gamo ti sto poutso einai afto greek trainslation

#GAMO TI STO POUTSO EINAI AFTO GREEK TRAINSLATION HOW TO#

In doing so, he will proceed from what is more evident to the senses (phaneroteron) to an explanation that is more intelligible and clear as a reasoned account (kata ton logon). At the beginning of II.2, at 413a9-16, Aristotle is concerned to go beyond the the facts gathered together in the initial, general treatment of the soul in De Anima II.1 to access the core, so to speak, of what makes it what it is. Several of Aristotle’s pronouncements on the proper methodological approach to the natural sciences point in this direction, and it is perhaps as clear in De Anima II.2 as anywhere. What is lacking in this reading is that it seems to forget that the entelechy in view is equally an aspect of ousia as it is experienced in the world around us.

Such a conception would lead one to consider form as manifested in matter apart from matter, and in this sense it coincides with one of the principles of the natural world, as one of the senses of ousia (the one that coincides with entelecheia) outlined above. There is, of course, a sense in which one can consider “form” as abstracted in thought from all matter in which case it becomes literally an idea or else a celestial object in Aristotle’s cosmos. In this precise sense of form, it coincides with an understanding of form not as present in things, but as ideally separate in a way that coincides with a more Platonic sense of “form.” Needless to say, this is, as was hinted at in the opening a highly metaphysical sense of form. To take up the complementarity between the “was” and “IS” translations first, it is important to see that Owens’ “the what-IS-being” emphasizes an aspect of form that places it outside of time in a way that contrasts with “the contingency of matter and change, upon which time follows” (4). In what follows, I would like to point out that there are ways in which his view complements the one being the literal rendering offered here, but also that there are important ways in which it may lead a reader to conclusions that are unlikely to have been accurate.ġ. Nevertheless, I believe that an older tradition which translates the phrase more in terms of its literal meaning, which leaves the “was” intact also reveals a great deal about the notion of essence that should not be cast aside. Owens’ treatment is indeed useful in developing Aristotelian concepts that are latent in the language. Many translators choose to simply gloss the phrase as “essence” but Owens’ translation serves as an attempt to work through the language to uncover the thinking behind the literal meaning of the phrase.

Moreover, as might be expected in the context of his book “The doctrine of being in the Aristotelian metaphysics”, Owens builds metaphysical implications into the timelessness of the IS in the expression, saying that it points us to what “essentially, necessarily is” in a thing, apart from the “unintelligible matter…which is the principle of contingency and change” in a thing. Thus, the translation Owens recommends emerges as “the what-IS-being” (here the ‘was’ becomes a timeless ‘is’). Thus ên (“was” above) would be read as connoting an action taking place in a “timeless present” (“was” in its imperfetive sense carries the idea of an action without a start or an end). Owens argued that the “was” in the phrase should be understood not literally, but in terms of its imperfective aspect.

#GAMO TI STO POUTSO EINAI AFTO GREEK TRAINSLATION HOW TO#

One prominent suggestion for how to deal with the phrase comes from the Aristotelian scholar, Joseph Owens. The difficulty arises simply from what many have thought to be the disjointedness of the literal translation, which runs, “the what it was to be,” or as some have rendered it, “the what it was being”. A problem that has arisen for translators, interpreters, and readers is how to understand the original greek words in a way that makes sense to us today. Aristotle’s phrase, to ti ên einai, is generally understood as a formula for expressing the notion of “essence”.

Gamo ti sto poutso einai afto greek trainslation