| Title | Aquinas and the Platonists |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 2002 |
| Published in | The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach |
| Pages | 279-324 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hankey, Wayne J. |
| Editor(s) | Gersh, Stephen , Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. |
| Translator(s) |
| As with all thinkers who treat the philosophies on which they depend, Aquinas has two relations to his predecessors and, in particular, to the Platonic tradition. One is that of which he is conscious, sets out explicitly, is part of how he places himself within the history of philosophy, and is essential to his understanding of that place. The other is the unconscious dependence. In every thinker, these will diverge to some extent. First, no previous philosophy can answer later questions without being altered by the questioner: a thing is received according to the mode of the receiver. The alteration made by present need is especially marked in the schools deriving from the Hellenistic philosophies, with their dependence on the exegesis of authoritative texts constantly reread to supply answers required by the new needs of thought. Second, no one is capable of a complete grasp of what forms and moves their own thought. In the case of Thomas’ relation to Platonism, the divergences, inconsistencies, and even contradictions between what he says about Platonism, how he places himself in respect to it, and its real influence on his thought are very great. In fact, Thomas’ own system stands within a tradition whose foundation, as he represents it, he self-consciously opposes. Because his understanding of the Platonic tradition is deeply problematic in many ways, while his knowledge of it is extensive, and because the tradition is itself so complex, Aquinas is frequently (or, better, normally) criticizing one aspect of Platonism from the perspective of another. Such internal criticism is characteristic of Plato’s thought and of its tradition. The ancient Platonists were, however, far better informed about the history of the tradition in which they stood than were their Latin medieval successors. The Platonists of late antiquity, upon whom Thomas depends for much of his understanding of the history of philosophy, did not have the degree of naivete present in the self-opposition that characterizes Thomas’ relation to Platonism. Getting hold of Thomas’s self-conscious relation to Platonism has been largely accomplished, and many of the tools to complete the task are available. The lexicographical aspect of the work was substantially done almost fifty years ago by R.J. Henle. His Saint Thomas and Platonism: A Study of the Plato and Platonici Texts in the Writings of Saint Thomas is almost complete in terms of the texts it considers. Henle lavishly reproduces the relevant passages in Latin. For the most part, he gives the likely sources of the doctrines attributed to the Platonists with the accuracy possible when he wrote. His analysis, within the parameters he sets and which his perspective sets for him, is thorough and inescapable. Beyond Henle’s work, it is necessary to add the few texts he missed, to correct his work on the basis of better editions than the ones he had available (or used), and to compensate for the limits of his undertaking and his biases. The principal problems with Henle’s work, once we accept its limits, lie in the vestiges of the neo-Scholastic mentality he retains. This mentality is opposed to that of the historian and was antipathetic to Platonic idealism. On this account, like Aquinas himself, he misses the extent to which Thomas’ representation of Platonism and of his own relation to it actually stands within its long and diverse tradition. Henle’s work accurately describes how, for Aquinas, a philosophical school is a fixed way of thinking, which results in “a series of like statements formulated in the several minds that teach it and learn it, that write it and read it” (as Mark Jordan puts it). Despite accepting this definition of a “philosophical teaching” from Jordan, as well as his crucial point that Aquinas is not a philosopher whose position is an Aristotelianismus in an Enlightenment or neo-Scholastic manner, I shall continue to write herein both of “Platonism” and of Thomas’ Platonism. As a matter of fact, for Aquinas, what the Platonici teach has been reduced to a fixed way of thinking, which he treats ahistorically, although he knows much of its history. Further, at several crucial points, he self-consciously sides with them. In rescuing Aquinas from neo-Scholastic representations of his philosophy, Jordan is importantly right that Aquinas did not think of Christians as philosophers. He neglects, however, the continuities that do exist between Scholastic and neo-Scholastic treatments of philosophy. Henle, working within these, through his analysis of the texts in which Thomas speaks of Plato and the Platonici, shows how Platonism is presented as one of these viae. This via Thomas criticizes, and for most purposes finds the way of Aristotle superior, even if he may accept some of the positions at which the Platonists arrive—positions that also may be reached otherwise. For Thomas, Platonism has a fundamental point of departure, established in Plato’s attempt to save certain knowledge from the consequences of the doctrine of the ancient Physicists (Priores Naturales), with whom he accepts that philosophy began. For him, Plato’s flawed solution to the epistemological problem determines Platonic ontology. The Platonic philosophical position as a whole proceeds according to a distinct method of reasoning to arrive at positions. It is a series of syllogisms whose basic premises are deficient. In the thirteenth century, only the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Timaeus were available to the Latin West. Henle concluded that Aquinas had no direct knowledge of any of them. Thus, much as with Augustine, he knows only what he takes to be Plato’s doctrines and is without knowledge of the dialogues themselves. Thomas’ approach to philosophy gave him little sympathy for the kind of dialectic by which the fundamentals of philosophy are questioned and reconsidered within and between the dialogues. The substance of Thomas’ own thinking shows almost no development—except, significantly, in his coming to accept that knowledge involves the formation of a Plotinian-Augustinian inner word in the mind, the verbum mentis. There is certainly no development remotely comparable to that within Plato’s corpus. In consequence, his picture of Plato’s way of thinking is not only lacking in the most basic information but is also without the intellectual necessities for a sympathetic representation. [introduction p. 1-3] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/LajmF4jRGYCVzFn |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1348","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1348,"authors_free":[{"id":2003,"entry_id":1348,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":167,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","free_first_name":"Wayne J.","free_last_name":"Hankey","norm_person":{"id":167,"first_name":" Wayne J.","last_name":"Hankey","full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054015821","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2361,"entry_id":1348,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":450,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Gersh, Stephen","free_first_name":"Stephen","free_last_name":"Gersh","norm_person":{"id":450,"first_name":"Stephen","last_name":"Gersh","full_name":"Gersh, Stephen","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172508460","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2362,"entry_id":1348,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":451,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. ","free_first_name":"Maarten J. F. M. ","free_last_name":"Hoenen","norm_person":{"id":451,"first_name":"Maarten J. F. M. ","last_name":"Hoenen","full_name":"Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172140307","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Aquinas and the Platonists","main_title":{"title":"Aquinas and the Platonists"},"abstract":"As with all thinkers who treat the philosophies on which they depend, Aquinas has two relations to his predecessors and, in particular, to the Platonic tradition. One is that of which he is conscious, sets out explicitly, is part of how he places himself within the history of philosophy, and is essential to his understanding of that place. The other is the unconscious dependence. In every thinker, these will diverge to some extent. First, no previous philosophy can answer later questions without being altered by the questioner: a thing is received according to the mode of the receiver. The alteration made by present need is especially marked in the schools deriving from the Hellenistic philosophies, with their dependence on the exegesis of authoritative texts constantly reread to supply answers required by the new needs of thought. Second, no one is capable of a complete grasp of what forms and moves their own thought. In the case of Thomas\u2019 relation to Platonism, the divergences, inconsistencies, and even contradictions between what he says about Platonism, how he places himself in respect to it, and its real influence on his thought are very great.\r\n\r\nIn fact, Thomas\u2019 own system stands within a tradition whose foundation, as he represents it, he self-consciously opposes. Because his understanding of the Platonic tradition is deeply problematic in many ways, while his knowledge of it is extensive, and because the tradition is itself so complex, Aquinas is frequently (or, better, normally) criticizing one aspect of Platonism from the perspective of another. Such internal criticism is characteristic of Plato\u2019s thought and of its tradition. The ancient Platonists were, however, far better informed about the history of the tradition in which they stood than were their Latin medieval successors. The Platonists of late antiquity, upon whom Thomas depends for much of his understanding of the history of philosophy, did not have the degree of naivete present in the self-opposition that characterizes Thomas\u2019 relation to Platonism.\r\n\r\nGetting hold of Thomas\u2019s self-conscious relation to Platonism has been largely accomplished, and many of the tools to complete the task are available. The lexicographical aspect of the work was substantially done almost fifty years ago by R.J. Henle. His Saint Thomas and Platonism: A Study of the Plato and Platonici Texts in the Writings of Saint Thomas is almost complete in terms of the texts it considers. Henle lavishly reproduces the relevant passages in Latin. For the most part, he gives the likely sources of the doctrines attributed to the Platonists with the accuracy possible when he wrote. His analysis, within the parameters he sets and which his perspective sets for him, is thorough and inescapable. Beyond Henle\u2019s work, it is necessary to add the few texts he missed, to correct his work on the basis of better editions than the ones he had available (or used), and to compensate for the limits of his undertaking and his biases.\r\n\r\nThe principal problems with Henle\u2019s work, once we accept its limits, lie in the vestiges of the neo-Scholastic mentality he retains. This mentality is opposed to that of the historian and was antipathetic to Platonic idealism. On this account, like Aquinas himself, he misses the extent to which Thomas\u2019 representation of Platonism and of his own relation to it actually stands within its long and diverse tradition.\r\n\r\nHenle\u2019s work accurately describes how, for Aquinas, a philosophical school is a fixed way of thinking, which results in \u201ca series of like statements formulated in the several minds that teach it and learn it, that write it and read it\u201d (as Mark Jordan puts it). Despite accepting this definition of a \u201cphilosophical teaching\u201d from Jordan, as well as his crucial point that Aquinas is not a philosopher whose position is an Aristotelianismus in an Enlightenment or neo-Scholastic manner, I shall continue to write herein both of \u201cPlatonism\u201d and of Thomas\u2019 Platonism.\r\n\r\nAs a matter of fact, for Aquinas, what the Platonici teach has been reduced to a fixed way of thinking, which he treats ahistorically, although he knows much of its history. Further, at several crucial points, he self-consciously sides with them. In rescuing Aquinas from neo-Scholastic representations of his philosophy, Jordan is importantly right that Aquinas did not think of Christians as philosophers. He neglects, however, the continuities that do exist between Scholastic and neo-Scholastic treatments of philosophy. Henle, working within these, through his analysis of the texts in which Thomas speaks of Plato and the Platonici, shows how Platonism is presented as one of these viae.\r\n\r\nThis via Thomas criticizes, and for most purposes finds the way of Aristotle superior, even if he may accept some of the positions at which the Platonists arrive\u2014positions that also may be reached otherwise. For Thomas, Platonism has a fundamental point of departure, established in Plato\u2019s attempt to save certain knowledge from the consequences of the doctrine of the ancient Physicists (Priores Naturales), with whom he accepts that philosophy began. For him, Plato\u2019s flawed solution to the epistemological problem determines Platonic ontology. The Platonic philosophical position as a whole proceeds according to a distinct method of reasoning to arrive at positions. It is a series of syllogisms whose basic premises are deficient.\r\n\r\nIn the thirteenth century, only the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Timaeus were available to the Latin West. Henle concluded that Aquinas had no direct knowledge of any of them. Thus, much as with Augustine, he knows only what he takes to be Plato\u2019s doctrines and is without knowledge of the dialogues themselves. Thomas\u2019 approach to philosophy gave him little sympathy for the kind of dialectic by which the fundamentals of philosophy are questioned and reconsidered within and between the dialogues.\r\n\r\nThe substance of Thomas\u2019 own thinking shows almost no development\u2014except, significantly, in his coming to accept that knowledge involves the formation of a Plotinian-Augustinian inner word in the mind, the verbum mentis. There is certainly no development remotely comparable to that within Plato\u2019s corpus. In consequence, his picture of Plato\u2019s way of thinking is not only lacking in the most basic information but is also without the intellectual necessities for a sympathetic representation.\r\n[introduction p. 1-3]","btype":2,"date":"2002","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/LajmF4jRGYCVzFn","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":167,"full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":450,"full_name":"Gersh, Stephen","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":451,"full_name":"Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1348,"section_of":327,"pages":"279-324","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":327,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"no language selected","title":"The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Gersh2002","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2002","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2002","abstract":"Das Handbuch beschreitet neue Wege in der Schilderung der komplexen Geschichte jener geistigen Str\u00f6mungen, die gemeinhin unter der Bezeichnung 'platonisch' bzw. 'neuplatonisch' zusammengefa\u00dft werden. Es behandelt in chronologischer Folge die bedeutendsten philosophischen Denkrichtungen innerhalb dieser Tradition. Die Beitr\u00e4ge untersuchen die wichtigsten platonischen Begriffe und ihre semantischen Implikationen, erl\u00e4utern die mit ihnen verbundenen philosophischen und theologischen Anspr\u00fcche, legen die Quellen der Begriffe dar und stellen sie in den Kontext der auf sie rekurrierenden bzw. ihnen zuwiderlaufenden geistigen Traditionen. So entsteht ein lebhaftes Bild des intellektuellen Lebens im Mittelalter und in der Fr\u00fchen Neuzeit. Das Werk enth\u00e4lt Beitr\u00e4ge in englischer und deutscher Sprache. [Author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/AyyoAnYvbV6wAyu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":327,"pubplace":"Berlin","publisher":"de Gruyter","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":null,"valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2002]}
| Title | Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 2002 |
| Journal | Dionysius |
| Volume | 20 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hankey, Wayne J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| Following Simplicius, Thomas set up the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical viae as complementary oppositions each of which contributed to the truth. Thomas also followed Simplicius in discerning differences between the hermeneutic methods of the two great schools. He reproduced the history of philosophy of Simplicius as soon as he had his commentaries, agreed with many of his conciliating judgments, and used the same reconciling logical figures. He does not identify himself as a Peripatetic or as a Platonist. However, when he agrees that Aristotle’s way of reasoning, per viam motus, to the existence of separate substances is manifestior et certior, he is sitting in judgment with, not against, Simplicius. For both the sixth and the thirteenth century commentators, Plato and Aristotle are assimilated to each other in various ways, and the real possibility of any beginning except that from the sensible is excluded. Thomas’ hermeneutic is that of the Platonic tradition in late Antiquity – Thomas certainly thought that the truth was veiled under poetic and symbolic language and judged this to be essential for revealing the truth to humans. Consistently with this approach, in the exposition of the De Caelo, Aquinas goes so far with Simplicius as to find “something divine (fabula aliquid divinum continet)” in the myth that Atlas holds up the heavens.106 He would seem, thus, to be on his way to the reconciliation of religious as well as of philosophical traditions. If this should, in fact, be his intent, Thomas would be following Simplicius and his Neoplatonic predecessors in their deepest purposes. This Christian priest, friar, and saint would have placed himself with the “divine” Proclus among the successors of Plato. [Conclusion] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/YjEdDURMoq0kV8j |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1349","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1349,"authors_free":[{"id":2004,"entry_id":1349,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":167,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","free_first_name":"Wayne J.","free_last_name":"Hankey","norm_person":{"id":167,"first_name":" Wayne J.","last_name":"Hankey","full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054015821","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius","main_title":{"title":"Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius"},"abstract":"Following Simplicius, Thomas set up the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical viae as complementary oppositions each of which contributed to the truth. Thomas also followed \r\nSimplicius in discerning differences between the hermeneutic methods of the two great schools. He reproduced the history of philosophy of Simplicius as soon as he had his commentaries, agreed with many of his conciliating judgments, and used the same reconciling logical figures. He does not identify himself as a Peripatetic or as a Platonist. \r\nHowever, when he agrees that Aristotle\u2019s way of reasoning, per viam motus, to the existence of \r\nseparate substances is manifestior et certior, he is sitting in judgment with, not against, Simplicius. For both the sixth and the thirteenth century commentators, Plato and Aristotle are assimilated to each other in various ways, and the real possibility of any beginning except that from the sensible is excluded. Thomas\u2019 hermeneutic is that of the Platonic tradition in late Antiquity \u2013 Thomas certainly thought that the truth was veiled under poetic and symbolic language and judged this to be essential for revealing the truth to humans. \r\nConsistently with this approach, in the exposition of the De Caelo, Aquinas goes so far with \r\nSimplicius as to find \u201csomething divine (fabula aliquid divinum continet)\u201d in the myth that Atlas \r\nholds up the heavens.106 He would seem, thus, to be on his way to the reconciliation of religious as well as of philosophical traditions. If this should, in fact, be his intent, Thomas would be following Simplicius and his Neoplatonic predecessors in their deepest purposes. This Christian priest, friar, and saint would have placed himself with the \u201cdivine\u201d Proclus among the successors of Plato. [Conclusion]","btype":3,"date":"2002","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/YjEdDURMoq0kV8j","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":167,"full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1349,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Dionysius","volume":"20","issue":"","pages":""}},"sort":[2002]}
| Title | Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1998 |
| Journal | Bryn Mawr Classical Review |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue | 19 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hankey, Wayne J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
| This welcome volume is yet another in the important series The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Edited by Richard Sorabji, about 30 volumes have now been published (they are not numbered). As in all the volumes, Sorabji’s General Introduction is reprinted as an appendix (pp. 151-160), though its accompanying lists, both of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, in the Berlin edition of Hermann Diels, and of English translations of the ancient commentators, are found only in the first of the translations: Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (1987). Uniformly with the series, there are, as well as the translation (here in 110 pages), a short introduction (here in two parts: one by Peter Lautner, who did the notes, and the other by J.O. Urmson, who translated the text), a list of textual emendations, extensive notes (305 in fact, compensating for the shortness of the introduction), an English-Greek glossary, a Greek-English index, and indices of names and subjects. Other compensations for the regrettable shortness of the introduction are the affiliated publications from the Cornell University Press: Sorabji's Time, Creation and the Continuum (1983), his Matter, Space and Motion (1988), and the collections of articles Sorabji has edited: Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (1987), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence (1990). These are indispensable for negotiating Lautner’s notes. Also useful on the Aristotelian tradition and the place of Simplicius in it is a new collection of articles edited by Sorabji but published by the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London in 1997: Aristotle and After. Understanding the character and significance of what Simplicius is doing here, especially of his very consequential modifications of Aristotle, requires consultation with excellent but inconvenient endnotes and with their references to this and other, less accessible, literature. As a result, In Physics 5 and its companion volumes are for well-formed scholars with first-class university libraries at their disposal. With this volume, we near the completion within this series of the translation of Simplicius' enormous commentary on the Physics. It joins, of Simplicius, the Corollaries on Place and Time, On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1-2.4, and On Aristotle's Physics 2, 4, 6, 7; all of which have appeared since 1989. They manifest in the English-speaking world a renewed scholarly and philosophical interest in Simplicius, which has produced translations, editions, and research by American, Belgian, English, French, German, and Italian scholars. Their work and projects were collected in Simplicius: sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie (1987), edited by Ilsetraut Hadot. Indeed, a contributor to that collection, Leonardo Tarán, promises us a new edition of the Greek text of the commentary on the Physics as well as another translation of it. Another contributor, Philippe Hoffmann, is reediting the commentary on the De Caelo. The renewed labor on the commentaries is justified by those who undertake it. The first place to find this is in Sorabji's General Introduction, which, beyond indicating the influence of the Neoplatonic commentaries, calls them "incomparable guides to Aristotle" (p. 159). A claim he supports by reference to the "minutely detailed knowledge of the entire Aristotelian corpus" possessed and conveyed by the commentators. In his article for the French colloque, Tarán maintained that Simplicius' commentary on the Physics remains the best commentary on that work "even today" (p. 247). Since her Le Problème du Néoplatonisme Alexandrin: Hiéroclès et Simplicius (1978), Ilsetraut Hadot has defended Simplicius and the commentators of the Athenian Neoplatonic school from denigrating comparisons with the production of the Alexandrines. She demonstrates that Praechter was wrong in supposing the Alexandrian commentaries to have been more devoted to the vrai sens of Aristotle in contrast to their own Neoplatonic philosophical projects. In fact, the commentaries of both schools were produced within a tradition initiated by Porphyry and were required by the essential role Aristotle's writings played in teaching. The value of the commentary may be diminished by the service given to such Neoplatonic scholastic projects as the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, but Hadot’s demonstrations elevate Simplicius by diminishing the preeminence given to the Alexandrines. In a review in this journal (BMCR 97.9.24), Richard Todd produced good reasons for choosing, as the place to begin among the older scholarship on Aristotle, the Renaissance commentaries of Jacobus Zabarella or Julius Pacius, but still, he would have these Renaissance humanists bring readers back to Simplicius. By the Renaissance, his commentaries, lost to the Latins until the 13th century, were well known and highly respected. So none will deny the enormous importance of Simplicius' commentary. Beyond its illumination of Aristotle, its application and defense of the Neoplatonic interpretative framework is skillful and creative. Moreover, it is the great treasury for our knowledge of previous Greek physics from the Pre-Socratics onward and of the commentaries before his own. Both of these he preserves by quotation, often at greater length than his argument requires, as if Simplicius, like Boethius, saw himself preserving a disappearing heritage in a darkening age. Much of In Physics 5 is a dialogue with Alexander of Aphrodisias, and enormous passages of his commentary are reproduced. They remind us of one of the essential tasks of scholarship that has only begun and will be assisted by this translation. Since so much of what we know about natural philosophy before Simplicius is dependent on him, we need to deepen our understanding of his thinking to consider how his selection and reproduction shape our knowledge of ancient philosophy. The conservative labor was successful; evidently, the commentary of Simplicius survived and carried his past with it. In consequence, another reason for the great importance of this work is its influence. His understanding of Aristotle constituted an essential element in the thinking of the Arabic Neoplatonists and, from the 13th century on, his comments were communicated to the Latin West in their treatises and in their own commentaries on Aristotle's texts, as well as through direct translations from the Greek by Latins like William of Moerbeke. Thus, he reached the scholastics of the medieval West. The conscientious continuation by Simplicius of the great Neoplatonic enterprise of reconciling Plato and Aristotle helped determine the Latin understanding of Aristotle. Moreover, ideas of his own, developed in that context, became fruitful again as Aristotelian physics was transformed in the construction of modern natural philosophies. Simplicius was with Damascius and the other pagan philosophers who headed east after Justinian closed the Academy in Athens. He probably composed this, and his other Aristotelian commentaries, in the remote city of Harran (Carrhae). Whatever the activity of the philosophers gathered there, as distinct from his predecessors like Themistius or contemporaries like Philoponus the Christian, Simplicius' commentaries no longer show characteristics marking them as having been developed as lectures. Evidence points to composition after 538, and Peter Lautner shows that at least part of the commentary on the Physics was written before the commentary on the Categories. Simplicius assiduously carries forward the reconciliation of Aristotle with Plato. Whether, with Sorabji, we call this project "perfectly crazy" (p. 156), we will agree it stimulates Simplicius to his greatest creativity. Here the philosophical commentator is moved by his religion. Since Porphyry, and fervently with Iamblichus, Proclus, and their successors, piety in respect to the old gods demanded that the unity of that by which they revealed themselves and their cosmos be exhibited. Further, defending the Hellenic spiritual tradition against its critics and effectively marshaling its forces against the Christian enemy required this unification. Simplicius helps work through completely what the Neoplatonic reconciliations and unifications require. He assists with its momentous move from substance to subjectivity. For what it furthers and transmits in this greatest of Western transformations, his commentary is philosophically important. Those who have made it more accessible are to be thanked. [the entire review] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/gUxdRzi2BGcl9jH |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1347","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1347,"authors_free":[{"id":2002,"entry_id":1347,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":167,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","free_first_name":"Wayne J.","free_last_name":"Hankey","norm_person":{"id":167,"first_name":" Wayne J.","last_name":"Hankey","full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054015821","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle","main_title":{"title":"Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle"},"abstract":"This welcome volume is yet another in the important series The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Edited by Richard Sorabji, about 30 volumes have now been published (they are not numbered). As in all the volumes, Sorabji\u2019s General Introduction is reprinted as an appendix (pp. 151-160), though its accompanying lists, both of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, in the Berlin edition of Hermann Diels, and of English translations of the ancient commentators, are found only in the first of the translations: Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (1987).\r\n\r\nUniformly with the series, there are, as well as the translation (here in 110 pages), a short introduction (here in two parts: one by Peter Lautner, who did the notes, and the other by J.O. Urmson, who translated the text), a list of textual emendations, extensive notes (305 in fact, compensating for the shortness of the introduction), an English-Greek glossary, a Greek-English index, and indices of names and subjects.\r\n\r\nOther compensations for the regrettable shortness of the introduction are the affiliated publications from the Cornell University Press: Sorabji's Time, Creation and the Continuum (1983), his Matter, Space and Motion (1988), and the collections of articles Sorabji has edited: Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (1987), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence (1990). These are indispensable for negotiating Lautner\u2019s notes. Also useful on the Aristotelian tradition and the place of Simplicius in it is a new collection of articles edited by Sorabji but published by the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London in 1997: Aristotle and After.\r\n\r\nUnderstanding the character and significance of what Simplicius is doing here, especially of his very consequential modifications of Aristotle, requires consultation with excellent but inconvenient endnotes and with their references to this and other, less accessible, literature. As a result, In Physics 5 and its companion volumes are for well-formed scholars with first-class university libraries at their disposal.\r\n\r\nWith this volume, we near the completion within this series of the translation of Simplicius' enormous commentary on the Physics. It joins, of Simplicius, the Corollaries on Place and Time, On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1-2.4, and On Aristotle's Physics 2, 4, 6, 7; all of which have appeared since 1989. They manifest in the English-speaking world a renewed scholarly and philosophical interest in Simplicius, which has produced translations, editions, and research by American, Belgian, English, French, German, and Italian scholars. Their work and projects were collected in Simplicius: sa vie, son \u0153uvre, sa survie (1987), edited by Ilsetraut Hadot. Indeed, a contributor to that collection, Leonardo Tar\u00e1n, promises us a new edition of the Greek text of the commentary on the Physics as well as another translation of it. Another contributor, Philippe Hoffmann, is reediting the commentary on the De Caelo.\r\n\r\nThe renewed labor on the commentaries is justified by those who undertake it. The first place to find this is in Sorabji's General Introduction, which, beyond indicating the influence of the Neoplatonic commentaries, calls them \"incomparable guides to Aristotle\" (p. 159). A claim he supports by reference to the \"minutely detailed knowledge of the entire Aristotelian corpus\" possessed and conveyed by the commentators.\r\n\r\nIn his article for the French colloque, Tar\u00e1n maintained that Simplicius' commentary on the Physics remains the best commentary on that work \"even today\" (p. 247). Since her Le Probl\u00e8me du N\u00e9oplatonisme Alexandrin: Hi\u00e9rocl\u00e8s et Simplicius (1978), Ilsetraut Hadot has defended Simplicius and the commentators of the Athenian Neoplatonic school from denigrating comparisons with the production of the Alexandrines. She demonstrates that Praechter was wrong in supposing the Alexandrian commentaries to have been more devoted to the vrai sens of Aristotle in contrast to their own Neoplatonic philosophical projects. In fact, the commentaries of both schools were produced within a tradition initiated by Porphyry and were required by the essential role Aristotle's writings played in teaching. The value of the commentary may be diminished by the service given to such Neoplatonic scholastic projects as the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, but Hadot\u2019s demonstrations elevate Simplicius by diminishing the preeminence given to the Alexandrines.\r\n\r\nIn a review in this journal (BMCR 97.9.24), Richard Todd produced good reasons for choosing, as the place to begin among the older scholarship on Aristotle, the Renaissance commentaries of Jacobus Zabarella or Julius Pacius, but still, he would have these Renaissance humanists bring readers back to Simplicius. By the Renaissance, his commentaries, lost to the Latins until the 13th century, were well known and highly respected.\r\n\r\nSo none will deny the enormous importance of Simplicius' commentary. Beyond its illumination of Aristotle, its application and defense of the Neoplatonic interpretative framework is skillful and creative. Moreover, it is the great treasury for our knowledge of previous Greek physics from the Pre-Socratics onward and of the commentaries before his own. Both of these he preserves by quotation, often at greater length than his argument requires, as if Simplicius, like Boethius, saw himself preserving a disappearing heritage in a darkening age. Much of In Physics 5 is a dialogue with Alexander of Aphrodisias, and enormous passages of his commentary are reproduced. They remind us of one of the essential tasks of scholarship that has only begun and will be assisted by this translation. Since so much of what we know about natural philosophy before Simplicius is dependent on him, we need to deepen our understanding of his thinking to consider how his selection and reproduction shape our knowledge of ancient philosophy.\r\n\r\nThe conservative labor was successful; evidently, the commentary of Simplicius survived and carried his past with it. In consequence, another reason for the great importance of this work is its influence. His understanding of Aristotle constituted an essential element in the thinking of the Arabic Neoplatonists and, from the 13th century on, his comments were communicated to the Latin West in their treatises and in their own commentaries on Aristotle's texts, as well as through direct translations from the Greek by Latins like William of Moerbeke. Thus, he reached the scholastics of the medieval West.\r\n\r\nThe conscientious continuation by Simplicius of the great Neoplatonic enterprise of reconciling Plato and Aristotle helped determine the Latin understanding of Aristotle. Moreover, ideas of his own, developed in that context, became fruitful again as Aristotelian physics was transformed in the construction of modern natural philosophies.\r\n\r\nSimplicius was with Damascius and the other pagan philosophers who headed east after Justinian closed the Academy in Athens. He probably composed this, and his other Aristotelian commentaries, in the remote city of Harran (Carrhae). Whatever the activity of the philosophers gathered there, as distinct from his predecessors like Themistius or contemporaries like Philoponus the Christian, Simplicius' commentaries no longer show characteristics marking them as having been developed as lectures. Evidence points to composition after 538, and Peter Lautner shows that at least part of the commentary on the Physics was written before the commentary on the Categories.\r\n\r\nSimplicius assiduously carries forward the reconciliation of Aristotle with Plato. Whether, with Sorabji, we call this project \"perfectly crazy\" (p. 156), we will agree it stimulates Simplicius to his greatest creativity. Here the philosophical commentator is moved by his religion. Since Porphyry, and fervently with Iamblichus, Proclus, and their successors, piety in respect to the old gods demanded that the unity of that by which they revealed themselves and their cosmos be exhibited. Further, defending the Hellenic spiritual tradition against its critics and effectively marshaling its forces against the Christian enemy required this unification.\r\n\r\nSimplicius helps work through completely what the Neoplatonic reconciliations and unifications require. He assists with its momentous move from substance to subjectivity. For what it furthers and transmits in this greatest of Western transformations, his commentary is philosophically important. Those who have made it more accessible are to be thanked. [the entire review]","btype":3,"date":"1998","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gUxdRzi2BGcl9jH","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":167,"full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1347,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Bryn Mawr Classical Review","volume":"3","issue":"19","pages":""}},"sort":[1998]}
| Title | Aquinas and the Platonists |
| Type | Book Section |
| Language | English |
| Date | 2002 |
| Published in | The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach |
| Pages | 279-324 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hankey, Wayne J. |
| Editor(s) | Gersh, Stephen , Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. |
| Translator(s) |
As with all thinkers who treat the philosophies on which they depend, Aquinas has two relations to his predecessors and, in particular, to the Platonic tradition. One is that of which he is conscious, sets out explicitly, is part of how he places himself within the history of philosophy, and is essential to his understanding of that place. The other is the unconscious dependence. In every thinker, these will diverge to some extent. First, no previous philosophy can answer later questions without being altered by the questioner: a thing is received according to the mode of the receiver. The alteration made by present need is especially marked in the schools deriving from the Hellenistic philosophies, with their dependence on the exegesis of authoritative texts constantly reread to supply answers required by the new needs of thought. Second, no one is capable of a complete grasp of what forms and moves their own thought. In the case of Thomas’ relation to Platonism, the divergences, inconsistencies, and even contradictions between what he says about Platonism, how he places himself in respect to it, and its real influence on his thought are very great. In fact, Thomas’ own system stands within a tradition whose foundation, as he represents it, he self-consciously opposes. Because his understanding of the Platonic tradition is deeply problematic in many ways, while his knowledge of it is extensive, and because the tradition is itself so complex, Aquinas is frequently (or, better, normally) criticizing one aspect of Platonism from the perspective of another. Such internal criticism is characteristic of Plato’s thought and of its tradition. The ancient Platonists were, however, far better informed about the history of the tradition in which they stood than were their Latin medieval successors. The Platonists of late antiquity, upon whom Thomas depends for much of his understanding of the history of philosophy, did not have the degree of naivete present in the self-opposition that characterizes Thomas’ relation to Platonism. Getting hold of Thomas’s self-conscious relation to Platonism has been largely accomplished, and many of the tools to complete the task are available. The lexicographical aspect of the work was substantially done almost fifty years ago by R.J. Henle. His Saint Thomas and Platonism: A Study of the Plato and Platonici Texts in the Writings of Saint Thomas is almost complete in terms of the texts it considers. Henle lavishly reproduces the relevant passages in Latin. For the most part, he gives the likely sources of the doctrines attributed to the Platonists with the accuracy possible when he wrote. His analysis, within the parameters he sets and which his perspective sets for him, is thorough and inescapable. Beyond Henle’s work, it is necessary to add the few texts he missed, to correct his work on the basis of better editions than the ones he had available (or used), and to compensate for the limits of his undertaking and his biases. The principal problems with Henle’s work, once we accept its limits, lie in the vestiges of the neo-Scholastic mentality he retains. This mentality is opposed to that of the historian and was antipathetic to Platonic idealism. On this account, like Aquinas himself, he misses the extent to which Thomas’ representation of Platonism and of his own relation to it actually stands within its long and diverse tradition. Henle’s work accurately describes how, for Aquinas, a philosophical school is a fixed way of thinking, which results in “a series of like statements formulated in the several minds that teach it and learn it, that write it and read it” (as Mark Jordan puts it). Despite accepting this definition of a “philosophical teaching” from Jordan, as well as his crucial point that Aquinas is not a philosopher whose position is an Aristotelianismus in an Enlightenment or neo-Scholastic manner, I shall continue to write herein both of “Platonism” and of Thomas’ Platonism. As a matter of fact, for Aquinas, what the Platonici teach has been reduced to a fixed way of thinking, which he treats ahistorically, although he knows much of its history. Further, at several crucial points, he self-consciously sides with them. In rescuing Aquinas from neo-Scholastic representations of his philosophy, Jordan is importantly right that Aquinas did not think of Christians as philosophers. He neglects, however, the continuities that do exist between Scholastic and neo-Scholastic treatments of philosophy. Henle, working within these, through his analysis of the texts in which Thomas speaks of Plato and the Platonici, shows how Platonism is presented as one of these viae. This via Thomas criticizes, and for most purposes finds the way of Aristotle superior, even if he may accept some of the positions at which the Platonists arrive—positions that also may be reached otherwise. For Thomas, Platonism has a fundamental point of departure, established in Plato’s attempt to save certain knowledge from the consequences of the doctrine of the ancient Physicists (Priores Naturales), with whom he accepts that philosophy began. For him, Plato’s flawed solution to the epistemological problem determines Platonic ontology. The Platonic philosophical position as a whole proceeds according to a distinct method of reasoning to arrive at positions. It is a series of syllogisms whose basic premises are deficient. In the thirteenth century, only the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Timaeus were available to the Latin West. Henle concluded that Aquinas had no direct knowledge of any of them. Thus, much as with Augustine, he knows only what he takes to be Plato’s doctrines and is without knowledge of the dialogues themselves. Thomas’ approach to philosophy gave him little sympathy for the kind of dialectic by which the fundamentals of philosophy are questioned and reconsidered within and between the dialogues. The substance of Thomas’ own thinking shows almost no development—except, significantly, in his coming to accept that knowledge involves the formation of a Plotinian-Augustinian inner word in the mind, the verbum mentis. There is certainly no development remotely comparable to that within Plato’s corpus. In consequence, his picture of Plato’s way of thinking is not only lacking in the most basic information but is also without the intellectual necessities for a sympathetic representation. [introduction p. 1-3] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/LajmF4jRGYCVzFn |
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F. M. ","free_first_name":"Maarten J. F. M. ","free_last_name":"Hoenen","norm_person":{"id":451,"first_name":"Maarten J. F. M. ","last_name":"Hoenen","full_name":"Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172140307","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Aquinas and the Platonists","main_title":{"title":"Aquinas and the Platonists"},"abstract":"As with all thinkers who treat the philosophies on which they depend, Aquinas has two relations to his predecessors and, in particular, to the Platonic tradition. One is that of which he is conscious, sets out explicitly, is part of how he places himself within the history of philosophy, and is essential to his understanding of that place. The other is the unconscious dependence. In every thinker, these will diverge to some extent. First, no previous philosophy can answer later questions without being altered by the questioner: a thing is received according to the mode of the receiver. The alteration made by present need is especially marked in the schools deriving from the Hellenistic philosophies, with their dependence on the exegesis of authoritative texts constantly reread to supply answers required by the new needs of thought. Second, no one is capable of a complete grasp of what forms and moves their own thought. In the case of Thomas\u2019 relation to Platonism, the divergences, inconsistencies, and even contradictions between what he says about Platonism, how he places himself in respect to it, and its real influence on his thought are very great.\r\n\r\nIn fact, Thomas\u2019 own system stands within a tradition whose foundation, as he represents it, he self-consciously opposes. Because his understanding of the Platonic tradition is deeply problematic in many ways, while his knowledge of it is extensive, and because the tradition is itself so complex, Aquinas is frequently (or, better, normally) criticizing one aspect of Platonism from the perspective of another. Such internal criticism is characteristic of Plato\u2019s thought and of its tradition. The ancient Platonists were, however, far better informed about the history of the tradition in which they stood than were their Latin medieval successors. The Platonists of late antiquity, upon whom Thomas depends for much of his understanding of the history of philosophy, did not have the degree of naivete present in the self-opposition that characterizes Thomas\u2019 relation to Platonism.\r\n\r\nGetting hold of Thomas\u2019s self-conscious relation to Platonism has been largely accomplished, and many of the tools to complete the task are available. The lexicographical aspect of the work was substantially done almost fifty years ago by R.J. Henle. His Saint Thomas and Platonism: A Study of the Plato and Platonici Texts in the Writings of Saint Thomas is almost complete in terms of the texts it considers. Henle lavishly reproduces the relevant passages in Latin. For the most part, he gives the likely sources of the doctrines attributed to the Platonists with the accuracy possible when he wrote. His analysis, within the parameters he sets and which his perspective sets for him, is thorough and inescapable. Beyond Henle\u2019s work, it is necessary to add the few texts he missed, to correct his work on the basis of better editions than the ones he had available (or used), and to compensate for the limits of his undertaking and his biases.\r\n\r\nThe principal problems with Henle\u2019s work, once we accept its limits, lie in the vestiges of the neo-Scholastic mentality he retains. This mentality is opposed to that of the historian and was antipathetic to Platonic idealism. On this account, like Aquinas himself, he misses the extent to which Thomas\u2019 representation of Platonism and of his own relation to it actually stands within its long and diverse tradition.\r\n\r\nHenle\u2019s work accurately describes how, for Aquinas, a philosophical school is a fixed way of thinking, which results in \u201ca series of like statements formulated in the several minds that teach it and learn it, that write it and read it\u201d (as Mark Jordan puts it). Despite accepting this definition of a \u201cphilosophical teaching\u201d from Jordan, as well as his crucial point that Aquinas is not a philosopher whose position is an Aristotelianismus in an Enlightenment or neo-Scholastic manner, I shall continue to write herein both of \u201cPlatonism\u201d and of Thomas\u2019 Platonism.\r\n\r\nAs a matter of fact, for Aquinas, what the Platonici teach has been reduced to a fixed way of thinking, which he treats ahistorically, although he knows much of its history. Further, at several crucial points, he self-consciously sides with them. In rescuing Aquinas from neo-Scholastic representations of his philosophy, Jordan is importantly right that Aquinas did not think of Christians as philosophers. He neglects, however, the continuities that do exist between Scholastic and neo-Scholastic treatments of philosophy. Henle, working within these, through his analysis of the texts in which Thomas speaks of Plato and the Platonici, shows how Platonism is presented as one of these viae.\r\n\r\nThis via Thomas criticizes, and for most purposes finds the way of Aristotle superior, even if he may accept some of the positions at which the Platonists arrive\u2014positions that also may be reached otherwise. For Thomas, Platonism has a fundamental point of departure, established in Plato\u2019s attempt to save certain knowledge from the consequences of the doctrine of the ancient Physicists (Priores Naturales), with whom he accepts that philosophy began. For him, Plato\u2019s flawed solution to the epistemological problem determines Platonic ontology. The Platonic philosophical position as a whole proceeds according to a distinct method of reasoning to arrive at positions. It is a series of syllogisms whose basic premises are deficient.\r\n\r\nIn the thirteenth century, only the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Timaeus were available to the Latin West. Henle concluded that Aquinas had no direct knowledge of any of them. Thus, much as with Augustine, he knows only what he takes to be Plato\u2019s doctrines and is without knowledge of the dialogues themselves. Thomas\u2019 approach to philosophy gave him little sympathy for the kind of dialectic by which the fundamentals of philosophy are questioned and reconsidered within and between the dialogues.\r\n\r\nThe substance of Thomas\u2019 own thinking shows almost no development\u2014except, significantly, in his coming to accept that knowledge involves the formation of a Plotinian-Augustinian inner word in the mind, the verbum mentis. There is certainly no development remotely comparable to that within Plato\u2019s corpus. In consequence, his picture of Plato\u2019s way of thinking is not only lacking in the most basic information but is also without the intellectual necessities for a sympathetic representation.\r\n[introduction p. 1-3]","btype":2,"date":"2002","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/LajmF4jRGYCVzFn","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":167,"full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":450,"full_name":"Gersh, Stephen","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":451,"full_name":"Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M. ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1348,"section_of":327,"pages":"279-324","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":327,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"no language selected","title":"The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Gersh2002","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2002","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2002","abstract":"Das Handbuch beschreitet neue Wege in der Schilderung der komplexen Geschichte jener geistigen Str\u00f6mungen, die gemeinhin unter der Bezeichnung 'platonisch' bzw. 'neuplatonisch' zusammengefa\u00dft werden. Es behandelt in chronologischer Folge die bedeutendsten philosophischen Denkrichtungen innerhalb dieser Tradition. Die Beitr\u00e4ge untersuchen die wichtigsten platonischen Begriffe und ihre semantischen Implikationen, erl\u00e4utern die mit ihnen verbundenen philosophischen und theologischen Anspr\u00fcche, legen die Quellen der Begriffe dar und stellen sie in den Kontext der auf sie rekurrierenden bzw. ihnen zuwiderlaufenden geistigen Traditionen. So entsteht ein lebhaftes Bild des intellektuellen Lebens im Mittelalter und in der Fr\u00fchen Neuzeit. Das Werk enth\u00e4lt Beitr\u00e4ge in englischer und deutscher Sprache. [Author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/AyyoAnYvbV6wAyu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":327,"pubplace":"Berlin","publisher":"de Gruyter","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":null,"valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Aquinas and the Platonists"]}
| Title | Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 1998 |
| Journal | Bryn Mawr Classical Review |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue | 19 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hankey, Wayne J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
This welcome volume is yet another in the important series The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Edited by Richard Sorabji, about 30 volumes have now been published (they are not numbered). As in all the volumes, Sorabji’s General Introduction is reprinted as an appendix (pp. 151-160), though its accompanying lists, both of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, in the Berlin edition of Hermann Diels, and of English translations of the ancient commentators, are found only in the first of the translations: Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (1987). Uniformly with the series, there are, as well as the translation (here in 110 pages), a short introduction (here in two parts: one by Peter Lautner, who did the notes, and the other by J.O. Urmson, who translated the text), a list of textual emendations, extensive notes (305 in fact, compensating for the shortness of the introduction), an English-Greek glossary, a Greek-English index, and indices of names and subjects. Other compensations for the regrettable shortness of the introduction are the affiliated publications from the Cornell University Press: Sorabji's Time, Creation and the Continuum (1983), his Matter, Space and Motion (1988), and the collections of articles Sorabji has edited: Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (1987), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence (1990). These are indispensable for negotiating Lautner’s notes. Also useful on the Aristotelian tradition and the place of Simplicius in it is a new collection of articles edited by Sorabji but published by the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London in 1997: Aristotle and After. Understanding the character and significance of what Simplicius is doing here, especially of his very consequential modifications of Aristotle, requires consultation with excellent but inconvenient endnotes and with their references to this and other, less accessible, literature. As a result, In Physics 5 and its companion volumes are for well-formed scholars with first-class university libraries at their disposal. With this volume, we near the completion within this series of the translation of Simplicius' enormous commentary on the Physics. It joins, of Simplicius, the Corollaries on Place and Time, On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1-2.4, and On Aristotle's Physics 2, 4, 6, 7; all of which have appeared since 1989. They manifest in the English-speaking world a renewed scholarly and philosophical interest in Simplicius, which has produced translations, editions, and research by American, Belgian, English, French, German, and Italian scholars. Their work and projects were collected in Simplicius: sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie (1987), edited by Ilsetraut Hadot. Indeed, a contributor to that collection, Leonardo Tarán, promises us a new edition of the Greek text of the commentary on the Physics as well as another translation of it. Another contributor, Philippe Hoffmann, is reediting the commentary on the De Caelo. The renewed labor on the commentaries is justified by those who undertake it. The first place to find this is in Sorabji's General Introduction, which, beyond indicating the influence of the Neoplatonic commentaries, calls them "incomparable guides to Aristotle" (p. 159). A claim he supports by reference to the "minutely detailed knowledge of the entire Aristotelian corpus" possessed and conveyed by the commentators. In his article for the French colloque, Tarán maintained that Simplicius' commentary on the Physics remains the best commentary on that work "even today" (p. 247). Since her Le Problème du Néoplatonisme Alexandrin: Hiéroclès et Simplicius (1978), Ilsetraut Hadot has defended Simplicius and the commentators of the Athenian Neoplatonic school from denigrating comparisons with the production of the Alexandrines. She demonstrates that Praechter was wrong in supposing the Alexandrian commentaries to have been more devoted to the vrai sens of Aristotle in contrast to their own Neoplatonic philosophical projects. In fact, the commentaries of both schools were produced within a tradition initiated by Porphyry and were required by the essential role Aristotle's writings played in teaching. The value of the commentary may be diminished by the service given to such Neoplatonic scholastic projects as the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, but Hadot’s demonstrations elevate Simplicius by diminishing the preeminence given to the Alexandrines. In a review in this journal (BMCR 97.9.24), Richard Todd produced good reasons for choosing, as the place to begin among the older scholarship on Aristotle, the Renaissance commentaries of Jacobus Zabarella or Julius Pacius, but still, he would have these Renaissance humanists bring readers back to Simplicius. By the Renaissance, his commentaries, lost to the Latins until the 13th century, were well known and highly respected. So none will deny the enormous importance of Simplicius' commentary. Beyond its illumination of Aristotle, its application and defense of the Neoplatonic interpretative framework is skillful and creative. Moreover, it is the great treasury for our knowledge of previous Greek physics from the Pre-Socratics onward and of the commentaries before his own. Both of these he preserves by quotation, often at greater length than his argument requires, as if Simplicius, like Boethius, saw himself preserving a disappearing heritage in a darkening age. Much of In Physics 5 is a dialogue with Alexander of Aphrodisias, and enormous passages of his commentary are reproduced. They remind us of one of the essential tasks of scholarship that has only begun and will be assisted by this translation. Since so much of what we know about natural philosophy before Simplicius is dependent on him, we need to deepen our understanding of his thinking to consider how his selection and reproduction shape our knowledge of ancient philosophy. The conservative labor was successful; evidently, the commentary of Simplicius survived and carried his past with it. In consequence, another reason for the great importance of this work is its influence. His understanding of Aristotle constituted an essential element in the thinking of the Arabic Neoplatonists and, from the 13th century on, his comments were communicated to the Latin West in their treatises and in their own commentaries on Aristotle's texts, as well as through direct translations from the Greek by Latins like William of Moerbeke. Thus, he reached the scholastics of the medieval West. The conscientious continuation by Simplicius of the great Neoplatonic enterprise of reconciling Plato and Aristotle helped determine the Latin understanding of Aristotle. Moreover, ideas of his own, developed in that context, became fruitful again as Aristotelian physics was transformed in the construction of modern natural philosophies. Simplicius was with Damascius and the other pagan philosophers who headed east after Justinian closed the Academy in Athens. He probably composed this, and his other Aristotelian commentaries, in the remote city of Harran (Carrhae). Whatever the activity of the philosophers gathered there, as distinct from his predecessors like Themistius or contemporaries like Philoponus the Christian, Simplicius' commentaries no longer show characteristics marking them as having been developed as lectures. Evidence points to composition after 538, and Peter Lautner shows that at least part of the commentary on the Physics was written before the commentary on the Categories. Simplicius assiduously carries forward the reconciliation of Aristotle with Plato. Whether, with Sorabji, we call this project "perfectly crazy" (p. 156), we will agree it stimulates Simplicius to his greatest creativity. Here the philosophical commentator is moved by his religion. Since Porphyry, and fervently with Iamblichus, Proclus, and their successors, piety in respect to the old gods demanded that the unity of that by which they revealed themselves and their cosmos be exhibited. Further, defending the Hellenic spiritual tradition against its critics and effectively marshaling its forces against the Christian enemy required this unification. Simplicius helps work through completely what the Neoplatonic reconciliations and unifications require. He assists with its momentous move from substance to subjectivity. For what it furthers and transmits in this greatest of Western transformations, his commentary is philosophically important. Those who have made it more accessible are to be thanked. [the entire review] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/gUxdRzi2BGcl9jH |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1347","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1347,"authors_free":[{"id":2002,"entry_id":1347,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":167,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","free_first_name":"Wayne J.","free_last_name":"Hankey","norm_person":{"id":167,"first_name":" Wayne J.","last_name":"Hankey","full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054015821","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle","main_title":{"title":"Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle"},"abstract":"This welcome volume is yet another in the important series The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Edited by Richard Sorabji, about 30 volumes have now been published (they are not numbered). As in all the volumes, Sorabji\u2019s General Introduction is reprinted as an appendix (pp. 151-160), though its accompanying lists, both of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, in the Berlin edition of Hermann Diels, and of English translations of the ancient commentators, are found only in the first of the translations: Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (1987).\r\n\r\nUniformly with the series, there are, as well as the translation (here in 110 pages), a short introduction (here in two parts: one by Peter Lautner, who did the notes, and the other by J.O. Urmson, who translated the text), a list of textual emendations, extensive notes (305 in fact, compensating for the shortness of the introduction), an English-Greek glossary, a Greek-English index, and indices of names and subjects.\r\n\r\nOther compensations for the regrettable shortness of the introduction are the affiliated publications from the Cornell University Press: Sorabji's Time, Creation and the Continuum (1983), his Matter, Space and Motion (1988), and the collections of articles Sorabji has edited: Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (1987), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence (1990). These are indispensable for negotiating Lautner\u2019s notes. Also useful on the Aristotelian tradition and the place of Simplicius in it is a new collection of articles edited by Sorabji but published by the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London in 1997: Aristotle and After.\r\n\r\nUnderstanding the character and significance of what Simplicius is doing here, especially of his very consequential modifications of Aristotle, requires consultation with excellent but inconvenient endnotes and with their references to this and other, less accessible, literature. As a result, In Physics 5 and its companion volumes are for well-formed scholars with first-class university libraries at their disposal.\r\n\r\nWith this volume, we near the completion within this series of the translation of Simplicius' enormous commentary on the Physics. It joins, of Simplicius, the Corollaries on Place and Time, On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1-2.4, and On Aristotle's Physics 2, 4, 6, 7; all of which have appeared since 1989. They manifest in the English-speaking world a renewed scholarly and philosophical interest in Simplicius, which has produced translations, editions, and research by American, Belgian, English, French, German, and Italian scholars. Their work and projects were collected in Simplicius: sa vie, son \u0153uvre, sa survie (1987), edited by Ilsetraut Hadot. Indeed, a contributor to that collection, Leonardo Tar\u00e1n, promises us a new edition of the Greek text of the commentary on the Physics as well as another translation of it. Another contributor, Philippe Hoffmann, is reediting the commentary on the De Caelo.\r\n\r\nThe renewed labor on the commentaries is justified by those who undertake it. The first place to find this is in Sorabji's General Introduction, which, beyond indicating the influence of the Neoplatonic commentaries, calls them \"incomparable guides to Aristotle\" (p. 159). A claim he supports by reference to the \"minutely detailed knowledge of the entire Aristotelian corpus\" possessed and conveyed by the commentators.\r\n\r\nIn his article for the French colloque, Tar\u00e1n maintained that Simplicius' commentary on the Physics remains the best commentary on that work \"even today\" (p. 247). Since her Le Probl\u00e8me du N\u00e9oplatonisme Alexandrin: Hi\u00e9rocl\u00e8s et Simplicius (1978), Ilsetraut Hadot has defended Simplicius and the commentators of the Athenian Neoplatonic school from denigrating comparisons with the production of the Alexandrines. She demonstrates that Praechter was wrong in supposing the Alexandrian commentaries to have been more devoted to the vrai sens of Aristotle in contrast to their own Neoplatonic philosophical projects. In fact, the commentaries of both schools were produced within a tradition initiated by Porphyry and were required by the essential role Aristotle's writings played in teaching. The value of the commentary may be diminished by the service given to such Neoplatonic scholastic projects as the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, but Hadot\u2019s demonstrations elevate Simplicius by diminishing the preeminence given to the Alexandrines.\r\n\r\nIn a review in this journal (BMCR 97.9.24), Richard Todd produced good reasons for choosing, as the place to begin among the older scholarship on Aristotle, the Renaissance commentaries of Jacobus Zabarella or Julius Pacius, but still, he would have these Renaissance humanists bring readers back to Simplicius. By the Renaissance, his commentaries, lost to the Latins until the 13th century, were well known and highly respected.\r\n\r\nSo none will deny the enormous importance of Simplicius' commentary. Beyond its illumination of Aristotle, its application and defense of the Neoplatonic interpretative framework is skillful and creative. Moreover, it is the great treasury for our knowledge of previous Greek physics from the Pre-Socratics onward and of the commentaries before his own. Both of these he preserves by quotation, often at greater length than his argument requires, as if Simplicius, like Boethius, saw himself preserving a disappearing heritage in a darkening age. Much of In Physics 5 is a dialogue with Alexander of Aphrodisias, and enormous passages of his commentary are reproduced. They remind us of one of the essential tasks of scholarship that has only begun and will be assisted by this translation. Since so much of what we know about natural philosophy before Simplicius is dependent on him, we need to deepen our understanding of his thinking to consider how his selection and reproduction shape our knowledge of ancient philosophy.\r\n\r\nThe conservative labor was successful; evidently, the commentary of Simplicius survived and carried his past with it. In consequence, another reason for the great importance of this work is its influence. His understanding of Aristotle constituted an essential element in the thinking of the Arabic Neoplatonists and, from the 13th century on, his comments were communicated to the Latin West in their treatises and in their own commentaries on Aristotle's texts, as well as through direct translations from the Greek by Latins like William of Moerbeke. Thus, he reached the scholastics of the medieval West.\r\n\r\nThe conscientious continuation by Simplicius of the great Neoplatonic enterprise of reconciling Plato and Aristotle helped determine the Latin understanding of Aristotle. Moreover, ideas of his own, developed in that context, became fruitful again as Aristotelian physics was transformed in the construction of modern natural philosophies.\r\n\r\nSimplicius was with Damascius and the other pagan philosophers who headed east after Justinian closed the Academy in Athens. He probably composed this, and his other Aristotelian commentaries, in the remote city of Harran (Carrhae). Whatever the activity of the philosophers gathered there, as distinct from his predecessors like Themistius or contemporaries like Philoponus the Christian, Simplicius' commentaries no longer show characteristics marking them as having been developed as lectures. Evidence points to composition after 538, and Peter Lautner shows that at least part of the commentary on the Physics was written before the commentary on the Categories.\r\n\r\nSimplicius assiduously carries forward the reconciliation of Aristotle with Plato. Whether, with Sorabji, we call this project \"perfectly crazy\" (p. 156), we will agree it stimulates Simplicius to his greatest creativity. Here the philosophical commentator is moved by his religion. Since Porphyry, and fervently with Iamblichus, Proclus, and their successors, piety in respect to the old gods demanded that the unity of that by which they revealed themselves and their cosmos be exhibited. Further, defending the Hellenic spiritual tradition against its critics and effectively marshaling its forces against the Christian enemy required this unification.\r\n\r\nSimplicius helps work through completely what the Neoplatonic reconciliations and unifications require. He assists with its momentous move from substance to subjectivity. For what it furthers and transmits in this greatest of Western transformations, his commentary is philosophically important. Those who have made it more accessible are to be thanked. [the entire review]","btype":3,"date":"1998","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gUxdRzi2BGcl9jH","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":167,"full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1347,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Bryn Mawr Classical Review","volume":"3","issue":"19","pages":""}},"sort":["Review of: Simplicius, On Aristotle's Physics 5, translated by J.O.Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle"]}
| Title | Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius |
| Type | Article |
| Language | English |
| Date | 2002 |
| Journal | Dionysius |
| Volume | 20 |
| Categories | no categories |
| Author(s) | Hankey, Wayne J. |
| Editor(s) | |
| Translator(s) |
Following Simplicius, Thomas set up the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical viae as complementary oppositions each of which contributed to the truth. Thomas also followed Simplicius in discerning differences between the hermeneutic methods of the two great schools. He reproduced the history of philosophy of Simplicius as soon as he had his commentaries, agreed with many of his conciliating judgments, and used the same reconciling logical figures. He does not identify himself as a Peripatetic or as a Platonist. However, when he agrees that Aristotle’s way of reasoning, per viam motus, to the existence of separate substances is manifestior et certior, he is sitting in judgment with, not against, Simplicius. For both the sixth and the thirteenth century commentators, Plato and Aristotle are assimilated to each other in various ways, and the real possibility of any beginning except that from the sensible is excluded. Thomas’ hermeneutic is that of the Platonic tradition in late Antiquity – Thomas certainly thought that the truth was veiled under poetic and symbolic language and judged this to be essential for revealing the truth to humans. Consistently with this approach, in the exposition of the De Caelo, Aquinas goes so far with Simplicius as to find “something divine (fabula aliquid divinum continet)” in the myth that Atlas holds up the heavens.106 He would seem, thus, to be on his way to the reconciliation of religious as well as of philosophical traditions. If this should, in fact, be his intent, Thomas would be following Simplicius and his Neoplatonic predecessors in their deepest purposes. This Christian priest, friar, and saint would have placed himself with the “divine” Proclus among the successors of Plato. [Conclusion] |
| Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/YjEdDURMoq0kV8j |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1349","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1349,"authors_free":[{"id":2004,"entry_id":1349,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":167,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","free_first_name":"Wayne J.","free_last_name":"Hankey","norm_person":{"id":167,"first_name":" Wayne J.","last_name":"Hankey","full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054015821","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius","main_title":{"title":"Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius"},"abstract":"Following Simplicius, Thomas set up the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical viae as complementary oppositions each of which contributed to the truth. Thomas also followed \r\nSimplicius in discerning differences between the hermeneutic methods of the two great schools. He reproduced the history of philosophy of Simplicius as soon as he had his commentaries, agreed with many of his conciliating judgments, and used the same reconciling logical figures. He does not identify himself as a Peripatetic or as a Platonist. \r\nHowever, when he agrees that Aristotle\u2019s way of reasoning, per viam motus, to the existence of \r\nseparate substances is manifestior et certior, he is sitting in judgment with, not against, Simplicius. For both the sixth and the thirteenth century commentators, Plato and Aristotle are assimilated to each other in various ways, and the real possibility of any beginning except that from the sensible is excluded. Thomas\u2019 hermeneutic is that of the Platonic tradition in late Antiquity \u2013 Thomas certainly thought that the truth was veiled under poetic and symbolic language and judged this to be essential for revealing the truth to humans. \r\nConsistently with this approach, in the exposition of the De Caelo, Aquinas goes so far with \r\nSimplicius as to find \u201csomething divine (fabula aliquid divinum continet)\u201d in the myth that Atlas \r\nholds up the heavens.106 He would seem, thus, to be on his way to the reconciliation of religious as well as of philosophical traditions. If this should, in fact, be his intent, Thomas would be following Simplicius and his Neoplatonic predecessors in their deepest purposes. This Christian priest, friar, and saint would have placed himself with the \u201cdivine\u201d Proclus among the successors of Plato. [Conclusion]","btype":3,"date":"2002","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/YjEdDURMoq0kV8j","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":167,"full_name":"Hankey, Wayne J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1349,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Dionysius","volume":"20","issue":"","pages":""}},"sort":["Thomas' Neoplatonic Histories: His following of Simplicius"]}