[lit-ideas] The titles to Aristotle's 'books'
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:40:31 EDT
M. Chase refers to the _contents_ of 'De generatione et corruptione':
"this must be true only of the Argentine edition of De Gen.
et corr. Not only was the version I'm familiar with *not* written to
"refute Plato's doctrine of the soul as immortal", but as far as
know, Plato's doctrine of the soul is not even mentioned in the work,
nor does the word "immortal" or "immortality" (*athanatos*/*athanasia*)
ever occur in it. Aristotle's conception of the immortality or otherwise of
the
soul is far from clear, but the work it's discussed in is the De anima, not
the
De gen. et corr."
----
This poses the question as to whether Aristotle's 'books' are correctly
titled, as I think they are not. It was not a practice then to title the books,
indeed to publish any, and it was all done (as the phrase goes) 'posthumously'.
What's even odder in the case of Aristotle is that he wrote in Greek, while
his 'books' have (most of them) Latin names. (No such thing in the corpus of
English literature!)
Cheers,
JL
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] The titles to Aristotle's 'books'
