248 Aristotle and his school
and in the intelligent ones, but it is stronger in the irrational ones: in the
latter it is an immediate movement, whereas in the intelligent people God
works through the intermediary of ‘the divine in us’ (3 8 ),
the intellect. This is an obvious reference to the distribution argument in
1247 a 28 – 9 , where it was stated that it is ‘paradoxical’ that a god or demon
should love simple people, not the best and wisest ( % 3 <
); evidently Aristotle remains aware of the distribution
argument and anticipates it by means of a careful presentation of his own
explanation.
I will now support this interpretation with a detailed analysis of the text.
For the purpose of clarity I will print first a text and a translation of each
section and then add comments on the section in question. The text of the
manuscript tradition will be followed as closely as possible; any deviations
from it will be accounted for from line to line.^31
1248 a 16 – 26 :
16 $ 5 J "
0 p5 ($ - -#
,
17 $
j o B 2) )
;
18 1 $
< -
T ( 1 % < -
19 < $5 < -,^32 " 5
20 "
0 (5 !# ! B^33
0 $
21
'
> ( ' $
$^34 "0 (. $
22 < -
< > G ' % -#o ?5 "3 -#
(^31) In the light of the harassed transmission of the text it may seem rather naive to keep as closely as
possible to the MS tradition, but I have done so for methodological reasons. It seems to me that the
numerous problems of interpretation in this chapter are due at least as much to Aristotle’s concise and
often frankly clumsy way of writing as to possible corruptions in the text. Therefore the interpreter
should maintain a fundamental distinction between hypotheses concerning the original text which
Aristotle wrote down, and hypotheses concerning what he intended to say. This distinction seems to
have often been ignored, and apparently interpreters have, with an appeal to the abysmal state of the
text, proposed many conjectures with a view to making the text comply with interpretations mainly
prompted by theological assertions in other Aristotelian writings. The unfortunate consequence of
this process is that there is no generally accepted text on which to base a debate concerning the
tenability of a particular interpretation: in order to scrutinise it, one has to be willing to accept, for
the sake of argument, the readings proposed by the interpreter, while these readings were actually
chosen to support the interpretation. An interpretation open to falsification must necessarily keep
as closely as possible to the, admittedly narrow, basis of the MS tradition, and should propose
conjectures only where this is absolutely necessary, and render an account of every conjecture. This
account should be based principally on the immediate context and only secondarily on statements
on the subject in other Aristotelian writings.
(^32) The MS tradition $5 < -is emended by Dirlmeier ( 1962 a) and Woods ( 1982 ) into
! B < -
, analogously to! 〈B〉
in line 20 , but this is unnecessary,
as von Fragstein ( 1974 , 375 ) points out, for the articulationj is also present here.
(^33) The MS tradition is!
; I follow Spengel in insertingN.
(^34) The MS tradition is$
$ ", which does not make sense and which can easily
be emended into$
$ "analogously to$ < -
".