{"_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":[1997]}

{"_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":[1996]}

{"_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]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"896","_score":null,"_source":{"id":896,"authors_free":[{"id":1322,"entry_id":896,"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":2442,"entry_id":896,"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":"Soul Vehicles in Simplicius","main_title":{"title":"Soul Vehicles in Simplicius"},"abstract":"There has been a not inconsiderable amount of discussion of the nature and function of the och\u00eama\u2014or och\u00eamata\u2014the 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\u2019 case virtually none, has been paid to the nature and role of such intermediary vehicles in the Neoplatonist commentators on Aristotle.\r\n\r\nThe purpose of the following pages will be to examine the use of the concept in Simplicius. In particular, it will seek to establish:\r\n\r\n How many such vehicles there were.\r\n What they were made of.\r\n What was their function, and, related to this:\r\n What was their life expectancy.\r\n 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?\r\n\r\nIn 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]","btype":2,"date":"1993","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/iFGbdffl8v5SpA9","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":896,"section_of":214,"pages":"173-188","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]}

{"_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]}

{"_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]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"784","_score":null,"_source":{"id":784,"authors_free":[{"id":1154,"entry_id":784,"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":2428,"entry_id":784,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":109,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Duffy, John","free_first_name":"John","free_last_name":"Duffy","norm_person":{"id":109,"first_name":"John","last_name":"Duffy","full_name":"Duffy, John","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1032769092","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2429,"entry_id":784,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":110,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Peradotto, John J.","free_first_name":"John J.","free_last_name":"Peradotto","norm_person":{"id":110,"first_name":"John J.","last_name":"Peradotto","full_name":"Peradotto, John J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172304636","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Simplicius and others on Aristotle\u2019s discussions of reason","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius and others on Aristotle\u2019s discussions of reason"},"abstract":"What I want to do in this paper is to look at how Aristotle\u2019s \r\nsuccessors treated some points in his discussions of reason, and in \r\nparticular the discussion in the De anima. bout their handling of \r\nrelevant parts of the Nichomachaean Ethics we know very little, for \r\nunlike the De anima that treatise was not a major subject of study in \r\nthe philosophical lectures and seminars of late antiquity. Though a \r\ncommentary on some of it had been written by Aspasius, and notes by \r\nother, probably pre-Neoplatonic, hands survive,8 exposition of the \r\nNicomachean Ethics seems to have been one of the gaps that the group \r\nof Aristotelians around Anna Comnena in twelfth-century Constantinople felt that they needed to fill. [pp. 104 f.]","btype":2,"date":"1988","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/fYDdU8vNuJj4BJd","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":109,"full_name":"Duffy, John","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":110,"full_name":"Peradotto, John J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":784,"section_of":35,"pages":"103-119","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":35,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Gonimos: Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies presented to Leendert G. Westerink at 75","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Duffy1988","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1988","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1988","abstract":"This volume, dedicated to the scholar Leendert G. Westerink, comprises 16 articles across two main areas of his research interests: Neo-Platonic and Byzantine studies. The six Neo-Platonic articles explore subjects such as manuscript histories, philosophical debates, and influences of figures like Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Notably, Father Saffrey investigates an anonymous commentary on Parmenides, while other authors delve into Neo-Platonic mathematics, hymns, and commentaries on Aristotle\u2019s discussions of reason.\r\n\r\nThe ten Byzantine studies articles cover a diverse range of historical and cultural insights. Topics include Byzantine letter-writing practices, with George Dennis highlighting humor in personal correspondence, and Cyril Mango examining the collapse of St. Sophia. Further articles focus on figures such as Psellus, Patriarch Cosmas, and fourteenth-century scholar Georgios Karbones, alongside explorations of political and religious tensions in the Ionian Islands under various European rulers. This collection offers an in-depth look at both Neo-Platonic philosophy and Byzantine cultural dynamics, illustrating the intellectual legacy of Westerink\u2019s scholarship. [summary of Lucas Siorvanes' Review]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/QCXOrqqEdxnvWCD","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":35,"pubplace":"Buffalo \u2013 New York","publisher":"Arethusa","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1988]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"873","_score":null,"_source":{"id":873,"authors_free":[{"id":1282,"entry_id":873,"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":1283,"entry_id":873,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":403,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Markus, R. A.","free_first_name":"R. A.","free_last_name":"Markus","norm_person":{"id":403,"first_name":"R. A.","last_name":"Markus","full_name":"Markus, R. A.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/121838862","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2229,"entry_id":873,"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}}],"entry_title":"Plotinus in later Platonism","main_title":{"title":"Plotinus in later Platonism"},"abstract":"We have seen, then, that in some areas later Neoplatonists introduced Plotinus\u2019 views to corroborate their own. This was equally true of his opinions as a Platonist and, as they understood him, as an interpreter of Aristotle. These agreements are most often found in relatively uncontroversial areas of their thought.\r\n\r\nHowever, at the extremes of the metaphysical world and in those other areas where difficulties were likely to arise, we do find substantial differences. We must, however, be cautious about interpreting these differences in terms of chronological changes. The later Neoplatonists continued to disagree among themselves, and the process we have examined was not one of linear development away from Plotinus. [conclusion p. 220]","btype":2,"date":"1981","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/ydcrCuFuFOAFW6r","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":403,"full_name":"Markus, R. A.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":873,"section_of":131,"pages":"212-222","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":131,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Neoplatonism and early Christian thought: Essays in honour of A.H. Armstrong","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Markus1981a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1981","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1981","abstract":"The studies collected in this book are all concerned with aspects of the Platonic tradition, either in its own internal development in the Hellenistic age and the period of the Roman Empire, or with the influence of Platonism, in one or other of its forms, on other spiritual traditions, especially that of Christianity. [offical abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/PcJka3NQUzhA8jZ","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":131,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Variorum","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1981]}