Literature

LITERATURE. — The Aristotelian philosophy is to be studied, first in Aristotle's works, which are the best commentaries on one another; the best complete edition is the Berlin edition (l 83 1-1870), by Bekker and Brandis, in which also are the fragments collected by V. Rose, the scholia collected by Brandis, and the index compiled by Bonitz. After reading the remains of the Peripatetic school, the Greek commentators should be further studied in this edition. The Latin commentators, the Arabians and the schoolmen show how Aristotle has been the chief author of modern culture; while the vindication of modern independence comes out in his critics, the greatest of whom were Roger and Francis Bacon. Since the modern discovery of the science of motion by Galileo which changed natural science, and the modern revolution of philosophy by Descartes which changed metaphysics, the study of Aristotle has become less universal ; but it did not die out, and received a fresh stimulus especially from Julius Pacius, who going back through G. Zabarella to the Arabians, and himself gifted with great logical powers, always deserves study in his editions of the Organon and the Physics, and in his Doctrinae Peripateticae.

In more recent times, as part of the growing conviction of the essentiality of everything Greek, Aristotle has received marked attention. In France there are the works of Cousin (1835), Felix Ravaisson, who wrote on the Metaphysics (1837-1846), and Barthelemy St Hilaire, who translated the Organon and other works (1844 seq.). In Germany there has been a host of commentaries, among which we may mention the Organon edited (1844-1846) by F. Th. Waitz (not so well as by Pacius), the De Anima edited (1833) by F. A. Trendelenburg and later by A. Torstrik, the Historia Animalium by H. Aubert and F. Wimmer (1868), the Ethics by K. L. Michelet (1827), the Metaphysics by A. Schwegler (1847) and (best of all) by H. Bonitz (1848), who is the most faithful of all commentators, because to great industry and acumen he adds the rare gift of confessing when he does not understand, and when he does not know what Aristotle might have thought. With Aristotle's works before one, with the Index Aristotelicus, and the edition and translation of the Metaphysics by Bonitz on one side, and Zeller's Die Philosophic der Griechen, ii.

2, " Aristoteles " (trans, by Costelloe and Muirhead), on the other side, one can go a considerable way towards understanding the foundations of Aristotelianism. In England scholars tend to take up certain parts of Aristotle's philosophy. Grote indeed intended to write a general account of Aristotle like that of Plato; but his Aristotle went little further than the logical writings. From Cambridge we have J. W. Blakesley's Life oj Aristotle, E. M. Cope's Rhetoric, Dr Henry Jackson's Nicomachean Ethics, \., S. H. Butcher's Poetics, Hicks's De Anima, ]. E. Sandys's Athenian Constitution, Jebb's Rhetoric (ed. Sandys). Oxford in particular, since the beginning of the I9th century, has kept alive the study of Aristotle. E. Cardwell in his edition of the Nicomachean Ethics (1828) had the wisdom to found his text on the Laurentian Manuscript (Kb); E. Poste wrote translations of the Posterior Analytics and Sophistici Elenchi; R. Congreve edited the Politics; A. Grant edited the Nicomachean Ethics; E. Wallace translated and annotated the De Anima; B. Jowett translated the Politics; W. L. Newman has edited the Politics in four volumes; Dr Ogle has translated the De Partibus Animalium, with notes; R.

Shute wrote a History of the Aristotelian Writings; Professor J A. Stewart has written Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics; Professor I. Burnet has issued an annotated edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, and W. D. Ross has translated the Metaphysics. All these are, or were, Oxford men; and it remains to mention two others: I. Bywater, who as an Aristotelian scholar has done much for the improvement of Bekker's text, especially of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Poetics; and F. G. Kenyon, who has the proud distinction of having been the first modern editor of the 1 ASijvaiwx ToXirfia. (T. CA.)