Exegesis as Philosophy: Notes on Aristotelian Methods in Neoplatonic Commentary, 2023
By: Griffin, Michael J., Muzala, Melina (Ed.)
Title Exegesis as Philosophy: Notes on Aristotelian Methods in Neoplatonic Commentary
Type Book Section
Language English
Date 2023
Published in Ancient Greek Dialectic and Its Reception
Pages 371-396
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s) Muzala, Melina
Translator(s)

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Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire, 2015
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire
Type Monograph
Language English
Date 2015
Publication Place Oxford
Publisher Oxford University Press
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
This volume studies the origin and evolution of philosophical interest in Aristotle's Categories. After centuries of neglect, the Categories became the focus of philosophical discussion in the first century BCE, and was subsequently adopted as the basic introductory textbook for philosophy in the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions. In this study, Michael Griffin builds on earlier work to reconstruct the fragments of the earliest commentaries on the treatise, and illuminates the earliest arguments for Aristotle's approach to logic as the foundation of higher education. Griffin argues that Andronicus of Rhodes played a critical role in the Categories' rise to prominence, and that his motivations for interest in the text can be recovered. The volume also tracks Platonic and Stoic debate over the Categories, and suggests reasons for its adoption into the mainstream of both schools. Covering the period from the first century BCE to the third century CE, the volume focuses on individual philosophers whose views can be recovered from later, mostly Neoplatonic sources, including Andronicus of Rhodes, Eudorus of Alexandria, Pseudo-Archytas, Lucius, Nicostratus, Athenodorus, and Cornutus.

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Which ‘Athenodorus’ commented on Aristotle's "Categories"?, 2013
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title Which ‘Athenodorus’ commented on Aristotle's "Categories"?
Type Article
Language English
Date 2013
Journal The Classical Quarterly
Volume 63
Issue 1
Pages 199-208
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
In this note I would like to revisit the identity of one of the Categories’earliest critics, a Stoic identified only as ‘Athenodorus’in the pages of Dexippus, Porphyry and Simplicius. There is a strong consensus identifying this ‘Athenodorus’with Athenodorus Calvus, a tutor of Octavian and correspondent of Cicero, roughly contem- porary with Andronicus of Rhodes.5 I want to suggest several reasons for reconsidering this identification. In particular, I want to argue that a certain Athenodorus mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (7.68) is on philosophical grounds a compelling candidate for identi- fication with the critic of the Categories, and that Diogenes’Athenodorus is relatively unlikely to be Calvus. As an alternative to Calvus, I tentatively advance the possibility that our Athenodorus may belong to a generation of Stoic philosophers who conducted work on the Categories in the Hellenistic period, prior to the activity of Andronicus in the first century, and under the title Before the Topics (see Simpl. in Cat. 379.9, who observes that Andronicus of Rhodes was aware of this title and rejected it). [p. 200]

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What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the "Categories", 2012
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the "Categories"
Type Article
Language English
Date 2012
Journal Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
Volume 55
Issue 1
Pages 69-108
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
One of the more provocative mysteries of later ancient philosophy is how Porphyiy came to situate the Categories of Aristotle at the outset of the nascent Neoplatonic curriculum. After all, the Categories tends to strike modem readers as a temperamentally counter-Platonic work, in which Aristotle grants ontological priority to perceptible subjects over intelligible genera and species, and we are led to wonder how a Platonist would be motivated to encourage its use as a general introduction to philosophy. The commentary tradition has left us with several layers of evidence for Porphyry's reasoning. First, in answer to the general question "Why should a philosopher study the Categories?" we have Porphyry's assertion that the ten Aristotelian schemata of predication carve the genera of being accurately at the joints (in Cat. 58,5-59,33), that this isomorphism between kind of simple referring terms and kinds of beings facilitates human knowledge, and that the philosopher's path therefore begins from the correct inteipretation of the Categories (see for example T9-11, discussed below). Second, in response to the question 'Why is the Categories compatible with Platonism?’, we have Porphyry’s account that the Categories introduces the student to the study of referring terms, which refer primarily to perceptible beings; after we have grasped the correct application of language to perceptibles, however, we are prepared to 'ascend by analogy’ to the study of intelligibles, which is Plato’s ambit. But this pedagogical solution, while it jibes elegantly with Porphyry!s decision to bracket metaphysical questions from introductory logic {cf. Isagoge 4,10-15, with Barnes 2003 ad loc.), also suggests a tension between two layers of Porphyry’s thought about die Categories. On the one hand, we are motivated to read the treatise because its divisions ofmeaningful language exhaustively and accurately picture being; on the other hand, we acknowledge that the text has nothing to say about die most important kind of being, namely intelligible being. In other words, Porphyry’s leading argument in favour of studying the Categories (its comprehensiveness) seems like a strange bedfellow for his leading argument in favour of its compatibility with Platonism (its restrictedness); and the source of this general tension is the first puzzle that I would like to explore in this essay. [Introduction, pp. 69 f.]

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What Has Aristotelian Dialectic to Offer a Neoplatonist? A Possible Sample of Iamblichus at Simplicius on the Categories 12,10-13,12, 2012
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title What Has Aristotelian Dialectic to Offer a Neoplatonist? A Possible Sample of Iamblichus at Simplicius on the Categories 12,10-13,12
Type Article
Language English
Date 2012
Journal The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition
Volume 6
Pages 173-185
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
Simplicius in Cat. 12,10-13,12 presents an interesting justifijication for the study of Aristotle’s Categories, based in Neoplatonic psychology and metaphysics. I suggest that this passage could be regarded as a testimonium to Iamblichus’ reasons for endorsing Porphyry’s selection of the Categories as an introductory text of Platonic philosophy. These Iamblichean arguments, richly grounded in Neoplatonic metaphysics and psychology, may have exercised an influence comparable to Porphyry’s. [authors abstract]

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  • PAGE 1 OF 1
Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire, 2015
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire
Type Monograph
Language English
Date 2015
Publication Place Oxford
Publisher Oxford University Press
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
This volume studies the origin and evolution of philosophical interest in Aristotle's Categories. After centuries of neglect, the Categories became the focus of philosophical discussion in the first century BCE, and was subsequently adopted as the basic introductory textbook for philosophy in the Aristotelian and Platonic traditions.

In this study, Michael Griffin builds on earlier work to reconstruct the fragments of the earliest commentaries on the treatise, and illuminates the earliest arguments for Aristotle's approach to logic as the foundation of higher education. Griffin argues that Andronicus of Rhodes played a critical role in the Categories' rise to prominence, and that his motivations for interest in the text can be recovered. The volume also tracks Platonic and Stoic debate over the Categories, and suggests reasons for its adoption into the mainstream of both schools.

Covering the period from the first century BCE to the third century CE, the volume focuses on individual philosophers whose views can be recovered from later, mostly Neoplatonic sources, including Andronicus of Rhodes, Eudorus of Alexandria, Pseudo-Archytas, Lucius, Nicostratus, Athenodorus, and Cornutus.

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Exegesis as Philosophy: Notes on Aristotelian Methods in Neoplatonic Commentary, 2023
By: Griffin, Michael J., Muzala, Melina (Ed.)
Title Exegesis as Philosophy: Notes on Aristotelian Methods in Neoplatonic Commentary
Type Book Section
Language English
Date 2023
Published in Ancient Greek Dialectic and Its Reception
Pages 371-396
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s) Muzala, Melina
Translator(s)

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What Has Aristotelian Dialectic to Offer a Neoplatonist? A Possible Sample of Iamblichus at Simplicius on the Categories 12,10-13,12, 2012
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title What Has Aristotelian Dialectic to Offer a Neoplatonist? A Possible Sample of Iamblichus at Simplicius on the Categories 12,10-13,12
Type Article
Language English
Date 2012
Journal The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition
Volume 6
Pages 173-185
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
Simplicius in Cat.  12,10-13,12 presents an interesting justifijication for the study of Aristotle’s Categories, based in Neoplatonic psychology and metaphysics. I suggest that this passage could be regarded as a testimonium to Iamblichus’ reasons for endorsing Porphyry’s selection of the Categories as an introductory text of Platonic philosophy. These Iamblichean arguments, richly grounded in Neoplatonic metaphysics and psychology, may have exercised an influence comparable to Porphyry’s. [authors abstract]

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What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the "Categories", 2012
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the "Categories"
Type Article
Language English
Date 2012
Journal Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
Volume 55
Issue 1
Pages 69-108
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
One of the more provocative mysteries of later ancient philosophy is how Porphyiy came 
to situate the Categories of Aristotle at the outset of the nascent Neoplatonic curriculum.
After all, the Categories tends to strike modem readers as a temperamentally counter-Platonic work, in which Aristotle grants ontological priority to perceptible subjects over intelligible genera and species,  and we are led to wonder how a Platonist would be 
motivated to encourage its use as a general introduction to philosophy. The commentary 
tradition has left us with several  layers of evidence for Porphyry's reasoning. First, in answer to the general question  "Why should a philosopher study the Categories?" we have 
Porphyry's assertion that the ten Aristotelian schemata of predication carve the genera of 
being accurately at the joints (in Cat. 58,5-59,33), that this isomorphism between kind of simple referring terms and kinds of beings facilitates human knowledge, and that the 
philosopher's path therefore begins from the correct inteipretation of the Categories (see for example T9-11, discussed below). Second, in response to the question 'Why is the Categories compatible with Platonism?’, we have Porphyry’s account that the Categories introduces the student to the study of referring terms, which refer primarily to perceptible beings;  after  we  have  grasped  the  correct  application  of  language  to  perceptibles, 
however, we are prepared to 'ascend by analogy’ to the study of intelligibles, which is 
Plato’s ambit.  But this pedagogical  solution,  while  it jibes  elegantly with  Porphyry!s 
decision to bracket metaphysical questions from introductory logic {cf. Isagoge 4,10-15, with Barnes 2003 ad loc.), also suggests a tension between two layers of Porphyry’s thought about die Categories. On the one hand, we are motivated to read the treatise 
because its divisions ofmeaningful language exhaustively and accurately picture being; on  the  other hand,  we  acknowledge that the text has nothing to  say about die most important kind of being, namely intelligible being.  In other words, Porphyry’s leading 
argument  in  favour  of studying  the  Categories (its comprehensiveness)  seems  like a strange bedfellow for his leading argument in favour of its compatibility with Platonism 
(its restrictedness); and the source of this general tension is the first puzzle that I would like to explore in this essay. [Introduction, pp. 69 f.]

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Which ‘Athenodorus’ commented on Aristotle's "Categories"?, 2013
By: Griffin, Michael J.
Title Which ‘Athenodorus’ commented on Aristotle's "Categories"?
Type Article
Language English
Date 2013
Journal The Classical Quarterly
Volume 63
Issue 1
Pages 199-208
Categories no categories
Author(s) Griffin, Michael J.
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
In this note I would like to revisit the identity of one of the Categories’earliest
critics, a Stoic identified only as ‘Athenodorus’in the pages of Dexippus, Porphyry
and Simplicius. There is a strong consensus identifying this ‘Athenodorus’with
Athenodorus Calvus, a tutor of Octavian and correspondent of Cicero, roughly contem-
porary with Andronicus of Rhodes.5 I want to suggest several reasons for reconsidering
this identification. In particular, I want to argue that a certain Athenodorus mentioned by
Diogenes Laertius (7.68) is on philosophical grounds a compelling candidate for identi-
fication with the critic of the Categories, and that Diogenes’Athenodorus is relatively
unlikely to be Calvus. As an alternative to Calvus, I tentatively advance the possibility
that our Athenodorus may belong to a generation of Stoic philosophers who conducted
work on the Categories in the Hellenistic period, prior to the activity of Andronicus in
the first century, and under the title Before the Topics (see Simpl. in Cat. 379.9, who
observes that Andronicus of Rhodes was aware of this title and rejected it). [p. 200]

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