A Proof in the <i>ΠΕΡΙ ΙΔΕΩΝ</i>

Abstract

In his lost essay περὶ ἰδεῶν Aristotle retailed and rebutted a number of Academic arguments for the existence of Ideas. Several of these, together with Aristotle's objections to them, are preserved in Alexander's commentary on A 9 of the Metaphysics. The first object of the following discussion is to show the sense and the provenance of one, the most complex and puzzling, of these surviving arguments. For several reasons it seems to deserve more consideration than it has yet had. 1. Its length and technicality make it singularly fitted to illustrate the sort of material on which Aristotle drew in his critique. 2. Moreover, Alexander reports it by way of amplifying Aristotle's comment that, of the more precise arguments on Ideas, οἱ μὲν τῶν πρός τι ποιοῦσιν ἰδέας , ὧν οὔ φαμεν εἶναι καθ᾿ αὑτὸ γένος ( Met. 990b15–17 = 1079a11–13); condensed and allusive form of this remark and its immediate neighbours in the Metaphysics can be taken to show that here Aristotle is epitomising parts of his περὶ ἰδεῶν that are independently known to us only through his commentator. We shall not understand the objection if we misidentify its target; and another purpose of this discussion is to show that the objection is not the disingenuous muddle that one recent writer labours to make it. 3. But Alexander's report of the argument is a nest of problems, and the same recent writer brands it as almost incredibly careless. To this extent, the success of our explanation will be a vindication of the commentator. But on all the heads of this discussion I am well aware that much more remains to be said.