| 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) |
| The principate of Augustus coincided with a surge of interest in the short Aristotelian treatise which we now entitle Categories, contributing to its later installation at the outset of the philosophical curriculum and its traditional function as an introduction to logic. Thanks in part to remarks made by Plutarch (Sulla 26.1–2) and Porphyry (Vita Plotini 24.7), the origin of this interest has often been traced to Andronicus of Rhodes: his catalogue (πίνακες) and publication of the Aristotelian corpus began with the Categories and may have drawn fresh attention to a previously obscure treatise. But the later Neoplatonic sources name several other philosophers who also discussed the Categories and played an important role in crafting its interpretation during the first centuries of our era. For example, the Neoplatonist Simplicius discusses the views of Stoics and Platonists who questioned the Categories’ value as a treatment of grammar or ontology, while others defended its usefulness as an introduction to logic. These early debates, as these later sources suggest, exercised a lasting influence on the shape of subsequent philosophy and philosophical education within and beyond the Aristotelian tradition. 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 contemporary with Andronicus of Rhodes. 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 identification 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). Such a story runs counter to the older consensus, now considerably less certain, that Andronicus was the first philosopher to draw serious attention to the Categories after it had languished for centuries out of circulation. Instead, we might regard Andronicus’ relocation of the text to the outset of the Aristotelian curriculum under the new title Categories as a relatively late chapter in an ongoing tradition of commentary and polemic. In what follows, I suggest some possible motives for Andronicus’ relocation of the Categories, if it can be viewed as a response to earlier criticism. [introduction p. 199-200] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/IbfU0uOFgfzLjDG |
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| 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) |
| Through this sketch of the evidence, I hope to have suggested that there is, in any case, more to the bipartite theory than a compendious treatment or compression of the tripartite material by Porphyry, and that attention should be drawn to it as a separate and distinct layer of the tradition. I have also explored some of the ways in which both layers may be seen as predating Porphyry, while Porphyry’s approach to the Categories in the shorter commentary could be seen as building on an earlier source. As to our first mystery—the role of the Categories in the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, both first-century and Neoplatonic—I would like to offer a few concluding reflections on the theory itself. To be significant, a verbal expression must have an extension that qualifies as ὄν (Porph. In Cat. 90,30-91,12 – T17; as this passage shows, the extension might be infinite). If Busse is right to read ἕκαστον κατὰ ἀριθμὸν σημαίνει <ἕν> τῶν ὄντων (“each numerically distinct expression signifies one of the beings”) around 58,5-15 (T9), I think we are not merely dealing with the Stoic view that there are “somethings” that do not subsist—occasionally compared to Meinong's distinction of bestehen and existieren as represented by Bertrand Russell—but an even stronger view, akin to Owen’s positive reading of the Parmenidean maxim that “what can be spoken and thought must exist” (B2). That sort of intuition, though pre-Platonic, was always part of the Platonic tradition. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that we find friendly Platonist and Neopythagorean treatments in the earliest layer of the exegetical stratigraphy of the Categories, and that Porphyry should find it a suitable cornerstone around which to build later Neoplatonic ontology. The bipartite theory that I have described looks like an extensional theory of signification—as Porphyry’s language in T17 might seem to suggest, the meaning of a predicate F amounts to the set of objects said to be F. We might call this kind of view nominalist, and not very much in the spirit of Platonism as we usually conceive it. But there are also examples in the Arabic tradition that draw on the Posterior Analytics for a kind of Platonic view about the existence of eternal natures. For example (see Adamson, “Knowledge of Universals”), the tenth-century logician Ibn ʿAdī maintained that (1) terms in syllogisms directly refer (have some existing extension), (2) following the Post. An., demonstrative knowledge is never of the transient, unlimited particulars, and (3) nonetheless, demonstrative knowledge occurs; from these points, he was led to maintain that there are eternal, unchanging objects of reference. If this conclusion could be referred to as essential Platonism, then as Adamson puts it, “to some extent, Aristotle’s own words invited the Platonizing.” It seems to me compatible with Alexander’s view, if I understand his De anima rightly (especially around p. 90), that there are eternal natures that may or may not be predicated of many particulars, a view about which Sharples has also written. My suggestion here, then, is just that the interpretation of the Organon that facilitates this line of thinking goes back to a very early layer of commentary on the Categories. Modern philosophy arguably also provides examples of how a theory of direct reference can inspire different flavors of almost Platonic realism, especially when the observable infinity of particular objects of acquaintance is coupled with the observed feasibility of human knowledge. Bertrand Russell in 1945 criticized Porphyry’s work on the Categories (which he had, I suppose, indirectly) by wielding the same weapons that had served against his interpretation of Meinong in 1904. Russell credited Porphyry’s alleged misreading of Aristotle with the excessively “metaphysical” temper of subsequent logic (HWP 1945:472), including entrenched realism about genera and species and “endless bad metaphysics about unity” (198). But it was the early Russell himself who, in 1903, made every denoting phrase directly denote an existing entity and argued that “anything that can be mentioned is sure to be a term...” that has unity and in some sense exists (43). In fact, Russell was led by his pre-1905 account of denoting to frame the problem of knowledge in terms strikingly similar to our bipartite theory (see T27a): the “inmost secret of our power to deal with infinity” lies in the fact that “an infinitely complex object... can certainly not be manipulated by the human intelligence; but infinite collections, owing to the notion of denoting, can be manipulated.” Russell later eliminated (what he took to be) the Meinongian plurality of denoted beings implied by his own earlier logical realism, using his theory of descriptions as an instrument; thus the later Russell, who still maintained that “we could not acquire knowledge of absolute particulars,” came to hold that our words denote just adjectives or relations (T27b). Porphyry—and arguably many Peripatetics before him—took an analogous temperament in precisely the opposite direction. Both held, in their own way, that an ideal language would carve nature at the joints; and the semantic building blocks of Porphyry's ideal language, as I have suggested here, were rooted in a long tradition of Peripatetic thought about what Aristotle’s Categories categorize, and in particular how unity could be imposed on plurality to make sense of the world. But whereas Russell’s language ultimately aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, a Moorean world of common sense and acquaintance, Porphyry’s categorical language aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, the world of the Enneads and the existence of some eternal natures. Peripatetic and Porphyrian logicism was not Russell’s, and a similar interest in the ontological implications of their logical apparatus led to very different results at the dawn of analytic philosophy and at the dawn of Neoplatonism: by dispensing with several components of Aristotle’s theory of predication that Porphyry had held to be central, Russell had toppled the giant from whose shoulders Porphyry had spied (and at any rate hoped to teach his pupils to spy) Plotinus’s ontology. [conclusion p. 90-92] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/0V3z3uBVFDC712w |
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Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the \"Categories\""},"abstract":"Through this sketch of the evidence, I hope to have suggested that there is, in any case, more to the bipartite theory than a compendious treatment or compression of the tripartite material by Porphyry, and that attention should be drawn to it as a separate and distinct layer of the tradition. I have also explored some of the ways in which both layers may be seen as predating Porphyry, while Porphyry\u2019s approach to the Categories in the shorter commentary could be seen as building on an earlier source.\r\nAs to our first mystery\u2014the role of the Categories in the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, both first-century and Neoplatonic\u2014I would like to offer a few concluding reflections on the theory itself. To be significant, a verbal expression must have an extension that qualifies as \u1f44\u03bd (Porph. In Cat. 90,30-91,12 \u2013 T17; as this passage shows, the extension might be infinite). If Busse is right to read \u1f15\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f70 \u1f00\u03c1\u03b9\u03b8\u03bc\u1f78\u03bd \u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9 <\u1f15\u03bd> \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd (\u201ceach numerically distinct expression signifies one of the beings\u201d) around 58,5-15 (T9), I think we are not merely dealing with the Stoic view that there are \u201csomethings\u201d that do not subsist\u2014occasionally compared to Meinong's distinction of bestehen and existieren as represented by Bertrand Russell\u2014but an even stronger view, akin to Owen\u2019s positive reading of the Parmenidean maxim that \u201cwhat can be spoken and thought must exist\u201d (B2). That sort of intuition, though pre-Platonic, was always part of the Platonic tradition.\r\nPerhaps it is not so surprising, then, that we find friendly Platonist and Neopythagorean treatments in the earliest layer of the exegetical stratigraphy of the Categories, and that Porphyry should find it a suitable cornerstone around which to build later Neoplatonic ontology.\r\nThe bipartite theory that I have described looks like an extensional theory of signification\u2014as Porphyry\u2019s language in T17 might seem to suggest, the meaning of a predicate F amounts to the set of objects said to be F. We might call this kind of view nominalist, and not very much in the spirit of Platonism as we usually conceive it. But there are also examples in the Arabic tradition that draw on the Posterior Analytics for a kind of Platonic view about the existence of eternal natures.\r\nFor example (see Adamson, \u201cKnowledge of Universals\u201d), the tenth-century logician Ibn \u02bfAd\u012b maintained that (1) terms in syllogisms directly refer (have some existing extension), (2) following the Post. An., demonstrative knowledge is never of the transient, unlimited particulars, and (3) nonetheless, demonstrative knowledge occurs; from these points, he was led to maintain that there are eternal, unchanging objects of reference. If this conclusion could be referred to as essential Platonism, then as Adamson puts it, \u201cto some extent, Aristotle\u2019s own words invited the Platonizing.\u201d\r\nIt seems to me compatible with Alexander\u2019s view, if I understand his De anima rightly (especially around p. 90), that there are eternal natures that may or may not be predicated of many particulars, a view about which Sharples has also written. My suggestion here, then, is just that the interpretation of the Organon that facilitates this line of thinking goes back to a very early layer of commentary on the Categories.\r\nModern philosophy arguably also provides examples of how a theory of direct reference can inspire different flavors of almost Platonic realism, especially when the observable infinity of particular objects of acquaintance is coupled with the observed feasibility of human knowledge.\r\nBertrand Russell in 1945 criticized Porphyry\u2019s work on the Categories (which he had, I suppose, indirectly) by wielding the same weapons that had served against his interpretation of Meinong in 1904. Russell credited Porphyry\u2019s alleged misreading of Aristotle with the excessively \u201cmetaphysical\u201d temper of subsequent logic (HWP 1945:472), including entrenched realism about genera and species and \u201cendless bad metaphysics about unity\u201d (198).\r\nBut it was the early Russell himself who, in 1903, made every denoting phrase directly denote an existing entity and argued that \u201canything that can be mentioned is sure to be a term...\u201d that has unity and in some sense exists (43).\r\nIn fact, Russell was led by his pre-1905 account of denoting to frame the problem of knowledge in terms strikingly similar to our bipartite theory (see T27a): the \u201cinmost secret of our power to deal with infinity\u201d lies in the fact that \u201can infinitely complex object... can certainly not be manipulated by the human intelligence; but infinite collections, owing to the notion of denoting, can be manipulated.\u201d\r\nRussell later eliminated (what he took to be) the Meinongian plurality of denoted beings implied by his own earlier logical realism, using his theory of descriptions as an instrument; thus the later Russell, who still maintained that \u201cwe could not acquire knowledge of absolute particulars,\u201d came to hold that our words denote just adjectives or relations (T27b).\r\nPorphyry\u2014and arguably many Peripatetics before him\u2014took an analogous temperament in precisely the opposite direction. Both held, in their own way, that an ideal language would carve nature at the joints; and the semantic building blocks of Porphyry's ideal language, as I have suggested here, were rooted in a long tradition of Peripatetic thought about what Aristotle\u2019s Categories categorize, and in particular how unity could be imposed on plurality to make sense of the world.\r\nBut whereas Russell\u2019s language ultimately aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, a Moorean world of common sense and acquaintance, Porphyry\u2019s categorical language aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, the world of the Enneads and the existence of some eternal natures.\r\nPeripatetic and Porphyrian logicism was not Russell\u2019s, and a similar interest in the ontological implications of their logical apparatus led to very different results at the dawn of analytic philosophy and at the dawn of Neoplatonism: by dispensing with several components of Aristotle\u2019s theory of predication that Porphyry had held to be central, Russell had toppled the giant from whose shoulders Porphyry had spied (and at any rate hoped to teach his pupils to spy) Plotinus\u2019s ontology.\r\n [conclusion p. 90-92]","btype":3,"date":"2012","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/0V3z3uBVFDC712w","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":148,"full_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1148,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies","volume":"55","issue":"1","pages":"69-108"}},"sort":[2012]}
| 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] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/FkVb1TMzAG6AZ5E |
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| 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] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/FkVb1TMzAG6AZ5E |
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| 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) |
Through this sketch of the evidence, I hope to have suggested that there is, in any case, more to the bipartite theory than a compendious treatment or compression of the tripartite material by Porphyry, and that attention should be drawn to it as a separate and distinct layer of the tradition. I have also explored some of the ways in which both layers may be seen as predating Porphyry, while Porphyry’s approach to the Categories in the shorter commentary could be seen as building on an earlier source. As to our first mystery—the role of the Categories in the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, both first-century and Neoplatonic—I would like to offer a few concluding reflections on the theory itself. To be significant, a verbal expression must have an extension that qualifies as ὄν (Porph. In Cat. 90,30-91,12 – T17; as this passage shows, the extension might be infinite). If Busse is right to read ἕκαστον κατὰ ἀριθμὸν σημαίνει <ἕν> τῶν ὄντων (“each numerically distinct expression signifies one of the beings”) around 58,5-15 (T9), I think we are not merely dealing with the Stoic view that there are “somethings” that do not subsist—occasionally compared to Meinong's distinction of bestehen and existieren as represented by Bertrand Russell—but an even stronger view, akin to Owen’s positive reading of the Parmenidean maxim that “what can be spoken and thought must exist” (B2). That sort of intuition, though pre-Platonic, was always part of the Platonic tradition. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that we find friendly Platonist and Neopythagorean treatments in the earliest layer of the exegetical stratigraphy of the Categories, and that Porphyry should find it a suitable cornerstone around which to build later Neoplatonic ontology. The bipartite theory that I have described looks like an extensional theory of signification—as Porphyry’s language in T17 might seem to suggest, the meaning of a predicate F amounts to the set of objects said to be F. We might call this kind of view nominalist, and not very much in the spirit of Platonism as we usually conceive it. But there are also examples in the Arabic tradition that draw on the Posterior Analytics for a kind of Platonic view about the existence of eternal natures. For example (see Adamson, “Knowledge of Universals”), the tenth-century logician Ibn ʿAdī maintained that (1) terms in syllogisms directly refer (have some existing extension), (2) following the Post. An., demonstrative knowledge is never of the transient, unlimited particulars, and (3) nonetheless, demonstrative knowledge occurs; from these points, he was led to maintain that there are eternal, unchanging objects of reference. If this conclusion could be referred to as essential Platonism, then as Adamson puts it, “to some extent, Aristotle’s own words invited the Platonizing.” It seems to me compatible with Alexander’s view, if I understand his De anima rightly (especially around p. 90), that there are eternal natures that may or may not be predicated of many particulars, a view about which Sharples has also written. My suggestion here, then, is just that the interpretation of the Organon that facilitates this line of thinking goes back to a very early layer of commentary on the Categories. Modern philosophy arguably also provides examples of how a theory of direct reference can inspire different flavors of almost Platonic realism, especially when the observable infinity of particular objects of acquaintance is coupled with the observed feasibility of human knowledge. Bertrand Russell in 1945 criticized Porphyry’s work on the Categories (which he had, I suppose, indirectly) by wielding the same weapons that had served against his interpretation of Meinong in 1904. Russell credited Porphyry’s alleged misreading of Aristotle with the excessively “metaphysical” temper of subsequent logic (HWP 1945:472), including entrenched realism about genera and species and “endless bad metaphysics about unity” (198). But it was the early Russell himself who, in 1903, made every denoting phrase directly denote an existing entity and argued that “anything that can be mentioned is sure to be a term...” that has unity and in some sense exists (43). In fact, Russell was led by his pre-1905 account of denoting to frame the problem of knowledge in terms strikingly similar to our bipartite theory (see T27a): the “inmost secret of our power to deal with infinity” lies in the fact that “an infinitely complex object... can certainly not be manipulated by the human intelligence; but infinite collections, owing to the notion of denoting, can be manipulated.” Russell later eliminated (what he took to be) the Meinongian plurality of denoted beings implied by his own earlier logical realism, using his theory of descriptions as an instrument; thus the later Russell, who still maintained that “we could not acquire knowledge of absolute particulars,” came to hold that our words denote just adjectives or relations (T27b). Porphyry—and arguably many Peripatetics before him—took an analogous temperament in precisely the opposite direction. Both held, in their own way, that an ideal language would carve nature at the joints; and the semantic building blocks of Porphyry's ideal language, as I have suggested here, were rooted in a long tradition of Peripatetic thought about what Aristotle’s Categories categorize, and in particular how unity could be imposed on plurality to make sense of the world. But whereas Russell’s language ultimately aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, a Moorean world of common sense and acquaintance, Porphyry’s categorical language aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, the world of the Enneads and the existence of some eternal natures. Peripatetic and Porphyrian logicism was not Russell’s, and a similar interest in the ontological implications of their logical apparatus led to very different results at the dawn of analytic philosophy and at the dawn of Neoplatonism: by dispensing with several components of Aristotle’s theory of predication that Porphyry had held to be central, Russell had toppled the giant from whose shoulders Porphyry had spied (and at any rate hoped to teach his pupils to spy) Plotinus’s ontology. [conclusion p. 90-92] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/0V3z3uBVFDC712w |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1148","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1148,"authors_free":[{"id":1723,"entry_id":1148,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":148,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","free_first_name":"Michael J.","free_last_name":"Griffin","norm_person":{"id":148,"first_name":"Michael J.","last_name":"Griffin","full_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1065676603","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the \"Categories\"","main_title":{"title":"What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the \"Categories\""},"abstract":"Through this sketch of the evidence, I hope to have suggested that there is, in any case, more to the bipartite theory than a compendious treatment or compression of the tripartite material by Porphyry, and that attention should be drawn to it as a separate and distinct layer of the tradition. I have also explored some of the ways in which both layers may be seen as predating Porphyry, while Porphyry\u2019s approach to the Categories in the shorter commentary could be seen as building on an earlier source.\r\nAs to our first mystery\u2014the role of the Categories in the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, both first-century and Neoplatonic\u2014I would like to offer a few concluding reflections on the theory itself. To be significant, a verbal expression must have an extension that qualifies as \u1f44\u03bd (Porph. In Cat. 90,30-91,12 \u2013 T17; as this passage shows, the extension might be infinite). If Busse is right to read \u1f15\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f70 \u1f00\u03c1\u03b9\u03b8\u03bc\u1f78\u03bd \u03c3\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9 <\u1f15\u03bd> \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd (\u201ceach numerically distinct expression signifies one of the beings\u201d) around 58,5-15 (T9), I think we are not merely dealing with the Stoic view that there are \u201csomethings\u201d that do not subsist\u2014occasionally compared to Meinong's distinction of bestehen and existieren as represented by Bertrand Russell\u2014but an even stronger view, akin to Owen\u2019s positive reading of the Parmenidean maxim that \u201cwhat can be spoken and thought must exist\u201d (B2). That sort of intuition, though pre-Platonic, was always part of the Platonic tradition.\r\nPerhaps it is not so surprising, then, that we find friendly Platonist and Neopythagorean treatments in the earliest layer of the exegetical stratigraphy of the Categories, and that Porphyry should find it a suitable cornerstone around which to build later Neoplatonic ontology.\r\nThe bipartite theory that I have described looks like an extensional theory of signification\u2014as Porphyry\u2019s language in T17 might seem to suggest, the meaning of a predicate F amounts to the set of objects said to be F. We might call this kind of view nominalist, and not very much in the spirit of Platonism as we usually conceive it. But there are also examples in the Arabic tradition that draw on the Posterior Analytics for a kind of Platonic view about the existence of eternal natures.\r\nFor example (see Adamson, \u201cKnowledge of Universals\u201d), the tenth-century logician Ibn \u02bfAd\u012b maintained that (1) terms in syllogisms directly refer (have some existing extension), (2) following the Post. An., demonstrative knowledge is never of the transient, unlimited particulars, and (3) nonetheless, demonstrative knowledge occurs; from these points, he was led to maintain that there are eternal, unchanging objects of reference. If this conclusion could be referred to as essential Platonism, then as Adamson puts it, \u201cto some extent, Aristotle\u2019s own words invited the Platonizing.\u201d\r\nIt seems to me compatible with Alexander\u2019s view, if I understand his De anima rightly (especially around p. 90), that there are eternal natures that may or may not be predicated of many particulars, a view about which Sharples has also written. My suggestion here, then, is just that the interpretation of the Organon that facilitates this line of thinking goes back to a very early layer of commentary on the Categories.\r\nModern philosophy arguably also provides examples of how a theory of direct reference can inspire different flavors of almost Platonic realism, especially when the observable infinity of particular objects of acquaintance is coupled with the observed feasibility of human knowledge.\r\nBertrand Russell in 1945 criticized Porphyry\u2019s work on the Categories (which he had, I suppose, indirectly) by wielding the same weapons that had served against his interpretation of Meinong in 1904. Russell credited Porphyry\u2019s alleged misreading of Aristotle with the excessively \u201cmetaphysical\u201d temper of subsequent logic (HWP 1945:472), including entrenched realism about genera and species and \u201cendless bad metaphysics about unity\u201d (198).\r\nBut it was the early Russell himself who, in 1903, made every denoting phrase directly denote an existing entity and argued that \u201canything that can be mentioned is sure to be a term...\u201d that has unity and in some sense exists (43).\r\nIn fact, Russell was led by his pre-1905 account of denoting to frame the problem of knowledge in terms strikingly similar to our bipartite theory (see T27a): the \u201cinmost secret of our power to deal with infinity\u201d lies in the fact that \u201can infinitely complex object... can certainly not be manipulated by the human intelligence; but infinite collections, owing to the notion of denoting, can be manipulated.\u201d\r\nRussell later eliminated (what he took to be) the Meinongian plurality of denoted beings implied by his own earlier logical realism, using his theory of descriptions as an instrument; thus the later Russell, who still maintained that \u201cwe could not acquire knowledge of absolute particulars,\u201d came to hold that our words denote just adjectives or relations (T27b).\r\nPorphyry\u2014and arguably many Peripatetics before him\u2014took an analogous temperament in precisely the opposite direction. Both held, in their own way, that an ideal language would carve nature at the joints; and the semantic building blocks of Porphyry's ideal language, as I have suggested here, were rooted in a long tradition of Peripatetic thought about what Aristotle\u2019s Categories categorize, and in particular how unity could be imposed on plurality to make sense of the world.\r\nBut whereas Russell\u2019s language ultimately aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, a Moorean world of common sense and acquaintance, Porphyry\u2019s categorical language aimed to talk about, and gain certainty about, the world of the Enneads and the existence of some eternal natures.\r\nPeripatetic and Porphyrian logicism was not Russell\u2019s, and a similar interest in the ontological implications of their logical apparatus led to very different results at the dawn of analytic philosophy and at the dawn of Neoplatonism: by dispensing with several components of Aristotle\u2019s theory of predication that Porphyry had held to be central, Russell had toppled the giant from whose shoulders Porphyry had spied (and at any rate hoped to teach his pupils to spy) Plotinus\u2019s ontology.\r\n [conclusion p. 90-92]","btype":3,"date":"2012","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/0V3z3uBVFDC712w","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":148,"full_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1148,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies","volume":"55","issue":"1","pages":"69-108"}},"sort":["What does Aristotle categorize? Semantics and the early peripatetic reading of the \"Categories\""]}
| 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) |
The principate of Augustus coincided with a surge of interest in the short Aristotelian treatise which we now entitle Categories, contributing to its later installation at the outset of the philosophical curriculum and its traditional function as an introduction to logic. Thanks in part to remarks made by Plutarch (Sulla 26.1–2) and Porphyry (Vita Plotini 24.7), the origin of this interest has often been traced to Andronicus of Rhodes: his catalogue (πίνακες) and publication of the Aristotelian corpus began with the Categories and may have drawn fresh attention to a previously obscure treatise. But the later Neoplatonic sources name several other philosophers who also discussed the Categories and played an important role in crafting its interpretation during the first centuries of our era. For example, the Neoplatonist Simplicius discusses the views of Stoics and Platonists who questioned the Categories’ value as a treatment of grammar or ontology, while others defended its usefulness as an introduction to logic. These early debates, as these later sources suggest, exercised a lasting influence on the shape of subsequent philosophy and philosophical education within and beyond the Aristotelian tradition. 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 contemporary with Andronicus of Rhodes. 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 identification 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). Such a story runs counter to the older consensus, now considerably less certain, that Andronicus was the first philosopher to draw serious attention to the Categories after it had languished for centuries out of circulation. Instead, we might regard Andronicus’ relocation of the text to the outset of the Aristotelian curriculum under the new title Categories as a relatively late chapter in an ongoing tradition of commentary and polemic. In what follows, I suggest some possible motives for Andronicus’ relocation of the Categories, if it can be viewed as a response to earlier criticism. [introduction p. 199-200] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/IbfU0uOFgfzLjDG |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"821","_score":null,"_source":{"id":821,"authors_free":[{"id":1222,"entry_id":821,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":148,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","free_first_name":"Michael J.","free_last_name":"Griffin","norm_person":{"id":148,"first_name":"Michael J.","last_name":"Griffin","full_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1065676603","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Which \u2018Athenodorus\u2019 commented on Aristotle's \"Categories\"?","main_title":{"title":"Which \u2018Athenodorus\u2019 commented on Aristotle's \"Categories\"?"},"abstract":"The principate of Augustus coincided with a surge of interest in the short Aristotelian treatise which we now entitle Categories, contributing to its later installation at the outset of the philosophical curriculum and its traditional function as an introduction to logic. Thanks in part to remarks made by Plutarch (Sulla 26.1\u20132) and Porphyry (Vita Plotini 24.7), the origin of this interest has often been traced to Andronicus of Rhodes: his catalogue (\u03c0\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03ba\u03b5\u03c2) and publication of the Aristotelian corpus began with the Categories and may have drawn fresh attention to a previously obscure treatise. But the later Neoplatonic sources name several other philosophers who also discussed the Categories and played an important role in crafting its interpretation during the first centuries of our era. For example, the Neoplatonist Simplicius discusses the views of Stoics and Platonists who questioned the Categories\u2019 value as a treatment of grammar or ontology, while others defended its usefulness as an introduction to logic. These early debates, as these later sources suggest, exercised a lasting influence on the shape of subsequent philosophy and philosophical education within and beyond the Aristotelian tradition.\r\n\r\nIn this note, I would like to revisit the identity of one of the Categories\u2019 earliest critics, a Stoic identified only as \u2018Athenodorus\u2019 in the pages of Dexippus, Porphyry, and Simplicius. There is a strong consensus identifying this \u2018Athenodorus\u2019 with Athenodorus Calvus, a tutor of Octavian and correspondent of Cicero, roughly contemporary with Andronicus of Rhodes. 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 identification with the critic of the Categories, and that Diogenes\u2019 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).\r\n\r\nSuch a story runs counter to the older consensus, now considerably less certain, that Andronicus was the first philosopher to draw serious attention to the Categories after it had languished for centuries out of circulation. Instead, we might regard Andronicus\u2019 relocation of the text to the outset of the Aristotelian curriculum under the new title Categories as a relatively late chapter in an ongoing tradition of commentary and polemic. In what follows, I suggest some possible motives for Andronicus\u2019 relocation of the Categories, if it can be viewed as a response to earlier criticism. [introduction p. 199-200]","btype":3,"date":"2013","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/IbfU0uOFgfzLjDG","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":148,"full_name":"Griffin, Michael J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":821,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"The Classical Quarterly","volume":"63","issue":"1","pages":"199-208"}},"sort":["Which \u2018Athenodorus\u2019 commented on Aristotle's \"Categories\"?"]}