Courtney McGrailAristotelian Interpretations
by Fran O’Rourke
(Irish Academic Press, €29.99)
J. Anthony Gaughan
This year is the 2,400th Anniversary of the birth of Aristotle at Stagira in the north of Classical Greece in 384 BC. He was arguably the greatest philosopher who ever lived.
His anniversary has been celebrated in Greece, Cyprus and in Classics Departments in universities throughout the Western world. In Ireland there was a seminar on aspects of his work in Trinity College, Dublin, and the publication of this collection of essays.
In his introduction O’Rourke provides a charming account of his early years on a small farm and suggests that the habit he developed of closely observing nature prepared him for his subsequent personal encounter with Aristotle, whose philosophy is based on the observance of nature and reality.
This theme – the direct contact between the individual and nature/reality – is pursued in all the essays, which range across all of Aristotle’s thought: his metaphysics, natural philosophy, psychology, ethics and aesthetics.
Attitude
In the opening essay O’Rourke discusses the philosopher’s ‘wondrous’ outlook upon the universe, an attitude shared with the poet.
Philosophy and poetry are both characterised by their universal openness to reality. But he notes how the poet has also licence to affirm things not only as they are, but also as they might be or could be imagined. The essay ‘Human Nature and Destiny in Aristotle’ provides an overview of the philosopher’s understanding of human beings, both as they resemble and differ from other animals. The author emphasizes the unity for Aristotle of soul and body as co-constituents of a single substance and comments on his tentative arguments for the immortality of the soul.
The essay ‘Knowledge and Necessity in Aristotle’ discusses his grounding of knowledge in the action of sensible beings upon our sense faculties and since these by their nature respond to material objects the knowledge they mediate is immediate and infallible.
The essay concludes with a summary of Aristotle’s reasoning to the necessity of a first mover. In ‘Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Metaphor’ O’Rourke suggests that the philosopher has articulated the most satisfactory explanation for metaphor as a fundamental feature of everyday language and he echoes Aristotle’s emphasis on its importance for biology and metaphysics.
‘Aristotle’s Political Anthropology’ examines a number of questions arising from Aristotle’s definition of man as a political animal. For instance: how may the primacy of the state be reconciled with the fact that the citizen is somehow independent, with autonomous activities and an individual purpose?
Other essays consider Aristotle’s philosophy in the context of evolutionary theory. The final essay is on the influence of Aristotle on James Joyce.
At Newman’s University Joyce was imbued by the spirit of Aristotle. He acknowledges this in A Portrait of the Artist and it is also evident in the mental framework of Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses.
The careful reader of these essays will be richly rewarded. They illustrate some of the most profound metaphysical insights to be found in the philosophy of Aristotle and their contemporary relevance.
Not the least of these is the fact that things are, and our knowledge is firmly grounded on reality.