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ON EMENDING AND NOT EMENDING THE TEXT OF SOME PASSAGES IN ARISTOTLE'S ETHICA EUDEMIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Peter L.P. Simpson
Peter L.P. Simpson*
Affiliation:
City University of New York
*
[email protected]
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Extract

The text of Aristotle's Ethica Eudemia (EE) is often in need of emendation, especially because of the particular fault in the manuscripts of misreading one letter for another or misdividing letters to form words. Scholars have already done fine work in correcting many of these errors (especially at the beginning of 8.1), but more needs to be done. A second problem with the text does not have to do with matters of spelling or grammar (or even of punctuation), but rather with those of philosophical sense. For, as scholars have noted, the EE is marked by considerable compression of thought, and this compression leads scholars to propose changes where, on further consideration, it can be shown that not change of words but change of comprehension is needed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 660 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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References

1 The two main editions of EE are Susemihl, F., [Aristotelis Eudemia Ethica] Eudemii Rhodii Ethica (Leipzig, 1884)Google Scholar and Walzer, R.R. and Mingay, J.M., Aristotelis Ethica Eudemia (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar. Bekker's original text of all of Aristotle's works is also invaluable but its apparatus criticus is thin (Bekker, I., Aristotelis Opera [Berlin, 1831]Google Scholar).

2 Dirlmeier, F., Aristoteles. Eudemische Ethik (Darmstadt, 1962), 363Google Scholar, who speaks, in this regard, of Aristotle's ‘Brachylogie’ in EE, and Kenny, A.J.P., Aristotle on the Perfect Life (Oxford, 1992), 115, 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who uses the word ‘telegrammatic’ in the same regard; see also von Fragstein, A., Studien zur Ethik des Aristoteles (Amsterdam, 1974), 397Google Scholar; Mingay, J., ‘How should a philosopher live? Two Aristotelian views’, History of Political Thought 8 (1987), 21–32Google Scholar, at 27, 29, 31. Why such compression of thought, in both logic and grammar, should be a mark of EE when it is not, say, a mark of NE, is worth pondering. One suggestion, following Kenny (n. 2), 141, is that NE (which continues immediately into the Politica) is addressed to would-be legislators or politikoi, while EE seems aimed at a philosophically more sophisticated audience. The former would likely not be able or eager to follow a highly compressed piece of reasoning, but the latter almost certainly would, and might indeed relish a good intellectual workout. This suggestion, however, must remain merely a suggestion here. An adequate defence of it would require an article by itself.

3 Lucas, D.W., Aristotle. Poetics (Oxford, 1968), 42, 231Google Scholar.

4 A point forcibly made in defence of ἐνδέχεσθαι by Gudeman, Alfred, Aristoteles ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ (Berlin, 1934), 27Google Scholar.

5 Goodwin, W.W., A Greek Grammar (London, 1968)Google Scholar, § 1462 notes that μὴ is used in causal relative clauses that have also a conditional force.

6 Or alternatively, taking μόνον οὐ together and not separately, ‘he who is friend of a man almost belongs …’, i.e. is almost part of a city, for all he has left to do to become a part is to advance to the next stage beyond the household.

7 The example seems otherwise so peculiar that scholars think the text needs emending, as Dirlmeier (n. 2), 473 and Moraux, P., ‘Das Fragment VIII 1. Text und Interpretation’, in Moraux, P. and Harlfinger, D., Untersuchungen zur Eudemischen Ethik (Berlin, 1971), 253–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 257.

8 The distinction is noted by D.J. Allan, ‘The fine and the good in the Eudemian Ethics’, in Moraux and Harlfinger (n. 7), 63–72, at 70, who uses it precisely to explain the relation between individual virtuous acts and an overall virtuous life.

9 The argument of this paragraph is admittedly controversial and there are able defences of the emended reading ἀγαθοὶ, as White, S.A., Sovereign Virtue (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar. But since the MSS reading of ἄγριοι can also be given a plausible sense, one should at least give this reading serious consideration.

10 Dirlmeier (n. 2), 425–6.

11 The suggestion is not listed in the apparatus criticus of the OCT. It comes from Jackson, H., On Some Passages in the Seventh Book of the Eudemian Ethics Attributed to Aristotle (Cambridge, 1900), 29Google Scholar.

12 Denniston, J.D., The Greek Particles (Oxford, 1950), 352Google Scholar, who also suggests a translation of ‘and especially’.

13 Rackham, H., Aristotle. The Athenian Constitution. The Eudemian Ethics. On Virtues and Vices (Cambridge, MA, 1961), 439Google Scholar and Solomon, J., in Barnes, J. (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, 1984), 2.1973Google Scholar. Kenny, A.J.P.'s translation is similar, Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics (Oxford, 2011), 137Google Scholar.

14 Goodwin (n. 5), § 1421 n. 3.

15 von Fragstein, (n. 2), 376.

16 My thanks to my colleague Jacob Stern and to an anonymous reviewer for CQ for comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this article.