A protocol, and two cases run through it, one of which returns against the claim it was built to support. The question at issue: biography, catalogue, chronology and text are counted as independent witnesses to the Peripatetic corpus and their agreement is treated as corroboration — but if a catalogue assignment, a biographical anecdote and a developmental date are all derived from the same textual features,…
At the close of the Sophistical Refutations Aristotle denies that anything of his inquiry existed before it: οὐδὲν παντελῶς ὑπῆρχεν. The paper argues that the sentence means what it says; that the closing chapter is built, joint by joint, so that it can be kept; and that the figure the standard qualification exists to protect — Socrates as a predecessor from whom something of the inquiry was received — is a…