Dr. Liliana Carolina Sánchez Castro
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Can the choice of a particular literary genre have an impact on the doctrinal content of a philosophical piece? There is a tendency among historians of philosophy dealing with Greco-Roman antiquity to think that this may be the case. Thus, the type of philosophy of Parmenides and Empedocles was adapted to the transmission in verse; Platonic philosophy, to dialogue; certain ethical issues, to the format of the tragedy; the Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean tradition, to the commentary.
Aristotle's thought has not escaped this controversy. Although the type of transmission preferred by the Stagirite is the treatise, we have preserved fragments of a series of dialogues in which he would have dealt with some topics that were also present in his treatises. This duplicity of works has found an echo in certain news about a "double" treatment that Aristotle would have given to certain philosophical themes in order to approach these subjects in different ways appropriate to different audiences. According to a certain interpretation, this would be the case of the Eudemus dialogue in which Aristotle would have taken advantage of the dialogical format to refer to the soul from a Platonic perspective and, thus, defend its immortality.
This interpretation, which is probably the most widespread of the Eudemus dialogue, rests on the tacit acceptance that if the Eudemus was a dialogue, then it must have a Platonic content. In the present research, we will try to explore in depth the link between the form and the content of the Eudemus dialogue in order to provide an explanation for it in the Aristotelian corpus.
Contact:
Liliana Carolina Sánchez Castro
Associate Professor, Greek Philosophy
Institute of Philosophy, University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
Managing Editor of the Journal Estudios de Filosofía https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/estudios_de_filosofia