Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators

677 Pages·15.153 MB·English

by  Richard Sorabji (editor)

Aristotle Re-Interpreted:
New Findings on Seven Hundred
Years of the Ancient Commentators
edited by
Richard Sorabji
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing P1c
BLOOMS BURY
LO:-JDO]\; • OXFORD' ]\;EW YORK· ]\;EW DELHI' SYDNEY
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Contributors viii
Introduction: Seven Hundred Years of Commentary and the Sixth
Century Diffusion to other Cultures Richard Sorabji
The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century B C E: Andronicus'
Canon Myrto Hatzimichali 81
2 Boethus' Aristotelian Ontology Marwan Rashed 103
3 The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free Will Problem
and the Role of Alexander Susanne Bobzien 125
4 Alexander of Aphrodisias on Particulars and the Stoic Criterion of
Identity Marwan Rashed 161
5 Themistius and the Problem of Spontaneous Generation Devin Henry 179
6 Spontaneous Generation and its Metaphysics in Themistius' Paraphrase
of Aristotle's Metaphysics 12 Yoav Meyrav 195
7 The Neoplatonic Commentators on 'Spontaneous' Generation James
Wi/berding 211
8 A Rediscovered Categories Commentary: Porphyry(?) with Fragments of
Boethus Riccardo Chiaradonna, Marwan Rashed, and David Sedley 231
9 The Purpose of Porphyry's Rational Animals: A Dialectical Attack on
the Stoics in On Abstinence from Animal Food G. Fay Edwards 263
10 Universals Transformed in the Commentators on Aristotle Richard
Sorabji 291
11 Iamblichus' Noera Theoria of Aristotle's Categories John Dillon 313
12 Produs' Defence of the Timaeus against Aristotle: A Reconstruction
of a Lost Polemical Treatise Carlos Steel 327
13. Smoothing over the Differences: Produs and Ammonius on Plato's
Cratylus and Aristotle's De Interpretatione R. M. van den Berg 353
14. Dating of Philoponus' Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence
from his Teacher Ammonius Richard Sorabji 367
15. John Philoponus' Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle's
De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus Pantelis Golitsis 393
vi Contents
16. Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of
Potentiality Frans A. J. de Haas 413
17. Gnostikos and/or hulikos: Philoponus' Account of the Material
Aspects of Sense-Perception Peter Lautner 437
18. The Last Philosophers of Late Antiquity in the Arabic Tradition
Peter Adamson
453
19. Alexander of Aphrodisias versus John Philoponus in Arabic: A Case
of Mistaken Identity Ahmad Hasnawi 477
20. New Arabic Fragments of Philoponus and their Reinterpretation:
Does the World Lack a Beginning in Time or Take no Time to
Begin? Marwan Rashed 503
21. Simplicius' Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and
Doctrines Philippe Hoffmann and Pantelis Golitsis 531
22. A Philosophical Portrait of Stephanus the Philosopher
Mossman Roueche 541
23. Who Were the Real Authors of the Metaphysics Commentary
Ascribed to Alexander and Ps.-Alexander? Pantelis Golitsis 565
The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Translations 589
Bibliography
595
Index Locorum 625
General Index 661
Introduction: Seven Hundred Years of
Commentary and the Sixth Century Diff usion to
other Cultures
Richard Sorabji
Th e Advance in Knowledge
Th ere has been an exponential increase in exploration of the ancient commentators on
Aristotle, since 1985 when the translation series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle 1
was funded, since 1987 when the fi rst translation appeared, and since 1990, which saw
publication of the series’ introduction to Aristotle’s commentators, A ristotle
Transformed . 2 Th en there were very few experts on the commentators in the world and
the general editor was not one of them. A review of the commentators on Aristotle was
included in the introduction to the three-v olume sourcebook on the commentators on
Aristotle published in 2004, which, however, included little more than the 400 years
from 200 to 600 CE , not the present span of nearly 700 years. 3 Over a hundred volumes
of commentary have been published in English translation in the series since 1987,
some lost in Greek and preserved in Latin, Arabic, or Syriac, and translations are under
way from the surviving Hebrew and Arabic and again from Syriac. It is a sign of the
geometrical progression in discovery that sixteen of the chapters included here were
produced in the last fi ve years, another so fully revised as to be almost a new paper and
only six are older than that.
Th ere are areas in which new detective work has been especially active. New
fragments have been found or made accessible of the early Boethus of Sidon from the
fi rst century BCE , 4 the original advocate and exponent of word by word commentary
on Aristotle, who started up a good number of the subsequent controversies. Some of
the Boethus fragments are addressed in Chapter 2 and, embedded in a new fragment
1 General Editor Richard Sorabji, Duckworth from 1987, Bloomsbury from 2013.
2 Edited by Richard Sorabji (London: Duckworth, 1990; 2nd edn Bloomsbury, 2016).
3 Richard Sorabji, Th e Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600 AD: A Sourcebook , 3 vols (London:
Duckworth, 2004; repr. Bloomsbury, 2013).
4 I use ‘ BCE ’, ‘ CE ’, referring to the common era, not BC or AD , which refer to Christ, when Islam or
faiths other than Christianity are included in the discussion.
1
2 Aristotle Re-Interpreted
of Porphyry, in Chapter 8 below. Th e Porphyry fragment was invisible to the naked eye
but deciphered under multi- spectral lighting, and it is a substantial fragment of what is
possibly the most infl uential commentary of the third century Neoplatonist Porphyry,
the lost larger of two commentaries by him on Aristotle’s C ategories . Turning to later
Neoplatonism, a lost reply to Aristotle by Proclus in defence of Plato’s cosmology is
reconstructed in Chapter 12 from the commentators Philoponus, Simplicius, and
Proclus himself. New fragments of Proclus’ opponent Philoponus, lost in Greek but
preserved in Arabic, are discussed in Chapter 19, and the author of that chapter has
discovered many more fragments of Greek commentary, nearly all surviving in
medieval Arabic, 5 but the most extensive one in Greek, the lost commentary of
Alexander on Aristotle’s Physics Books 4 to 8. It is edited with French commentary and
translation in over 600 pages. Th e vital and transformative study of Arabic has also
made it possible in Chapter 19 to reassign Arabic fragments from Alexander to
Philoponus.
New fragments expand not only our knowledge of the original Greek texts, but also,
when the fragments come from the languages of other cultures, our knowledge of the
infl uence of the Greek texts in those cultures. Th e spread of Greek philosophy to other
cultures is a marked feature of the sixth century CE . One stimulus was the construction
by Ammonius in Alexandria of new introductions to philosophy with defi nitions of
philosophy and of philosophical terms and divisions of philosophical fi elds and of
other philosophical items. Th is became popular as making philosophy more accessible,
and there has been work on these introductions and their spread, fi rst in the sixth
century to Persian and Syriac, 6 then from the eighth century into Arabic, as described
in Chapter 18 and elsewhere7 and in the seventh and eighth centuries to Fathers of the
Greek Church, as described in Chapter 22. Th at chapter also provides a totally diff erent
picture of the Alexandrian philosopher Stephanus, of the spread of his work on
defi nitions and divisions, while Chapter  23 expands the known range of his
commentaries. Th e Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series will match for
comparison the translation of an Armenian version of David the Invincible’s Defi nitions
and Divisions of Philosophy with a translation under way from the surviving Greek
version of that same work. Th e record of conversations on philosophy and science
between the sixth century Athenian philosophers and the Persian king who gave them
refuge in 531 CE will appear as one of the next translations in the series. Th e spread of
Greek Philosophy into Arabic has been the one most intensely studied of all, particularly
in connexion with Philoponus, and is continued in Chapters 18, 19, and 20.
Th ere have been new developments concerning Philoponus, thanks to Pantelis
Golitsis, in studying the dating of his commentaries and of their divergence from his
teacher Ammonius Th ese are the subject of Chapters 14 and 15. Golitsis also studies in
Chapter 23 the twelft h century compilations through Michael of Ephesus of composite
5 See notes 27, 50, 51, 99 for Alexander and Th emistius, for Simplicius notes 289, 298, 299, 300, and for
Philoponus, note 307 and the new fragments of Philoponus in Rashed’s Chapter 20.
6 See also notes 98, 217, 218, 221, 222, 224, 226, 304–6.
7 See also notes 228–233.
Introduction 3
commentaries with the aid of surviving older commentaries, in order to fi ll gaps. In
both contexts, it has become clearer in what ways later commentators used or re-u sed
the interpretations of Aristotle by their teachers or predecessors.
Many, not all, of the chapters below will focus on one commentator, and some on
one or two topics discussed by that commentator. Th e purpose of the introduction is to
provide a setting for these studies by off ering a quick, but more rounded, sketch of the
commentators involved and of the development of the tradition of commentary as
between earlier and later practitioners. Clearly, that does not make it possible to provide
comprehensive details about each commentator. But an extra aid is now available in
French in Richard Goulet, ed., D ictionnaire des philosophes antiques (Paris: CNRS ,
1989-). In many cases, if not all, this major work supplies comprehensive available
details on the lives and works of Greek philosophers, including, of course, the
commentators on Aristotle and, progressing alphabetically, it has published between
1989 and 2016 the volumes up to Tyrsenos. Th e account in the introduction below
off ers snapshots only, and fuller details should be sought in these volumes as they
progress.8
Andronicus: In Athens First Century BCE
Andronicus has been described already by Hans Gottschalk in A ristotle Transformed .
Th e main controversy since then has been on what Gottschalk called Andronicus’
‘critical edition’. Th e reputation of Andronicus in Athens in the fi rst century BCE as the
man whose edition of Aristotle triggered the commentary movement received a check
in the seminal 1997 article of Jonathan Barnes, ‘Roman Aristotle’. 9 Andronicus, he
rightly said, did not produce a critical edition of Aristotle in the modern sense, one that
compares diff erent manuscript copies and emends the text so as to reconstruct as far as
possible the original. What he did do, however, is suggested by two pieces of evidence
discussed by Barnes. According to Porphyry, who took him as a model for his own later
editorial work, Andronicus had assembled separate discussions by Aristotle into the
same place.1 0 In the same breath Porphyry cited his own practice of establishing
a paedagogical order for reading the works being edited, and elsewhere approved
putting Aristotle’s logic fi rst,1 1 a practice followed to this day, and ascribed by Philoponus
to Andronicus, in opposition to the preference of Boethus, who is called Andronicus’
pupil, for putting Physics fi rst.1 2 Th e other piece of evidence was that he wrote a life
of Aristotle and a catalogue describing his works. It is mentioned by Plutarch, but
survives only in shortened form in an Arabic version, which refers to at least fi ve
8 I am very grateful to those who commented on parts of this introduction for me: Gillian Clark on
Porphyry, John Dillon on Iamblichus, Marwan Rashed on Arabic matters and on what I said about
his chapters, Carlos Steel on Proclus, Mossman Roueché on Ammonius and his school.
9 Jonathan Barnes, ‘ Roman Aristotle ’, in Jonathan Barnes and Miriam Griffi n, eds, P hilosophia Togata
II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 1–69, at pp. 21–44.
10 Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 24.
11 Porphyry, in Cat . 59,21–2.
12 Philoponus, i n Cat. 5,15–20.
4 Aristotle Re-Interpreted
books.1 3 In addition to this, he wrote a ‘paraphrase’ of Aristotle’s C ategories , which
Simplicius treats as something less than his pupil Boethus’ ‘exegesis’ (i n Cat . 26,17–20;
30,3–5). Andronicus’ ideas will have become known from his biography and catalogue,
as well as from his paraphrase commentary. He formed a canon of Aristotle’s works,
as well as arranging them in order, and in this he was largely followed except for two
changes. In one, he treated the end of our C ategories as wrongly amalgamated with
the rest; in the other, he rejected as spurious Aristotle’s On Interpretation , because
when its chapter 1 treats spoken sounds as symbols or signs of eff ects produced in the
soul, eff ects which Andronicus takes to be thoughts (n oêmata ), he cannot fi nd the
corresponding passage to which Aristotle refers in his O n the Soul . 14 Boethus was
decisively to reinstate On Interpretation as genuine, and to restore the addendum to the
Categories . In Chapter 1, Myrto Hatzimichali explains why, with one possible exception,
he did not engage in textual emendation. Th is was not because it had not been practised
well before the time of Andronicus. Rather, Andronicus’ project of canon- formation
and arrangement for Aristotle was far more seminal for the commentary movement
than any critical edition could have been.
Andronicus added some further impetus still. 15 Michael Griffi n has elsewhere given
a sense of what Andronicus may have contributed in other ways to the study of the
Categories . For one thing, he asked about the purpose (s kopos ) of Aristotle’s C ategories .
But he also discussed its title and its utility, and why it should be the fi rst to be read of
Aristotle’s works. Th ese four topics discussed by Andronicus were by the sixth century
CE included among the standard topics for discussion in all introductions preceding
the commentaries on Aristotle’s C ategories , so Andronicus was already setting the
scene for more than 500 years later. In addition, his choice of logic as the starting point
prevailed against his younger contemporary Boethus’ preference for physics1 6 except
that by the sixth century a commentary on Porphyry’s I ntroduction (I sagôgê ) tended to
precede in the curriculum the commentary on the C ategories .
Andronicus also wrote a treatise on the division of a genus into species, a favoured
ancient (though unsatisfactory) example being the division of animal into rational and
13 Translated in I. Düring, A ristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg: Elanders, 1957),
pp. 221–31, fi ft h book cited in no. 97, p. 230; supplemented in I. Düring, ‘ Ptolemy’s Vita Aristotelis
rediscovered ’, in R. B. Palmer and R. Hammerton-Kelly, eds, Philomathes, In Memory of Philip Merlan
(Th e Hague: Nijhoff , 1971), pp. 264–9.
14 Ammonius, in Int . 5,28.
15 Th e classic work on the period of Andronicus and Boethus is Paul Moraux, D er Aristotelismus bei
den Griechen von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias: I Die Renaissance des Aristotelismus im
I Jh. v. Chr . (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973). For recent reinterpretation see Michael Griffi n, A ristotle’s
Categories in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), who supplies a much
fuller bibliography at p. 3, n. 23, and his earlier Oxford D.Phil. Dissertation, 2009, Th e Reception of
Aristotle’s Categories c. 80 BC – AD 220 ; Tobias Reinhardt, ‘ Andronicus of Rome and Boethus of
Sidon on Aristotle’s C ategories ’, in Richard Sorabji and Robert W. Sharples, eds, G reek and Roman
Philosophy 100BC- 200 AD , 2 vols (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 513–29,
and, on Boethus on the category of relative, Concetta Luna, ‘ Boéthos de Sidon sur les rélatifs ’, Studia
graeco- arabica 3 (2013), 1–31. Th e publications of the important fi ve- year research project, ed.
Cristina D’Ancona, are available in print (I SSN 2281–2687) and online at < http://learningroads.cfs.
unipi.it/?page_id=111 >.
16 Elias, in Cat . 117,17–118,31.
Introduction 5
other species. At least he wrote on this, if it is Andronicus to whom Boethius refers by
the expression, ‘the later sect of Peripatetic wisdom’.1 7 Andronicus seems to have
insisted on dividing the genus by a genuine diff erentia, not by a mere accident like
paleness, which may or may not belong to humans. In all these ways, Andronicus
encouraged the subsequent focus of early Aristotelian commentary on Aristotle’s
Categories . A new fragment on Andronicus’ discussion of accidental features is included
in the recently discovered fragments of Porphyry in Chapter 8, at 6,9–7,8, and is
analysed there.
Andronicus’ provocative ideas about the Categories were also stimulating to his
younger associate in Athens, Boethus. He reorganised Aristotle’s ten categories
extensively, including them all under Plato’s two distinctions of existing in itself or in
relation to something else, with the alleged result of reducing their number. He treated
Aristotle’s category of When, or at- a- time, as subordinate to Time, which he saw as a
category of its own, and similarly Aristotle’s category of Where, or in- a-place, as
subordinate to Place, which he also treated as a category. Th is last pair of substitutions
did not aff ect the number of categories, but he also placed relation aft er all the categories
as being like a mere sucker or side- shoot. Pamela Huby has suggested the reports
would be compatible if he regarded in itself and in relation as super- categories , with
time and place as categories falling under i n relation and quantity as a category that
exists i n itself . 18 He further proposed an emendation of Aristotle’s second (and
preferred) defi nition of the category of relatives, apparently to protect it from a charge
of circularity.
Boethus of Sidon in Athens First Century BCE
Boethus of Sidon is crucial for the tradition of commentary on Aristotle, in that he is
said to have recommended the remarkable project of writing a w ord by word
commentary on Aristotle’s C ategories (e xêgoumenos kath’ hekastên lexin ), 19 and he did
write such a commentary on Aristotle’s C ategories . Th is was eventually to have a
momentous infl uence on the commentary tradition, although the earliest surviving
commentaries aft er him are not as thorough.2 0
In addition, Boethus, in defending Aristotle’s system, seems to have downgraded his
key terms, interpreting them as belonging to the lowest available level. Th is is true of
Aristotle’s form, of diff erentia, of universal, and of his fi rst fi gure of syllogism. In
Chapter 2, Marwan Rashed takes up Boethus’ downgrading of form as non- substance
on the basis of Aristotle’s requirement in C ategories 2a11–13; 3a7–9, that a substance is
a subject of predicates, and not a predicate, so not in a subject. From this, Simplicius
17 Boethius, D e Divisione 891–2.
18 Pamela Huby, ‘An excerpt from Boethus of Sidon’s commentary on the C ategories ?’, Classical
Quarterly 31 (1981), 398–409, citing Simplicius, in Cat 63,22; 347,19–21; 134,5; 157,18–21.
19 Reported by Simplicius, i n Cat. 30,2.
20 On the origin of commentaries on Aristotle, see Michael Griffi n, A ristotle’s Categories in the Early
Roman Empire (n. 15 above).
6 Aristotle Re-Interpreted
tells us,2 1 Boethus concluded that, although a compound of matter and form, like
Socrates, can be a substance, and so can matter, for example the fl esh and bones of
Socrates, this is not possible for the f orm of Socrates, his soul. His form cannot be a
substance, because form, though not mentioned in Aristotle’s Categories , is said in his
Physics 4.3, to be present in matter. Th is exclusion of form was to prove unacceptable
more than two hundred years later to Aristotle’s greatest defender, Alexander of
Aphrodisias, discussed below in Chapters 3 and 4, because in works other than the
Categories , Aristotle treats soul as substance, even though it is i n body as a subject
(Aristotle, De Anima ( DA ) or On the Soul 2.1). Aristotle’s M etaphysics Book 7 also
treats form as a good candidate for being substance, and M etaphysics 8 speaks as if a
diff erent criterion for substancehood had already been implied in Book 7 (see 7.17):
the cause of a thing’s being. 22 Alexander himself corrected Boethus2 3 by holding that
form is a part of the compound substance, and a p art of a substance is a substance.
Rashed in Chapter 2 below cites a treatise in Arabic O n Diff erence , existing in two
versions, which he argues come from a lost Qu estion about diff erentiae by Alexander.2 4
It insists that the diff erentia of a genus, for example rational as diff erentiating a species
of animal, is substance because it is a p art of a substance, apparently because the
diff erentia (rational) is form and form is p art of the genus (animal). Th e Question also
criticises someone who denies this by again relying on one of the criteria in Aristotle’s
Categories for substancehood (just as Boethus relied on another one in his
disqualifi cation of form from substancehood), and this is one of Rashed’s reasons for
thinking that Alexander’s opponent is Boethus. Th is time, the unsatisfi ed criterion is
that substances receive contrary characteristics. Alexander in the Arabic version replies
that it is not diff erentiae but individual substances that have to receive contraries.
Riccardo Chiaradonna has studied Boethus’ downgrading also of universals, again
by reference to the C ategories ’ defi nition of substance. On this ground, universals are
not even a something (a Stoic category, lower than substance). Simplicius tells us:
‘Boethus says fi rst that the universal does not even exist in reality (e inai en hupostasei ),
according to Aristotle, and even if it did have any reality, it would not be a something .
Aristotle rather said it was in something’.2 5 Chiaradonna concludes from a discussion
of a number of passages that Boethus thought of a universal as nothing but a collection
of particulars. Th e recently recovered fragments of Porphyry’s lost commentary on the
Categories in Chapter 8 below, speaking of animal, similarly say ‘none of these generic
items is a subject’. 26 Th e text of Porphyry translated and analysed in this chapter
21 Simplicius, i n Cat . 78,5–20.
22 Aristotle, Metaphysics 8, 1043a2–4; b13–14, aft er an opening at 1042a3–4 which announces
recapitulation and fi nishing touches (so Christof Rapp in a lecture in Oxford).
23 Alexander, D A ( On the Soul ) 6,2–6.
24 Earlier in Marwan Rashed, L ’Essentialisme (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), pp. 63–4 and 76; ‘Priorité de
l’ EIDOS ou du GENOS entre Andronicos et Alexandre: vestiges arabes et grecs inédits’, Arabic
Sciences and Philosophy 14 (2004), 9–63, at 44, cf. 29–30.
25 Simplicius, i n Cat . 50,5–8; cf. Dexippus, i n Cat. 22,32–3. Discussed by Riccardo Chiaradonna,
‘ Alexander, Boethus and the other Peripatetics: Th e Th eory of Universals in the Aristotelian
Commentators ’, in R. Chiaradonna and G. Galluzzo, eds, U niversals in Ancient Philosophy (Pisa:
Edizioni della Normale, 2013), pp. 299–328.
26 p. 3, lines 16–26.