Protrepticus (Ancient Greek:Προτρεπτικός) or, "Exhortation to Philosophy" (Ancient Greek:Φιλοσοφητέον) is alost philosophical work written byAristotle in the mid-4th century BCE. The work was intended to encourage the reader to studyphilosophy.[1] Although the Protrepticus was one of Aristotle's most famous works in antiquity,[2] it did not survive except in fragments and ancient reports from later authors, particularly fromIamblichus, who appears to quote large extracts from it, without attribution, alongside extracts from extant works of Plato, in the second book of his work onPythagoreanism.[3]
Like many of Aristotle's lost works, Protrepticus was likely written as aSocratic dialogue, in a similar format to the works ofPlato. There is good evidence that several of the nineteen works that stand at the head ofDiogenes' andHesychius' lists were dialogues; it may be inferred with high probability, though not with certainty, that the others were so too, but Stobaeus, pp. 59, 61 infra, and Athenaeus, p. 61 infra, confirm its genuineness. TheHistoria Augusta furthermore says that another lost work,Cicero'sHortensius, was allegedly modeled after theProtrepticus[4] and as theHortensius, like many of Cicero's extant philosophical works, was known to be written as a dialogue, theProtrepticus was probably one too.
The main aim of the work was to convince its readers that they should do philosophy. According toAlexander of Aphrodisias, the argument put forth was that if someone denied that one should do philosophy, then, because whether or not one should do philosophy is itself a philosophical concern, this proves that one should do philosophy in order to investigate the answer.[4] Alexander states that the work further investigates the nature of philosophical contemplation and argues that this is also the proper exercise of human beings.[4]
Aristotle'sprotrepticus is likely the origin of the English word Protreptics, which means, “turning or converting someone to a specific end” used in a philosophical sense,[5] a word hardly ever used except in specialized philosophical treatises.[6]
Large fragments of the Protrepticus are quoted byIamblichus in the second book of his workOn Pythagoreanism. A number of ancient reports on theProtrepticus survive in other works:[4]
Since the 19th century, when inquiry was initiated byJakob Bernays (1863), several scholars have attempted to reconstruct the work.[7] Attempted reconstructions include:
The dialogues [of Plato] not only embody the famous "oracular" and "paradoxical" statements emanating from Socrates ("virtue is knowledge", "nobody does evil knowingly", "it is better to suffer than to commit injustice") and are, to a large extent,protreptic plays based on these, but they also discuss and state, more or less explicitly, the ultimate foundations on which those statements rest and the far-reaching consequences which flow from them. )
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