hand, the interpretive tradition of western psychoanalysis, which sees gender and kinship relations as the defining themes of the oedipus cycle, while decrying, on the other, Hegelian readings that view Antigone as an aesthetically pure, ethical heroine caught between obligations to family and state. The thesis of the book is perhaps best captured in Chanter’s own words: “it turns out that the issues raised by Òsófisan and Fugard . . . far from being tangential to those of sophocles, are inscribed at the very heart of the oedipal cycle. Yet their inscription has proved difficult to read by interpreters of Antigone who have inherited ways of reading inflected by philosophical and psychoanalytic legacies, which are themselves impli-cated in imperialism, bolstered by new world slavery” (143). Chanter’s critique of the west’s reception of Antigone is often illuminating, but the proposition that colonialism per se is the culprit of blindered readings and that slavery lies