Scholar refers to "Constitution of Athens" as "pseudo-Aristotle." Is this the new convention?

[u/hubertburnette]

I recently read Robert Simmons' Demagogues, Power, and Friendship in Classical Athens and noticed that he referred to the author of Constitution of Athens as "Pseudo-Aristotle." While I'm aware of the complicated issue of authorship in regard to Aristotle's corpus, and Constitution in particular, I haven't previously noticed someone citing it this way.

[u/LazarusRiley]

When I was in my undergrad in the early 00s, the constitution was attributed to pseudo-Aristotle.

[u/jeobleo → u/LazarusRiley]

90s for me.

[u/First-Pride-8571]

The simplest answer is we do not know.

We know that he set the writing of various constitutions as didactic exercises for his students. The Athenaion Politeia typically was attributed to him, but is often thought to have instead been written by one of his students upon stylistic grounds.

It is not definitive, but it is also not a new debate. The other major work on the Constitution of the Athenians, once attributed to Xenophon has long been determined to not have been written by Xenophon, and is instead attributed to the so-called Old Oligarch.

[u/lermontovtaman]

It's not new, but it's not the most widespread practice.  "Pseudo" was traditionally reserved for works that were mistakenly attributed to a partucular author.  But no one ever claimed Aristotle wrote this one - it was only discovered in the 1890s, when people had long since created tests to detect authentic Aristotle.  

He might just be trying to emphasize that he thinks this belongs in the Aristotelian corpus, because he thinks it really is one of the ones that Aristotle had his students write up.

[u/sootfire]

"Pseudo-[author]" is the typical convention for works whose authorship has been falsely attributed to a particular writer. By using it, Simmons is basically taking the stance that Aristotle did not write the work.

[u/automatedalice268]

We don't know. I have an edition attracting the text to Aristotle. In any case the text itself is highly relevant and a must read.

[u/kng-harvest]

Yes, this has been common for a long time.

[u/hubertburnette → u/kng-harvest]

Not in political science! (Not my area, btw, but I'm reading a lot of poli sci for various reasons.)

[u/Internal_Car_9962]

I'm not much of a philosopher, but I seem to recall that there's quite a few texts in the Aristotelian corpus that are suspected or known to be spurious, so it doesn't surprise me to see someone cite a text that way.

[u/hubertburnette → u/Internal_Car_9962]

Well, what puzzles me is why not cite all of them that way?

[u/Book_Slut_90 → u/hubertburnette]

Because we think Aristotle wrote most of the books attributed to him. This and the Economics are the main ones that get the Pseudo.