Philoponus: Against Proclus On the Eternity of the World 6-8

209 Pages·2005·2.01 MB·English

by  Proclus

PHILOPONUS
Against Proclus
On the Eternity of
the World 6-8
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PHILOPONUS
Against Proclus
On the Eternity of
the World 6-8
Translated by
Michael Share
Duckworth
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Introduction, t(cid:51)r(cid:68)a(cid:83)n(cid:72)s(cid:85)(cid:69)la(cid:68)(cid:70)t(cid:78)io(cid:3)(cid:72)n(cid:71) (cid:76)a(cid:87)(cid:76)n(cid:82)(cid:81)d(cid:3) (cid:192)n(cid:85)o(cid:86)t(cid:87)(cid:3)e(cid:83)s(cid:88) (cid:69)©(cid:79)(cid:76) (cid:86)2(cid:75)0(cid:72)0(cid:71)5(cid:3)(cid:21) (cid:19)b(cid:20)y(cid:23) (cid:3)Michael Share
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Departures from Rabe’s Text 7
Translation 11
Chapter 6 13
Chapter 7 87
Chapter 8 116
Notes 129
Select Bibliography 155
English-Greek Glossary 157
Greek-English Index 166
Subject Index 191
Index of Passages Cited 199
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Preface
Richard Sorabji
This volume continues the translation of Philoponus’ work in 18 chap-
ters, which is one of the most interesting of all post-Aristotelian Greek
philosophical texts. It was written at a crucial moment in the defeat of
paganism by Christianity. In 529 AD, the Emperor Justinian put an end
to teaching in the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens, where Proclus
had in the fifth century AD been the most devout pagan teacher, St
Benedict is thought to have founded the monastery in Monte Cassino,
and, again on behalf of Christianity, Philoponus in Alexandria attacked
Proclus’ arguments that the universe had no beginning in his Against
Proclus On the Eternity of the World. Philoponus was one of the cleverest
of the Neoplatonist philosophers, a pupil of Ammonius in Alexandria,
but he was a Christian, and he used his profound knowledge of the
Neoplatonist and Aristotelian traditions to turn the pagans’ own views
against themselves.
Our text records, and replies to, the 18 arguments of Proclus’ Against
the Christians on the Eternity of the World, as well as quoting a little of
Proclus’ Examination of Aristotle’s Objections to Plato’s Timaeus. It will
suffice to indicate just a few of the original arguments and ideas in chapters
6 to 8, and I shall select two issues from the longest chapter, 6.
In VI.29, 238,3-240,9; and VIII.1, 297, 21-300,2, Philoponus reports
that Proclus had adapted an argument from Aristotle’s Physics 8.10.
Since bodies are finite in size, the largest body, the universe, cannot
house the infinite power needed to maintain it in existence (Aristotle
had only said ‘in motion’) for ever. That power must therefore be housed
in something incorporeal and external to it, God. Proclus in Athens
laments Aristotle’s failure to apply the argument to existence as well as
to motion. But Proclus’ pupil Ammonius in Alexandria claimed that this
was what Aristotle had intended (so Simplicius in Phys. 1363,4-12), and
this interpretation of Aristotle was to prevail.
Philoponus now infers from Proclus’ view that the world is perishable
so far as its own nature is concerned and that hence God has to override
its nature. The imperishability it acquires from God is therefore above
its nature or super-natural (huper phusin), 237,10-15; 240,22. Conse-
viii Preface
quently, Philoponus infers, 242,15-22, since it is perishable so far as its
own nature is concerned, it is also subject to being generated with a
beginning. As Lindsay Judson has pointed out, there is a tacit assump-
tion here that God could not override its natural generability in the way
he overrides its natural perishability.1 The argument is set out more
clearly in the Arabic summary of a lost longer exposition by Philoponus.2
At VI.7-8, Philoponus makes much of Plato himself having described
the universe in Timaeus 27C, 28B-C, 37D-38C as ‘generated’. His
discussion reveals the techniques of interpretation applied to Plato’s
text by others. In VI.8, 145,13-147,25, we learn that the Middle Platon-
ist Taurus had tried to evade the most obvious implication of ‘generated’
by distinguishing 4 alternative senses of ‘generated’, and the Neoplaton-
ist Porphyry had tried to add others. Two of Taurus’ meanings had been
exploited by Proclus. Taurus had also, as we learn in VI.22, 191,15ff.,
interpreted Plato’s question at Timaeus 27C whether the universe has
come to be, or is ungenerated, as if the ‘or’ meant ‘if’. Others had
emended Plato’s text. Alexander is said at VI.27, 214,10-20, to have
reported others as emending ‘or’ to ‘even though’, while others again,
according to Philoponus at VI.22, 193,9-11, had emended ‘ungenerated’
(agenês) to ‘ever in process of generation’ (aeigenês). Aristotle had
already recorded that some people took Plato’s talk of the universe
having been generated to be a fiction like that used by geometers
drawing diagrams, to clarify the structure of something by showing it
being built up in sequences, when it was never really so built, On the
Heavens 279b32 - 280a10. Here we have a window onto ancient tech-
niques of textual criticism.
*
A new introduction to the Commentators will appear in R.R.K. Sorabji,
The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: A Sourcebook, Lon-
don, Duckworth, 2004.
Notes
1. Lindsay Judson, ‘God or nature? Philoponus on generability and perish-
ability’, in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian
Science, London & Ithaca, NY 1987. See also Richard Sorabji, Matter, Space and
Motion, London & Ithaca, NY 1988, ch. 15.
2. Translated by S. Pines, ‘An Arabic summary of a lost work of John
Philoponus’, Israel Oriental Studies 2, 1972, 320-52, at 323-4, and reproduced
in Sorabji Matter, Space and Motion, London & Ithaca, NY 1988, ch. 15.
Introduction
This translation is made from Rabe’s 1899 Teubner edition,1 the only
modern critical edition of the Greek text. Departures from Rabe’s text,
many of which are based on Rabe’s own suggestions in the critical
apparatus, are mentioned in the notes as they occur and listed sepa-
rately in front of the translation. Words in square brackets in the
translation do not occur in the Greek but have been inserted to clarify
the sense. Greek words are occasionally given in transliteration when it
is thought their presence may help the reader.
The single manuscript on which our knowledge of the Greek text of
Philoponus’ work is based is incomplete at either end, and the original
title of the work is quite uncertain. I discussed the ancient references to
the work and the status of Rabe’s Latin title, on which the English title
on the title-page of this volume is based, in the introduction to my
translation of its first five chapters in this series, to which I refer the
reader. In this introduction and in the notes I shall refer to Philoponus’
work as Aet., an abbreviation based on the Latin title.
Proclus’ proofs have recently been re-edited and translated into
English by Helen S. Lang and A.D. Macro and there is an earlier English
translation of them by the English Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor and a
German one by Matthias Baltes.2 In contrast, only small portions of
Philoponus’ refutations of them have ever been translated into any
modern language.
Since they also apply here, it is probably worth repeating the remarks
I made in the introduction to my translation of chapters 1-5 of Aet. on
some of my translation decisions.3
In Plato’s Timaeus, from which much of the terminology used in Aet.
and in the creation debate in general derives, the world, or universe, is
variously referred to as ho kosmos,ho ouranos or to pan.
kosmos originally meant ‘order’ and, secondarily, ‘adornment’, and it
never lost these connotations, but by Plato’s day the meaning ‘world-
order’ or simply ‘world’ was well-established. Common English equiva-
lents are ‘cosmos’ and ‘world’ and I have opted for the latter.4
ouranos literally means ‘heaven’ but in the Timaeus Plato uses it
interchangeably with kosmos (cf. Tim. 28B) and Aristotle at Cael. 278b
ff. says that it may be used of (a) the outermost circumference of the
universe, (b) the heavens as a whole, including the stars, the sun, the