Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T18:26:51.414Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato 190. 26 ff.1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. A. Long
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool

Extract

Alexander is arguing that our responsibility for what we do () is grounded in the fact that a man is the of his own actions (cf. Aristotle, E.N. 3. 1111a21, 1112b31, etc.). The opponents of this view, he says, hold that nothing performed by a man is such that at the time when he does something he also has the possibility of not doing it, (190. 24–6). One who believes this, he argues, cannot make any moral judgements or do any of the things ‘which ought reasonably to be brought about by those who have believed the possibility also of doing each of the things which they do’. My translation has, I hope, shown the need for a negative in the last clause: ‘the possibility also of not doing’ is the point needed; so insert between and . For omission of the negative elsewhere in De fato cf. 165. 1; 179. 21; 189. 6; 195. 26; 202. 12; 207. 19; 211. 18.

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 All references are to the page and line of Ivo Bruns's edition, ‘Alexandri Aphrodisiensis Scripta minora’: Supplementum Aristotelicum ii. 2 (Berlin Academy, 1892).