Title | The Life and Works of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic Sources |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 295-326 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hadot, Ilsetraut |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Here, therefore, are the conclusions to which one might be led as regards Simplicius’ works. We have extant: the commentaries on Epictetus’ Encheiridion, on Aristotle’s De Caelo, Physics, Categories, and probably on his De Anima. Lost, though attested in a more or less certain fashion: a commentary on the first book of Euclid’s Elements, a commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a commentary on Iamblichus’ work devoted to the Pythagorean sect, an epitome of Theophrastus’ Physics (if the commentary on the De Anima, where one finds a reference to this work, is authentic), and perhaps a commentary on Hermogenes’ Tekhnê. [conclusion p. 326] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/SguvcKAd2fhClm6 |
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Title | The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 61-88 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Gottschalk, Hans B. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
In Chapter 3, Hans Gottschalk surveys the commentators on Aristotle from the fi rst century bc to late in the second century ad , and some of their Platonist opponents. He gives the most space to the fi rst of them, Andronicus, persuasively rguing that he worked in Athens without going to Rome, and telling something of Andronicus’ philosophical comments on Aristotle and of his editorial work on Aristotle’s school writings (as opposed to his works then better known, but now largely lost, for publication outside the school). He rightly says that Andronicus presented Aristotle as a system. As I indicated in commenting on Chapter 1 above, his younger contemporary in Athens, Boethus, stimulated enormous reaction from later commentators by his detailed and idiosyncratic interpretation of Aristotle, fragments of which they recorded. So the description ‘scholasticism’, insofar as it suggests to us something rather dry, is not a description we should now be likely to use, especially aft er the recent discovery of new fragments of Boethus. But Aristotle Re-Interpreted will include a contribution on some of Boethus’ achievement and further detail on the commentators aft er him is supplied in other recent works listed above in note 6. Th e only big matter of controversy concerns the two words ‘critical edition’ at the opening of Gottschalk’s chapter, which could be taken for granted in 1990. It was challenged by Jonathan Barnes in 1997. 9 A critical edition is produced by comparing diff erent copies of the original in order to discover more closely what the original may have said. Barnes argued powerfully that this is not what Andronicus did. Indeed, if he did not go to Rome to examine the manuscript there, it is even less likely that he did. One reaction was to think that this greatly reduced the importance of Andronicus. But a contribution in Aristotle Re- Interpreted will take up the other editorial activity including the presentation of Aristotle’s school writings as a system. It was far more valuable, according to this argument, to create a coherent canon of Aristotle’s voluminous school writings, by joining or separating pieces and arranging them in a coherent order for reading, than to seek the original wording in a critical edition. [Sorabji: Introduction to the Second Edition, p. xii] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/nJ4WSAlewntt7lZ |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"535","_score":null,"_source":{"id":535,"authors_free":[{"id":756,"entry_id":535,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":135,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Gottschalk, Hans B.","free_first_name":"Hans B.","free_last_name":"Gottschalk","norm_person":{"id":135,"first_name":"Hans B.","last_name":"Gottschalk","full_name":"Gottschalk, Hans B.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1161498559","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":757,"entry_id":535,"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":"The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators","main_title":{"title":"The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators"},"abstract":" In Chapter 3, Hans Gottschalk surveys the commentators on Aristotle from the \r\nfi rst century bc to late in the second century ad , and some of their Platonist \r\nopponents. He gives the most space to the fi rst of them, Andronicus, persuasively rguing that he worked in Athens without going to Rome, and telling something \r\nof Andronicus\u2019 philosophical comments on Aristotle and of his editorial work \r\non Aristotle\u2019s school writings (as opposed to his works then better known, but \r\nnow largely lost, for publication outside the school). He rightly says that \r\nAndronicus presented Aristotle as a system. As I indicated in commenting on \r\nChapter 1 above, his younger contemporary in Athens, Boethus, stimulated \r\nenormous reaction from later commentators by his detailed and idiosyncratic \r\ninterpretation of Aristotle, fragments of which they recorded. So the description \r\n\u2018scholasticism\u2019, insofar as it suggests to us something rather dry, is not a \r\ndescription we should now be likely to use, especially aft er the recent discovery \r\nof new fragments of Boethus. But Aristotle Re-Interpreted will include a \r\ncontribution on some of Boethus\u2019 achievement and further detail on the \r\ncommentators aft er him is supplied in other recent works listed above in note 6. \r\nTh e only big matter of controversy concerns the two words \u2018critical edition\u2019 at the \r\nopening of Gottschalk\u2019s chapter, which could be taken for granted in 1990. It was \r\nchallenged by Jonathan Barnes in 1997. 9 A critical edition is produced by \r\ncomparing diff erent copies of the original in order to discover more closely what \r\nthe original may have said. Barnes argued powerfully that this is not what \r\nAndronicus did. Indeed, if he did not go to Rome to examine the manuscript \r\nthere, it is even less likely that he did. One reaction was to think that this greatly \r\nreduced the importance of Andronicus. But a contribution in Aristotle Re-\r\nInterpreted will take up the other editorial activity including the presentation of \r\nAristotle\u2019s school writings as a system. It was far more valuable, according to this \r\nargument, to create a coherent canon of Aristotle\u2019s voluminous school writings, \r\nby joining or separating pieces and arranging them in a coherent order for \r\nreading, than to seek the original wording in a critical edition. [Sorabji: Introduction to the Second Edition, p. xii]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/nJ4WSAlewntt7lZ","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":135,"full_name":"Gottschalk, Hans B.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":535,"section_of":200,"pages":"61-88","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":200,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1990","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1990","abstract":"The story of the ancient commentators on Aristotle has not previously been told \r\nat book length. Here it is assembled for the fi rst time by drawing both on some \r\nof the classic articles translated into English or revised and on the very latest \r\nresearch. Some of the chapters will be making revisionary suggestions unfamiliar \r\neven to specialists in the fi eld. Th e philosophical interest of the commentators \r\nhas been illustrated elsewhere. 1 Th e aim here is not so much to do this again as \r\nto set out the background of the commentary tradition against which further \r\nphilosophical discussion and discussions of other kinds can take place. \r\n Th e importance of the commentators lies partly in their representing the \r\nthought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools, \r\npartly in the panorama they provide of the 1100 years of Ancient Greek \r\nphilosophy, preserving as they do many original quotations from lost philosophical \r\nworks. Still more signifi cant is their profound infl uence, uncovered in some of the \r\nchapters below, on subsequent philosophy, Islamic and European. Th is was due \r\npartly to their preserving anti-Aristotelian material which helped to inspire \r\nmedieval and Renaissance science, but still more to their presenting an Aristotle \r\ntransformed in ways which happened to make him acceptable to the Christian \r\nChurch. It is not just Aristotle, but this Aristotle transformed and embedded in \r\nthe philosophy of the commentators, that lies behind the views of later thinkers. [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/b7EaNXJNckqKKqB","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":200,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"2","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | John Philoponus’ Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle’s De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 393-412 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Golitsis, Pantelis |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Philoponus’ denial of the existence of unformed matter in his Contra Proclum, composed in 529, allows us to date the commentary on DA 3 before the Contra Proclum, since the existence of unformed matter is accepted in the former work. To conclude: we should discard Stephanus as a possible author of in DA 3, which is an attribution depending on a Byzantine addition to a manuscript with no title, and reassign this commentary to Philoponus on the grounds of self-reference, exegetical attitude, and general style. This commentary, possibly through the initiative of a pupil who recorded it, replaced Ammonius’ commentary on Book 3, as previously published by Philoponus, thus allowing two different editions to reach Byzantium: Philoponus’ edition of Ammonius’ lectures and the composite edition in which Ammonius’ lectures on Book 3 were replaced by those of Philoponus. The second edition was the one copied by D1, whereas D3 had access only to the first edition. [conclusion p. 412] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/QH2oMIgPb9H8EAI |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1418","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1418,"authors_free":[{"id":2219,"entry_id":1418,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":129,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","free_first_name":"Pantelis","free_last_name":"Golitsis","norm_person":{"id":129,"first_name":"Pantelis","last_name":"Golitsis","full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2221,"entry_id":1418,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"John Philoponus\u2019 Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle\u2019s De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus","main_title":{"title":"John Philoponus\u2019 Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle\u2019s De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus"},"abstract":"Philoponus\u2019 denial of the existence of unformed matter in his Contra Proclum, composed in 529, allows us to date the commentary on DA 3 before the Contra Proclum, since the existence of unformed matter is accepted in the former work.\r\n\r\nTo conclude: we should discard Stephanus as a possible author of in DA 3, which is an attribution depending on a Byzantine addition to a manuscript with no title, and reassign this commentary to Philoponus on the grounds of self-reference, exegetical attitude, and general style. This commentary, possibly through the initiative of a pupil who recorded it, replaced Ammonius\u2019 commentary on Book 3, as previously published by Philoponus, thus allowing two different editions to reach Byzantium: Philoponus\u2019 edition of Ammonius\u2019 lectures and the composite edition in which Ammonius\u2019 lectures on Book 3 were replaced by those of Philoponus. The second edition was the one copied by D1, whereas D3 had access only to the first edition. [conclusion p. 412]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/QH2oMIgPb9H8EAI","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":129,"full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1418,"section_of":1419,"pages":"393-412","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/thdAvlIvWl4EdKB","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Simplicius’ Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and Doctrines |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 531–540 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hoffmann, Philippe , Golitsis, Pantelis |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Simplicius’ Corollary on Place (Corollarium de loco) is not a doxographic text but a strictly Neoplatonic philosophical work, with its own philosophical method. It takes the form of a digression interrupting the continuity of Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (itself a written work intended for readers, hoi entugkhanontes, hoi enteuxomenoi), and its literary genre is that of a monograph treatise using dialectic and exegesis as its principal methods. The dialectical method consists in discussing the opinions of Simplicius’ predecessors, ancient and modern, mainly Aristotle and Proclus, to pave the way for the exposition of the truth, following the method inaugurated by Aristotle in the Topics and still very much alive. It also proceeds by puzzles and solutions (aporiai kai luseis). Th e exegetic method reappears even within a digression which breaks with the continuous commentary and Simplicius devotes sometimes long passages to quoting and commenting on texts from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Proclus, and Damascius, but also from the Chaldaean Oracles, Iamblichus, or Syrianus. Throughout this piece Simplicius maintains complete control over his material which includes the art of rhetoric, dialectical technique, and his philosophic intention. In it, he replaces the Aristotelian defi nition of place (‘the first unmoved boundary of the surrounding body’ (to tou periekhontos peras akinêton prôton), Phys . 4.4, 212a20–1) with a new defi nition taken from his master Damascius (place is the measure of the intrinsic positioning (metron tês theseôs) of the parts of a body, and of its right position in a greater surrounding whole), and he departs from Aristotle’s thought with a radical innovation which progressively works its way in. [introduction p. 531-532] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/nyFqYhK3Z7baSF2 |
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It takes the form of a digression interrupting the continuity of Simplicius\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Physics (itself a written work intended for readers, hoi entugkhanontes, hoi enteuxomenoi), and its literary genre is that of a monograph treatise using dialectic and exegesis as its principal methods. The dialectical method consists in discussing the opinions of Simplicius\u2019 predecessors, ancient and modern, mainly Aristotle and Proclus, to pave the way for the exposition of the truth, following the method inaugurated by Aristotle in the Topics and still very much alive. It also proceeds by puzzles and solutions (aporiai kai luseis). Th e exegetic method reappears even within a digression which breaks with the continuous commentary and Simplicius devotes sometimes long passages to quoting and commenting on texts from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Proclus, and Damascius, but also from the Chaldaean Oracles, Iamblichus, or Syrianus. Throughout this piece Simplicius maintains complete control over his material which includes the art of rhetoric, dialectical technique, and his philosophic intention. In it, he replaces the Aristotelian defi nition of place (\u2018the first unmoved boundary of the surrounding body\u2019 (to tou periekhontos peras akin\u00eaton pr\u00f4ton), Phys . 4.4, 212a20\u20131) with a new defi nition taken from his master Damascius (place is the measure of the intrinsic positioning (metron t\u00eas these\u00f4s) of the parts of a body, and of its right position in a greater surrounding whole), and he departs from Aristotle\u2019s thought with a radical innovation which progressively works its way in. [introduction p. 531-532]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/nyFqYhK3Z7baSF2","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":138,"full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":129,"full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1508,"section_of":1419,"pages":"531\u2013540","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Dating of Philoponus’ Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence from his Teacher Ammonius |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 367-392 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
There have been two major hypotheses since 1990, and much valuable discussion concerning the dating of Philoponus’ commentaries on Aristotle and of his divergence from Ammonius. In 1990, Koenraad Verrycken summarized in Aristotle Transformed his new datings for Philoponus’ work, drawing on apparent contradictions in his statements about the eternity or coming-into-being of the universe and its contents, about the nature of place, and about the possibility of vacuum and of motion in a vacuum. His earlier dissertation of 1985 also included Philoponus’ changing treatment of Aristotle’s prime matter. He suggested solving these problems by postulating a phase around 517 CE in which Philoponus accepted his teacher Ammonius’ Neoplatonism and interpretation of Aristotle as agreeing with Plato and with Neoplatonism, and a later phase in which he reverted to his Christian origins on the level of doctrine and repudiated the Neoplatonist and Aristotelian ideas, especially where, as with eternity or the Creation of the universe, they contradicted Christian ideas. This called for a second edition of some earlier commentaries on Aristotle after 529 CE. Verrycken was aware that his particular dating might not be accepted, and even that the appearance of a Neoplatonist or Aristotelian view might sometimes be due to the expository nature of commentary on Aristotle. This and other explanations have since been proffered, and the particular dating has received widespread criticism, which I have summarized elsewhere. Nonetheless, even if Philoponus does not juxtapose as often as suggested different viewpoints of his own, Verrycken’s citations establish that he does develop different viewpoints across a wide range of texts and topics, so that it remains necessary to consider his evidence in formulating any alternative dating. The second major hypothesis was offered in 2008 by Pantelis Golitsis, who exploited an underused source of evidence that bears on several questions. He has also been kind enough to discuss at two workshops his further work in preparation. I shall, however, refer to his 2008 publication, except where explicitly stated. Philoponus’ seven commentaries on Aristotle are divided into books, and four commentaries are, or at least some books in four commentaries are, described in their titles as being Philoponus’ commentarial (skholastikai) notes (aposêmeiôseis) from the meetings (sunousiai), i.e., seminar sessions, of Ammonius (his teacher), with Philoponus’ name or other designation coming first. The four are in An. Pr., in An. Post., in DA, and in GC. The last three of these four are described as containing further (critical) reflections (more below on the meaning of epistaseis) of his own (idiôn) by Philoponus. The remaining three of Philoponus’ commentaries on Aristotle are not ascribed to the seminars of Ammonius. Philoponus also refers twice to a commentary, now lost, on Porphyry’s Introduction (Isagôgê), his introduction that is, on one interpretation, to Aristotle’s logic. All this could have several important implications. First, although the titles of his commentaries were written in by successive scribes, Golitsis has sought out the best manuscripts and has taken them to represent Philoponus’ own description, and from this he has inferred quite a precise timetable for Philoponus’ commentaries on Aristotle. The commentaries whose book titles refer to Ammonius’ seminars were written first and commissioned as editions of Ammonius’ lectures as they were delivered in the order of the standard curriculum between 510 and 515. Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which contains a lecture dated to 517, is not connected in its book titles with Ammonius’ lectures in the modern edition of Vitelli under the general editorship of Diels, and moreover, it contains open disagreement with Ammonius. If that is right, the commentary will reflect courses that Philoponus himself was giving. However, Golitsis allows me to mention that in further work, he will now be taking seriously Trincavelli’s earlier alternative reading of the manuscript title, which does, at the beginning of the commentary on Physics Book One, mention both Ammonius’ seminars and Philoponus’ (critical) reflections, and he will be explaining the transformative consequences. Philoponus’ editions of Ammonius’ lectures will have included, again, Golitsis suggests, in the order of the standard curriculum: on Porphyry’s Isagôgê, and on Aristotle’s Categories, then on the eighth book of his Physics, which precedes the lecture of 517 on the Physics, whether or not the series includes more on the Physics. So far, Golitsis’ conclusion rightly observes the standard view that most commentaries on Aristotle reflect teaching classes. But, by way of exception, the commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology is not connected by any titles to Ammonius, and Golitsis argues it does not appear to reflect teaching either, so was written after Philoponus had stopped teaching courses on Aristotle. The task now, as I see it, is to consider how far the new considerations about titles, combined with many others, including some highlighted by Verrycken, can enable us to confirm or disconfirm the details of dating and divergence and provide a modified picture. [introduction p. 367-369] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/6Gmj6C363y2Apg8 |
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In 1990, Koenraad Verrycken summarized in Aristotle Transformed his new datings for Philoponus\u2019 work, drawing on apparent contradictions in his statements about the eternity or coming-into-being of the universe and its contents, about the nature of place, and about the possibility of vacuum and of motion in a vacuum. His earlier dissertation of 1985 also included Philoponus\u2019 changing treatment of Aristotle\u2019s prime matter. He suggested solving these problems by postulating a phase around 517 CE in which Philoponus accepted his teacher Ammonius\u2019 Neoplatonism and interpretation of Aristotle as agreeing with Plato and with Neoplatonism, and a later phase in which he reverted to his Christian origins on the level of doctrine and repudiated the Neoplatonist and Aristotelian ideas, especially where, as with eternity or the Creation of the universe, they contradicted Christian ideas. This called for a second edition of some earlier commentaries on Aristotle after 529 CE. Verrycken was aware that his particular dating might not be accepted, and even that the appearance of a Neoplatonist or Aristotelian view might sometimes be due to the expository nature of commentary on Aristotle. This and other explanations have since been proffered, and the particular dating has received widespread criticism, which I have summarized elsewhere. Nonetheless, even if Philoponus does not juxtapose as often as suggested different viewpoints of his own, Verrycken\u2019s citations establish that he does develop different viewpoints across a wide range of texts and topics, so that it remains necessary to consider his evidence in formulating any alternative dating.\r\n\r\nThe second major hypothesis was offered in 2008 by Pantelis Golitsis, who exploited an underused source of evidence that bears on several questions. He has also been kind enough to discuss at two workshops his further work in preparation. I shall, however, refer to his 2008 publication, except where explicitly stated. Philoponus\u2019 seven commentaries on Aristotle are divided into books, and four commentaries are, or at least some books in four commentaries are, described in their titles as being Philoponus\u2019 commentarial (skholastikai) notes (apos\u00eamei\u00f4seis) from the meetings (sunousiai), i.e., seminar sessions, of Ammonius (his teacher), with Philoponus\u2019 name or other designation coming first. The four are in An. Pr., in An. Post., in DA, and in GC. The last three of these four are described as containing further (critical) reflections (more below on the meaning of epistaseis) of his own (idi\u00f4n) by Philoponus. The remaining three of Philoponus\u2019 commentaries on Aristotle are not ascribed to the seminars of Ammonius. Philoponus also refers twice to a commentary, now lost, on Porphyry\u2019s Introduction (Isag\u00f4g\u00ea), his introduction that is, on one interpretation, to Aristotle\u2019s logic. All this could have several important implications.\r\n\r\nFirst, although the titles of his commentaries were written in by successive scribes, Golitsis has sought out the best manuscripts and has taken them to represent Philoponus\u2019 own description, and from this he has inferred quite a precise timetable for Philoponus\u2019 commentaries on Aristotle. The commentaries whose book titles refer to Ammonius\u2019 seminars were written first and commissioned as editions of Ammonius\u2019 lectures as they were delivered in the order of the standard curriculum between 510 and 515. Philoponus\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Physics, which contains a lecture dated to 517, is not connected in its book titles with Ammonius\u2019 lectures in the modern edition of Vitelli under the general editorship of Diels, and moreover, it contains open disagreement with Ammonius. If that is right, the commentary will reflect courses that Philoponus himself was giving.\r\n\r\nHowever, Golitsis allows me to mention that in further work, he will now be taking seriously Trincavelli\u2019s earlier alternative reading of the manuscript title, which does, at the beginning of the commentary on Physics Book One, mention both Ammonius\u2019 seminars and Philoponus\u2019 (critical) reflections, and he will be explaining the transformative consequences. Philoponus\u2019 editions of Ammonius\u2019 lectures will have included, again, Golitsis suggests, in the order of the standard curriculum: on Porphyry\u2019s Isag\u00f4g\u00ea, and on Aristotle\u2019s Categories, then on the eighth book of his Physics, which precedes the lecture of 517 on the Physics, whether or not the series includes more on the Physics.\r\n\r\nSo far, Golitsis\u2019 conclusion rightly observes the standard view that most commentaries on Aristotle reflect teaching classes. But, by way of exception, the commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Meteorology is not connected by any titles to Ammonius, and Golitsis argues it does not appear to reflect teaching either, so was written after Philoponus had stopped teaching courses on Aristotle. The task now, as I see it, is to consider how far the new considerations about titles, combined with many others, including some highlighted by Verrycken, can enable us to confirm or disconfirm the details of dating and divergence and provide a modified picture. [introduction p. 367-369]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/6Gmj6C363y2Apg8","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1531,"section_of":1419,"pages":"367-392","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Smoothing over the Differences: Proclus and Ammonius on Plato’s Cratylus and Aristotle’s De Interpretatione |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 353-366 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | van den Berg, Robbert Maarten |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Ammonius, the son of Hermeias († between 517 and 526), was not a prolific author, unlike his teacher Proclus (412–485). Whereas the latter wrote up to seven hundred lines a day, the only large work that Ammonius ever wrote was his commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione. Remarkably enough, for someone whose entire reputation rests on his study of Aristotle, he does not claim any credit for its content. His work, he writes at the beginning, is a record of the interpretations of his divine teacher Proclus. If he too is able to add anything to the clarification of the book, he ‘owes a great thanks to the god of eloquence.’ How much did the god of eloquence allow Ammonius to add? No other sources of Proclus’ course on the Int. survive. Yet in one case we are able to study Ammonius’ originality or the lack of it: his discussion of Aristotle’s views on onomata, a group of words that corresponds roughly speaking to our nouns and which I shall refer to as ‘names’ in this paper. One of the major issues in Greek linguistic thought throughout Antiquity was the relation between names and their objects. Does there exist some sort of natural relation between names and their objects, or are names just a matter of convention? Plato had discussed the question in his Cratylus, in which he had made a certain Hermogenes the spokesman of the conventionalist position and the eponymous character Cratylus an adherent of the naturalist position. In the end, Socrates forces both Hermogenes and Cratylus to admit that names are partly by nature and partly by convention, hence that they are both right and wrong. Many scholars, both ancient and modern, believe that in the first chapters of Int. Aristotle responded at least in part to the views expressed in the Cratylus. As it so happens, an excerpt of Proclus’ lecture notes on that Platonic dialogue has survived. A first reading of the two commentaries seems indeed to suggest that there is a substantial overlap between them on the relevant issue, even though Proclus may at times be critical of Aristotle. As we shall see, this apparent correspondence has even inspired an attempt to emend Proclus’ text at one point on the basis of Ammonius’ commentary. In this paper, I will argue that in fact Ammonius’ concept of onoma is significantly different from that of Proclus. As Proclus had observed, but as Ammonius tried to downplay, Aristotle had been arguing against Plato. For Proclus, this did not pose any particular problem. Like all Neoplatonists, Ammonius included, he was convinced that the divinely inspired Plato had to be right. If Aristotle chose to deviate from Plato and the truth, that was his problem. Proclus sets Socrates up as a judge (in Crat. §10, p. 4,12) between the conventionalist Hermogenes and the naturalist Cratylus, a judge who shows that they are both right and wrong. Aristotle is explicitly counted among the partisans of Hermogenes. On the whole, one can say that Proclus is very critical of Aristotle in in Crat. Ammonius, on the other hand, wanted to show that Plato and Aristotle were in complete harmony with each other, even where this is not evident. He too presents Socrates as a mediator between Hermogenes and Cratylus (in Int. 37,1), but this time Aristotle is not grouped together with Hermogenes but presented as being of the same mind as Socrates. As we shall see, Ammonius, when discussing the nature of names, takes his point of departure from Aristotle. Since Aristotle’s idea of what a name is differs from Plato’s, Ammonius will arrive at a concept of name that is fundamentally different from that of Proclus, who takes Plato as his starting point. On the assumption that Proclus, who for the most part appears to be quite consistent throughout his enormous œuvre, did not radically change his views when lecturing on Int., we may thus infer from this that Ammonius was not slavishly following Proclus. This becomes all the more apparent in the case of Ammonius’ interpretation of Cratylus’ position in the dialogue. In order to harmonize Plato with Aristotle, Ammonius offers a rather original, albeit not very convincing, reading of that position. Once we have established the fundamental difference between the two of them, we will be better able to explain a phenomenon to which Richard Sorabji has recently drawn attention: the absence of any interest in divine names in Ammonius’ commentary. Finally, this case study will allow us to make a more general observation about the relation between the Athenian and Alexandrian commentators. [introduction p. 353-355] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/U7I3LYIXJL83A4Y |
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Whereas the latter wrote up to seven hundred lines a day, the only large work that Ammonius ever wrote was his commentary on Aristotle\u2019s De Interpretatione. Remarkably enough, for someone whose entire reputation rests on his study of Aristotle, he does not claim any credit for its content. His work, he writes at the beginning, is a record of the interpretations of his divine teacher Proclus. If he too is able to add anything to the clarification of the book, he \u2018owes a great thanks to the god of eloquence.\u2019\r\n\r\nHow much did the god of eloquence allow Ammonius to add? No other sources of Proclus\u2019 course on the Int. survive. Yet in one case we are able to study Ammonius\u2019 originality or the lack of it: his discussion of Aristotle\u2019s views on onomata, a group of words that corresponds roughly speaking to our nouns and which I shall refer to as \u2018names\u2019 in this paper.\r\n\r\nOne of the major issues in Greek linguistic thought throughout Antiquity was the relation between names and their objects. Does there exist some sort of natural relation between names and their objects, or are names just a matter of convention? Plato had discussed the question in his Cratylus, in which he had made a certain Hermogenes the spokesman of the conventionalist position and the eponymous character Cratylus an adherent of the naturalist position. In the end, Socrates forces both Hermogenes and Cratylus to admit that names are partly by nature and partly by convention, hence that they are both right and wrong. Many scholars, both ancient and modern, believe that in the first chapters of Int. Aristotle responded at least in part to the views expressed in the Cratylus. As it so happens, an excerpt of Proclus\u2019 lecture notes on that Platonic dialogue has survived. A first reading of the two commentaries seems indeed to suggest that there is a substantial overlap between them on the relevant issue, even though Proclus may at times be critical of Aristotle. As we shall see, this apparent correspondence has even inspired an attempt to emend Proclus\u2019 text at one point on the basis of Ammonius\u2019 commentary.\r\n\r\nIn this paper, I will argue that in fact Ammonius\u2019 concept of onoma is significantly different from that of Proclus. As Proclus had observed, but as Ammonius tried to downplay, Aristotle had been arguing against Plato. For Proclus, this did not pose any particular problem. Like all Neoplatonists, Ammonius included, he was convinced that the divinely inspired Plato had to be right. If Aristotle chose to deviate from Plato and the truth, that was his problem. Proclus sets Socrates up as a judge (in Crat. \u00a710, p. 4,12) between the conventionalist Hermogenes and the naturalist Cratylus, a judge who shows that they are both right and wrong. Aristotle is explicitly counted among the partisans of Hermogenes. On the whole, one can say that Proclus is very critical of Aristotle in in Crat.\r\n\r\nAmmonius, on the other hand, wanted to show that Plato and Aristotle were in complete harmony with each other, even where this is not evident. He too presents Socrates as a mediator between Hermogenes and Cratylus (in Int. 37,1), but this time Aristotle is not grouped together with Hermogenes but presented as being of the same mind as Socrates. As we shall see, Ammonius, when discussing the nature of names, takes his point of departure from Aristotle. Since Aristotle\u2019s idea of what a name is differs from Plato\u2019s, Ammonius will arrive at a concept of name that is fundamentally different from that of Proclus, who takes Plato as his starting point. On the assumption that Proclus, who for the most part appears to be quite consistent throughout his enormous \u0153uvre, did not radically change his views when lecturing on Int., we may thus infer from this that Ammonius was not slavishly following Proclus. This becomes all the more apparent in the case of Ammonius\u2019 interpretation of Cratylus\u2019 position in the dialogue. In order to harmonize Plato with Aristotle, Ammonius offers a rather original, albeit not very convincing, reading of that position.\r\n\r\nOnce we have established the fundamental difference between the two of them, we will be better able to explain a phenomenon to which Richard Sorabji has recently drawn attention: the absence of any interest in divine names in Ammonius\u2019 commentary. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 413-436 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | de Haas, Frans A. J. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
In this study, I have tried to show that Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s account of mixture has to be understood against the background of a discussion between three views of mixture that dominated the Aristotelian tradition as a whole. The starting point was Zabarella’s classification of solutions to the main problem of mixture: how to interpret Aristotle’s claim that the ingredients are preserved in the mixture in potentiality. In a sense, Proclus and Simplicius belong with Avicenna because they accept the preservation of the elements in actuality, along with reduced actuality and interaction in the realm of qualities. However, since they reject Aristotelian mixture and discuss the problem in terms of body vs. qualities rather than forms vs. qualities, they are best regarded as belonging to a different school altogether. Alexander is probably the main source of the influential account of Averroes. Philoponus belongs with the fourth group due to his criticism of Aristotle (or rather Alexander). He accepts the corruption of the ingredients while only their qualities are preserved in reduced actuality. It remains to be seen whether his influence on the medieval authors that subscribe to a similar view can be established. Zabarella’s reports on his sources should be handled with care. His summaries of Alexander are inadequate, his understanding of Philoponus is wrong. He himself claims that his ‘true’ interpretation of Averroes was not followed by any Averroist (see e.g. 465A, 466B), which should give us pause as well. Moreover, I fail to see how he can believe that his complicated interpretation of Averroes can be backed up by his interpretation of Alexander and Philoponus: they seem to represent three quite different doctrines indeed. Although a quick glance at Zabarella’s other medieval sources seems to confirm his classification of them, it cannot be ruled out that closer inspection will yield some surprises, as it did with Philoponus. The details of Zabarella’s own theory of mixture still await further investigation. To conclude on a more general note: in charting the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s work from Late Antiquity through Arabic, Latin Medieval, and Renaissance authors, it is tempting to assume we are dealing with a single line of tradition. However, it is still far from clear which ancient commentaries were available (in Greek or in Arabic, Syrian, or Latin translation) at what date. But even if this can be established, we cannot be sure that a particular commentator actually used his predecessors’ commentaries, even when he refers to them by name: perhaps he merely copied a reference from another commentary. In this way, Zabarella’s mistake may have arisen. More importantly, every commentator who analyzes the problem of the potentiality of the ingredients in a mixture as it is presented in Aristotle’s texts in On Generation and Corruption is faced with a limited number of possible solutions. Every commentator, then, is perfectly capable of re-inventing the wheel. However, the application of the third kind of potentiality in the context of mixture seems to have been invented for the first time by John Philoponus. [conclusion p. 434-435] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/ldUX6hfn5ClzTTs |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1528","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1528,"authors_free":[{"id":2661,"entry_id":1528,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"de Haas, Frans A. J.","free_first_name":"Frans A. J.","free_last_name":"de Haas","norm_person":null},{"id":2662,"entry_id":1528,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality","main_title":{"title":"Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality"},"abstract":"In this study, I have tried to show that Philoponus\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s account of mixture has to be understood against the background of a discussion between three views of mixture that dominated the Aristotelian tradition as a whole. The starting point was Zabarella\u2019s classification of solutions to the main problem of mixture: how to interpret Aristotle\u2019s claim that the ingredients are preserved in the mixture in potentiality. In a sense, Proclus and Simplicius belong with Avicenna because they accept the preservation of the elements in actuality, along with reduced actuality and interaction in the realm of qualities. However, since they reject Aristotelian mixture and discuss the problem in terms of body vs. qualities rather than forms vs. qualities, they are best regarded as belonging to a different school altogether. Alexander is probably the main source of the influential account of Averroes. Philoponus belongs with the fourth group due to his criticism of Aristotle (or rather Alexander). He accepts the corruption of the ingredients while only their qualities are preserved in reduced actuality. It remains to be seen whether his influence on the medieval authors that subscribe to a similar view can be established.\r\n\r\nZabarella\u2019s reports on his sources should be handled with care. His summaries of Alexander are inadequate, his understanding of Philoponus is wrong. He himself claims that his \u2018true\u2019 interpretation of Averroes was not followed by any Averroist (see e.g. 465A, 466B), which should give us pause as well. Moreover, I fail to see how he can believe that his complicated interpretation of Averroes can be backed up by his interpretation of Alexander and Philoponus: they seem to represent three quite different doctrines indeed. Although a quick glance at Zabarella\u2019s other medieval sources seems to confirm his classification of them, it cannot be ruled out that closer inspection will yield some surprises, as it did with Philoponus. The details of Zabarella\u2019s own theory of mixture still await further investigation.\r\n\r\nTo conclude on a more general note: in charting the commentary tradition on Aristotle\u2019s work from Late Antiquity through Arabic, Latin Medieval, and Renaissance authors, it is tempting to assume we are dealing with a single line of tradition. However, it is still far from clear which ancient commentaries were available (in Greek or in Arabic, Syrian, or Latin translation) at what date. But even if this can be established, we cannot be sure that a particular commentator actually used his predecessors\u2019 commentaries, even when he refers to them by name: perhaps he merely copied a reference from another commentary. In this way, Zabarella\u2019s mistake may have arisen. More importantly, every commentator who analyzes the problem of the potentiality of the ingredients in a mixture as it is presented in Aristotle\u2019s texts in On Generation and Corruption is faced with a limited number of possible solutions. Every commentator, then, is perfectly capable of re-inventing the wheel. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Rediscovered Categories Commentary: Porphyry(?) with Fragments of Boethus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 231-262 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Chiaradonna, Riccardo , Rashed, Marwan , Sedley, David N. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
The celebrated Archimedes Palimpsest has turned out to include not only seminal works of Archimedes but also two speeches by Hyperides and—identified as recently as 2005—fourteen pages of an otherwise unknown commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, in a copy written around 900 CE. Even if it contained nothing else, the citations that this last manuscript preserves from named earlier commentators—Andronicus, Boethus, Nicostratus, and Herminus—would be enough to make it an important addition to our knowledge of the Categories tradition. Its new evidence on the first-century BCE Aristotelian Boethus is especially significant. Two of the three citations from him (3,19–22; 14,4–12) probably embody his words more or less verbatim, to judge from the combination of direct speech and peculiarly crabbed language, very unlike the author’s usual style. In addition, the author mentions a group of anonymous commentators already criticized by Boethus, thus giving further unexpected insights into the early reception of Aristotle’s work. But the author’s own contributions are rich and fascinating too. If his date and identity could be established, the new text would make an even greater impact on our present state of understanding. In this article, it will be argued that the new fragment is, to all appearances, a remnant of the most important of all the ancient Categories commentaries, Porphyry’s lost Ad Gedalium. The grounds for such an attribution will be set out in this introduction. There will then follow a translation of the passage, and finally a commentary on the commentary. Our aim is not, in the space of a single article, to settle all the interpretative questions but, on the contrary, to initiate discussion, to develop our proposal regarding authorship, and, above all, to bring the already published text to the attention of interested scholars in the field of ancient philosophy. The commentary consists of seven consecutive folios, recto and verso, each with thirty lines per side and around forty letters per line. For ease of reference, we have renumbered the sides into a simple consecutive run, 1–14. Despite its severely damaged state, it has proved possible to decipher much of the greater part of the text on these fourteen pages. In what follows, we start with a brief description, then turn to the question of authorship. The entire fourteen pages deal, incompletely, with just two consecutive lemmata from the Categories. The passage already under discussion when the text opens is 1a20-b15, a strikingly long lemma, especially given that the same passage is divided into three lemmata by Ammonius and into five by Simplicius. The commentator has by this point already dealt, presumably at some length, with Aristotle’s well-known distinction there between properties that are ‘said of a subject’ and those that are ‘in a subject.’ As the text opens, he is discussing the later part of the lemma, 1b10–15, where Aristotle explains a principle of transitivity according to which when predicate B is said of subject A, and predicate C is said of subject B, then predicate C is said of subject A. Various aspects of this theorem, and problems arising from it, occupy the commentator from 1,1 to 7,8. But he then returns (7,8–9,30) to the opening part of the main lemma, its fourfold division of predicates (1a20-b9), which he presents as applying a neglected Aristotelian method of division, one that can also, as he proceeds to illustrate, be used effectively in the doxographical mapping out of philosophical theories. At 9,30–10,12, we encounter the transition to a new lemma, Categories 1b16–24, where Aristotle explains his thesis that any two different genera, such as animal and knowledge, which are not subordinated one to the other, will normally be divided by two specifically (tôi eidei) different sets of differentiae. The commentator takes the opportunity here to explain the basic vocabulary of genus, species, and differentia, as befits the opening pages of a work that was itself placed first in the Aristotelian corpus. Otherwise, his discussion, as for the preceding lemma, is largely taken up with the resolution of the exegetical problems raised by his predecessors. The Categories was the earliest Aristotelian treatise to attract commentaries and critiques from the first century BCE onwards. The numerous exegetes, of whose work only a small proportion has survived, included not only Aristotelians but also Platonists, Stoics, and others of uncertain philosophical allegiance. The surviving commentaries are in fact all the work of Neoplatonists, starting with the short question-and-answer commentary by Porphyry (third century CE), but they contain plentiful reports of the views of earlier commentators and critics. Since our commentary repeatedly cites previous commentators from the first century BCE to the second century CE but none later than that, we can be confident that it was written in the Roman imperial era, not earlier than the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. 200), whose teacher Herminus is the latest commentator cited, and probably not very much later either. This enables us to set about searching for its author’s identity systematically, since we are fortunate, in the case of this particular Aristotelian treatise, to have from Simplicius (in Cat. 1,9–2,29 Kalbfleisch) a detailed survey of the commentary tradition down to the beginning of the sixth century. [introduction p. 231-233] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/boTHRcfBsw3NuBU |
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Its new evidence on the first-century BCE Aristotelian Boethus is especially significant. Two of the three citations from him (3,19\u201322; 14,4\u201312) probably embody his words more or less verbatim, to judge from the combination of direct speech and peculiarly crabbed language, very unlike the author\u2019s usual style. In addition, the author mentions a group of anonymous commentators already criticized by Boethus, thus giving further unexpected insights into the early reception of Aristotle\u2019s work.\r\n\r\nBut the author\u2019s own contributions are rich and fascinating too. If his date and identity could be established, the new text would make an even greater impact on our present state of understanding. In this article, it will be argued that the new fragment is, to all appearances, a remnant of the most important of all the ancient Categories commentaries, Porphyry\u2019s lost Ad Gedalium.\r\n\r\nThe grounds for such an attribution will be set out in this introduction. There will then follow a translation of the passage, and finally a commentary on the commentary. Our aim is not, in the space of a single article, to settle all the interpretative questions but, on the contrary, to initiate discussion, to develop our proposal regarding authorship, and, above all, to bring the already published text to the attention of interested scholars in the field of ancient philosophy.\r\n\r\nThe commentary consists of seven consecutive folios, recto and verso, each with thirty lines per side and around forty letters per line. For ease of reference, we have renumbered the sides into a simple consecutive run, 1\u201314.\r\n\r\nDespite its severely damaged state, it has proved possible to decipher much of the greater part of the text on these fourteen pages. In what follows, we start with a brief description, then turn to the question of authorship.\r\n\r\nThe entire fourteen pages deal, incompletely, with just two consecutive lemmata from the Categories. The passage already under discussion when the text opens is 1a20-b15, a strikingly long lemma, especially given that the same passage is divided into three lemmata by Ammonius and into five by Simplicius. The commentator has by this point already dealt, presumably at some length, with Aristotle\u2019s well-known distinction there between properties that are \u2018said of a subject\u2019 and those that are \u2018in a subject.\u2019 As the text opens, he is discussing the later part of the lemma, 1b10\u201315, where Aristotle explains a principle of transitivity according to which when predicate B is said of subject A, and predicate C is said of subject B, then predicate C is said of subject A. Various aspects of this theorem, and problems arising from it, occupy the commentator from 1,1 to 7,8. But he then returns (7,8\u20139,30) to the opening part of the main lemma, its fourfold division of predicates (1a20-b9), which he presents as applying a neglected Aristotelian method of division, one that can also, as he proceeds to illustrate, be used effectively in the doxographical mapping out of philosophical theories.\r\n\r\nAt 9,30\u201310,12, we encounter the transition to a new lemma, Categories 1b16\u201324, where Aristotle explains his thesis that any two different genera, such as animal and knowledge, which are not subordinated one to the other, will normally be divided by two specifically (t\u00f4i eidei) different sets of differentiae. The commentator takes the opportunity here to explain the basic vocabulary of genus, species, and differentia, as befits the opening pages of a work that was itself placed first in the Aristotelian corpus. Otherwise, his discussion, as for the preceding lemma, is largely taken up with the resolution of the exegetical problems raised by his predecessors.\r\n\r\nThe Categories was the earliest Aristotelian treatise to attract commentaries and critiques from the first century BCE onwards. The numerous exegetes, of whose work only a small proportion has survived, included not only Aristotelians but also Platonists, Stoics, and others of uncertain philosophical allegiance. The surviving commentaries are in fact all the work of Neoplatonists, starting with the short question-and-answer commentary by Porphyry (third century CE), but they contain plentiful reports of the views of earlier commentators and critics.\r\n\r\nSince our commentary repeatedly cites previous commentators from the first century BCE to the second century CE but none later than that, we can be confident that it was written in the Roman imperial era, not earlier than the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. 200), whose teacher Herminus is the latest commentator cited, and probably not very much later either. This enables us to set about searching for its author\u2019s identity systematically, since we are fortunate, in the case of this particular Aristotelian treatise, to have from Simplicius (in Cat. 1,9\u20132,29 Kalbfleisch) a detailed survey of the commentary tradition down to the beginning of the sixth century.\r\n[introduction p. 231-233]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/boTHRcfBsw3NuBU","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":49,"full_name":"Chiaradonna, Riccardo ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":194,"full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":298,"full_name":"Sedley, David N.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1535,"section_of":1419,"pages":"231-262","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Title | Iamblichus’ Noera Theôria of Aristotle’s Categories |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 313-326 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Dillon, John |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
It will be seen that it is Iamblichus’ purpose to salvage Aristotle, reconciling him both with his perceived doctrine elsewhere (as, for example, in the Metaphysics and the Physics), and with that of Plato and the Pythagoreans. The aim is to establish a metaphysical framework for the interpretation of the Categories, revealing the hidden levels of truth inherent in it. This is achieved, of course, at the cost of ignoring what seems to us the essentially anti-metaphysical, as well as tentative and exploratory, nature of the Categories, but it would be somewhat anachronistic to condemn Iamblichus too severely for that. The text of the Categories had been a battleground for at least three hundred years before his time, from the period of Andronicus, Ariston, and Eudorus of Alexandria, and the Stoic Apollodorus of Tarsus in the first century BCE, through that of the Platonists Lucius and Nicostratus, and then Atticus, and the Stoic Cornutus, and lastly Alexander of Aphrodisias in the first and second centuries CE, down to Plotinus and Porphyry in his own day, with every phrase and word of the text liable to challenge and requiring defense. Iamblichus’ distinctive contribution is to take the Categories as a coherent description of reality in the Neoplatonic sense, and that, bizarre as it may seem to us, is not really all that more perverse than many of the various ways in which the work had been treated in the centuries before him. [conclusion p. 324-325] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/d9iiR3Sr5aRY9S7 |
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The aim is to establish a metaphysical framework for the interpretation of the Categories, revealing the hidden levels of truth inherent in it. This is achieved, of course, at the cost of ignoring what seems to us the essentially anti-metaphysical, as well as tentative and exploratory, nature of the Categories, but it would be somewhat anachronistic to condemn Iamblichus too severely for that. The text of the Categories had been a battleground for at least three hundred years before his time, from the period of Andronicus, Ariston, and Eudorus of Alexandria, and the Stoic Apollodorus of Tarsus in the first century BCE, through that of the Platonists Lucius and Nicostratus, and then Atticus, and the Stoic Cornutus, and lastly Alexander of Aphrodisias in the first and second centuries CE, down to Plotinus and Porphyry in his own day, with every phrase and word of the text liable to challenge and requiring defense. Iamblichus\u2019 distinctive contribution is to take the Categories as a coherent description of reality in the Neoplatonic sense, and that, bizarre as it may seem to us, is not really all that more perverse than many of the various ways in which the work had been treated in the centuries before him. [conclusion p. 324-325]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/d9iiR3Sr5aRY9S7","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":97,"full_name":"Dillon, John","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1533,"section_of":1419,"pages":"313-326","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Boethus’ Aristotelian Ontology |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 103-124 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Rashed, Marwan |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Boethus is surely one of the most important thinkers of the first century BCE. Though only a few testimonies, and no clear fragment, remain, their number and content are sufficient to show how insightful he was in commenting upon Aristotle. It is not just that he was typical of this first generation of commentators who have struck modern historians by their free spirit towards Aristotle’s text. Boethus’ fragments on substance testify to more than a free attitude towards the Philosopher: it is also possible to recognize, through the many layers of the tradition—Alexander, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Simplicius—a coherent and unitary doctrine. His doctrine, of course, is not un-Aristotelian; it does not even stand somewhere halfway between Aristotle and other thinkers of Antiquity, the Stoics in particular (even if it is obviously inspired by a general Stoic atmosphere). Boethus has consciously built, out of some rare Aristotelian indications, a certain kind of Aristotelianism among other possible ones. This doctrinal approach is probably both the cause and the effect of a cultural fact: the Peripatos’ nearly exclusive focus, in the first century BCE, on the Categories. For sure, the treatise of the Categories, by itself, does not necessarily produce a definite account of the world. But by contrast with what is the case with other parts of the Aristotelian corpus, its basic ontological features seem naturally at home in the framework of a doctrine holding the primacy of the individual material substance. [introduction p. 103-104] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/xYH889DSksf6EXe |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1536","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1536,"authors_free":[{"id":2679,"entry_id":1536,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":194,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Rashed, Marwan","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":{"id":194,"first_name":"Marwan","last_name":"Rashed","full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054568634","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2680,"entry_id":1536,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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":"Boethus\u2019 Aristotelian Ontology","main_title":{"title":"Boethus\u2019 Aristotelian Ontology"},"abstract":"Boethus is surely one of the most important thinkers of the first century BCE. Though only a few testimonies, and no clear fragment, remain, their number and content are sufficient to show how insightful he was in commenting upon Aristotle. It is not just that he was typical of this first generation of commentators who have struck modern historians by their free spirit towards Aristotle\u2019s text. Boethus\u2019 fragments on substance testify to more than a free attitude towards the Philosopher: it is also possible to recognize, through the many layers of the tradition\u2014Alexander, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Simplicius\u2014a coherent and unitary doctrine.\r\n\r\nHis doctrine, of course, is not un-Aristotelian; it does not even stand somewhere halfway between Aristotle and other thinkers of Antiquity, the Stoics in particular (even if it is obviously inspired by a general Stoic atmosphere). Boethus has consciously built, out of some rare Aristotelian indications, a certain kind of Aristotelianism among other possible ones. This doctrinal approach is probably both the cause and the effect of a cultural fact: the Peripatos\u2019 nearly exclusive focus, in the first century BCE, on the Categories.\r\n\r\nFor sure, the treatise of the Categories, by itself, does not necessarily produce a definite account of the world. But by contrast with what is the case with other parts of the Aristotelian corpus, its basic ontological features seem naturally at home in the framework of a doctrine holding the primacy of the individual material substance.\r\n[introduction p. 103-104]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/xYH889DSksf6EXe","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":194,"full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1536,"section_of":1419,"pages":"103-124","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus’ Canon |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 81-102 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hatzimichali, Myrto |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
If we recall at this point the information gathered on the state of Plato’s text in the first century BCE, we can see that by comparison the study of Aristotle’s text was indeed revolutionized. In the case of the Aristotelian corpus, our sources tell a story of true peripeteia, with the appearance of new texts or at least new copies with special claims of antiquity and pedigree, and with the standardization and ordering of the canon in Andronicus’ Pinakes. A scrutiny of our sources has shown that it was the processes of cataloging, canon formation, and corpus organization that had the greatest impact on the texts we now read, and not the appearance of new ‘editions’ and text-critical initiatives. If this appears counterintuitive, we should remember that judgments about the importance or otherwise of ancient editorial activity can be misleading if they are too dependent on modern experiences and expectations. [conclusion p. 102] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/hzJ6JONomuuLaQX |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1537","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1537,"authors_free":[{"id":2681,"entry_id":1537,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hatzimichali, Myrto","free_first_name":"Myrto","free_last_name":"Hatzimichali","norm_person":null},{"id":2682,"entry_id":1537,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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":"The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus\u2019 Canon","main_title":{"title":"The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus\u2019 Canon"},"abstract":"If we recall at this point the information gathered on the state of Plato\u2019s text in the first century BCE, we can see that by comparison the study of Aristotle\u2019s text was indeed revolutionized. In the case of the Aristotelian corpus, our sources tell a story of true peripeteia, with the appearance of new texts or at least new copies with special claims of antiquity and pedigree, and with the standardization and ordering of the canon in Andronicus\u2019 Pinakes.\r\n\r\nA scrutiny of our sources has shown that it was the processes of cataloging, canon formation, and corpus organization that had the greatest impact on the texts we now read, and not the appearance of new \u2018editions\u2019 and text-critical initiatives. If this appears counterintuitive, we should remember that judgments about the importance or otherwise of ancient editorial activity can be misleading if they are too dependent on modern experiences and expectations. [conclusion p. 102]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/hzJ6JONomuuLaQX","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1537,"section_of":1419,"pages":"81-102","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2016]}
Title | Introduction to the Second Edition: New findings on Philoponus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2010 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition |
Pages | 1-40 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | |
Translator(s) |
Since 1987, when the first edition of this book appeared, there have been new findings both about Philoponus' thought and about his milieu. In this Introduction to the second edition, I will start with the milieu. There has been a major archaeological discovery, nothing less than the lecture rooms of the Alexandrian school. It was announced in 2004 that the Polish archaeological team under Grzegorz Majcherek had identified the lecture rooms of the 6th-century Alexandrian school, surprisingly well preserved. Although the first few rooms had been excavated 25 years earlier, the identification had become possible only now. By 2008, 20 rooms had been excavated. 20 is the number of rooms reported by a 12th-century source writing in Arabic, Abd el-Latif, but there may be more. [introduction p. 1] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/UotikAt6Giet2tb |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"796","_score":null,"_source":{"id":796,"authors_free":[{"id":1174,"entry_id":796,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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":"Introduction to the Second Edition: New findings on Philoponus","main_title":{"title":"Introduction to the Second Edition: New findings on Philoponus"},"abstract":"Since 1987, when the first edition of this book appeared, there have been new findings both about Philoponus' thought and about his milieu. In this Introduction to the second edition, I will start with the milieu. There has been a major archaeological discovery, nothing less than the lecture rooms of the Alexandrian school. It was announced in 2004 that the Polish archaeological team under Grzegorz Majcherek had identified the lecture rooms of the 6th-century Alexandrian school, surprisingly well preserved. Although the first few rooms had been excavated 25 years earlier, the identification had become possible only now. By 2008, 20 rooms had been excavated. 20 is the number of rooms reported by a 12th-century source writing in Arabic, Abd el-Latif, but there may be more. [introduction p. 1]","btype":2,"date":"2010","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/UotikAt6Giet2tb","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":796,"section_of":184,"pages":"1-40","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":[2010]}
Title | The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2006 |
Published in | Reading Plato in antiquity |
Pages | 185-193 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Tarrant, Harold , Baltzly, Dirk |
Translator(s) |
In Neoplatonism, though not in Aristotelianism, Plato and Aristotle are transformed in a variety of different ways. The transformation is partly driven by a wish to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, but only partly. There is less effort to harmonize the two in some commentators than in others, and on some issues, as we shall see, there is less harmonization among our commentators than there was in the Middle Platonism of an earlier period. Further, the transformation of views is driven by other factors besides harmonization. Harmonization is most marked in Porphyry and Ammonius. It seems to be least favored by Syrianus and Proclus. Simplicius says that the good commentator should find Plato and Aristotle in harmony on most points (In Cat. 7.23–32). The presumption for a Neoplatonist is that, in the case of disharmony, Plato will be right. However, this presumption is reversed by a late commentator, Olympiodorus, who backs Aristotle against Plato on the definition of relatives (In Cat. 112.19ff). As an example of harmonization, Porphyry, on the standard interpretation, defended Aristotle’s categories from Plotinus’ objections in Enneads VI.1–3. Plotinus accepted only four of Aristotle’s ten categories for classifying the world perceived by the senses, and even then with heavy qualifications. He complained that Aristotle’s categories left out the world of intelligible Forms from which the perceptible world derived. Sensible qualities, for example, are only shadows of the activities of intelligible Forms. Porphyry replied (In Cat. 57.7–8, 58.5–7, and 91.19–27) that Aristotle’s categories are not meant to be exhaustive. They are only intended to distinguish words insofar as they signify things, and words are chiefly used to speak about sensibles. For that limited task, the categories are to be valued. Porphyry thus made Aristotle’s categories forever acceptable to Platonism. Hereafter, it became increasingly useful to reinforce what I regard as the myth of harmony in the face of Christian charges that pagan philosophers contradicted each other. There was an irony in this, because the harmonization—whose motive was thus partly anti-Christian—ended in the thirteenth century by helping Thomas Aquinas present Aristotle as safe for Christianity. This assimilation to Plato had turned Aristotle’s God from a thinker into a Creator and Aristotle’s human soul into an immortal one. There can, however, be more than one approach toward the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle. Lloyd Gerson, in this volume, offers the most thoroughgoing modern attempt to argue that it is basically correct. If, as I have supposed, it is not, the question arises whether pressure toward a false harmonization would be bad for philosophy. Having to convince Christians that Plato and Aristotle agreed with each other on almost everything would surely lead to a loss of their wonderful insights. But in fact, it gave a distinctive character, interesting in its own right, to Neoplatonism. Curiously, it also led to an even closer reading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, because their texts had to be read very closely indeed if one was going to argue that what they really meant was something different from what might first appear. In fact, the pressure to harmonize proved a valuable stimulus to the imagination in the Greek Neoplatonist commentators. They took Plato to postulate a changeless and timeless world of divine Platonic Forms, and they had to think out how such a world would relate to the temporal, changing world described by Aristotle. I should now like to look at some examples of what happened to the views of Plato and Aristotle in Neoplatonism. I shall ask what factors besides harmonization are at work, whether Plato is transformed in the process as much as Aristotle, whether the harmonizations are hostile or friendly to Aristotle, and where the transformations proved important for subsequent philosophy. [introduction p. 185-186] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/eWLLcrq58WWLfJm |
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The transformation is partly driven by a wish to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, but only partly. There is less effort to harmonize the two in some commentators than in others, and on some issues, as we shall see, there is less harmonization among our commentators than there was in the Middle Platonism of an earlier period. Further, the transformation of views is driven by other factors besides harmonization.\r\n\r\nHarmonization is most marked in Porphyry and Ammonius. It seems to be least favored by Syrianus and Proclus. Simplicius says that the good commentator should find Plato and Aristotle in harmony on most points (In Cat. 7.23\u201332). The presumption for a Neoplatonist is that, in the case of disharmony, Plato will be right. However, this presumption is reversed by a late commentator, Olympiodorus, who backs Aristotle against Plato on the definition of relatives (In Cat. 112.19ff).\r\n\r\nAs an example of harmonization, Porphyry, on the standard interpretation, defended Aristotle\u2019s categories from Plotinus\u2019 objections in Enneads VI.1\u20133. Plotinus accepted only four of Aristotle\u2019s ten categories for classifying the world perceived by the senses, and even then with heavy qualifications. He complained that Aristotle\u2019s categories left out the world of intelligible Forms from which the perceptible world derived. Sensible qualities, for example, are only shadows of the activities of intelligible Forms. Porphyry replied (In Cat. 57.7\u20138, 58.5\u20137, and 91.19\u201327) that Aristotle\u2019s categories are not meant to be exhaustive. They are only intended to distinguish words insofar as they signify things, and words are chiefly used to speak about sensibles. For that limited task, the categories are to be valued. Porphyry thus made Aristotle\u2019s categories forever acceptable to Platonism. Hereafter, it became increasingly useful to reinforce what I regard as the myth of harmony in the face of Christian charges that pagan philosophers contradicted each other. There was an irony in this, because the harmonization\u2014whose motive was thus partly anti-Christian\u2014ended in the thirteenth century by helping Thomas Aquinas present Aristotle as safe for Christianity. This assimilation to Plato had turned Aristotle\u2019s God from a thinker into a Creator and Aristotle\u2019s human soul into an immortal one.\r\n\r\nThere can, however, be more than one approach toward the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle. Lloyd Gerson, in this volume, offers the most thoroughgoing modern attempt to argue that it is basically correct. If, as I have supposed, it is not, the question arises whether pressure toward a false harmonization would be bad for philosophy. Having to convince Christians that Plato and Aristotle agreed with each other on almost everything would surely lead to a loss of their wonderful insights. But in fact, it gave a distinctive character, interesting in its own right, to Neoplatonism. Curiously, it also led to an even closer reading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, because their texts had to be read very closely indeed if one was going to argue that what they really meant was something different from what might first appear.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the pressure to harmonize proved a valuable stimulus to the imagination in the Greek Neoplatonist commentators. They took Plato to postulate a changeless and timeless world of divine Platonic Forms, and they had to think out how such a world would relate to the temporal, changing world described by Aristotle.\r\n\r\nI should now like to look at some examples of what happened to the views of Plato and Aristotle in Neoplatonism. I shall ask what factors besides harmonization are at work, whether Plato is transformed in the process as much as Aristotle, whether the harmonizations are hostile or friendly to Aristotle, and where the transformations proved important for subsequent philosophy. [introduction p. 185-186]","btype":2,"date":"2006","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/eWLLcrq58WWLfJm","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":122,"full_name":"Tarrant, Harold ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":107,"full_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":916,"section_of":196,"pages":"185-193","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":196,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Reading Plato in antiquity","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Tarrant2006","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2006","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2006","abstract":"This important collection of original essays is the first to concentrate at length on how the ancients responded to the challenge of reading and interpreting Plato, primarily between 100 BC and AD, edited by Lloyd Gerson, University of Toronto; 600. It incorporates the fruits of recent research into late antique philosophy, in particular its approach to hermeneutical problems. While a number of prominent figures, including Apuleius, Galen, Plotinus, Porphyry and lamblichus, receive detailed attention, several essays concentrate on the important figure of Proclus, in whom Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato reaches it most impressive, most surprising and most challenging form. The essays appear in chronological of their focal interpreters, giving a sense of the development of Platonist exegesis in this period. Reflecting their devotion to a common theme, the essays have been carefully edited and are presented with a composite bibliography and indices.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/PFetB36hpbaF0VD","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":196,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[2006]}
Title | The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1997 |
Published in | Aristotle and after |
Pages | 91-107 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Gaskin, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
As far as traditional classifications go, the Stoics count as materialists. But it is notorious that there were four things in their world-view which do not fit this caracterization: time, place, the void and the so-called ‘sayables', or lekta (SE AM 10.218 = FDS 720). Lekta consist of three main kinds of quasi-linguistic item: centrally, simple propositions (as well as certain non-assertoric, but grammatically autonomous, items) are ‘complete’ lekta (DL 7 .6-8 = FDS 696, 874; SE AM 8.70-74). From these propositions, more complex ‘complete’ lekta maybe constructed, such as conditionals (DL 7.71) or syllogisms (DL 7.63). And within the structure of complete lekta, ‘incomplete’ lekta, such as predicates, maybe discerned. I call lekta quasi-linguistic, rather than linguistic, because, as we learn from an important passage in Sextus (AM 8.11-13 = FDS 67), the Stoics distinguished lekta both from language and from physical objects in the world. Hence linguistic items such as the verb (rhêma) ‘writes’ and the complete sentence (logos) ‘Socrates writes’ should be kept rigorously apart from their corresponding lekta - the predicate (katigorema) writes and the complete proposition (axidma) Socrates writes - which the linguistic expressions signify (semainein: SE AM 8.11 - 12, DL 7.56, 58, 65). In this paper I shall examine the Stoic treatment of the main constituents of the complete lekton: cases and predicates. I shall argue that cases are, like predicates, (incomplete) lekta, and that the verbal noun played a central role in Stoic thinking about lekta. In the light of these reflections, I shall conclude with some speculative remarks on the unity of the proposition. [Introduction, p. 91] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/tocHWc6xfMEeg9C |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1177","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1177,"authors_free":[{"id":1751,"entry_id":1177,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":132,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Gaskin, Richard ","free_first_name":"Richard ","free_last_name":"Gaskin","norm_person":{"id":132,"first_name":"Richard ","last_name":"Gaskin","full_name":"Gaskin, Richard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1049853571","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2358,"entry_id":1177,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition","main_title":{"title":"The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition"},"abstract":"As far as traditional classifications go, the Stoics count as materialists. But it is notorious that there were four things in their world-view which do not fit this caracterization: time, place, the void and the so-called \u2018sayables', or lekta (SE AM 10.218 = FDS 720). Lekta consist of three main kinds of quasi-linguistic item: centrally, simple propositions (as well as certain non-assertoric, but grammatically autonomous, items) are \u2018complete\u2019 lekta (DL 7 .6-8 = FDS 696, 874; SE AM 8.70-74). From these propositions, more complex \u2018complete\u2019 lekta maybe constructed, such as conditionals (DL 7.71) or syllogisms (DL 7.63). And within the structure of complete lekta, \u2018incomplete\u2019 lekta, such as predicates, maybe discerned. I call lekta quasi-linguistic, rather than linguistic, because, as we learn from an important passage in Sextus (AM 8.11-13 = FDS 67), the Stoics distinguished lekta both from language and from physical objects in the world. Hence linguistic items such as the verb (rh\u00eama) \u2018writes\u2019 and the complete sentence (logos) \u2018Socrates writes\u2019 should be kept rigorously apart from their corresponding lekta - the predicate (katigorema) writes and the complete proposition (axidma) Socrates writes - which the linguistic expressions signify (semainein: SE AM 8.11 - 12, DL 7.56, 58, 65). \r\nIn this paper I shall examine the Stoic treatment of the main constituents of the complete lekton: cases and predicates. I shall argue that cases are, like predicates, (incomplete) lekta, and that the verbal noun played a central role in Stoic thinking about lekta. In the light of these reflections, I shall conclude with some speculative remarks on the unity of the proposition. [Introduction, p. 91]","btype":2,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/tocHWc6xfMEeg9C","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":132,"full_name":"Gaskin, Richard ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1177,"section_of":199,"pages":"91-107","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":199,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and after","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1997a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1997","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1997","abstract":"A selection of papers given at the Institute of Classical Studies during 1996. They cover a variety of new work on the 900 years of philosophy from Aristotle to Simplicius. There is a strong concentration on stoicism with papers by: Michael Frede ( Euphrates of Tyre ); A. A. Long ( Property ownership and community ); Brad Inwood ( 'Why do fools fallin love?' ); Susanne Bobzein ( freedom and ethics ); Richard Gaskin ( cases, predicates and the unity of the proposition ); Richard Sorabji ( stoic philosophy and psychotherapy ); Bernard Williams ( reply to Richard Sorabji ). The other papers are by: Heinrich von Staden ( Galen and the 'Second Sophistic' ); Hans B. Gottschalk ( continuity and change in Aristotelianism ); Travis Butler ( the homonymy of signification in Aristotle ); Andrea Falcon ( Aristotle's theory of division ); Sylvia Berryman (Horror Vacui in the third century BC ); M. B. Trapp ( On the Tablet of Cebes ); Marwan Rashed ( a 'new' text of Alexander on the soul's motion ). [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/x8uyail9ZCl9wfr","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":199,"pubplace":"University of London","publisher":"Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study","series":"BICS (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies) Supplement","volume":"68","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1997]}
Title | A “New” Text of Alexander on the Soul’s Motion |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1997 |
Published in | Aristotle and after |
Pages | 181-195 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Rashed, Marwan |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
A last argument: when Alexander describes the doctrine through which Aristotle hoped to escape from Atticus’ criticisms, he writes, apropos the intellect: "and it is separated out (ekkrinetai) in the same way as it is introduced (eiskrinetai)". Thus, the only two occurrences in Alexander of the verb eiskrinesthai are deeply connected with Atticus’ theory, either directly or through Aristotle’s reply. It seems, therefore, very probable that Alexander himself was aware of the significance of this technical term, and that he mentioned it twice. To conclude, then, the historical evolution of the polemics may be summarised as follows: The ‘Aristotelian’ claim of the intellect from without. Atticus attacks the intellect from without because of its inability to move. Aristoteles of Mytilene (as reported by Alexander in C1) defends the intellect from without by claiming its ubiquity. Alexander (De intell., C2) criticises Aristoteles’ solution to Atticus’ criticisms and gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes. Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus’ vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not resolve the question at all and alludes indirectly to his previous solution. Thus, we may conclude that the De intellectu is an authentic work of Alexander, but an earlier one than the commentary on the Physics. [conclusion p. 194-195] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/roAfpopRonK2aKn |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1061","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1061,"authors_free":[{"id":1610,"entry_id":1061,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":194,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Rashed, Marwan","free_first_name":"Marwan","free_last_name":"Rashed","norm_person":{"id":194,"first_name":"Marwan","last_name":"Rashed","full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054568634","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1611,"entry_id":1061,"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":"A \u201cNew\u201d Text of Alexander on the Soul\u2019s Motion","main_title":{"title":"A \u201cNew\u201d Text of Alexander on the Soul\u2019s Motion"},"abstract":"A last argument: when Alexander describes the doctrine through which Aristotle hoped to escape from Atticus\u2019 criticisms, he writes, apropos the intellect: \"and it is separated out (ekkrinetai) in the same way as it is introduced (eiskrinetai)\". Thus, the only two occurrences in Alexander of the verb eiskrinesthai are deeply connected with Atticus\u2019 theory, either directly or through Aristotle\u2019s reply. It seems, therefore, very probable that Alexander himself was aware of the significance of this technical term, and that he mentioned it twice.\r\n\r\nTo conclude, then, the historical evolution of the polemics may be summarised as follows:\r\n\r\n The \u2018Aristotelian\u2019 claim of the intellect from without.\r\n Atticus attacks the intellect from without because of its inability to move.\r\n Aristoteles of Mytilene (as reported by Alexander in C1) defends the intellect from without by claiming its ubiquity.\r\n Alexander (De intell., C2) criticises Aristoteles\u2019 solution to Atticus\u2019 criticisms and gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes.\r\n Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus\u2019 vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not resolve the question at all and alludes indirectly to his previous solution.\r\n\r\nThus, we may conclude that the De intellectu is an authentic work of Alexander, but an earlier one than the commentary on the Physics. [conclusion p. 194-195]","btype":2,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/roAfpopRonK2aKn","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":194,"full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1061,"section_of":199,"pages":"181-195","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":199,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and after","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1997a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1997","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1997","abstract":"A selection of papers given at the Institute of Classical Studies during 1996. They cover a variety of new work on the 900 years of philosophy from Aristotle to Simplicius. There is a strong concentration on stoicism with papers by: Michael Frede ( Euphrates of Tyre ); A. A. Long ( Property ownership and community ); Brad Inwood ( 'Why do fools fallin love?' ); Susanne Bobzein ( freedom and ethics ); Richard Gaskin ( cases, predicates and the unity of the proposition ); Richard Sorabji ( stoic philosophy and psychotherapy ); Bernard Williams ( reply to Richard Sorabji ). The other papers are by: Heinrich von Staden ( Galen and the 'Second Sophistic' ); Hans B. Gottschalk ( continuity and change in Aristotelianism ); Travis Butler ( the homonymy of signification in Aristotle ); Andrea Falcon ( Aristotle's theory of division ); Sylvia Berryman (Horror Vacui in the third century BC ); M. B. Trapp ( On the Tablet of Cebes ); Marwan Rashed ( a 'new' text of Alexander on the soul's motion ). [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/x8uyail9ZCl9wfr","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":199,"pubplace":"University of London","publisher":"Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study","series":"BICS (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies) Supplement","volume":"68","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1997]}
Title | Simplicius |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1996 |
Published in | The Oxford Classical Dictionary |
Pages | 1409-1410 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Spawforth, Antony , Hornblower, Simon |
Translator(s) |
Simplicius, 6th-cent. AD Neoplatonist (see Neoplatonism) and one of seven philosophers who left Athens for Ctesiphon after Justinian closed the Athenian Neoplatonist school in 529. He probably wrote all his commentaries after 532, when it was safe for the philosophers to leave Ctesiphon. Recent evidence suggests that he may have settled at Harran (ancient Carrhae) in present-day Turkey, from where Platonism was brought back in the 9th cent. to Baghdad. Simplicius was taught by Ammonius (2) in Alexandria and by Damascius, head of the Athenian school. He wrote commentaries, all extant, on Aristotle's De caelo, Physics, and Categories (in that order), and on Epictetus' Manual, among other works. A commentary on Aristotle’s De anima is of disputed authorship. His are the fullest of all Aristotle commentaries, recording debates on Aristotle from the preceding 850 years and embedding many fragments from the entire millennium. At the same time, Simplicius gave his own views on many topics, including place, time, and matter. His commentaries express the revulsion of a devout Neoplatonist for Christianity and for its arch-philosophical defender, Philoponus. Commentary in Aristotelium Graeca 7-11 (1882-1907), partly trans. in R. Sorabji (ed.), The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (1987- ); In Ench. Epict., ed. Dübner (1840), trans. G. Stanhope (1694). I. Hadot (ed.), Simplicius, sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie (1987); M. Tardieu, Coutumes mésopotamiennes (1991); RE3A 1 (1927). R. R. K. S. [the entire entry] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/vzddeyFIMrhk1Ab |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1386","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1386,"authors_free":[{"id":2139,"entry_id":1386,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":2142,"entry_id":1386,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":335,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Spawforth, Antony","free_first_name":"Antony","free_last_name":"Spawforth","norm_person":{"id":335,"first_name":"Antony","last_name":"Spawforth","full_name":"Spawforth, Antony","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/131894757","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2143,"entry_id":1386,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":334,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Hornblower, Simon","free_first_name":"Simon","free_last_name":"Hornblower","norm_person":{"id":334,"first_name":"Simon","last_name":"Hornblower","full_name":"Hornblower, Simon","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/135771676","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Simplicius","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius"},"abstract":"Simplicius, 6th-cent. AD Neoplatonist (see Neoplatonism) and one of seven philosophers who left Athens for Ctesiphon after Justinian closed the Athenian Neoplatonist school in 529. He probably wrote all his commentaries after 532, when it was safe for the philosophers to leave Ctesiphon. Recent evidence suggests that he may have settled at Harran (ancient Carrhae) in present-day Turkey, from where Platonism was brought back in the 9th cent. to Baghdad.\r\n\r\nSimplicius was taught by Ammonius (2) in Alexandria and by Damascius, head of the Athenian school. He wrote commentaries, all extant, on Aristotle's De caelo, Physics, and Categories (in that order), and on Epictetus' Manual, among other works. A commentary on Aristotle\u2019s De anima is of disputed authorship. His are the fullest of all Aristotle commentaries, recording debates on Aristotle from the preceding 850 years and embedding many fragments from the entire millennium.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, Simplicius gave his own views on many topics, including place, time, and matter. His commentaries express the revulsion of a devout Neoplatonist for Christianity and for its arch-philosophical defender, Philoponus.\r\n\r\nCommentary in Aristotelium Graeca 7-11 (1882-1907), partly trans. in R. Sorabji (ed.), The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (1987- ); In Ench. Epict., ed. D\u00fcbner (1840), trans. G. Stanhope (1694). I. Hadot (ed.), Simplicius, sa vie, son \u0153uvre, sa survie (1987); M. Tardieu, Coutumes m\u00e9sopotamiennes (1991); RE3A 1 (1927). R. R. K. S. [the entire entry]","btype":2,"date":"1996","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/vzddeyFIMrhk1Ab","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":335,"full_name":"Spawforth, Antony","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":334,"full_name":"Hornblower, Simon","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1386,"section_of":1387,"pages":"1409-1410","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1387,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"The Oxford Classical Dictionary","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Hornblower1996","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1996","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"For more than half a century, the Oxford Classical Dictionary has been the unrivaled one-volume reference work on the Greco-Roman world. Whether one is interested in literature or art, philosophy or law, mythology or science, intimate details of daily life or broad cultural and historical trends, the OCD is the first place to turn for clear, authoritative information on all aspects of ancient culture.\r\n\r\nNow comes the Fourth Edition of this redoubtable resource, thoroughly revised and updated, with numerous new entries and two new focus areas (on reception and anthropology). Here, in over six thousand entries ranging from long articles to brief identifications, readers can find information on virtually any topic of interest--athletics, bee-keeping, botany, magic, religious rites, postal service, slavery, navigation, and the reckoning of time. The Oxford Classical Dictionary profiles every major figure of Greece and Rome, from Homer and Virgil to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Readers will find entries on mythological and legendary figures, on major cities, famous buildings, and important geographical landmarks, and on legal, rhetorical, literary, and political terms and concepts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/FsDwLlWXlqssLoo","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1387,"pubplace":"Oxford \u2013 New York","publisher":"Oxford University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"3","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1996]}
Title | The school of Alexander? |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1990 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 83-111 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sharples, Robert W. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Alexander of Aphrodisias was appointed by the emperors as a public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy at some time between 198 and 209 AD. As a public teacher, it is likely that he had, in some sense, a school. But trying to establish what happened in that school and how it functioned is comparable to the task we would face if we had to determine what went on in a philosophy department in a modern university based on a selection of books by the professor, a confused collection of his papers, the notes from which he lectured, and the essays of his students, with no obvious indication of which was which. We know a considerable amount about the Neoplatonic schools of the fifth and sixth centuries AD and the study of Aristotle’s writings in them. We know the place they had in the curriculum, the order in which they were read, and we can compare the ways in which different commentators approached the question of the relationship between the works of Aristotle and those of Plato. We can trace relations between teachers and their pupils, and we are sometimes told that a particular text is a pupil’s record of his teacher’s utterances. The very organization of the commentaries sometimes reflects and clarifies the requirements of the teaching context—in the division of a commentary into separate lectures and the placing of a general summary of a section of argument before the discussion of particular points. For the medieval period, too, we have copious information on the organization of teaching and study. With Alexander, matters are very different. We know the names of some of his teachers, and his surviving works provide evidence for his disagreements with them. We also know something of his disagreements with other philosophers of his own generation or the generation before, and we can trace—however controversially—his influence on later thinkers. But we do not know the name of a single one of his immediate pupils, and for all that we can tell, the influence of other writers on him might have been largely, and his influence on other writers entirely, through the medium of writing rather than personal encounter. After all, we are explicitly told that Alexander’s commentaries were among those read in Plotinus’ school. It is, however, in principle unlikely that any thinker in the ancient world would have communicated entirely through the written, rather than the spoken, word. Some of the writings attributed to Alexander are most naturally seen in the context of his teaching activities or debates within his circle. These writings include commentaries on Aristotelian works, treatises or monographs on particular topics such as those On the Soul and On Fate, and numerous short discussions. Three books of these collected discussions are entitled phusikai skholikai aporiai kai luseis—‘School-discussion problems and solutions on nature’; a fourth is titled Problems on Ethics but sub-titled, no doubt in imitation of the preceding three books when it was united with them, skholikai êthikai aporiai kai luseis—‘School-discussion problems and solutions on ethics.’ A further collection was transmitted as the second book of Alexander’s treatise On the Soul and labeled mantissa or ‘makeweight’ by the Berlin editor Bruns. Other texts essentially similar to those in these collections survive in Arabic, though not in Greek, and there is evidence to suggest that there were other collections now lost. The circumstances in which these collections were put together are unclear; it was not always expertly done, and while some of the titles attached to particular pieces seem to preserve valuable additional information, others are inept or unhelpful. Nor is it clear at what date the collections were assembled. It is not my concern here to provide a full enumeration of the works attributed to Alexander or to classify them in detail. That has been done elsewhere by both myself and others. Rather, I will proceed to a discussion of what the works can tell us about the context in which they arose. It will be helpful to start with a consideration of the relation of Alexander’s works to those of his predecessors, teachers, and contemporaries. [introduction p. 83-85] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/wgzq8ffCF70YlYd |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1027","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1027,"authors_free":[{"id":1551,"entry_id":1027,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":42,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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":1552,"entry_id":1027,"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":"The school of Alexander?","main_title":{"title":"The school of Alexander?"},"abstract":"Alexander of Aphrodisias was appointed by the emperors as a public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy at some time between 198 and 209 AD.\r\nAs a public teacher, it is likely that he had, in some sense, a school. But trying to establish what happened in that school and how it functioned is comparable to the task we would face if we had to determine what went on in a philosophy department in a modern university based on a selection of books by the professor, a confused collection of his papers, the notes from which he lectured, and the essays of his students, with no obvious indication of which was which.\r\n\r\nWe know a considerable amount about the Neoplatonic schools of the fifth and sixth centuries AD and the study of Aristotle\u2019s writings in them. We know the place they had in the curriculum, the order in which they were read, and we can compare the ways in which different commentators approached the question of the relationship between the works of Aristotle and those of Plato. We can trace relations between teachers and their pupils, and we are sometimes told that a particular text is a pupil\u2019s record of his teacher\u2019s utterances. The very organization of the commentaries sometimes reflects and clarifies the requirements of the teaching context\u2014in the division of a commentary into separate lectures and the placing of a general summary of a section of argument before the discussion of particular points.\r\n\r\nFor the medieval period, too, we have copious information on the organization of teaching and study.\r\nWith Alexander, matters are very different. We know the names of some of his teachers, and his surviving works provide evidence for his disagreements with them. We also know something of his disagreements with other philosophers of his own generation or the generation before, and we can trace\u2014however controversially\u2014his influence on later thinkers.\r\n\r\nBut we do not know the name of a single one of his immediate pupils, and for all that we can tell, the influence of other writers on him might have been largely, and his influence on other writers entirely, through the medium of writing rather than personal encounter. After all, we are explicitly told that Alexander\u2019s commentaries were among those read in Plotinus\u2019 school.\r\n\r\nIt is, however, in principle unlikely that any thinker in the ancient world would have communicated entirely through the written, rather than the spoken, word. Some of the writings attributed to Alexander are most naturally seen in the context of his teaching activities or debates within his circle.\r\n\r\nThese writings include commentaries on Aristotelian works, treatises or monographs on particular topics such as those On the Soul and On Fate, and numerous short discussions. Three books of these collected discussions are entitled phusikai skholikai aporiai kai luseis\u2014\u2018School-discussion problems and solutions on nature\u2019; a fourth is titled Problems on Ethics but sub-titled, no doubt in imitation of the preceding three books when it was united with them, skholikai \u00eathikai aporiai kai luseis\u2014\u2018School-discussion problems and solutions on ethics.\u2019\r\n\r\nA further collection was transmitted as the second book of Alexander\u2019s treatise On the Soul and labeled mantissa or \u2018makeweight\u2019 by the Berlin editor Bruns. Other texts essentially similar to those in these collections survive in Arabic, though not in Greek, and there is evidence to suggest that there were other collections now lost.\r\n\r\nThe circumstances in which these collections were put together are unclear; it was not always expertly done, and while some of the titles attached to particular pieces seem to preserve valuable additional information, others are inept or unhelpful. Nor is it clear at what date the collections were assembled.\r\n\r\nIt is not my concern here to provide a full enumeration of the works attributed to Alexander or to classify them in detail. That has been done elsewhere by both myself and others. Rather, I will proceed to a discussion of what the works can tell us about the context in which they arose. It will be helpful to start with a consideration of the relation of Alexander\u2019s works to those of his predecessors, teachers, and contemporaries. [introduction p. 83-85]","btype":2,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/wgzq8ffCF70YlYd","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":42,"full_name":"Sharples, Robert W.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1027,"section_of":1453,"pages":"83-111","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1453,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.\r\n\r\nThe importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence - uncovered in some of the chapters of this book - that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/M8lXuAdHpDW8tvu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1453,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1990]}
Title | Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle? |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1990 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 113-123 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
[B]oth the content of Themistius’ works, and such evidence as we have of the commentators’ attitudes to him, show that he was predominantly a Peripatetic. In this he stood out against the tendencies of his time. His frequently expressed admiration for Plato does not invalidate this conclusion. Themistius may rightly claim to have been the last major figure in antiquity who was a genuine follower of Aristotle. For him, unlike his contemporaries, Plato does not surpass the master of those who know but he, and Socrates, ‘innanzi agli altri piu presso gli stanno’. [Conclusion, p. 123] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/j4M1Faq3An8bJ7v |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"875","_score":null,"_source":{"id":875,"authors_free":[{"id":1285,"entry_id":875,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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":1286,"entry_id":875,"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":"Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle?","main_title":{"title":"Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle?"},"abstract":"[B]oth the content of Themistius\u2019 works, and such evidence as we \r\nhave of the commentators\u2019 attitudes to him, show that he was \r\npredominantly a Peripatetic. In this he stood out against the tendencies \r\nof his time. His frequently expressed admiration for Plato does not \r\ninvalidate this conclusion. Themistius may rightly claim to have been the \r\nlast major figure in antiquity who was a genuine follower of Aristotle. For \r\nhim, unlike his contemporaries, Plato does not surpass the master of \r\nthose who know but he, and Socrates, \u2018innanzi agli altri piu presso gli \r\nstanno\u2019. [Conclusion, p. 123]","btype":2,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/j4M1Faq3An8bJ7v","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":875,"section_of":1453,"pages":"113-123","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1453,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.\r\n\r\nThe importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence - uncovered in some of the chapters of this book - that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/M8lXuAdHpDW8tvu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1453,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1990]}
Title | The development of Philoponus’ thought and its chronology |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1990 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 233-274 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Verrycken, Koenraad |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
The position I should like to defend is to some extent intermediate between that of Gudeman and that of Ilvrard. I think Ilvrard is right in rejecting the hypothesis of Philoponus' conversion. But I also think Gudeman was right in assuming—more or less conjecturally—a duality in Philoponus’ philosophical work. Both Gudeman and Ilvrard, however, pose the problem wrongly in terms of ‘religious conviction’ only. If Philoponus did not develop a Christian philosophy in his first philosophical period, that does not show that he must have been a pagan at that time. And if he was born a Christian, that does not establish that his philosophy must always have been Christian in character. Philosophy is one thing, religion another. In my opinion, the problem should first be posed on the purely philosophical level: what does the author say? Only afterwards can one try to ‘project’ the results of the philosophical analysis onto the levels of biography and psychology. This is the method I employ. To start with, I shall outline very briefly the main characteristics of the philosophical systems of ‘Philoponus 1’ and ‘Philoponus 2’, as I shall call them. Then I shall try to piece together something of what can reasonably be said about Philoponus’ biography. Thirdly, I shall propose the first sketch of a new solution to the problem of the chronology of the author’s Aristotelian commentaries. I shall finish with some remarks on the development of Philoponus 2. [introduction p. 236] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/d1kiVpaSlWKa7uY |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"449","_score":null,"_source":{"id":449,"authors_free":[{"id":601,"entry_id":449,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":347,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Verrycken, Koenraad","free_first_name":"Koenraad","free_last_name":"Verrycken","norm_person":{"id":347,"first_name":"Koenraad","last_name":"Verrycken","full_name":"Verrycken, Koenraad","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1048689964","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":602,"entry_id":449,"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":"The development of Philoponus\u2019 thought and its chronology","main_title":{"title":"The development of Philoponus\u2019 thought and its chronology"},"abstract":"The position I should like to defend is to some extent intermediate between that of Gudeman and that of Ilvrard. I think Ilvrard is right in rejecting the hypothesis of Philoponus' conversion. But I also think Gudeman was right in assuming\u2014more or less conjecturally\u2014a duality in Philoponus\u2019 philosophical work. Both Gudeman and Ilvrard, however, pose the problem wrongly in terms of \u2018religious conviction\u2019 only. If Philoponus did not develop a Christian philosophy in his first philosophical period, that does not show that he must have been a pagan at that time. And if he was born a Christian, that does not establish that his philosophy must always have been Christian in character. Philosophy is one thing, religion another.\r\n\r\nIn my opinion, the problem should first be posed on the purely philosophical level: what does the author say? Only afterwards can one try to \u2018project\u2019 the results of the philosophical analysis onto the levels of biography and psychology. This is the method I employ.\r\n\r\nTo start with, I shall outline very briefly the main characteristics of the philosophical systems of \u2018Philoponus 1\u2019 and \u2018Philoponus 2\u2019, as I shall call them. Then I shall try to piece together something of what can reasonably be said about Philoponus\u2019 biography. Thirdly, I shall propose the first sketch of a new solution to the problem of the chronology of the author\u2019s Aristotelian commentaries. I shall finish with some remarks on the development of Philoponus 2. [introduction p. 236]","btype":2,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/d1kiVpaSlWKa7uY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":347,"full_name":"Verrycken, Koenraad","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":449,"section_of":1453,"pages":"233-274","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1453,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. 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Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/M8lXuAdHpDW8tvu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1453,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1990]}
Title | Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius‘ polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition |
Pages | 97-123 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hoffmann, Philippe |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
I am not entirely comfortable finding myself introducing a discordant note into a collection intended to celebrate the refreshing originality of Philoponus’ ideas. I shall, however, be speaking for Simplicius, vindictive pagan that he was, and shall hope to be an effective counterweight to what is said in other chapters. I shall be talking within the framework of a general interpretation of Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo. The commentary is an exegetical work undertaken as a paean to the Creator or ‘Demiurge.’ Its basic theory on the physical structure of celestial matter is that this matter is a combination of the superior parts (akrotêtes) of the four elements, dominated by the purely luminous superior part of fire. My aim will be to show how this theory can be seen as a reaction to the theories of John Philoponus. Philoponus had turned to the Timaeus for support in his Contra Aristotelem and had attacked the Aristotelian doctrine that the heavens are made of a fifth element and that the world is eternal. Well before Copernicus, Philoponus denied that there was any substantial difference between the heavens and the sublunary world. In his reply to the Contra Aristotelem, Simplicius reaffirms the divinity, the transcendence, and the eternal nature of the heavens. His exegesis aims to connect, rather than contrast, Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De caelo. It is, moreover, a religious act, a spiritual exercise designed to turn the soul (both Simplicius’ and his reader’s) towards the Demiurge. This conversion is our initiation into the grandeur of the universe and of the heavens, and his description of the physical nature of the heavens is one of the most valuable aspects of the revelation. Those readers still under Philoponus’ spell cannot achieve this revelation until they have undergone a preliminary act of purification, which is the refutation of the arguments of Philoponus’ Contra Aristotelem. In this way, Simplicius’ attack is directed at a target that is simultaneously philosophical and religious. A correct reading and interpretation of Aristotle’s De caelo leads not only to the acquisition of intellectual knowledge but also, and above all, to our elevation through thought (a thought that we live) to the whole universe and to the Demiurge. It is a form of prayer addressed to them. The sacrilegious blasphemy of the Christian Philoponus is countered by the Neoplatonist liturgy, a rightful celebration of their God. [introduction p. 97-98] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/RJi3pyBneebP54s |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"712","_score":null,"_source":{"id":712,"authors_free":[{"id":1062,"entry_id":712,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":138,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe","free_first_name":"Philippe","free_last_name":"Hoffmann","norm_person":{"id":138,"first_name":"Philippe ","last_name":"Hoffmann","full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/189361905","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2012,"entry_id":712,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius\u2018 polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius\u2018 polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens"},"abstract":"I am not entirely comfortable finding myself introducing a discordant note into a collection intended to celebrate the refreshing originality of Philoponus\u2019 ideas. I shall, however, be speaking for Simplicius, vindictive pagan that he was, and shall hope to be an effective counterweight to what is said in other chapters. I shall be talking within the framework of a general interpretation of Simplicius\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s De caelo. The commentary is an exegetical work undertaken as a paean to the Creator or \u2018Demiurge.\u2019 Its basic theory on the physical structure of celestial matter is that this matter is a combination of the superior parts (akrot\u00eates) of the four elements, dominated by the purely luminous superior part of fire.\r\n\r\nMy aim will be to show how this theory can be seen as a reaction to the theories of John Philoponus. Philoponus had turned to the Timaeus for support in his Contra Aristotelem and had attacked the Aristotelian doctrine that the heavens are made of a fifth element and that the world is eternal. Well before Copernicus, Philoponus denied that there was any substantial difference between the heavens and the sublunary world. In his reply to the Contra Aristotelem, Simplicius reaffirms the divinity, the transcendence, and the eternal nature of the heavens. His exegesis aims to connect, rather than contrast, Plato\u2019s Timaeus and Aristotle\u2019s De caelo.\r\n\r\nIt is, moreover, a religious act, a spiritual exercise designed to turn the soul (both Simplicius\u2019 and his reader\u2019s) towards the Demiurge. This conversion is our initiation into the grandeur of the universe and of the heavens, and his description of the physical nature of the heavens is one of the most valuable aspects of the revelation. Those readers still under Philoponus\u2019 spell cannot achieve this revelation until they have undergone a preliminary act of purification, which is the refutation of the arguments of Philoponus\u2019 Contra Aristotelem. In this way, Simplicius\u2019 attack is directed at a target that is simultaneously philosophical and religious.\r\n\r\nA correct reading and interpretation of Aristotle\u2019s De caelo leads not only to the acquisition of intellectual knowledge but also, and above all, to our elevation through thought (a thought that we live) to the whole universe and to the Demiurge. It is a form of prayer addressed to them. The sacrilegious blasphemy of the Christian Philoponus is countered by the Neoplatonist liturgy, a rightful celebration of their God. [introduction p. 97-98]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/RJi3pyBneebP54s","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":138,"full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":712,"section_of":184,"pages":"97-123","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":[1987]}
Title | Philoponus and the Rise of Preclassical Dynamics |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 84-120 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Wolff, Michael |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
If we are prepared to assume that the basic presuppositions of impetus theory can be traced back not to observational experience which Aristotle missed, but rather to a certain concept of man and to certain ethical principles, we need not attempt to explain the emergence of the theory solely by reference to new observations of falling bodies and the like. Is it not more appropriate to ask about the origin and kind of ethical problem to which impetus theory originally helped to provide an answer? The experience that forces are exhausted in all physical activities of human beings could have been just such a problem. Earlier society, which had left this experience chiefly to slaves, could not really have had such a problem. But, by the close of Antiquity, times were changing. [Conclusion p. 120] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/L1tFbjfO8UrPnAp |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"720","_score":null,"_source":{"id":720,"authors_free":[{"id":1073,"entry_id":720,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":364,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Wolff, Michael","free_first_name":"Michael","free_last_name":"Wolff","norm_person":{"id":364,"first_name":"Michael","last_name":"Wolff","full_name":"Wolff, Michael","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/131523120","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1074,"entry_id":720,"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 and the Rise of Preclassical Dynamics","main_title":{"title":"Philoponus and the Rise of Preclassical Dynamics"},"abstract":"If we are prepared to assume that the basic presuppositions of impetus theory \r\ncan be traced back not to observational experience which Aristotle missed, \r\nbut rather to a certain concept of man and to certain ethical principles, we \r\nneed not attempt to explain the emergence of the theory solely by reference to \r\nnew observations of falling bodies and the like. Is it not more appropriate to \r\nask about the origin and kind of ethical problem to which impetus theory \r\noriginally helped to provide an answer? The experience that forces are \r\nexhausted in all physical activities of human beings could have been just such \r\na problem. Earlier society, which had left this experience chiefly to slaves, \r\ncould not really have had such a problem. But, by the close of Antiquity, \r\ntimes were changing. [Conclusion p. 120]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/L1tFbjfO8UrPnAp","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":364,"full_name":"Wolff, Michael","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":720,"section_of":1383,"pages":"84-120","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1987]}
Title | Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics in the Sixtheenth Century |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition |
Pages | 210-230 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Schmitt, Charles Bernard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
As it is generally accepted, the term ‘Renaissance’ refers to a historical period in which there was a revival of interest in the literature, styles, and forms of Classical Antiquity. Though the ‘revival’ is usually understood to refer specifically to ancient ‘literary’ 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’s 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 ‘Renaissance’ was a revival of the technical knowledge bequeathed by Antiquity as much as of works of recognized literary and rhetorical quality. One 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. But 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. The 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’s 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—and generally delayed by only a few years—was 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. In 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’s 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—in logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and psychology—has scarcely been charted, nor has the interplay between Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and medieval and Renaissance Latin interpretations of Aristotle been evaluated and analyzed. During the second half of the sixteenth century, those who wanted to understand Aristotle—which for them meant philosophy tout court—frequently tried to relate the text of the Stagirite to the varying interpretations of Philoponus, Simplicius, Averroes (1126–98), Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), John of Jandun (died 1328), Pomponazzi (1462–1525), and Soto (1494/5–1560), among many others. Particularly 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 ‘new science’ of the seventeenth century. Thus 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. Before turning to a consideration of the impact of the Grammarian’s 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] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/Ub0AryY729JHN5w |
{"_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":[1987]}
Title | Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 197-209 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Wildberg, Christian |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Judging from the number and content of his commentaries, Philoponus was a thinker in the Aristotelian tradition. One of his major achievements lies in the fact that as a commentator he accepted and developed the heritage of his teacher Ammonius. For that reason alone it is remarkable that he composed a treatise which attacked vital topics of Aristotle’s philosophy with little compromise. Although it is true that throughout Antiquity many philosophers ventured to criticise the great Aristotle, one may agree that Philoponus did so, as Cesare Cremonini put it in 1616, ‘more sharply than anyone’ (acerrime omnium).' Where does this attack fit into the context of Philoponus’doctrinal development? No doubt his outspoken critique of Aristotle in the de Aetemitate Mundi contra Aristotelem somehow swayed Philoponus to desert the philosophical and join the theological camp. But the story is probably more complex. The general point of dissent was, as the title indicates, the doctrine of the eternity of the world. Being a Christian, Philoponus perhaps possessed a particular motivation for launching his attack - as a feat of praeparatio evangélica. This fact has been sufficiently recognised and appreciated. Less appreciated and studied, however, has been the philosophical side, i.e. the actual argument and structure of the treatise in question. Since it has not survived the content must be reconstructed from a number of substantial fragments found mainly in the commentaries of Philoponus’ adversary Simplicius. An adequate treatment of the double controversy Simplicius v Philoponus v Aristotle would fill a volume on its own and cannot be the subject of this chapter.2 Instead, I will attempt to revise apparently firmly established views about the treatise, in particular its composition and date. This, it is hoped, may lead to a revised view of that treatise and at the same time encourage a more advanced study of Philoponus’ doctrinal development in general. [introduction p. 197-198] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/dbFxqr9z9aZi48i |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"430","_score":null,"_source":{"id":430,"authors_free":[{"id":580,"entry_id":430,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":360,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Wildberg, Christian","free_first_name":"Christian","free_last_name":"Wildberg","norm_person":{"id":360,"first_name":"Christian","last_name":"Wildberg","full_name":"Wildberg, Christian","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/139018964","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":581,"entry_id":430,"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":"Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem","main_title":{"title":"Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem"},"abstract":"Judging from the number and content of his commentaries, Philoponus was a thinker in the Aristotelian tradition. One of his major achievements lies in \r\nthe fact that as a commentator he accepted and developed the heritage of his teacher Ammonius. For that reason alone it is remarkable that he composed a treatise which attacked vital topics of Aristotle\u2019s philosophy with little compromise. Although it is true that throughout Antiquity many philosophers ventured to criticise the great Aristotle, one may agree that Philoponus did so, as Cesare Cremonini put it in 1616, \u2018more sharply than anyone\u2019 (acerrime omnium).' Where does this attack fit into the context of Philoponus\u2019doctrinal development? No doubt his outspoken critique of Aristotle in the de Aetemitate Mundi contra Aristotelem somehow swayed Philoponus to desert the philosophical and join the theological camp. But the story is probably more complex. The general point of dissent was, as the title indicates, the doctrine of the eternity of the world. Being a Christian, Philoponus perhaps possessed a \r\nparticular motivation for launching his attack - as a feat of praeparatio evang\u00e9lica. This fact has been sufficiently recognised and appreciated. Less appreciated and studied, however, has been the philosophical side, i.e. the actual argument and structure of the treatise in question. Since it has not survived the content must be reconstructed from a number of substantial fragments found mainly in the commentaries of Philoponus\u2019 adversary Simplicius. An adequate treatment of the double controversy Simplicius v Philoponus v Aristotle would fill a volume on its own and cannot be the subject of this chapter.2 Instead, I will attempt to revise apparently firmly established views about the treatise, in particular its composition and date. This, it is hoped, may lead to a revised view of that treatise and at the same time encourage a more advanced study of Philoponus\u2019 doctrinal development in general. [introduction p. 197-198]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/dbFxqr9z9aZi48i","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":360,"full_name":"Wildberg, Christian","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":430,"section_of":1383,"pages":"197-209","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1987]}
Title | Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Simplicius. Sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie: Actes du colloque international de Paris 28 sept. - 1er oct. 1985 |
Pages | 148-165 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Hadot, Ilsetraut |
Translator(s) |
What conclusions can now be drawn? It is time to say that I do not think Aristotle reached the point of consciously thinking that extension would play the role of prime matter. It took the Neoplatonist Simplicius to interpret him that way, motivated by reasons of his own. The diffuseness of extension will have seemed important to Simplicius because it puts prime matter where it should be, at the opposite extreme from the unity of the One. He knew that Plato had been taken as identifying prime matter with space or with other kinds of extension, and, although he disagreed, he thought he found the justification for such an interpretation of Aristotle at least in Phys. 4,2, if not in the Metaphysics as well. But even if Simplicius' interpretation does not represent Aristotle's conscious thought, it opens new vistas. For one thing, I believe that extension would fit with Aristotle's conception of prime matter, and fit better than anything else that has been proposed. Furthermore, in considering how it would fit, we have been forced to consider a network of interlocking parts of Aristotle's philosophy. Some of the parts would require modification if extension were to be openly acknowledged as playing the role of prime matter, but the resulting modifications would yield a coherent view. Finally, views of the same general sort, which treat body as some kind of extension endowed with properties, have recurred through the ages, for example in Descartes, in Newton, and in twentieth-century physics. [conclusion p. 162-163] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/h6HONd1UnE1D8Vw |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"487","_score":null,"_source":{"id":487,"authors_free":[{"id":665,"entry_id":487,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":666,"entry_id":487,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":4,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","free_first_name":"Ilsetraut","free_last_name":"Hadot","norm_person":{"id":4,"first_name":"Ilsetraut","last_name":"Hadot","full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/107415011","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension"},"abstract":"What conclusions can now be drawn? It is time to say that I do not think Aristotle reached the point of consciously thinking that extension would play the role of prime matter. It took the Neoplatonist Simplicius to interpret him that way, motivated by reasons of his own.\r\n\r\nThe diffuseness of extension will have seemed important to Simplicius because it puts prime matter where it should be, at the opposite extreme from the unity of the One. He knew that Plato had been taken as identifying prime matter with space or with other kinds of extension, and, although he disagreed, he thought he found the justification for such an interpretation of Aristotle at least in Phys. 4,2, if not in the Metaphysics as well.\r\n\r\nBut even if Simplicius' interpretation does not represent Aristotle's conscious thought, it opens new vistas. For one thing, I believe that extension would fit with Aristotle's conception of prime matter, and fit better than anything else that has been proposed. Furthermore, in considering how it would fit, we have been forced to consider a network of interlocking parts of Aristotle's philosophy.\r\n\r\nSome of the parts would require modification if extension were to be openly acknowledged as playing the role of prime matter, but the resulting modifications would yield a coherent view. Finally, views of the same general sort, which treat body as some kind of extension endowed with properties, have recurred through the ages, for example in Descartes, in Newton, and in twentieth-century physics. [conclusion p. 162-163]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/h6HONd1UnE1D8Vw","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":4,"full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":487,"section_of":171,"pages":"148-165","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":171,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"fr","title":"Simplicius. Sa vie, son \u0153uvre, sa survie: Actes du colloque international de Paris 28 sept. - 1er oct. 1985","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Hadot1987","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1987","abstract":"Depuis une quinzaine d'ann\u00e9es, on assiste en Allemagne, en Angleterre, en Am\u00e9rique et en France \u00e0 un renouveau des \u00e9tudes sur Simplicius. Diff\u00e9rents chercheurs, partis de probl\u00e9matiques et de pr\u00e9occupations diff\u00e9rentes, se sont rencontr\u00e9s dans ce domaine de recherche d'une importance capitale pour l'histoire de toute la philosophie antique. C'\u00e9tait donc pour faciliter une \u00e9tude coordonn\u00e9e et syst\u00e9matique \u00e0 la fois du texte et de la pens\u00e9e de Simplicius que la Recherche Coop\u00e9rative Programm\u00e9e 739 \"Recherches sur les \u0153uvres et la pens\u00e9e de Simplicius\" fut fond\u00e9e en 1982 dans le cadre du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S., Paris). Depuis cette date, ses recherches se d\u00e9roulent en \u00e9troite collaboration avec l'\u00e9quipe anglo-am\u00e9ricaine de recherche du professeur Richard Sorabji, intitul\u00e9e \"Ancient Commentators on Aristotle\", et avec l'Aristoteles-Archiv de la Freie Universit\u00e4t de Berlin-Ouest dirig\u00e9 par le professeur Dieter Harlfinger.\r\n\r\nPour permettre aux diff\u00e9rents membres de la R.C.P., dont plusieurs habitent \u00e0 l'\u00e9tranger, ainsi qu'\u00e0 d'autres savants int\u00e9ress\u00e9s par les \u00e9tudes sur Simplicius, d'entrer en contact personnel, de r\u00e9soudre oralement des questions diverses se rapportant \u00e0 l'organisation du travail, d'\u00e9changer entre eux les tout derniers r\u00e9sultats de leurs recherches et d'engager une discussion sur des probl\u00e8mes difficiles, j'ai organis\u00e9, dans le cadre de la R.C.P. 739, un colloque international qui s'est tenu \u00e0 Paris, \u00e0 la Fondation Hugot, du 28 septembre au 1er octobre 1985. Ce colloque a \u00e9t\u00e9 enti\u00e8rement financ\u00e9 par la Fondation Hugot du Coll\u00e8ge de France, \u00e0 laquelle j'exprime toute ma gratitude. Je tiens aussi \u00e0 remercier M. et Mme de Morant pour la sollicitude et la bienveillance avec laquelle ils ont accueilli les membres du colloque et veill\u00e9 \u00e0 leur procurer un merveilleux confort.\r\n\r\nLe Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique a subventionn\u00e9 la parution des Actes du Colloque, et je remercie le professeur Dr. H. Wenzel d'avoir rendu possible leur parution dans la s\u00e9rie prestigieuse des Peripatoi de la maison d'\u00e9dition De Gruyter. [Pr\u00e9face]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/45BIqsODQJTdHmt","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":171,"pubplace":"Berlin \u2013 New York","publisher":"de Gruyter","series":"Peripatoi. Philologisch-historische Studien zum Aristotelismus","volume":"15","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1987]}
Title | John Philoponus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 1-40 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
This chapter delves into the life and intellectual contributions of John Philoponus, a pivotal figure bridging Neoplatonism and Christianity. It explores his relationship with Ammonius and examines how his Christian faith influenced his philosophical and scientific endeavors. The text covers Philoponus' critique of the Aristotelian worldview, focusing on key topics such as the creation of the universe, the impetus theory of dynamics, and the concept of velocity in a vacuum. It also addresses his innovative ideas about vacuum and space, his challenges to Aristotle's notions of natural place, and his interpretation of matter as extension. Philoponus is recognized for disrupting Aristotle's categorical framework, rejecting the fifth element, and presenting novel theories about the directionality of light. The chapter reflects on his attacks on Aristotle in retrospect, highlighting the interplay between his scientific theories and Christian doctrines, including Christ, the Trinity, resurrection, and the soul. Additionally, the chapter examines his influence on later thought, tracing his intellectual antecedents and the chronology of his writings. [Derived from the entire text] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/FDyWUVJUOYpvtvb |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"488","_score":null,"_source":{"id":488,"authors_free":[{"id":667,"entry_id":488,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":668,"entry_id":488,"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":"John Philoponus","main_title":{"title":"John Philoponus"},"abstract":"This chapter delves into the life and intellectual contributions of John Philoponus, a pivotal figure bridging Neoplatonism and Christianity. It explores his relationship with Ammonius and examines how his Christian faith influenced his philosophical and scientific endeavors. The text covers Philoponus' critique of the Aristotelian worldview, focusing on key topics such as the creation of the universe, the impetus theory of dynamics, and the concept of velocity in a vacuum. It also addresses his innovative ideas about vacuum and space, his challenges to Aristotle's notions of natural place, and his interpretation of matter as extension.\r\n\r\nPhiloponus is recognized for disrupting Aristotle's categorical framework, rejecting the fifth element, and presenting novel theories about the directionality of light. The chapter reflects on his attacks on Aristotle in retrospect, highlighting the interplay between his scientific theories and Christian doctrines, including Christ, the Trinity, resurrection, and the soul. Additionally, the chapter examines his influence on later thought, tracing his intellectual antecedents and the chronology of his writings. [Derived from the entire text]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/FDyWUVJUOYpvtvb","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":488,"section_of":1383,"pages":"1-40","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1987]}
Title | Infinity and the Creation |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 164-178 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
The arguments of Philoponus on which I want to focus concern the Christian view that the universe had a beginning. But here already I must draw a distinction. For in talking of the universe beginning, I am not talking merely of the present orderly arrangement of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. Many pagans would have accepted that the present arrangement of matter had a beginning. What, with very few exceptions, they all thought absurd was that matter itself should have had a beginning. Indeed, Jews and Christians themselves were embarrassed about this doctrine and were by no means unanimous in accepting it. It has been suggested that the oldest references to creation in the Old Testament come in Job, and that there God is envisaged as imposing order on pre-existing matter, not as creating matter itself. It has further been doubted whether there is any clear statement in the Bible of creation out of nothing. The opinion of Philo the Jew, in the first century A.D., is a matter of controversy, but I believe that he takes different sides in different works. A little later, Hermogenes and others offered a surprising reason for denying matter a beginning. They pointed to the use of the word "was" in the opening of Genesis, where it is said that the earth was without form and void, and they took the use of the past tense to show that earth, or matter, was already in existence when the Creator began work. It is often held, although I am not inclined to agree myself, that Boethius endorsed the Neoplatonist view of a beginningless universe at the end of his Consolation of Philosophy. What I would acknowledge is that other Christians in these centuries, such as Synesius and Elias, did deny the universe a beginning or end under the influence of Platonism. If we skip to the thirteenth century, we find Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Albert the Great saying that it cannot be established by philosophy one way or the other whether the universe had a beginning. It is only Scripture which reveals that it did. Two slightly younger contemporaries in Paris went a step further—indeed, a step too far. Boethius of Dacia (the Dane, not the sixth-century Roman) and Siger of Brabant maintained that philosophical argument showed the universe to be beginningless, but that nonetheless, reason must bow to revelation. They had to flee Paris in the condemnation of 1277, and there is a tradition that Siger was murdered. [introduction p. 165-167] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/RDC5FI7QaO4jMjf |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"489","_score":null,"_source":{"id":489,"authors_free":[{"id":669,"entry_id":489,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":670,"entry_id":489,"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":"Infinity and the Creation","main_title":{"title":"Infinity and the Creation"},"abstract":"The arguments of Philoponus on which I want to focus concern the Christian view that the universe had a beginning. But here already I must draw a distinction. For in talking of the universe beginning, I am not talking merely of the present orderly arrangement of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. Many pagans would have accepted that the present arrangement of matter had a beginning. What, with very few exceptions, they all thought absurd was that matter itself should have had a beginning.\r\n\r\nIndeed, Jews and Christians themselves were embarrassed about this doctrine and were by no means unanimous in accepting it. It has been suggested that the oldest references to creation in the Old Testament come in Job, and that there God is envisaged as imposing order on pre-existing matter, not as creating matter itself. It has further been doubted whether there is any clear statement in the Bible of creation out of nothing. The opinion of Philo the Jew, in the first century A.D., is a matter of controversy, but I believe that he takes different sides in different works.\r\n\r\nA little later, Hermogenes and others offered a surprising reason for denying matter a beginning. They pointed to the use of the word \"was\" in the opening of Genesis, where it is said that the earth was without form and void, and they took the use of the past tense to show that earth, or matter, was already in existence when the Creator began work. It is often held, although I am not inclined to agree myself, that Boethius endorsed the Neoplatonist view of a beginningless universe at the end of his Consolation of Philosophy.\r\n\r\nWhat I would acknowledge is that other Christians in these centuries, such as Synesius and Elias, did deny the universe a beginning or end under the influence of Platonism. If we skip to the thirteenth century, we find Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Albert the Great saying that it cannot be established by philosophy one way or the other whether the universe had a beginning. It is only Scripture which reveals that it did.\r\n\r\nTwo slightly younger contemporaries in Paris went a step further\u2014indeed, a step too far. Boethius of Dacia (the Dane, not the sixth-century Roman) and Siger of Brabant maintained that philosophical argument showed the universe to be beginningless, but that nonetheless, reason must bow to revelation. They had to flee Paris in the condemnation of 1277, and there is a tradition that Siger was murdered. [introduction p. 165-167]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/RDC5FI7QaO4jMjf","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":489,"section_of":1383,"pages":"164-178","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":[1987]}
Title | A “New” Text of Alexander on the Soul’s Motion |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1997 |
Published in | Aristotle and after |
Pages | 181-195 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Rashed, Marwan |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
A last argument: when Alexander describes the doctrine through which Aristotle hoped to escape from Atticus’ criticisms, he writes, apropos the intellect: "and it is separated out (ekkrinetai) in the same way as it is introduced (eiskrinetai)". Thus, the only two occurrences in Alexander of the verb eiskrinesthai are deeply connected with Atticus’ theory, either directly or through Aristotle’s reply. It seems, therefore, very probable that Alexander himself was aware of the significance of this technical term, and that he mentioned it twice. To conclude, then, the historical evolution of the polemics may be summarised as follows: The ‘Aristotelian’ claim of the intellect from without. Atticus attacks the intellect from without because of its inability to move. Aristoteles of Mytilene (as reported by Alexander in C1) defends the intellect from without by claiming its ubiquity. Alexander (De intell., C2) criticises Aristoteles’ solution to Atticus’ criticisms and gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes. Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus’ vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not resolve the question at all and alludes indirectly to his previous solution. Thus, we may conclude that the De intellectu is an authentic work of Alexander, but an earlier one than the commentary on the Physics. [conclusion p. 194-195] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/roAfpopRonK2aKn |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1061","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1061,"authors_free":[{"id":1610,"entry_id":1061,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":194,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Rashed, Marwan","free_first_name":"Marwan","free_last_name":"Rashed","norm_person":{"id":194,"first_name":"Marwan","last_name":"Rashed","full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054568634","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1611,"entry_id":1061,"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":"A \u201cNew\u201d Text of Alexander on the Soul\u2019s Motion","main_title":{"title":"A \u201cNew\u201d Text of Alexander on the Soul\u2019s Motion"},"abstract":"A last argument: when Alexander describes the doctrine through which Aristotle hoped to escape from Atticus\u2019 criticisms, he writes, apropos the intellect: \"and it is separated out (ekkrinetai) in the same way as it is introduced (eiskrinetai)\". Thus, the only two occurrences in Alexander of the verb eiskrinesthai are deeply connected with Atticus\u2019 theory, either directly or through Aristotle\u2019s reply. It seems, therefore, very probable that Alexander himself was aware of the significance of this technical term, and that he mentioned it twice.\r\n\r\nTo conclude, then, the historical evolution of the polemics may be summarised as follows:\r\n\r\n The \u2018Aristotelian\u2019 claim of the intellect from without.\r\n Atticus attacks the intellect from without because of its inability to move.\r\n Aristoteles of Mytilene (as reported by Alexander in C1) defends the intellect from without by claiming its ubiquity.\r\n Alexander (De intell., C2) criticises Aristoteles\u2019 solution to Atticus\u2019 criticisms and gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes.\r\n Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus\u2019 vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not resolve the question at all and alludes indirectly to his previous solution.\r\n\r\nThus, we may conclude that the De intellectu is an authentic work of Alexander, but an earlier one than the commentary on the Physics. [conclusion p. 194-195]","btype":2,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/roAfpopRonK2aKn","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":194,"full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1061,"section_of":199,"pages":"181-195","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":199,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and after","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1997a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1997","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1997","abstract":"A selection of papers given at the Institute of Classical Studies during 1996. They cover a variety of new work on the 900 years of philosophy from Aristotle to Simplicius. There is a strong concentration on stoicism with papers by: Michael Frede ( Euphrates of Tyre ); A. A. Long ( Property ownership and community ); Brad Inwood ( 'Why do fools fallin love?' ); Susanne Bobzein ( freedom and ethics ); Richard Gaskin ( cases, predicates and the unity of the proposition ); Richard Sorabji ( stoic philosophy and psychotherapy ); Bernard Williams ( reply to Richard Sorabji ). The other papers are by: Heinrich von Staden ( Galen and the 'Second Sophistic' ); Hans B. Gottschalk ( continuity and change in Aristotelianism ); Travis Butler ( the homonymy of signification in Aristotle ); Andrea Falcon ( Aristotle's theory of division ); Sylvia Berryman (Horror Vacui in the third century BC ); M. B. Trapp ( On the Tablet of Cebes ); Marwan Rashed ( a 'new' text of Alexander on the soul's motion ). [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/x8uyail9ZCl9wfr","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":199,"pubplace":"University of London","publisher":"Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study","series":"BICS (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies) Supplement","volume":"68","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["A \u201cNew\u201d Text of Alexander on the Soul\u2019s Motion"]}
Title | Boethus’ Aristotelian Ontology |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 103-124 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Rashed, Marwan |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Boethus is surely one of the most important thinkers of the first century BCE. Though only a few testimonies, and no clear fragment, remain, their number and content are sufficient to show how insightful he was in commenting upon Aristotle. It is not just that he was typical of this first generation of commentators who have struck modern historians by their free spirit towards Aristotle’s text. Boethus’ fragments on substance testify to more than a free attitude towards the Philosopher: it is also possible to recognize, through the many layers of the tradition—Alexander, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Simplicius—a coherent and unitary doctrine. His doctrine, of course, is not un-Aristotelian; it does not even stand somewhere halfway between Aristotle and other thinkers of Antiquity, the Stoics in particular (even if it is obviously inspired by a general Stoic atmosphere). Boethus has consciously built, out of some rare Aristotelian indications, a certain kind of Aristotelianism among other possible ones. This doctrinal approach is probably both the cause and the effect of a cultural fact: the Peripatos’ nearly exclusive focus, in the first century BCE, on the Categories. For sure, the treatise of the Categories, by itself, does not necessarily produce a definite account of the world. But by contrast with what is the case with other parts of the Aristotelian corpus, its basic ontological features seem naturally at home in the framework of a doctrine holding the primacy of the individual material substance. [introduction p. 103-104] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/xYH889DSksf6EXe |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1536","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1536,"authors_free":[{"id":2679,"entry_id":1536,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":194,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Rashed, Marwan","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":{"id":194,"first_name":"Marwan","last_name":"Rashed","full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1054568634","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2680,"entry_id":1536,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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":"Boethus\u2019 Aristotelian Ontology","main_title":{"title":"Boethus\u2019 Aristotelian Ontology"},"abstract":"Boethus is surely one of the most important thinkers of the first century BCE. Though only a few testimonies, and no clear fragment, remain, their number and content are sufficient to show how insightful he was in commenting upon Aristotle. It is not just that he was typical of this first generation of commentators who have struck modern historians by their free spirit towards Aristotle\u2019s text. Boethus\u2019 fragments on substance testify to more than a free attitude towards the Philosopher: it is also possible to recognize, through the many layers of the tradition\u2014Alexander, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Simplicius\u2014a coherent and unitary doctrine.\r\n\r\nHis doctrine, of course, is not un-Aristotelian; it does not even stand somewhere halfway between Aristotle and other thinkers of Antiquity, the Stoics in particular (even if it is obviously inspired by a general Stoic atmosphere). Boethus has consciously built, out of some rare Aristotelian indications, a certain kind of Aristotelianism among other possible ones. This doctrinal approach is probably both the cause and the effect of a cultural fact: the Peripatos\u2019 nearly exclusive focus, in the first century BCE, on the Categories.\r\n\r\nFor sure, the treatise of the Categories, by itself, does not necessarily produce a definite account of the world. But by contrast with what is the case with other parts of the Aristotelian corpus, its basic ontological features seem naturally at home in the framework of a doctrine holding the primacy of the individual material substance.\r\n[introduction p. 103-104]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/xYH889DSksf6EXe","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":194,"full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1536,"section_of":1419,"pages":"103-124","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Boethus\u2019 Aristotelian Ontology"]}
Title | Dating of Philoponus’ Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence from his Teacher Ammonius |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 367-392 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
There have been two major hypotheses since 1990, and much valuable discussion concerning the dating of Philoponus’ commentaries on Aristotle and of his divergence from Ammonius. In 1990, Koenraad Verrycken summarized in Aristotle Transformed his new datings for Philoponus’ work, drawing on apparent contradictions in his statements about the eternity or coming-into-being of the universe and its contents, about the nature of place, and about the possibility of vacuum and of motion in a vacuum. His earlier dissertation of 1985 also included Philoponus’ changing treatment of Aristotle’s prime matter. He suggested solving these problems by postulating a phase around 517 CE in which Philoponus accepted his teacher Ammonius’ Neoplatonism and interpretation of Aristotle as agreeing with Plato and with Neoplatonism, and a later phase in which he reverted to his Christian origins on the level of doctrine and repudiated the Neoplatonist and Aristotelian ideas, especially where, as with eternity or the Creation of the universe, they contradicted Christian ideas. This called for a second edition of some earlier commentaries on Aristotle after 529 CE. Verrycken was aware that his particular dating might not be accepted, and even that the appearance of a Neoplatonist or Aristotelian view might sometimes be due to the expository nature of commentary on Aristotle. This and other explanations have since been proffered, and the particular dating has received widespread criticism, which I have summarized elsewhere. Nonetheless, even if Philoponus does not juxtapose as often as suggested different viewpoints of his own, Verrycken’s citations establish that he does develop different viewpoints across a wide range of texts and topics, so that it remains necessary to consider his evidence in formulating any alternative dating. The second major hypothesis was offered in 2008 by Pantelis Golitsis, who exploited an underused source of evidence that bears on several questions. He has also been kind enough to discuss at two workshops his further work in preparation. I shall, however, refer to his 2008 publication, except where explicitly stated. Philoponus’ seven commentaries on Aristotle are divided into books, and four commentaries are, or at least some books in four commentaries are, described in their titles as being Philoponus’ commentarial (skholastikai) notes (aposêmeiôseis) from the meetings (sunousiai), i.e., seminar sessions, of Ammonius (his teacher), with Philoponus’ name or other designation coming first. The four are in An. Pr., in An. Post., in DA, and in GC. The last three of these four are described as containing further (critical) reflections (more below on the meaning of epistaseis) of his own (idiôn) by Philoponus. The remaining three of Philoponus’ commentaries on Aristotle are not ascribed to the seminars of Ammonius. Philoponus also refers twice to a commentary, now lost, on Porphyry’s Introduction (Isagôgê), his introduction that is, on one interpretation, to Aristotle’s logic. All this could have several important implications. First, although the titles of his commentaries were written in by successive scribes, Golitsis has sought out the best manuscripts and has taken them to represent Philoponus’ own description, and from this he has inferred quite a precise timetable for Philoponus’ commentaries on Aristotle. The commentaries whose book titles refer to Ammonius’ seminars were written first and commissioned as editions of Ammonius’ lectures as they were delivered in the order of the standard curriculum between 510 and 515. Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which contains a lecture dated to 517, is not connected in its book titles with Ammonius’ lectures in the modern edition of Vitelli under the general editorship of Diels, and moreover, it contains open disagreement with Ammonius. If that is right, the commentary will reflect courses that Philoponus himself was giving. However, Golitsis allows me to mention that in further work, he will now be taking seriously Trincavelli’s earlier alternative reading of the manuscript title, which does, at the beginning of the commentary on Physics Book One, mention both Ammonius’ seminars and Philoponus’ (critical) reflections, and he will be explaining the transformative consequences. Philoponus’ editions of Ammonius’ lectures will have included, again, Golitsis suggests, in the order of the standard curriculum: on Porphyry’s Isagôgê, and on Aristotle’s Categories, then on the eighth book of his Physics, which precedes the lecture of 517 on the Physics, whether or not the series includes more on the Physics. So far, Golitsis’ conclusion rightly observes the standard view that most commentaries on Aristotle reflect teaching classes. But, by way of exception, the commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology is not connected by any titles to Ammonius, and Golitsis argues it does not appear to reflect teaching either, so was written after Philoponus had stopped teaching courses on Aristotle. The task now, as I see it, is to consider how far the new considerations about titles, combined with many others, including some highlighted by Verrycken, can enable us to confirm or disconfirm the details of dating and divergence and provide a modified picture. [introduction p. 367-369] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/6Gmj6C363y2Apg8 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1531","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1531,"authors_free":[{"id":2667,"entry_id":1531,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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}},{"id":2668,"entry_id":1531,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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":"Dating of Philoponus\u2019 Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence from his Teacher Ammonius","main_title":{"title":"Dating of Philoponus\u2019 Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence from his Teacher Ammonius"},"abstract":"There have been two major hypotheses since 1990, and much valuable discussion concerning the dating of Philoponus\u2019 commentaries on Aristotle and of his divergence from Ammonius. In 1990, Koenraad Verrycken summarized in Aristotle Transformed his new datings for Philoponus\u2019 work, drawing on apparent contradictions in his statements about the eternity or coming-into-being of the universe and its contents, about the nature of place, and about the possibility of vacuum and of motion in a vacuum. His earlier dissertation of 1985 also included Philoponus\u2019 changing treatment of Aristotle\u2019s prime matter. He suggested solving these problems by postulating a phase around 517 CE in which Philoponus accepted his teacher Ammonius\u2019 Neoplatonism and interpretation of Aristotle as agreeing with Plato and with Neoplatonism, and a later phase in which he reverted to his Christian origins on the level of doctrine and repudiated the Neoplatonist and Aristotelian ideas, especially where, as with eternity or the Creation of the universe, they contradicted Christian ideas. This called for a second edition of some earlier commentaries on Aristotle after 529 CE. Verrycken was aware that his particular dating might not be accepted, and even that the appearance of a Neoplatonist or Aristotelian view might sometimes be due to the expository nature of commentary on Aristotle. This and other explanations have since been proffered, and the particular dating has received widespread criticism, which I have summarized elsewhere. Nonetheless, even if Philoponus does not juxtapose as often as suggested different viewpoints of his own, Verrycken\u2019s citations establish that he does develop different viewpoints across a wide range of texts and topics, so that it remains necessary to consider his evidence in formulating any alternative dating.\r\n\r\nThe second major hypothesis was offered in 2008 by Pantelis Golitsis, who exploited an underused source of evidence that bears on several questions. He has also been kind enough to discuss at two workshops his further work in preparation. I shall, however, refer to his 2008 publication, except where explicitly stated. Philoponus\u2019 seven commentaries on Aristotle are divided into books, and four commentaries are, or at least some books in four commentaries are, described in their titles as being Philoponus\u2019 commentarial (skholastikai) notes (apos\u00eamei\u00f4seis) from the meetings (sunousiai), i.e., seminar sessions, of Ammonius (his teacher), with Philoponus\u2019 name or other designation coming first. The four are in An. Pr., in An. Post., in DA, and in GC. The last three of these four are described as containing further (critical) reflections (more below on the meaning of epistaseis) of his own (idi\u00f4n) by Philoponus. The remaining three of Philoponus\u2019 commentaries on Aristotle are not ascribed to the seminars of Ammonius. Philoponus also refers twice to a commentary, now lost, on Porphyry\u2019s Introduction (Isag\u00f4g\u00ea), his introduction that is, on one interpretation, to Aristotle\u2019s logic. All this could have several important implications.\r\n\r\nFirst, although the titles of his commentaries were written in by successive scribes, Golitsis has sought out the best manuscripts and has taken them to represent Philoponus\u2019 own description, and from this he has inferred quite a precise timetable for Philoponus\u2019 commentaries on Aristotle. The commentaries whose book titles refer to Ammonius\u2019 seminars were written first and commissioned as editions of Ammonius\u2019 lectures as they were delivered in the order of the standard curriculum between 510 and 515. Philoponus\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Physics, which contains a lecture dated to 517, is not connected in its book titles with Ammonius\u2019 lectures in the modern edition of Vitelli under the general editorship of Diels, and moreover, it contains open disagreement with Ammonius. If that is right, the commentary will reflect courses that Philoponus himself was giving.\r\n\r\nHowever, Golitsis allows me to mention that in further work, he will now be taking seriously Trincavelli\u2019s earlier alternative reading of the manuscript title, which does, at the beginning of the commentary on Physics Book One, mention both Ammonius\u2019 seminars and Philoponus\u2019 (critical) reflections, and he will be explaining the transformative consequences. Philoponus\u2019 editions of Ammonius\u2019 lectures will have included, again, Golitsis suggests, in the order of the standard curriculum: on Porphyry\u2019s Isag\u00f4g\u00ea, and on Aristotle\u2019s Categories, then on the eighth book of his Physics, which precedes the lecture of 517 on the Physics, whether or not the series includes more on the Physics.\r\n\r\nSo far, Golitsis\u2019 conclusion rightly observes the standard view that most commentaries on Aristotle reflect teaching classes. But, by way of exception, the commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Meteorology is not connected by any titles to Ammonius, and Golitsis argues it does not appear to reflect teaching either, so was written after Philoponus had stopped teaching courses on Aristotle. The task now, as I see it, is to consider how far the new considerations about titles, combined with many others, including some highlighted by Verrycken, can enable us to confirm or disconfirm the details of dating and divergence and provide a modified picture. [introduction p. 367-369]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/6Gmj6C363y2Apg8","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1531,"section_of":1419,"pages":"367-392","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Dating of Philoponus\u2019 Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence from his Teacher Ammonius"]}
Title | Iamblichus’ Noera Theôria of Aristotle’s Categories |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 313-326 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Dillon, John |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
It will be seen that it is Iamblichus’ purpose to salvage Aristotle, reconciling him both with his perceived doctrine elsewhere (as, for example, in the Metaphysics and the Physics), and with that of Plato and the Pythagoreans. The aim is to establish a metaphysical framework for the interpretation of the Categories, revealing the hidden levels of truth inherent in it. This is achieved, of course, at the cost of ignoring what seems to us the essentially anti-metaphysical, as well as tentative and exploratory, nature of the Categories, but it would be somewhat anachronistic to condemn Iamblichus too severely for that. The text of the Categories had been a battleground for at least three hundred years before his time, from the period of Andronicus, Ariston, and Eudorus of Alexandria, and the Stoic Apollodorus of Tarsus in the first century BCE, through that of the Platonists Lucius and Nicostratus, and then Atticus, and the Stoic Cornutus, and lastly Alexander of Aphrodisias in the first and second centuries CE, down to Plotinus and Porphyry in his own day, with every phrase and word of the text liable to challenge and requiring defense. Iamblichus’ distinctive contribution is to take the Categories as a coherent description of reality in the Neoplatonic sense, and that, bizarre as it may seem to us, is not really all that more perverse than many of the various ways in which the work had been treated in the centuries before him. [conclusion p. 324-325] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/d9iiR3Sr5aRY9S7 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1533","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1533,"authors_free":[{"id":2671,"entry_id":1533,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":97,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Dillon, John","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":{"id":97,"first_name":"John","last_name":"Dillon","full_name":"Dillon, John","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/123498058","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2672,"entry_id":1533,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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":"Iamblichus\u2019 Noera The\u00f4ria of Aristotle\u2019s Categories","main_title":{"title":"Iamblichus\u2019 Noera The\u00f4ria of Aristotle\u2019s Categories"},"abstract":"It will be seen that it is Iamblichus\u2019 purpose to salvage Aristotle, reconciling him both with his perceived doctrine elsewhere (as, for example, in the Metaphysics and the Physics), and with that of Plato and the Pythagoreans. The aim is to establish a metaphysical framework for the interpretation of the Categories, revealing the hidden levels of truth inherent in it. This is achieved, of course, at the cost of ignoring what seems to us the essentially anti-metaphysical, as well as tentative and exploratory, nature of the Categories, but it would be somewhat anachronistic to condemn Iamblichus too severely for that. The text of the Categories had been a battleground for at least three hundred years before his time, from the period of Andronicus, Ariston, and Eudorus of Alexandria, and the Stoic Apollodorus of Tarsus in the first century BCE, through that of the Platonists Lucius and Nicostratus, and then Atticus, and the Stoic Cornutus, and lastly Alexander of Aphrodisias in the first and second centuries CE, down to Plotinus and Porphyry in his own day, with every phrase and word of the text liable to challenge and requiring defense. Iamblichus\u2019 distinctive contribution is to take the Categories as a coherent description of reality in the Neoplatonic sense, and that, bizarre as it may seem to us, is not really all that more perverse than many of the various ways in which the work had been treated in the centuries before him. [conclusion p. 324-325]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/d9iiR3Sr5aRY9S7","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":97,"full_name":"Dillon, John","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1533,"section_of":1419,"pages":"313-326","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Iamblichus\u2019 Noera The\u00f4ria of Aristotle\u2019s Categories"]}
Title | Infinity and the Creation |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 164-178 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
The arguments of Philoponus on which I want to focus concern the Christian view that the universe had a beginning. But here already I must draw a distinction. For in talking of the universe beginning, I am not talking merely of the present orderly arrangement of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. Many pagans would have accepted that the present arrangement of matter had a beginning. What, with very few exceptions, they all thought absurd was that matter itself should have had a beginning. Indeed, Jews and Christians themselves were embarrassed about this doctrine and were by no means unanimous in accepting it. It has been suggested that the oldest references to creation in the Old Testament come in Job, and that there God is envisaged as imposing order on pre-existing matter, not as creating matter itself. It has further been doubted whether there is any clear statement in the Bible of creation out of nothing. The opinion of Philo the Jew, in the first century A.D., is a matter of controversy, but I believe that he takes different sides in different works. A little later, Hermogenes and others offered a surprising reason for denying matter a beginning. They pointed to the use of the word "was" in the opening of Genesis, where it is said that the earth was without form and void, and they took the use of the past tense to show that earth, or matter, was already in existence when the Creator began work. It is often held, although I am not inclined to agree myself, that Boethius endorsed the Neoplatonist view of a beginningless universe at the end of his Consolation of Philosophy. What I would acknowledge is that other Christians in these centuries, such as Synesius and Elias, did deny the universe a beginning or end under the influence of Platonism. If we skip to the thirteenth century, we find Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Albert the Great saying that it cannot be established by philosophy one way or the other whether the universe had a beginning. It is only Scripture which reveals that it did. Two slightly younger contemporaries in Paris went a step further—indeed, a step too far. Boethius of Dacia (the Dane, not the sixth-century Roman) and Siger of Brabant maintained that philosophical argument showed the universe to be beginningless, but that nonetheless, reason must bow to revelation. They had to flee Paris in the condemnation of 1277, and there is a tradition that Siger was murdered. [introduction p. 165-167] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/RDC5FI7QaO4jMjf |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"489","_score":null,"_source":{"id":489,"authors_free":[{"id":669,"entry_id":489,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":670,"entry_id":489,"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":"Infinity and the Creation","main_title":{"title":"Infinity and the Creation"},"abstract":"The arguments of Philoponus on which I want to focus concern the Christian view that the universe had a beginning. But here already I must draw a distinction. For in talking of the universe beginning, I am not talking merely of the present orderly arrangement of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. Many pagans would have accepted that the present arrangement of matter had a beginning. What, with very few exceptions, they all thought absurd was that matter itself should have had a beginning.\r\n\r\nIndeed, Jews and Christians themselves were embarrassed about this doctrine and were by no means unanimous in accepting it. It has been suggested that the oldest references to creation in the Old Testament come in Job, and that there God is envisaged as imposing order on pre-existing matter, not as creating matter itself. It has further been doubted whether there is any clear statement in the Bible of creation out of nothing. The opinion of Philo the Jew, in the first century A.D., is a matter of controversy, but I believe that he takes different sides in different works.\r\n\r\nA little later, Hermogenes and others offered a surprising reason for denying matter a beginning. They pointed to the use of the word \"was\" in the opening of Genesis, where it is said that the earth was without form and void, and they took the use of the past tense to show that earth, or matter, was already in existence when the Creator began work. It is often held, although I am not inclined to agree myself, that Boethius endorsed the Neoplatonist view of a beginningless universe at the end of his Consolation of Philosophy.\r\n\r\nWhat I would acknowledge is that other Christians in these centuries, such as Synesius and Elias, did deny the universe a beginning or end under the influence of Platonism. If we skip to the thirteenth century, we find Thomas Aquinas and his teacher Albert the Great saying that it cannot be established by philosophy one way or the other whether the universe had a beginning. It is only Scripture which reveals that it did.\r\n\r\nTwo slightly younger contemporaries in Paris went a step further\u2014indeed, a step too far. Boethius of Dacia (the Dane, not the sixth-century Roman) and Siger of Brabant maintained that philosophical argument showed the universe to be beginningless, but that nonetheless, reason must bow to revelation. They had to flee Paris in the condemnation of 1277, and there is a tradition that Siger was murdered. [introduction p. 165-167]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/RDC5FI7QaO4jMjf","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":489,"section_of":1383,"pages":"164-178","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Infinity and the Creation"]}
Title | Introduction to the Second Edition: New findings on Philoponus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2010 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition |
Pages | 1-40 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | |
Translator(s) |
Since 1987, when the first edition of this book appeared, there have been new findings both about Philoponus' thought and about his milieu. In this Introduction to the second edition, I will start with the milieu. There has been a major archaeological discovery, nothing less than the lecture rooms of the Alexandrian school. It was announced in 2004 that the Polish archaeological team under Grzegorz Majcherek had identified the lecture rooms of the 6th-century Alexandrian school, surprisingly well preserved. Although the first few rooms had been excavated 25 years earlier, the identification had become possible only now. By 2008, 20 rooms had been excavated. 20 is the number of rooms reported by a 12th-century source writing in Arabic, Abd el-Latif, but there may be more. [introduction p. 1] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/UotikAt6Giet2tb |
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Title | John Philoponus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 1-40 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
This chapter delves into the life and intellectual contributions of John Philoponus, a pivotal figure bridging Neoplatonism and Christianity. It explores his relationship with Ammonius and examines how his Christian faith influenced his philosophical and scientific endeavors. The text covers Philoponus' critique of the Aristotelian worldview, focusing on key topics such as the creation of the universe, the impetus theory of dynamics, and the concept of velocity in a vacuum. It also addresses his innovative ideas about vacuum and space, his challenges to Aristotle's notions of natural place, and his interpretation of matter as extension. Philoponus is recognized for disrupting Aristotle's categorical framework, rejecting the fifth element, and presenting novel theories about the directionality of light. The chapter reflects on his attacks on Aristotle in retrospect, highlighting the interplay between his scientific theories and Christian doctrines, including Christ, the Trinity, resurrection, and the soul. Additionally, the chapter examines his influence on later thought, tracing his intellectual antecedents and the chronology of his writings. [Derived from the entire text] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/FDyWUVJUOYpvtvb |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"488","_score":null,"_source":{"id":488,"authors_free":[{"id":667,"entry_id":488,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":668,"entry_id":488,"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":"John Philoponus","main_title":{"title":"John Philoponus"},"abstract":"This chapter delves into the life and intellectual contributions of John Philoponus, a pivotal figure bridging Neoplatonism and Christianity. It explores his relationship with Ammonius and examines how his Christian faith influenced his philosophical and scientific endeavors. The text covers Philoponus' critique of the Aristotelian worldview, focusing on key topics such as the creation of the universe, the impetus theory of dynamics, and the concept of velocity in a vacuum. It also addresses his innovative ideas about vacuum and space, his challenges to Aristotle's notions of natural place, and his interpretation of matter as extension.\r\n\r\nPhiloponus is recognized for disrupting Aristotle's categorical framework, rejecting the fifth element, and presenting novel theories about the directionality of light. The chapter reflects on his attacks on Aristotle in retrospect, highlighting the interplay between his scientific theories and Christian doctrines, including Christ, the Trinity, resurrection, and the soul. Additionally, the chapter examines his influence on later thought, tracing his intellectual antecedents and the chronology of his writings. [Derived from the entire text]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/FDyWUVJUOYpvtvb","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":488,"section_of":1383,"pages":"1-40","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["John Philoponus"]}
Title | John Philoponus’ Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle’s De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 393-412 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Golitsis, Pantelis |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Philoponus’ denial of the existence of unformed matter in his Contra Proclum, composed in 529, allows us to date the commentary on DA 3 before the Contra Proclum, since the existence of unformed matter is accepted in the former work. To conclude: we should discard Stephanus as a possible author of in DA 3, which is an attribution depending on a Byzantine addition to a manuscript with no title, and reassign this commentary to Philoponus on the grounds of self-reference, exegetical attitude, and general style. This commentary, possibly through the initiative of a pupil who recorded it, replaced Ammonius’ commentary on Book 3, as previously published by Philoponus, thus allowing two different editions to reach Byzantium: Philoponus’ edition of Ammonius’ lectures and the composite edition in which Ammonius’ lectures on Book 3 were replaced by those of Philoponus. The second edition was the one copied by D1, whereas D3 had access only to the first edition. [conclusion p. 412] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/QH2oMIgPb9H8EAI |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1418","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1418,"authors_free":[{"id":2219,"entry_id":1418,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":129,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","free_first_name":"Pantelis","free_last_name":"Golitsis","norm_person":{"id":129,"first_name":"Pantelis","last_name":"Golitsis","full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2221,"entry_id":1418,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"John Philoponus\u2019 Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle\u2019s De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus","main_title":{"title":"John Philoponus\u2019 Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle\u2019s De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus"},"abstract":"Philoponus\u2019 denial of the existence of unformed matter in his Contra Proclum, composed in 529, allows us to date the commentary on DA 3 before the Contra Proclum, since the existence of unformed matter is accepted in the former work.\r\n\r\nTo conclude: we should discard Stephanus as a possible author of in DA 3, which is an attribution depending on a Byzantine addition to a manuscript with no title, and reassign this commentary to Philoponus on the grounds of self-reference, exegetical attitude, and general style. This commentary, possibly through the initiative of a pupil who recorded it, replaced Ammonius\u2019 commentary on Book 3, as previously published by Philoponus, thus allowing two different editions to reach Byzantium: Philoponus\u2019 edition of Ammonius\u2019 lectures and the composite edition in which Ammonius\u2019 lectures on Book 3 were replaced by those of Philoponus. The second edition was the one copied by D1, whereas D3 had access only to the first edition. [conclusion p. 412]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/QH2oMIgPb9H8EAI","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":129,"full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1418,"section_of":1419,"pages":"393-412","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. 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Title | Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 413-436 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | de Haas, Frans A. J. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
In this study, I have tried to show that Philoponus’ commentary on Aristotle’s account of mixture has to be understood against the background of a discussion between three views of mixture that dominated the Aristotelian tradition as a whole. The starting point was Zabarella’s classification of solutions to the main problem of mixture: how to interpret Aristotle’s claim that the ingredients are preserved in the mixture in potentiality. In a sense, Proclus and Simplicius belong with Avicenna because they accept the preservation of the elements in actuality, along with reduced actuality and interaction in the realm of qualities. However, since they reject Aristotelian mixture and discuss the problem in terms of body vs. qualities rather than forms vs. qualities, they are best regarded as belonging to a different school altogether. Alexander is probably the main source of the influential account of Averroes. Philoponus belongs with the fourth group due to his criticism of Aristotle (or rather Alexander). He accepts the corruption of the ingredients while only their qualities are preserved in reduced actuality. It remains to be seen whether his influence on the medieval authors that subscribe to a similar view can be established. Zabarella’s reports on his sources should be handled with care. His summaries of Alexander are inadequate, his understanding of Philoponus is wrong. He himself claims that his ‘true’ interpretation of Averroes was not followed by any Averroist (see e.g. 465A, 466B), which should give us pause as well. Moreover, I fail to see how he can believe that his complicated interpretation of Averroes can be backed up by his interpretation of Alexander and Philoponus: they seem to represent three quite different doctrines indeed. Although a quick glance at Zabarella’s other medieval sources seems to confirm his classification of them, it cannot be ruled out that closer inspection will yield some surprises, as it did with Philoponus. The details of Zabarella’s own theory of mixture still await further investigation. To conclude on a more general note: in charting the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s work from Late Antiquity through Arabic, Latin Medieval, and Renaissance authors, it is tempting to assume we are dealing with a single line of tradition. However, it is still far from clear which ancient commentaries were available (in Greek or in Arabic, Syrian, or Latin translation) at what date. But even if this can be established, we cannot be sure that a particular commentator actually used his predecessors’ commentaries, even when he refers to them by name: perhaps he merely copied a reference from another commentary. In this way, Zabarella’s mistake may have arisen. More importantly, every commentator who analyzes the problem of the potentiality of the ingredients in a mixture as it is presented in Aristotle’s texts in On Generation and Corruption is faced with a limited number of possible solutions. Every commentator, then, is perfectly capable of re-inventing the wheel. However, the application of the third kind of potentiality in the context of mixture seems to have been invented for the first time by John Philoponus. [conclusion p. 434-435] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/ldUX6hfn5ClzTTs |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1528","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1528,"authors_free":[{"id":2661,"entry_id":1528,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"de Haas, Frans A. J.","free_first_name":"Frans A. J.","free_last_name":"de Haas","norm_person":null},{"id":2662,"entry_id":1528,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality","main_title":{"title":"Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality"},"abstract":"In this study, I have tried to show that Philoponus\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s account of mixture has to be understood against the background of a discussion between three views of mixture that dominated the Aristotelian tradition as a whole. The starting point was Zabarella\u2019s classification of solutions to the main problem of mixture: how to interpret Aristotle\u2019s claim that the ingredients are preserved in the mixture in potentiality. In a sense, Proclus and Simplicius belong with Avicenna because they accept the preservation of the elements in actuality, along with reduced actuality and interaction in the realm of qualities. However, since they reject Aristotelian mixture and discuss the problem in terms of body vs. qualities rather than forms vs. qualities, they are best regarded as belonging to a different school altogether. Alexander is probably the main source of the influential account of Averroes. Philoponus belongs with the fourth group due to his criticism of Aristotle (or rather Alexander). He accepts the corruption of the ingredients while only their qualities are preserved in reduced actuality. It remains to be seen whether his influence on the medieval authors that subscribe to a similar view can be established.\r\n\r\nZabarella\u2019s reports on his sources should be handled with care. His summaries of Alexander are inadequate, his understanding of Philoponus is wrong. He himself claims that his \u2018true\u2019 interpretation of Averroes was not followed by any Averroist (see e.g. 465A, 466B), which should give us pause as well. Moreover, I fail to see how he can believe that his complicated interpretation of Averroes can be backed up by his interpretation of Alexander and Philoponus: they seem to represent three quite different doctrines indeed. Although a quick glance at Zabarella\u2019s other medieval sources seems to confirm his classification of them, it cannot be ruled out that closer inspection will yield some surprises, as it did with Philoponus. The details of Zabarella\u2019s own theory of mixture still await further investigation.\r\n\r\nTo conclude on a more general note: in charting the commentary tradition on Aristotle\u2019s work from Late Antiquity through Arabic, Latin Medieval, and Renaissance authors, it is tempting to assume we are dealing with a single line of tradition. However, it is still far from clear which ancient commentaries were available (in Greek or in Arabic, Syrian, or Latin translation) at what date. But even if this can be established, we cannot be sure that a particular commentator actually used his predecessors\u2019 commentaries, even when he refers to them by name: perhaps he merely copied a reference from another commentary. In this way, Zabarella\u2019s mistake may have arisen. More importantly, every commentator who analyzes the problem of the potentiality of the ingredients in a mixture as it is presented in Aristotle\u2019s texts in On Generation and Corruption is faced with a limited number of possible solutions. Every commentator, then, is perfectly capable of re-inventing the wheel. However, the application of the third kind of potentiality in the context of mixture seems to have been invented for the first time by John Philoponus.\r\n[conclusion p. 434-435]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/ldUX6hfn5ClzTTs","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1528,"section_of":1419,"pages":"413-436","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. 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Title | Philoponus and the Rise of Preclassical Dynamics |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 84-120 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Wolff, Michael |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
If we are prepared to assume that the basic presuppositions of impetus theory can be traced back not to observational experience which Aristotle missed, but rather to a certain concept of man and to certain ethical principles, we need not attempt to explain the emergence of the theory solely by reference to new observations of falling bodies and the like. Is it not more appropriate to ask about the origin and kind of ethical problem to which impetus theory originally helped to provide an answer? The experience that forces are exhausted in all physical activities of human beings could have been just such a problem. Earlier society, which had left this experience chiefly to slaves, could not really have had such a problem. But, by the close of Antiquity, times were changing. [Conclusion p. 120] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/L1tFbjfO8UrPnAp |
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Title | Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics in the Sixtheenth Century |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition |
Pages | 210-230 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Schmitt, Charles Bernard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
As it is generally accepted, the term ‘Renaissance’ refers to a historical period in which there was a revival of interest in the literature, styles, and forms of Classical Antiquity. Though the ‘revival’ is usually understood to refer specifically to ancient ‘literary’ 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’s 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 ‘Renaissance’ was a revival of the technical knowledge bequeathed by Antiquity as much as of works of recognized literary and rhetorical quality. One 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. But 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. The 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’s 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—and generally delayed by only a few years—was 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. In 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’s 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—in logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and psychology—has scarcely been charted, nor has the interplay between Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and medieval and Renaissance Latin interpretations of Aristotle been evaluated and analyzed. During the second half of the sixteenth century, those who wanted to understand Aristotle—which for them meant philosophy tout court—frequently tried to relate the text of the Stagirite to the varying interpretations of Philoponus, Simplicius, Averroes (1126–98), Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), John of Jandun (died 1328), Pomponazzi (1462–1525), and Soto (1494/5–1560), among many others. Particularly 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 ‘new science’ of the seventeenth century. Thus 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. Before turning to a consideration of the impact of the Grammarian’s 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] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/Ub0AryY729JHN5w |
{"_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"]}
Title | Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science |
Pages | 197-209 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Wildberg, Christian |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Judging from the number and content of his commentaries, Philoponus was a thinker in the Aristotelian tradition. One of his major achievements lies in the fact that as a commentator he accepted and developed the heritage of his teacher Ammonius. For that reason alone it is remarkable that he composed a treatise which attacked vital topics of Aristotle’s philosophy with little compromise. Although it is true that throughout Antiquity many philosophers ventured to criticise the great Aristotle, one may agree that Philoponus did so, as Cesare Cremonini put it in 1616, ‘more sharply than anyone’ (acerrime omnium).' Where does this attack fit into the context of Philoponus’doctrinal development? No doubt his outspoken critique of Aristotle in the de Aetemitate Mundi contra Aristotelem somehow swayed Philoponus to desert the philosophical and join the theological camp. But the story is probably more complex. The general point of dissent was, as the title indicates, the doctrine of the eternity of the world. Being a Christian, Philoponus perhaps possessed a particular motivation for launching his attack - as a feat of praeparatio evangélica. This fact has been sufficiently recognised and appreciated. Less appreciated and studied, however, has been the philosophical side, i.e. the actual argument and structure of the treatise in question. Since it has not survived the content must be reconstructed from a number of substantial fragments found mainly in the commentaries of Philoponus’ adversary Simplicius. An adequate treatment of the double controversy Simplicius v Philoponus v Aristotle would fill a volume on its own and cannot be the subject of this chapter.2 Instead, I will attempt to revise apparently firmly established views about the treatise, in particular its composition and date. This, it is hoped, may lead to a revised view of that treatise and at the same time encourage a more advanced study of Philoponus’ doctrinal development in general. [introduction p. 197-198] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/dbFxqr9z9aZi48i |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"430","_score":null,"_source":{"id":430,"authors_free":[{"id":580,"entry_id":430,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":360,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Wildberg, Christian","free_first_name":"Christian","free_last_name":"Wildberg","norm_person":{"id":360,"first_name":"Christian","last_name":"Wildberg","full_name":"Wildberg, Christian","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/139018964","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":581,"entry_id":430,"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":"Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem","main_title":{"title":"Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem"},"abstract":"Judging from the number and content of his commentaries, Philoponus was a thinker in the Aristotelian tradition. One of his major achievements lies in \r\nthe fact that as a commentator he accepted and developed the heritage of his teacher Ammonius. For that reason alone it is remarkable that he composed a treatise which attacked vital topics of Aristotle\u2019s philosophy with little compromise. Although it is true that throughout Antiquity many philosophers ventured to criticise the great Aristotle, one may agree that Philoponus did so, as Cesare Cremonini put it in 1616, \u2018more sharply than anyone\u2019 (acerrime omnium).' Where does this attack fit into the context of Philoponus\u2019doctrinal development? No doubt his outspoken critique of Aristotle in the de Aetemitate Mundi contra Aristotelem somehow swayed Philoponus to desert the philosophical and join the theological camp. But the story is probably more complex. The general point of dissent was, as the title indicates, the doctrine of the eternity of the world. Being a Christian, Philoponus perhaps possessed a \r\nparticular motivation for launching his attack - as a feat of praeparatio evang\u00e9lica. This fact has been sufficiently recognised and appreciated. Less appreciated and studied, however, has been the philosophical side, i.e. the actual argument and structure of the treatise in question. Since it has not survived the content must be reconstructed from a number of substantial fragments found mainly in the commentaries of Philoponus\u2019 adversary Simplicius. An adequate treatment of the double controversy Simplicius v Philoponus v Aristotle would fill a volume on its own and cannot be the subject of this chapter.2 Instead, I will attempt to revise apparently firmly established views about the treatise, in particular its composition and date. This, it is hoped, may lead to a revised view of that treatise and at the same time encourage a more advanced study of Philoponus\u2019 doctrinal development in general. [introduction p. 197-198]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/dbFxqr9z9aZi48i","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":360,"full_name":"Wildberg, Christian","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":430,"section_of":1383,"pages":"197-209","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1383,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabij1987d","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"All the chapters in this book are new, except for the inaugural lecture (Chapter 9), which I apologise for reprinting virtually unrevised and with the original lecture context still apparent. It seemed desirable, however, that so crucial a part ofthe controversy should be represented. The collection originated in a conference on Philoponus held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London in June 1983, which provided an opportunity for interested parties to pool knowledge from the many different disciplines that are relevant to his work. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn from the conference, while two other conference papers, those of Henry Blumenthal and Richard Sorabji, are being incorporated into books in preparation (see Bibliography). Sorabji's main suggestions, however, are included in Chapter I in the discussion of matter and extension (pp 18 and 23). The remairnng chapters, apart from the inaugural lecture, were solicited or written for the volume, two of them (5 and 12) having been delivered first at a seminar on Ancient Science at the Institute of Classical Studies. [preface, p. ix-x]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/buhMZZl0djmIx9v","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1383,"pubplace":"Ithaca, New York","publisher":"Cornell University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Prolegomena to the Study of Philoponus' contra Aristotelem"]}
Title | Rediscovered Categories Commentary: Porphyry(?) with Fragments of Boethus |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 231-262 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Chiaradonna, Riccardo , Rashed, Marwan , Sedley, David N. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
The celebrated Archimedes Palimpsest has turned out to include not only seminal works of Archimedes but also two speeches by Hyperides and—identified as recently as 2005—fourteen pages of an otherwise unknown commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, in a copy written around 900 CE. Even if it contained nothing else, the citations that this last manuscript preserves from named earlier commentators—Andronicus, Boethus, Nicostratus, and Herminus—would be enough to make it an important addition to our knowledge of the Categories tradition. Its new evidence on the first-century BCE Aristotelian Boethus is especially significant. Two of the three citations from him (3,19–22; 14,4–12) probably embody his words more or less verbatim, to judge from the combination of direct speech and peculiarly crabbed language, very unlike the author’s usual style. In addition, the author mentions a group of anonymous commentators already criticized by Boethus, thus giving further unexpected insights into the early reception of Aristotle’s work. But the author’s own contributions are rich and fascinating too. If his date and identity could be established, the new text would make an even greater impact on our present state of understanding. In this article, it will be argued that the new fragment is, to all appearances, a remnant of the most important of all the ancient Categories commentaries, Porphyry’s lost Ad Gedalium. The grounds for such an attribution will be set out in this introduction. There will then follow a translation of the passage, and finally a commentary on the commentary. Our aim is not, in the space of a single article, to settle all the interpretative questions but, on the contrary, to initiate discussion, to develop our proposal regarding authorship, and, above all, to bring the already published text to the attention of interested scholars in the field of ancient philosophy. The commentary consists of seven consecutive folios, recto and verso, each with thirty lines per side and around forty letters per line. For ease of reference, we have renumbered the sides into a simple consecutive run, 1–14. Despite its severely damaged state, it has proved possible to decipher much of the greater part of the text on these fourteen pages. In what follows, we start with a brief description, then turn to the question of authorship. The entire fourteen pages deal, incompletely, with just two consecutive lemmata from the Categories. The passage already under discussion when the text opens is 1a20-b15, a strikingly long lemma, especially given that the same passage is divided into three lemmata by Ammonius and into five by Simplicius. The commentator has by this point already dealt, presumably at some length, with Aristotle’s well-known distinction there between properties that are ‘said of a subject’ and those that are ‘in a subject.’ As the text opens, he is discussing the later part of the lemma, 1b10–15, where Aristotle explains a principle of transitivity according to which when predicate B is said of subject A, and predicate C is said of subject B, then predicate C is said of subject A. Various aspects of this theorem, and problems arising from it, occupy the commentator from 1,1 to 7,8. But he then returns (7,8–9,30) to the opening part of the main lemma, its fourfold division of predicates (1a20-b9), which he presents as applying a neglected Aristotelian method of division, one that can also, as he proceeds to illustrate, be used effectively in the doxographical mapping out of philosophical theories. At 9,30–10,12, we encounter the transition to a new lemma, Categories 1b16–24, where Aristotle explains his thesis that any two different genera, such as animal and knowledge, which are not subordinated one to the other, will normally be divided by two specifically (tôi eidei) different sets of differentiae. The commentator takes the opportunity here to explain the basic vocabulary of genus, species, and differentia, as befits the opening pages of a work that was itself placed first in the Aristotelian corpus. Otherwise, his discussion, as for the preceding lemma, is largely taken up with the resolution of the exegetical problems raised by his predecessors. The Categories was the earliest Aristotelian treatise to attract commentaries and critiques from the first century BCE onwards. The numerous exegetes, of whose work only a small proportion has survived, included not only Aristotelians but also Platonists, Stoics, and others of uncertain philosophical allegiance. The surviving commentaries are in fact all the work of Neoplatonists, starting with the short question-and-answer commentary by Porphyry (third century CE), but they contain plentiful reports of the views of earlier commentators and critics. Since our commentary repeatedly cites previous commentators from the first century BCE to the second century CE but none later than that, we can be confident that it was written in the Roman imperial era, not earlier than the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. 200), whose teacher Herminus is the latest commentator cited, and probably not very much later either. This enables us to set about searching for its author’s identity systematically, since we are fortunate, in the case of this particular Aristotelian treatise, to have from Simplicius (in Cat. 1,9–2,29 Kalbfleisch) a detailed survey of the commentary tradition down to the beginning of the sixth century. [introduction p. 231-233] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/boTHRcfBsw3NuBU |
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Its new evidence on the first-century BCE Aristotelian Boethus is especially significant. Two of the three citations from him (3,19\u201322; 14,4\u201312) probably embody his words more or less verbatim, to judge from the combination of direct speech and peculiarly crabbed language, very unlike the author\u2019s usual style. In addition, the author mentions a group of anonymous commentators already criticized by Boethus, thus giving further unexpected insights into the early reception of Aristotle\u2019s work.\r\n\r\nBut the author\u2019s own contributions are rich and fascinating too. If his date and identity could be established, the new text would make an even greater impact on our present state of understanding. In this article, it will be argued that the new fragment is, to all appearances, a remnant of the most important of all the ancient Categories commentaries, Porphyry\u2019s lost Ad Gedalium.\r\n\r\nThe grounds for such an attribution will be set out in this introduction. There will then follow a translation of the passage, and finally a commentary on the commentary. Our aim is not, in the space of a single article, to settle all the interpretative questions but, on the contrary, to initiate discussion, to develop our proposal regarding authorship, and, above all, to bring the already published text to the attention of interested scholars in the field of ancient philosophy.\r\n\r\nThe commentary consists of seven consecutive folios, recto and verso, each with thirty lines per side and around forty letters per line. For ease of reference, we have renumbered the sides into a simple consecutive run, 1\u201314.\r\n\r\nDespite its severely damaged state, it has proved possible to decipher much of the greater part of the text on these fourteen pages. In what follows, we start with a brief description, then turn to the question of authorship.\r\n\r\nThe entire fourteen pages deal, incompletely, with just two consecutive lemmata from the Categories. The passage already under discussion when the text opens is 1a20-b15, a strikingly long lemma, especially given that the same passage is divided into three lemmata by Ammonius and into five by Simplicius. The commentator has by this point already dealt, presumably at some length, with Aristotle\u2019s well-known distinction there between properties that are \u2018said of a subject\u2019 and those that are \u2018in a subject.\u2019 As the text opens, he is discussing the later part of the lemma, 1b10\u201315, where Aristotle explains a principle of transitivity according to which when predicate B is said of subject A, and predicate C is said of subject B, then predicate C is said of subject A. Various aspects of this theorem, and problems arising from it, occupy the commentator from 1,1 to 7,8. But he then returns (7,8\u20139,30) to the opening part of the main lemma, its fourfold division of predicates (1a20-b9), which he presents as applying a neglected Aristotelian method of division, one that can also, as he proceeds to illustrate, be used effectively in the doxographical mapping out of philosophical theories.\r\n\r\nAt 9,30\u201310,12, we encounter the transition to a new lemma, Categories 1b16\u201324, where Aristotle explains his thesis that any two different genera, such as animal and knowledge, which are not subordinated one to the other, will normally be divided by two specifically (t\u00f4i eidei) different sets of differentiae. The commentator takes the opportunity here to explain the basic vocabulary of genus, species, and differentia, as befits the opening pages of a work that was itself placed first in the Aristotelian corpus. Otherwise, his discussion, as for the preceding lemma, is largely taken up with the resolution of the exegetical problems raised by his predecessors.\r\n\r\nThe Categories was the earliest Aristotelian treatise to attract commentaries and critiques from the first century BCE onwards. The numerous exegetes, of whose work only a small proportion has survived, included not only Aristotelians but also Platonists, Stoics, and others of uncertain philosophical allegiance. The surviving commentaries are in fact all the work of Neoplatonists, starting with the short question-and-answer commentary by Porphyry (third century CE), but they contain plentiful reports of the views of earlier commentators and critics.\r\n\r\nSince our commentary repeatedly cites previous commentators from the first century BCE to the second century CE but none later than that, we can be confident that it was written in the Roman imperial era, not earlier than the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. 200), whose teacher Herminus is the latest commentator cited, and probably not very much later either. This enables us to set about searching for its author\u2019s identity systematically, since we are fortunate, in the case of this particular Aristotelian treatise, to have from Simplicius (in Cat. 1,9\u20132,29 Kalbfleisch) a detailed survey of the commentary tradition down to the beginning of the sixth century.\r\n[introduction p. 231-233]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/boTHRcfBsw3NuBU","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":49,"full_name":"Chiaradonna, Riccardo ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":194,"full_name":"Rashed, Marwan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":298,"full_name":"Sedley, David N.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1535,"section_of":1419,"pages":"231-262","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Rediscovered Categories Commentary: Porphyry(?) with Fragments of Boethus"]}
Title | Simplicius |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1996 |
Published in | The Oxford Classical Dictionary |
Pages | 1409-1410 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Spawforth, Antony , Hornblower, Simon |
Translator(s) |
Simplicius, 6th-cent. AD Neoplatonist (see Neoplatonism) and one of seven philosophers who left Athens for Ctesiphon after Justinian closed the Athenian Neoplatonist school in 529. He probably wrote all his commentaries after 532, when it was safe for the philosophers to leave Ctesiphon. Recent evidence suggests that he may have settled at Harran (ancient Carrhae) in present-day Turkey, from where Platonism was brought back in the 9th cent. to Baghdad. Simplicius was taught by Ammonius (2) in Alexandria and by Damascius, head of the Athenian school. He wrote commentaries, all extant, on Aristotle's De caelo, Physics, and Categories (in that order), and on Epictetus' Manual, among other works. A commentary on Aristotle’s De anima is of disputed authorship. His are the fullest of all Aristotle commentaries, recording debates on Aristotle from the preceding 850 years and embedding many fragments from the entire millennium. At the same time, Simplicius gave his own views on many topics, including place, time, and matter. His commentaries express the revulsion of a devout Neoplatonist for Christianity and for its arch-philosophical defender, Philoponus. Commentary in Aristotelium Graeca 7-11 (1882-1907), partly trans. in R. Sorabji (ed.), The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (1987- ); In Ench. Epict., ed. Dübner (1840), trans. G. Stanhope (1694). I. Hadot (ed.), Simplicius, sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie (1987); M. Tardieu, Coutumes mésopotamiennes (1991); RE3A 1 (1927). R. R. K. S. [the entire entry] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/vzddeyFIMrhk1Ab |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1386","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1386,"authors_free":[{"id":2139,"entry_id":1386,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":2142,"entry_id":1386,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":335,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Spawforth, Antony","free_first_name":"Antony","free_last_name":"Spawforth","norm_person":{"id":335,"first_name":"Antony","last_name":"Spawforth","full_name":"Spawforth, Antony","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/131894757","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2143,"entry_id":1386,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":334,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Hornblower, Simon","free_first_name":"Simon","free_last_name":"Hornblower","norm_person":{"id":334,"first_name":"Simon","last_name":"Hornblower","full_name":"Hornblower, Simon","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/135771676","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Simplicius","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius"},"abstract":"Simplicius, 6th-cent. AD Neoplatonist (see Neoplatonism) and one of seven philosophers who left Athens for Ctesiphon after Justinian closed the Athenian Neoplatonist school in 529. He probably wrote all his commentaries after 532, when it was safe for the philosophers to leave Ctesiphon. Recent evidence suggests that he may have settled at Harran (ancient Carrhae) in present-day Turkey, from where Platonism was brought back in the 9th cent. to Baghdad.\r\n\r\nSimplicius was taught by Ammonius (2) in Alexandria and by Damascius, head of the Athenian school. He wrote commentaries, all extant, on Aristotle's De caelo, Physics, and Categories (in that order), and on Epictetus' Manual, among other works. A commentary on Aristotle\u2019s De anima is of disputed authorship. His are the fullest of all Aristotle commentaries, recording debates on Aristotle from the preceding 850 years and embedding many fragments from the entire millennium.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, Simplicius gave his own views on many topics, including place, time, and matter. His commentaries express the revulsion of a devout Neoplatonist for Christianity and for its arch-philosophical defender, Philoponus.\r\n\r\nCommentary in Aristotelium Graeca 7-11 (1882-1907), partly trans. in R. Sorabji (ed.), The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (1987- ); In Ench. Epict., ed. D\u00fcbner (1840), trans. G. Stanhope (1694). I. Hadot (ed.), Simplicius, sa vie, son \u0153uvre, sa survie (1987); M. Tardieu, Coutumes m\u00e9sopotamiennes (1991); RE3A 1 (1927). R. R. K. S. [the entire entry]","btype":2,"date":"1996","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/vzddeyFIMrhk1Ab","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":335,"full_name":"Spawforth, Antony","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":334,"full_name":"Hornblower, Simon","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1386,"section_of":1387,"pages":"1409-1410","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1387,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"bibliography","type":4,"language":"en","title":"The Oxford Classical Dictionary","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Hornblower1996","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1996","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"For more than half a century, the Oxford Classical Dictionary has been the unrivaled one-volume reference work on the Greco-Roman world. Whether one is interested in literature or art, philosophy or law, mythology or science, intimate details of daily life or broad cultural and historical trends, the OCD is the first place to turn for clear, authoritative information on all aspects of ancient culture.\r\n\r\nNow comes the Fourth Edition of this redoubtable resource, thoroughly revised and updated, with numerous new entries and two new focus areas (on reception and anthropology). Here, in over six thousand entries ranging from long articles to brief identifications, readers can find information on virtually any topic of interest--athletics, bee-keeping, botany, magic, religious rites, postal service, slavery, navigation, and the reckoning of time. The Oxford Classical Dictionary profiles every major figure of Greece and Rome, from Homer and Virgil to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Readers will find entries on mythological and legendary figures, on major cities, famous buildings, and important geographical landmarks, and on legal, rhetorical, literary, and political terms and concepts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/FsDwLlWXlqssLoo","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1387,"pubplace":"Oxford \u2013 New York","publisher":"Oxford University Press","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"3","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Simplicius"]}
Title | Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius‘ polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science. Second Edition |
Pages | 97-123 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hoffmann, Philippe |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
I am not entirely comfortable finding myself introducing a discordant note into a collection intended to celebrate the refreshing originality of Philoponus’ ideas. I shall, however, be speaking for Simplicius, vindictive pagan that he was, and shall hope to be an effective counterweight to what is said in other chapters. I shall be talking within the framework of a general interpretation of Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo. The commentary is an exegetical work undertaken as a paean to the Creator or ‘Demiurge.’ Its basic theory on the physical structure of celestial matter is that this matter is a combination of the superior parts (akrotêtes) of the four elements, dominated by the purely luminous superior part of fire. My aim will be to show how this theory can be seen as a reaction to the theories of John Philoponus. Philoponus had turned to the Timaeus for support in his Contra Aristotelem and had attacked the Aristotelian doctrine that the heavens are made of a fifth element and that the world is eternal. Well before Copernicus, Philoponus denied that there was any substantial difference between the heavens and the sublunary world. In his reply to the Contra Aristotelem, Simplicius reaffirms the divinity, the transcendence, and the eternal nature of the heavens. His exegesis aims to connect, rather than contrast, Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s De caelo. It is, moreover, a religious act, a spiritual exercise designed to turn the soul (both Simplicius’ and his reader’s) towards the Demiurge. This conversion is our initiation into the grandeur of the universe and of the heavens, and his description of the physical nature of the heavens is one of the most valuable aspects of the revelation. Those readers still under Philoponus’ spell cannot achieve this revelation until they have undergone a preliminary act of purification, which is the refutation of the arguments of Philoponus’ Contra Aristotelem. In this way, Simplicius’ attack is directed at a target that is simultaneously philosophical and religious. A correct reading and interpretation of Aristotle’s De caelo leads not only to the acquisition of intellectual knowledge but also, and above all, to our elevation through thought (a thought that we live) to the whole universe and to the Demiurge. It is a form of prayer addressed to them. The sacrilegious blasphemy of the Christian Philoponus is countered by the Neoplatonist liturgy, a rightful celebration of their God. [introduction p. 97-98] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/RJi3pyBneebP54s |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"712","_score":null,"_source":{"id":712,"authors_free":[{"id":1062,"entry_id":712,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":138,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe","free_first_name":"Philippe","free_last_name":"Hoffmann","norm_person":{"id":138,"first_name":"Philippe ","last_name":"Hoffmann","full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/189361905","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2012,"entry_id":712,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius\u2018 polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius\u2018 polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens"},"abstract":"I am not entirely comfortable finding myself introducing a discordant note into a collection intended to celebrate the refreshing originality of Philoponus\u2019 ideas. I shall, however, be speaking for Simplicius, vindictive pagan that he was, and shall hope to be an effective counterweight to what is said in other chapters. I shall be talking within the framework of a general interpretation of Simplicius\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s De caelo. The commentary is an exegetical work undertaken as a paean to the Creator or \u2018Demiurge.\u2019 Its basic theory on the physical structure of celestial matter is that this matter is a combination of the superior parts (akrot\u00eates) of the four elements, dominated by the purely luminous superior part of fire.\r\n\r\nMy aim will be to show how this theory can be seen as a reaction to the theories of John Philoponus. Philoponus had turned to the Timaeus for support in his Contra Aristotelem and had attacked the Aristotelian doctrine that the heavens are made of a fifth element and that the world is eternal. Well before Copernicus, Philoponus denied that there was any substantial difference between the heavens and the sublunary world. In his reply to the Contra Aristotelem, Simplicius reaffirms the divinity, the transcendence, and the eternal nature of the heavens. His exegesis aims to connect, rather than contrast, Plato\u2019s Timaeus and Aristotle\u2019s De caelo.\r\n\r\nIt is, moreover, a religious act, a spiritual exercise designed to turn the soul (both Simplicius\u2019 and his reader\u2019s) towards the Demiurge. This conversion is our initiation into the grandeur of the universe and of the heavens, and his description of the physical nature of the heavens is one of the most valuable aspects of the revelation. Those readers still under Philoponus\u2019 spell cannot achieve this revelation until they have undergone a preliminary act of purification, which is the refutation of the arguments of Philoponus\u2019 Contra Aristotelem. In this way, Simplicius\u2019 attack is directed at a target that is simultaneously philosophical and religious.\r\n\r\nA correct reading and interpretation of Aristotle\u2019s De caelo leads not only to the acquisition of intellectual knowledge but also, and above all, to our elevation through thought (a thought that we live) to the whole universe and to the Demiurge. It is a form of prayer addressed to them. The sacrilegious blasphemy of the Christian Philoponus is countered by the Neoplatonist liturgy, a rightful celebration of their God. [introduction p. 97-98]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/RJi3pyBneebP54s","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":138,"full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":712,"section_of":184,"pages":"97-123","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":["Simplicius' polemics. Some aspects of Simplicius\u2018 polemical writings against John Philoponus: From invective to a reaffirmation of the transcendence of the heavens"]}
Title | Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1987 |
Published in | Simplicius. Sa vie, son œuvre, sa survie: Actes du colloque international de Paris 28 sept. - 1er oct. 1985 |
Pages | 148-165 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Hadot, Ilsetraut |
Translator(s) |
What conclusions can now be drawn? It is time to say that I do not think Aristotle reached the point of consciously thinking that extension would play the role of prime matter. It took the Neoplatonist Simplicius to interpret him that way, motivated by reasons of his own. The diffuseness of extension will have seemed important to Simplicius because it puts prime matter where it should be, at the opposite extreme from the unity of the One. He knew that Plato had been taken as identifying prime matter with space or with other kinds of extension, and, although he disagreed, he thought he found the justification for such an interpretation of Aristotle at least in Phys. 4,2, if not in the Metaphysics as well. But even if Simplicius' interpretation does not represent Aristotle's conscious thought, it opens new vistas. For one thing, I believe that extension would fit with Aristotle's conception of prime matter, and fit better than anything else that has been proposed. Furthermore, in considering how it would fit, we have been forced to consider a network of interlocking parts of Aristotle's philosophy. Some of the parts would require modification if extension were to be openly acknowledged as playing the role of prime matter, but the resulting modifications would yield a coherent view. Finally, views of the same general sort, which treat body as some kind of extension endowed with properties, have recurred through the ages, for example in Descartes, in Newton, and in twentieth-century physics. [conclusion p. 162-163] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/h6HONd1UnE1D8Vw |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"487","_score":null,"_source":{"id":487,"authors_free":[{"id":665,"entry_id":487,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":666,"entry_id":487,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":4,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","free_first_name":"Ilsetraut","free_last_name":"Hadot","norm_person":{"id":4,"first_name":"Ilsetraut","last_name":"Hadot","full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/107415011","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension"},"abstract":"What conclusions can now be drawn? It is time to say that I do not think Aristotle reached the point of consciously thinking that extension would play the role of prime matter. It took the Neoplatonist Simplicius to interpret him that way, motivated by reasons of his own.\r\n\r\nThe diffuseness of extension will have seemed important to Simplicius because it puts prime matter where it should be, at the opposite extreme from the unity of the One. He knew that Plato had been taken as identifying prime matter with space or with other kinds of extension, and, although he disagreed, he thought he found the justification for such an interpretation of Aristotle at least in Phys. 4,2, if not in the Metaphysics as well.\r\n\r\nBut even if Simplicius' interpretation does not represent Aristotle's conscious thought, it opens new vistas. For one thing, I believe that extension would fit with Aristotle's conception of prime matter, and fit better than anything else that has been proposed. Furthermore, in considering how it would fit, we have been forced to consider a network of interlocking parts of Aristotle's philosophy.\r\n\r\nSome of the parts would require modification if extension were to be openly acknowledged as playing the role of prime matter, but the resulting modifications would yield a coherent view. Finally, views of the same general sort, which treat body as some kind of extension endowed with properties, have recurred through the ages, for example in Descartes, in Newton, and in twentieth-century physics. [conclusion p. 162-163]","btype":2,"date":"1987","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/h6HONd1UnE1D8Vw","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":4,"full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":487,"section_of":171,"pages":"148-165","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":171,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"fr","title":"Simplicius. Sa vie, son \u0153uvre, sa survie: Actes du colloque international de Paris 28 sept. - 1er oct. 1985","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Hadot1987","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1987","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1987","abstract":"Depuis une quinzaine d'ann\u00e9es, on assiste en Allemagne, en Angleterre, en Am\u00e9rique et en France \u00e0 un renouveau des \u00e9tudes sur Simplicius. Diff\u00e9rents chercheurs, partis de probl\u00e9matiques et de pr\u00e9occupations diff\u00e9rentes, se sont rencontr\u00e9s dans ce domaine de recherche d'une importance capitale pour l'histoire de toute la philosophie antique. C'\u00e9tait donc pour faciliter une \u00e9tude coordonn\u00e9e et syst\u00e9matique \u00e0 la fois du texte et de la pens\u00e9e de Simplicius que la Recherche Coop\u00e9rative Programm\u00e9e 739 \"Recherches sur les \u0153uvres et la pens\u00e9e de Simplicius\" fut fond\u00e9e en 1982 dans le cadre du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S., Paris). Depuis cette date, ses recherches se d\u00e9roulent en \u00e9troite collaboration avec l'\u00e9quipe anglo-am\u00e9ricaine de recherche du professeur Richard Sorabji, intitul\u00e9e \"Ancient Commentators on Aristotle\", et avec l'Aristoteles-Archiv de la Freie Universit\u00e4t de Berlin-Ouest dirig\u00e9 par le professeur Dieter Harlfinger.\r\n\r\nPour permettre aux diff\u00e9rents membres de la R.C.P., dont plusieurs habitent \u00e0 l'\u00e9tranger, ainsi qu'\u00e0 d'autres savants int\u00e9ress\u00e9s par les \u00e9tudes sur Simplicius, d'entrer en contact personnel, de r\u00e9soudre oralement des questions diverses se rapportant \u00e0 l'organisation du travail, d'\u00e9changer entre eux les tout derniers r\u00e9sultats de leurs recherches et d'engager une discussion sur des probl\u00e8mes difficiles, j'ai organis\u00e9, dans le cadre de la R.C.P. 739, un colloque international qui s'est tenu \u00e0 Paris, \u00e0 la Fondation Hugot, du 28 septembre au 1er octobre 1985. Ce colloque a \u00e9t\u00e9 enti\u00e8rement financ\u00e9 par la Fondation Hugot du Coll\u00e8ge de France, \u00e0 laquelle j'exprime toute ma gratitude. Je tiens aussi \u00e0 remercier M. et Mme de Morant pour la sollicitude et la bienveillance avec laquelle ils ont accueilli les membres du colloque et veill\u00e9 \u00e0 leur procurer un merveilleux confort.\r\n\r\nLe Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique a subventionn\u00e9 la parution des Actes du Colloque, et je remercie le professeur Dr. H. Wenzel d'avoir rendu possible leur parution dans la s\u00e9rie prestigieuse des Peripatoi de la maison d'\u00e9dition De Gruyter. [Pr\u00e9face]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/45BIqsODQJTdHmt","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":171,"pubplace":"Berlin \u2013 New York","publisher":"de Gruyter","series":"Peripatoi. Philologisch-historische Studien zum Aristotelismus","volume":"15","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Simplicius: Prime Matter as Extension"]}
Title | Simplicius’ Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and Doctrines |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 531–540 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hoffmann, Philippe , Golitsis, Pantelis |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Simplicius’ Corollary on Place (Corollarium de loco) is not a doxographic text but a strictly Neoplatonic philosophical work, with its own philosophical method. It takes the form of a digression interrupting the continuity of Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (itself a written work intended for readers, hoi entugkhanontes, hoi enteuxomenoi), and its literary genre is that of a monograph treatise using dialectic and exegesis as its principal methods. The dialectical method consists in discussing the opinions of Simplicius’ predecessors, ancient and modern, mainly Aristotle and Proclus, to pave the way for the exposition of the truth, following the method inaugurated by Aristotle in the Topics and still very much alive. It also proceeds by puzzles and solutions (aporiai kai luseis). Th e exegetic method reappears even within a digression which breaks with the continuous commentary and Simplicius devotes sometimes long passages to quoting and commenting on texts from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Proclus, and Damascius, but also from the Chaldaean Oracles, Iamblichus, or Syrianus. Throughout this piece Simplicius maintains complete control over his material which includes the art of rhetoric, dialectical technique, and his philosophic intention. In it, he replaces the Aristotelian defi nition of place (‘the first unmoved boundary of the surrounding body’ (to tou periekhontos peras akinêton prôton), Phys . 4.4, 212a20–1) with a new defi nition taken from his master Damascius (place is the measure of the intrinsic positioning (metron tês theseôs) of the parts of a body, and of its right position in a greater surrounding whole), and he departs from Aristotle’s thought with a radical innovation which progressively works its way in. [introduction p. 531-532] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/nyFqYhK3Z7baSF2 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1508","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1508,"authors_free":[{"id":2619,"entry_id":1508,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":138,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe","free_first_name":"Philippe","free_last_name":"Hoffmann","norm_person":{"id":138,"first_name":"Philippe ","last_name":"Hoffmann","full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/189361905","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2620,"entry_id":1508,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":129,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","free_first_name":"Pantelis","free_last_name":"Golitsis","norm_person":{"id":129,"first_name":"Pantelis","last_name":"Golitsis","full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2621,"entry_id":1508,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"Simplicius\u2019 Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and Doctrines","main_title":{"title":"Simplicius\u2019 Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and Doctrines"},"abstract":"Simplicius\u2019 Corollary on Place (Corollarium de loco) is not a doxographic text but a strictly Neoplatonic philosophical work, with its own philosophical method. It takes the form of a digression interrupting the continuity of Simplicius\u2019 commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Physics (itself a written work intended for readers, hoi entugkhanontes, hoi enteuxomenoi), and its literary genre is that of a monograph treatise using dialectic and exegesis as its principal methods. The dialectical method consists in discussing the opinions of Simplicius\u2019 predecessors, ancient and modern, mainly Aristotle and Proclus, to pave the way for the exposition of the truth, following the method inaugurated by Aristotle in the Topics and still very much alive. It also proceeds by puzzles and solutions (aporiai kai luseis). Th e exegetic method reappears even within a digression which breaks with the continuous commentary and Simplicius devotes sometimes long passages to quoting and commenting on texts from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Proclus, and Damascius, but also from the Chaldaean Oracles, Iamblichus, or Syrianus. Throughout this piece Simplicius maintains complete control over his material which includes the art of rhetoric, dialectical technique, and his philosophic intention. In it, he replaces the Aristotelian defi nition of place (\u2018the first unmoved boundary of the surrounding body\u2019 (to tou periekhontos peras akin\u00eaton pr\u00f4ton), Phys . 4.4, 212a20\u20131) with a new defi nition taken from his master Damascius (place is the measure of the intrinsic positioning (metron t\u00eas these\u00f4s) of the parts of a body, and of its right position in a greater surrounding whole), and he departs from Aristotle\u2019s thought with a radical innovation which progressively works its way in. [introduction p. 531-532]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/nyFqYhK3Z7baSF2","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":138,"full_name":"Hoffmann, Philippe ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":129,"full_name":"Golitsis, Pantelis","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1508,"section_of":1419,"pages":"531\u2013540","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Simplicius\u2019 Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and Doctrines"]}
Title | Smoothing over the Differences: Proclus and Ammonius on Plato’s Cratylus and Aristotle’s De Interpretatione |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 353-366 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | van den Berg, Robbert Maarten |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Ammonius, the son of Hermeias († between 517 and 526), was not a prolific author, unlike his teacher Proclus (412–485). Whereas the latter wrote up to seven hundred lines a day, the only large work that Ammonius ever wrote was his commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione. Remarkably enough, for someone whose entire reputation rests on his study of Aristotle, he does not claim any credit for its content. His work, he writes at the beginning, is a record of the interpretations of his divine teacher Proclus. If he too is able to add anything to the clarification of the book, he ‘owes a great thanks to the god of eloquence.’ How much did the god of eloquence allow Ammonius to add? No other sources of Proclus’ course on the Int. survive. Yet in one case we are able to study Ammonius’ originality or the lack of it: his discussion of Aristotle’s views on onomata, a group of words that corresponds roughly speaking to our nouns and which I shall refer to as ‘names’ in this paper. One of the major issues in Greek linguistic thought throughout Antiquity was the relation between names and their objects. Does there exist some sort of natural relation between names and their objects, or are names just a matter of convention? Plato had discussed the question in his Cratylus, in which he had made a certain Hermogenes the spokesman of the conventionalist position and the eponymous character Cratylus an adherent of the naturalist position. In the end, Socrates forces both Hermogenes and Cratylus to admit that names are partly by nature and partly by convention, hence that they are both right and wrong. Many scholars, both ancient and modern, believe that in the first chapters of Int. Aristotle responded at least in part to the views expressed in the Cratylus. As it so happens, an excerpt of Proclus’ lecture notes on that Platonic dialogue has survived. A first reading of the two commentaries seems indeed to suggest that there is a substantial overlap between them on the relevant issue, even though Proclus may at times be critical of Aristotle. As we shall see, this apparent correspondence has even inspired an attempt to emend Proclus’ text at one point on the basis of Ammonius’ commentary. In this paper, I will argue that in fact Ammonius’ concept of onoma is significantly different from that of Proclus. As Proclus had observed, but as Ammonius tried to downplay, Aristotle had been arguing against Plato. For Proclus, this did not pose any particular problem. Like all Neoplatonists, Ammonius included, he was convinced that the divinely inspired Plato had to be right. If Aristotle chose to deviate from Plato and the truth, that was his problem. Proclus sets Socrates up as a judge (in Crat. §10, p. 4,12) between the conventionalist Hermogenes and the naturalist Cratylus, a judge who shows that they are both right and wrong. Aristotle is explicitly counted among the partisans of Hermogenes. On the whole, one can say that Proclus is very critical of Aristotle in in Crat. Ammonius, on the other hand, wanted to show that Plato and Aristotle were in complete harmony with each other, even where this is not evident. He too presents Socrates as a mediator between Hermogenes and Cratylus (in Int. 37,1), but this time Aristotle is not grouped together with Hermogenes but presented as being of the same mind as Socrates. As we shall see, Ammonius, when discussing the nature of names, takes his point of departure from Aristotle. Since Aristotle’s idea of what a name is differs from Plato’s, Ammonius will arrive at a concept of name that is fundamentally different from that of Proclus, who takes Plato as his starting point. On the assumption that Proclus, who for the most part appears to be quite consistent throughout his enormous œuvre, did not radically change his views when lecturing on Int., we may thus infer from this that Ammonius was not slavishly following Proclus. This becomes all the more apparent in the case of Ammonius’ interpretation of Cratylus’ position in the dialogue. In order to harmonize Plato with Aristotle, Ammonius offers a rather original, albeit not very convincing, reading of that position. Once we have established the fundamental difference between the two of them, we will be better able to explain a phenomenon to which Richard Sorabji has recently drawn attention: the absence of any interest in divine names in Ammonius’ commentary. Finally, this case study will allow us to make a more general observation about the relation between the Athenian and Alexandrian commentators. [introduction p. 353-355] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/U7I3LYIXJL83A4Y |
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Whereas the latter wrote up to seven hundred lines a day, the only large work that Ammonius ever wrote was his commentary on Aristotle\u2019s De Interpretatione. Remarkably enough, for someone whose entire reputation rests on his study of Aristotle, he does not claim any credit for its content. His work, he writes at the beginning, is a record of the interpretations of his divine teacher Proclus. If he too is able to add anything to the clarification of the book, he \u2018owes a great thanks to the god of eloquence.\u2019\r\n\r\nHow much did the god of eloquence allow Ammonius to add? No other sources of Proclus\u2019 course on the Int. survive. Yet in one case we are able to study Ammonius\u2019 originality or the lack of it: his discussion of Aristotle\u2019s views on onomata, a group of words that corresponds roughly speaking to our nouns and which I shall refer to as \u2018names\u2019 in this paper.\r\n\r\nOne of the major issues in Greek linguistic thought throughout Antiquity was the relation between names and their objects. Does there exist some sort of natural relation between names and their objects, or are names just a matter of convention? Plato had discussed the question in his Cratylus, in which he had made a certain Hermogenes the spokesman of the conventionalist position and the eponymous character Cratylus an adherent of the naturalist position. In the end, Socrates forces both Hermogenes and Cratylus to admit that names are partly by nature and partly by convention, hence that they are both right and wrong. Many scholars, both ancient and modern, believe that in the first chapters of Int. Aristotle responded at least in part to the views expressed in the Cratylus. As it so happens, an excerpt of Proclus\u2019 lecture notes on that Platonic dialogue has survived. A first reading of the two commentaries seems indeed to suggest that there is a substantial overlap between them on the relevant issue, even though Proclus may at times be critical of Aristotle. As we shall see, this apparent correspondence has even inspired an attempt to emend Proclus\u2019 text at one point on the basis of Ammonius\u2019 commentary.\r\n\r\nIn this paper, I will argue that in fact Ammonius\u2019 concept of onoma is significantly different from that of Proclus. As Proclus had observed, but as Ammonius tried to downplay, Aristotle had been arguing against Plato. For Proclus, this did not pose any particular problem. Like all Neoplatonists, Ammonius included, he was convinced that the divinely inspired Plato had to be right. If Aristotle chose to deviate from Plato and the truth, that was his problem. Proclus sets Socrates up as a judge (in Crat. \u00a710, p. 4,12) between the conventionalist Hermogenes and the naturalist Cratylus, a judge who shows that they are both right and wrong. Aristotle is explicitly counted among the partisans of Hermogenes. On the whole, one can say that Proclus is very critical of Aristotle in in Crat.\r\n\r\nAmmonius, on the other hand, wanted to show that Plato and Aristotle were in complete harmony with each other, even where this is not evident. He too presents Socrates as a mediator between Hermogenes and Cratylus (in Int. 37,1), but this time Aristotle is not grouped together with Hermogenes but presented as being of the same mind as Socrates. As we shall see, Ammonius, when discussing the nature of names, takes his point of departure from Aristotle. Since Aristotle\u2019s idea of what a name is differs from Plato\u2019s, Ammonius will arrive at a concept of name that is fundamentally different from that of Proclus, who takes Plato as his starting point. On the assumption that Proclus, who for the most part appears to be quite consistent throughout his enormous \u0153uvre, did not radically change his views when lecturing on Int., we may thus infer from this that Ammonius was not slavishly following Proclus. This becomes all the more apparent in the case of Ammonius\u2019 interpretation of Cratylus\u2019 position in the dialogue. In order to harmonize Plato with Aristotle, Ammonius offers a rather original, albeit not very convincing, reading of that position.\r\n\r\nOnce we have established the fundamental difference between the two of them, we will be better able to explain a phenomenon to which Richard Sorabji has recently drawn attention: the absence of any interest in divine names in Ammonius\u2019 commentary. Finally, this case study will allow us to make a more general observation about the relation between the Athenian and Alexandrian commentators. [introduction p. 353-355]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/U7I3LYIXJL83A4Y","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1532,"section_of":1419,"pages":"353-366","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Smoothing over the Differences: Proclus and Ammonius on Plato\u2019s Cratylus and Aristotle\u2019s De Interpretatione"]}
Title | The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 61-88 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Gottschalk, Hans B. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
In Chapter 3, Hans Gottschalk surveys the commentators on Aristotle from the fi rst century bc to late in the second century ad , and some of their Platonist opponents. He gives the most space to the fi rst of them, Andronicus, persuasively rguing that he worked in Athens without going to Rome, and telling something of Andronicus’ philosophical comments on Aristotle and of his editorial work on Aristotle’s school writings (as opposed to his works then better known, but now largely lost, for publication outside the school). He rightly says that Andronicus presented Aristotle as a system. As I indicated in commenting on Chapter 1 above, his younger contemporary in Athens, Boethus, stimulated enormous reaction from later commentators by his detailed and idiosyncratic interpretation of Aristotle, fragments of which they recorded. So the description ‘scholasticism’, insofar as it suggests to us something rather dry, is not a description we should now be likely to use, especially aft er the recent discovery of new fragments of Boethus. But Aristotle Re-Interpreted will include a contribution on some of Boethus’ achievement and further detail on the commentators aft er him is supplied in other recent works listed above in note 6. Th e only big matter of controversy concerns the two words ‘critical edition’ at the opening of Gottschalk’s chapter, which could be taken for granted in 1990. It was challenged by Jonathan Barnes in 1997. 9 A critical edition is produced by comparing diff erent copies of the original in order to discover more closely what the original may have said. Barnes argued powerfully that this is not what Andronicus did. Indeed, if he did not go to Rome to examine the manuscript there, it is even less likely that he did. One reaction was to think that this greatly reduced the importance of Andronicus. But a contribution in Aristotle Re- Interpreted will take up the other editorial activity including the presentation of Aristotle’s school writings as a system. It was far more valuable, according to this argument, to create a coherent canon of Aristotle’s voluminous school writings, by joining or separating pieces and arranging them in a coherent order for reading, than to seek the original wording in a critical edition. [Sorabji: Introduction to the Second Edition, p. xii] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/nJ4WSAlewntt7lZ |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"535","_score":null,"_source":{"id":535,"authors_free":[{"id":756,"entry_id":535,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":135,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Gottschalk, Hans B.","free_first_name":"Hans B.","free_last_name":"Gottschalk","norm_person":{"id":135,"first_name":"Hans B.","last_name":"Gottschalk","full_name":"Gottschalk, Hans B.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1161498559","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":757,"entry_id":535,"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":"The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators","main_title":{"title":"The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators"},"abstract":" In Chapter 3, Hans Gottschalk surveys the commentators on Aristotle from the \r\nfi rst century bc to late in the second century ad , and some of their Platonist \r\nopponents. He gives the most space to the fi rst of them, Andronicus, persuasively rguing that he worked in Athens without going to Rome, and telling something \r\nof Andronicus\u2019 philosophical comments on Aristotle and of his editorial work \r\non Aristotle\u2019s school writings (as opposed to his works then better known, but \r\nnow largely lost, for publication outside the school). He rightly says that \r\nAndronicus presented Aristotle as a system. As I indicated in commenting on \r\nChapter 1 above, his younger contemporary in Athens, Boethus, stimulated \r\nenormous reaction from later commentators by his detailed and idiosyncratic \r\ninterpretation of Aristotle, fragments of which they recorded. So the description \r\n\u2018scholasticism\u2019, insofar as it suggests to us something rather dry, is not a \r\ndescription we should now be likely to use, especially aft er the recent discovery \r\nof new fragments of Boethus. But Aristotle Re-Interpreted will include a \r\ncontribution on some of Boethus\u2019 achievement and further detail on the \r\ncommentators aft er him is supplied in other recent works listed above in note 6. \r\nTh e only big matter of controversy concerns the two words \u2018critical edition\u2019 at the \r\nopening of Gottschalk\u2019s chapter, which could be taken for granted in 1990. It was \r\nchallenged by Jonathan Barnes in 1997. 9 A critical edition is produced by \r\ncomparing diff erent copies of the original in order to discover more closely what \r\nthe original may have said. Barnes argued powerfully that this is not what \r\nAndronicus did. Indeed, if he did not go to Rome to examine the manuscript \r\nthere, it is even less likely that he did. One reaction was to think that this greatly \r\nreduced the importance of Andronicus. But a contribution in Aristotle Re-\r\nInterpreted will take up the other editorial activity including the presentation of \r\nAristotle\u2019s school writings as a system. It was far more valuable, according to this \r\nargument, to create a coherent canon of Aristotle\u2019s voluminous school writings, \r\nby joining or separating pieces and arranging them in a coherent order for \r\nreading, than to seek the original wording in a critical edition. [Sorabji: Introduction to the Second Edition, p. xii]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/nJ4WSAlewntt7lZ","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":135,"full_name":"Gottschalk, Hans B.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":535,"section_of":200,"pages":"61-88","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":200,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1990","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1990","abstract":"The story of the ancient commentators on Aristotle has not previously been told \r\nat book length. Here it is assembled for the fi rst time by drawing both on some \r\nof the classic articles translated into English or revised and on the very latest \r\nresearch. Some of the chapters will be making revisionary suggestions unfamiliar \r\neven to specialists in the fi eld. Th e philosophical interest of the commentators \r\nhas been illustrated elsewhere. 1 Th e aim here is not so much to do this again as \r\nto set out the background of the commentary tradition against which further \r\nphilosophical discussion and discussions of other kinds can take place. \r\n Th e importance of the commentators lies partly in their representing the \r\nthought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools, \r\npartly in the panorama they provide of the 1100 years of Ancient Greek \r\nphilosophy, preserving as they do many original quotations from lost philosophical \r\nworks. Still more signifi cant is their profound infl uence, uncovered in some of the \r\nchapters below, on subsequent philosophy, Islamic and European. Th is was due \r\npartly to their preserving anti-Aristotelian material which helped to inspire \r\nmedieval and Renaissance science, but still more to their presenting an Aristotle \r\ntransformed in ways which happened to make him acceptable to the Christian \r\nChurch. It is not just Aristotle, but this Aristotle transformed and embedded in \r\nthe philosophy of the commentators, that lies behind the views of later thinkers. [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/b7EaNXJNckqKKqB","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":200,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"2","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators"]}
Title | The Life and Works of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic Sources |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 295-326 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hadot, Ilsetraut |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Here, therefore, are the conclusions to which one might be led as regards Simplicius’ works. We have extant: the commentaries on Epictetus’ Encheiridion, on Aristotle’s De Caelo, Physics, Categories, and probably on his De Anima. Lost, though attested in a more or less certain fashion: a commentary on the first book of Euclid’s Elements, a commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, a commentary on Iamblichus’ work devoted to the Pythagorean sect, an epitome of Theophrastus’ Physics (if the commentary on the De Anima, where one finds a reference to this work, is authentic), and perhaps a commentary on Hermogenes’ Tekhnê. [conclusion p. 326] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/SguvcKAd2fhClm6 |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"670","_score":null,"_source":{"id":670,"authors_free":[{"id":982,"entry_id":670,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":4,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","free_first_name":"Ilsetraut","free_last_name":"Hadot","norm_person":{"id":4,"first_name":"Ilsetraut","last_name":"Hadot","full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/107415011","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":983,"entry_id":670,"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":"The Life and Works of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic Sources","main_title":{"title":"The Life and Works of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic Sources"},"abstract":"Here, therefore, are the conclusions to which one might be led as regards Simplicius\u2019 works. We have extant: the commentaries on Epictetus\u2019 Encheiridion, on Aristotle\u2019s De Caelo, Physics, Categories, and probably on his De Anima. Lost, though attested in a more or less certain fashion: a commentary on the first book of Euclid\u2019s Elements, a commentary on Aristotle\u2019s Metaphysics, a commentary on Iamblichus\u2019 work devoted to the Pythagorean sect, an epitome of Theophrastus\u2019 Physics (if the commentary on the De Anima, where one finds a reference to this work, is authentic), and perhaps a commentary on Hermogenes\u2019 Tekhn\u00ea. [conclusion p. 326]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/SguvcKAd2fhClm6","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":4,"full_name":"Hadot, Ilsetraut","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":670,"section_of":200,"pages":"295-326","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":200,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1990","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1990","abstract":"The story of the ancient commentators on Aristotle has not previously been told \r\nat book length. Here it is assembled for the fi rst time by drawing both on some \r\nof the classic articles translated into English or revised and on the very latest \r\nresearch. Some of the chapters will be making revisionary suggestions unfamiliar \r\neven to specialists in the fi eld. Th e philosophical interest of the commentators \r\nhas been illustrated elsewhere. 1 Th e aim here is not so much to do this again as \r\nto set out the background of the commentary tradition against which further \r\nphilosophical discussion and discussions of other kinds can take place. \r\n Th e importance of the commentators lies partly in their representing the \r\nthought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools, \r\npartly in the panorama they provide of the 1100 years of Ancient Greek \r\nphilosophy, preserving as they do many original quotations from lost philosophical \r\nworks. Still more signifi cant is their profound infl uence, uncovered in some of the \r\nchapters below, on subsequent philosophy, Islamic and European. Th is was due \r\npartly to their preserving anti-Aristotelian material which helped to inspire \r\nmedieval and Renaissance science, but still more to their presenting an Aristotle \r\ntransformed in ways which happened to make him acceptable to the Christian \r\nChurch. It is not just Aristotle, but this Aristotle transformed and embedded in \r\nthe philosophy of the commentators, that lies behind the views of later thinkers. [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/b7EaNXJNckqKKqB","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":200,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"2","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Life and Works of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic Sources"]}
Title | The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1997 |
Published in | Aristotle and after |
Pages | 91-107 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Gaskin, Richard |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
As far as traditional classifications go, the Stoics count as materialists. But it is notorious that there were four things in their world-view which do not fit this caracterization: time, place, the void and the so-called ‘sayables', or lekta (SE AM 10.218 = FDS 720). Lekta consist of three main kinds of quasi-linguistic item: centrally, simple propositions (as well as certain non-assertoric, but grammatically autonomous, items) are ‘complete’ lekta (DL 7 .6-8 = FDS 696, 874; SE AM 8.70-74). From these propositions, more complex ‘complete’ lekta maybe constructed, such as conditionals (DL 7.71) or syllogisms (DL 7.63). And within the structure of complete lekta, ‘incomplete’ lekta, such as predicates, maybe discerned. I call lekta quasi-linguistic, rather than linguistic, because, as we learn from an important passage in Sextus (AM 8.11-13 = FDS 67), the Stoics distinguished lekta both from language and from physical objects in the world. Hence linguistic items such as the verb (rhêma) ‘writes’ and the complete sentence (logos) ‘Socrates writes’ should be kept rigorously apart from their corresponding lekta - the predicate (katigorema) writes and the complete proposition (axidma) Socrates writes - which the linguistic expressions signify (semainein: SE AM 8.11 - 12, DL 7.56, 58, 65). In this paper I shall examine the Stoic treatment of the main constituents of the complete lekton: cases and predicates. I shall argue that cases are, like predicates, (incomplete) lekta, and that the verbal noun played a central role in Stoic thinking about lekta. In the light of these reflections, I shall conclude with some speculative remarks on the unity of the proposition. [Introduction, p. 91] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/tocHWc6xfMEeg9C |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1177","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1177,"authors_free":[{"id":1751,"entry_id":1177,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":132,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Gaskin, Richard ","free_first_name":"Richard ","free_last_name":"Gaskin","norm_person":{"id":132,"first_name":"Richard ","last_name":"Gaskin","full_name":"Gaskin, Richard ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1049853571","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2358,"entry_id":1177,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"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":"The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition","main_title":{"title":"The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition"},"abstract":"As far as traditional classifications go, the Stoics count as materialists. But it is notorious that there were four things in their world-view which do not fit this caracterization: time, place, the void and the so-called \u2018sayables', or lekta (SE AM 10.218 = FDS 720). Lekta consist of three main kinds of quasi-linguistic item: centrally, simple propositions (as well as certain non-assertoric, but grammatically autonomous, items) are \u2018complete\u2019 lekta (DL 7 .6-8 = FDS 696, 874; SE AM 8.70-74). From these propositions, more complex \u2018complete\u2019 lekta maybe constructed, such as conditionals (DL 7.71) or syllogisms (DL 7.63). And within the structure of complete lekta, \u2018incomplete\u2019 lekta, such as predicates, maybe discerned. I call lekta quasi-linguistic, rather than linguistic, because, as we learn from an important passage in Sextus (AM 8.11-13 = FDS 67), the Stoics distinguished lekta both from language and from physical objects in the world. Hence linguistic items such as the verb (rh\u00eama) \u2018writes\u2019 and the complete sentence (logos) \u2018Socrates writes\u2019 should be kept rigorously apart from their corresponding lekta - the predicate (katigorema) writes and the complete proposition (axidma) Socrates writes - which the linguistic expressions signify (semainein: SE AM 8.11 - 12, DL 7.56, 58, 65). \r\nIn this paper I shall examine the Stoic treatment of the main constituents of the complete lekton: cases and predicates. I shall argue that cases are, like predicates, (incomplete) lekta, and that the verbal noun played a central role in Stoic thinking about lekta. In the light of these reflections, I shall conclude with some speculative remarks on the unity of the proposition. [Introduction, p. 91]","btype":2,"date":"1997","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/tocHWc6xfMEeg9C","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":132,"full_name":"Gaskin, Richard ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1177,"section_of":199,"pages":"91-107","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":199,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle and after","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji1997a","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1997","edition_no":null,"free_date":"1997","abstract":"A selection of papers given at the Institute of Classical Studies during 1996. They cover a variety of new work on the 900 years of philosophy from Aristotle to Simplicius. There is a strong concentration on stoicism with papers by: Michael Frede ( Euphrates of Tyre ); A. A. Long ( Property ownership and community ); Brad Inwood ( 'Why do fools fallin love?' ); Susanne Bobzein ( freedom and ethics ); Richard Gaskin ( cases, predicates and the unity of the proposition ); Richard Sorabji ( stoic philosophy and psychotherapy ); Bernard Williams ( reply to Richard Sorabji ). The other papers are by: Heinrich von Staden ( Galen and the 'Second Sophistic' ); Hans B. Gottschalk ( continuity and change in Aristotelianism ); Travis Butler ( the homonymy of signification in Aristotle ); Andrea Falcon ( Aristotle's theory of division ); Sylvia Berryman (Horror Vacui in the third century BC ); M. B. Trapp ( On the Tablet of Cebes ); Marwan Rashed ( a 'new' text of Alexander on the soul's motion ). [authors abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/x8uyail9ZCl9wfr","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":199,"pubplace":"University of London","publisher":"Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study","series":"BICS (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies) Supplement","volume":"68","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Stoics on cases, predicates, and the unity of the proposition"]}
Title | The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus’ Canon |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2016 |
Published in | Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators |
Pages | 81-102 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Hatzimichali, Myrto |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
If we recall at this point the information gathered on the state of Plato’s text in the first century BCE, we can see that by comparison the study of Aristotle’s text was indeed revolutionized. In the case of the Aristotelian corpus, our sources tell a story of true peripeteia, with the appearance of new texts or at least new copies with special claims of antiquity and pedigree, and with the standardization and ordering of the canon in Andronicus’ Pinakes. A scrutiny of our sources has shown that it was the processes of cataloging, canon formation, and corpus organization that had the greatest impact on the texts we now read, and not the appearance of new ‘editions’ and text-critical initiatives. If this appears counterintuitive, we should remember that judgments about the importance or otherwise of ancient editorial activity can be misleading if they are too dependent on modern experiences and expectations. [conclusion p. 102] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/hzJ6JONomuuLaQX |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1537","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1537,"authors_free":[{"id":2681,"entry_id":1537,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Hatzimichali, Myrto","free_first_name":"Myrto","free_last_name":"Hatzimichali","norm_person":null},{"id":2682,"entry_id":1537,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","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":"The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus\u2019 Canon","main_title":{"title":"The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus\u2019 Canon"},"abstract":"If we recall at this point the information gathered on the state of Plato\u2019s text in the first century BCE, we can see that by comparison the study of Aristotle\u2019s text was indeed revolutionized. In the case of the Aristotelian corpus, our sources tell a story of true peripeteia, with the appearance of new texts or at least new copies with special claims of antiquity and pedigree, and with the standardization and ordering of the canon in Andronicus\u2019 Pinakes.\r\n\r\nA scrutiny of our sources has shown that it was the processes of cataloging, canon formation, and corpus organization that had the greatest impact on the texts we now read, and not the appearance of new \u2018editions\u2019 and text-critical initiatives. If this appears counterintuitive, we should remember that judgments about the importance or otherwise of ancient editorial activity can be misleading if they are too dependent on modern experiences and expectations. [conclusion p. 102]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/hzJ6JONomuuLaQX","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1537,"section_of":1419,"pages":"81-102","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1419,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Sorabji2016","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2016","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This volume presents collected essays \u2013 some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated \u2013 on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as \u2018a scholarly marvel\u2019, \u2018a truly breath-taking achievement\u2019 and \u2018one of the great scholarly achievements of our time\u2019 and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field.\r\n\r\nWith a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/gZ0ZaTAlMe0PYrI","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1419,"pubplace":"New York","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus\u2019 Canon"]}
Title | The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 2006 |
Published in | Reading Plato in antiquity |
Pages | 185-193 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Editor(s) | Tarrant, Harold , Baltzly, Dirk |
Translator(s) |
In Neoplatonism, though not in Aristotelianism, Plato and Aristotle are transformed in a variety of different ways. The transformation is partly driven by a wish to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, but only partly. There is less effort to harmonize the two in some commentators than in others, and on some issues, as we shall see, there is less harmonization among our commentators than there was in the Middle Platonism of an earlier period. Further, the transformation of views is driven by other factors besides harmonization. Harmonization is most marked in Porphyry and Ammonius. It seems to be least favored by Syrianus and Proclus. Simplicius says that the good commentator should find Plato and Aristotle in harmony on most points (In Cat. 7.23–32). The presumption for a Neoplatonist is that, in the case of disharmony, Plato will be right. However, this presumption is reversed by a late commentator, Olympiodorus, who backs Aristotle against Plato on the definition of relatives (In Cat. 112.19ff). As an example of harmonization, Porphyry, on the standard interpretation, defended Aristotle’s categories from Plotinus’ objections in Enneads VI.1–3. Plotinus accepted only four of Aristotle’s ten categories for classifying the world perceived by the senses, and even then with heavy qualifications. He complained that Aristotle’s categories left out the world of intelligible Forms from which the perceptible world derived. Sensible qualities, for example, are only shadows of the activities of intelligible Forms. Porphyry replied (In Cat. 57.7–8, 58.5–7, and 91.19–27) that Aristotle’s categories are not meant to be exhaustive. They are only intended to distinguish words insofar as they signify things, and words are chiefly used to speak about sensibles. For that limited task, the categories are to be valued. Porphyry thus made Aristotle’s categories forever acceptable to Platonism. Hereafter, it became increasingly useful to reinforce what I regard as the myth of harmony in the face of Christian charges that pagan philosophers contradicted each other. There was an irony in this, because the harmonization—whose motive was thus partly anti-Christian—ended in the thirteenth century by helping Thomas Aquinas present Aristotle as safe for Christianity. This assimilation to Plato had turned Aristotle’s God from a thinker into a Creator and Aristotle’s human soul into an immortal one. There can, however, be more than one approach toward the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle. Lloyd Gerson, in this volume, offers the most thoroughgoing modern attempt to argue that it is basically correct. If, as I have supposed, it is not, the question arises whether pressure toward a false harmonization would be bad for philosophy. Having to convince Christians that Plato and Aristotle agreed with each other on almost everything would surely lead to a loss of their wonderful insights. But in fact, it gave a distinctive character, interesting in its own right, to Neoplatonism. Curiously, it also led to an even closer reading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, because their texts had to be read very closely indeed if one was going to argue that what they really meant was something different from what might first appear. In fact, the pressure to harmonize proved a valuable stimulus to the imagination in the Greek Neoplatonist commentators. They took Plato to postulate a changeless and timeless world of divine Platonic Forms, and they had to think out how such a world would relate to the temporal, changing world described by Aristotle. I should now like to look at some examples of what happened to the views of Plato and Aristotle in Neoplatonism. I shall ask what factors besides harmonization are at work, whether Plato is transformed in the process as much as Aristotle, whether the harmonizations are hostile or friendly to Aristotle, and where the transformations proved important for subsequent philosophy. [introduction p. 185-186] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/eWLLcrq58WWLfJm |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"916","_score":null,"_source":{"id":916,"authors_free":[{"id":1351,"entry_id":916,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":133,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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}},{"id":1352,"entry_id":916,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":122,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Tarrant, Harold","free_first_name":"Harold","free_last_name":"Tarrant","norm_person":{"id":122,"first_name":"Harold ","last_name":"Tarrant","full_name":"Tarrant, Harold ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/132040077","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":1353,"entry_id":916,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":107,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","free_first_name":"Dirk","free_last_name":"Baltzly","norm_person":{"id":107,"first_name":"Dirk","last_name":"Baltzly","full_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1150414960","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle","main_title":{"title":"The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle"},"abstract":"In Neoplatonism, though not in Aristotelianism, Plato and Aristotle are transformed in a variety of different ways. The transformation is partly driven by a wish to harmonize Plato and Aristotle, but only partly. There is less effort to harmonize the two in some commentators than in others, and on some issues, as we shall see, there is less harmonization among our commentators than there was in the Middle Platonism of an earlier period. Further, the transformation of views is driven by other factors besides harmonization.\r\n\r\nHarmonization is most marked in Porphyry and Ammonius. It seems to be least favored by Syrianus and Proclus. Simplicius says that the good commentator should find Plato and Aristotle in harmony on most points (In Cat. 7.23\u201332). The presumption for a Neoplatonist is that, in the case of disharmony, Plato will be right. However, this presumption is reversed by a late commentator, Olympiodorus, who backs Aristotle against Plato on the definition of relatives (In Cat. 112.19ff).\r\n\r\nAs an example of harmonization, Porphyry, on the standard interpretation, defended Aristotle\u2019s categories from Plotinus\u2019 objections in Enneads VI.1\u20133. Plotinus accepted only four of Aristotle\u2019s ten categories for classifying the world perceived by the senses, and even then with heavy qualifications. He complained that Aristotle\u2019s categories left out the world of intelligible Forms from which the perceptible world derived. Sensible qualities, for example, are only shadows of the activities of intelligible Forms. Porphyry replied (In Cat. 57.7\u20138, 58.5\u20137, and 91.19\u201327) that Aristotle\u2019s categories are not meant to be exhaustive. They are only intended to distinguish words insofar as they signify things, and words are chiefly used to speak about sensibles. For that limited task, the categories are to be valued. Porphyry thus made Aristotle\u2019s categories forever acceptable to Platonism. Hereafter, it became increasingly useful to reinforce what I regard as the myth of harmony in the face of Christian charges that pagan philosophers contradicted each other. There was an irony in this, because the harmonization\u2014whose motive was thus partly anti-Christian\u2014ended in the thirteenth century by helping Thomas Aquinas present Aristotle as safe for Christianity. This assimilation to Plato had turned Aristotle\u2019s God from a thinker into a Creator and Aristotle\u2019s human soul into an immortal one.\r\n\r\nThere can, however, be more than one approach toward the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle. Lloyd Gerson, in this volume, offers the most thoroughgoing modern attempt to argue that it is basically correct. If, as I have supposed, it is not, the question arises whether pressure toward a false harmonization would be bad for philosophy. Having to convince Christians that Plato and Aristotle agreed with each other on almost everything would surely lead to a loss of their wonderful insights. But in fact, it gave a distinctive character, interesting in its own right, to Neoplatonism. Curiously, it also led to an even closer reading of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, because their texts had to be read very closely indeed if one was going to argue that what they really meant was something different from what might first appear.\r\n\r\nIn fact, the pressure to harmonize proved a valuable stimulus to the imagination in the Greek Neoplatonist commentators. They took Plato to postulate a changeless and timeless world of divine Platonic Forms, and they had to think out how such a world would relate to the temporal, changing world described by Aristotle.\r\n\r\nI should now like to look at some examples of what happened to the views of Plato and Aristotle in Neoplatonism. I shall ask what factors besides harmonization are at work, whether Plato is transformed in the process as much as Aristotle, whether the harmonizations are hostile or friendly to Aristotle, and where the transformations proved important for subsequent philosophy. [introduction p. 185-186]","btype":2,"date":"2006","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/eWLLcrq58WWLfJm","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":122,"full_name":"Tarrant, Harold ","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}},{"id":107,"full_name":"Baltzly, Dirk","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":916,"section_of":196,"pages":"185-193","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":196,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"Reading Plato in antiquity","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Tarrant2006","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2006","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2006","abstract":"This important collection of original essays is the first to concentrate at length on how the ancients responded to the challenge of reading and interpreting Plato, primarily between 100 BC and AD, edited by Lloyd Gerson, University of Toronto; 600. It incorporates the fruits of recent research into late antique philosophy, in particular its approach to hermeneutical problems. While a number of prominent figures, including Apuleius, Galen, Plotinus, Porphyry and lamblichus, receive detailed attention, several essays concentrate on the important figure of Proclus, in whom Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato reaches it most impressive, most surprising and most challenging form. The essays appear in chronological of their focal interpreters, giving a sense of the development of Platonist exegesis in this period. Reflecting their devotion to a common theme, the essays have been carefully edited and are presented with a composite bibliography and indices.","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/PFetB36hpbaF0VD","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":196,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The Transformation of Plato and Aristotle"]}
Title | The development of Philoponus’ thought and its chronology |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1990 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 233-274 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Verrycken, Koenraad |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
The position I should like to defend is to some extent intermediate between that of Gudeman and that of Ilvrard. I think Ilvrard is right in rejecting the hypothesis of Philoponus' conversion. But I also think Gudeman was right in assuming—more or less conjecturally—a duality in Philoponus’ philosophical work. Both Gudeman and Ilvrard, however, pose the problem wrongly in terms of ‘religious conviction’ only. If Philoponus did not develop a Christian philosophy in his first philosophical period, that does not show that he must have been a pagan at that time. And if he was born a Christian, that does not establish that his philosophy must always have been Christian in character. Philosophy is one thing, religion another. In my opinion, the problem should first be posed on the purely philosophical level: what does the author say? Only afterwards can one try to ‘project’ the results of the philosophical analysis onto the levels of biography and psychology. This is the method I employ. To start with, I shall outline very briefly the main characteristics of the philosophical systems of ‘Philoponus 1’ and ‘Philoponus 2’, as I shall call them. Then I shall try to piece together something of what can reasonably be said about Philoponus’ biography. Thirdly, I shall propose the first sketch of a new solution to the problem of the chronology of the author’s Aristotelian commentaries. I shall finish with some remarks on the development of Philoponus 2. [introduction p. 236] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/d1kiVpaSlWKa7uY |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"449","_score":null,"_source":{"id":449,"authors_free":[{"id":601,"entry_id":449,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":347,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Verrycken, Koenraad","free_first_name":"Koenraad","free_last_name":"Verrycken","norm_person":{"id":347,"first_name":"Koenraad","last_name":"Verrycken","full_name":"Verrycken, Koenraad","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1048689964","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":602,"entry_id":449,"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":"The development of Philoponus\u2019 thought and its chronology","main_title":{"title":"The development of Philoponus\u2019 thought and its chronology"},"abstract":"The position I should like to defend is to some extent intermediate between that of Gudeman and that of Ilvrard. I think Ilvrard is right in rejecting the hypothesis of Philoponus' conversion. But I also think Gudeman was right in assuming\u2014more or less conjecturally\u2014a duality in Philoponus\u2019 philosophical work. Both Gudeman and Ilvrard, however, pose the problem wrongly in terms of \u2018religious conviction\u2019 only. If Philoponus did not develop a Christian philosophy in his first philosophical period, that does not show that he must have been a pagan at that time. And if he was born a Christian, that does not establish that his philosophy must always have been Christian in character. Philosophy is one thing, religion another.\r\n\r\nIn my opinion, the problem should first be posed on the purely philosophical level: what does the author say? Only afterwards can one try to \u2018project\u2019 the results of the philosophical analysis onto the levels of biography and psychology. This is the method I employ.\r\n\r\nTo start with, I shall outline very briefly the main characteristics of the philosophical systems of \u2018Philoponus 1\u2019 and \u2018Philoponus 2\u2019, as I shall call them. Then I shall try to piece together something of what can reasonably be said about Philoponus\u2019 biography. Thirdly, I shall propose the first sketch of a new solution to the problem of the chronology of the author\u2019s Aristotelian commentaries. I shall finish with some remarks on the development of Philoponus 2. [introduction p. 236]","btype":2,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/d1kiVpaSlWKa7uY","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":347,"full_name":"Verrycken, Koenraad","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":449,"section_of":1453,"pages":"233-274","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1453,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.\r\n\r\nThe importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence - uncovered in some of the chapters of this book - that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/M8lXuAdHpDW8tvu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1453,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The development of Philoponus\u2019 thought and its chronology"]}
Title | The school of Alexander? |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1990 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 83-111 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Sharples, Robert W. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
Alexander of Aphrodisias was appointed by the emperors as a public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy at some time between 198 and 209 AD. As a public teacher, it is likely that he had, in some sense, a school. But trying to establish what happened in that school and how it functioned is comparable to the task we would face if we had to determine what went on in a philosophy department in a modern university based on a selection of books by the professor, a confused collection of his papers, the notes from which he lectured, and the essays of his students, with no obvious indication of which was which. We know a considerable amount about the Neoplatonic schools of the fifth and sixth centuries AD and the study of Aristotle’s writings in them. We know the place they had in the curriculum, the order in which they were read, and we can compare the ways in which different commentators approached the question of the relationship between the works of Aristotle and those of Plato. We can trace relations between teachers and their pupils, and we are sometimes told that a particular text is a pupil’s record of his teacher’s utterances. The very organization of the commentaries sometimes reflects and clarifies the requirements of the teaching context—in the division of a commentary into separate lectures and the placing of a general summary of a section of argument before the discussion of particular points. For the medieval period, too, we have copious information on the organization of teaching and study. With Alexander, matters are very different. We know the names of some of his teachers, and his surviving works provide evidence for his disagreements with them. We also know something of his disagreements with other philosophers of his own generation or the generation before, and we can trace—however controversially—his influence on later thinkers. But we do not know the name of a single one of his immediate pupils, and for all that we can tell, the influence of other writers on him might have been largely, and his influence on other writers entirely, through the medium of writing rather than personal encounter. After all, we are explicitly told that Alexander’s commentaries were among those read in Plotinus’ school. It is, however, in principle unlikely that any thinker in the ancient world would have communicated entirely through the written, rather than the spoken, word. Some of the writings attributed to Alexander are most naturally seen in the context of his teaching activities or debates within his circle. These writings include commentaries on Aristotelian works, treatises or monographs on particular topics such as those On the Soul and On Fate, and numerous short discussions. Three books of these collected discussions are entitled phusikai skholikai aporiai kai luseis—‘School-discussion problems and solutions on nature’; a fourth is titled Problems on Ethics but sub-titled, no doubt in imitation of the preceding three books when it was united with them, skholikai êthikai aporiai kai luseis—‘School-discussion problems and solutions on ethics.’ A further collection was transmitted as the second book of Alexander’s treatise On the Soul and labeled mantissa or ‘makeweight’ by the Berlin editor Bruns. Other texts essentially similar to those in these collections survive in Arabic, though not in Greek, and there is evidence to suggest that there were other collections now lost. The circumstances in which these collections were put together are unclear; it was not always expertly done, and while some of the titles attached to particular pieces seem to preserve valuable additional information, others are inept or unhelpful. Nor is it clear at what date the collections were assembled. It is not my concern here to provide a full enumeration of the works attributed to Alexander or to classify them in detail. That has been done elsewhere by both myself and others. Rather, I will proceed to a discussion of what the works can tell us about the context in which they arose. It will be helpful to start with a consideration of the relation of Alexander’s works to those of his predecessors, teachers, and contemporaries. [introduction p. 83-85] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/wgzq8ffCF70YlYd |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"1027","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1027,"authors_free":[{"id":1551,"entry_id":1027,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":42,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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":1552,"entry_id":1027,"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":"The school of Alexander?","main_title":{"title":"The school of Alexander?"},"abstract":"Alexander of Aphrodisias was appointed by the emperors as a public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy at some time between 198 and 209 AD.\r\nAs a public teacher, it is likely that he had, in some sense, a school. But trying to establish what happened in that school and how it functioned is comparable to the task we would face if we had to determine what went on in a philosophy department in a modern university based on a selection of books by the professor, a confused collection of his papers, the notes from which he lectured, and the essays of his students, with no obvious indication of which was which.\r\n\r\nWe know a considerable amount about the Neoplatonic schools of the fifth and sixth centuries AD and the study of Aristotle\u2019s writings in them. We know the place they had in the curriculum, the order in which they were read, and we can compare the ways in which different commentators approached the question of the relationship between the works of Aristotle and those of Plato. We can trace relations between teachers and their pupils, and we are sometimes told that a particular text is a pupil\u2019s record of his teacher\u2019s utterances. The very organization of the commentaries sometimes reflects and clarifies the requirements of the teaching context\u2014in the division of a commentary into separate lectures and the placing of a general summary of a section of argument before the discussion of particular points.\r\n\r\nFor the medieval period, too, we have copious information on the organization of teaching and study.\r\nWith Alexander, matters are very different. We know the names of some of his teachers, and his surviving works provide evidence for his disagreements with them. We also know something of his disagreements with other philosophers of his own generation or the generation before, and we can trace\u2014however controversially\u2014his influence on later thinkers.\r\n\r\nBut we do not know the name of a single one of his immediate pupils, and for all that we can tell, the influence of other writers on him might have been largely, and his influence on other writers entirely, through the medium of writing rather than personal encounter. After all, we are explicitly told that Alexander\u2019s commentaries were among those read in Plotinus\u2019 school.\r\n\r\nIt is, however, in principle unlikely that any thinker in the ancient world would have communicated entirely through the written, rather than the spoken, word. Some of the writings attributed to Alexander are most naturally seen in the context of his teaching activities or debates within his circle.\r\n\r\nThese writings include commentaries on Aristotelian works, treatises or monographs on particular topics such as those On the Soul and On Fate, and numerous short discussions. Three books of these collected discussions are entitled phusikai skholikai aporiai kai luseis\u2014\u2018School-discussion problems and solutions on nature\u2019; a fourth is titled Problems on Ethics but sub-titled, no doubt in imitation of the preceding three books when it was united with them, skholikai \u00eathikai aporiai kai luseis\u2014\u2018School-discussion problems and solutions on ethics.\u2019\r\n\r\nA further collection was transmitted as the second book of Alexander\u2019s treatise On the Soul and labeled mantissa or \u2018makeweight\u2019 by the Berlin editor Bruns. Other texts essentially similar to those in these collections survive in Arabic, though not in Greek, and there is evidence to suggest that there were other collections now lost.\r\n\r\nThe circumstances in which these collections were put together are unclear; it was not always expertly done, and while some of the titles attached to particular pieces seem to preserve valuable additional information, others are inept or unhelpful. Nor is it clear at what date the collections were assembled.\r\n\r\nIt is not my concern here to provide a full enumeration of the works attributed to Alexander or to classify them in detail. That has been done elsewhere by both myself and others. Rather, I will proceed to a discussion of what the works can tell us about the context in which they arose. It will be helpful to start with a consideration of the relation of Alexander\u2019s works to those of his predecessors, teachers, and contemporaries. [introduction p. 83-85]","btype":2,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/wgzq8ffCF70YlYd","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":42,"full_name":"Sharples, Robert W.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1027,"section_of":1453,"pages":"83-111","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1453,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.\r\n\r\nThe importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence - uncovered in some of the chapters of this book - that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/M8lXuAdHpDW8tvu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1453,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["The school of Alexander?"]}
Title | Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle? |
Type | Book Section |
Language | English |
Date | 1990 |
Published in | Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence |
Pages | 113-123 |
Categories | no categories |
Author(s) | Blumenthal, Henry J. |
Editor(s) | Sorabji, Richard |
Translator(s) |
[B]oth the content of Themistius’ works, and such evidence as we have of the commentators’ attitudes to him, show that he was predominantly a Peripatetic. In this he stood out against the tendencies of his time. His frequently expressed admiration for Plato does not invalidate this conclusion. Themistius may rightly claim to have been the last major figure in antiquity who was a genuine follower of Aristotle. For him, unlike his contemporaries, Plato does not surpass the master of those who know but he, and Socrates, ‘innanzi agli altri piu presso gli stanno’. [Conclusion, p. 123] |
Online Resources | https://uni-koeln.sciebo.de/s/j4M1Faq3An8bJ7v |
{"_index":"sire","_id":"875","_score":null,"_source":{"id":875,"authors_free":[{"id":1285,"entry_id":875,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":108,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"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":1286,"entry_id":875,"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":"Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle?","main_title":{"title":"Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle?"},"abstract":"[B]oth the content of Themistius\u2019 works, and such evidence as we \r\nhave of the commentators\u2019 attitudes to him, show that he was \r\npredominantly a Peripatetic. In this he stood out against the tendencies \r\nof his time. His frequently expressed admiration for Plato does not \r\ninvalidate this conclusion. Themistius may rightly claim to have been the \r\nlast major figure in antiquity who was a genuine follower of Aristotle. For \r\nhim, unlike his contemporaries, Plato does not surpass the master of \r\nthose who know but he, and Socrates, \u2018innanzi agli altri piu presso gli \r\nstanno\u2019. [Conclusion, p. 123]","btype":2,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/j4M1Faq3An8bJ7v","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":108,"full_name":"Blumenthal, Henry J.","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":133,"full_name":"Sorabji, Richard","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":875,"section_of":1453,"pages":"113-123","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":1453,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":"en","title":"Aristotle Transformed. The ancient commentators and their influence","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"1990","edition_no":null,"free_date":null,"abstract":"This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide.\r\n\r\nThe importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence - uncovered in some of the chapters of this book - that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. [author's abstract]","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/M8lXuAdHpDW8tvu","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":1453,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Duckworth","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"1","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle?"]}