Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Book Review: Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates
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If Aristotle intends, as Burger’s noticing reminder suggests
strongly, that he is not satisfied with two realms, practical and theoretical, but
that he wishes to unite the two into a complete activity and a complete life,
the question we must consider, and which Burger turns to in her concluding
section, is, how are theoria and praxis to be conjoined? what might it mean to
put theoria into action? On the one hand, “To picture the theoretical life in its
purity, we must think of the gods” (203). The life of pure contemplation would
appear to be the life of a god, it “is at home only on the Isles of the Blessed,”
and “its exemplar is Thales” (205). But this model in general does not concern
itself, and Thales in particular did not concern himself, with “philosophy of
the human things.” That concern belongs to Socrates and Socratic philosophy.
And Aristotle identifies his investigation of the highest human good,
eudaimonia, and the best life for a human being as part of the philosophy of
the human things.
At this point we must look back to the beginning and remember
that a part of Aristotle’s work—indeed, perhaps his entire work—involved
examining speeches (logoi), the things people say and believe, to try to discover
the truth. From early on Burger pointed out how Aristotle cited the
Socratic formula “turn to the logoi” to critique those who take refuge in logoi
and avoid the hard work of action. Her careful reading indicates that Aristotle
means us to remember this point at the end, which, she argues, means that
we are meant to apply the same caution to Aristotle’s words themselves. If we
do this, Burger suggests, we will walk away understanding the Ethics not as a
treatise declaring the supremacy of sophia and contemplation over phronesis
and action, but as a philosophic discussion exploring both the promise and
the challenge of sophia and phronesis together for human life and human
action. That promise and challenge are played out not in assertoric fashion,
but in dialogue: the dialogue that Aristotle is engaging in with Socrates and
Plato, but also, and in a sense more profoundly, the invitation to dialogue that
Aristotle extends to the reader. And it is on this last point that Burger’s book
is most to be commended. For as she discovers and discloses the evidence
in the text for Aristotle’s dialogue with Socrates, she herself practices and
illustrates how we, the readers, may enter into and engage in a philosophic
dialogue with Aristotle.