{"_index":"sire","_id":"971","_score":null,"_source":{"id":971,"authors_free":[{"id":1462,"entry_id":971,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":39,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Baltussen, Han","free_first_name":"Han","free_last_name":"Baltussen","norm_person":{"id":39,"first_name":"Han","last_name":"Baltussen","full_name":"Baltussen, Han","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/136236456","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2351,"entry_id":971,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":42,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sharples, Robert W.","free_first_name":"Robert W.","free_last_name":"Sharples","norm_person":{"id":42,"first_name":"Robert W.","last_name":"Sharples","full_name":"Sharples, Robert W.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/114269505","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2352,"entry_id":971,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":43,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","free_first_name":"Anne D.","free_last_name":"Sheppard","norm_person":{"id":43,"first_name":"Anne D.","last_name":"Sheppard","full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1158024592","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Early Reactions to Plato\u2019s Timaeus: polemic and exegesis in Theophrastus and Epicurus","main_title":{"title":"Early Reactions to Plato\u2019s Timaeus: polemic and exegesis in Theophrastus and Epicurus"},"abstract":"We are reasonably well informed about what might justly be thought of as the commentary tradition of the late Hellenistic and late antique period. In this series of papers on the theme Plato\u2019s Timaeus and the Commentary Tradition, an obvious choice of topic has been to discuss the works of authors who explicitly declare themselves to be commenting upon or clarifying the text of an author. Most papers in this volume have therefore justly seen it as their task to clarify the interaction between one commentator and the Timaeus.\r\n\r\nMy perspective is slightly different. Commentary, as we usually see it, must have had its precursors in some form or other. As it happens, we have some evidence related to the Timaeus which makes this a reasonable assumption. I therefore want to look at two thinkers whose interpretative efforts occur at the beginnings of the \"commentary tradition.\" Here things are less clear and well-defined, in that at this end of the scale we are dealing with the emergence of exegesis. This means that certain fundamental assumptions\u2014e.g., what a commentary or a commentator is\u2014would no longer have an obvious value as starting points and that important questions about the interaction between authors and texts (such as \"what is a commentary?\", \"what form did the interpretation of texts take?\", or \"when do commentaries emerge?\") require a fresh look.\r\n\r\nThe \"prehistory\" of exegesis has received renewed impetus from the study of the so-called Derveni Papyrus (DP), a remarkable document from the 4th century BCE, representing a running commentary with allegorical interpretation on an Orphic poem. In his review of the collection of essays on this 4th-century \"commentary,\" Edward Hussey already points out that \"DP\u2019s interpretative procedures and terminology are already fairly formalized, in a way that shows parallels with the Protagoras, and suggests a self-conscious academic discipline in the making.\"\r\n\r\nThe two protagonists in this analysis are Theophrastus and Epicurus, both close in time to Plato. Epicurus is in many ways linked to Theophrastus\u2014as has been emerging only recently, especially through the work of David Sedley. My choice of overarching theme provides the analysis of these critical voices with context and perspective.\r\n\r\nThe ancient and modern perception of Theophrastus is a variable one, but in general, it is slanted toward a rather negative assessment. Theophrastus\u2019 work has suffered a bad press across the ages. The perception seems to be that Theophrastus is a second-rate thinker (as one scholar once commented, \"reading Theophrastus is like reading Aristotle on a bad day\"). This perhaps somewhat offhand remark may refer only to the stylistic (de)merits or to the quality of thought found in the sparsely preserved remains of what once was a considerable output. But it seems unfair in many ways. In ancient times, Theophrastus\u2019 works were so closely associated with Aristotle\u2019s that his works became mixed up with his master\u2019s.\r\n\r\nIn late antiquity, the general consensus of the commentators after Themistius seems to have been that Theophrastus was a major figure in the history of philosophy whose opinions could nevertheless be ignored on most matters.\r\n\r\nSome twelve fragments have been preserved which throw light on the unexpected place the second head of the Peripatos acquired in the later Platonist tradition. I think it will be instructive to have a look at these, because they say something not only about the role of Theophrastus but also about the perception of his comments in antiquity.\r\n\r\nI should confess that my ulterior motive is to look at these early reactions as a stage in the emergence of exegesis and (formal) commentary. My interest, then, is in the \"pre-history\" of the commentary tradition. The crucial question which will be constantly driving my analysis is: can the early polemical responses be viewed as the start of commentary or not? [introduction p. 49-50]","btype":2,"date":"2003","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/rECjmb8p0bsRQza","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":39,"full_name":"Baltussen, Han","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":42,"full_name":"Sharples, Robert W.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":43,"full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":971,"section_of":157,"pages":"49-71","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":157,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Ancient Approaches to Plato's Timaeus","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sharples\/Sheppard2003","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2003","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2003","abstract":"Twelve academic essays, given during the Institute of Classical Studies research seminar in 2000 and 2001, examine Plato's vision of the `real world' as he presented it in Timaeus while considering the text's influence on classical philosophers and scientists. Specific subjects include astronomy, the reactions of Aristotle and others to Timaeus , Hellenistic musicology, Proclus' Commentary , comparisons with Aristotle's Physics , mythology. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/UsvEmjeEeL17itA","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":157,"pubplace":"University of London","publisher":"Institute of Classical Studies","series":"Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies","volume":"46, Supplement 78","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Early Reactions to Plato\u2019s Timaeus: polemic and exegesis in Theophrastus and Epicurus"]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"1021","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1021,"authors_free":[{"id":1537,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":43,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","free_first_name":"Anne D.","free_last_name":"Sheppard","norm_person":{"id":43,"first_name":"Anne D.","last_name":"Sheppard","full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1158024592","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1538,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J. ","free_first_name":"Henry J.","free_last_name":"Blumenthal","norm_person":{"id":108,"first_name":"Henry J.","last_name":"Blumenthal","full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1051543967","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1539,"entry_id":1021,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":139,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Robinson, Howard","free_first_name":"Howard","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":139,"first_name":"Robinson","last_name":"Howard ","full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/172347122","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3","main_title":{"title":"Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3"},"abstract":"Aristotle\u2019s treatment of phantasia in De anima 3.3 is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind that cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought\u2014a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call \"imagination,\" at least has much in common with it. It is tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is difficult to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been several recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle\u2019s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere. I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination. In all three cases, the way they interpret Aristotle\u2019s position is influenced by the account of imagination they themselves favor.\r\n\r\nIt used to be taken for granted that imagination involves having mental images, but this assumption was among the many challenged in the works of Wittgenstein and in Gilbert Ryle\u2019s The Concept of Mind. It is now more fashionable to analyze propositions of the form \"I imagine that P\" than to inquire into hypothetical pictures in the mind. Accordingly, some current interpreters of Aristotle claim that he is interested in the logic of the verb phainesthai, or in a power that interprets the data of perception, rather than in mental images.\r\n\r\nFor example, Malcolm Schofield claims that Aristotle is concerned with the verb phainesthai and the sense in which it expresses a non-committal attitude toward the veridical character of sensory or quasi-sensory experiences. According to Schofield, Aristotle is concerned with \"non-paradigmatic sensory experiences\"\u2014phenomena that make one say cautiously phainetai (\"It looks like an X\"). Mental imagery is only one type of such experience and is not Aristotle\u2019s main concern. Martha Nussbaum also emphasizes the connection with the verb phainesthai and explicitly attacks the view that mental images are central to either Aristotelian phantasia or our notion of imagination. Nussbaum claims that Aristotle has a very general interest in how things appear to living creatures. She examines Aristotle\u2019s account of the role of phantasia in animal movement and its relationship to aisthesis and argues that, for Aristotle, aisthesis is simply the passive reception of sense-impressions, while the role of phantasia is to interpret such impressions.\r\n\r\nMore recently, Deborah Modrak has argued for an interpretation of Aristotelian phantasia that once again makes mental images important. She argues against Nussbaum\u2019s interpretation of aisthesis as purely passive and describes phantasia as \"the awareness of a sensory content under conditions that are not conducive to veridical perception.\" Such awareness, she argues, can perfectly well take the form of a mental image.\r\n\r\nMy concern here is not so much to adjudicate among these rival modern interpretations of Aristotle as to inquire what light the Neoplatonist commentators on the De anima throw on the issues raised. It might be thought that this is a futile enterprise, given the very different presuppositions with which the ancient commentators approached Aristotle. Henry Blumenthal has demonstrated in a number of articles that these commentators read Aristotle through Platonizing spectacles and that their interpretation of his psychology is colored by their Platonist assumptions. Nevertheless, if we examine the discussions of De anima 3.3 by the Neoplatonists, some interesting light is cast on the question of whether phantasia involves mental images.\r\n\r\nIn this paper, I shall confine myself to the two Neoplatonist commentaries on the De anima\u2014those attributed to Simplicius and Philoponus. (Themistius, who was not a Neoplatonist, would require separate discussion.) Both commentaries raise problems of authorship, although these do not significantly affect the present inquiry. F. Bossier and C. Steel have argued that the commentary ascribed to Simplicius is not by him but by his contemporary Priscianus Lydus. Whether this is correct or not, the commentary is a product of sixth-century Athenian Neoplatonism. Book 3 of the Greek version of Philoponus\u2019 commentary has been much more conclusively demonstrated to be by the later Alexandrian commentator Stephanus. Part of a Latin translation of Philoponus\u2019 own work on De anima 3 survives, but his comments on 3.3 are not preserved. Those I shall be discussing are by Stephanus. (Where it is possible to compare the two commentators, the views of Stephanus are sometimes quite close to those of Philoponus, so it is likely that Philoponus\u2019 views on 3.3 were not very different from those we find in Stephanus.) [introduction p. 165-167]","btype":2,"date":"1991","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/lzX0JUImw1D2csY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":43,"full_name":"Sheppard, Anne D.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":139,"full_name":"Robinson, Howard ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1021,"section_of":354,"pages":"165-173","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":354,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Blumenthal\/Robinson1991","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1991","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1991","abstract":"This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution.[official abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jxVlK6YghFkMcPK","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":354,"pubplace":"Oxford","publisher":"Clarendon Press","series":"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Phantasia and Mental Images: Neoplatonist Interpretations of De Anima, 3.3"]}