Talk:Aristotle/Archives/2010

Ethnocentric

The text reads: "his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'.

I think ethnocentric needs to be changed to racist. This is important to understanding Aristotle with respect to early Science because racism is bias, and bias is illegal in the Scientific Method. Aristotle's science fits more closely something like undisciplined and pre-scientific metaphysics.

In contrast, my own experience with ethnocentrism was the mono-diet of New Africanism I lived (with many others) to help restore Black self-esteem by promoting New African music and art. And we were successful; we now have a Black president! --John Bessa (talk) 19:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The term "ethnocentric" better represents historians' consensus (and so should remain, though possibly with other views included: see below) because of the disagreement whether ancient perceptions and prejudices were conceived in terms of racial (as opposed to national) difference. If you wanted to explore whether there is any citable view for this article that can be derived from the side of the scholarly controversy that believes racism per se is an appropriate term to bring to the study of classical antiquity, it would be best to start by studying the references to Aristotle in this book. Wareh (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that ethnocentric is more correct. The term racism as generally understood has a lot of specifically modern characteristics. I am not saying the case for Aristotle being racist could not be argued, but Wikipedia should report what is mainstream and should not report debateable opinions as if they are not debateable. BTW, despot is a normal Greek word for master, and the point being made is obviously that foreigners are not like friends and family and can not be worked with in the same way as Greeks were familiar with in their small states. Aristotle and many other Greeks had varying levels of respect for foreigners, but also a practical concern about any attempt to try to maintain international empires, and preferred smaller states.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured Article

I think, it should be a featured article. --Extra999 (Contact ^me + _contribs) 12:58, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 71.252.213.184, 12 April 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Please change Lebos, under the Life section, to Lyceum

71.252.213.184 (talk) 05:05, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

 Done I could not find "lebos" in the article, but your suggested change to Lyceum was already there. Goodvac (talk) 05:41, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

physics elements

Please reorder. Fire, than Earth, than water, than air. Fire being at the center of the universe. –160.227.23.233 (talk) 23:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Except that wasn't the order Aristotle gave. For him earth was at the centre of the universe. –Syncategoremata (talk) 01:32, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Readability of Aristotle's Works

As the non-linear, lecture-note style is an important side note to understanding Aristotle I have added this section in. I have taken several college courses that address Aristotle's works and each time both the text and teacher referred to his writing style. If both teacher and book include this information it is obviously important. I agree with my teachers that it is important. One of the major drivers of higher quality text copying into Arabic was complaints about Aristotle's "poorly-translated" (actually poorly-written) corpus.

Noting the failure of User:TheThomas to follow WP:BRD. The --Snowded ^TALK 18:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)recent additions rely on a web site as source and have dubious value, the issue about the intent in writing - if properly sourced - might belong somewhere in the text but its not a section. Anecdotal reporting of your agreement with a few teachers does not a reliable source make. However I can see no purpose in the change - what do other editors think? --Snowded ^TALK 18:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not, in any way, need to provide a reliable source for the importance of the information. I am only required to provide a reliable source for the information. It does belong somewhere in the text, and I inserted it into the most reasonable place I saw. If you're keen on moving stuff around, be my guest. TheThomas (talk) 18:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

You have not supplied a reliable source for the text. Also you can't just add anything that is referenced if it does not contribute to the article. I am disputing the relevance and you should self revert pending agreement. --Snowded ^TALK 18:47, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The source specifically agrees with the text I edited into the article. The source has a its own inline citations and bibliography. What I wrote is both well supported by the source material and an accurate description of the sourced material. Your claim of it being unreliable is ridiculous. As a side note, erasing new information that you see can't see the importance of is not a worthy pastime. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 19:02, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The source is a web site by a law professor. It has various controversial statements. In an article of this nature you need material from a respectable text book on the subject. I think the statement that you made in the addition is opinion and your latest additions OR. You need to read WP:BRD and bring suggested amendments here for discussion if your first insertion is disputed (as it has been). --Snowded ^TALK 19:04, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

You're wasting my time. It is sourced. Whether there is controversial statements...in the 20,000 word text...the claims are sourced and quoted. I haven't inserted any opinion. It is only two lines, there isn't enough room for opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 19:12, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Being sourced is not enough, especially when the source is dubious. I have checked Kenny and Coplestone and neither make those statements. --Snowded ^TALK 19:15, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

What have you checked for? —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 19:21, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Here is the same claim from UC Berkeley. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/aristotle.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 19:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC) Mind you, in UC Berkeley's single page on Aristotle it only has two lines referring to his works, one of these is the claim you are challenging the importance of. They only had one page to sum up Aristotle and they included that piece of information nearly verbatim of how I had edited into wikipedia...and how my source had said it. Here in fact is the same claim on wikipedia. Edited in by another user. "Many scholars believe that Aristotle's works as we have them today are little more than lecture notes. Plenty of his works are extremely compressed and baffling to beginners. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Metaphysics - Ibn Sina (Avicenna), who was one of the greatest Islamic philosophers in the Medieval age, said that he had read the Metaphysics of Aristotle forty times, but still did not understand it. Later he read the book of al-Farabi, Purposes of Metaphysics of Aristotle, and understood Aristotle's book.

In the 19th century, with the rise of textual criticism, the Metaphysics was examined anew. Critics, noting the wide variety of topics and the seemingly illogical order of the books, concluded that it was actually a collection of shorter works thrown together haphazardly. Werner Jaeger further maintained that the different books were taken from different periods of Aristotle's life. Everyman's Library, for their 1000th volume, published the Metaphysics in a rearranged order that was intended to make the work easier for readers." —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 19:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC) Since this material has already met the standards of rigor required by wikipedia once in the Metaphysics of Aristotle page, I am assuming your complaints were overruled already at least once. I am going to go ahead and insert the information again if you can't come up with another issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 19:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I formatted your entry above as the indentation at times appeared random. The statement that some of Aristotle's works may be lecture notes is valid and can be backed up from sources. It might be worth a sentence at the end of the paragraph on "list of words" but it doesn't justify a full section (especially as you have repeated the point twice. Your paragraph on style is original research on your part. The point about the rearrangement of Metaphysics might be worth inclusion in Corpus_Aristotelicum with (and only with) a third party reference as to its relevance. Simply reporting the change is original research and its not especially relevant in a summary paragraph on this article. There are references to issues over dating of the various parts of Metaphysics, but those do not support your statement about their being baffling. Your statement about my complaints being overruled is baffling, would you point to the Dif? I can't find anything on the Metaphysics article which supports your statements, although I see you have again inserted your misinterpretation of the Cicero quote (which I have reversed). Stating both sides of an argument does not make you "self-contradictory". You are persistently refusing to follow WP:BRD and should agree any controversial change here first. --Snowded ^TALK 07:39, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

The edits of TheThomas are evidently good-faith contributions, and there are important truths recognizable in the text added. In my opinion, the single point raised which was probably most necessary for the article to consider was scholarly theories about how single works in the Aristotelian corpus may derive from the combination of several strands (indeed related to textual criticism, and indeed with Jaeger's ideas about the origins of different books of the Metaphysics a good example).

That said, I also think it's generally fair to say that the additions include redundancies, over-simplifications, and conflations that should be corrected by reference to what is already in the article (e.g. search our article for "lecture") and by reliance on better sources, which should not be carelessly synthesized. Specifically (1) Cicero's comment on arguments pro and contra has absolutely nothing to do with contradictions deriving from the lecture-note-recording process (a figment without a source offered to back it up); Wexler's cited article (on the Problems (Aristotle)) is discussing a feature of Aristotle's style of argument, not the (purportedly accidental) style in which the treatises have been assembled by master, students, or editors; (2) likewise the bafflingness of the Metaphysics can hardly be said to be primarily a result of this kind of factor (again, Jaeger's views seem to apply not to the lecture-note process but to the different origins of larger units of composition); the most authoritative modern accounts of Aristotle's theory of substance etc. can be equally baffling, and the most that can be said is that the presence of multiple strands in Met. (a different issue from "lecture notes" by the way) complicates our understanding of what is already an incredibly difficult and technical work.

Since it's good to be specific in a more positive way, perhaps the best first step would be to roll back and add, after, "Rather the surviving works mostly resemble lectures unintended for publication" (=old content), a sentence like, "With the rise of textual and analytic criticism, scholars have argued that some of the works consist of parts taken from different discussions and periods of Aristotle's work." (Sorry, that's not very elegantly written.) While Met. could certainly be mentioned as an example, fuller discussion of its issues should go in Metaphysics (Aristotle).

I see little need to duplicate wholesale between here and Corpus Aristotelicum. The most strictly logical approach would probably be to remove the second paragraph of Corpus_Aristotelicum#Overview_of_the_extant_works and to incorporate it into the same section here. That would help make it clear that general discussion of the style and composition of Aristotelian treatises is not really the subject of Corpus Aristotelicum, so that the new content should go here if anywhere. Certainly, while we're trying to build up a version that can earn consensus, I agree with Snowded that it would be nice to do so here (perhaps on the talk page). Wareh (talk) 16:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

After writing the above, I noticed the edit to the Metaphysics article and realized that (a) the content I most appreciated from TheThomas's addition (on Jaeger's analysis of Metaphysics) seems to have come from that article (though really Everyman's 1000th publication is a bit cheesy and beside the point) and not from TheThomas; (b) TheThomas has there added a quote (Cicero on pro and contra) which manifestly has nothing to do with the subject (Aristotle's Metaphysics). So, while I still WP:AGF, I would restate my opinion as saying I simply can't approve TheThomas's edits here and at Corpus Aristotelicum in their current form and believe they should be reverted pending a more solid approach to the issues they raise. Wareh (talk) 16:12, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I reverted for the moment per your suggestion (thanks for engaging). I think the point about lecture notes is important and should be included in this article as a sentence with a reference. To adapt your suggestion above, how about "Many of Aristotle's works may have been lectures and related material not intended for publication. In recent times some works have been rearranged to reflect scholarship". --Snowded ^TALK 08:06, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

There are really two unreleated points here. "Many of Aristotle's works may derive from lecture notes" and "Some scholars have attempted to identify sections within a given work of Aristotle that were composed at different times." As for the cn-tag on the fact that the surviving works are in the nature of technical treatises, I welcome a really well-chosen footnote, but this is close enough to common knowledge that I'm removing the tag. Among countless passing references, see e.g. A.A. Long, Hellenistic philosophy, p. 9, "only Aristotle's 'published' literary works and not the technical treatises which form the bulk of the work which survives today" (where "published" means published in antiquity by Aristotle). Sorry I can't be more sweepingly helpful at the moment. Wareh (talk) 14:52, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

" TheThomas' " should be written without the double s please. Since the idea of importance doesn't lend itself to proofs I will just drop this. I'd like to point out that this is not a page for philosophers. It is a page for people interested in Aristotle, and nowhere in this page is the undeniably poor readability of Aristotle's works addressed--though it is addressed in several other wikipedia articles. I decided to add this in after listening to M. Principe stating the importance of it in his lecture series. I couldn't agree with him more. If I am interested in Hobbes I can read Leviathan, if I am interested in Plato I can read the Republic, and anybody with an interest in Aristotle ought to know they cannot read Aristotle. I am disappointed to learn that this wikipedia article is closed to further improvement, additions, and information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 18:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Personally I find several of the works of Aristotle easier to read than Leviathan, but that is a personal opinion (as is yours). What matters here is third party reliable sources. If there is such material and we address WP:WEIGHT then it may make sense to add something - your call however. You have added a citation tag for something which I would have thought was self-evident. Any reason for that? --Snowded ^TALK 20:24, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Our discussion should make it obvious. You pointed out something I consider self-evident "that is a personal opinion (as is yours)." Any reason for that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheThomas (talk • contribs) 02:37, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

You view on what is self-evident is a personal opinion. If you want to make a qualitative statement such as that you need to (i) find a reliable source which says it and (ii) establish the relevance for this page. Personally I don't think the whole body of Aristotle's works are difficult to read, they are certainly more readable that much of continental and linguistic philosophy in the modern era. Some require more effort than others, some are more lecture notes but this is after all Philosophy. --Snowded ^TALK 06:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Aristotle rediscovered

A section that covered the "rediscovery" of Aristotle by European scholars has been removed today for lack of sourcing. I think it is an important enough aspect of Aristotle to be included in the article, and am not sure any of it remains. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/ could serve as at least a partial source--JimWae (talk) 20:53, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree the removal was hasty. It's basically sound and verifiable material, so in my view it should be kept and fixed rather than deleted. Moreover, one of the places to which the same edit added the citation-needed tag (does the editor intend to follow up in those places with deletions?) is a sentence "Lord sees...but is confident..." Perhaps the editor would like a page number, but this is already attributed. I do think it is desirable to have a citation for the palmistry etc. and will try to add something. I find the deletion approach troubling because a lot of common knowledge could be removed on that basis from a pretty good article like this one. The citation-needed tag is a clear enough flag (if any warning is needed), and the article has seen slow improvements, so patience is in order. Wareh (talk) 14:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the link to Aquinas and rediscovery is important - there are references in several books, happy to support something --Snowded ^TALK 18:15, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Modern Philosophy

I would like to propose that a segment of post-enlightenment philosophers is given to describing Ayn Rand's connection with Aristotle. I have previously written a piece for the section but I was advised to add to this talk first. Although some migh not consider Rand a modern philosopher, she is clearly influenced by Aristotle, which I think is more than enough for mention and description.

This is my proposed edit:

Ayn Rand was massively influenced by Aristotle, and considered him the most important philosopher in Western history. In The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963, 18, she describes Aristotle thus:

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back toward the cave of his antipode: Plato."</ref>The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963, 18.</ref>

The page containing the source is here:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/aristotle.html

Lots of people were influenced by Aristotle. We'd need an indication from high-quality reliable sources to suggest that it's important to note here that Rand was so influenced. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 03:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Agree with SlimVirgin. Also see Talk:Aristotle/Archives/2009#Moving the Legacy section to Aristotelians and Talk:Aristotle/Archives/2009#Ayn Rand for some other editor's thoughts on this issue. Paul August ☎ 14:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. There are way too many people to name all of them, so there needs to be a bit more than just any old connection.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:06, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, no case for inclusion --Snowded ^TALK 20:23, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Question for grammar mavens

I'd like to change the third sentence, "Aristotle's writings constitute a first at creating a comprehensive system of Western philosophy" to something that reads more smoothly to me. My question is whether it already reads smoothly to others. "A first" usually raises the question "a first what?" "A first writings" is ungrammatical. And is it Aristotle or his writings that is/are responsible for the creating? Does this need fixing, and if so what would improve it without unduly hobbling the rest of the sentence? How about "Aristotle's writings were the first to create ...?" --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 19:44, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I understand it, but it seems clumsy. Change away. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 21:32, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Done. (The meaning was clear, it was just the clumsiness.) --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 02:09, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ethnocentric

The text reads: "his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'.

I think ethnocentric needs to be changed to racist. This is important to understanding Aristotle with respect to early Science because racism is bias, and bias is illegal in the Scientific Method. Aristotle's science fits more closely something like undisciplined and pre-scientific metaphysics.

In contrast, my own experience with ethnocentrism was the mono-diet of New Africanism I lived (with many others) to help restore Black self-esteem by promoting New African music and art. And we were successful; we now have a Black president! --John Bessa (talk) 19:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The term "ethnocentric" better represents historians' consensus (and so should remain, though possibly with other views included: see below) because of the disagreement whether ancient perceptions and prejudices were conceived in terms of racial (as opposed to national) difference. If you wanted to explore whether there is any citable view for this article that can be derived from the side of the scholarly controversy that believes racism per se is an appropriate term to bring to the study of classical antiquity, it would be best to start by studying the references to Aristotle in this book. Wareh (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that ethnocentric is more correct. The term racism as generally understood has a lot of specifically modern characteristics. I am not saying the case for Aristotle being racist could not be argued, but Wikipedia should report what is mainstream and should not report debatable opinions as if they are not debatable. BTW, despot is a normal Greek word for master, and the point being made is obviously that foreigners are not like friends and family and can not be worked with in the same way as Greeks were familiar with in their small states. Aristotle and many other Greeks had varying levels of respect for foreigners, but also a practical concern about any attempt to try to maintain international empires, and preferred smaller states.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster says that Aristotle and other Greeks (Athenians) had concern about and running empires, yet it was Aristotle who convinced Alexander to attack the Persians as objects. This is the issue: Aristotle is attributed with so many contradictory things that I suspect that he was in line with his master (or despot) Plato, and that the more "open" material was added to his legacy later. Or more likely from my experience, he simply took material from others who were more "sensual" and presented their material as his own; this I have experienced with narcissists, who are people who cannot really see outside themselves: Plato.

When I was in technology development during the heyday of the 1990s, we used the term "Human 1.0." There will never be a 2.0, at least not in many lifetimes, or ever if Devolution is in effect. Saying that humans in different regions or during different eras are fundamentally different, and as such, judged in different ways, is bias. And bias is the basis of this discussion. Is ethnocentricty simply a clean word for racism, and is not racism then built into the basic thought of Western Civilization? And since all humanity is roughly similar (again the bias issue), is racism a fundamental component of all high-level civilization as opposed to natural native society? This goes further: why do we equate (on the wikipedia) nativism and racism; exactly how convoluted is the classic model?

This is important in the context of modern society's attempt to unwind the classic tendency to conflict. I really don't see a need for further research when the facts are so plainly in front of us. But I am reading IF Stone's Trial of Socrates as a staring point, and I will look at The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Wareh.--John Bessa (talk) 13:21, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

The Deformed Male

Where does Aristotle state that the female is "a deformed male"? The reference is Pecks Generation of Animals but I can't find it there. On the other hand, Prudence Allen discusses in The Concept of Woman http://books.google.se/books?id=SfnTRPSlvl0C&lpg=PA95&ots=FMXBuBHl8M&dq=aristotle%20female%20deformed%20male&pg=PA97#v=onepage&q&f=false a work by Michael Nolan with the telling title Passive and Deformed? Did Aristotle Really Say This? Hexmaster (talk) 09:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The article by Nolan you mention is available here. The passage in question is Generation of Animals II.3, 737a22-30; for Platt's Oxford translation, see this page, beginning, "For the female’s contribution..." The Greek word translated "mutilated" by Platt is πεπηρωμένον (from πηρόω), but the context of the passage is more important for interpretation than the lexicon entry. It is certainly important to note "as it were, a mutilated male." This is an analogy, not a statement of fact with the mot juste to describe the female; it arises in this form because the fact that mutilated parents can give birth to healthy or mutilated offspring is analogous to the fact that female parents can give birth to male or female offspring. Aristotle's emphasis is on the positive point, that the female's "secretion" or "residue" "has all the parts in it potentially" (including those of the male), despite the fact that the female in actuality is, most evidently, not a male. On the whole, I think the sentence in the article is pretty facile and an inferior example of the kind of "curious error" the section purports to discuss. Aristotle's_views_on_women#Women_are_like_infertile_men has the same point better phrased & under a better heading. Wareh (talk) 17:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

authorship

The introduction concludes by bringing Aristotle's authorship of the corpus attributed to him into doubt. Though a very few smaller pieces have been questioned (e.g. first part of Organon), there is certainly no consensus that they are not by Aristotle, and most of his works are not doubted to stem from him. This claim should be removed from the introduction and a refined analysis of the question introduced into the main text at an appropriate location. hgilbert (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you saying that the current text says there is a consensus? or are you saying that there is a consensus for the opposite of doubting?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:06, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the edit you made, I simplified it. But perhaps something which I removed is reference to only minor works being doubted. I think nearly every work has been doubted by some serious scholar or another. On the other hand, most serious scholars would still consider all or nearly all of the Aristotelian corpus to be by him or his school or those quite directly influenced. If there is a way to introduce that implication that would seem ok to me at least.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Most scholars would agree that the corpus was written either by him, or by his school, or by those directly influenced by him, true, but that is not what is at stake in questions over his authorship. Rather, if they were written by his school or by those influenced by him, then they are spurious. And there is doubt over whether he wrote any of what we possess. I don't buy it, but the "all we have are his lecture notes" theory refuses to die. And the Magna Moralia is doubtful, among others. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 03:30, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

As you say, these doubts are real in this field of study, so that is also how Wikipedia should be written. But the doubts are not only about lesser works like Magna Moralia. In classical times the Nicomachean and Eudemian ethics were both referred to sometimes as if not written out by Aristotle himself. OTOH I do not believe this necessarily makes them spurious either. Things are not so black and white.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:58, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the reference (Irwin & Fine, Introductory Readings, pp. xi-xii) completely fails to support the text. Yes, there are some interesting issues that could be brought up in a more specialized section. But someone misconstrued Irwin & Fine: p. xii says it is dangerous to assume that (1) Aristotle regarded the treatises in the form we know as finished, (2) Aristotle intended to publish anything resembling our text of the Metaphysics. Perhaps it is also fair to say that a pair of analytic philosophers, writing a brief introduction for students in the skimpier of their two anthologies (the less condensed version, Selections, p. xv, also IMO not a good WP:RS for this subject, also does not support the article text: but it does assume that Aristotle is the drafter of the "works that appear to be closely related to Aristotle's lectures," e.g. in "he seems to refer to 'visual aids'...") were never the most appropriate source for this more philological and historical question (while not disputing, of course, Irwin & Fine's intimate and expert knowledge of the Greek texts).

Right now we have a spurious reference, so I feel pretty safe removing the text (it's still married to the cheesy "far-reaching influence" too). If editors have good ancient evidence and modern comment in more pertinent scholarship focused on these questions, I will welcome it. Wareh (talk) 15:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes, sourcing is something I had not looked at but there it should be no problem. The Loeb bilingual and Oxford Greek editions of Aristotle all have prefaces which discuss some of these things I believe. The Loeb Eudemian Ethics is in front of me now and the Intro by Rackham starts:

All the extent books attributed to Aristotle (including probably the recently discovered treatise on the Athenian Constitution) belong to the group of his works designated by ancient authorities άκροατικοὶ λὀγοι, "lecture courses."

Rackham there describes the liklly origins of the three Ethics volumes:-

• Magna Moralia: "probably compiled by a Peripatetic of the generation after Aristotle".
• Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics: "Both may have been the compilers of the treatises that bear their names: Cicero (De Finibus v.12) says that The Nicomachean Ethics, though attributed to Aristotle himself, can well have been by his son, and Diogenes Laerte quotes from it as by Nicomachus." Porphyry who was later, appears to be the first source to have mentioned the idea that Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics were named so because they were dedicated to those people.

I do not think that we can say that the Nicomachean Ethics is one of the minor works, and so we should be careful not to imply that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:20, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

These are very different cases. The MM is duly marked as doubted at Corpus Aristotelicum; more accurately it, as opposed to the works usually received as Aristotelian, is a perfect example of what a handbook of excerpts prepared by another hand really looks like.

You are right that the idea of "dedication" (that Eudemus and Nicomachus were the addressees) does not seem to be something that we ought to carry back to Aristotle's time, but it does not follow (in the judgment of the best sources of the last couple of generations, I think) that we may seriously entertain the idea of non-Aristotelian authorship. Indeed, Nicomachus and Eudemus may be the publishers of Aristotle's texts (note that even Rackham says "compilers," which, as opposed to the Ciceronian fantasy, does not really justify our article's presentation of the works as anything but authentically Aristotelian), but scholars are now unanimous in regarding them as two versions by Aristotle. See the beginning of Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, ch. 9, who comments, on Cicero's inference of Nicomachus' authorship and on the dedication theory:

"Two of the traditional hypotheses to explain the two versions and titles betray their lateness by their mere ignorance. Thus Cicero suggested that the Nicomachean might well be by Nicomachus—a conclusion which indeed would be inevitable if the Eudemian were by Eudemus. This is a mere invention, as his threadbare argument for it shows: why should not the son of a famous father have been himself a capable man for once? Equally late and amateurish is the interpretation of the two titles as meaning the Ethics to Nicomachus and to Eudemus..."

Note that none of this depends on Jaeger's thesis of historical development. He points out that the genuinely Aristotelian origin of EE, alongside EN, had already been demonstrated along independent lines by Von der Mühll (1909) and Kapp (1912). Wareh (talk) 18:22, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds a reasonable presentation. I think my point above about not thinking the word spurious being appropriate for explaining the doubts might help. I just wanted to say it is not true that there are no doubts. The thing is though that there is no clear distinction that can be made between compiling, editing, lecture note taking etc. with the information available. I think that whatever actually happened, the NE and EE are indeed considered to be Aristotle's real work, at worst written out by people who knew him well and heard his real words. BUT, not everyone would say that this means there is no doubt about him being the author the way that word is normally understood today. So coming back to WP, I guess careful wording is also a potential way to resolve all possible interpretations here?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:48, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I do believe we can find careful wording that will be satisfactory. My current thoughts on the subject include: (1) it is a subtle point, not a devastatingly important caution for the article's lead, in my opinion, but a matter to be be taken up in a subordinate section that looks more closely at the form of his works, (2) your "at worst" scenario is exactly that -- the worst possibility (for the genuine works), and not the consensus view about the true explanation of the state of any text; rather, I think it would be more the middle of the road reflection of consensus to pretty much assume these texts were prepared by Aristotle within his school, (2a) so perhaps there remains a real disagreement between us about whether the best WP:RS really believe we should report Aristotle is not an "author the way that word is normally understood," (take e.g. Metaphysics: tied for the roughest mess in the corpus, but still it's more a matter of how different coherent units have been assembled for us than anything else) (3) but I do believe there is a compromise wording out there that will say what needs to be said. Maybe, "The surviving texts of Aristotle are technical treatises from within Aristotle's school, and not the texts he published more widely under his name during his lifetime. In some cases, the Aristotelian texts were likely left in different versions and contexts (as in the overlapping parts of the Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics), or in smaller units that could be incorporated into larger books in different ways. Because of this, a posthumous compiler and publisher may sometimes have played a significant role in arranging the text into the form we know." This seems more correct/consensus to me, because it does not charge out there and insinuate that there is widespread skepticism about the authorship of the individual sentences and chapters to be found in the un-asterisked texts. Wareh (talk) 19:47, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I like the direction of your wording, and your explanation. I am making a mental note to look for you next time I see a wording problem I can't get a grip on! Here's a concern: the words "not the texts he published" could sound more negative than I think you want even though what they mean is explained later, making them correct. But because they are near the front, maybe they need some tweaking to prevent the problem of people not reading ahead to check how strong the words are really meant to be?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:20, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad it feels like progress. Your reservation is helpful, and I propose: for "and not the texts...lifetime," read "as opposed to the dialogues and other 'exoteric' texts he published more widely during his lifetime." ("Under his name" was also not ideal: it would have people needlessly thinking of crypto-publication of the other work.) The best available wikilink for the exoterica would probably be Corpus_Aristotelicum#Fragments. Wareh (talk) 00:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what others think, but it certainly seems to me that this approach would be an improvement to the article. I think that concerning this subject we are more or less looking at some sentences no one has ever concentrated much on.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:54, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The article treatment is looking much better now; thank you all for the analysis. The wording above looks good - and if used belongs in the subsection, not the introduction. Many classical texts (Homer and the Bible are only extreme cases) are clearly not simply reprints of a manuscript version of the author(s). hgilbert (talk) 13:39, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Result looks good to me Wareh. Thanks.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me, too. Two questions, though: is this true of all the texts - are not some of the surviving works ones published during his lifetime? And wouldn't it be good to provide a citation for what you've just added? hgilbert (talk) 01:48, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

The way I read what Wareh has put in it does allow or even suggest that this be the case? Of course the word "publish" is a little anachronistic. In ancient Greece it would just mean "written out".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the wording seems to imply that what we have is not what Aristotle wrote. It casts doubt upon the authenticity of the treatises without suggesting that there is a dispute. And some texts are considered more problematic than others and so less likely to be in the form that they were in when Aristotle died. (As an aside, some things written down were not circulated or given to slaves to copy, so there is something akin to publication the Greek context). RJC ^Talk_Contribs 14:25, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Easiest way to explain what you mean might be to propose a further improvement?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:47, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I would amend "Because of this, a posthumous compiler and publisher may sometimes have played a significant role in arranging the text into the form we know" to read "Because of this, some scholars suggest that that a posthumous compiler and publisher may sometimes have played a significant role in arranging the text into the form we know, although this is not universally accepted." We'd list the people who maintain these positions in the footnotes. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 15:35, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

My intention was actually to avoid "cast[ing] doubt upon the authenticity of the treatises," so I'm surprised RJC finds my text to do so: I read the addition as saying that texts generally agreed to be by Aristotle "may sometimes" have had to make a transition into the form of published texts (the term has some meaning: to me, it suggests circulating in multiple copies rather than existing as an archival document), without giving the reader any reason to wonder who wrote the words in the treatises accepted as genuine. Someone had mentioned Eudemus and Nicomachus, so I produced a good source (Jaeger) in this case, for rejecting over-credulous doubts about Aristotelian authorship while considering a likely scenario for when and how such a transition occurred. This is not an example where the "arranging" is likely to be very invasive, though; a better example of that would be Metaphysics, where it is a nearly provable assertion that the treatise has been arranged from pieces that were not written to go in the context of such a treatise. E.g. S. Marc Cohen is right to summarize about the Metaphysics: "the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotle's works." And someone could find the proper sources behind such a summary if needed.

But frankly, if this doesn't remove the objections, I'd like to see my text removed and not replaced. I think it would be completely backwards to put the text with . Why are we working so hard to retain content that is divisive and whose supporting reference proved to be of no value? I say, we should first come up with what really good sources say on the issue (my gut tells me this will shift the whole terms in which the issue is cast, rather than neatly falling along the lines of the speculative "some scholars suggest...others dispute..."), and only then add to the article. The charitable assumption that there is a summarizable, coherent scholarly debate on the subject as a whole may not pan out, though; closer to the truth may be that there are fairly solid inferences about some of the works (perhaps better discussed in their articles?), with other cases of more or less critical and satisfactory peering into unanswerable questions, and many more cases of writers thoughtlessly repeating what seemed plausible to them or what they had heard from the older generation. In the history of mathematics, you have to be careful not to accept a mathematician's introductory summary of the history in place of a real historian's work, and the same applies to the history of philosophy.

"Lecture notes," by the way, is a perfect example of something people like to repeat, even though I don't think better authorities take it seriously in general reference to the corpus. W.D. Ross, Aristotle's able editor, considers the idea that our works' "rough and unfinished condition" can be explained by being "Aristotle's own lecture notes or notes taken down by pupils," "ruled out by various considerations" (though he does see something like rough notes in a few of the works: Met. Λ 1-5 with its use of μετὰ ταῦτα ὅτι, cf. Prior Analytics 24a10-15, and De Anima III with its "terseness to the point of obscurity").

I'm on the verge of undoing myself with the edit summary, "There was not consensus for this; let's wait for better research into scholarly sources before adding anything." Anyone else may do so with my blessing. Wareh (talk) 18:00, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I do not see an enormous difference between the two options. I think that the main concern I believe we all share is that if we have something about this, and why wouldn't we, then it should avoid the two extremes, of over-stating or under-stating the doubt.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:11, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 121.54.96.8, 18 October 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} Can i copy this please...

121.54.96.8 (talk) 11:30, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. If you would like to use Wikipedia content elsewhere, you are free to do so as long as you reference Wikipedia and follow the copyright rules. Thanks, Stickee (talk) 12:01, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Born/Death Dates

He was born before he died?? Same problem with Plato as well.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.179.250.54 (talk) 00:54, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Please consider how BC dates work.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 82.130.45.83, 14 November 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} there's an inappropriatepicture in the current version at the bottom of the article

82.130.45.83 (talk) 05:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Done. Thanks! Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 05:56, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Request to correct spelling

"Nicomachean" is spelled incorrectly in the section on Aristotle's works on ethics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.189.117.204 (talk • contribs)

 Done Wareh (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)