{"_index":"sire","_id":"858","_score":null,"_source":{"id":858,"authors_free":[{"id":1262,"entry_id":858,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":303,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Rist, John M.","free_first_name":"John M.","free_last_name":"Rist","norm_person":{"id":303,"first_name":"John M.","last_name":"Rist","full_name":"Rist, John M.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/137060440","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The End of Aristotle's on Prayer","main_title":{"title":"The End of Aristotle's on Prayer"},"abstract":"Jean P\u00e9pin recently devoted a lengthy study to Aristotle's On Prayer. There is good reason to think that the work never existed. On Prayer is listed in Diogenes Laertius' catalogue of Aristotle's writings (5.22) and in the Vita Hesychii. The only other evidence for its existence is a passage of Simplicius that tells us that at the end of On Prayer, Aristotle says clearly that God is either mind or somehow beyond mind (\u1f22 \u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6).\r\n\r\nThe claim that God is beyond mind is unique in an unemended Aristotelian text, but the notion would be acceptable to Simplicius both because, as a Neoplatonist, he would believe it to be true, and because as a Neoplatonic commentator on Aristotle, he would be happy to find evidence of the basic philosophical harmony of Aristotle and Plato. Our problem, therefore, is to see why Simplicius thought that Aristotle held this view. The immediate answer is that he thought he had found it in a text of Aristotle's called On Prayer (or perhaps more likely in an anthology of Aristotelian material claiming that this was Aristotle's view in such a work).\r\n\r\nBut if there was no such work On Prayer, how could Simplicius (or his source) think there was, and what is the actual source of the apparent fragment that claims that for Aristotle, God might be \"beyond mind\"? It is possible to understand how Simplicius was misled.\r\n\r\nThere is a Latin work in two chapters called De Bona Fortuna. It is composed of Magna Moralia 2.8 and Eudemian Ethics 8.2. Of the 56 surviving manuscripts of De Bona Fortuna, the earliest datable version is Vat. Lat. 2083, of the year 1284. The producer of this text is unknown. De Bona Fortuna is not an excerpt from existing Latin translations of Magna Moralia and Eudemian Ethics, because although Bartholomew of Messina translated the Magna Moralia between 1258 and 1266, and although a Greek manuscript of the Eudemian Ethics may have been known in Messina before 1250, there are no medieval Latin translations of the Eudemian Ethics as a whole; indeed, the only other section of the text translated is E.E. 8.3.\r\n\r\nThe original sources of De Bona Fortuna were known to at least some of those who copied it in Latin, but the work itself is a direct translation from Greek. So, unless the translator also both excerpted and combined the two parts of the De Bona Fortuna himself, and showed no concern for the fact that the rest of the Eudemian Ethics was still untranslated, and perhaps even still unknown (which is highly unlikely), he must have used a Greek original of De Bona Fortuna in the form of a separate treatise composed of M.M. 2.8 and E.E. 8.2.\r\n\r\nThe title of the treatise, presumably, was the Greek equivalent of De Bona Fortuna, that is, \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2. We have no means of telling when it was assembled, but there is no reason why it should not be ancient and indeed have been available to Simplicius or (if Simplicius is quoting an anthology of some sort) to his source.\r\n\r\nE.E. 8.2 (1248A28) unemended, reads as follows: \u03a4\u03af \u03bf\u1f56\u03bd \u1f02\u03bd \u03ba\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c4\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03cc\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd \u03b5\u1f34\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9 \u03c4\u03b9\u03c2 \u1f22 \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2. Spengel added the words \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 after \u03b5\u1f34\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9, following the reading et intellectu found in De Bona Fortuna. Thus, the Greek original of De Bona Fortuna read: \u03a4\u03af \u03bf\u1f56\u03bd \u1f02\u03bd \u03ba\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c4\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03cc\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd \u03b5\u1f34\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bb\u03b9\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2. Thus, in \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2, God is greater than mind.\r\n\r\nAdmittedly, \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 did not say that God is \"beyond mind\" (\u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6), only that he is greater than mind. But in Platonic or Neopythagorean writings of late antiquity, these phrases are virtually interchangeable. The most striking evidence is from Plotinus, who uses \u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 dozens of times and also gives the best examples of the One being \"greater (\u03ba\u03c1\u03b5\u03af\u03c4\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd)\" than mind (5.3.14.16-18, 5.3.16.38, 5.3.17.1-3).\r\n\r\nSimplicius thought he knew about an Aristotelian text On Prayer (\u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c7\u1fc6\u03c2). Let us suppose that he had direct or indirect access to a work originally called On Good Fortune (\u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2). The corruption of \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 to \u0395\u1f50\u03c7\u1fc6\u03c2 is easy. In this text, Simplicius found the remark that God is \"greater than mind.\" There is no reason to assume that Simplicius is quoting On Good Fortune verbatim. For Simplicius, as a Neoplatonist, to say that God is \"greater than mind\" is the same as to say that he is \"beyond (\u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1) mind.\"\r\n\r\nThe use of \u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1 in this way derives, of course, from Neoplatonic, Middle Platonic, and Neopythagorean interpretations of Plato's Republic 509B.\r\n\r\nLet us therefore posit the following sequence of events. A Greek text, including (but not necessarily restricted to) M.M. 2.8 and E.E. 8.2, is compiled and originally entitled \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2. It comes to contain, at some point, an un-Aristotelian phrase (absent from the original text of the E.E. and based on a misinterpretation of that text) saying that God is \"greater than mind.\" The title of the work is at some stage corrupted: \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 becomes \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c7\u1fc6\u03c2.\r\n\r\nSimplicius either reads it under this title or, more likely, finds it so cited by an excerpter or commentator of Platonizing tendencies. Either Simplicius or the excerpter paraphrases \u03ba\u03c1\u03b5\u03af\u03c4\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 as \u1f10\u03c0\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6. Hence, our alleged fragment of Aristotle's work On Prayer, found in Simplicius, is really a corrupted fragment of \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2, a work whose origin is lost but which reaches Simplicius, or becomes known to him, through the medium of a Platonizing tradition.\r\n\r\nThe date of the original compilation \u03a0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u0395\u1f50\u03c4\u03c5\u03c7\u03af\u03b1\u03c2 remains unknown, but it must have been early enough for its title, in a mistaken form, to have found its way onto the lists of Aristotle's writings. The corruption of the title was probably achieved by a librarian's error long before the crucial phrase \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6 (absent, as we have seen, from the Eudemian Ethics) was imported into the text itself. This can hardly have occurred before the revival of Neopythagoreanism, that is, before the second century B.C. It is not impossible that it was post-Plotinian. 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