Is the Categorization of Heresies 'Aristotelian'?
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Is the Categorization of Heresies 'Aristotelian'?
I know this is a stupid question but I am not an expert in very much to do with antiquity. As far as I remember all Aristotle did was just categorize things. One of philosophy professors said 'Aristotle is your grandmother.' Is it a stretch to say that Irenaeus's obsession with categorizing heresies as inherently Aristotelian?
Re: Is the Categorization of Heresies 'Aristotelian'?
I think there's something to this.
One thing that Aristotle does in his Physics and Metaphysics is look back at his predecessors in the Greek philosophical tradition (roughly 2 centuries), beginning with Thales, and evaluate them according to the standard of how well or how poorly their views accord with his own. In many cases scholars of pre-Socratic philosophy have concluded that Aristotle (like his teacher Plato) was fundamentally unreliable and inaccurate in his assessment of these figures. But his works survived and their works largely didn't. Seems like a comparable situation with the heresiologists.
One thing that Aristotle does in his Physics and Metaphysics is look back at his predecessors in the Greek philosophical tradition (roughly 2 centuries), beginning with Thales, and evaluate them according to the standard of how well or how poorly their views accord with his own. In many cases scholars of pre-Socratic philosophy have concluded that Aristotle (like his teacher Plato) was fundamentally unreliable and inaccurate in his assessment of these figures. But his works survived and their works largely didn't. Seems like a comparable situation with the heresiologists.