De Spiritu and its place in the Corpus Aristotelicum: Pneumatologists vs. Positivists

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De Spiritu

and its place in the

Corpus Aristotelicum:

Pneumatologists vs. Positivists

Master-thesis Gijs Raeven College № 9180400 (UvA) College № 2566917 (VU) First supervisor: Piet Gerbrandy Second supervisor: Marije Martijn Classics & Ancient Civilizations: Classics

ACASA (Amsterdam Center for Ancient Studies & Archeology) april 2016

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I. Introduction

A.L. Peck, editor of Aristotle’s De Generatione Animalium for the Loeb-series, told his then undergraduate student John M. Rist that if he could only begin to understand pneuma, he should begin to understand Aristotle. And so he did: “This has proved to be correct in all sorts of unexpected ways.”1_{Perhaps one of the most wondrous results of this would be his}

hypothesis that Aristotle named pneuma using an intuition about humans having

hormones. Indeed, pneuma has very much to do with self-reproducing powers, and even with what Buster Pointdexter so eloquently described as ‘feeling hot, hot, hot.’ In Latin it is rendered as Spiritus, and could be translated as ‘spirit.’ It is sometimes translated – very confusingly, as we will see in chapter I – as ‘breath.’ Today, because we have words like ‘pneumatics,’ ‘pneumapathy,’ and ‘pneumonia’ derived from pneuma, we easily make the connection between pneuma and wind, air, breathing. The word spiritus is also derived from breathing in Latin, i.e. spirare. The Latin word for soul, anima, has a similar

evolution.2_{It is cognate with the Greek word ὁ ἄνεμος, hence again wind. This word has}

lived on in our language with the exact meaning of the soul as the life-giving principle, as in ‘being animated,’ and even in the slightly tautological ‘animation movies,’ in which a static drawing has been made to live. But spiritus has various other associations today,

1 _{John Rist (1989), p. xvii.}

2 _{Aristotle gives even for the Greek word for soul, ἡ ψυχή, an etymology connected to breath. Since he}

sees breath as cooling of the body, he deduces ψυχἠ from the Greek word for cooling down, ἡ κατάψυξις, De Anima I.ii 405b28-29.

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because it lives on in our word ‘spirit.’ ‘Spirited’ can be used in the same way as

‘animated,’ but ‘spirit’ nowadays has many more associations than ‘animus.’ It can also denote ‘ghost,’ ‘disembodied being,’ and has even moved from the element air to the element fire in ‘the Holy Spirit’ and ‘spirituals’ (fire-water). Spirituals have a more ardent religiosity about them than Soul-music.

In the Corpus Aristotelicum a small work, consisting of little more than five Bekker-pages, called De Spiritu, is included that purports by its title and its opening lines to treat exactly this topic: pneuma. The text renders many problems, though, and readers cannot even agree if it indeed does describe pneuma. It is not clear if the text was corrupted in the process of copying it, or that it may have been a never fully worked-out sketch, by

Aristotle, a later pupil, or even some writer who was only slightly familiar with Aristotle’s writings. Many a scholar gave up on the ‘little book,’ or libellus as it was nicknamed, and declared it spurious, glad to be able to put it aside. It is not a good read per se. However, recently some new suggestions about its meaning have been proposed, suggestions that include bestowing pneuma a central place in Aristotle’s psychology, as was suggested by A.L. Peck’s remark to John M. Rist, and this indeed helped me to probe deeper into the

Corpus Aristotelicum.

Purpose of this study is to explore the way the De Spiritu has been handled by scholars over the last century, to reconsider the status and meaning of De Spiritu, and to evaluate the contemporary debate about its place in Aristotle’s philosophy. In chapter II I will first look shortly into the work itself and discuss how it was authoritatively

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III I will introduce Jaeger’s genetical approach, his Entwicklungthese, that changed Aristotle scholarship forever, and dominated it the first half of the 20th_{century. I will also look into}

its consequences for our images of Plato, Aristotle, and how they interconnect, and of course the consequences for our reading of the De Spiritu.Then I will describe the current situation that evolved out of this, with two opposing sides, which I came to call

‘Positivists’ and ‘Pneumatologists.’ Pneumatologists (Bos & Ferwerda3_{) see pneuma as a}

central concept in Aristotle’s philosophy, functioning as a junction between body and soul. They consider the De Spiritu as an Aristotelian work, compatible with all his other work. Positivists (Gregoric & Lewis,4_Jaeger5_{) mostly see pneuma as a merely tentative concept, in}

which Aristotle tried to capture some of his intuitions, only to later abandon them. His most central teaching about the soul is not pneuma but his famous hylomorphism: the soul is the form (morphe) of the matter (hyle) i.e. our physical body. They see this as very close to their own determinism, with the soul just being a convenient name for a very complex system of processes arising out of the body. The Pneumatologists’ arguments are listed in chapter IV, The Positivists’ in chapter V, including an investigation into the origins of these theories. In chapter VI we will re-evaluate both readings, and look for alternatives, since each side accuses the other side of overlooking or downplaying the evidence against their own case.6_{In chapter VII we will go deeper into the difference between the two}

perspectives, and the reason why it would be hard to reconcile them.

3 _{Bos & Ferwerda (2007), pp. 565-588.} 4 _{Gregoric & Lewis (2015b), pp. 159-167.} 5 _{Jaeger, (1913a), pp. 29-74.}

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II. Reading the De Spiritu Libellus

Let us first look into the text without worrying too much about which philosophical or physiological school it would belong to. De Spiritu is a translation into Latin of ‘Περὶ πνεύματος’ (about pneuma). It is best to leave pneuma untranslated here. The work is not very long-winded - hence ‘libellus’ - and comprises nine little chapters or paragraphs, which I will indicate by §.

§1.: The research question

“What is the mode of growth of the innate pneuma and its mode of maintenance?”7 De Spiritu opens with stating its subject, i.e. the question about the maintenance and

continuance (ἡ διαμονή) of our innate pneuma, and also about its growth (ἡ αὔξησις). ‘Innate’8_{is already a technical term that is hard to interpret on its own. Typically, it is not}

explained in De Spiritu itself. We will later see how it seems to be used to differentiate between:

1. pneuma (without ‘innate’) as ‘breath,’ inhaled air.

7 _{§1 481a1 ‘Τίς}_ἡ_τοῦ_{ἐμφύτου}_{πνεύματος}_{διαμονή}_,_καὶ_τίς_ἡ_{αὔξησις;’ In this study, unless stated}

otherwise, I will follow the translation of Dobson (1914). Here I substituted ‘pneuma’ for Dobsons ‘breath,’ as I will do henceforth. I also substituted ‘innate’ for Dobsons ‘natural,’ as will be explained.

8 _{This is the much used translation for ‘ἔμφυτος, -ον,’ which means ‘in-grown,’ but could also have}

overtones of ‘characteristic’ or ‘natural.’ Hett gives a good alternative: ‘inherent.’ I will keep on using ‘innate’ to suit the majority of writers on this subject.

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2. ‘innate pneuma’ as ‘its own, proper pneuma.’

The writer goes on to explain why this is an interesting question: when an organism is still an embryo or baby, it has less innate pneuma than when it is grown up,9_{hence the second}

question about where the augment comes from. An answer to this could be: by processing some form of food. Then two possibilities are given for the pneuma’s nourishment: it lives from the food we eat and drink, or from our breath.10_{(Here Hett’s translations already}

become hopelessly involuted: in his idiom ‘breath’ feeds on ‘respiration’)

The theory that pneuma lives from our food is from Empedocles and Democritus. It is generally agreed that this refers to the known philosophers with those names who appear regularly in the works of Aristoteles and Plato.11_{They maintain that our food is}

digested with the help of the breathing process, and so becomes nutrition for our pneuma. The theory that pneuma lives from our breath is from Aristogenes. It is not immediately clear who should be meant by this. He maintains that inhaled air is concocted in the lungs and so itself becomes food for the pneuma.

§2.: Refutation of the theory of Aristogenes

The next paragraph starts by saying that the theory of Aristogenes causes even more

aporia,12_{and then continues to elaborate on this. “Because, what can cause this digestion}

9 _{§1 481a2-4 ‘ὁρῶμεν γὰρ ὅτι πλέον καὶ ἰσχυρότερον γίνεται καὶ καθ’ ἡλικίας μεταβολὴν καὶ κατὰ}

διάθεσιν σώματος.’

10 _{§1 481a7-8 ‘ἢ διὰ τῆς ἀναπνοῆς ἢ διὰ τῆς κατὰ τὴν τῆς τροφῆς προσφορὰν πέψεως’.} 11 _{Bos & Ferwerda (2008), p. 14; p. 62}

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(concoction)? Apparently the breath itself as it digests other things.”13_{Here the two}

concepts, ‘inhaled breath’ and ‘innate pneuma’ seem to have become confused. Or maybe the writer disproves Aristogenes’ theory by showing how he confuses the two different meanings of pneuma?14_{He then continues by asking how this would work for animals who}

live under water: ‘For apart from the fact that they do not respire, we do not admit that there is any air at all in water.’15 _{The paragraph closes with ‘So much, then, as regards the}

nutrition and growth of the pneuma.’16_{So apparently the research question of § 1 is}

considered to be dealt with for now, and maybe the name De Spiritu would only apply to these first two paragraphs?

§3.: Breath

“With regard to respiration [ἀναπνοή is used here, not πνεῦμα], some philosophers - such as Empedocles and Democritus – do not deal with its purpose, but only describe the process.”17_{Then the treatise introduces a purpose of its own, without explaining where}

13 _{§2 481a29-30 ‘ἥ τε γὰρ πέψις ὑπὸ τίνος; εἰκὸς μὲν γὰρ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ, καθάπερ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων.’ For ‘ἡ}

πέψις’ Dobson and Hett give ‘digestion,’ Bos ‘is concocted,’ cf. Ferwerda (2001) ‘stoven.’

14 _{§2 481b3-4 ‘αὐτὸ δὲ τοῦτ’ ἄτοπον, εἰ μὴ διαφέρει τοῦ ἔξω ἀέρος·’} 15 _{§2 482a23-4 ‘Χωρὶς γὰρ τοῦ μὴ ἀναπνεῖν οὐδ' ἐνυπάρχειν ὅλως ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ φαμὲν ἀέρα.’ Translation} Hett (1975). 16 _{§2 482a26-7 ‘καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ὡς περὶ τὴν αὔξησιν καὶ τροφὴν τοῦ πνεὺματος. ’} 17 _{§3 482a28-30 ‘Περὶ}_δὲ_{ἀναπνοῆς}_οἱ_μὲν_οὐ_{λέγουσι}_τίνος_χάριν_,_ἀλλὰ_μόνον_ὃν_τρόπον_{γίνεται}_, καθάπερἘμπεδοκλῆςκαὶΔημόκριτος·’

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this would come from: refrigeration.18_{What than follows are some seemingly unconnected}

arguments about if the air ducts could bring nutrition or refrigeration, emphasising neither he nor his colleagues would be able to know, since these processes are hard to observe. But by logical reasoning he comes to the conclusion that it cannot be true that the air ducts take care of nutrition, because plants feed themselves too but do not have air ducts. But then he states: “This question belongs rather to a treatise on methods of nutrition.”19_{So here we see the writer quite consequently demarcating this paragraph as}

talking about breath, as in respiration (ἀναπνοή and not πνεῦμα).

§4.: Pulsation (ὁ σφυγμός)

“Whereas there are three motions belonging to the breath in the windpipe – respiration, pulsation, and a third which introduces and assimilates the nutriment – we must define how and where and for what purpose each takes place.”20_{Then he proceeds to do so, but}

the greatest part of the chapter is a discussion of pulsation. At first it is unclear if he is still arguing against the breath-as-food argument: he just talks about the nutrition as being a part of the motions of the breath, but later it becomes clear he is arguing that the pulse does not belong to the respiration. Pulse is more ‘basic’: before birth already a pulse exists, whereas the breathing process starts only after birth. He is forgiving towards others who thought pulse and breath were intertwined, because the pulse is not unlike the pulsation

18 _{§3 482a31 ‘δεῖ δὲ καὶ εἰ καταψύξεως χάριν, αὐτὸ τοῦτο διασαφῆσαι.’} 19 _§3_{482b12-3 ‘ταῦτα}_μὲν_{οἰκειότερά}_πως_τοῖς_περὶ_τὰς_{τροφάς.’}

20 _{§3 482b14-17 Ἐπεὶ}_δὲ_τρεῖς_αἱ_{κινήσεις}_τοῦ_ἐν_τῇ_{ἀρτηρίᾳ}_{πνεύματος}_,_{ἀναπνοή}_,_{σφυγμός}_,_τρίτη_δ’_ἡ

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in boiling water, caused by vaporisation. But pulse is more connected to the soul than to our breathing: breathing hard does not change your heartbeat, but fear, hope or anguish do. He also discusses the arteries (αἱ ἀρτηρίαι) having pulsation, again leaving us in the dark about what he would mean by arteries. They do not seem to fit any anatomical concept we nowadays use, because these air ducts are hypothesised to maybe bring nutrition to all parts of the body. Actually, in this paragraph the question if nutrition and respiration are connected is again left open.

§5.: The oesophagus

Paragraph five opens with a very strange statement, but by now we know we are supposed to keep our options open about where pneuma as well as inhaled breath are supposed to go, and by what means. The statement has no finite verb, 21_{and this is}

probably why all translators add ‘it is said’ or synonyms: “They say that the breath which is respired is carried into the belly, not through the gullet [oesophagus] – that is

impossible – but that there is a duct along the loins through which the breath is carried from the trachea into the belly and out again, and this can be perceived by the sense.”22

21 _{The last part, […]·τοῦτο δὲ τῇ αἰσθήσει φανερόν could of course be supplemented with εἰμί or ἐστίν,}

so it is not clear the writer takes this last remark on his own account or not. Bos and Ferwerda propose ‘τοῦτο’ is only connected to ‘καὶπάλινἔξω,’ and not to the whole opening statement, because “it is impossible to see how anybody can perceive the inhaled air being transported via a passage along the loins to the stomach, as the translations Dobson and others suggest.” Bos and Ferwerda (2008), p. 116.

22 _{§5 483a19-23 ‘τὸ}_{δὲ πνεῦμα τὸ}_ἐκ_τῆς_{ἀναπνοῆς}_{φέρεσθαι}_μὲν_εἰς_τὴν_{κοιλίαν}_,_οὐ_διὰ_τοῦ_{στομάχου} (τοῦτομὲνγὰρἀδύνατον), ἀλλὰπόρονεἶναιπαρὰτὴνὀσφύν, δι’οὗτὸπνεῦματῇἀναπνοῇ

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What is he talking about here? Especially the part ‘and this can be perceived’ is very peculiar. It reminded me of people practicing yoga talking about breathing into their belly, and I hypothesized that arteries can also mean energy channels (which in tantra is called

nadi’s) of some form, but this did not get me anywhere.23_{Because later in this paragraph it}

is again clear the air ducts are physical: “the air duct is easily broken, just like a vein.”24_In

passing the question is asked “what is then the soul?”25_{It seems quite unconnected to the}

rest of the text and it is answered in only a really superficial manner; we will be discussing this fragment later.

§6.: Internal transportation

In this paragraph we are apparently asked to broaden our idea of arteries,26_{it opens with}

φέρεσθαιἐκτοῦβρογχίουεἰςτὴνκοιλίανκαὶπάλινἔξω· τοῦτοδὲτῇαἰσθήσειφανερόν. Hett (1975), p. 499 translates: “It is said that in respiration the breath is not conveyed to the belly through the

oesophagus […].”

23 _{Of all the people I discussed this passage with, there was only one who still seemed to be in touch with}

the pre-scientific experience by remarking: well of course, the belly swells when inhaling, doesn’t it?

24 _{§5 483b14-5 ‘ἡ δ’ ἀρτηρία ταχὺ διαρρήγνυται, καθάπερ καὶ ἡ φλέψ.} 25 _§5_{483a27 ‘τί}_οὖν_ἡ_ψυχή;’

26 _{Hellenistic physiologists thought that what we now call the arteries were air-ducts, presumably because}

when examining a dead animal they found vessels containing blood (our vains) and vessels containing nothing / air (our arteries), because when slaughtered, blood drains out of the arteries immediately, not out of the vains as their valves are oriented in the other direction. Galenus was the first, as far as we know, to maintain the arteries contain blood too. Van Gijn (2016), p. 9. Apperantly any empty tube could be considered an ‘artery.’

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the question: “Is the semen’s passage through the air duct due to pressure also?”27_This

seems be coming out of nowhere, 28_{and no answer whatsoever is given. Instead, the writer}

continues about how nutrition could be transported between bones and sinews, and would any arteries be involved? The chapter closes by asking more questions than it answers, leaving a very tentative impression.

§7. Bones and sinews (νεῦρα)

This chapter speaks of movement of the body: one of the purposes of bones is movement. Other purposes are merely support or covering, like our skull. It is then suggested all bones can be considered having the purpose of covering, namely the marrow. At least, this is what Hett and Dobson make out of it, the Greek discription is not very elaborate. The whole sentence reads: ‘τὴν δὲ τοῦ στέγειν καὶ περιέχειν, οἷον τὰ ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ τὸν ἐνκέφαλον, καὶ ὅσοι δὴ τὸν μυελὸν ἄρχειν.’29_{Dobson translates: “And by covering and} 27_§6_{484a14-5 Hett’s translation of ‘Πότερον}_δὲ_τὸ_σπέρμα_διὰ_τῆς_{ἀρτηρίας}_ὡς_καὶ

συνθλιβόμενον […];’ Dobson translates ‘Does the seed pass through the air-duct?’ Hett translates ‘Is the semen’s passage through the air duct due to pressure also […]?’ Which is quite different from Hett’s translation, because his wording is implying it does pass the air-duct. The most straightforward meaning of διά with the genitive is ‘right through,’ but it could also mean ‘through, by,’ by an agent, LSJ.

28 _{Jaeger writes ‘unvorbereitet’ (1913a), p. 60.}

29_{§7 484b15-7 “Covering and envelope I mean in the sense that the skull covers the brain, or a those who} regard the marrow as principle say that the bone covers the marrow.” Hett (1975), p. 507.

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surrounding I mean as e.g. the bones in the head surround the brain; and those who make the marrow the originator of motion treat the bones as primarily meant to protect it.” Apparently the writer of De Spiritu does not belong to those who regard the marrow as originator of motion, because he proposes ‘sinews’ (νεῦρα) for this role. But there are other sorts of ‘νεύρον,’ it also includes ligaments: “The other sinews are for the purpose of fastening together all those bones which require fastening.”30_{This clearly refers to sinews}

or tendons. On the other hand, the word neuron is not explicitly stated in this last sentence, but is supplemented from the previous sentence.31_{This does not make it more certain as to}

what should be meant here. This paragraph gives the impression its writer would like to account for all possible movements and corresponding joints in humans, but it does not ammount to more than some examples.

§8.: Causa finalis

“The best description of everything may be obtained by an investigation like the present; but we must adequately investigate the final causes.”32_{The anatomical descriptions of the}

previous chapter are very well, but now the writer wants to consider more the purposes of different body parts: “We must not suppose that the bones are for the sake of movement;

30 _{485b34-37 ‘τὰ δ’ ἄλλα συνδέσμου χάριν, ὅσα δεῖται.’ ‘νεύρον’ is from Homer on used for both sinew}

and tendon. Only from Erasistratus on it starts also to mean ‘nerve’ as organs of sensation, Liddell and Scott (1966).

31 _{§7 484b35 ‘μετὰ νεύρων’ into 485b38 ‘τὰ δ' ἄλλα [νεῦρα] συνδέσμου χάριν, ὅσα δεῖται.’}

32 _{485a4-5 ‘Πάντων δ’ ἐστὶ λόγος ὁ βελτίων ὡς καὶ νῦν ζητεῖν. ἀλλὰ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐφ’ ἱκανόν, ὧν χάριν,}

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that is rather the purpose of the sinews or what corresponds to them, viz. the immediate receptacle of pneuma which causes motion.”33_{Here I get the impression the writer is almost}

defining the concept νεῦρα as parts causing the movements, as intermediate between

pneuma and the muscles. Then the writer gives some examples of how different animals

have different bodies for different purposes.

§9. Conclusion (and more bones)

“We cannot agree with those who say it is not the heat-principle which is active in bodies, or that fire has only one kind of motion and one power – the power to cleave.”34_Dobson

translating here θερμόν as heat-principle is suggestive of how it would have something to do with pneuma. It would be very convenient if the final paragraph started with a

concluding argument about pneuma, De Spiritu would be about pneuma, with some

digressions in between on bones and arteries. But again the writer leaves us in the dark as to what is meant by this new term τὸ θερμόν. He goes on to say, even if fire would have one function, an agent could achieve several results with it. But fire, setting aside any agent using it for different purposes, does not have one function, but several: ‘For (even)35

in the case of inanimate things the action of fire is not universally the same on all – some it

33 _{485a5-7 ‘οὐκ}_ἂν_δόξειε_{κινήσεως}_ἕνεκα_τὰ_ὀστᾶ_,_ἀλλὰ_{μᾶλλον}_τὰ_νεῦρα_ἢ_τὰ_{ἀνάλογον}_,_ἐν_ᾧ_πρώτῳ

τὸπνεῦματὸκινητικόν, ‘ Translated by Dobson. Hett is more positive: ‘That which serves the purpose of movement would seem to be not the bones but rather the sinews […];’

34 _{§9 485a28-30 ‘Οἱ ἀναιροῦντες ὡς οὐ τὸ θερμὸν τὸ ἐργαζόμενον ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν, ἢ ὅτι μία τις φορὰ}

καὶ δύναμις ἡ τμητικὴ τοῦ πυρός, οὐ καλῶς λέγουσιν.’

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condenses, others it rarifies; some it dissolves, others it hardens.”36_{This perhaps has}

something to do with a discussion of mixtures. “Therefore Empedocles stated the nature of bone too simply,”37_{and then follows a discussion of bones as mixture of materials. All this}

again does not seem very coherent: admittedly we have discussed bones, especially in §7, but also earlier. We have also seen theories of Empedocles which have been refuted. But these were about pneuma, only later did the bones come up, and by that time it was harder to know who theorized what, including the writer himself.

He continues about the mixtures of bones, and then starts a whole new narrative about flesh in animals and how it can be a mixture. But then, quite unexpectedly, he seems to close off with: “and practically the same observations apply to the veins and air-ducts and the rest.”

§§1-4 were full of discussions about veins and air-ducts, but it is not immediately clear how better answers to the questions posed would arise all encountered problems would be solved by regarding also the veins and air-ducts as mixtures of other things. Dobson ends his translation of De Spiritu encouragingly with ‘in conclusion,’38_{but it is not}

exactly clear which problem it is solving: “so that, in conclusion, either the proportion observed in their mixture is not constant, or the definitions must not be stated in terms of hardness, density, and their opposites.”39

36 _{§9 485a30-2 ‘οὐδὲ}_γὰρ_ὅλα_τοῖς_{ἀψύχοις}_ταὐτὸ_ποιεῖ_πᾶσιν_,_ἀλλὰ_τὰ_μὲν_{πυκνοῖ}_,_τὰ_δὲ_μανοῖ_,_καὶ

τήκει, τὰδὲπήγνυσιν.’

37 _{485b26-7 ‘διὸ καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς μίαν ἁπλῶς τὴν τοῦ ὀστοῦ φύσιν’.} 38 _{485b2 presumably his interpretation of ‘ὥστε’.}

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What readers make of it

Clearly the writer of De Spiritu is Aristotelian: he knows his causae finales, loves animals, mentions ἐνέργεια40_{and δύναμις,} 41_{engages his predecessors to refute them, wants to see}

things for himself and hates being diverted by appearances.42_{But fateful philologers were}

apparently very timid to ascribe such incoherent paragraphs to their hero Aristotle, the greatest philosopher to ever walk the earth. This dilemma can always be fixed with a compromise: the pupil. The first printed edition of De Spiritu used this solution and gave Theophrastus as its writer.43_{In 1831 De Spiritu gets its Bekker-pages allotted without}

comment,44_{but Valentine Rose tends to be very frugal in his assignments of Aristotelian}

authenticity: Volume V of the Prussian Aristotelis Opera,45_{containing the fragments, he}

subtitled Aristotelis qui ferebatur librorum fragmenta (purported to be of Aristotle), just to be sure. Earlier46_{he had already argued why De Motu Animalium and De Spiritu could never}

be authentically Aristotelian.

In 1913 Jaeger publishes De Spiritu together with De Motu Animalium,47_{and in the} πυκνότητι καὶ τοῖς ἐναντίοις τοὺς λόγους ληπτέον.’

40 _{481a14; 482b35; 483a17 & 18.} 41 _{481b13 & 485a29.}

42 _{485b4 ‘διὸ γελοῖον πρὸς τὸ ἔξω κρίνειν.’} 43 _{Furlanus (1605).}

44 _{Bekker (1831) Aristotelis Opera, Volumen prius.} 45 _{Rose (1870) Aristotelis Opera, Volumen quintum.} 46 _{Rose (1854).}

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same year writes an extremely influential article48_{in which he restores the authenticity of}

the latter, but agrees with Rose’s verdict on De Spiritu. Jaeger is willing to see some cohesion in §§ 1-8: “Bis auf dieses Schlußkapitel bildet die Schrift einen äußeren

Zusammenhang, wenn auch nicht von Aufbau zu reden ist.”49_{But §9 he believes to be a}

later addition by Erasistratos, who lived in the third century AD, because it is totally different: “Das Schlußkapitel enthüllt eine andere Welt (§9). […] In der Tat ist es längst bemerkt worden, daß wir hier auf stoischem Boden stehen.”50_{This line of thought will be}

worked out in my chapter V. For now I am more concerned how Jaeger, successfully, has been hectoring all future editors away from De Spiritu. In the preface of his 1913 edition he writes:

Nitidissimum de animalium motione libellum quo iure homines docti cum obscuri physiologi seu philosophi miserabili fructu una tractaverint, quem de spiritu librum ferunt, tametsi neque hanc neque ullam aliam definitam patitur inscriptionem pro sua et rerum et quaestionum mixtione atque perturbatione, vix intellegas.

Præfatio Jaeger (1913b), p. xviii

One could hardly understand from what judgement learned men consider the most brillant little book De Motu Animalium as an equal to the pathetic work of some obscure physiologist or philosopher, which they call De Spiritu, although it does not contain this definition [of pneuma, I presume] nor any other, to make sense of its omnium gatherum

47 _{Jaeger (1913b).} 48 _{Jaeger (1913a).} 49 _{Jaeger (1913a), p. 61.} 50 _{Jaeger (1913a), p. 70.}

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of both subjects and questions.51

Nobody wishes to become associated with ‘some obscure physiologist’ nor does it seem that anything can be obtained from this ‘ fructus misrabilis,’ which they call De Spiritu, so hardly any new work on it has been done.

Ross’ standard Aristotle edition copies Dobson’s translation, and even for The Revised

Oxford Translation52 of 1984 no revision of Dobson’s work seemed necessary. Nor is

anything said about the status of the libellus, apart from the indication ‘**’ which means: ‘spurious.’ Dobson’s preface was more helpful: “This treatise has been rejected as spurious by practically all editors, one of the chief reasons being the confusion of the senses

assigned to ἀρτηρíα. It is sometimes ascribed to Theophrastus. Its author had certainly studied the Aristotelian Corpus, and analogies may be traced to the De Respiratione and some of the zoological treatises. […] No amount of emendation will remove the

incoherence of the work, which must be regarded rather as a collection of Problems than as a finished treatise.”53

In the twentieth century, before the work of Bos and Ferwerda, there has been only one scholar willing to consider the De Spiritu as Aristotelian, although he has to admit “dass man wirklich an ihrer Echtheit zweiflen könnte.”54_{He sees Aristotle’s own hand in}

this work, and his thinking about the arteries as contributing to our present understanding

51 _{Jaeger (1913b), p. xviii, my translation.} 52 _{Barnes (1984).}

53 _{Dobson (1914), p. iii-iv.} 54 _{Gohlke (1947), p. 18.}

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of the difference between arteries (their blood contains oxygen) and veins (their blood does not). Any incoherence is due to the fact that Aristotle was not able to finish it, maybe because he died when still working on it. At any rate it belongs to the last stage of

Aristotle’s life, Gohlke maintains.55_{But to know what this ‘last stage’ entails, we first have}

to look into some more work that Jaeger did on Aristotle.

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III. Rise & fall of the Entwicklungsthese

Being or becoming, that has been the question since Parmenides. Has Aristotle been developing his philosophy, or was he born with a golden philosophical system in his head?56_{Or, more to the point: is the Corpus Aristotelicum a monolithic system, or does it}

pay to seek layers in it, tracing back through Aristotle’s development as a philosopher? In this chapter I will discuss the Entwicklungthese, which basically states that Aristotle started writing as a loyal pupil of Plato, and later matured, managing to grow beyond Plato’s influence to become a philosopher in his own right. According to this view, Aristotle’s philosophy will be divided into early works, late works, and possibly works of an intermediate period. This view is in stark contrast to the Corpus Aristotelicum as a

monolithic system, as it was considered to be in antiquity by the medieval Scholastics, and up until the 19th_century.

In the 20th_{century this had ended. Rist writes: “Nevertheless, whether or not there}

is recognizable development in the thought of Aristotle, there is certainly development in that of Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. If it is pernicious57_{to attend to the}

possible development of Aristotle, it must be equally pernicious to ask why the Tractatus is followed rather than preceded by Philosophical Investigations.”58_{The keyword here is}

56 _{Rist (1989), p. xi.}

57 _{Rist is here reacting to a remark of Barnes, who called the Jaegerian Project ‘pernicious,’ see Barnes}

(1990).

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‘recognizable,’ since the developments Aristotle has gone through are not necessarily reflected in his writings. Most writers59_{agree that the works of Jaeger and Nuyens have}

advanced our knowledge about Aristotle enormously, but if a hypothesis does not seem to fit it must eventually be rejected. I will show, focusing on Aristotle’s philosophy of the soul, how everybody hesitated to do exactly that and instead kept tinkering with the chronology to try to solve the ever increasing number of new problems, until eventually everybody grew tired of it. Barnes sighed: “nowadays, we would rather read our Aristotle than dismember him and chronologise his severed parts.”60

Entwicklungthese for Plato’s work

During the nineteenth century, the century that fell in love with the idea of evolution, before the work on chronologising Aristotle began the same model had already been applied to Plato’s dialogues. By that time a sort of Entwicklungsthese was applied to the work of Plato very successfully, so it would be very tempting to do the same with Aristotle. But the situations for Plato and for Aristotle were very different. With Plato, it was already an issue of how much of the dialogues were Socrates’ thoughts and how much were Plato’s, and this discussion was very much helped by an agreement on the order in which they were written. Also the Platonian dialogues were published during his lifetime when he was writing the later ones. Without being able to change the earlier,

59 _{For example the two most extreme on the spectrum: Wians (1996) pp. ix-xiv; Bos (2003) pp. 13, 17; maybe}

only not Barnes, nor Wehrle (2000) with his cry from the heart about ‘betrayal.’

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would he even have minded inconsistencies between them, as opposed to the Aristotelian

Corpus which refers to itself all the time? There certainly is an order in these works, but it

is of a completely different nature: intended by Aristotle for didactic purposes. The Corpus starts with logic, then describes the world as it is, then describes how it should be: ethics and politics. Wians writes: “one of the most conspicuous features of the corpus is its programmatic unity.”61

Aristotle’s dialogues

Aristotle did write dialogues, which were published. We will see how they do not seem to form a ‘programmatic unity’ with the Corpus. Rose categorises the Aristotelian fragments in twenty-two different dialogues, including a Symposion and an Erotikos.62_{Not much is}

known about them, but we will see how this is not a problem in this discussion because everybody agrees that Aristotle wrote them in the earlier stages of his life, and that their content is very Platonic. The problem is that they seem to contradict some works in the

Corpus.

Eudemus: a book of consolatio mortis

Most relevant for our discussion is the Eudemus, which has the byname On the Soul. The crux of this dialogue, as far as we know, is the story about Eudemus falling sick while journeying far away from his hometown on Cyprus. In a dream he is told he will recover

61 _{Wians (1996), p. xiii.} 62 _{Rose (1870), pp. 1474-1495.}

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in three days, which he did, and that in five years he will finally see his beloved homeland again. Eventually he dies during a battle in Syracuse, far away from Cyprus, exactly five years later.63_{So here we have an all-knowing oracle, talking about the death-experience as}

returning to the beloved homeland, where the soul is more at home than anywhere on earth.

Jaeger and his follower Chroust consider this dialogue as a book of consolation for the loss of a lost friend, and philosophically less relevant. Chroust writes: “an eulogy of a departed ‘person near and dear’ is hardly the proper document from which to draw reliable inferences as to Aristotle’s true and ultimate convictions regarding the nature of the human soul.”64_{Still they have to admit that Aristotle could not refrain from}

philosophizing as a way to console himself: we know the dialogue also entails two arguments about why the soul is not a harmony of the body. Firstly harmony has an opposite, namely disharmony. The human soul has no opposite, so it has to be an ousia in its own right. Whereas his teacher Plato needed extensive discussion to deal with this point, Aristotle concludes it with one syllogism.65_{Secondly harmony of the physical body}

is the opposite of disharmony of the body. Disharmony of the body is illness, weakness, ugliness. But it is untrue that the soul is health, strength, or beauty of the body, even Thersites has a soul. Therefore the soul is not harmony.66

In antiquity the Eudemus and Plato’s Phaido were seen as equals, as eloquent pleas

63 _{Cicero, De Divinatione ad Brutum I.xxv 53; Rose (1886) fragment 37 / Rose (1870), pp. 1474-1495.} 64 _{Chroust (1966a), p. 49.}

65 _{Jaeger (1923), pp. 38-9.} 66 _{Jaeger (1923), p. 41.}

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for the immortality of the human soul. Plato had been using similar arguments,67_and

apparently Aristotle’s dialogue was as well-written as the famous Phaido we know. Cicero read the Eudemus, and compares Aristotle’s style to a rhetorical flowing river of gold.68

Jaeger wants to stress that the Eudemus is a highly personal work intended to process the loss of a good friend, where earlier readers saw it only as an exercise to imitate Plato: “Über die seltsame Anästhesie, die in ihm nichts als eine frostige Stilübung in der Manier des Phaidon zu erkennen vermochte, ist kein Wort zu verlieren.”69_{In other words:}

Aristotle really meant this, naïve as he still was, Jaeger also seems to imply.

Genesis of the Jaegerian project

The first proposal to regard Aristotle’s philosophy in different stages had already been given slightly earlier in 1910 by T. Case in The Encyclopaedia Britannica,70_{but it only gained}

momentum when advanced by Jaeger some years later in a monography Aristoteles.

Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung.71_{Here he suggests how, as a young man,}

Aristotle must have become substantially influenced by his teacher Plato, but later changed his mind about some parts of his philosophy, for example, relevantly for us, rejecting the idea of an eternal soul.

The idea for Jaeger’s Entwicklungsthese grew out of his Habilitationsschrift on

67 _{Phaido 93c ff.}

68 _{Cicero Academia Priora II.xxxviii 119 “veniet flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles.”} 69 _{Jaeger (1923), p. 38.}

70 _{T. Case (1910) ‘Aristotle,’ The Encyclopaedia Brittanica, also reprinted in Wians (1996), pp. 1-40.} 71 _{Jaeger (1923) Aristoteles etc.}

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Aristotle’s Metaphysica.72_{Looking back to this in 1923, he writes that he was then still}

trapped in the old philological paradigm: “ich war dort aber äußerlich noch zu sehr in der alten textphilologischen Fragestellung befangen [...], um die eigenen Ergebnissen bis in ihre letzten sachlichen Konsequenzen zu verfolgen.”73_{So here we see Jaeger feeling very}

confident in being able to contribute to a new interpretation of Aristotle’s work. He was no longer trapped in the old paradigm, and it was about time someone replaced the

scholastic, monolithic interpretation of the Corpus.74_{On the other hand, he was still a}

philologist, and in being so would be better equipped to objectively focus on the texts as they are,75_{whereas earlier readers could not stop being Aristotelians themselves when}

interpreting Aristotle. Jaeger was well trained in philological techniques by his famous teacher Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff of how to unravel contradictions and doublets to show us something about the origins of a text. He used these methods very extensively, not only on the Corpus, but also on several texts related to it, thus bringing attention to texts that were up until then conveniently ignored. Both reasons for his confidence turned out to be justified and consequently he forever changed the way we read Aristotle, even if his general hypothesis may have failed.

Jaeger describes Aristotle’s life from start to finish, compartmentalised as he sees it,

72 _{Jaeger (1912) Studien zur Enstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles, Berlin: Weidman.} 73 _{Jaeger (1923) Aristoteles, p. 173.}

74 _{Jaeger (1923) pp. 2-5.}

75 _{“[Der Philologe], der gewohnt ist, die Selbstbeurteilung einer Persönlichkeit nicht als völlig objektive}

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life as well as writings, in Akademiezeit, Wanderjahre, Meisterzeit. 76

Die Akademiezeit

Because Jaeger’s work had such an impact, we first need to look into what the situation was before the Entwicklungsthese to be able to appreciate it. Before Jaeger, Aristotle’s personality as well as his philosophy were seen as radically different from Plato’s, 77_and

still in 1933 the following was a mainstream description of Aristotle:

“When Plato was keeping his school in Athens, a raw youth from Macedonia burst into the quiet groves where the old philosopher and his students walked and talked, bringing with him a new vigour and a new outlook.”78

Jaeger’s most important argument about the Akademiezeit is to call attention to the very special situation where a genius who thoroughly influenced Western society has been under the influence of another genius of similar importance for so long: “Man findet sicher keinen zweiten Fall in der Geschichte der großen Denker, vielleicht sogar überhaupt kein Beispiel in der Entwicklungsgeschichte selbständiger Schöpfernaturen, daß ein Mensch von vergleichbar tiefer Originalität der Begabung so anhaltend unter dem Einfluß eines völlig anders gearteten, überragenden Genies gestanden hat und ganz in seinem Schatten aufgewachsen ist.”79

76 _{Jaeger (1923), see ‘Inhalt’ on an unnumbered page; pp. 7, 103, 329.} 77 _{Guthrie (1981), p. 22.}

78 _{Daily Express, 3 October 1933, cited in Guthrie (1981), p. 22.}

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Wanderjahre

Aristotle stays in Athens until the year of Plato’s death. From his thirty-seventh until his forty-ninth year, Aristotle wanders, becoming the most important philosopher in centres in Assis and Mytilene, before eventually teaching Alexander in Macedonia.

The bulk of Jaeger’s book is about these Wanderjahre, as a transitional phase between the Akademiezeit and the Meisterzeit. Here all the philosophical works already had their beginning: Jaeger speaks of an ‘Urmetaphysik,’ ‘Urethik,’ etc. which were only completed in his last stage of his life back in Athens. In this way Jaeger accounts for strange

repetitions in the Corpus, as there are the several overlapping books of Ethics and the two nearly identical passages Metaphysica A.ix & Metaphysica M.iv-v,80_{at which he kept}

working. Jaeger did not work out the development in Aristotle’s psychology very

thoroughly but discriminated between De Anima III, in which he sees the treatment of the

nous as still very Platonian, and De Anima I-II, together with the Parva Naturalia, where

more room is allowed for actual observation. In general Jaeger writes: “Die Aufdeckung der psychophysischen Zusammenhänge mußte zunächst den platonischen Glauben an die Unvergänglichkeit der Einzelseele erschüttern, und Aristoteles konnte nichts von seiner einstigen Überzeugung aufrecht halten als die Unabhängigkeit des reinen νοῦς vom Körper. Alle übrigen Funktionen der Seele wie Reflexion, Lieben und Hassen, Furcht, Zorn und Erinnerung setzen das psychophysischen Gesamtwesen als Träger voraus und gehen

80 _{Book M.iv-v speaks in first person, Book A.ix says exactly the same but in third person, cf. Tredennick}

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mit diesem zugrunde.”81

Aristotle keeps trying to present his philosophy as mere elaborations of Plato’s, “die Pietät zu wahren,” 82_{but he is only trying to fool himself: “Die Genossen urteilen anders.}

Sie erkannten unter der konservativen Hülle den revolutonären Geist eines neuen Weltbegriffs und sahen Aristoteles nicht mehr als Platoniker an.”83

Meisterzeit

Only when arriving in Athens for the second time does Aristotle succeed in surmounting all influence of his former teacher Plato, not unlike Plato himself who only wrote his very final dialogues without the great Socrates in it, casting himself as a collocutor instead. In the course of establishing his own school, the Lyceum, Aristotle also establishes his own, independent philosophy.

Jaeger does not arrive at a clear image of Aristotle’s psychology in this master-stage, basically saying that Aristotle remained undecided: “Die spätere Lehre des Aristoteles steht zwischen der materialistischen Auffassung, daß die Seele eine Harmonie des Körpers ist, und der platonischen im Eudemos, daß sie eine eigene Substanz ist, in der Mitte.”84

81 _{Jaeger (1923) Aristoteles, p. 47-8.} 82 _{Jaeger (1923) Aristoteles, p. 179.} 83 _Ibidem.

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Jaeger influenced by the 19th century: Comte

A. Mansion85_{tried to show how much Jaeger projected his own idealization of the world}

on his model of Aristotle’s development by pointing out how much it coincided with Comte’s tripartition of human development, in history as well as in individual human lives. Comte describes primitive man as mythological, trying to make sense of the world with traditional stories. While growing up, both as an individual as well as in a complete culture, man develops into the theological stage; he is becoming more rational, and tries to think through the world, inventing philosophy and theology. The ultimate stage man can reach is the positivistic stage, where he has cast off every possible superstition, and is solely led by his ratio. ‘Positivism’ was also the name he gave to his own science, one of the first attempts in history at a systemic sociology, which he apparently saw as the ultimate fulfilment of the human species. Its goal was to eliminate every belief or

traditional assumption about the world, such as the human soul and God. We must think for ourselves and only the senses can be trusted. This is not very sophisticated

philosophically, but this line of thinking has always remained among us as reductionism or materialism. Juxtaposing Comte’s and Jaeger’s models, we get:

1. ‘Die Akademiezeit’: mythological because Aristotle takes as Gospel the Platonian psychology as we see in the Eudemus: antagonism between body and soul.

2. ‘Die Wanderjahre’: slowly he begins to cut loose from his former teacher, is

experimenting with hylomorphism for the soul, but is still holding on to a belief in nous as a world in itself, as stated in De Anima.

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3. ‘Die Meisterzeit’: finally he has matured to realise soul is totally a function of a physical body.

This same attitude was already evident in Jaeger’s 1913 article: “Das naive Denken vorwissenschaftlicher Naturerfahrung erkennt aus dem Stillstand der Atmung, der die Schwelle zwischen Leben und Tod bildet, das innere Band, welches Leben und Atmen aneinanderknüpft. Das unwiederbringliche Entfliehende, mit dem alle Bewegung und die Lust der immer regsamen Empfindung dem sterbenden Körper entweicht, ist der Gott des Lebens, und sein Wesen ist die Kraft des Hauches, das πνεῦμα.”86_{But we will see how in}

other implementations of the Entwicklungsthese this concept pneuma played a very different role, not as mystical lore, but as a first sign of scientific thinking. For Nuyens pneuma was a working hypothesis in the transitional Wanderjahre stage.

F.J.C.J. Nuyens S.J.

The first influential improvement on Jaegers work was by the Dutchman Nuyens, who focused on development in Aristotle’s ideas on the relation between body and soul.

Although Nuyens did not copy Jaeger but tried to redo the whole project, he arrived at the same tripartite, quasi-Comptean layout as Jaeger.87_{The middle stage was necessary mostly}

because he could not imagine Aristotle making such a sweeping move from Platonism to

86 _{Jaeger (1913), p. 29.}

87 _{Nuyens (1939) was a dissertation to obtain a doctorate – similar to a PhD. – which traditionally contain}

several ‘stellingen’ = ‘theses,’ of which the second one reads: “Stelling II. Aristoteles’ zielkunde heeft zich, uitgaande van Plato’s dualism, langs een mechanistisch instrumentalisme ontwikkeld tot het entelechisme.”

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traditional Aristotelian psychology: “Een grooter tegenstelling inzake de verhouding van ziel en lichaam dan tusschen den Eudemus en de De Anima is immers moeilijk denkbaar.”88

So Nuyens imagines he needs an intermediate stage in which the soul gradually, in Aristotle’s changing philosophy, loses its independence from the body:

“In deze opvatting [Nuyens refers here to all early works of Aristotle, except the Eudemus] verliest de ziel echter niet aanstonds geheel haar zelfstandigheid. Zij is de “levenskracht”, die – aan een bepaald orgaan gebonden – in het lichaam woont en het lichaam leven doet, zij is de gebieder, die over het lichaam heerscht, zij is de gebruiker, het lichaam het

instrument.”89

Here Nuyens comes very close to what Bos and Ferwerda claim has been Aristotle’s psychology throughout. He even invents a name for it: “Deze opvatting, die wij het best typeeren als een “vitalistisch instrumentalisme” komt vooral in de biologische en ethische werken voor.”90_{As was the costum at his time he is ignoring the text of De Spiritu here. He}

seems however to be conscious of some lacuna here: “Bij de vaststelling van dit overgangsstadium tusschen den Eudemus en de De Anima doet zich de moeilijkheid gevoelen, dat Aristoteles in deze jaren zijn zielkundige opvattingen niet in een uitgewerkt tractaat heeft vastgelegd.”91

Nuyens states that the texts of De Anima and what we know of the Eudemus already indicate that some development must have taken place: where the Eudemus seems to only

88 _{Nuyens (1939) p. 41.} 89 _{Nuyens (1939) p. 41.} 90 _{Nuyens (1939) p. 41.} 91 _Ibidem.

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talk of people, De Anima considers all life. So here too we see a projection of our own modern science on Aristotle: the understanding that man is just an animal is more sophisticated than the mythological, earlier perception as man having something to do with God.

So Nuyens sees the hylomorphistic model of the soul as the ultimate model for the soul, the most scientific, and the truest, and thus the most Aristotelian. But he is not to defend a reductionist or materialist standpoint, considering the two letters beyond his name: ‘S.J.’ that is Societas Jesu, also known as Jesuits. Nuyens could be perfectly happy with the hylomorphistic soul because the official theologian of his Roman Catholic church, Thomas Aquinas, had somehow92_{adapted the Aristotelian psychology to the doctrines of}

Rome. Life after death, heaven and hell, resurrection when the Apocalyptic End Times arrive, and what have you not, all have been accounted for by scholasticism.

Grundlegung = ‘to be built upon,’ not ‘elementary’

So with two so different implementations the Entwicklungsthese becomes accessible for anyone, and soon every possible structuring of Aristotle’s work has been proposed. It was only natural that somebody would do so, because Jaeger had taken on a large workload that prevented him from being able to work very systematically. This he admits himself: “[Das vorliegende Buch] will nicht ein systematische Darstellung, sondern eine

92 _{See my BA-thesis Gijs Raeven (2014) Thomas looking into De Anima. The reintroduction of Aristotle’s}

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Analyse geben.”93

‘Grundlegung’ in Jaeger’s title was translated into English by Richard Robinson as ‘Fundamentals,’94_{but this should not be read as ‘basics, the minimum everyone at least}

should be familiar with,’ but can also be read as ‘foundations to be built upon.’ This is also how Nuyens saw his own work: calling it only a contribution95_{to the discussion. To be}

able to work more systematically he restricted his studies to Aristotle’s psychology, inviting others to do similar studies on Aristotle’s changing ideas of God, and of his changing relation to Plato.96

And so writers continued the work, and the Entwicklungsthese dominated scholarship on Aristotle with all possible arrangements of his development being discussed. But enthusiasm waned after Owen97 _{and Düring}98_{wrote independently that}

Aristotle was initially very much opposed to Platonian transcendentalism, but later changed his mind under the influence of his very gifted pupil Theophrastus (only

according to Düring). At this point just about all possibilities and combinations had been exhausted, without any of them leading to any more fresh outlooks. People started to lose interest: the spell of the Entwicklungthese was broken.99

93 _{Jaeger (1923), ‘Vorwort’.}

94 _{Werner Jaeger (1948) Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of his Development, translation of Jaeger (1923)} 95 _{“bijdrage,” Nuyens (1939) p. 51.}

96 _Ibidem.

97 _{Owen (1960) & (1965).} 98 _{Düring (1956) & (1966).} 99 _{Menn (1998), p. 408.}

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Unitarists versus analysts

The debate developed not unlike a similar debate on Homer. This debate, the Homeric Question, was already going on for a longer time, but when Wilamowitz came up with an analysis it proved to be too sophisticated for other scholars to improve upon, or to refute. “Over the course of the following decades [i.e. after Wilamowitz published Die Heimkehr

des Odysseus: neue Homerische Untersungungen100_{] attention drifted away, particularly in the}

English-speaking world,” as an anonymous writer described it.101_{Whereas in the Homeric}

question Wilamowitz’ model proves to be too intricate for others to aspire towards improvement, in the case of the Entwicklungdthese it is the endless list of new proposals that led to Barnes’ resignation.

Analysts and moderate analysts

At a later time, some diehard Analysts think that they can turn the tide of things. Rist explains how everybody reverted back to being a Unitarist due to “Jaeger’s failure to establish the details of Aristotle’s philosophical development, and the comparative failure of many others who followed him.” He does not like what he sees in Aristotelian

scholarship, writers focusing on one minuscule problem, only to avoid dealing with the

Entwicklungsthese in some form.

100 _{Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1927).}

101 _{Lemma Wikipedia ‘Homeric scholarship,’}_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_scholarship}_{, last}

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But in the Introduction to Wians (1996) the importance of Jaegerism is already reduced to the basic premise that it would be a pity, if not a shame, if classicists did not read their Jaeger any more. Menn also encourages reading Jaeger, and to keep considering the problematic passages in (pseudo)Aristotelian texts. This is exactly what we, together with Gregoric & Lewis, as well as Bos, Ferwerda and Gerson are doing.

Scholars who are not will generally find themselves working in a soft, mild Unitarism, aware of some discrepancies between some works of Aristotle, for example between his dialogues and De Anima, but without the need to account for them. When Menn was working on his review of Wians’ Aristotle’s Philosophical Development, a colleague of his expressed surprise that anyone was still even interested in Aristotle’s development.102_{But in the 21}st_{century the debate that had petered out has been rekindled.}

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IV. Pneuma as

τὸ σῶμα ὀργανικόν

A new Aristotelian pneumatology was proposed in Bos’ The Soul and its Instrumental Body.

A Reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Philosophy of Living Nature. In it he states that the

hylomorphism as traditionally applied to the soul should be abandoned.103_{Both reviews}

from Bronstein and King call the book an “ambitious book.”104_{This is not meant merely as}

a compliment, but they consider his thesis too daring, when he presumes that by τὸ σῶμα ὀργανικόν in De Anima II.i 412b Aristotle was referring to pneuma. They also think that he makes too heavy use of De Spiritu and De Mundo as genuine Aristotelian works.105_{But in}

the pneumatology of Bos the libellus does not play the most pivotal role. It is the interpretation of the little word ὀργανικόν that does, and Bos’ interpretation of it has become more and more accepted.

Alexander of Aphrodisias and τὸ σῶμα ὀργανικόν

Since Alexander of Aphrodisias in the second century AD wrote that the word

‘ὀργανικόν’ in the definition in 412b should be interpreted as ‘equipped with organs,’106

this has been followed by all scholars up to our times. Superficially this is an obvious

103 _{Bos (2003), pp. 363-368.} 104 _{Bronstein, F. (2006), pp. 322-3.} 105 _{King (2007), p. 323.}

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interpretation because it follows a digression in De Anima II.i 412b1-4 about how the diverse specialised parts –the leaves, roots – of plants can also be considered ‘organs’ of some form. Alexander wrote in his De Anima, a commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima:107

ἔστιγὰρ ὀργανικὸνσῶματὸἔχονπλείωτεκαὶδιαφέρονταμέρηψυχικαῖς δυνάμεσινὑπηρετεῖσθαιδυνάμενα..

Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Anima 16,11

For an organic body is one that has many different parts able to subserve the soul powers.108

But this would be the only time for the word ‘ὀργανικός, -ή, -όν’ in the whole of the

Corpus Aristotelicum that it should take on this meaning. Normally it means ‘instrumental,’

or ‘serving as organs or instruments.’ Bos proposes that this meaning should also be applied here, in the definition of 412b. The soul is then not the entelechy of the physical body, but of a pneumatic ‘instrumental body,’ with which it can move the physical body. This way the problematic incongruences that occupied Jaeger and Nuyens dissolve

without the need for any Entwicklungsthese. In De Generatione Animalium Aristotle treats the very difficult question how the non-physical soul can move the physical body: it does so by way of the pneumatic body. It can move the physical body because it is itself a physical body, but of such a high nature109_{that it can also communicate with the soul.}

107 _{Abraham P. Bos (2012), p. 140.} 108 _{Victor Caston (2014), p. 43.}

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Πασής μὲν οὖν ψυχῆς δύναμις ἑτέρου σώματος ἔοικε κεκοινωνηκέναι καὶ θειοτέρου τῶν καλουμένων στοιχίων·

De Generatione Animalium II.iii 736b30

Now so far as we can see, the faculty of the Soul of every kind has to do with some physical substance which is different from the so-called ‘elements’ and more divine than they are.110

The soul uses the pneumatic body, i.e. a physical body, to move around in the world, and to perceive the world, the two most important functions a soul needs an instrument for. But the pneumatic body is also what keeps the body together: it prevents the elements constituting it from falling back to their natural places.111

This new, non-Alexandrian interpretation of ὀργανικóν is now increasingly accepted. Gregoric writes: “Forms of living beings (τὰ ἔμψηχα) are their souls (ψυχαí), whereas their natural instrumental bodies (σώματα φυσικὰ ὀργανικά), that is, natural bodies equipped for doing whatever living beings of a given sort typically do, are their matter.”112

Ferwerda however, in 2001, was still agreeing with Verbeke that this other interpretation of ὀργανικóν will create new problems. According to Verbeke Aristotle always sees pneuma as an intermediate between physical body and soul, also in the psychology of De Anima, but for him it is natural pneuma is hardly113_{mentioned in De}

110 _{Peck, A.L. (1942), p. 171} 111 _{Rein Ferwerda (2001), p. 24} 112 _{Pavel Gregoric (2007), p. 19}

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Anima because Aristotle adheres strictly to his subject, i.e. the soul.114

The three definitions of ‘soul’ in De Anima II.i

There are several definitions in De Anima. In the beginning of Book II Aristotle works his way through three of them, thinking aloud as it were, narrowing down what should be the most precise definition.115_{His first attempt is:}

ἀναγκαῖον ἄρα τὴν ψυχὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι ὡς εἶδος σώματος φυσικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος. De Anima 412a20

So the soul must be substance in the sense of being the form of a natural body, which potentially has life.116

He then moves from substance (οὐσία) to specify it as entelechy (ἐντελέχεια),117after

explaining there are two sorts of ἐντελέχεια, and arrives at a slightly different definition of the soul:

διὸ ἡ ψυχή ἐστιν ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος. De Anima 412a28-9

The soul may therefore be defined as the first actuality of a natural body potentially

II.ix 421b15 (obviously in the meaning of respiration, while discussing the sense of smelling).

114 _{Verbeke, G. (1978).}

115 _{See also my BA-thesis Gijs Raeven (2014) Thomas looking into De Anima. The reintroduction of Aristotle’s}

psychology in the West in the 13th_century.

116 _{Hett (1975), p. 69.}

117 _{A term coined by Aristotle for the form in hylomorphism when dealing specifically with souls, who}

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possessing life.118

Now the other part of the definition needs to become more concrete. What exactly is ‘a body potentially having life’? Such a body, Aristotle writes, must be ὀργανικός, and this is the word we will have to discuss:

εἰ δή τι κοινὸν ἐπὶ πάσης ψυχῆς δεῖ λέγειν, εἴη ἄν ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ. De Anima 412b11-13

If then one is to find a definition which will apply to every soul, it will be: “the first actuality of a natural body possessing organs [i.e. ὀργανικόν’]119

If ὀργανικóν is defined as ‘having organs,’ then the second and third definitions do not connect neatly, because ‘a body furnished with organs’ is already a living body,120_{and not}

a body potentially having life. This point is also made by Alexander of Aphrodisias: “For when we say that soul is of a natural body which potentially has life, we are not then applying ‘potentially’ to the body in the way that we are accustomed to apply it to things that do not yet have something but are suitable to receive it. For it is not that this body first exists without soul, and subsequently receives it, but what potentially has life is what is able to live, that is what possesses organs for the activities in life, and ‘potentially having

118 _Ibidem. 119 _Ibidem.

120 _{“Aristotle cannot yet talk about plants and about bodies with instrumental parts. For all genesis}

starts with the presence of homogeneous components () on the basis of the four sublunary elementary bodies.” Bos (2012), p. 146. See also Jaeger (1913a), p. 43.