Studies in Presocratic Philosophy Volume 1 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4658742
Publisher: Routledge

Conclusion

It has been seen that Theophrastus' treatment of Presocratic causes owes not only its general point of view but also much of the detail of its organization and wording to the Metaphysics A summary, and that his departures from that summary are usually only for the purpose of gathering additional material from Aristotle's other accounts and from the works of the Presocratics. The improbabilities and demonstrable errors that arise directly from his close adherence to one or other of Aristotle's accounts need not be retold here. I take it as self-evident that, when he merely copies or paraphrases an erroneous or improbable account from Aristotle, his copy or paraphrase is no better or worse than its original. There remains to consider briefly some of the features of his work that, although due to his use of Aristotle, are due to his method of using the text of Aristotle rather than to Aristotle's intentions.

(i) Theophrastus' practice of supplementing the Metaphysics summary with statements made by Aristotle in other contexts often causes his accounts to be a bewildering patchwork of ill-fitting pieces. In Metaphysics A, Aristotle does not say what mechanism of change was used by the Milesians. In the Physics (187 A 12-16) he says that all physical monists accounted for change by rarefaction and condensation. This latter statement Theophrastus applies not only to Anaximenes and Diogenes, of whom it is true; he also applies it to Hippasus and Heraclitus, of whom, as Aristotle knows, it cannot be true (see pp. 187 ff.). Aristotle omits Anaximander from the Metaphysics summary. Theophrastus resorts, therefore, to two Physics interpretations in one of which Anaximander is a monist and in the other, both a monist and pluralist. The contradiction in the second interpretation, Theophrastus pretends to solve by accepting Aristotle's patently false identification of the primordial mixture with undifferentiated matter (see pp. 198 f.). Similarly, according to the account taken from the Metaphysics, Anaxagoras is said to have posited infinite material principles, but by the interpretation just mentioned he becomes, like Anaximander, a monist (see pp. 217 f.). In Empedocles Theophrastus finds the inconsistency that sometimes the material principles are four and sometimes six. This inconsistency, however, is due not to failure on the part of Empedocles but to Theophrastus' juxtaposition of two separate interpretations of Aristotle, the latter of which rests on the view that Empedocles' Sphere is a homogeneous compound (see pp. 210 f.). The atomists, according to the interpretation of the Metaphysics, differed from the Milesians only in substituting shape, order, and position for the rare and dense; but by the interpretation taken from the De Generatione their doctrine is related to the Eleatics, and a different account is given of their material principles and of their theory of change (see pp. 227 f.). This sort of confusion and contradiction was probably characteristic of all Theophrastus' doxographical writings; for some of the accounts in the De Sensibus are not only inconsistent with the accounts of the principles but also contain inner contradictions (see p.

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