O Aristotelovom poimanju presokratovaca
On Aristotle's Concept of Presocratics

Summary/Abstract: In this article the author gives a list of pro et contra views of philosophers and philologists on Aristotel as a reliable source of Presocratic philosophers. Without pretention to react to every remark and comment that has ever been written one by one, he points to one of the elements which lead to the dissent in question. His research is focused on different approaches to classical philosophical works. Listing the problems he encountered while reviewing the original writing, the author as one of the crucial problems points to the multiplicity of meaning in the writings of Greek thinkers that are kept up to the present. Such multiplicity is demonstrated on the sentence from Aristotles' Metaphysics (984a11-13), which is related to the two later Presocratic philosophers, Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Having examined at least three options that have been differentiated, i.e. three possible meanings of the paragraph from the 3rd chapter of the 1st book of Metaphysics, the author concludes the following: the key for understanding the sentence in question, and the Presocratic philosophy in general, is the well known Aristotles doctrine of the causes. Having in mind the Stagirites fourfold causal schematism, the most probable interpratation of the sentence from the Met.984a11-13, is the one that takes Anaxagoras as „later” (ὕστερος) than Empedocles: both literally – in age, and in figurative sense – being far advanced in philosophical ideas.

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