From aisthesis there comes to be memory, . . . ;
from memory there comes to be experience . . . ;
from experience,
[that is] the universal in the soul;
[that is] the one among the many;
there comes to be . . .
The ek controls genitives. What “comes to be” is in the nominative.
Can the last line, with its opening nominative, then be this?
that one thing of all [that] puts into them what is the same
In other words, is it legitimate to read an implicit relative pronoun (“that”) into the text?
No that won’t do. I don’t know where you get “there comes to be” from (the next sentence, perhaps?). And ἐνῇ is intransitive (lit. “is in”), it can’t mean “puts into.” And ὃ is already the relative pronoun, it’s not implicit. The antecedent of the ὃ that begins the relative clause has to be τοῦ ἑνὸς or τοῦ καθόλου or both, that’s a grammatical given. This is inevitably a much discussed passage, and way beyond my philosophical competence—but it seems you’re seriously misconstruing it.
No, here It’s just the subjunctive of ἐνεστι. If you read the earlier part of the chapter you’ll find the genitive absolute: ἐνούσης δ’ αἰσθήσεως τοῖς μὲν τῶν ζῴων ἐγγίγνεται μονὴ τοῦ αἰσθήματος, …..
There’s a famous passage in Plato’s Ion (534b) on poetic inspiration:
κοῦφον γὰρ χρῆμα ποιητής ἐστιν καὶ πτηνὸν καὶ ἱερόν, καὶ οὐ πρότερον οἷός τε ποιεῖν πρὶν ἂν ἔνθεός τε γένηται καὶ ἔκφρων καὶ ὁ νοῦς μηκέτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐνῇ. (“A poet is … unable to make poetry before he’s inspired and out of his senses and his mind is no longer in him”)
Oh, right, of course, but . . . that’s curious . . .
Both Perseus and TLG says ἐνῇ is (or can also be) an aorist subjunctive of ἐνίημι.
And it seems to be so here in Aristotle’s Problemata:
κἂν γάρ τις αὐτὴν πλαγίαν ἐνῇ εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ, ἐπιλαβὼν τὸν αὐλόν, εἴσεισι τὸ ὕδωρ.
For if one put it (the tube) at an angle into the water, closing the tube, the water enters.
(Or does an aorist subjunctive never go with a present indicative in a conditional sentence like that?)
Can ἐνῇ ever be a contraction for ἐνέκῃ? (That would normally be the aorist subjunctive of ἐνίημι, right?)
ἐνίημι certrainly would help make good sense of Aristotle’s APo B 19.
Weird. Just bugs in Perseus and TLG? or something else?
By form, it could be ενιημι, but that’s just a problem with taking sentences apart instead of reading through by practice. He’s describing the same thing twice:
@mccaskey,
No bugs, and not really weird. It’s just that there are two different verbs. (ἐν)εἰμί (intransitive, “am in”) is one, (ἐν)ἲημι (transitive, “put [something] in”) is the other. ᾗ is the 3s.subjunctive of εἰμί, while ᾖ (with rough breathing) is the 3s.aor.subj. of ἵημι.
And no, ἐνῇ cannot be a contraction for ἐνέκῃ. That really would be weird.
PS. The above was written early this morning independently of Joel, who does well to provide the immediate context (without which the thread is indeed unintelligible) but it really needs the preceding context too and his quasi-translation is too imprecise and hardly intelligible itself.
Not every post has to pick an argument with me, Michael. (Shortly to be proved by the upcoming post complaining that I rose to the bait.)
I quoted what I quoted because I thought that this section made perfect sense on its own, and that it didn’t need more. Sense impressions and the recurrence of memory becoming experience don’t seem complicated. The stuff about a “one” in the soul seems like pretty standard half-mysticism to me, after getting through Kratulos the other week. The divisions of fundamental existence in this sort of thing are one/many and rest/movement, hence the argument that we either have to have τέχνη come out of experience or the universal a priori. At least that’s what it looks like from the two or three paragraphs I’ve seen of this in the threads.
Still I can quote more if needed, if you’d like me to.
I don’t really translate. It’s not an art I’ve studied, and I admire people who can do it. I just jotted down how I was reading the above, so that someone, reading the Greek, would understand how I was taking it.
The Prior and Posterior Analytics are (or are like) lecture notes. We often need to fill in what the teacher would have been thinking and saying in class.
Aristotle likes to use men, de, de, de, . . . where we would use bullet points in a slide presentation; he implicitly carries words from the men clause into the de clauses.
The fairly conventional reading of this passage begins where Joel starts his quote, and reads three “from this (genitive) comes a that (nominative)” clauses —
(1) Ἐκ μὲν οὖν αἰσθήσεως γίνεται μνήμη . . . / From perception comes a memory.
(2) ἐκ δὲ μνήμης . . . ἐμπειρία . . . / From memory [comes] an experience.
(3) ἐκ δ’ ἐμπειρίας . . . ἀρχὴ . . . / From experience [comes] an archē.
The challenge then is to determine from the elided words what Aristotle thinks perception, memory, experience, and archē are and exactly how he thinks one “comes to be” from the other.
The common reading is that in (3), τοῦ κα|θόλου ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ (the universal in the soul) and τοῦ ἑνὸς παρὰ τὰ πολλά (the one apart from the many) are appositives of ἐμπειρίας.
But then what do we do with ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ἓν ἐνῇ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό? ὃ isn’t genitive. So grammatically it cannot be another appositive like the others are.
I hypothesize that ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ἓν ἐνῇ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό is what comes to be, that the phrase is in apposition to the ἀρχὴ, not to the ἐμπειρίας. Then, if Aristotle is saying that one thing puts what is the same into many, then many puzzles about the chapter and the book fall into place.
But then what do we do with ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ἓν ἐνῇ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό? ὃ isn’t genitive. So grammatically it cannot be another appositive like the others are.
A relative’s case is determined by its own clause, not its antecedent.
You don’t need a genitive as an object for the ἐκ followed by a relative pronoun which would be nominative in its clause?
So ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ἓν ἐνῇ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό could be either the object of the ἐκ or the nominative for what comes to be?
Yes that’s right (except it seems I mistyped the breathings—smooth if from εἰμί, rough if from ἵημι). Until Joel jumped in I was trying to help you with your problems (which are severe). Now I’m happy to leave you in his hands. Good luck.
I replied to a thread that seemed interesting. This is not tuition and nobody here is “in my hands” when it comes to Greek (God help them, if so). If nothing good comes out from a public discussion held by people of many different skill levels (including people of truly haphazard Greek like my own), then an internet bulletin board is certainly the wrong format for this sort of thing.
Joel, you replied to a thread that seemed interesting, you say, but your actual reply began “Not every post has to pick an argument with me, Michael.” Only you would have thought I was picking an argument with you. I avoid arguing with you as much as possible, for good reason.
I explain to the OP how the ἐνῇ could in itself be from either of two verbs (the OP had got the wrong one), and you complain that the board’s purpose is public discussion, “not tuition.” I’m all in favor of public discussion, but as you rightly say, we have people of many different skill levels here, and when someone asks for help I sometimes try to provide it. You do the same yourself. I refuse to be criticized for it.
This particular Aristotelian passage is notoriously thorny (perhaps you were not aware of that), and you blithely skate over its problems.
I told the OP I was happy to leave him in your hands after your intervention because I wanted to avoid dissension between us. You won’t credit it, but I value comity.
Now can we please get back to discussing issues of Greek and Latin without this perpetual sniping and point-scoring and self-justification?
The conventional reading is something like “whatever is one and the same in all those things.” I think you guys agree. I want to be sure I see exactly how it says that. Like this? —
ὃ . . . . ἂν . . . ἐν ἅπασιν ἓν. . . ἐνῇ . . . ἐκείνοις . . . τὸ αὐτό,
what . . . . . . one in all . . . . is in . . . them . . . . the same.
ὃ is nominative because it is the subject of the clause.
ἓν is “one,” not the present participle of ἵημι.
The clause is relative to what came before, so we have ἂν plus subjunctive.
ἐκείνοις is dative because of the ἐν in ἐνῇ.
Is that it? If so, . . .
What feels weird is saying “in all of them” twice, once as “ἐν ἅπασιν” and once as “ἐν- ἐκείνοις.” That leaves us with: “What is one in all of them is the same in all of them.” That just does not say anything substantive — right where Aristotle should be saying something climactic. I keep thinking ἅπασιν and ἐκείνοις must refer to different things.
Also weird is that right around here, Aristotle should be saying we need to identify the cause that accounts for superficial similarities.
I need to keep in mind that these are notes Aristotle made to remind himself what he wants to say in class. Things that look sloppy or ambiguous to us might have been enough to remind him what he wanted to say. (I have published on a case of this in Prior Analytics.)
Also, by the way, manuscripts record three versions:
ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ἓν ἐνῇ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό,
ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ᾗ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό,
ὃ ἂν ἐν ἅπασιν ἐνῇ ἐκείνοις τὸ αὐτό,
They might provide clues to how the passage was read in antiquity. I doubt they were all scribal errors.
My understanding is that ὅ is backwards looking, like a normal relative clause. οὗτοι οὐκ εἰσὶν οἱ αὐτόματοι οὓς ζητεῖτε. “…whom you seek.” So I think that you’re “what” should be a “which”. I would not think that ἐκείνοις is meant to stand for ἅπασιν, but rather something farther back in the text.
So backquoting a bit further up the page (and I apologize for Michael at responding as I did at his request for me to quote more):
To me it appears that he’s talking about creatures that have a μονή inside them of the things perceived, and other creatures do not have it (ἐνούσης δ᾿ αἰσθήσεως τοῖς μὲν τῶν ζῴων ἐγγίνεται μονὴ τοῦ αἰσθήματος, τοῖς δ᾿ οὐκ ἐγγίνεται). And following, there is another distinction between the μονή-havers, that some of them have λόγος, others not. (τοῖς μὲν γίνεσθαι λόγον ἐκ τῆς τῶν τοιούτων μονῆς, τοῖς δὲ μή)
So here, that ἐκείνοις refers back to μονή-havers among animal-kind, and I would think specifically the ones with λόγος.
Someone will have to explain to me what a μονή is though, as I didn’t backtrack further than the above. (I suspect it’s a “permanence” or record, of which a μνήμη would be a further specification, but I am guessing.)
