| Title | Simplicius: On Aristotle ‘On the Soul 3.1–5’ |
| Type | Monograph |
| Language | English |
| Date | 2000 |
| Publication Place | London |
| Publisher | Duckworth |
| Series | Ancient commentators on Aristotle |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Simplicius |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. (Blumenthal, Henry J.) , |
| In On the Soul 3.1-5, Aristotle goes beyond the five sense to the general functions of sense perception, the imagination and the so-called active intellect, the of which was still a matter of controversy in the time of Thomas Aquinas. In his commentary on Aristotle's text, 'Simplicius' insists that the intellect in question is not something transcendental but the human rational soul. He denies both Plotinus' view that a part of the soul has never descended from uninterrupted contemplation of the Platonic Forms, and Proclus' view that the soul cannot be changed in its substance through embodiment. He also denies that imagination sees things as true or false, which requires awareness of one's own cognitions. He thinks that imagination works by projecting imprints. In the case of mathematics, it can make the imprints more like shapes taken on during sense perception or more like concepts, which calls for lines without breadth. He acknowledges that Aristotle would not agree to reify these concepts as substances, but thinks of mathematical entities as mere abstractions. Addressing the vexed question of authorship, H. J. Blumenthal concludes that the commentary was written neither by Simplicius nor Priscian. In a novel interpretation, he suggests that if Priscian had any hand in this commentary, it might have been as editor of notes from Simplicius' lectures. [offical abstract] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/3B0pZxic5793Qw5 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"122","_score":null,"_source":{"id":122,"authors_free":[{"id":148,"entry_id":122,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":3,"role_name":"translator"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J. ","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2269,"entry_id":122,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":62,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Simplicius ","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":{"id":62,"first_name":"Cilicius","last_name":"Simplicius ","full_name":"Simplicius Cilicius","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/118642421","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2270,"entry_id":122,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J. ","free_first_name":"Henry J. ","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Simplicius: On Aristotle \u2018On the Soul 3.1\u20135\u2019","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius: On Aristotle \u2018On the Soul 3.1\u20135\u2019"},"abstract":"In On the Soul 3.1-5, Aristotle goes beyond the five sense to the general functions of sense perception, the imagination and the so-called active intellect, the of which was still a matter of controversy in the time of Thomas Aquinas.\r\nIn his commentary on Aristotle's text, 'Simplicius' insists that the intellect in question is not something transcendental but the human rational soul. He denies both Plotinus' view that a part of the soul has never descended from uninterrupted contemplation of the Platonic Forms, and Proclus' view that the soul cannot be changed in its substance through embodiment.\r\nHe also denies that imagination sees things as true or false, which requires awareness of one's own cognitions. He thinks that imagination works by projecting imprints. In the case of mathematics, it can make the imprints more like shapes taken on during sense perception or more like concepts, which calls for lines without breadth. He acknowledges that Aristotle would not agree to reify these concepts as substances, but thinks of mathematical entities as mere abstractions.\r\nAddressing the vexed question of authorship, H. J. Blumenthal concludes that the commentary was written neither by Simplicius nor Priscian. In a novel interpretation, he suggests that if Priscian had any hand in this commentary, it might have been as editor of notes from Simplicius' lectures. [offical abstract]","btype":1,"date":"2000","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/3B0pZxic5793Qw5","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":3,"role_name":"translator"}},{"id":62,"full_name":"Simplicius Cilicius","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":{"id":122,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"Ancient commentators on Aristotle","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null},"booksection":null,"article":null},"sort":[2000]}
| Title | Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity? |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1997 |
| Journal | Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale |
| Volume | 8 |
| Pages | 143–157 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| In general we have to conclude that while the whole "Philoponus” commentary may include a number of explicit references to the biological writings, and while the real Philoponus may often refer to medical and scientific issues, there is no systematic bias towards explaining the contents of the De anima in terms of them. There is, however, just as in the Ps-Simplicius commentary, enough said about such matters, and enough reference made to other parts of the biological corpus, to show that the commentators were still aware of the original intentions of the work — or, at the very least, behaved as if they were — even if they did not always feel bound by them. That awareness was to survive into the Middle Ages as well. [Conclusion, p. 157] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/IJsW8b6iPwteKXr |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"893","_score":null,"_source":{"id":893,"authors_free":[{"id":1316,"entry_id":893,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity?","main_title":{"title":"Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity?"},"abstract":"In general we have to conclude that while the whole \"Philoponus\u201d commentary may include a number of explicit references to the biological writings, and while the real Philoponus may often refer to medical and scientific issues, there is no systematic bias towards explaining the contents of the De anima in terms of them. There is, however, just as in the Ps-Simplicius commentary, enough said about such matters, and \r\nenough reference made to other parts of the biological corpus, to show that the commentators were still aware of the original intentions of the work \u2014 or, at the very least, behaved as if they were \u2014 even if they did not always feel bound by them. That awareness was to survive into the Middle Ages as well. [Conclusion, p. 157]","btype":3,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/IJsW8b6iPwteKXr","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":893,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale","volume":"8","issue":"","pages":"143\u2013157"}},"sort":[1997]}
| Title | Iamblichus as a Commentator |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1997 |
| Journal | Syllecta Classica |
| Volume | 8 |
| Pages | 1–13 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| Twenty-two years ago, when that growth in interest in Neoplatonism, which is a culmination of this conference, was only just getting underway, two large books appeared that will be familiar to all who are interested in Iamblichus. I am referring, of course, to J.M. Dillon's collection of the fragmentary remains of Iamblichus' commentaries on Plato's dialogues, supplied with an ample commentary to boot, and B. Dalsgaard Larsen's Jamblique de Chalcis: Exégète et Philosophe, of which some 240 pages are devoted to his role as an exegete; a collection of exegetical fragments appeared as a 130-page appendix. Larsen's book covered the interpretation of both Plato and Aristotle and pre-empted a second volume of Dillon's, which was to deal with Aristotle. I mention these books because we are, inter alia, taking stock, and it is remarkable that not much attention has been paid since then to Iamblichus' role as a commentator. Perhaps they have had the same effect on the study of this aspect of Iamblichus as Proclus' work had on the interpretation of Plato at Alexandria. Be that as it may, I intend to look, not very originally, at Iamblichus' activities as a commentator on philosophical works—and so I shall say nothing about the twenty-eight books or more of his lost commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles—and also to say something, in the manner of core samples, about how his expositions compare with those of the later commentators. Though the process can be traced back in part to Porphyry, I think it is safe to say that Iamblichus was the first Neoplatonist, at least of those about whom we are reasonably well informed, to set out systematically to write commentaries on the major works of both Plato and—in Iamblichus' case to a lesser extent—Aristotle too. The fact that he did both is noteworthy, since most of his successors seem to have specialized, more or less, in one or the other in their published works, if not in their lecture courses. We are, as ever in this area, faced with difficulties about deciding who wrote what, which often amounts to making difficult decisions about the implications of the usual imprecise references that are commonplace in ancient commentary. The best we have are those references which Simplicius, in his Physics commentary, gives to specific books or even chapters of Iamblichus' Timaeus and Categories commentaries (cf. In Aristotelis Physica Commentaria 639.23–24; in the second chapter of book 5 of the commentary on the Timaeus 786.11–12; in the first book of the commentary on the Categories). But that Iamblichus did write commentaries on both Plato and Aristotle can be regarded as firmly established. It is tempting to think, though there is no text which allows us to demonstrate this, that his doing so was connected with the fact that it seems to have been he who set up the thereafter traditional course in which certain works of Aristotle were read as propaedeutic to a selection of twelve—or rather ten plus two—Platonic dialogues, which culminated in the study of the Timaeus and Parmenides.[introduction p. 1-2] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/3m984P11hlUhV1x |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"895","_score":null,"_source":{"id":895,"authors_free":[{"id":1321,"entry_id":895,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Iamblichus as a Commentator","main_title":{"title":"Iamblichus as a Commentator"},"abstract":"Twenty-two years ago, when that growth in interest in Neoplatonism, which is a culmination of this conference, was only just getting underway, two large books appeared that will be familiar to all who are interested in Iamblichus. I am referring, of course, to J.M. Dillon's collection of the fragmentary remains of Iamblichus' commentaries on Plato's dialogues, supplied with an ample commentary to boot, and B. Dalsgaard Larsen's Jamblique de Chalcis: Ex\u00e9g\u00e8te et Philosophe, of which some 240 pages are devoted to his role as an exegete; a collection of exegetical fragments appeared as a 130-page appendix.\r\n\r\nLarsen's book covered the interpretation of both Plato and Aristotle and pre-empted a second volume of Dillon's, which was to deal with Aristotle. I mention these books because we are, inter alia, taking stock, and it is remarkable that not much attention has been paid since then to Iamblichus' role as a commentator. Perhaps they have had the same effect on the study of this aspect of Iamblichus as Proclus' work had on the interpretation of Plato at Alexandria.\r\n\r\nBe that as it may, I intend to look, not very originally, at Iamblichus' activities as a commentator on philosophical works\u2014and so I shall say nothing about the twenty-eight books or more of his lost commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles\u2014and also to say something, in the manner of core samples, about how his expositions compare with those of the later commentators.\r\n\r\nThough the process can be traced back in part to Porphyry, I think it is safe to say that Iamblichus was the first Neoplatonist, at least of those about whom we are reasonably well informed, to set out systematically to write commentaries on the major works of both Plato and\u2014in Iamblichus' case to a lesser extent\u2014Aristotle too.\r\n\r\nThe fact that he did both is noteworthy, since most of his successors seem to have specialized, more or less, in one or the other in their published works, if not in their lecture courses. We are, as ever in this area, faced with difficulties about deciding who wrote what, which often amounts to making difficult decisions about the implications of the usual imprecise references that are commonplace in ancient commentary.\r\n\r\nThe best we have are those references which Simplicius, in his Physics commentary, gives to specific books or even chapters of Iamblichus' Timaeus and Categories commentaries (cf. In Aristotelis Physica Commentaria 639.23\u201324; in the second chapter of book 5 of the commentary on the Timaeus 786.11\u201312; in the first book of the commentary on the Categories). But that Iamblichus did write commentaries on both Plato and Aristotle can be regarded as firmly established.\r\n\r\nIt is tempting to think, though there is no text which allows us to demonstrate this, that his doing so was connected with the fact that it seems to have been he who set up the thereafter traditional course in which certain works of Aristotle were read as propaedeutic to a selection of twelve\u2014or rather ten plus two\u2014Platonic dialogues, which culminated in the study of the Timaeus and Parmenides.[introduction p. 1-2]","btype":3,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/3m984P11hlUhV1x","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":895,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Syllecta \tClassica","volume":"8","issue":"","pages":"1\u201313"}},"sort":[1997]}
| Title | Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5 |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1997 |
| Published in | Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. Essays Presented to John Whittaker |
| Pages | 213-228 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Joyal, Mark |
| Translator(s) |
| As often, the title of this paper needs a word of explanation, since some readers, though not our dedicatee, might wonder who the author I call Ps-Simplicius might be. Those whose interests lie in Aristotle rather than his Neoplatonic commentators may not all be aware that there is a serious problem about the authorship of the De Anima commentary, which they know as the work of Simplicius. This is not the place to discuss this problem, which I and others have discussed elsewhere,¹ but the fact, as I think one must now take it to be, that our author is not the real Simplicius has an important implication for any study on the text of this work. That is, the substantial corpus of work by Simplicius himself cannot be used to corroborate—or undermine—readings in our work, and one cannot appeal to it for support for a conjecture. This is all the more so since one of the stronger arguments for denying authorship to the real Simplicius is that the language of the De Anima commentary is so different from his as to put it beyond the bounds of possibility that we are dealing with two different kinds of writing from one and the same hand.*² If, as some think, the author was Priscian of Lydia, author of the Metaphrasis in Theophrastum, we could occasionally appeal to that work, though it is short—a mere thirty-seven pages of Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.³ But I think there are difficulties about that identification which are sufficient to require at least a degree of caution, and that all one can safely say is that this commentary comes from the same intellectual area as the works of Simplicius, Priscian, and Damascius, all Neoplatonists who worked in Athens at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth. Hence the label Ps-Simplicius—a counsel of prudence, if not quite despair: not quite, because a solution is possible in principle, though I suspect that we may never arrive at it. [introduction p. 213-214] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/SafBRE6SrgivoG5 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1469","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1469,"authors_free":[{"id":2543,"entry_id":1469,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2544,"entry_id":1469,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":540,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Joyal, Mark","free_first_name":"Mark","free_last_name":"Joyal","norm_person":{"id":540,"first_name":"Mark","last_name":"Joyal","full_name":"Joyal, Mark","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1162514582","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5","main_title":{"title":"Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5"},"abstract":"As often, the title of this paper needs a word of explanation, since some readers, though not our dedicatee, might wonder who the author I call Ps-Simplicius might be. Those whose interests lie in Aristotle rather than his Neoplatonic commentators may not all be aware that there is a serious problem about the authorship of the De Anima commentary, which they know as the work of Simplicius.\r\n\r\nThis is not the place to discuss this problem, which I and others have discussed elsewhere,\u00b9 but the fact, as I think one must now take it to be, that our author is not the real Simplicius has an important implication for any study on the text of this work. That is, the substantial corpus of work by Simplicius himself cannot be used to corroborate\u2014or undermine\u2014readings in our work, and one cannot appeal to it for support for a conjecture. This is all the more so since one of the stronger arguments for denying authorship to the real Simplicius is that the language of the De Anima commentary is so different from his as to put it beyond the bounds of possibility that we are dealing with two different kinds of writing from one and the same hand.*\u00b2\r\n\r\nIf, as some think, the author was Priscian of Lydia, author of the Metaphrasis in Theophrastum, we could occasionally appeal to that work, though it is short\u2014a mere thirty-seven pages of Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.\u00b3 But I think there are difficulties about that identification which are sufficient to require at least a degree of caution, and that all one can safely say is that this commentary comes from the same intellectual area as the works of Simplicius, Priscian, and Damascius, all Neoplatonists who worked in Athens at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth.\r\n\r\nHence the label Ps-Simplicius\u2014a counsel of prudence, if not quite despair: not quite, because a solution is possible in principle, though I suspect that we may never arrive at it.\r\n[introduction p. 213-214]","btype":2,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/SafBRE6SrgivoG5","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":540,"full_name":"Joyal, Mark","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1469,"section_of":1470,"pages":"213-228","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1470,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. 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The collection as a whole testifies to the importance of the Platonic writings for the history of ideas, and to the vitality that the study of these writings continues to possess.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/JhijSNjBEJlYa2C","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1470,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Routledge (2017)","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1997]}
| Title | The writings of the De anima commentators |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Published in | Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the "De Anima" |
| Pages | 53-71 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
| So far we have discussed the work of our commentators as if it was simply scholarship and philosophical exposition, whether of their own philosophy or that of Aristotle which most of them held to be fundamen tally the same. There is, however, another aspect of the commentaries which, while not prominent, should not be forgotten. That is the way in which doing such work was an integral part of a life aimed at the greatest possible degree of return to that higher reality from which the commenta tors saw human life as a decline and separation. It is becoming increasingly better understood that for the great majority of Greek philo sophers, philosophy was not only a way of thinking but a way of life.70 The late Neoplatonists seem to have gone even further, and regarded the production of commentaries as a kind of service to the divine, much as a Christian monk who engaged in scholarship would have seen it in that light So we find at the end of Simplicius’ commentary on the De caelo what can only be described as a prayer: ‘Oh lord and artificer of the universe and the simple bodies in it, to you and all that has been brought into being by you I offer this work as a hymn, being eager to see as a revelation the magnitude of your works and to proclaim it to those who are worthy, so that thinking no mean or mortal thoughts about you we may make obeisance to you in accordance with the high place you occupy in respect of all that is produced by you’ (731.25-9). Those who think that ancient philosophy ceased to be of interest some three and a half centuries before these words were written and who may from time to time consult Sim plicius for an opinion on the meaning of an Aristotelian text, are unlikely ever to see these words, or those that come at the end of the commentary on the Enckeiridion (138.22-3). Without them they cannot fully under stand the nature of works beyond whose surface they never penetrate, works whose very composition could be seen as an act of reverence to the gods of paganism. [Conclusion, p. 71] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/OwPB7ahnasyI8P2 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"927","_score":null,"_source":{"id":927,"authors_free":[{"id":1371,"entry_id":927,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2527,"entry_id":927,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The writings of the De anima commentators","main_title":{"title":"The writings of the De anima commentators"},"abstract":"So far we have discussed the work of our commentators as if it was \r\nsimply scholarship and philosophical exposition, whether of their own \r\nphilosophy or that of Aristotle which most of them held to be fundamen\u00ad\r\ntally the same. There is, however, another aspect of the commentaries \r\nwhich, while not prominent, should not be forgotten. That is the way in \r\nwhich doing such work was an integral part of a life aimed at the greatest \r\npossible degree of return to that higher reality from which the commenta\u00ad\r\ntors saw human life as a decline and separation. It is becoming \r\nincreasingly better understood that for the great majority of Greek philo\u00ad\r\nsophers, philosophy was not only a way of thinking but a way of life.70 The \r\nlate Neoplatonists seem to have gone even further, and regarded the \r\nproduction of commentaries as a kind of service to the divine, much as a \r\nChristian monk who engaged in scholarship would have seen it in that \r\nlight So we find at the end of Simplicius\u2019 commentary on the De caelo what \r\ncan only be described as a prayer: \u2018Oh lord and artificer of the universe \r\nand the simple bodies in it, to you and all that has been brought into being \r\nby you I offer this work as a hymn, being eager to see as a revelation the \r\nmagnitude of your works and to proclaim it to those who are worthy, so \r\nthat thinking no mean or mortal thoughts about you we may make \r\nobeisance to you in accordance with the high place you occupy in respect \r\nof all that is produced by you\u2019 (731.25-9). Those who think that ancient \r\nphilosophy ceased to be of interest some three and a half centuries before \r\nthese words were written and who may from time to time consult Sim\u00ad\r\nplicius for an opinion on the meaning of an Aristotelian text, are unlikely \r\never to see these words, or those that come at the end of the commentary \r\non the Enckeiridion (138.22-3). Without them they cannot fully under\u00ad\r\nstand the nature of works beyond whose surface they never penetrate, \r\nworks whose very composition could be seen as an act of reverence to the \r\ngods of paganism. [Conclusion, p. 71]","btype":2,"date":"1996","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/OwPB7ahnasyI8P2","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":927,"section_of":213,"pages":"53-71","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":213,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":1,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the \"De Anima\"","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal1996a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1996","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1996","abstract":"Steven Strange: Emory University Scholars have traditionally used the Aristotelian commentators as sources for lost philosophical works and occasionally also as aids to understanding Aristotle. In H. J. Blumenthal's view, however, the commentators often assumed that there was a Platonist philosophy to which not only they but Aristotle himself subscribed. Their expository writing usually expressed their versions of Neoplatonist philosophy. Blumenthal here places the commentators in their intellectual and historical contexts, identifies their philosophical views, and demonstrates their tendency to read Aristotle as if he were a member of their philosophical circle.This book focuses on the commentators' exposition of Aristotle's treatise De anima (On the Soul), because it is relatively well documented and because the concept of soul was so important in all Neoplatonic systems. Blumenthal explains how the Neoplatonizing of Aristotle's thought, as well as the widespread use of the commentators' works, influenced the understanding of Aristotle in both the Islamic and Judaeo-Christian traditions.H. J. Blumenthal is the author or coeditor of six previous books and is currently preparing a two-volume translation, with introduction and commentary, of Simplicius' Commentary on \"De anima\" for publication in Cornell's series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/VOUUZIIp0rHNG0V","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":213,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1996]}
| Title | Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the "De Anima" |
| Type | Monograph |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Publication Place | London |
| Publisher | Duckworth |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| Steven Strange: Emory University Scholars have traditionally used the Aristotelian commentators as sources for lost philosophical works and occasionally also as aids to understanding Aristotle. In H. J. Blumenthal's view, however, the commentators often assumed that there was a Platonist philosophy to which not only they but Aristotle himself subscribed. Their expository writing usually expressed their versions of Neoplatonist philosophy. Blumenthal here places the commentators in their intellectual and historical contexts, identifies their philosophical views, and demonstrates their tendency to read Aristotle as if he were a member of their philosophical circle.This book focuses on the commentators' exposition of Aristotle's treatise De anima (On the Soul), because it is relatively well documented and because the concept of soul was so important in all Neoplatonic systems. Blumenthal explains how the Neoplatonizing of Aristotle's thought, as well as the widespread use of the commentators' works, influenced the understanding of Aristotle in both the Islamic and Judaeo-Christian traditions.H. J. Blumenthal is the author or coeditor of six previous books and is currently preparing a two-volume translation, with introduction and commentary, of Simplicius' Commentary on "De anima" for publication in Cornell's series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/VOUUZIIp0rHNG0V |
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| Title | The commentators: their identity and their background |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Published in | Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the "De Anima" |
| Pages | 35-51 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
| While in the previous chapter we have been looking at the overall similarity of the commentators’ methods and assumptions, it is now time to try to say something about them as individuals and the work they produced. This is not an easy task. We may have lives of the most important philosophers, Plotinus and Proclus, and even of an apparent nonentity like Isidore, but for those who wrote commentaries on Aristotle, we can often do little more than establish places of activity and approximate dates. The information most consistently available is the most useless—an indication, sometimes no more than a manuscript tradition with all the doubts attaching to that, of the town or area a man came from or was known by: “Proclus the Lycian,” “Simplicius the Cilician,” “Priscian the Lydian.” Those who operated in Alexandria are usually labeled “Alexandrian,” too consistently for the label to be anything more than an indication that that was where they worked or spent an important part of their careers. Thus, all we know, in most cases, is where some of the writers we are concerned with began their lives, and then only to the extent of knowing what part of the world it was in. Nevertheless, some information on the commentators is provided by sources that tell us about them incidentally to their main aim. Damascius’ reconstructed Life of Isidore is one such source: it deals in passing with those who were either personally or historically connected with the subject of the work. Much of the information about the relation between those who worked at Athens and Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries is derived from that source. In particular, most of the evidence about who studied with whom and where is to be found there. Unfortunately, by far the larger of two collections of excerpts in Photius (codd. 181 and 242), by whom most of the surviving contents have been preserved, comes from a particularly scrappy part of his work, so that we often do not know which snippets should be taken together, a point that affects, among other things, an important question about Ammonius. Two works that do survive and give us some further help are Zacharias’ Life of Severus, from which, though it concentrates on Christians, we can learn something about conditions in the schools of Alexandria as well as about their students and teachers, and the same writer’s dialogue Ammonius, which provides rather less than its title might lead one to hope, being concerned primarily with matters in dispute between pagans and Christians, such as the eternity of the world and the creative activity of God. It tells us very little about Ammonius but does raise a question of some importance about his beliefs, with which we must deal below. At an earlier period, Marinus’ Life of Proclus, a document often distorted by the desire to fit biographical facts to philosophical notions, gives us some information about others who worked at Athens and are part of the story of Aristotelian commentary—namely, Plutarch and Syrianus, who, Marinus tells us, were respectively master and pupil, as well as both being teachers of Proclus. In addition, he mentions persons about whom he gives us little or no other information, such as Plutarch’s grandson Archiadas and Proclus’ contemporary Domninus. Unfortunately, the Life does not proceed in chronological order because its structure depends on a framework of the Neoplatonic scale of virtues and Proclus’ ascent to its summit. In addition to what these sources provide, we have pieces of more or less incidental information from elsewhere, some of it not unimportant. Such are the dates infrequently given en passant in the commentaries and the occasional references to philosophy in both contemporary and later historians. Some of these references are notoriously difficult to interpret or even simply unreliable. In this category are the details of the exile of 529 and the possible return from it. In addition, there are entries in or from the lexica and other compilations so popular in late Classical antiquity and early Byzantine culture; some of these overlap both with each other and with the material found in Photius. There are some figures in the tradition of Aristotelian commentary about whom we know almost nothing. Such are Asclepius, the editor of Ammonius’ Metaphysics course, at least for Books A-Z, Olympiodorus in the next generation, and his presumed pupil Elias. His—probably—contemporary David is well known in the Armenian tradition but not in the Greek. The last three, as it happens, are all later than the last surviving Life of a philosopher. One of the perversities of the distribution of information is that we are often better informed about those whose work has been lost but was clearly important in the tradition, like Plutarch, and even those whose work has been lost and may not have been important in the interpretation of either the Platonic or the Aristotelian writings in any case, like Isidore, than about the authors of considerable parts of our corpus of texts, like Ammonius and Simplicius. Let us now go back to the beginning and look at what we do know about those who contributed to the exposition of the De Anima, leaving aside Plotinus, whose contribution was the more general one of integrating Aristotelian psychology into Neoplatonic philosophy and about whose life we are reasonably well, if somewhat sporadically, informed. We can say that Iamblichus, the initiator of the organization of the Neoplatonists’ Aristotle and Plato course, and perhaps their Aristotle course as well, probably did not write a De Anima commentary, a matter we shall return to shortly, but Ps-Simplicius claims to follow the guidance he offered in his own treatise on the soul. Since, however, most of that has been lost, and Ps-Simplicius’ De Anima commentary notoriously fails to provide the extensive documentation and specific attributions found in the other Simplicius commentaries, we can assess neither the real extent nor the specific details of Iamblichus’ influence. That situation contrasts with what obtains in the case of their Categories commentaries: while in this case Iamblichus’ commentary is lost, Simplicius refers to it constantly by name. It is worth mentioning that Proclus does the same in his Timaeus commentary, showing that Iamblichus’ lead was followed by at least some—perhaps avoiding at this stage adding "Athenians"—at both ends of the combined Aristotle and Plato course. Nevertheless, the combination of Ps-Simplicius’ expression of intent in the De Anima commentary and what actually happens in other commentaries suggests that Iamblichus’ influence on the exposition of the De Anima will not have been negligible. Its extent may or may not have been greater because of his place early in the story: though his exact dates cannot be established, they fall in the second half of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, making it possible that he was actually a pupil of Porphyry, as later writers assert—an assertion that must, however, be treated with some care because of the notorious habit of ancient biographers and doxographers of arranging philosophers in chains of master-pupil relations, a habit that affects the whole history of Greek philosophy from Thales to the end. After Iamblichus, there is a gap in the history of Platonism and also of Aristotelian exposition. The latter is, however, partly filled by the anomalous figure of Themistius, partly because of the very anomaly that consists in his being a Peripatetic and standing outside the mainstream of philosophical development, which was by now almost entirely Platonist. Themistius differs from the other commentators in another respect too. Most of them were, as far as we know, the equivalent of professional philosophers today, producing philosophical research while earning their living by teaching, subsidized perhaps, in the case of those Neoplatonists working at Athens, by the Academy’s funds, from whatever source these came. Themistius, on the other hand, was a diplomat and politician whose interest in Aristotle might be thought of as loosely analogous to Gladstone’s in Homer. The commentaries were written early in his life, and there is no evidence that he ever returned to actual study of Aristotle, nor that he ever taught philosophy. Nor is there any evidence that will withstand scrutiny that he ever wrote on Plato, great as his admiration for him was. [introduction p. 35-38] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/GBYzMZ4X3Nt0hsI |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1449","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1449,"authors_free":[{"id":2431,"entry_id":1449,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2444,"entry_id":1449,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The commentators: their identity and their background","main_title":{"title":"The commentators: their identity and their background"},"abstract":"While in the previous chapter we have been looking at the overall similarity of the commentators\u2019 methods and assumptions, it is now time to try to say something about them as individuals and the work they produced. This is not an easy task. We may have lives of the most important philosophers, Plotinus and Proclus, and even of an apparent nonentity like Isidore, but for those who wrote commentaries on Aristotle, we can often do little more than establish places of activity and approximate dates.\r\n\r\nThe information most consistently available is the most useless\u2014an indication, sometimes no more than a manuscript tradition with all the doubts attaching to that, of the town or area a man came from or was known by: \u201cProclus the Lycian,\u201d \u201cSimplicius the Cilician,\u201d \u201cPriscian the Lydian.\u201d Those who operated in Alexandria are usually labeled \u201cAlexandrian,\u201d too consistently for the label to be anything more than an indication that that was where they worked or spent an important part of their careers. Thus, all we know, in most cases, is where some of the writers we are concerned with began their lives, and then only to the extent of knowing what part of the world it was in.\r\n\r\nNevertheless, some information on the commentators is provided by sources that tell us about them incidentally to their main aim. Damascius\u2019 reconstructed Life of Isidore is one such source: it deals in passing with those who were either personally or historically connected with the subject of the work. Much of the information about the relation between those who worked at Athens and Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries is derived from that source. In particular, most of the evidence about who studied with whom and where is to be found there.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, by far the larger of two collections of excerpts in Photius (codd. 181 and 242), by whom most of the surviving contents have been preserved, comes from a particularly scrappy part of his work, so that we often do not know which snippets should be taken together, a point that affects, among other things, an important question about Ammonius.\r\n\r\nTwo works that do survive and give us some further help are Zacharias\u2019 Life of Severus, from which, though it concentrates on Christians, we can learn something about conditions in the schools of Alexandria as well as about their students and teachers, and the same writer\u2019s dialogue Ammonius, which provides rather less than its title might lead one to hope, being concerned primarily with matters in dispute between pagans and Christians, such as the eternity of the world and the creative activity of God. It tells us very little about Ammonius but does raise a question of some importance about his beliefs, with which we must deal below.\r\n\r\nAt an earlier period, Marinus\u2019 Life of Proclus, a document often distorted by the desire to fit biographical facts to philosophical notions, gives us some information about others who worked at Athens and are part of the story of Aristotelian commentary\u2014namely, Plutarch and Syrianus, who, Marinus tells us, were respectively master and pupil, as well as both being teachers of Proclus. In addition, he mentions persons about whom he gives us little or no other information, such as Plutarch\u2019s grandson Archiadas and Proclus\u2019 contemporary Domninus. Unfortunately, the Life does not proceed in chronological order because its structure depends on a framework of the Neoplatonic scale of virtues and Proclus\u2019 ascent to its summit.\r\n\r\nIn addition to what these sources provide, we have pieces of more or less incidental information from elsewhere, some of it not unimportant. Such are the dates infrequently given en passant in the commentaries and the occasional references to philosophy in both contemporary and later historians. Some of these references are notoriously difficult to interpret or even simply unreliable. In this category are the details of the exile of 529 and the possible return from it. In addition, there are entries in or from the lexica and other compilations so popular in late Classical antiquity and early Byzantine culture; some of these overlap both with each other and with the material found in Photius.\r\n\r\nThere are some figures in the tradition of Aristotelian commentary about whom we know almost nothing. Such are Asclepius, the editor of Ammonius\u2019 Metaphysics course, at least for Books A-Z, Olympiodorus in the next generation, and his presumed pupil Elias. His\u2014probably\u2014contemporary David is well known in the Armenian tradition but not in the Greek. The last three, as it happens, are all later than the last surviving Life of a philosopher.\r\n\r\nOne of the perversities of the distribution of information is that we are often better informed about those whose work has been lost but was clearly important in the tradition, like Plutarch, and even those whose work has been lost and may not have been important in the interpretation of either the Platonic or the Aristotelian writings in any case, like Isidore, than about the authors of considerable parts of our corpus of texts, like Ammonius and Simplicius.\r\n\r\nLet us now go back to the beginning and look at what we do know about those who contributed to the exposition of the De Anima, leaving aside Plotinus, whose contribution was the more general one of integrating Aristotelian psychology into Neoplatonic philosophy and about whose life we are reasonably well, if somewhat sporadically, informed.\r\n\r\nWe can say that Iamblichus, the initiator of the organization of the Neoplatonists\u2019 Aristotle and Plato course, and perhaps their Aristotle course as well, probably did not write a De Anima commentary, a matter we shall return to shortly, but Ps-Simplicius claims to follow the guidance he offered in his own treatise on the soul.\r\n\r\nSince, however, most of that has been lost, and Ps-Simplicius\u2019 De Anima commentary notoriously fails to provide the extensive documentation and specific attributions found in the other Simplicius commentaries, we can assess neither the real extent nor the specific details of Iamblichus\u2019 influence. That situation contrasts with what obtains in the case of their Categories commentaries: while in this case Iamblichus\u2019 commentary is lost, Simplicius refers to it constantly by name.\r\n\r\nIt is worth mentioning that Proclus does the same in his Timaeus commentary, showing that Iamblichus\u2019 lead was followed by at least some\u2014perhaps avoiding at this stage adding \"Athenians\"\u2014at both ends of the combined Aristotle and Plato course. Nevertheless, the combination of Ps-Simplicius\u2019 expression of intent in the De Anima commentary and what actually happens in other commentaries suggests that Iamblichus\u2019 influence on the exposition of the De Anima will not have been negligible.\r\n\r\nIts extent may or may not have been greater because of his place early in the story: though his exact dates cannot be established, they fall in the second half of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, making it possible that he was actually a pupil of Porphyry, as later writers assert\u2014an assertion that must, however, be treated with some care because of the notorious habit of ancient biographers and doxographers of arranging philosophers in chains of master-pupil relations, a habit that affects the whole history of Greek philosophy from Thales to the end.\r\n\r\nAfter Iamblichus, there is a gap in the history of Platonism and also of Aristotelian exposition. The latter is, however, partly filled by the anomalous figure of Themistius, partly because of the very anomaly that consists in his being a Peripatetic and standing outside the mainstream of philosophical development, which was by now almost entirely Platonist.\r\n\r\nThemistius differs from the other commentators in another respect too. Most of them were, as far as we know, the equivalent of professional philosophers today, producing philosophical research while earning their living by teaching, subsidized perhaps, in the case of those Neoplatonists working at Athens, by the Academy\u2019s funds, from whatever source these came.\r\n\r\nThemistius, on the other hand, was a diplomat and politician whose interest in Aristotle might be thought of as loosely analogous to Gladstone\u2019s in Homer. The commentaries were written early in his life, and there is no evidence that he ever returned to actual study of Aristotle, nor that he ever taught philosophy. Nor is there any evidence that will withstand scrutiny that he ever wrote on Plato, great as his admiration for him was. 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Blumenthal is the author or coeditor of six previous books and is currently preparing a two-volume translation, with introduction and commentary, of Simplicius' Commentary on \"De anima\" for publication in Cornell's series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/VOUUZIIp0rHNG0V","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":213,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1996]}
| Title | Dunamis in "Simplicius" |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Published in | Dunamis nel Neoplatonismo: atti del II Colloquio internazionale del Centro di Ricerca sul Neoplatonismo, Università degli studi di Catania, 6-8 ottobre 1994 |
| Pages | 149-172 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Cardullo, R. Loredana , Romano, Francesco |
| Translator(s) |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/abLTBIirPsa77f4 |
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| Title | Platonism in late antiquity |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Published in | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Pages | 1-27 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
| The Platonism of late antiquity is, of course, what we now call Neoplatonism. That term is a modern one. ‘Neoplatonist’ and ‘Neoplatonic’ first appeared in English and French in the 1830s. All the philosophers whose work comes under this heading thought of themselves simply as Platonists, and the doctrine they were expounding as the Platonic philosophy. For Plotinus, the man normally thought of as the founder of this type of philosophy, all that he might have to say had been said before, though it might not have been set out explicitly, and could be found in the text of Plato (cf. V 1.8.10-14). For Proclus in the 5th century, after two hundred years of this kind of thinking, the same view of what he was doing still stood, as it did for Simplicius and Damascius into the 6th. Thus, Proclus, in the preface to his Platonic Theology, could write of his whole enterprise, and that of his Neoplatonic predecessors, as the understanding and exposition of the truths in Plato. Given our modern views of Plato and Aristotle, as working philosophers whose views developed and whose answers to questions were not always the same, it is important to realize that their ancient interpreters looked at them as creators of fixed systems: though they might recognize that they did not always say the same things about the same questions, they saw such apparent inconsistencies as problems about the relation of disparate statements to an assumed single doctrine rather than about how one different doctrine might relate to another. Before going on, I should perhaps offer some explanations and an apology. The apology is to those who know a great deal, or even a little, about Neoplatonism to whom some of what I shall say is basic common knowledge. The explanations are two. First, that I am taking late antiquity to start in the 3rd century A.D., following an old Cambridge custom of taking ancient Greek philosophy to have ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius. The second is to say what I am going to do here. It relates to the first. When this view of the limits of classical antiquity still held, the study of Neoplatonism was regarded as rather disreputable, in the English-speaking world at least, and the few apparent exceptions—Elements of Theology, still one of the great achievements of Neoplatonic scholarship, and the first modern commentary on a Neoplatonic work—was seen not so much as evidence that there was here a rich field for new scholarly endeavor as an indication of that scholar’s eccentricity. The common attitude found its expression in the preface to the first volume of W.K.C. Guthrie’s History of Greek Philosophy, where he relegated Neoplatonism to the realms of the unphilosophical and the un-Greek: "With Plotinus and his followers, as well as with their Christian contemporaries, there does seem to enter a new religious spirit which is not fundamentally Greek..." That was in 1962. What I want to do is to look at some of the characteristics of Neoplatonism and to see how the picture of this philosophy, or rather group of philosophies, has changed during the last three decades. I think most would now agree it is basically Greek. As to the importance of the religious and soteriological elements in it, which for many of its adherents was rather small in any case, that is arguable, and its significance depends on the extent to which one regards other forms of ancient philosophy as enquiries into how one should live the best life either in relation to one’s own society or to the gods which that society recognized. What is important is that most of the Neoplatonic writings we have are clearly philosophical rather than religious or otherwise concerned with the supernatural. I shall therefore take it for granted that we are talking about philosophy, and not any of the other things with which Neoplatonism has sometimes been associated, and which may undoubtedly be found in some of its products. [introduction p. 1-2] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/A5Y90b8NYMkY9Vs |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1126","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1126,"authors_free":[{"id":1701,"entry_id":1126,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2440,"entry_id":1126,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Platonism in late antiquity","main_title":{"title":"Platonism in late antiquity"},"abstract":"The Platonism of late antiquity is, of course, what we now call Neoplatonism. That term is a modern one. \u2018Neoplatonist\u2019 and \u2018Neoplatonic\u2019 first appeared in English and French in the 1830s. All the philosophers whose work comes under this heading thought of themselves simply as Platonists, and the doctrine they were expounding as the Platonic philosophy. For Plotinus, the man normally thought of as the founder of this type of philosophy, all that he might have to say had been said before, though it might not have been set out explicitly, and could be found in the text of Plato (cf. V 1.8.10-14). For Proclus in the 5th century, after two hundred years of this kind of thinking, the same view of what he was doing still stood, as it did for Simplicius and Damascius into the 6th. Thus, Proclus, in the preface to his Platonic Theology, could write of his whole enterprise, and that of his Neoplatonic predecessors, as the understanding and exposition of the truths in Plato.\r\n\r\nGiven our modern views of Plato and Aristotle, as working philosophers whose views developed and whose answers to questions were not always the same, it is important to realize that their ancient interpreters looked at them as creators of fixed systems: though they might recognize that they did not always say the same things about the same questions, they saw such apparent inconsistencies as problems about the relation of disparate statements to an assumed single doctrine rather than about how one different doctrine might relate to another.\r\n\r\nBefore going on, I should perhaps offer some explanations and an apology. The apology is to those who know a great deal, or even a little, about Neoplatonism to whom some of what I shall say is basic common knowledge. The explanations are two.\r\n\r\nFirst, that I am taking late antiquity to start in the 3rd century A.D., following an old Cambridge custom of taking ancient Greek philosophy to have ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius. The second is to say what I am going to do here. It relates to the first. When this view of the limits of classical antiquity still held, the study of Neoplatonism was regarded as rather disreputable, in the English-speaking world at least, and the few apparent exceptions\u2014Elements of Theology, still one of the great achievements of Neoplatonic scholarship, and the first modern commentary on a Neoplatonic work\u2014was seen not so much as evidence that there was here a rich field for new scholarly endeavor as an indication of that scholar\u2019s eccentricity. The common attitude found its expression in the preface to the first volume of W.K.C. Guthrie\u2019s History of Greek Philosophy, where he relegated Neoplatonism to the realms of the unphilosophical and the un-Greek:\r\n\r\n\"With Plotinus and his followers, as well as with their Christian contemporaries, there does seem to enter a new religious spirit which is not fundamentally Greek...\"\r\n\r\nThat was in 1962.\r\n\r\nWhat I want to do is to look at some of the characteristics of Neoplatonism and to see how the picture of this philosophy, or rather group of philosophies, has changed during the last three decades. I think most would now agree it is basically Greek. As to the importance of the religious and soteriological elements in it, which for many of its adherents was rather small in any case, that is arguable, and its significance depends on the extent to which one regards other forms of ancient philosophy as enquiries into how one should live the best life either in relation to one\u2019s own society or to the gods which that society recognized. What is important is that most of the Neoplatonic writings we have are clearly philosophical rather than religious or otherwise concerned with the supernatural. I shall therefore take it for granted that we are talking about philosophy, and not any of the other things with which Neoplatonism has sometimes been associated, and which may undoubtedly be found in some of its products.\r\n[introduction p. 1-2]","btype":2,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/A5Y90b8NYMkY9Vs","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1126,"section_of":214,"pages":"1-27","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":214,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":1,"language":"en","title":"Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal1993c","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1993","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1993","abstract":"This book presents a series of Dr. Blumenthal\u2019s studies on the history of Neoplatonism, from its founder Plotinus to the end of Classical Antiquity, relating especially to the Neoplatonists\u2019 doctrines about the soul. The work falls into two parts. The first deals with Plotinus and considers the soul both as part of the structure of the universe and in its capacity as the basis of the individual\u2019s vital and cognitive functions. The second part is concerned with the later history of Neoplatonism, including its end. Its main focus is the investigation of how Neoplatonic psychology was modified and developed by later philosophers, in particular the commentators on Aristotle, and used as the starting point for their Platonizing interpretations of his philosophy.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/Hj2vOznXoMqSzco","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":214,"pubplace":"Aldershot (Hampshire)","publisher":"Variorum","series":"Variorum collected studies series","volume":"426","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1993]}
| Title | Simplicius(?) on the first book of Aristotle’s De Anima |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Published in | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Pages | 91-112 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
| Neoplatonic exposition of classical Greek philosophy includes two kinds of reinterpretation. The first and most basic is, of course, the reading of Plato himself as a Neoplatonist. This is, it goes without saying, to be found primarily in all the independent works of Neopla tonism, as well as in commentaries on works of Plato. The other, with which readers of the Aristotelian commentators are more often concerned, is the Platonization of Aristotle. The latter is crucial to our understanding of any Neoplatonist commentator, both in himself and also as an authority on Aristotle. And since we are dealing with a text at least superficially based on Aristotle, I shall devote most of this paper to some of the somewhat strange interpretations of him to be found in Book 1 of the De anima commentary. At the same time this particular book also offers an opportunity, which the commentary on what will have seemed to him the more obviously philosophically in teresting parts of the De anima does not1, to see how Simplicius works in the area of Plato interpretation, and we shall look at the way in which Plato and Aristotle are both subjected to similar tech niques of interpretation. [p. 91] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/b0MGk7ACSQL6CCE |
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| Title | Soul Vehicles in Simplicius |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Published in | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Pages | 173-188 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
| There has been a not inconsiderable amount of discussion of the nature and function of the ochêma—or ochêmata—the body or bodies made of not quite bodily substance, which served as an intermediary between body and soul in various Neoplatonisms from Porphyry, or even arguably Plotinus, down to and including Proclus. Rather less attention, and in Simplicius’ case virtually none, has been paid to the nature and role of such intermediary vehicles in the Neoplatonist commentators on Aristotle. The purpose of the following pages will be to examine the use of the concept in Simplicius. In particular, it will seek to establish: How many such vehicles there were. What they were made of. What was their function, and, related to this: What was their life expectancy. Were they simply such as one would expect to find in the work of a Neoplatonist at this time, or are they in some way modified by the commentary context? In considering these matters, special attention will be paid to the vocabulary used to discuss them. It should not, however, come as a surprise to discover that it is not significantly, if at all, different from that of those Neoplatonists who did not concentrate their endeavors on the exposition of Aristotle. [introduction p. 173] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/iFGbdffl8v5SpA9 |
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| Title | Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Journal | Illinois Classical Studies |
| Volume | 18 |
| Pages | 307-325 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| Any discussion of Greek Alexandria may properly take its starting point from the work of P. M. Fraser, even if only to dissent from it. In the preface to Ptolemaic Alexandria Fraser observes that philosophy was one of the “items” that “were not effectively transplanted to Alexandria.”1 In his chapter on philosophy, talking of the establishment of the main philosophical schools at Athens, Fraser writes that it “remained the centre of philosophical studies down to the closing of the schools by Justinian in A.D. 563.”2 The first of these statements is near enough the truth, since the Alexandria of the Ptolemies was not distinguished in philosophy as ifwas in literature or science, though even then some important things happened during that period too. But the implication that this situation continued during the Roman and early Byzantine periods is misleading, and by the end of the period simply false.3 The purpose of this paper is to examine some aspects of the considerable contribution that Alexandria made to the philosophical tradition that continued into the Islamic and Christian middle ages and beyond, and to show that it may lay claim to have been at least equal to that of Athens itself. [Introduction, p. 307] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/MGb8ujHWfXvghPD |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"898","_score":null,"_source":{"id":898,"authors_free":[{"id":1326,"entry_id":898,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity","main_title":{"title":"Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity"},"abstract":"Any discussion of Greek Alexandria may properly take its starting point \r\nfrom the work of P. M. Fraser, even if only to dissent from it. In the preface \r\nto Ptolemaic Alexandria Fraser observes that philosophy was one of the \r\n\u201citems\u201d that \u201cwere not effectively transplanted to Alexandria.\u201d1 In his \r\nchapter on philosophy, talking of the establishment of the main \r\nphilosophical schools at Athens, Fraser writes that it \u201cremained the centre of \r\nphilosophical studies down to the closing of the schools by Justinian in A.D. \r\n563.\u201d2 The first of these statements is near enough the truth, since the \r\nAlexandria of the Ptolemies was not distinguished in philosophy as ifwas in \r\nliterature or science, though even then some important things happened \r\nduring that period too. But the implication that this situation continued \r\nduring the Roman and early Byzantine periods is misleading, and by the end \r\nof the period simply false.3 The purpose of this paper is to examine some \r\naspects of the considerable contribution that Alexandria made to the \r\nphilosophical tradition that continued into the Islamic and Christian middle \r\nages and beyond, and to show that it may lay claim to have been at least \r\nequal to that of Athens itself. [Introduction, p. 307]","btype":3,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/MGb8ujHWfXvghPD","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":898,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Illinois Classical Studies","volume":"18","issue":"","pages":"307-325"}},"sort":[1993]}
| Title | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Type | Monograph |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Publication Place | Aldershot (Hampshire) |
| Publisher | Variorum |
| Series | Variorum collected studies series |
| Volume | 426 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| This book presents a series of Dr. Blumenthal’s studies on the history of Neoplatonism, from its founder Plotinus to the end of Classical Antiquity, relating especially to the Neoplatonists’ doctrines about the soul. The work falls into two parts. The first deals with Plotinus and considers the soul both as part of the structure of the universe and in its capacity as the basis of the individual’s vital and cognitive functions. The second part is concerned with the later history of Neoplatonism, including its end. Its main focus is the investigation of how Neoplatonic psychology was modified and developed by later philosophers, in particular the commentators on Aristotle, and used as the starting point for their Platonizing interpretations of his philosophy. |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/Hj2vOznXoMqSzco |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"214","_score":null,"_source":{"id":214,"authors_free":[{"id":273,"entry_id":214,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism","main_title":{"title":"Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism"},"abstract":"This book presents a series of Dr. Blumenthal\u2019s studies on the history of Neoplatonism, from its founder Plotinus to the end of Classical Antiquity, relating especially to the Neoplatonists\u2019 doctrines about the soul. The work falls into two parts. The first deals with Plotinus and considers the soul both as part of the structure of the universe and in its capacity as the basis of the individual\u2019s vital and cognitive functions. The second part is concerned with the later history of Neoplatonism, including its end. Its main focus is the investigation of how Neoplatonic psychology was modified and developed by later philosophers, in particular the commentators on Aristotle, and used as the starting point for their Platonizing interpretations of his philosophy.","btype":1,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/Hj2vOznXoMqSzco","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":{"id":214,"pubplace":"Aldershot (Hampshire)","publisher":"Variorum","series":"Variorum collected studies series","volume":"426","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null},"booksection":null,"article":null},"sort":[1993]}
| Title | The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 175-189 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hadot, Ilsetraut |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
| This brief comparison between Plato and Aristotle reveals once again the attitude of our Alexandrian commentators—Philoponus, Olympiodorus, and Elias in the case I have just discussed—towards the philosophers: for them, the two philosophers are mutually complementary, but the genius of the divine Plato is superior to Aristotle. Aristotle only knows how to establish logical rules, which he discovers by analyzing the logical elements in Plato’s work, whereas Plato practiced logical proof spontaneously and intuitively without formulating the rules for it. Here again, we meet the principle of Aristotle’s inferiority to Plato, which determines the harmonizing trend as well as its limitations. Thanks to Marinus’ Life of Proclus and Damascius’ Life of Isidore, we know the role of the study of the works of Aristotle with commentary in the teaching of the School of Athens at the time when Syrianus, then Proclus, then Isidore ran the School. Syrianus initiated Proclus into Plato’s mystical doctrine after Proclus had been adequately prepared by studying the works of Aristotle, as if, so to speak, by way of preparatory or ‘minor’ mysteries. So, in directing Proclus’ studies, Syrianus proceeds in due order, as Marinus emphasizes, and ‘does not leap over the threshold’; in other words, Proclus proceeds in the set order and does not miss out any step in the teaching. Isidore, too, came to Plato’s philosophy after studying Aristotle. I hope to have shown in this paper that the part played by the study of and commentary on Aristotle’s works remained the same up to the end of Neoplatonism. Aristotle was never studied for his own sake by the Neoplatonists, but always as a necessary preparation for the philosophy of Plato. [conclusion p. 188-189] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/mXkoXV2wq7SgBs3 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"640","_score":null,"_source":{"id":640,"authors_free":[{"id":909,"entry_id":640,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":4,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","free_first_name":"Ilsetraut","free_last_name":"Hadot","norm_person":{"id":4,"first_name":"Ilsetraut","last_name":"Hadot","full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/107415011","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":910,"entry_id":640,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":911,"entry_id":640,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories","main_title":{"title":"The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories"},"abstract":"This brief comparison between Plato and Aristotle reveals once again the attitude of our Alexandrian commentators\u2014Philoponus, Olympiodorus, and Elias in the case I have just discussed\u2014towards the philosophers: for them, the two philosophers are mutually complementary, but the genius of the divine Plato is superior to Aristotle.\r\n\r\nAristotle only knows how to establish logical rules, which he discovers by analyzing the logical elements in Plato\u2019s work, whereas Plato practiced logical proof spontaneously and intuitively without formulating the rules for it. Here again, we meet the principle of Aristotle\u2019s inferiority to Plato, which determines the harmonizing trend as well as its limitations.\r\n\r\nThanks to Marinus\u2019 Life of Proclus and Damascius\u2019 Life of Isidore, we know the role of the study of the works of Aristotle with commentary in the teaching of the School of Athens at the time when Syrianus, then Proclus, then Isidore ran the School. Syrianus initiated Proclus into Plato\u2019s mystical doctrine after Proclus had been adequately prepared by studying the works of Aristotle, as if, so to speak, by way of preparatory or \u2018minor\u2019 mysteries.\r\n\r\nSo, in directing Proclus\u2019 studies, Syrianus proceeds in due order, as Marinus emphasizes, and \u2018does not leap over the threshold\u2019; in other words, Proclus proceeds in the set order and does not miss out any step in the teaching. Isidore, too, came to Plato\u2019s philosophy after studying Aristotle.\r\n\r\nI hope to have shown in this paper that the part played by the study of and commentary on Aristotle\u2019s works remained the same up to the end of Neoplatonism. Aristotle was never studied for his own sake by the Neoplatonists, but always as a necessary preparation for the philosophy of Plato. [conclusion p. 188-189]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/mXkoXV2wq7SgBs3","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":4,"full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":640,"section_of":354,"pages":"175-189","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1991]}
| Title | Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3 |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 165-173 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Sheppard, Anne D. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
| Aristotle’s treatment of phantasia in De anima 3.3 is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind that cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought—a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call "imagination," at least has much in common with it. It is tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is difficult to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been several recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle’s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere. I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination. In all three cases, the way they interpret Aristotle’s position is influenced by the account of imagination they themselves favor. It used to be taken for granted that imagination involves having mental images, but this assumption was among the many challenged in the works of Wittgenstein and in Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind. It is now more fashionable to analyze propositions of the form "I imagine that P" than to inquire into hypothetical pictures in the mind. Accordingly, some current interpreters of Aristotle claim that he is interested in the logic of the verb phainesthai, or in a power that interprets the data of perception, rather than in mental images. For example, Malcolm Schofield claims that Aristotle is concerned with the verb phainesthai and the sense in which it expresses a non-committal attitude toward the veridical character of sensory or quasi-sensory experiences. According to Schofield, Aristotle is concerned with "non-paradigmatic sensory experiences"—phenomena that make one say cautiously phainetai ("It looks like an X"). Mental imagery is only one type of such experience and is not Aristotle’s main concern. Martha Nussbaum also emphasizes the connection with the verb phainesthai and explicitly attacks the view that mental images are central to either Aristotelian phantasia or our notion of imagination. Nussbaum claims that Aristotle has a very general interest in how things appear to living creatures. She examines Aristotle’s account of the role of phantasia in animal movement and its relationship to aisthesis and argues that, for Aristotle, aisthesis is simply the passive reception of sense-impressions, while the role of phantasia is to interpret such impressions. More recently, Deborah Modrak has argued for an interpretation of Aristotelian phantasia that once again makes mental images important. She argues against Nussbaum’s interpretation of aisthesis as purely passive and describes phantasia as "the awareness of a sensory content under conditions that are not conducive to veridical perception." Such awareness, she argues, can perfectly well take the form of a mental image. My concern here is not so much to adjudicate among these rival modern interpretations of Aristotle as to inquire what light the Neoplatonist commentators on the De anima throw on the issues raised. It might be thought that this is a futile enterprise, given the very different presuppositions with which the ancient commentators approached Aristotle. Henry Blumenthal has demonstrated in a number of articles that these commentators read Aristotle through Platonizing spectacles and that their interpretation of his psychology is colored by their Platonist assumptions. Nevertheless, if we examine the discussions of De anima 3.3 by the Neoplatonists, some interesting light is cast on the question of whether phantasia involves mental images. In this paper, I shall confine myself to the two Neoplatonist commentaries on the De anima—those attributed to Simplicius and Philoponus. (Themistius, who was not a Neoplatonist, would require separate discussion.) Both commentaries raise problems of authorship, although these do not significantly affect the present inquiry. F. Bossier and C. Steel have argued that the commentary ascribed to Simplicius is not by him but by his contemporary Priscianus Lydus. Whether this is correct or not, the commentary is a product of sixth-century Athenian Neoplatonism. Book 3 of the Greek version of Philoponus’ commentary has been much more conclusively demonstrated to be by the later Alexandrian commentator Stephanus. Part of a Latin translation of Philoponus’ own work on De anima 3 survives, but his comments on 3.3 are not preserved. Those I shall be discussing are by Stephanus. (Where it is possible to compare the two commentators, the views of Stephanus are sometimes quite close to those of Philoponus, so it is likely that Philoponus’ views on 3.3 were not very different from those we find in Stephanus.) [introduction p. 165-167] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/lzX0JUImw1D2csY |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1021","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1021,"authors_free":[{"id":1537,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":43,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","free_first_name":"Anne D.","free_last_name":"Sheppard","norm_person":{"id":43,"first_name":"Anne D.","last_name":"Sheppard","full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1158024592","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1538,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J. ","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1539,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3","main_title":{"title":"Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3"},"abstract":"Aristotle\u2019s treatment of phantasia in De anima 3.3 is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind that cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought\u2014a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call \"imagination,\" at least has much in common with it. It is tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is difficult to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been several recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle\u2019s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere. I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination. In all three cases, the way they interpret Aristotle\u2019s position is influenced by the account of imagination they themselves favor.\r\n\r\nIt used to be taken for granted that imagination involves having mental images, but this assumption was among the many challenged in the works of Wittgenstein and in Gilbert Ryle\u2019s The Concept of Mind. It is now more fashionable to analyze propositions of the form \"I imagine that P\" than to inquire into hypothetical pictures in the mind. Accordingly, some current interpreters of Aristotle claim that he is interested in the logic of the verb phainesthai, or in a power that interprets the data of perception, rather than in mental images.\r\n\r\nFor example, Malcolm Schofield claims that Aristotle is concerned with the verb phainesthai and the sense in which it expresses a non-committal attitude toward the veridical character of sensory or quasi-sensory experiences. According to Schofield, Aristotle is concerned with \"non-paradigmatic sensory experiences\"\u2014phenomena that make one say cautiously phainetai (\"It looks like an X\"). Mental imagery is only one type of such experience and is not Aristotle\u2019s main concern. Martha Nussbaum also emphasizes the connection with the verb phainesthai and explicitly attacks the view that mental images are central to either Aristotelian phantasia or our notion of imagination. Nussbaum claims that Aristotle has a very general interest in how things appear to living creatures. She examines Aristotle\u2019s account of the role of phantasia in animal movement and its relationship to aisthesis and argues that, for Aristotle, aisthesis is simply the passive reception of sense-impressions, while the role of phantasia is to interpret such impressions.\r\n\r\nMore recently, Deborah Modrak has argued for an interpretation of Aristotelian phantasia that once again makes mental images important. She argues against Nussbaum\u2019s interpretation of aisthesis as purely passive and describes phantasia as \"the awareness of a sensory content under conditions that are not conducive to veridical perception.\" Such awareness, she argues, can perfectly well take the form of a mental image.\r\n\r\nMy concern here is not so much to adjudicate among these rival modern interpretations of Aristotle as to inquire what light the Neoplatonist commentators on the De anima throw on the issues raised. It might be thought that this is a futile enterprise, given the very different presuppositions with which the ancient commentators approached Aristotle. Henry Blumenthal has demonstrated in a number of articles that these commentators read Aristotle through Platonizing spectacles and that their interpretation of his psychology is colored by their Platonist assumptions. Nevertheless, if we examine the discussions of De anima 3.3 by the Neoplatonists, some interesting light is cast on the question of whether phantasia involves mental images.\r\n\r\nIn this paper, I shall confine myself to the two Neoplatonist commentaries on the De anima\u2014those attributed to Simplicius and Philoponus. (Themistius, who was not a Neoplatonist, would require separate discussion.) Both commentaries raise problems of authorship, although these do not significantly affect the present inquiry. F. Bossier and C. Steel have argued that the commentary ascribed to Simplicius is not by him but by his contemporary Priscianus Lydus. Whether this is correct or not, the commentary is a product of sixth-century Athenian Neoplatonism. Book 3 of the Greek version of Philoponus\u2019 commentary has been much more conclusively demonstrated to be by the later Alexandrian commentator Stephanus. Part of a Latin translation of Philoponus\u2019 own work on De anima 3 survives, but his comments on 3.3 are not preserved. Those I shall be discussing are by Stephanus. (Where it is possible to compare the two commentators, the views of Stephanus are sometimes quite close to those of Philoponus, so it is likely that Philoponus\u2019 views on 3.3 were not very different from those we find in Stephanus.) [introduction p. 165-167]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/lzX0JUImw1D2csY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":43,"full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1021,"section_of":354,"pages":"165-173","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1991]}
| Title | Aristotle’s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 1-7 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Kerferd, George B. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
| In his De caelo (3.1, 298b 14–24 — 28 A 25 DK), Aristotle makes a strange and puzzling statement about Parmenides and the Eleatics. But before we discuss this in detail, it will be best first to give a translation of the context as a whole, with the relevant statement italicized, and to consider the way in which he is there classifying earlier thinkers. The passage reads as follows: "Perhaps the first question for consideration is whether generation is a fact or not. Earlier searchers after wisdom concerning reality differed both from the accounts which we are now offering and from one another. Some of them abolished generation and destruction completely. Nothing that is, they declare, is either generated or destroyed; it merely seems to us that it is so. Such were Melissus and Parmenides and their followers, and these men, although in other respects their doctrines are excellent, are not to be regarded as speaking from the point of view of natural science. For the existence of certain entities that are neither generated nor subject to any kind of change is a matter not for natural science but for a different and higher study. These men, however, since they supposed there was nothing else at all apart from the existence of things perceived and on the other hand were the first to contemplate some such (unchanging) entities as a prerequisite for any knowledge or understanding (gnôseôs ê phronêseôs) as a result transferred to sensible objects those accounts which come from the other (higher) source (tôn ekei then logous). Others again, as if from set purpose, came to hold the opposite opinion to that held by these men. For there are some who say that nothing in the world is ungenerated, but all things are subject to generation, and that when generated some things remain indestructible and others are again destroyed. This view was held above all by Hesiod and his followers, and thereafter by the first natural philosophers. These say that all other things are in process of being generated and flow, and nothing is stable. But there is one thing only which persists, from which all these other things are produced by natural transformations. This seems to be the meaning intended by Heraclitus of Ephesus and many others. But there are some who suppose that all body also is generated, combining it out of plane surfaces and separating it again into such planes." Aristotle’s classification here would seem at first sight to be threefold: Those who deny all generation and destruction as mere illusions. Those who say nothing is ungenerated but everything comes to be, although once generated, some things are exempt from destruction while others are again destroyed. Those who would generate all solids from geometrical shapes or planes. But there is an obscurity about the second group, said to be led by Hesiod and his followers, with whom are to be associated "the earliest natural philosophers." The reference to Hesiod must surely be to his doctrine of Chaos, which was the first to come into existence (Theogony 116) and from which, in due course, all other things arose. Grouped with him are the earliest natural philosophers (hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes), which suggests to us at first reading the Ionians. But in this case, Aristotle would be saying, for example, that the water of Thales itself came into existence before other things were generated from it. This seems in conflict both with the usual view of the Ionians in antiquity and also with what seems to be their characterization in the following two sentences, which describe a doctrine according to which there is a single substance persisting through the various transmutations that produce phenomena. A resolution of this problem is propounded by Simplicius in his commentary on the passage. He takes the words hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes to refer to those whom Aristotle elsewhere calls hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes (Metaphysics 983b28), namely Orpheus and Musaeus. This opens the way to the view that the Ionians are first referred to in the sentence following next after hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes, which begins with the words hoi de. The result is to divide Aristotle’s second class into two, producing a total of four, not three, classifications. This was indeed what Simplicius intended, as can be seen in his statement tetrachê dieile tas peri geneseôs doxas (In De caelo, 556.3). These will then be: No generation at all. All things are generated, and some of these things then persist permanently. Most things are generated but not the primary substances. All bodily things are generated from ungenerated geometrical entities. Whatever may be the correct analysis of what Aristotle is saying here, there can be no doubt that he places the Eleatics in category (1)—no generation at all. But a major difficulty arises from his statement that for the Eleatics there is nothing else apart from things perceived and that they applied to things perceived the concepts appropriate to unchanging entities, which belong to a different field altogether. On the whole, this statement seems to have provoked irritation rather than interest or respect, and it is commonly dismissed as mistaken. Harold Chemiss, writing in 1935, says that here: "The Eleatic doctrine is rejected as unphysical. But the origin is differently explained. The Eleatics were the first to see that knowledge requires the existence of immutable substances; but, thinking that sensible objects alone existed, they applied to them the arguments concerning objects of thought. Aristotle derives this account by a literal interpretation of Plato, Parmenides 135b-c. But cf. Sophist 249b-d." [introduction p. 1-3] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/8A6Irhi7CRu4EpE |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"889","_score":null,"_source":{"id":889,"authors_free":[{"id":1309,"entry_id":889,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":215,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Kerferd, George B.","free_first_name":"George B.","free_last_name":"Kerferd","norm_person":{"id":215,"first_name":" George B.","last_name":"Kerferd","full_name":"Kerferd, George B.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1158138547","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1310,"entry_id":889,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1311,"entry_id":889,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Aristotle\u2019s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides","main_title":{"title":"Aristotle\u2019s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides"},"abstract":"In his De caelo (3.1, 298b 14\u201324 \u2014 28 A 25 DK), Aristotle makes a strange and puzzling statement about Parmenides and the Eleatics. But before we discuss this in detail, it will be best first to give a translation of the context as a whole, with the relevant statement italicized, and to consider the way in which he is there classifying earlier thinkers. The passage reads as follows:\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps the first question for consideration is whether generation is a fact or not. Earlier searchers after wisdom concerning reality differed both from the accounts which we are now offering and from one another. Some of them abolished generation and destruction completely. Nothing that is, they declare, is either generated or destroyed; it merely seems to us that it is so. Such were Melissus and Parmenides and their followers, and these men, although in other respects their doctrines are excellent, are not to be regarded as speaking from the point of view of natural science. For the existence of certain entities that are neither generated nor subject to any kind of change is a matter not for natural science but for a different and higher study. These men, however, since they supposed there was nothing else at all apart from the existence of things perceived and on the other hand were the first to contemplate some such (unchanging) entities as a prerequisite for any knowledge or understanding (gn\u00f4se\u00f4s \u00ea phron\u00ease\u00f4s) as a result transferred to sensible objects those accounts which come from the other (higher) source (t\u00f4n ekei then logous). Others again, as if from set purpose, came to hold the opposite opinion to that held by these men. For there are some who say that nothing in the world is ungenerated, but all things are subject to generation, and that when generated some things remain indestructible and others are again destroyed. This view was held above all by Hesiod and his followers, and thereafter by the first natural philosophers. These say that all other things are in process of being generated and flow, and nothing is stable. But there is one thing only which persists, from which all these other things are produced by natural transformations. This seems to be the meaning intended by Heraclitus of Ephesus and many others. But there are some who suppose that all body also is generated, combining it out of plane surfaces and separating it again into such planes.\"\r\n\r\nAristotle\u2019s classification here would seem at first sight to be threefold:\r\n\r\n Those who deny all generation and destruction as mere illusions.\r\n Those who say nothing is ungenerated but everything comes to be, although once generated, some things are exempt from destruction while others are again destroyed.\r\n Those who would generate all solids from geometrical shapes or planes.\r\n\r\nBut there is an obscurity about the second group, said to be led by Hesiod and his followers, with whom are to be associated \"the earliest natural philosophers.\" The reference to Hesiod must surely be to his doctrine of Chaos, which was the first to come into existence (Theogony 116) and from which, in due course, all other things arose. Grouped with him are the earliest natural philosophers (hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes), which suggests to us at first reading the Ionians. But in this case, Aristotle would be saying, for example, that the water of Thales itself came into existence before other things were generated from it. This seems in conflict both with the usual view of the Ionians in antiquity and also with what seems to be their characterization in the following two sentences, which describe a doctrine according to which there is a single substance persisting through the various transmutations that produce phenomena.\r\n\r\nA resolution of this problem is propounded by Simplicius in his commentary on the passage. He takes the words hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes to refer to those whom Aristotle elsewhere calls hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes (Metaphysics 983b28), namely Orpheus and Musaeus. This opens the way to the view that the Ionians are first referred to in the sentence following next after hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes, which begins with the words hoi de. The result is to divide Aristotle\u2019s second class into two, producing a total of four, not three, classifications. This was indeed what Simplicius intended, as can be seen in his statement tetrach\u00ea dieile tas peri genese\u00f4s doxas (In De caelo, 556.3). These will then be:\r\n\r\n No generation at all.\r\n All things are generated, and some of these things then persist permanently.\r\n Most things are generated but not the primary substances.\r\n All bodily things are generated from ungenerated geometrical entities.\r\n\r\nWhatever may be the correct analysis of what Aristotle is saying here, there can be no doubt that he places the Eleatics in category (1)\u2014no generation at all. But a major difficulty arises from his statement that for the Eleatics there is nothing else apart from things perceived and that they applied to things perceived the concepts appropriate to unchanging entities, which belong to a different field altogether.\r\n\r\nOn the whole, this statement seems to have provoked irritation rather than interest or respect, and it is commonly dismissed as mistaken. Harold Chemiss, writing in 1935, says that here:\r\n\r\n\"The Eleatic doctrine is rejected as unphysical. But the origin is differently explained. The Eleatics were the first to see that knowledge requires the existence of immutable substances; but, thinking that sensible objects alone existed, they applied to them the arguments concerning objects of thought. Aristotle derives this account by a literal interpretation of Plato, Parmenides 135b-c. But cf. Sophist 249b-d.\" [introduction p. 1-3]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/8A6Irhi7CRu4EpE","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":215,"full_name":"Kerferd, George B.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":889,"section_of":354,"pages":"1-7","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1991]}
| Title | Nous pathêtikos in later Greek philosophy |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 191-205 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
| In 1911 H. Kurfess obtained a doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a dissertation on the history of the interpretation of nous poietikos and nous pathetikos} Notoriously the expression nous poietikos never occurs in the text of Aristotle, but its derivation from De mim. 430*11-12 is an easy step, and when philosophers and commentators subsequently discuss it, we know what it is that they are talking about, even if its nature and status remained, and remain, controversial. Similarly nouspathetikos, or rather ho pathetikos nous, occurs only once in the pages of Aristotle, but appears often, if less frequently than nous poietikos, in the texts of his successors and interpreters. In its case, however, though the expression occurs in Aristotle’s De anima, its reference is unclear. To aggravate matters, nous pathetikos quite often appears in his successors in contexts which seem to have nothing to do with the intellect. Yet while nous poietikos has generated an enormous literature from the ancient world up until today, the phrase nous pathetikos has received nothing like the attention of its partner. This paper will examine some of its uses in both commentators and Neo- platonist philosophers in the hope of explaining its appearance and clarifying its meaning. [Introduction, p. 191] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/Di0rd034eeOOHeY |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"894","_score":null,"_source":{"id":894,"authors_free":[{"id":1317,"entry_id":894,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1319,"entry_id":894,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1320,"entry_id":894,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Nous path\u00eatikos in later Greek philosophy","main_title":{"title":"Nous path\u00eatikos in later Greek philosophy"},"abstract":"In 1911 H. Kurfess obtained a doctorate from the University of \r\nT\u00fcbingen with a dissertation on the history of the interpretation of nous \r\npoietikos and nous pathetikos} Notoriously the expression nous poietikos \r\nnever occurs in the text of Aristotle, but its derivation from De mim. \r\n430*11-12 is an easy step, and when philosophers and commentators \r\nsubsequently discuss it, we know what it is that they are talking about, \r\neven if its nature and status remained, and remain, controversial. \r\nSimilarly nouspathetikos, or rather ho pathetikos nous, occurs only once in \r\nthe pages of Aristotle, but appears often, if less frequently than nous \r\npoietikos, in the texts of his successors and interpreters. In its case, \r\nhowever, though the expression occurs in Aristotle\u2019s De anima, its \r\nreference is unclear. To aggravate matters, nous pathetikos quite often \r\nappears in his successors in contexts which seem to have nothing to do \r\nwith the intellect. Yet while nous poietikos has generated an enormous \r\nliterature from the ancient world up until today, the phrase nous \r\npathetikos has received nothing like the attention of its partner. This \r\npaper will examine some of its uses in both commentators and Neo- \r\nplatonist philosophers in the hope of explaining its appearance and \r\nclarifying its meaning. [Introduction, p. 191]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/Di0rd034eeOOHeY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":894,"section_of":354,"pages":"191-205","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1991]}
| Title | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Type | Edited Book |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Publication Place | Oxford |
| Publisher | Clarendon Press |
| Series | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
| This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"354","_score":null,"_source":{"id":354,"authors_free":[{"id":460,"entry_id":354,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":461,"entry_id":354,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","main_title":{"title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition"},"abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","btype":4,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null},"booksection":null,"article":null},"sort":[1991]}
| Title | Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Journal | Illinois Classical Studies |
| Volume | 18 |
| Pages | 307-325 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
Any discussion of Greek Alexandria may properly take its starting point from the work of P. M. Fraser, even if only to dissent from it. In the preface to Ptolemaic Alexandria Fraser observes that philosophy was one of the “items” that “were not effectively transplanted to Alexandria.”1 In his chapter on philosophy, talking of the establishment of the main philosophical schools at Athens, Fraser writes that it “remained the centre of philosophical studies down to the closing of the schools by Justinian in A.D. 563.”2 The first of these statements is near enough the truth, since the Alexandria of the Ptolemies was not distinguished in philosophy as ifwas in literature or science, though even then some important things happened during that period too. But the implication that this situation continued during the Roman and early Byzantine periods is misleading, and by the end of the period simply false.3 The purpose of this paper is to examine some aspects of the considerable contribution that Alexandria made to the philosophical tradition that continued into the Islamic and Christian middle ages and beyond, and to show that it may lay claim to have been at least equal to that of Athens itself. [Introduction, p. 307] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/MGb8ujHWfXvghPD |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"898","_score":null,"_source":{"id":898,"authors_free":[{"id":1326,"entry_id":898,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity","main_title":{"title":"Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity"},"abstract":"Any discussion of Greek Alexandria may properly take its starting point \r\nfrom the work of P. M. Fraser, even if only to dissent from it. In the preface \r\nto Ptolemaic Alexandria Fraser observes that philosophy was one of the \r\n\u201citems\u201d that \u201cwere not effectively transplanted to Alexandria.\u201d1 In his \r\nchapter on philosophy, talking of the establishment of the main \r\nphilosophical schools at Athens, Fraser writes that it \u201cremained the centre of \r\nphilosophical studies down to the closing of the schools by Justinian in A.D. \r\n563.\u201d2 The first of these statements is near enough the truth, since the \r\nAlexandria of the Ptolemies was not distinguished in philosophy as ifwas in \r\nliterature or science, though even then some important things happened \r\nduring that period too. But the implication that this situation continued \r\nduring the Roman and early Byzantine periods is misleading, and by the end \r\nof the period simply false.3 The purpose of this paper is to examine some \r\naspects of the considerable contribution that Alexandria made to the \r\nphilosophical tradition that continued into the Islamic and Christian middle \r\nages and beyond, and to show that it may lay claim to have been at least \r\nequal to that of Athens itself. [Introduction, p. 307]","btype":3,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/MGb8ujHWfXvghPD","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":898,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Illinois Classical Studies","volume":"18","issue":"","pages":"307-325"}},"sort":["Alexandria as a Center of Greek Philosophy in Later Classical Antiquity"]}
| Title | Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the "De Anima" |
| Type | Monograph |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Publication Place | London |
| Publisher | Duckworth |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
Steven Strange: Emory University Scholars have traditionally used the Aristotelian commentators as sources for lost philosophical works and occasionally also as aids to understanding Aristotle. In H. J. Blumenthal's view, however, the commentators often assumed that there was a Platonist philosophy to which not only they but Aristotle himself subscribed. Their expository writing usually expressed their versions of Neoplatonist philosophy. Blumenthal here places the commentators in their intellectual and historical contexts, identifies their philosophical views, and demonstrates their tendency to read Aristotle as if he were a member of their philosophical circle.This book focuses on the commentators' exposition of Aristotle's treatise De anima (On the Soul), because it is relatively well documented and because the concept of soul was so important in all Neoplatonic systems. Blumenthal explains how the Neoplatonizing of Aristotle's thought, as well as the widespread use of the commentators' works, influenced the understanding of Aristotle in both the Islamic and Judaeo-Christian traditions.H. J. Blumenthal is the author or coeditor of six previous books and is currently preparing a two-volume translation, with introduction and commentary, of Simplicius' Commentary on "De anima" for publication in Cornell's series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/VOUUZIIp0rHNG0V |
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| Title | Aristotle’s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 1-7 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Kerferd, George B. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
In his De caelo (3.1, 298b 14–24 — 28 A 25 DK), Aristotle makes a strange and puzzling statement about Parmenides and the Eleatics. But before we discuss this in detail, it will be best first to give a translation of the context as a whole, with the relevant statement italicized, and to consider the way in which he is there classifying earlier thinkers. The passage reads as follows:
"Perhaps the first question for consideration is whether generation is a fact or not. Earlier searchers after wisdom concerning reality differed both from the accounts which we are now offering and from one another. Some of them abolished generation and destruction completely. Nothing that is, they declare, is either generated or destroyed; it merely seems to us that it is so. Such were Melissus and Parmenides and their followers, and these men, although in other respects their doctrines are excellent, are not to be regarded as speaking from the point of view of natural science. For the existence of certain entities that are neither generated nor subject to any kind of change is a matter not for natural science but for a different and higher study. These men, however, since they supposed there was nothing else at all apart from the existence of things perceived and on the other hand were the first to contemplate some such (unchanging) entities as a prerequisite for any knowledge or understanding (gnôseôs ê phronêseôs) as a result transferred to sensible objects those accounts which come from the other (higher) source (tôn ekei then logous). Others again, as if from set purpose, came to hold the opposite opinion to that held by these men. For there are some who say that nothing in the world is ungenerated, but all things are subject to generation, and that when generated some things remain indestructible and others are again destroyed. This view was held above all by Hesiod and his followers, and thereafter by the first natural philosophers. These say that all other things are in process of being generated and flow, and nothing is stable. But there is one thing only which persists, from which all these other things are produced by natural transformations. This seems to be the meaning intended by Heraclitus of Ephesus and many others. But there are some who suppose that all body also is generated, combining it out of plane surfaces and separating it again into such planes."
Aristotle’s classification here would seem at first sight to be threefold:
Those who deny all generation and destruction as mere illusions.
Those who say nothing is ungenerated but everything comes to be, although once generated, some things are exempt from destruction while others are again destroyed.
Those who would generate all solids from geometrical shapes or planes.
But there is an obscurity about the second group, said to be led by Hesiod and his followers, with whom are to be associated "the earliest natural philosophers." The reference to Hesiod must surely be to his doctrine of Chaos, which was the first to come into existence (Theogony 116) and from which, in due course, all other things arose. Grouped with him are the earliest natural philosophers (hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes), which suggests to us at first reading the Ionians. But in this case, Aristotle would be saying, for example, that the water of Thales itself came into existence before other things were generated from it. This seems in conflict both with the usual view of the Ionians in antiquity and also with what seems to be their characterization in the following two sentences, which describe a doctrine according to which there is a single substance persisting through the various transmutations that produce phenomena.
A resolution of this problem is propounded by Simplicius in his commentary on the passage. He takes the words hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes to refer to those whom Aristotle elsewhere calls hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes (Metaphysics 983b28), namely Orpheus and Musaeus. This opens the way to the view that the Ionians are first referred to in the sentence following next after hoi prôtoi physiologêsantes, which begins with the words hoi de. The result is to divide Aristotle’s second class into two, producing a total of four, not three, classifications. This was indeed what Simplicius intended, as can be seen in his statement tetrachê dieile tas peri geneseôs doxas (In De caelo, 556.3). These will then be:
No generation at all.
All things are generated, and some of these things then persist permanently.
Most things are generated but not the primary substances.
All bodily things are generated from ungenerated geometrical entities.
Whatever may be the correct analysis of what Aristotle is saying here, there can be no doubt that he places the Eleatics in category (1)—no generation at all. But a major difficulty arises from his statement that for the Eleatics there is nothing else apart from things perceived and that they applied to things perceived the concepts appropriate to unchanging entities, which belong to a different field altogether.
On the whole, this statement seems to have provoked irritation rather than interest or respect, and it is commonly dismissed as mistaken. Harold Chemiss, writing in 1935, says that here:
"The Eleatic doctrine is rejected as unphysical. But the origin is differently explained. The Eleatics were the first to see that knowledge requires the existence of immutable substances; but, thinking that sensible objects alone existed, they applied to them the arguments concerning objects of thought. Aristotle derives this account by a literal interpretation of Plato, Parmenides 135b-c. But cf. Sophist 249b-d." [introduction p. 1-3] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/8A6Irhi7CRu4EpE |
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But before we discuss this in detail, it will be best first to give a translation of the context as a whole, with the relevant statement italicized, and to consider the way in which he is there classifying earlier thinkers. The passage reads as follows:\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps the first question for consideration is whether generation is a fact or not. Earlier searchers after wisdom concerning reality differed both from the accounts which we are now offering and from one another. Some of them abolished generation and destruction completely. Nothing that is, they declare, is either generated or destroyed; it merely seems to us that it is so. Such were Melissus and Parmenides and their followers, and these men, although in other respects their doctrines are excellent, are not to be regarded as speaking from the point of view of natural science. For the existence of certain entities that are neither generated nor subject to any kind of change is a matter not for natural science but for a different and higher study. These men, however, since they supposed there was nothing else at all apart from the existence of things perceived and on the other hand were the first to contemplate some such (unchanging) entities as a prerequisite for any knowledge or understanding (gn\u00f4se\u00f4s \u00ea phron\u00ease\u00f4s) as a result transferred to sensible objects those accounts which come from the other (higher) source (t\u00f4n ekei then logous). Others again, as if from set purpose, came to hold the opposite opinion to that held by these men. For there are some who say that nothing in the world is ungenerated, but all things are subject to generation, and that when generated some things remain indestructible and others are again destroyed. This view was held above all by Hesiod and his followers, and thereafter by the first natural philosophers. These say that all other things are in process of being generated and flow, and nothing is stable. But there is one thing only which persists, from which all these other things are produced by natural transformations. This seems to be the meaning intended by Heraclitus of Ephesus and many others. But there are some who suppose that all body also is generated, combining it out of plane surfaces and separating it again into such planes.\"\r\n\r\nAristotle\u2019s classification here would seem at first sight to be threefold:\r\n\r\n Those who deny all generation and destruction as mere illusions.\r\n Those who say nothing is ungenerated but everything comes to be, although once generated, some things are exempt from destruction while others are again destroyed.\r\n Those who would generate all solids from geometrical shapes or planes.\r\n\r\nBut there is an obscurity about the second group, said to be led by Hesiod and his followers, with whom are to be associated \"the earliest natural philosophers.\" The reference to Hesiod must surely be to his doctrine of Chaos, which was the first to come into existence (Theogony 116) and from which, in due course, all other things arose. Grouped with him are the earliest natural philosophers (hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes), which suggests to us at first reading the Ionians. But in this case, Aristotle would be saying, for example, that the water of Thales itself came into existence before other things were generated from it. This seems in conflict both with the usual view of the Ionians in antiquity and also with what seems to be their characterization in the following two sentences, which describe a doctrine according to which there is a single substance persisting through the various transmutations that produce phenomena.\r\n\r\nA resolution of this problem is propounded by Simplicius in his commentary on the passage. He takes the words hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes to refer to those whom Aristotle elsewhere calls hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes (Metaphysics 983b28), namely Orpheus and Musaeus. This opens the way to the view that the Ionians are first referred to in the sentence following next after hoi pr\u00f4toi physiolog\u00easantes, which begins with the words hoi de. The result is to divide Aristotle\u2019s second class into two, producing a total of four, not three, classifications. This was indeed what Simplicius intended, as can be seen in his statement tetrach\u00ea dieile tas peri genese\u00f4s doxas (In De caelo, 556.3). These will then be:\r\n\r\n No generation at all.\r\n All things are generated, and some of these things then persist permanently.\r\n Most things are generated but not the primary substances.\r\n All bodily things are generated from ungenerated geometrical entities.\r\n\r\nWhatever may be the correct analysis of what Aristotle is saying here, there can be no doubt that he places the Eleatics in category (1)\u2014no generation at all. But a major difficulty arises from his statement that for the Eleatics there is nothing else apart from things perceived and that they applied to things perceived the concepts appropriate to unchanging entities, which belong to a different field altogether.\r\n\r\nOn the whole, this statement seems to have provoked irritation rather than interest or respect, and it is commonly dismissed as mistaken. Harold Chemiss, writing in 1935, says that here:\r\n\r\n\"The Eleatic doctrine is rejected as unphysical. But the origin is differently explained. The Eleatics were the first to see that knowledge requires the existence of immutable substances; but, thinking that sensible objects alone existed, they applied to them the arguments concerning objects of thought. Aristotle derives this account by a literal interpretation of Plato, Parmenides 135b-c. But cf. Sophist 249b-d.\" [introduction p. 1-3]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/8A6Irhi7CRu4EpE","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":215,"full_name":"Kerferd, George B.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":889,"section_of":354,"pages":"1-7","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Aristotle\u2019s Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides"]}
| Title | Dunamis in "Simplicius" |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Published in | Dunamis nel Neoplatonismo: atti del II Colloquio internazionale del Centro di Ricerca sul Neoplatonismo, Università degli studi di Catania, 6-8 ottobre 1994 |
| Pages | 149-172 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Cardullo, R. Loredana , Romano, Francesco |
| Translator(s) |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/abLTBIirPsa77f4 |
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| Title | Iamblichus as a Commentator |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1997 |
| Journal | Syllecta Classica |
| Volume | 8 |
| Pages | 1–13 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
Twenty-two years ago, when that growth in interest in Neoplatonism, which is a culmination of this conference, was only just getting underway, two large books appeared that will be familiar to all who are interested in Iamblichus. I am referring, of course, to J.M. Dillon's collection of the fragmentary remains of Iamblichus' commentaries on Plato's dialogues, supplied with an ample commentary to boot, and B. Dalsgaard Larsen's Jamblique de Chalcis: Exégète et Philosophe, of which some 240 pages are devoted to his role as an exegete; a collection of exegetical fragments appeared as a 130-page appendix. Larsen's book covered the interpretation of both Plato and Aristotle and pre-empted a second volume of Dillon's, which was to deal with Aristotle. I mention these books because we are, inter alia, taking stock, and it is remarkable that not much attention has been paid since then to Iamblichus' role as a commentator. Perhaps they have had the same effect on the study of this aspect of Iamblichus as Proclus' work had on the interpretation of Plato at Alexandria. Be that as it may, I intend to look, not very originally, at Iamblichus' activities as a commentator on philosophical works—and so I shall say nothing about the twenty-eight books or more of his lost commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles—and also to say something, in the manner of core samples, about how his expositions compare with those of the later commentators. Though the process can be traced back in part to Porphyry, I think it is safe to say that Iamblichus was the first Neoplatonist, at least of those about whom we are reasonably well informed, to set out systematically to write commentaries on the major works of both Plato and—in Iamblichus' case to a lesser extent—Aristotle too. The fact that he did both is noteworthy, since most of his successors seem to have specialized, more or less, in one or the other in their published works, if not in their lecture courses. We are, as ever in this area, faced with difficulties about deciding who wrote what, which often amounts to making difficult decisions about the implications of the usual imprecise references that are commonplace in ancient commentary. The best we have are those references which Simplicius, in his Physics commentary, gives to specific books or even chapters of Iamblichus' Timaeus and Categories commentaries (cf. In Aristotelis Physica Commentaria 639.23–24; in the second chapter of book 5 of the commentary on the Timaeus 786.11–12; in the first book of the commentary on the Categories). But that Iamblichus did write commentaries on both Plato and Aristotle can be regarded as firmly established. It is tempting to think, though there is no text which allows us to demonstrate this, that his doing so was connected with the fact that it seems to have been he who set up the thereafter traditional course in which certain works of Aristotle were read as propaedeutic to a selection of twelve—or rather ten plus two—Platonic dialogues, which culminated in the study of the Timaeus and Parmenides.[introduction p. 1-2] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/3m984P11hlUhV1x |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"895","_score":null,"_source":{"id":895,"authors_free":[{"id":1321,"entry_id":895,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Iamblichus as a Commentator","main_title":{"title":"Iamblichus as a Commentator"},"abstract":"Twenty-two years ago, when that growth in interest in Neoplatonism, which is a culmination of this conference, was only just getting underway, two large books appeared that will be familiar to all who are interested in Iamblichus. I am referring, of course, to J.M. Dillon's collection of the fragmentary remains of Iamblichus' commentaries on Plato's dialogues, supplied with an ample commentary to boot, and B. Dalsgaard Larsen's Jamblique de Chalcis: Ex\u00e9g\u00e8te et Philosophe, of which some 240 pages are devoted to his role as an exegete; a collection of exegetical fragments appeared as a 130-page appendix.\r\n\r\nLarsen's book covered the interpretation of both Plato and Aristotle and pre-empted a second volume of Dillon's, which was to deal with Aristotle. I mention these books because we are, inter alia, taking stock, and it is remarkable that not much attention has been paid since then to Iamblichus' role as a commentator. Perhaps they have had the same effect on the study of this aspect of Iamblichus as Proclus' work had on the interpretation of Plato at Alexandria.\r\n\r\nBe that as it may, I intend to look, not very originally, at Iamblichus' activities as a commentator on philosophical works\u2014and so I shall say nothing about the twenty-eight books or more of his lost commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles\u2014and also to say something, in the manner of core samples, about how his expositions compare with those of the later commentators.\r\n\r\nThough the process can be traced back in part to Porphyry, I think it is safe to say that Iamblichus was the first Neoplatonist, at least of those about whom we are reasonably well informed, to set out systematically to write commentaries on the major works of both Plato and\u2014in Iamblichus' case to a lesser extent\u2014Aristotle too.\r\n\r\nThe fact that he did both is noteworthy, since most of his successors seem to have specialized, more or less, in one or the other in their published works, if not in their lecture courses. We are, as ever in this area, faced with difficulties about deciding who wrote what, which often amounts to making difficult decisions about the implications of the usual imprecise references that are commonplace in ancient commentary.\r\n\r\nThe best we have are those references which Simplicius, in his Physics commentary, gives to specific books or even chapters of Iamblichus' Timaeus and Categories commentaries (cf. In Aristotelis Physica Commentaria 639.23\u201324; in the second chapter of book 5 of the commentary on the Timaeus 786.11\u201312; in the first book of the commentary on the Categories). But that Iamblichus did write commentaries on both Plato and Aristotle can be regarded as firmly established.\r\n\r\nIt is tempting to think, though there is no text which allows us to demonstrate this, that his doing so was connected with the fact that it seems to have been he who set up the thereafter traditional course in which certain works of Aristotle were read as propaedeutic to a selection of twelve\u2014or rather ten plus two\u2014Platonic dialogues, which culminated in the study of the Timaeus and Parmenides.[introduction p. 1-2]","btype":3,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/3m984P11hlUhV1x","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":895,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Syllecta \tClassica","volume":"8","issue":"","pages":"1\u201313"}},"sort":["Iamblichus as a Commentator"]}
| Title | Nous pathêtikos in later Greek philosophy |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 191-205 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
In 1911 H. Kurfess obtained a doctorate from the University of Tübingen with a dissertation on the history of the interpretation of nous poietikos and nous pathetikos} Notoriously the expression nous poietikos never occurs in the text of Aristotle, but its derivation from De mim. 430*11-12 is an easy step, and when philosophers and commentators subsequently discuss it, we know what it is that they are talking about, even if its nature and status remained, and remain, controversial. Similarly nouspathetikos, or rather ho pathetikos nous, occurs only once in the pages of Aristotle, but appears often, if less frequently than nous poietikos, in the texts of his successors and interpreters. In its case, however, though the expression occurs in Aristotle’s De anima, its reference is unclear. To aggravate matters, nous pathetikos quite often appears in his successors in contexts which seem to have nothing to do with the intellect. Yet while nous poietikos has generated an enormous literature from the ancient world up until today, the phrase nous pathetikos has received nothing like the attention of its partner. This paper will examine some of its uses in both commentators and Neo- platonist philosophers in the hope of explaining its appearance and clarifying its meaning. [Introduction, p. 191] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/Di0rd034eeOOHeY |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"894","_score":null,"_source":{"id":894,"authors_free":[{"id":1317,"entry_id":894,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1319,"entry_id":894,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1320,"entry_id":894,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Nous path\u00eatikos in later Greek philosophy","main_title":{"title":"Nous path\u00eatikos in later Greek philosophy"},"abstract":"In 1911 H. Kurfess obtained a doctorate from the University of \r\nT\u00fcbingen with a dissertation on the history of the interpretation of nous \r\npoietikos and nous pathetikos} Notoriously the expression nous poietikos \r\nnever occurs in the text of Aristotle, but its derivation from De mim. \r\n430*11-12 is an easy step, and when philosophers and commentators \r\nsubsequently discuss it, we know what it is that they are talking about, \r\neven if its nature and status remained, and remain, controversial. \r\nSimilarly nouspathetikos, or rather ho pathetikos nous, occurs only once in \r\nthe pages of Aristotle, but appears often, if less frequently than nous \r\npoietikos, in the texts of his successors and interpreters. In its case, \r\nhowever, though the expression occurs in Aristotle\u2019s De anima, its \r\nreference is unclear. To aggravate matters, nous pathetikos quite often \r\nappears in his successors in contexts which seem to have nothing to do \r\nwith the intellect. Yet while nous poietikos has generated an enormous \r\nliterature from the ancient world up until today, the phrase nous \r\npathetikos has received nothing like the attention of its partner. This \r\npaper will examine some of its uses in both commentators and Neo- \r\nplatonist philosophers in the hope of explaining its appearance and \r\nclarifying its meaning. [Introduction, p. 191]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/Di0rd034eeOOHeY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":894,"section_of":354,"pages":"191-205","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Nous path\u00eatikos in later Greek philosophy"]}
| Title | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Type | Edited Book |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Publication Place | Oxford |
| Publisher | Clarendon Press |
| Series | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"354","_score":null,"_source":{"id":354,"authors_free":[{"id":460,"entry_id":354,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":461,"entry_id":354,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","main_title":{"title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition"},"abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","btype":4,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null},"booksection":null,"article":null},"sort":["Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition"]}
| Title | Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3 |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 165-173 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Sheppard, Anne D. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
Aristotle’s treatment of phantasia in De anima 3.3 is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind that cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought—a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call "imagination," at least has much in common with it. It is tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is difficult to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been several recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle’s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere. I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination. In all three cases, the way they interpret Aristotle’s position is influenced by the account of imagination they themselves favor.
It used to be taken for granted that imagination involves having mental images, but this assumption was among the many challenged in the works of Wittgenstein and in Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind. It is now more fashionable to analyze propositions of the form "I imagine that P" than to inquire into hypothetical pictures in the mind. Accordingly, some current interpreters of Aristotle claim that he is interested in the logic of the verb phainesthai, or in a power that interprets the data of perception, rather than in mental images.
For example, Malcolm Schofield claims that Aristotle is concerned with the verb phainesthai and the sense in which it expresses a non-committal attitude toward the veridical character of sensory or quasi-sensory experiences. According to Schofield, Aristotle is concerned with "non-paradigmatic sensory experiences"—phenomena that make one say cautiously phainetai ("It looks like an X"). Mental imagery is only one type of such experience and is not Aristotle’s main concern. Martha Nussbaum also emphasizes the connection with the verb phainesthai and explicitly attacks the view that mental images are central to either Aristotelian phantasia or our notion of imagination. Nussbaum claims that Aristotle has a very general interest in how things appear to living creatures. She examines Aristotle’s account of the role of phantasia in animal movement and its relationship to aisthesis and argues that, for Aristotle, aisthesis is simply the passive reception of sense-impressions, while the role of phantasia is to interpret such impressions.
More recently, Deborah Modrak has argued for an interpretation of Aristotelian phantasia that once again makes mental images important. She argues against Nussbaum’s interpretation of aisthesis as purely passive and describes phantasia as "the awareness of a sensory content under conditions that are not conducive to veridical perception." Such awareness, she argues, can perfectly well take the form of a mental image.
My concern here is not so much to adjudicate among these rival modern interpretations of Aristotle as to inquire what light the Neoplatonist commentators on the De anima throw on the issues raised. It might be thought that this is a futile enterprise, given the very different presuppositions with which the ancient commentators approached Aristotle. Henry Blumenthal has demonstrated in a number of articles that these commentators read Aristotle through Platonizing spectacles and that their interpretation of his psychology is colored by their Platonist assumptions. Nevertheless, if we examine the discussions of De anima 3.3 by the Neoplatonists, some interesting light is cast on the question of whether phantasia involves mental images.
In this paper, I shall confine myself to the two Neoplatonist commentaries on the De anima—those attributed to Simplicius and Philoponus. (Themistius, who was not a Neoplatonist, would require separate discussion.) Both commentaries raise problems of authorship, although these do not significantly affect the present inquiry. F. Bossier and C. Steel have argued that the commentary ascribed to Simplicius is not by him but by his contemporary Priscianus Lydus. Whether this is correct or not, the commentary is a product of sixth-century Athenian Neoplatonism. Book 3 of the Greek version of Philoponus’ commentary has been much more conclusively demonstrated to be by the later Alexandrian commentator Stephanus. Part of a Latin translation of Philoponus’ own work on De anima 3 survives, but his comments on 3.3 are not preserved. Those I shall be discussing are by Stephanus. (Where it is possible to compare the two commentators, the views of Stephanus are sometimes quite close to those of Philoponus, so it is likely that Philoponus’ views on 3.3 were not very different from those we find in Stephanus.) [introduction p. 165-167] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/lzX0JUImw1D2csY |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1021","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1021,"authors_free":[{"id":1537,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":43,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","free_first_name":"Anne D.","free_last_name":"Sheppard","norm_person":{"id":43,"first_name":"Anne D.","last_name":"Sheppard","full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1158024592","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1538,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J. ","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1539,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3","main_title":{"title":"Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3"},"abstract":"Aristotle\u2019s treatment of phantasia in De anima 3.3 is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind that cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought\u2014a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call \"imagination,\" at least has much in common with it. It is tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is difficult to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been several recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle\u2019s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere. I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination. In all three cases, the way they interpret Aristotle\u2019s position is influenced by the account of imagination they themselves favor.\r\n\r\nIt used to be taken for granted that imagination involves having mental images, but this assumption was among the many challenged in the works of Wittgenstein and in Gilbert Ryle\u2019s The Concept of Mind. It is now more fashionable to analyze propositions of the form \"I imagine that P\" than to inquire into hypothetical pictures in the mind. Accordingly, some current interpreters of Aristotle claim that he is interested in the logic of the verb phainesthai, or in a power that interprets the data of perception, rather than in mental images.\r\n\r\nFor example, Malcolm Schofield claims that Aristotle is concerned with the verb phainesthai and the sense in which it expresses a non-committal attitude toward the veridical character of sensory or quasi-sensory experiences. According to Schofield, Aristotle is concerned with \"non-paradigmatic sensory experiences\"\u2014phenomena that make one say cautiously phainetai (\"It looks like an X\"). Mental imagery is only one type of such experience and is not Aristotle\u2019s main concern. Martha Nussbaum also emphasizes the connection with the verb phainesthai and explicitly attacks the view that mental images are central to either Aristotelian phantasia or our notion of imagination. Nussbaum claims that Aristotle has a very general interest in how things appear to living creatures. She examines Aristotle\u2019s account of the role of phantasia in animal movement and its relationship to aisthesis and argues that, for Aristotle, aisthesis is simply the passive reception of sense-impressions, while the role of phantasia is to interpret such impressions.\r\n\r\nMore recently, Deborah Modrak has argued for an interpretation of Aristotelian phantasia that once again makes mental images important. She argues against Nussbaum\u2019s interpretation of aisthesis as purely passive and describes phantasia as \"the awareness of a sensory content under conditions that are not conducive to veridical perception.\" Such awareness, she argues, can perfectly well take the form of a mental image.\r\n\r\nMy concern here is not so much to adjudicate among these rival modern interpretations of Aristotle as to inquire what light the Neoplatonist commentators on the De anima throw on the issues raised. It might be thought that this is a futile enterprise, given the very different presuppositions with which the ancient commentators approached Aristotle. Henry Blumenthal has demonstrated in a number of articles that these commentators read Aristotle through Platonizing spectacles and that their interpretation of his psychology is colored by their Platonist assumptions. Nevertheless, if we examine the discussions of De anima 3.3 by the Neoplatonists, some interesting light is cast on the question of whether phantasia involves mental images.\r\n\r\nIn this paper, I shall confine myself to the two Neoplatonist commentaries on the De anima\u2014those attributed to Simplicius and Philoponus. (Themistius, who was not a Neoplatonist, would require separate discussion.) Both commentaries raise problems of authorship, although these do not significantly affect the present inquiry. F. Bossier and C. Steel have argued that the commentary ascribed to Simplicius is not by him but by his contemporary Priscianus Lydus. Whether this is correct or not, the commentary is a product of sixth-century Athenian Neoplatonism. Book 3 of the Greek version of Philoponus\u2019 commentary has been much more conclusively demonstrated to be by the later Alexandrian commentator Stephanus. Part of a Latin translation of Philoponus\u2019 own work on De anima 3 survives, but his comments on 3.3 are not preserved. Those I shall be discussing are by Stephanus. (Where it is possible to compare the two commentators, the views of Stephanus are sometimes quite close to those of Philoponus, so it is likely that Philoponus\u2019 views on 3.3 were not very different from those we find in Stephanus.) [introduction p. 165-167]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/lzX0JUImw1D2csY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":43,"full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1021,"section_of":354,"pages":"165-173","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3"]}
| Title | Platonism in late antiquity |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Published in | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Pages | 1-27 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
The Platonism of late antiquity is, of course, what we now call Neoplatonism. That term is a modern one. ‘Neoplatonist’ and ‘Neoplatonic’ first appeared in English and French in the 1830s. All the philosophers whose work comes under this heading thought of themselves simply as Platonists, and the doctrine they were expounding as the Platonic philosophy. For Plotinus, the man normally thought of as the founder of this type of philosophy, all that he might have to say had been said before, though it might not have been set out explicitly, and could be found in the text of Plato (cf. V 1.8.10-14). For Proclus in the 5th century, after two hundred years of this kind of thinking, the same view of what he was doing still stood, as it did for Simplicius and Damascius into the 6th. Thus, Proclus, in the preface to his Platonic Theology, could write of his whole enterprise, and that of his Neoplatonic predecessors, as the understanding and exposition of the truths in Plato. Given our modern views of Plato and Aristotle, as working philosophers whose views developed and whose answers to questions were not always the same, it is important to realize that their ancient interpreters looked at them as creators of fixed systems: though they might recognize that they did not always say the same things about the same questions, they saw such apparent inconsistencies as problems about the relation of disparate statements to an assumed single doctrine rather than about how one different doctrine might relate to another. Before going on, I should perhaps offer some explanations and an apology. The apology is to those who know a great deal, or even a little, about Neoplatonism to whom some of what I shall say is basic common knowledge. The explanations are two. First, that I am taking late antiquity to start in the 3rd century A.D., following an old Cambridge custom of taking ancient Greek philosophy to have ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius. The second is to say what I am going to do here. It relates to the first. When this view of the limits of classical antiquity still held, the study of Neoplatonism was regarded as rather disreputable, in the English-speaking world at least, and the few apparent exceptions—Elements of Theology, still one of the great achievements of Neoplatonic scholarship, and the first modern commentary on a Neoplatonic work—was seen not so much as evidence that there was here a rich field for new scholarly endeavor as an indication of that scholar’s eccentricity. The common attitude found its expression in the preface to the first volume of W.K.C. Guthrie’s History of Greek Philosophy, where he relegated Neoplatonism to the realms of the unphilosophical and the un-Greek: "With Plotinus and his followers, as well as with their Christian contemporaries, there does seem to enter a new religious spirit which is not fundamentally Greek..." That was in 1962. What I want to do is to look at some of the characteristics of Neoplatonism and to see how the picture of this philosophy, or rather group of philosophies, has changed during the last three decades. I think most would now agree it is basically Greek. As to the importance of the religious and soteriological elements in it, which for many of its adherents was rather small in any case, that is arguable, and its significance depends on the extent to which one regards other forms of ancient philosophy as enquiries into how one should live the best life either in relation to one’s own society or to the gods which that society recognized. What is important is that most of the Neoplatonic writings we have are clearly philosophical rather than religious or otherwise concerned with the supernatural. I shall therefore take it for granted that we are talking about philosophy, and not any of the other things with which Neoplatonism has sometimes been associated, and which may undoubtedly be found in some of its products. [introduction p. 1-2] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/A5Y90b8NYMkY9Vs |
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That term is a modern one. \u2018Neoplatonist\u2019 and \u2018Neoplatonic\u2019 first appeared in English and French in the 1830s. All the philosophers whose work comes under this heading thought of themselves simply as Platonists, and the doctrine they were expounding as the Platonic philosophy. For Plotinus, the man normally thought of as the founder of this type of philosophy, all that he might have to say had been said before, though it might not have been set out explicitly, and could be found in the text of Plato (cf. V 1.8.10-14). For Proclus in the 5th century, after two hundred years of this kind of thinking, the same view of what he was doing still stood, as it did for Simplicius and Damascius into the 6th. Thus, Proclus, in the preface to his Platonic Theology, could write of his whole enterprise, and that of his Neoplatonic predecessors, as the understanding and exposition of the truths in Plato.\r\n\r\nGiven our modern views of Plato and Aristotle, as working philosophers whose views developed and whose answers to questions were not always the same, it is important to realize that their ancient interpreters looked at them as creators of fixed systems: though they might recognize that they did not always say the same things about the same questions, they saw such apparent inconsistencies as problems about the relation of disparate statements to an assumed single doctrine rather than about how one different doctrine might relate to another.\r\n\r\nBefore going on, I should perhaps offer some explanations and an apology. The apology is to those who know a great deal, or even a little, about Neoplatonism to whom some of what I shall say is basic common knowledge. The explanations are two.\r\n\r\nFirst, that I am taking late antiquity to start in the 3rd century A.D., following an old Cambridge custom of taking ancient Greek philosophy to have ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius. The second is to say what I am going to do here. It relates to the first. When this view of the limits of classical antiquity still held, the study of Neoplatonism was regarded as rather disreputable, in the English-speaking world at least, and the few apparent exceptions\u2014Elements of Theology, still one of the great achievements of Neoplatonic scholarship, and the first modern commentary on a Neoplatonic work\u2014was seen not so much as evidence that there was here a rich field for new scholarly endeavor as an indication of that scholar\u2019s eccentricity. The common attitude found its expression in the preface to the first volume of W.K.C. Guthrie\u2019s History of Greek Philosophy, where he relegated Neoplatonism to the realms of the unphilosophical and the un-Greek:\r\n\r\n\"With Plotinus and his followers, as well as with their Christian contemporaries, there does seem to enter a new religious spirit which is not fundamentally Greek...\"\r\n\r\nThat was in 1962.\r\n\r\nWhat I want to do is to look at some of the characteristics of Neoplatonism and to see how the picture of this philosophy, or rather group of philosophies, has changed during the last three decades. I think most would now agree it is basically Greek. As to the importance of the religious and soteriological elements in it, which for many of its adherents was rather small in any case, that is arguable, and its significance depends on the extent to which one regards other forms of ancient philosophy as enquiries into how one should live the best life either in relation to one\u2019s own society or to the gods which that society recognized. What is important is that most of the Neoplatonic writings we have are clearly philosophical rather than religious or otherwise concerned with the supernatural. I shall therefore take it for granted that we are talking about philosophy, and not any of the other things with which Neoplatonism has sometimes been associated, and which may undoubtedly be found in some of its products.\r\n[introduction p. 1-2]","btype":2,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/A5Y90b8NYMkY9Vs","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1126,"section_of":214,"pages":"1-27","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":214,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":1,"language":"en","title":"Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal1993c","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1993","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1993","abstract":"This book presents a series of Dr. Blumenthal\u2019s studies on the history of Neoplatonism, from its founder Plotinus to the end of Classical Antiquity, relating especially to the Neoplatonists\u2019 doctrines about the soul. The work falls into two parts. The first deals with Plotinus and considers the soul both as part of the structure of the universe and in its capacity as the basis of the individual\u2019s vital and cognitive functions. The second part is concerned with the later history of Neoplatonism, including its end. Its main focus is the investigation of how Neoplatonic psychology was modified and developed by later philosophers, in particular the commentators on Aristotle, and used as the starting point for their Platonizing interpretations of his philosophy.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/Hj2vOznXoMqSzco","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":214,"pubplace":"Aldershot (Hampshire)","publisher":"Variorum","series":"Variorum collected studies series","volume":"426","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Platonism in late antiquity"]}
| Title | Simplicius(?) on the first book of Aristotle’s De Anima |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Published in | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Pages | 91-112 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
Neoplatonic exposition of classical Greek philosophy includes two kinds of reinterpretation. The first and most basic is, of course, the reading of Plato himself as a Neoplatonist. This is, it goes without saying, to be found primarily in all the independent works of Neopla tonism, as well as in commentaries on works of Plato. The other, with which readers of the Aristotelian commentators are more often concerned, is the Platonization of Aristotle. The latter is crucial to our understanding of any Neoplatonist commentator, both in himself and also as an authority on Aristotle. And since we are dealing with a text at least superficially based on Aristotle, I shall devote most of this paper to some of the somewhat strange interpretations of him to be found in Book 1 of the De anima commentary. At the same time this particular book also offers an opportunity, which the commentary on what will have seemed to him the more obviously philosophically in teresting parts of the De anima does not1, to see how Simplicius works in the area of Plato interpretation, and we shall look at the way in which Plato and Aristotle are both subjected to similar tech niques of interpretation. [p. 91] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/b0MGk7ACSQL6CCE |
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| Title | Simplicius: On Aristotle ‘On the Soul 3.1–5’ |
| Type | Monograph |
| Language | English |
| Date | 2000 |
| Publication Place | London |
| Publisher | Duckworth |
| Series | Ancient commentators on Aristotle |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | , Simplicius |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. (Blumenthal, Henry J.) , |
In On the Soul 3.1-5, Aristotle goes beyond the five sense to the general functions of sense perception, the imagination and the so-called active intellect, the of which was still a matter of controversy in the time of Thomas Aquinas. In his commentary on Aristotle's text, 'Simplicius' insists that the intellect in question is not something transcendental but the human rational soul. He denies both Plotinus' view that a part of the soul has never descended from uninterrupted contemplation of the Platonic Forms, and Proclus' view that the soul cannot be changed in its substance through embodiment. He also denies that imagination sees things as true or false, which requires awareness of one's own cognitions. He thinks that imagination works by projecting imprints. In the case of mathematics, it can make the imprints more like shapes taken on during sense perception or more like concepts, which calls for lines without breadth. He acknowledges that Aristotle would not agree to reify these concepts as substances, but thinks of mathematical entities as mere abstractions. Addressing the vexed question of authorship, H. J. Blumenthal concludes that the commentary was written neither by Simplicius nor Priscian. In a novel interpretation, he suggests that if Priscian had any hand in this commentary, it might have been as editor of notes from Simplicius' lectures. [offical abstract] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/3B0pZxic5793Qw5 |
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| Title | Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5 |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1997 |
| Published in | Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. Essays Presented to John Whittaker |
| Pages | 213-228 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Joyal, Mark |
| Translator(s) |
As often, the title of this paper needs a word of explanation, since some readers, though not our dedicatee, might wonder who the author I call Ps-Simplicius might be. Those whose interests lie in Aristotle rather than his Neoplatonic commentators may not all be aware that there is a serious problem about the authorship of the De Anima commentary, which they know as the work of Simplicius. This is not the place to discuss this problem, which I and others have discussed elsewhere,¹ but the fact, as I think one must now take it to be, that our author is not the real Simplicius has an important implication for any study on the text of this work. That is, the substantial corpus of work by Simplicius himself cannot be used to corroborate—or undermine—readings in our work, and one cannot appeal to it for support for a conjecture. This is all the more so since one of the stronger arguments for denying authorship to the real Simplicius is that the language of the De Anima commentary is so different from his as to put it beyond the bounds of possibility that we are dealing with two different kinds of writing from one and the same hand.*² If, as some think, the author was Priscian of Lydia, author of the Metaphrasis in Theophrastum, we could occasionally appeal to that work, though it is short—a mere thirty-seven pages of Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.³ But I think there are difficulties about that identification which are sufficient to require at least a degree of caution, and that all one can safely say is that this commentary comes from the same intellectual area as the works of Simplicius, Priscian, and Damascius, all Neoplatonists who worked in Athens at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth. Hence the label Ps-Simplicius—a counsel of prudence, if not quite despair: not quite, because a solution is possible in principle, though I suspect that we may never arrive at it. [introduction p. 213-214] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/SafBRE6SrgivoG5 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1469","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1469,"authors_free":[{"id":2543,"entry_id":1469,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2544,"entry_id":1469,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":540,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Joyal, Mark","free_first_name":"Mark","free_last_name":"Joyal","norm_person":{"id":540,"first_name":"Mark","last_name":"Joyal","full_name":"Joyal, Mark","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1162514582","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5","main_title":{"title":"Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5"},"abstract":"As often, the title of this paper needs a word of explanation, since some readers, though not our dedicatee, might wonder who the author I call Ps-Simplicius might be. Those whose interests lie in Aristotle rather than his Neoplatonic commentators may not all be aware that there is a serious problem about the authorship of the De Anima commentary, which they know as the work of Simplicius.\r\n\r\nThis is not the place to discuss this problem, which I and others have discussed elsewhere,\u00b9 but the fact, as I think one must now take it to be, that our author is not the real Simplicius has an important implication for any study on the text of this work. That is, the substantial corpus of work by Simplicius himself cannot be used to corroborate\u2014or undermine\u2014readings in our work, and one cannot appeal to it for support for a conjecture. This is all the more so since one of the stronger arguments for denying authorship to the real Simplicius is that the language of the De Anima commentary is so different from his as to put it beyond the bounds of possibility that we are dealing with two different kinds of writing from one and the same hand.*\u00b2\r\n\r\nIf, as some think, the author was Priscian of Lydia, author of the Metaphrasis in Theophrastum, we could occasionally appeal to that work, though it is short\u2014a mere thirty-seven pages of Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.\u00b3 But I think there are difficulties about that identification which are sufficient to require at least a degree of caution, and that all one can safely say is that this commentary comes from the same intellectual area as the works of Simplicius, Priscian, and Damascius, all Neoplatonists who worked in Athens at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth.\r\n\r\nHence the label Ps-Simplicius\u2014a counsel of prudence, if not quite despair: not quite, because a solution is possible in principle, though I suspect that we may never arrive at it.\r\n[introduction p. 213-214]","btype":2,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/SafBRE6SrgivoG5","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":540,"full_name":"Joyal, Mark","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1469,"section_of":1470,"pages":"213-228","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1470,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition. Essays Presented to John Whittaker","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1997","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book, which honours the career of a distinguished scholar, contains essays dealing with important problems in Plato, the Platonic tradition, and the texts and transmission of Plato and later Platonic writers. It ranges from the discussion of issues in individual Platonic dialogues to the examination of Platonism in the Middle Ages. The essays are written by leading scholars in the field and reflect the current state of knowledge on the various problems under discussion. The collection as a whole testifies to the importance of the Platonic writings for the history of ideas, and to the vitality that the study of these writings continues to possess.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/JhijSNjBEJlYa2C","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1470,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Routledge (2017)","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima , III. 1-5"]}
| Title | Soul Vehicles in Simplicius |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Published in | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Pages | 173-188 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
There has been a not inconsiderable amount of discussion of the nature and function of the ochêma—or ochêmata—the body or bodies made of not quite bodily substance, which served as an intermediary between body and soul in various Neoplatonisms from Porphyry, or even arguably Plotinus, down to and including Proclus. Rather less attention, and in Simplicius’ case virtually none, has been paid to the nature and role of such intermediary vehicles in the Neoplatonist commentators on Aristotle.
The purpose of the following pages will be to examine the use of the concept in Simplicius. In particular, it will seek to establish:
How many such vehicles there were.
What they were made of.
What was their function, and, related to this:
What was their life expectancy.
Were they simply such as one would expect to find in the work of a Neoplatonist at this time, or are they in some way modified by the commentary context?
In considering these matters, special attention will be paid to the vocabulary used to discuss them. It should not, however, come as a surprise to discover that it is not significantly, if at all, different from that of those Neoplatonists who did not concentrate their endeavors on the exposition of Aristotle. [introduction p. 173] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/iFGbdffl8v5SpA9 |
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| Title | Soul and intellect: Studies in Plotinus and later Neoplatonism |
| Type | Monograph |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1993 |
| Publication Place | Aldershot (Hampshire) |
| Publisher | Variorum |
| Series | Variorum collected studies series |
| Volume | 426 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
This book presents a series of Dr. Blumenthal’s studies on the history of Neoplatonism, from its founder Plotinus to the end of Classical Antiquity, relating especially to the Neoplatonists’ doctrines about the soul. The work falls into two parts. The first deals with Plotinus and considers the soul both as part of the structure of the universe and in its capacity as the basis of the individual’s vital and cognitive functions. The second part is concerned with the later history of Neoplatonism, including its end. Its main focus is the investigation of how Neoplatonic psychology was modified and developed by later philosophers, in particular the commentators on Aristotle, and used as the starting point for their Platonizing interpretations of his philosophy. |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/Hj2vOznXoMqSzco |
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| Title | The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1991 |
| Published in | Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition |
| Pages | 175-189 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hadot, Ilsetraut |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. , Robinson, Howard |
| Translator(s) |
This brief comparison between Plato and Aristotle reveals once again the attitude of our Alexandrian commentators—Philoponus, Olympiodorus, and Elias in the case I have just discussed—towards the philosophers: for them, the two philosophers are mutually complementary, but the genius of the divine Plato is superior to Aristotle. Aristotle only knows how to establish logical rules, which he discovers by analyzing the logical elements in Plato’s work, whereas Plato practiced logical proof spontaneously and intuitively without formulating the rules for it. Here again, we meet the principle of Aristotle’s inferiority to Plato, which determines the harmonizing trend as well as its limitations. Thanks to Marinus’ Life of Proclus and Damascius’ Life of Isidore, we know the role of the study of the works of Aristotle with commentary in the teaching of the School of Athens at the time when Syrianus, then Proclus, then Isidore ran the School. Syrianus initiated Proclus into Plato’s mystical doctrine after Proclus had been adequately prepared by studying the works of Aristotle, as if, so to speak, by way of preparatory or ‘minor’ mysteries. So, in directing Proclus’ studies, Syrianus proceeds in due order, as Marinus emphasizes, and ‘does not leap over the threshold’; in other words, Proclus proceeds in the set order and does not miss out any step in the teaching. Isidore, too, came to Plato’s philosophy after studying Aristotle. I hope to have shown in this paper that the part played by the study of and commentary on Aristotle’s works remained the same up to the end of Neoplatonism. Aristotle was never studied for his own sake by the Neoplatonists, but always as a necessary preparation for the philosophy of Plato. [conclusion p. 188-189] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/mXkoXV2wq7SgBs3 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"640","_score":null,"_source":{"id":640,"authors_free":[{"id":909,"entry_id":640,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":4,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","free_first_name":"Ilsetraut","free_last_name":"Hadot","norm_person":{"id":4,"first_name":"Ilsetraut","last_name":"Hadot","full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/107415011","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":910,"entry_id":640,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":911,"entry_id":640,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories","main_title":{"title":"The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories"},"abstract":"This brief comparison between Plato and Aristotle reveals once again the attitude of our Alexandrian commentators\u2014Philoponus, Olympiodorus, and Elias in the case I have just discussed\u2014towards the philosophers: for them, the two philosophers are mutually complementary, but the genius of the divine Plato is superior to Aristotle.\r\n\r\nAristotle only knows how to establish logical rules, which he discovers by analyzing the logical elements in Plato\u2019s work, whereas Plato practiced logical proof spontaneously and intuitively without formulating the rules for it. Here again, we meet the principle of Aristotle\u2019s inferiority to Plato, which determines the harmonizing trend as well as its limitations.\r\n\r\nThanks to Marinus\u2019 Life of Proclus and Damascius\u2019 Life of Isidore, we know the role of the study of the works of Aristotle with commentary in the teaching of the School of Athens at the time when Syrianus, then Proclus, then Isidore ran the School. Syrianus initiated Proclus into Plato\u2019s mystical doctrine after Proclus had been adequately prepared by studying the works of Aristotle, as if, so to speak, by way of preparatory or \u2018minor\u2019 mysteries.\r\n\r\nSo, in directing Proclus\u2019 studies, Syrianus proceeds in due order, as Marinus emphasizes, and \u2018does not leap over the threshold\u2019; in other words, Proclus proceeds in the set order and does not miss out any step in the teaching. Isidore, too, came to Plato\u2019s philosophy after studying Aristotle.\r\n\r\nI hope to have shown in this paper that the part played by the study of and commentary on Aristotle\u2019s works remained the same up to the end of Neoplatonism. Aristotle was never studied for his own sake by the Neoplatonists, but always as a necessary preparation for the philosophy of Plato. [conclusion p. 188-189]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/mXkoXV2wq7SgBs3","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":4,"full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":640,"section_of":354,"pages":"175-189","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy according to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories"]}
| Title | The commentators: their identity and their background |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Published in | Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the "De Anima" |
| Pages | 35-51 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
While in the previous chapter we have been looking at the overall similarity of the commentators’ methods and assumptions, it is now time to try to say something about them as individuals and the work they produced. This is not an easy task. We may have lives of the most important philosophers, Plotinus and Proclus, and even of an apparent nonentity like Isidore, but for those who wrote commentaries on Aristotle, we can often do little more than establish places of activity and approximate dates. The information most consistently available is the most useless—an indication, sometimes no more than a manuscript tradition with all the doubts attaching to that, of the town or area a man came from or was known by: “Proclus the Lycian,” “Simplicius the Cilician,” “Priscian the Lydian.” Those who operated in Alexandria are usually labeled “Alexandrian,” too consistently for the label to be anything more than an indication that that was where they worked or spent an important part of their careers. Thus, all we know, in most cases, is where some of the writers we are concerned with began their lives, and then only to the extent of knowing what part of the world it was in. Nevertheless, some information on the commentators is provided by sources that tell us about them incidentally to their main aim. Damascius’ reconstructed Life of Isidore is one such source: it deals in passing with those who were either personally or historically connected with the subject of the work. Much of the information about the relation between those who worked at Athens and Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries is derived from that source. In particular, most of the evidence about who studied with whom and where is to be found there. Unfortunately, by far the larger of two collections of excerpts in Photius (codd. 181 and 242), by whom most of the surviving contents have been preserved, comes from a particularly scrappy part of his work, so that we often do not know which snippets should be taken together, a point that affects, among other things, an important question about Ammonius. Two works that do survive and give us some further help are Zacharias’ Life of Severus, from which, though it concentrates on Christians, we can learn something about conditions in the schools of Alexandria as well as about their students and teachers, and the same writer’s dialogue Ammonius, which provides rather less than its title might lead one to hope, being concerned primarily with matters in dispute between pagans and Christians, such as the eternity of the world and the creative activity of God. It tells us very little about Ammonius but does raise a question of some importance about his beliefs, with which we must deal below. At an earlier period, Marinus’ Life of Proclus, a document often distorted by the desire to fit biographical facts to philosophical notions, gives us some information about others who worked at Athens and are part of the story of Aristotelian commentary—namely, Plutarch and Syrianus, who, Marinus tells us, were respectively master and pupil, as well as both being teachers of Proclus. In addition, he mentions persons about whom he gives us little or no other information, such as Plutarch’s grandson Archiadas and Proclus’ contemporary Domninus. Unfortunately, the Life does not proceed in chronological order because its structure depends on a framework of the Neoplatonic scale of virtues and Proclus’ ascent to its summit. In addition to what these sources provide, we have pieces of more or less incidental information from elsewhere, some of it not unimportant. Such are the dates infrequently given en passant in the commentaries and the occasional references to philosophy in both contemporary and later historians. Some of these references are notoriously difficult to interpret or even simply unreliable. In this category are the details of the exile of 529 and the possible return from it. In addition, there are entries in or from the lexica and other compilations so popular in late Classical antiquity and early Byzantine culture; some of these overlap both with each other and with the material found in Photius. There are some figures in the tradition of Aristotelian commentary about whom we know almost nothing. Such are Asclepius, the editor of Ammonius’ Metaphysics course, at least for Books A-Z, Olympiodorus in the next generation, and his presumed pupil Elias. His—probably—contemporary David is well known in the Armenian tradition but not in the Greek. The last three, as it happens, are all later than the last surviving Life of a philosopher. One of the perversities of the distribution of information is that we are often better informed about those whose work has been lost but was clearly important in the tradition, like Plutarch, and even those whose work has been lost and may not have been important in the interpretation of either the Platonic or the Aristotelian writings in any case, like Isidore, than about the authors of considerable parts of our corpus of texts, like Ammonius and Simplicius. Let us now go back to the beginning and look at what we do know about those who contributed to the exposition of the De Anima, leaving aside Plotinus, whose contribution was the more general one of integrating Aristotelian psychology into Neoplatonic philosophy and about whose life we are reasonably well, if somewhat sporadically, informed. We can say that Iamblichus, the initiator of the organization of the Neoplatonists’ Aristotle and Plato course, and perhaps their Aristotle course as well, probably did not write a De Anima commentary, a matter we shall return to shortly, but Ps-Simplicius claims to follow the guidance he offered in his own treatise on the soul. Since, however, most of that has been lost, and Ps-Simplicius’ De Anima commentary notoriously fails to provide the extensive documentation and specific attributions found in the other Simplicius commentaries, we can assess neither the real extent nor the specific details of Iamblichus’ influence. That situation contrasts with what obtains in the case of their Categories commentaries: while in this case Iamblichus’ commentary is lost, Simplicius refers to it constantly by name. It is worth mentioning that Proclus does the same in his Timaeus commentary, showing that Iamblichus’ lead was followed by at least some—perhaps avoiding at this stage adding "Athenians"—at both ends of the combined Aristotle and Plato course. Nevertheless, the combination of Ps-Simplicius’ expression of intent in the De Anima commentary and what actually happens in other commentaries suggests that Iamblichus’ influence on the exposition of the De Anima will not have been negligible. Its extent may or may not have been greater because of his place early in the story: though his exact dates cannot be established, they fall in the second half of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, making it possible that he was actually a pupil of Porphyry, as later writers assert—an assertion that must, however, be treated with some care because of the notorious habit of ancient biographers and doxographers of arranging philosophers in chains of master-pupil relations, a habit that affects the whole history of Greek philosophy from Thales to the end. After Iamblichus, there is a gap in the history of Platonism and also of Aristotelian exposition. The latter is, however, partly filled by the anomalous figure of Themistius, partly because of the very anomaly that consists in his being a Peripatetic and standing outside the mainstream of philosophical development, which was by now almost entirely Platonist. Themistius differs from the other commentators in another respect too. Most of them were, as far as we know, the equivalent of professional philosophers today, producing philosophical research while earning their living by teaching, subsidized perhaps, in the case of those Neoplatonists working at Athens, by the Academy’s funds, from whatever source these came. Themistius, on the other hand, was a diplomat and politician whose interest in Aristotle might be thought of as loosely analogous to Gladstone’s in Homer. The commentaries were written early in his life, and there is no evidence that he ever returned to actual study of Aristotle, nor that he ever taught philosophy. Nor is there any evidence that will withstand scrutiny that he ever wrote on Plato, great as his admiration for him was. [introduction p. 35-38] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/GBYzMZ4X3Nt0hsI |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1449","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1449,"authors_free":[{"id":2431,"entry_id":1449,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2444,"entry_id":1449,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The commentators: their identity and their background","main_title":{"title":"The commentators: their identity and their background"},"abstract":"While in the previous chapter we have been looking at the overall similarity of the commentators\u2019 methods and assumptions, it is now time to try to say something about them as individuals and the work they produced. This is not an easy task. We may have lives of the most important philosophers, Plotinus and Proclus, and even of an apparent nonentity like Isidore, but for those who wrote commentaries on Aristotle, we can often do little more than establish places of activity and approximate dates.\r\n\r\nThe information most consistently available is the most useless\u2014an indication, sometimes no more than a manuscript tradition with all the doubts attaching to that, of the town or area a man came from or was known by: \u201cProclus the Lycian,\u201d \u201cSimplicius the Cilician,\u201d \u201cPriscian the Lydian.\u201d Those who operated in Alexandria are usually labeled \u201cAlexandrian,\u201d too consistently for the label to be anything more than an indication that that was where they worked or spent an important part of their careers. Thus, all we know, in most cases, is where some of the writers we are concerned with began their lives, and then only to the extent of knowing what part of the world it was in.\r\n\r\nNevertheless, some information on the commentators is provided by sources that tell us about them incidentally to their main aim. Damascius\u2019 reconstructed Life of Isidore is one such source: it deals in passing with those who were either personally or historically connected with the subject of the work. Much of the information about the relation between those who worked at Athens and Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries is derived from that source. In particular, most of the evidence about who studied with whom and where is to be found there.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, by far the larger of two collections of excerpts in Photius (codd. 181 and 242), by whom most of the surviving contents have been preserved, comes from a particularly scrappy part of his work, so that we often do not know which snippets should be taken together, a point that affects, among other things, an important question about Ammonius.\r\n\r\nTwo works that do survive and give us some further help are Zacharias\u2019 Life of Severus, from which, though it concentrates on Christians, we can learn something about conditions in the schools of Alexandria as well as about their students and teachers, and the same writer\u2019s dialogue Ammonius, which provides rather less than its title might lead one to hope, being concerned primarily with matters in dispute between pagans and Christians, such as the eternity of the world and the creative activity of God. It tells us very little about Ammonius but does raise a question of some importance about his beliefs, with which we must deal below.\r\n\r\nAt an earlier period, Marinus\u2019 Life of Proclus, a document often distorted by the desire to fit biographical facts to philosophical notions, gives us some information about others who worked at Athens and are part of the story of Aristotelian commentary\u2014namely, Plutarch and Syrianus, who, Marinus tells us, were respectively master and pupil, as well as both being teachers of Proclus. In addition, he mentions persons about whom he gives us little or no other information, such as Plutarch\u2019s grandson Archiadas and Proclus\u2019 contemporary Domninus. Unfortunately, the Life does not proceed in chronological order because its structure depends on a framework of the Neoplatonic scale of virtues and Proclus\u2019 ascent to its summit.\r\n\r\nIn addition to what these sources provide, we have pieces of more or less incidental information from elsewhere, some of it not unimportant. Such are the dates infrequently given en passant in the commentaries and the occasional references to philosophy in both contemporary and later historians. Some of these references are notoriously difficult to interpret or even simply unreliable. In this category are the details of the exile of 529 and the possible return from it. In addition, there are entries in or from the lexica and other compilations so popular in late Classical antiquity and early Byzantine culture; some of these overlap both with each other and with the material found in Photius.\r\n\r\nThere are some figures in the tradition of Aristotelian commentary about whom we know almost nothing. Such are Asclepius, the editor of Ammonius\u2019 Metaphysics course, at least for Books A-Z, Olympiodorus in the next generation, and his presumed pupil Elias. His\u2014probably\u2014contemporary David is well known in the Armenian tradition but not in the Greek. The last three, as it happens, are all later than the last surviving Life of a philosopher.\r\n\r\nOne of the perversities of the distribution of information is that we are often better informed about those whose work has been lost but was clearly important in the tradition, like Plutarch, and even those whose work has been lost and may not have been important in the interpretation of either the Platonic or the Aristotelian writings in any case, like Isidore, than about the authors of considerable parts of our corpus of texts, like Ammonius and Simplicius.\r\n\r\nLet us now go back to the beginning and look at what we do know about those who contributed to the exposition of the De Anima, leaving aside Plotinus, whose contribution was the more general one of integrating Aristotelian psychology into Neoplatonic philosophy and about whose life we are reasonably well, if somewhat sporadically, informed.\r\n\r\nWe can say that Iamblichus, the initiator of the organization of the Neoplatonists\u2019 Aristotle and Plato course, and perhaps their Aristotle course as well, probably did not write a De Anima commentary, a matter we shall return to shortly, but Ps-Simplicius claims to follow the guidance he offered in his own treatise on the soul.\r\n\r\nSince, however, most of that has been lost, and Ps-Simplicius\u2019 De Anima commentary notoriously fails to provide the extensive documentation and specific attributions found in the other Simplicius commentaries, we can assess neither the real extent nor the specific details of Iamblichus\u2019 influence. That situation contrasts with what obtains in the case of their Categories commentaries: while in this case Iamblichus\u2019 commentary is lost, Simplicius refers to it constantly by name.\r\n\r\nIt is worth mentioning that Proclus does the same in his Timaeus commentary, showing that Iamblichus\u2019 lead was followed by at least some\u2014perhaps avoiding at this stage adding \"Athenians\"\u2014at both ends of the combined Aristotle and Plato course. Nevertheless, the combination of Ps-Simplicius\u2019 expression of intent in the De Anima commentary and what actually happens in other commentaries suggests that Iamblichus\u2019 influence on the exposition of the De Anima will not have been negligible.\r\n\r\nIts extent may or may not have been greater because of his place early in the story: though his exact dates cannot be established, they fall in the second half of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, making it possible that he was actually a pupil of Porphyry, as later writers assert\u2014an assertion that must, however, be treated with some care because of the notorious habit of ancient biographers and doxographers of arranging philosophers in chains of master-pupil relations, a habit that affects the whole history of Greek philosophy from Thales to the end.\r\n\r\nAfter Iamblichus, there is a gap in the history of Platonism and also of Aristotelian exposition. The latter is, however, partly filled by the anomalous figure of Themistius, partly because of the very anomaly that consists in his being a Peripatetic and standing outside the mainstream of philosophical development, which was by now almost entirely Platonist.\r\n\r\nThemistius differs from the other commentators in another respect too. Most of them were, as far as we know, the equivalent of professional philosophers today, producing philosophical research while earning their living by teaching, subsidized perhaps, in the case of those Neoplatonists working at Athens, by the Academy\u2019s funds, from whatever source these came.\r\n\r\nThemistius, on the other hand, was a diplomat and politician whose interest in Aristotle might be thought of as loosely analogous to Gladstone\u2019s in Homer. The commentaries were written early in his life, and there is no evidence that he ever returned to actual study of Aristotle, nor that he ever taught philosophy. Nor is there any evidence that will withstand scrutiny that he ever wrote on Plato, great as his admiration for him was. [introduction p. 35-38]","btype":2,"date":"1996","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/GBYzMZ4X3Nt0hsI","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1449,"section_of":213,"pages":"35-51","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":213,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":1,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the \"De Anima\"","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal1996a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1996","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1996","abstract":"Steven Strange: Emory University Scholars have traditionally used the Aristotelian commentators as sources for lost philosophical works and occasionally also as aids to understanding Aristotle. In H. J. Blumenthal's view, however, the commentators often assumed that there was a Platonist philosophy to which not only they but Aristotle himself subscribed. Their expository writing usually expressed their versions of Neoplatonist philosophy. Blumenthal here places the commentators in their intellectual and historical contexts, identifies their philosophical views, and demonstrates their tendency to read Aristotle as if he were a member of their philosophical circle.This book focuses on the commentators' exposition of Aristotle's treatise De anima (On the Soul), because it is relatively well documented and because the concept of soul was so important in all Neoplatonic systems. Blumenthal explains how the Neoplatonizing of Aristotle's thought, as well as the widespread use of the commentators' works, influenced the understanding of Aristotle in both the Islamic and Judaeo-Christian traditions.H. J. Blumenthal is the author or coeditor of six previous books and is currently preparing a two-volume translation, with introduction and commentary, of Simplicius' Commentary on \"De anima\" for publication in Cornell's series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/VOUUZIIp0rHNG0V","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":213,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The commentators: their identity and their background"]}
| Title | The writings of the De anima commentators |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1996 |
| Published in | Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the "De Anima" |
| Pages | 53-71 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Translator(s) |
So far we have discussed the work of our commentators as if it was simply scholarship and philosophical exposition, whether of their own philosophy or that of Aristotle which most of them held to be fundamen tally the same. There is, however, another aspect of the commentaries which, while not prominent, should not be forgotten. That is the way in which doing such work was an integral part of a life aimed at the greatest possible degree of return to that higher reality from which the commenta tors saw human life as a decline and separation. It is becoming increasingly better understood that for the great majority of Greek philo sophers, philosophy was not only a way of thinking but a way of life.70 The late Neoplatonists seem to have gone even further, and regarded the production of commentaries as a kind of service to the divine, much as a Christian monk who engaged in scholarship would have seen it in that light So we find at the end of Simplicius’ commentary on the De caelo what can only be described as a prayer: ‘Oh lord and artificer of the universe and the simple bodies in it, to you and all that has been brought into being by you I offer this work as a hymn, being eager to see as a revelation the magnitude of your works and to proclaim it to those who are worthy, so that thinking no mean or mortal thoughts about you we may make obeisance to you in accordance with the high place you occupy in respect of all that is produced by you’ (731.25-9). Those who think that ancient philosophy ceased to be of interest some three and a half centuries before these words were written and who may from time to time consult Sim plicius for an opinion on the meaning of an Aristotelian text, are unlikely ever to see these words, or those that come at the end of the commentary on the Enckeiridion (138.22-3). Without them they cannot fully under stand the nature of works beyond whose surface they never penetrate, works whose very composition could be seen as an act of reverence to the gods of paganism. [Conclusion, p. 71] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/OwPB7ahnasyI8P2 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"927","_score":null,"_source":{"id":927,"authors_free":[{"id":1371,"entry_id":927,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2527,"entry_id":927,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The writings of the De anima commentators","main_title":{"title":"The writings of the De anima commentators"},"abstract":"So far we have discussed the work of our commentators as if it was \r\nsimply scholarship and philosophical exposition, whether of their own \r\nphilosophy or that of Aristotle which most of them held to be fundamen\u00ad\r\ntally the same. There is, however, another aspect of the commentaries \r\nwhich, while not prominent, should not be forgotten. That is the way in \r\nwhich doing such work was an integral part of a life aimed at the greatest \r\npossible degree of return to that higher reality from which the commenta\u00ad\r\ntors saw human life as a decline and separation. It is becoming \r\nincreasingly better understood that for the great majority of Greek philo\u00ad\r\nsophers, philosophy was not only a way of thinking but a way of life.70 The \r\nlate Neoplatonists seem to have gone even further, and regarded the \r\nproduction of commentaries as a kind of service to the divine, much as a \r\nChristian monk who engaged in scholarship would have seen it in that \r\nlight So we find at the end of Simplicius\u2019 commentary on the De caelo what \r\ncan only be described as a prayer: \u2018Oh lord and artificer of the universe \r\nand the simple bodies in it, to you and all that has been brought into being \r\nby you I offer this work as a hymn, being eager to see as a revelation the \r\nmagnitude of your works and to proclaim it to those who are worthy, so \r\nthat thinking no mean or mortal thoughts about you we may make \r\nobeisance to you in accordance with the high place you occupy in respect \r\nof all that is produced by you\u2019 (731.25-9). Those who think that ancient \r\nphilosophy ceased to be of interest some three and a half centuries before \r\nthese words were written and who may from time to time consult Sim\u00ad\r\nplicius for an opinion on the meaning of an Aristotelian text, are unlikely \r\never to see these words, or those that come at the end of the commentary \r\non the Enckeiridion (138.22-3). Without them they cannot fully under\u00ad\r\nstand the nature of works beyond whose surface they never penetrate, \r\nworks whose very composition could be seen as an act of reverence to the \r\ngods of paganism. [Conclusion, p. 71]","btype":2,"date":"1996","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/OwPB7ahnasyI8P2","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":927,"section_of":213,"pages":"53-71","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":213,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":1,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and Neoplatonism in late antiquity: Interpretations of the \"De Anima\"","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal1996a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1996","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1996","abstract":"Steven Strange: Emory University Scholars have traditionally used the Aristotelian commentators as sources for lost philosophical works and occasionally also as aids to understanding Aristotle. In H. J. Blumenthal's view, however, the commentators often assumed that there was a Platonist philosophy to which not only they but Aristotle himself subscribed. Their expository writing usually expressed their versions of Neoplatonist philosophy. Blumenthal here places the commentators in their intellectual and historical contexts, identifies their philosophical views, and demonstrates their tendency to read Aristotle as if he were a member of their philosophical circle.This book focuses on the commentators' exposition of Aristotle's treatise De anima (On the Soul), because it is relatively well documented and because the concept of soul was so important in all Neoplatonic systems. Blumenthal explains how the Neoplatonizing of Aristotle's thought, as well as the widespread use of the commentators' works, influenced the understanding of Aristotle in both the Islamic and Judaeo-Christian traditions.H. J. Blumenthal is the author or coeditor of six previous books and is currently preparing a two-volume translation, with introduction and commentary, of Simplicius' Commentary on \"De anima\" for publication in Cornell's series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/VOUUZIIp0rHNG0V","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":213,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The writings of the De anima commentators"]}
| Title | Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity? |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1997 |
| Journal | Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale |
| Volume | 8 |
| Pages | 143–157 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
In general we have to conclude that while the whole "Philoponus” commentary may include a number of explicit references to the biological writings, and while the real Philoponus may often refer to medical and scientific issues, there is no systematic bias towards explaining the contents of the De anima in terms of them. There is, however, just as in the Ps-Simplicius commentary, enough said about such matters, and enough reference made to other parts of the biological corpus, to show that the commentators were still aware of the original intentions of the work — or, at the very least, behaved as if they were — even if they did not always feel bound by them. That awareness was to survive into the Middle Ages as well. [Conclusion, p. 157] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/IJsW8b6iPwteKXr |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"893","_score":null,"_source":{"id":893,"authors_free":[{"id":1316,"entry_id":893,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity?","main_title":{"title":"Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity?"},"abstract":"In general we have to conclude that while the whole \"Philoponus\u201d commentary may include a number of explicit references to the biological writings, and while the real Philoponus may often refer to medical and scientific issues, there is no systematic bias towards explaining the contents of the De anima in terms of them. There is, however, just as in the Ps-Simplicius commentary, enough said about such matters, and \r\nenough reference made to other parts of the biological corpus, to show that the commentators were still aware of the original intentions of the work \u2014 or, at the very least, behaved as if they were \u2014 even if they did not always feel bound by them. That awareness was to survive into the Middle Ages as well. [Conclusion, p. 157]","btype":3,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/IJsW8b6iPwteKXr","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":893,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale","volume":"8","issue":"","pages":"143\u2013157"}},"sort":["Were Aristotle's Intentions in writing the De Anima Forgotten in Late Antiquity?"]}