{"_index":"sire","_id":"1037","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1037,"authors_free":[{"id":1571,"entry_id":1037,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":284,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Schmitt, Charles Bernard","free_first_name":"Charles Bernard","free_last_name":"Schmitt","norm_person":{"id":284,"first_name":"Charles Bernard","last_name":"Schmitt","full_name":"Schmitt, Charles Bernard","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/118846744","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1572,"entry_id":1037,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"Richard","free_last_name":"Sorabji","norm_person":{"id":133,"first_name":"Richard","last_name":"Sorabji","full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/130064165","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics in the Sixtheenth Century","main_title":{"title":"Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics in the Sixtheenth Century"},"abstract":"As it is generally accepted, the term \u2018Renaissance\u2019 refers to a historical period in which there was a revival of interest in the literature, styles, and forms of Classical Antiquity. Though the \u2018revival\u2019 is usually understood to refer specifically to ancient \u2018literary\u2019 texts, there can be no doubt that the specialized technical treatises of philosophy, natural science, mathematics, and medicine played a role equally important, if not more important, in the cultural and intellectual life of the Renaissance. In addition to the rediscovery of the integral texts of Homer and the Greek dramatists, Cicero\u2019s Letters to Atticus, Quintilian, and Lucretius, the fifteenth century also saw the recovery of much of Galen, Theophrastus, Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus, Pappus, Diogenes Laertius, and Sextus Empiricus, as well as many additional classical authors of specialized literature. Indeed, the \u2018Renaissance\u2019 was a revival of the technical knowledge bequeathed by Antiquity as much as of works of recognized literary and rhetorical quality.\r\n\r\nOne aspect of the influence of ancient literature on the Renaissance which has received little attention until fairly recently is the role of the Greek commentators on Aristotle. In that vast corpus, most of which is conveniently assembled for us in the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, there is a wealth of interpretative and supplementary material, which is of great use not only for an understanding of the Aristotelian text itself but also for understanding its historical context and the philosophical positions that were in competition with those of Aristotle in antiquity. A certain number of the Greek commentaries were known in the Middle Ages, both in the Islamic and in the Christian worlds, but such knowledge was very fragmentary. Only a small portion of the extant commentaries was available in Latin before the sixteenth century. Some of these attained a degree of importance and played a central role in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century discussions of the soul, for example. These medieval versions are presently being edited in a critical fashion by a group of scholars at Louvain; this series should take its place alongside the Greek texts produced in the last century by the Berlin Academy of Sciences. So far, editions of commentaries by Themistius, Ammonius, Philoponus, Simplicius, Alexander, and Eustratius have appeared.\r\n\r\nBut it remained for the sixteenth century to make accessible most of the material. For example, less than half of the works attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias contained in the CAG and Supplementum Aristotelicum were available in the Middle Ages, and, among the expositions of Philoponus, only the commentary on the De Anima was available.\r\n\r\nThe need for a comprehensive publication of all of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle was already noted and made a program for the future in Aldo Manuzio\u2019s prefatory letter to the first volume of his editio princeps of Aristotle in 1495. Although Aldo himself did not live to achieve his aim, he did initiate it, and between that date and 1540 nearly the entire Greek corpus was made available to European scholars. Parallel with the publication of the Greek texts\u2014and generally delayed by only a few years\u2014was the publication of Latin translations of the same texts, thus making the material accessible to a much wider readership than the rather restricted group who could cope effectively with the Greek text of the commentators. Most of the Greek editions themselves, as well as the majority of the translations, issued from Venetian presses, though Paris and Lyon served as secondary publication centers. By mid-century essentially everything could be read in Latin, and the impact of the new material can be traced in the Aristotelian literature of the period.\r\n\r\nIn reading the many commentaries on Aristotle and other philosophical works of the sixteenth century, one clearly discerns the rising tide of interest in these expositions across a spectrum of philosophical and scientific topics. Hitherto, the impact of these new sources of information has only imperfectly been charted, primarily with regard to discussions of the soul. Nardi\u2019s fundamental work on Simplicius, the more recent studies on Alexander by Cranz, and on the general Neoplatonism of the commentaries by Mahoney have served to draw attention to the rich vein of material there to be mined. The range of the impact\u2014in logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and psychology\u2014has scarcely been charted, nor has the interplay between Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and medieval and Renaissance Latin interpretations of Aristotle been evaluated and analyzed.\r\n\r\nDuring the second half of the sixteenth century, those who wanted to understand Aristotle\u2014which for them meant philosophy tout court\u2014frequently tried to relate the text of the Stagirite to the varying interpretations of Philoponus, Simplicius, Averroes (1126\u201398), Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225\u201374), John of Jandun (died 1328), Pomponazzi (1462\u20131525), and Soto (1494\/5\u20131560), among many others.\r\n\r\nParticularly little studied has been the impact of the newly available Greek commentators on the Physics. Here is meant primarily Simplicius and Philoponus, both of whom left behind extensive and detailed expositions of that work, neither of which was known directly to Latin writers of the Middle Ages but which were to become available in the sixteenth century. As long ago as Wohlwill and Duhem, it has been known that some of the criticisms and alternative positions put forward in the commentaries on the Physics by the two sixth-century writers later attained importance in the history of the development of physical thought. Moreover, it was also realized by the same historians that the critiques of Aristotle put forward by Simplicius and Philoponus were very similar to some of the positions that became central in the formulation of the \u2018new science\u2019 of the seventeenth century.\r\n\r\nThus far, however, there has been little systematic attempt to consider the reaction of the sixteenth century as a whole to the reorientation made possible by the availability of Simplicius and Philoponus. The story is not simple, and it cannot be covered comprehensively here, though I hope to be able to indicate some lines further research might take. What I shall do is to focus upon Philoponus, whose significance in the story is possibly less than that of Simplicius, but without a full story of the fortune of the Physics of both authors a valid conclusion regarding their relative merits is not possible.\r\n\r\nBefore turning to a consideration of the impact of the Grammarian\u2019s partial commentary on the Physics (only the first four books are integrally extant), I should like to deal briefly with two other points. First, I should like to sketch a portrait of Philoponus as a commentator, emphasizing why what he had to say was of potential importance for the sixteenth century. Secondly, I shall say something general about the recovery and assimilation of his philosophical works in the West down to the sixteenth century. [introduction p. 210-213]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/Ub0AryY729JHN5w","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":284,"full_name":"Schmitt, Charles Bernard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1037,"section_of":184,"pages":"210-230","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":184,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1987c","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2010","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1987","abstract":"Richard Sorabji is the editor of a vast and growing number of translations of ancient\r\ncommentaries on Aristotle and the editor of several excellent collections of studies on the\r\nAristotelian tradition. Philoponus, a 6th century Christian thinker who was originally trained as\r\na Neoplatonist, is best remembered today for his attack on Aristotle's 'physics'; his influence on\r\nlater philosophers and scientists and his role in the reevaluation of Aristotelian science and\r\nnatural philosophy are indeed remarkable. The second edition of Philoponus and the Rejection\r\nof Aristotelian Science includes a new two-part introduction which offers a survey of the\r\nrapidly expanding scholarship on Philoponus and of recent archeological discoveries (such as\r\nthe lecture rooms of the 6th century Alexandrian school), as well as new insights into the\r\ninteraction between Greek paganism and Christianity in connection with Philoponus and his\r\nmilieu. The twelve chapters included in this collection are written by very prominent scholars\r\nand tackle topics such as Philoponus' corollaries on space and time, the differences between his\r\ntheological views (e.g. on the three hypostases) and the prevailing dogmas of the time, the\r\nrelation between his theory about impetus and later treatments of impetus and related\r\nconcepts in a number of Arab thinkers and in Galileo. This collection is one of the most reliable\r\nand wide-ranging introductions to Philoponus' views and influence, and those interested in late\r\nancient philosophy and its interactions with Christian thought will find this to be a most\r\nvaluable resource. [Review by Tiberiu Popa]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/CJSIbOOK7lIAB00","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":184,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London","series":"BICS Supplement","volume":"103","edition_no":"2","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics in the Sixtheenth Century"]}