From Biology to Linguistics: The Definition of Arthron in Aristotle's Poetics

This volume is not intended as a philological or paleographical specialist contribution: it is a new attempt at reading Aristotle’s work as a whole. It consists of two chapters. The first chapter consists of three sections. First section discusses the main problems posed by the definition of arthron; second section considers the state of the text; third section examines the critical literature on that issue since the end of the nineteenth century. The second chapter is the actual pars construens of the work. It consists of five sections. The first section explores the close relationship that Aristotle holds between biology and language. Aristotle is not the father of the specialized sciences: He is rather the last great global thinker of Antiquity; in each field of knowledge, he employs the method of his biological inquiries. Second section analyzes the definition of arthron in the twentieth chapter of the Poetics and emphasizes their close similarity to its definition in the biological works. In the third section suggest my conjecture about the first example of arthron in the Poetics, according to which I read eimi instead off.m.i. In the fourth and fifth sections, I take some objections to my conjecture into account; I reject that einai may be considered ‘one verb among the others.’ Last section considers the more recent critical issues about Greek einai.