Original scientific paper

Frane Petrić: Philosophy Between Truth and Interpetation

Mihaela Girardi-Karšulin ; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska

Abstract

Petrić’s critique of Aristotle was meant to challenge the traditionally present dual positive valorization of Aristotle: one of them of an Averroistic type that considered Aristotle to be the peak of all truth and philosophy; and the other, a concordistic-syncretistic one, that values Aristotle’s philosophy as the true knowledge of one of the levels of being, one of the worlds.
The first critique is simpler and Petrić resolves it: by pointing at Aristotle’s predecessors and at the contradictions in his work.
The other critique is more complex, for Petrić, as a neo-Platonist, cannot dispute the philosophical legitimacy of ihe interpretation of the authorities, for that would disprove Plato’s authority too.
This is why Petrić, at the end of the Discussionum peripateticarum T. IV, conceived mainly in a historical-philological manner, and thus before a philosophical analysis and critique of Aristotle, introduces a methodological examination of what is philosophical interpretation and on which principles it should be performed. A philosophical interpretation, that is, an expoundation of a text written by an authority, is legitimate philosophy only if oriented toward the truth of the issue in question. An interpretation relying only on what is claimed by a philosophy, without a foothold in the issue itself (common to both the author and the interpreter), a purely historical-philosophical interpretation, cannot be and is not philosophy. The necessity of the orientation toward the truth of the Being of being thus makes impossible the concordistic thesis on worlds as a mere construct that approaches Aristotle’s philosophy on the basis of its own hypotheses, not from the truth of the beings that Arislotle talks about. This is, I believe, Petrić’s antithesis to concordistic claims, although one should admit that Petrić does not formulate his methodic analysis directly opposing concordistic theses. Petrić, however, does something else, he denies their existence. It is nevertheless impossible to believe that Petrić never read Pico’s De ente et uno, Reuchlin, or Steuco Eugubino.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

68550

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/68550

Publication date:

1.12.2003.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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