{"_index":"sire","_id":"1141","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1141,"authors_free":[{"id":1715,"entry_id":1141,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":255,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Menn, Stephen","free_first_name":"Stephen","free_last_name":"Menn","norm_person":{"id":255,"first_name":"Stephen","last_name":"Menn","full_name":"Menn, Stephen","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/174092768","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Andronicus and Boethus: Reflections on Michael Griffin\u2019s Aristotle\u2019s Categories in the Early Roman Empire","main_title":{"title":"Andronicus and Boethus: Reflections on Michael Griffin\u2019s Aristotle\u2019s Categories in the Early Roman Empire"},"abstract":"Griffin, Rashed, and Chiaradonna have shown how we can use Simplicius\u2019 Categories commentary to reconstruct much of Porphyry\u2019s greater Categories commentary (also witnessed by the Archimedes Palimpsest), and then use this to reconstruct much of the work of Boethus, and to a lesser extent Andronicus, on the Categories. In some cases \r\nbuilding on Griffin, in other cases disagreeing with him, I bring out some ways in which Andronicus and Boethus differ from most later interpreters; this can help us understand Alexander\u2019s and Porphyry\u2019s responses. I reconstruct (i) Andronicus\u2019 interpretation of \u2018in\u2019 and \u2018said of, which is based on Aristotle\u2019s distinction between abstract nouns and paronymous concrete nouns, and avoids the metaphysical freight that later interpreters load onto the notion of \u2018said o f; (ii) Boethus\u2019 use of De Interpretation 1 to explain how \r\na universal term can be synonymous without positing either universals in re or Stoic \r\nXeKid, and the consequences he draws for the different aims of the Categories and De Interpretation; and (iii) Boethus\u2019 solution to the tension between Aristotle\u2019s hylomorphism and the Categories\u2019 account of substance. Boethus, unlike later interpreters, thinks the \r\nform is in the matter, and is therefore not a substance but (typically) a quality, but that it \r\nis nonetheless able to constitute the composite as a substance distinct from the matter. I bring out the Aristotelian basis for Boethus\u2019 reading, connect it with Boethus\u2019 accounts of differentiae and of the soul, and show how Boethus\u2019 views help motivate Porphyry\u2019s responses. In some cases Porphyry constructs his views by triangulating between Boethus and Alexander. [Author's abstract]","btype":3,"date":"2018","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/QBnyRLAL62sCzX0","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":255,"full_name":"Menn, Stephen","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":1141,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale","volume":"29","issue":"","pages":"13-43"}},"sort":[2018]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"978","_score":null,"_source":{"id":978,"authors_free":[{"id":1477,"entry_id":978,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":255,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Menn, Stephen","free_first_name":"Stephen","free_last_name":"Menn","norm_person":{"id":255,"first_name":"Stephen","last_name":"Menn","full_name":"Menn, Stephen","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/174092768","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Review of: Baltussen: Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius. The Methodology of a Commentator","main_title":{"title":"Review of: Baltussen: Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius. The Methodology of a Commentator"},"abstract":"Most people who have heard of Simplicius know two things about him: he was a very learned man who included many quotations and reports of others' views in his writing, thus becoming one of our main sources for the pre-Socratics; but, unfortunately, he was a Neoplatonist, and his testimony is therefore to some degree suspect. So Simplicius has been studied more for the sake of assessing testimony about earlier philosophers than for his own sake; this is the first full-scale monograph on Simplicius in English, although virtually simultaneous with Pantelis Golitsis' Les commentaires de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon \u00e0 la \"Physique\" d'Aristote: tradition et innovation (Berlin, 2008).\r\n\r\nSimplicius, however, is not so neglected or undervalued as this might suggest: his projects of harmonizing Plato and Aristotle (and sometimes other philosophers), and of defending pagan philosophy against Christian attacks (leading to his polemics against Philoponus), have been much studied both by Anglophone scholars around Richard Sorabji and by Francophone scholars around Ilsetraut Hadot and Philippe Hoffmann. \"Neoplatonist\" is no longer an insult, and it now seems normal that in later antiquity reading and commenting on Plato and Aristotle should also be a way of doing philosophy. If Simplicius' religious and harmonistic aims, and his scholarly methods, are not ours, we are interested in alternatives to our own way of doing things. But we have lacked a systematic study of Simplicius' methods in his commentaries, and of his strategies for using authors besides Plato and Aristotle (not just the pre-Socratics, but also Theophrastus and Eudemus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, and Proclus and his school, whom Baltussen discusses in turn).\r\n\r\nBaltussen's aims are laudable, but his book is not a safe guide; Golitsis, while not comprehensive, is much better. Baltussen pursues some good questions: why does Simplicius quote so much (just to save the texts from the wave of Christian barbarism?), what are his sources, and how does he handle so much information? (Actually, Simplicius discusses no more writers than Proclus, but he cites verbatim much more, and tries to go beyond secondary sources.) Baltussen needlessly defends Simplicius against the bizarre idea that he knew the pre-Socratics only through Alexander of Aphrodisias. However, it is true that Simplicius sometimes uses secondary sources, and also that Alexander was very important for him. Baltussen says that \"overall Simplicius considered [Alexander a] reliable guide and interpreter... Disagreement is expressed in muted form and head-on confrontation is rare\" (192). This both understates and overstates Simplicius' relation to Alexander and misses his method as a commentator.\r\n\r\nSimplicius' Physics and De Caelo commentaries are in effect metacommentaries on Alexander's lost commentaries (his Categories commentary starts instead from Porphyry and Iamblichus). One important hermeneutic principle for Simplicius is that each treatise must have a single primary object (skopos), such that everything else it discusses is discussed on account of some relation to that object. Baltussen discusses this principle but misleadingly. On p. 117, he has Simplicius attribute to Alexander (top of the page) the view that the skopos of the De Caelo is the world, and (lower down) the view that it is the four elements; attribute to Iamblichus the view that it is the universe; and Simplicius himself endorse the view that it is \"both the universe... and the four elements.\"\r\n\r\nIn fact, Simplicius attributes to Iamblichus the view that it is only the fifth (heavenly) body, and to Alexander the view that it is both the world and the five simple bodies. Simplicius himself says that the skopos is just the five simple bodies. The mistake is particularly serious because Baltussen suggests that Simplicius does not really make up his mind and opts for plural skopoi, when Simplicius emphatically insists that each treatise must have a single skopos and criticizes Alexander for breaking that rule. (On p. 36, Baltussen seems to suggest that Simplicius took the single-skopos rule from Alexander, but in the passage he cites Simplicius is criticizing Alexander.)\r\n\r\nOn p. 23 and 158, Syrianus (died ca. 437 A.D.) is listed among Simplicius' teachers. On p. 81, the inset translation of In Physica 161.23-162.2 turns the text into nonsense, taking pro\u00e9chth\u0113san (from proag\u014d) as if it were from a compound of achthomai (\"am grieved\") and misunderstanding Simplicius' term pro\u00e9chth\u0113san (\"charitable interpretation\"). (Baltussen doesn't usually quote the Greek, so the reader must be on guard.)\r\n\r\nOn p. 190 (and 175), he turns Simplicius' comments on constructing an equilateral triangle into a discussion of the first postulate, to draw a straight line. He notes skeptically that Simplicius \"mentions a work 'On Prayer' by Aristotle... in which he claims that Aristotle knew of a transcendent intellect\" (182), but On Prayer is well-attested, and of course Aristotle believed in a transcendent intellect; Simplicius' audacious claim in this passage is that Aristotle, like Plato, believed in a divine first principle above intellect and being.\r\n\r\nBaltussen's discussions of Philoponus and Christianity are particularly misleading. On p. 185, he cites Leslie MacCoull as putting some of Philoponus' arguments in the context of \"the theological debate among Arrianists [sic]\", but Philoponus was a Monophysite, the Arians had nothing to do with it, and MacCoull does not say they did. Baltussen also speaks here of Philoponus' aims in his \"polemic with Simplicius,\" but there seems to be no evidence that Philoponus knew of Simplicius' existence. [the entire review]","btype":3,"date":"2010","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/nycXB8DgJkcMbQt","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":255,"full_name":"Menn, Stephen","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":978,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"The Classical World","volume":"104","issue":"1","pages":"117-118"}},"sort":[2010]}