{"_index":"sire","_type":"_doc","_id":"1534","_score":null,"_ignored":["booksection.book.abstract.keyword"],"_source":{"id":1534,"authors_free":[{"id":2673,"entry_id":1534,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":null},{"id":2674,"entry_id":1534,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Sorabji, Richard","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":null}],"entry_title":"Universals Transformed in the Commentators on Aristotle","main_title":{"title":"Universals Transformed in the Commentators on Aristotle"},"abstract":"This paper revises my Introduction to the translation of Philoponus, in Cat. by Riin Sirkel, Martin Tweedale, and John Harris (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), which in turn superseded my \u2018Universals Transformed: The First Th ousand Years aft er Plato \u2019, in P. F. Strawson and Arindam Chakrabarti, eds, Universals, Concepts and Qualities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 105\u201325. Aristotle regarded Plato\u2019s supreme substances, his Ideas or Forms, as being universals, as opposed to particulars, whereas he himself treated universals as only secondary substances, or as not deserving the title of substances at all. I shall start with his treatment of Plato\u2019s Ideas. He says that Plato\u2019s postulation of Ideas grew out of Socrates\u2019 search for defi nitions which provided not mere instances of some kind of thing, but a formula which applied universally to every instance of the kind. He added that Platonists made Plato\u2019s Ideas universal (katholou). One of his objections to Plato\u2019s Ideas was that they were meant to explain the coming into being of things. But to explain coming into being, you need a trigger (to kin\u00eason), whereas Ideas were meant to be unchanging, so as to serve as objects of definition, and so are not suitable as triggers. \r\nLet me survey what transformations we have noticed in the idea of universals in the tradition of ancient commentary on Aristotle. Boethus downgraded them. Alexander multiplied grades, going beyond Aristotle by including as a grade on the same scale conceptual universals, but ameliorated the low status of both grades by giving the non-conceptual ones certain explanatory roles. He also innovated in discussing Aristotle\u2019s rejection of Plato\u2019s Ideas by saying that even if Ideas and particulars were synonymous, sharing both name and definition, yet the definition might not be properly shared by the particular. Porphyry followed Alexander by accepting multigrade universals, but Ammonius influenced posterity by associating Porphyry with the idea that only concepts are universals. Proclus and Simplicius drew from Aristotle\u2019s concepts in Alexander when they gave reasons why Aristotle was wrong on both counts about Plato\u2019s Ideas: Ideas were not universals, except in a qualified sense, but they were causes. Proclus accepted three levels of reality: Ideas before the many particulars and two grades of universal, one in the many particulars and a conceptual one modelled after the many particulars. His pupil Ammonius accepted three levels, but transformed the highest one into non-universal concepts in the mind of Plato\u2019s Creator God. This was the first of two steps in presenting Aristotle as agreeing with Plato, contrary to the complaints of Proclus, because Aristotle\u2019s God was a thinker who entertained concepts in his mind. Ammonius\u2019 harmonisation of Aristotle with Plato was completed by rejecting the claim of Proclus, and of Proclus\u2019 teacher Syrianus, that Aristotle did not recognise his own arguments as implying that God was a Creator, just as Plato thought. Philoponus diverged from Ammonius, and from Ammonius\u2019 anonymous editor, by giving to concepts the role of being what we define and predicate. But only in his theological work did he reach the final transformation of making concepts into the only universals, thus concluding that the Christian Trinity consisted of three godheads having no unity except as a universal Godhead existing only in our minds.\r\n[introduction\/conclusion]","btype":2,"date":"2016","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/4eYShYTAQsr6FeG","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1534,"section_of":1419,"pages":"291-312","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":["Universals Transformed in the Commentators on Aristotle"]}