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Part I
Methodology
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1 Δόξαι and the Tools of Dialectic in De Anima I.1–3
Colin Guthrie King
1 Introduction
In an influential article on Aristotle’s method, G. E. L. Owen observed that Aristotle’s notion of the phainomena accommodates not simply what we might call empirical observations, but also the very concepts we employ in making them.1 Owen would go on to claim that, for this particular sense of the phainomena, “all dialectical argument can be said to start from the phainomena”.2 This claim proved seminal for a generation of influential scholars in ancient philosophy who would try to show how Aristotle could be justified in applying a dialectical method in various contexts, including scientific ones.3 More recently, the pendulum has swung back again, with several authors denying that Aristotle’s “method” is dialectical in certain works.4
The primary purpose of this article is not to engage in this particular exegetical controversy concerning “dialectical method”. But I do intend to show how the terms of this debate are inadequate for the interpretation of Aristotle’s texts. The debate about “dialectical methodology” is obtuse because the treatise in which Aristotle developes a theory of dialectic—the Topics—presents a method for training in a particular practice of argumentation (namely: dialectic), and not a theory of Aristotle’s own inquiries, which clearly are not instances of two-person, question-and-answer argumentation. We can learn from the first book of De anima how elements from the theory of dialectical argumentation are employed by Aristotle in the service of inquiry; and that is the primary purpose of this article. In particular, we may see from Book I of the De anima that Aristotle can reject dialectical standards and procedures of argumentation and definition, while at the same time employing the tools developed in his theory of dialectical argumentation.
In the first part of the paper, I locate the main claims of my interpretation in the context of the literature on Aristotle’s De anima. In the second, I examine what role the search for a definition of the soul plays in setting the agenda of the science sought in De anima. In the third part, I consider the criteria and objectives guiding Aristotle’s collection of “views” and “opinions” (δόξαι) in De anima I.2. In the fourth and final main part of the paper, I consider the manner in which Aristotle evaluates others’ views through various tests.
2 Problems for the Interpretation of De anima I
It was long almost a truism in modern scholarship on Aristotle that his “method”, or methodology, is “dialectical”, in particular when we find him considering the views of others.5 And so it is not surprising that this interpretation has been applied to De anima I, where we find Aristotle in sustained engagement with the views of earlier philosophers on the nature of the soul.6 But the ascription of dialectical “method” to De anima I (and several texts like it) raises several objections. It has been observed that Aristotle does not appeal to “popular” conceptions of soul in this text, but instead selects a few authoritative views.7 Here as in many other isagogic contexts—i.e., at the beginning of a treatise or the discussion of a problem—Aristotle does not feel obliged to report what is held to be true by all or the majority, nor even by all the wise. He cites and investigates a subset of the views of the “wise”, experts or epistemic authorities, selectively, based on what he deems relevant.8 Moreover, it may be said that “the preliminary clarifications of basic conceptions and assumptions” is basic to any philosophical enterprise, and not specific to any sort of method.9 In another vein, there are those who find in Aristotle’s retrospective “clarifications” eristically motivated distortions of the views of others, motivated primarily by fitting these views into a systematic framework that is already at hand. Harold Cherniss, in particular, took Aristotle’s retrospective statements on the soul as primary evidence for this sort of attitude on Aristotle’s part.10 Such a criticism of Aristotle’s criticism presumes that his isagogical discussions of the views of others is a form of dialectic, but one which is eristic and, above all, tendentious. If we wish to save Aristotle from the charge of being uncharitable in this way, we might like to deny that his arguments are dialectical in this sense. Finally, and on another level of interpretation, the reasonable objection has been raised that the reading of “dialectical method” into Aristotle’s works themselves is inappropriate given that he conceives of dialectic as a specific form of rule-governed, inter-personal argumentation, and his extant texts (unlike Plato’s dialogues) are not even literary imitations of such a procedure, much less real instantiations of it.11
Given this background in the scholarship, it seems advisable to begin with a clarification of some basic questions that the interpretation of De anima I might reasonably be expected to address. Here are two groups of questions to which the literature has repeatedly returned:
What motivates the retrospective treatment of the views of others in De anima I? Is Aristotle motivated to select and discuss these views for historical reasons, based on an already formed theory of the soul? Does the discussion of these views contribute directly to the formulation of the theory? Are these two motivations compatible for Aristotle, or strongly associated with one another, or even inextricably linked? And what are the standards Aristotle brings to the selection, formulation, and interpretation of the views of others?
Is the procedure in De anima I dialectical in some way? What would it mean for this to be true? And what epistemological aims are connected with the entire retrospective procedure in De anima I?
I will address these questions. In response to the first set, I shall argue that, no, Aristotle is not motivated in De anima I by an antiquarian historical interest in the opinions of others.12 From this, it follows that his procedure in this book is not rightly understood as failing or defective history, since it is not history at all (understanding “history” as a form of inquiry directed primarily at the past). Aristotle does seem to be using a sort of archive, however: a system of information retrieval based upon specific priorities connected to the inquiry at hand.13 Pace Cherniss, this “citation system” is not based on the theory of the soul that we find in subsequent books of De anima, and so it is not helpful to interpret it in this way. It seems rather to yield conditions for a satisfactory account of what soul is—and these conditions are directly connected to what Aristotle deems to be the underlying presuppositions of previous contributions to the theory of the soul in the framework of general natural philosophy.14
Aristotle’s inquiry in De anima I is not directed primarily at the views of particular individuals, but foremost to the common background assumptions or presuppositions of those views he deems relevant. Aristotle’s inquiry concerns the contours of substantive agreement and disagreement that obtain both between selected views, and on questions that arise from within the views themselves. An interest in implicit agreement and disagreement, both between views and within them, is characteristic also of the theory of dialectical argumentation as we find it in the Topics and the Rhetoric.15 The interest in investigating common presuppositions and points of disagreement motivates a genuine concern for what Aristotle takes to be the program of natural science before him, to which Aristotle clearly assigns an epistemic value for his own theory of the soul.16 This will be seen in the way in which he derives from his discussion of previous views substantive conditions for his own explanation of soul.
Notwithstanding this use of tools from the theory of dialectical argumentation for the study of δόξαι, I shall argue in response to the second set of questions that, no, De anima I is not a piece or case of dialectical argumentation or even “dialectical methodology”. Still, we can understand the criticism Aristotle exercises here better in light of his remarks on the criticism of definitions and arguments in the Topics, in particular through comparing his criticism of views in De anima I with his theory of “poorly said” definitions in Topics VI, and his remarks on the criticism of argumentation in Topics VIII.11.
3 Definition and Dialectic in De anima I.1
In De anima I.1 Aristotle sets out the objective of his study in the following way (unless otherwise noted, translations are my own):
We seek to theorize and understand the nature and essence of the soul and its attributes, of which some seem to be particular to the soul itself, whereas others seem to belong also to living beings on account of the soul (DA I.1, 402a7–10).17
This project, as Aristotle goes on to describe it, is to say what the soul is (402a12–13). The difficulty with this is that the soul is claimed as the object of several different disciplines, and so we are immediately forced to confront the question of whether there is one single discipline for the pursuit of questions regarding definition, i.e., what something is. If there is not one procedure to investigate the being of things, then it must be established first which procedure is appropriate for each field of inquiry. This latter option can be characterized as the departmental approach to definition (402a16–18). At the beginning of De anima, then, we find two problems in the dialectical sense, i.e., questions concerning an object of investigation (θεώρημα) about which there are either no accepted views or about which such views are opposed (Top. I.11, 104b1–5).18 The problems here can be construed in terms of the following two questions: What sort of inquiry would be responsible for determining the definition of the soul? And is there a discipline responsible for all definitional inquiries? The questions are clearly related: if there is one science responsible for all definition-related inquiries, it will be that science to which we must turn for the definition of the soul.
Though it is not called out by name here, we can be sure that at least one procedure with a pretense to being responsible for all definitional inquiry was dialectic. We find this stated explicitly in a passage from the catalogue of difficulties for the science of substance in Metaphysics III. There, a similar problem as that in De anima I.1 is put to question:
And we must also investigate whether (πότερον) the inquiry is exclusively about substances, or if it also concerns the per se attributes of the substances, and in addition to this about the same and different, similar and dissimilar, and contrariety, and about the prior and the posterior and all the other things about which dialecticians undertake their inquiries upon the basis of acceptable premisses alone—and whose task it is to theorize about all of them (Metaph. III.1, 995b18–25).
The question of whether a certain inquiry (θεωρία) of substances is limited to them, or also includes the study of their attributes, is raised here explicitly, and then supplemented with an example of a form of inquiry which investigates everything.19 As representative of such a universal form of inquiry, Aristotle cites the dialecticians who make their inquiries upon the basis of “acceptable premisses alone” (ἐκ τῶν ἐνδόξων μόνων, 995b24).20 We can therefore reasonably assume that the question-problem of whether there is one procedure for inquiry or many in De anima I.1 is a reference, albeit an indirect one, to dialectical procedures and their appropriateness for the inquiry at hand.
This corresponds also with the way in which Aristotle conceives dialectical procedures in the Topics. The purpose of this treatise is to train the student in dialectical argumentation; and so the scope of the treatise tells us something (albeit indirectly) about the purposes of such argumentation. At the beginning of the Topics we are told that the purpose of the treatise is to find a method from which we shall be able to argue on “any problem put forward” upon the basis of acceptable premisses (Top. I.1, 100a18–20). The purpose of the Topics is to prepare the student to argue, quite literally, about anything. The theory of dialectical argumentation is organized around definitions (ὅροι) and what in the dialectical moots of the Academy were discussed as their components: genus, proprium, specific difference, and those items that may be predicated to any given subject as an “attribute” or “property” (συμβεβηκός). Together, t...
