I will speak less of my person than of my aims.
Aristotle is – by a long and strong tradition – prisoner of a sort of metaphysics which he never dreamed of. This is the result of an interpretation of some of his texts not much later in the Peripatos, but mostly by the fathers and in Middle Ages. In that periode such an interpretation was a good one because it stood in connection with everyday life. But now, in the 20th and 21th century we must be aware of the incongruitiy and the ideologic distortion of this interpretation. If we read the text in Greek, not in English, German or otherwise, the fact will be obvious. Most of these translations…
I will speak less of my person than of my aims.
Aristotle is – by a long and strong tradition – prisoner of a sort of metaphysics which he never dreamed of. This is the result of an interpretation of some of his texts not much later in the Peripatos, but mostly by the fathers and in Middle Ages. In that periode such an interpretation was a good one because it stood in connection with everyday life. But now, in the 20th and 21th century we must be aware of the incongruitiy and the ideologic distortion of this interpretation. If we read the text in Greek, not in English, German or otherwise, the fact will be obvious. Most of these translations, as good as they may be, are profoundly imbued with the tradition, the mentality, the conceptions of the Middle Ages.
Seeing this, I set myself the target to deliver the prisoner. Some main points of difference to the standard interpretation are: there is no metaphysics of substance; Aristotle is aware of the fact that no knowledge can transcend the prevailing opinions of a given society (= endoxa in Greek); to go back to the fundamentals of these opinions is the main job of our philosophy. To do that, Aristotle uses a special form of concepts, which are derived from common speech with the article in his quoting function (e. g. to hou heneka (= what you think, when you say 'for the sake of...'), to ti estin (what you have in mind, when you ask the question 'What's this?') etc. etc.).
My preparations for my aim are studies in classics, a PhD and a habilitation in philosophy at the university of Zurich (Switzerland). I gave lecturers as Privatdozent at the university of Zurich from 1992 to 2007 (from 2000 on as Titularprofessor). From 1970 to 2004 I worked as teacher of classics at the Kantonsschule Zurich (Freudenberg).
