Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

250 Aristotle and his school1248 a 26–9:26 27 .28 29 ; 39 .‘For in a certain way the divine element in us moves everything; but thestarting-point of reasoning is not reasoning, but something stronger. Well,what then could be even stronger than knowledge, other than God? (Notvirtue) for virtue is an instrument of intelligence.’Comments: I regard ‘the divine element in us’ ( ) asanequivalent of ‘the intellect’ ( ), in accordance with Eth. Nic.1177 a 13–17, 1177 b 27–31 and 1179 a 27–8. 40 The point of this sentenceis that it makes explicit another possible answer to Aristotle’s question, tothe effect that it is the intellect () which is the principle of movementin the soul: for after all, the intellect is ‘the divine element in us’. Aristotleanticipates this idea by arguing that, admittedly, this is true in a certain way(), but the intellect itself has got its movement from something whichis ‘superior’ (, cf.1248 a 18–20 above). (It is not necessary to alterthe MS reading . 41 The sentence anticipates a possible objection to the effectthat the sought for is ). 4239 The MS tradition is ; The emendation of into as well as the addition of , which are generally accepted by modern interpreters, arebased on the Latin tradition: quid igitur utique erit melius et scientia et intellectu nisi deus, but theaddition is probably prompted by the mention of in the following sentence and by line32 ; seems equivalent in this context to and.40 Following Dirlmeier (1962a) 490, and von Arnim (1928) 21, contra Woods (1982) 182, who arguesthat in Eth. Nic. 1177 a 13–17 ‘the divine element is tentatively identified with the intelligence (nous),whereas here the divine element is distinguished from intelligence’. Cf. Wagner (1970) 105–8, whowrongly follows Dirlmeier (1962a) 108 in concluding that ‘this divine element moves the processesin the soul’ (‘dieses bewegt die Vorgänge in der Seele’), which is incompatible with Wagner’sown conclusion that is equivalent to which is distinguished from : ifWagner reads in 1248a 38, how can he conclude that not but is the ?41 Mills (1983, 289 n. 13) reads , but this change is not necessary,and it makes the following sentence (lines 27–9) redundant. I do not understand Mills’ objectionto the MS tradition, ‘for how could the in us move ?’, for this seems consistent withAristotle’s ideas on the subject in general (cf. De motu an. 700 b 18ff.) and, besides, Aristotle qualifiesthis statement by (‘in a way which it is not relevant now to explain’).42 The objection is probably Socratic, and should be regarded here as moral virtue. Woods (1982,182) and Dirlmeier (1962a, 490) refer to 1246 b 10–12: (on which see Moraux (1971) 264–5).