Journal of the History of Philosophy

602 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3o:4 OCTOBER 1992 conception of research and his "up to now" clause? In that case the main distinction Barnes (and other writers) have sketched between ancient and modern skepticism becomes blurred: "The Greeks took their skepticism seriously; the moderns do not" (Annas and Barnes, 7). To avoid this fatal consequence we must admit that Sextus was not aware of the conflict between the Pyrrhonist's zetes/sand his often-mentioned "up to now" warning. But this is hardly credible. A minor historical point. Concerning the mode of hypothesis, Barnes points out that Sextus explains it in three passages (PHI I73-74; M VIII 369-78; MIII 7-17) and guesses that the one in MIII is the closest to the source. Consequently he suggests that "Sextus took his attack on hypothesis from an earlier sceptical discussion of geometrical method" (loo). Timon's Against the Physicists is not mentioned, although it is explicitly quoted by Sextus a few lines before (MIII 2; see Brochard's Les Sceptiques Crees, III, 6, 3). Timon said that "one ought to raise this question first of all," that is, whether anything should be accepted from hypothesis (loc. cit.). Timon seems to be recommending the first move in a disputatory situation. Sextus apparently generalizes Timon's opinion to all the dogmatists who consider that every philosophical topic should be treated by assuming some hypothesis or other (loc. cit.). Timon's opinion is hardly comparable to the sophisticated Agrippa's mode of hypothesis and it has often been noticed that Aristotle's An. Post. A 3 is the probable source of Agrippa's form of reasoning. But Timon's is perhaps the first skeptical text on the matter and his rather hostile use of 'hypothesis' is particularly relevant as a toil against the Aristotelian way out from skeptical dilemmas. EZEQUIEL DE OLASO Universidad de San AndrOs, Argentina Ralph Mclnerny. Boethius and Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 199o. Pp. xiv + 268. Cloth, $38.95 . "The thesis of this book is simply stated: Boethius taught what Thomas said he taught and the Thomistic commentaries on Boethius are without question the best commentaries ever written on the tractates." Thus Mclnerny begins (xiv) and ends (249), and the tractates he has in mind are, of course, Boethius's De trinitate and De hebclomadibns. Thomas wrote commentaries on both, probably in about 1257-58, but he employed a different format for each. For De hebd. he wrote a line by line exposition, while for De trin. he constructed a double treatment, an exposition of the text followed by questions and articles concerning problems prompted by the text--the format adopted also for his Sentences commentary. McInerny's specific aim is to show that Thomas's doctrine of esse in these two commentaries is in accord with, although not exhausted by, Boethius's own doctrine, so that we are compelled to acknowledge an accuracy denied them even (perhaps, most of all) by Thomas's most ardent admirers. The misinterpretations, McInerny argues, have arisen in connection with the Boethian rather than the Thomistic texts, and the result has been to drive a wedge between Thomas and his predecessor. It almost does not overstate the case to say that McInerny's study reduces BOOK REVXEWS 603 tO a search for the correct interpretation of two Boethian dicta: diuersum est esse et id quod est, and omne namque esseexforma est. Since Pierre Duhem there has been a tendency among Thomists to claim that essein De hebd. meansforma, so that Boethius is understood only to have distinguished essence (esse,forma) and the concrete individual (/d quod est). The burden of this interpretation is clear: it leaves the door open for Thomas to discover the difference between existence and essence. At the same time, however, it occasions two difficulties, of which the first at least is insuperable. For replacing the occurrences of esse withf0rma in De hebd. shows that such an equation would make nonsense of Boethius's text, and McInerny rightly stresses that it will not do in any event to interpret that tractate on the basis of the opening axioms alone. They must...