This volume completes, starting from chapter 6, the commentary by the young Philoponus on Aristotle's Categories, chapters 1-5 of which were previously published in this series. This ancient commentary was the first work in the Aristotelian syllabus after a general introduction to Aristotle by the same author. It is influenced by an extant short anonymous record of his teacher Ammonius' lecturees on the same work, but Philoponus' commentary is two and a half times as long as that anonymous record, and (...) includes special contributions of Philoponus' own, for example in philology, Christian theology and in disagreements with Aristotle. This English translation of Philoponus' work is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. (shrink)

Seit dem 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert werden die Schriften von Aristoteles kommentiert. Diese Ausgabe enthält griechische Kommentare zu seinem Werk vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr., u. a. von Alexander von Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in griechischer Sprache.

Philoponus has been identified as the founder in dynamics of the theory of impetus, an inner force impressed from without, which, in its later recurrence, has been hailed as a scientific revolution. His commentary is translated here without the previously translated excursus, the Corollary on Void, also available in this series. Philoponus rejects Aristotle's attack on the very idea of void and of the possibility of motion in it, even though he thinks that void never occurs in fact. Philoponus' argument (...) was later to be praised by Galileo. This volume contains the first English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography. (shrink)

This is a post-Aristotelian Greek philosophical text, written at a crucial moment in the defeat of paganism by Christianity, AD 529, when the Emporor Justinian closed the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. Philoponus in Alexandria was a brilliant Christian philosopher, steeped in Neoplatanism, who turned the pagans' ideas against them. Here he attacks the most devout of the earlier Athenian pagan philosophers, Proclus, defending the distinctively Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' eighteen arguments to the contrary, (...) which are discussed in eighteen chapters. Chapters 1-5 are translated in this volume. (shrink)

Seit dem 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert werden die Schriften von Aristoteles kommentiert. Diese Ausgabe enthält griechische Kommentare zu seinem Werk vom 3. bis 8. Jahrhundert n. Chr., u. a. von Alexander von Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius in griechischer Sprache.

In this, the first half of Philoponus' analysis of book one of "Aristotle's Physics", the principal themes are metaphysical. Aristotle's opening chapter in the "Physics" is an abstract reflection on methodology for the investigation of nature, 'physics'. Aristotle suggests that one must proceed from things that are familiar but vague, and derive more precise but less obvious principles to constitute genuine knowledge. His controversial claim that this is to progress from the universal to the more particular occasions extensive apologetic exegesis, (...) typical of Philoponus' meticulous and somewhat pedantic method. Philoponus explains away the apparent conflict between the 'didactic method' (unavoidable in physics) and the strict demonstrative method described in the "Analytics". After 20 pages on chapter 1, Philoponus devotes the remaining 66 pages to Aristotle's objections to two major Presocratic thinkers, Parmenides and Melissus. Aristotle included these thinkers as an aside, because they were not engaged in physics, but in questioning the very basis of physics. Philoponus investigates Aristotle's claims about the relation between a science and its axioms, explores alternative ways of formalising Aristotle's refutation of Eleatic monism and provides a sustained critique of Aristotle's analysis of the Eleatics' purported mistakes about unity and being. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In der Geschichte der Logik spielt die Darstellung verschiedener formallogischer Sachverhalte in veranschaulichenden Figuren eine grosse Rolle. Eines der bekanntesten Beispiele solcher Figuren ist die beruhmte pons asinorum oder Eselsbrucke. Diese Figur findet sich zum erstenmal in dem Kommentar des Johannes Philoponos zu den Ersten Analytiken des Aristoteles. Die griechischen Aristoteliker haben einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung der Syllogistik geleistet. Einige ihrer Beitrage - wie dieser der Eselsbrucke - wurden durch Averroes und Albert den Grossen der lateinischen Tradition weitergegeben. Die (...) meisten haben aber auf die Ubersetzertatigkeit des 16. Jahrhunderts warten mussen, bevor sie im Rahmen der Argumentationstheorie voll zur Geltung kamen. (shrink)

The ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle constitute a large body of Greek philosophical writings, not previously translated into European languages. This volume includes notes and indexes and forms part of a series to fill this gap.

The objective of this paper is to examine the thought of John Philoponus contra Aristotle, as it pertains to consciousness and its emergence, in light of both contemporary cosmology and philosophy. It will be argued that in an eternal universe the emergence of consciousness is an impossibility. The inspiration for this line of reasoning is found in Philoponus’ sixth century arguments against Aristotle on the eternity of the world. It will be shown that much of Philoponus’ argumentation is corroborated by (...) contemporary cosmology and philosophy. (shrink)

One of the issues that deeply interested the philosophers of late antiquity, the Ancient Greek Commentators, concerns the priority of substances. While questions concerning ontological priority have recently attracted attention in Aristotelian scholarship and contemporary metaphysics, the Commentators’ discussions have not yet received the attention they deserve. My aim is to start to fill in this gap, by focusing on John Philoponus’s account of the priority of substances in his commentary on Aristotle’s "Categories". In particular, I aim to show how (...) Philoponus develops and defends the view that, while particular substances enjoy priority over accidents and concepts (“universals after the many”), they do not enjoy priority over all other things. Rather, a certain type of universal substance (“universals prior to the many”) enjoys priority over particulars. (shrink)

The Neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle’s works have always been considered somehow suspicious. That is partly related to the doctrinal commitments of the commentators, partly with the hermeneutical strategies to which they seem to recur. Both of these reasons have also give place to the accusation of distortion and misunderstanding of Aristotle’s philosophy. In the following paper I want to perform an exercise of disclosing the hermeneutical procedure that one of this commentators applies to one of the passages of the first (...) book of the De Anima. The commentator is Philoponus, the passage is the refutation of the soul-harmony theory. My aim is to show that, despite the doctrinal commitments that the commentator may have, his methodology follows Aristotelian guidelines. I hope that this could open perspectives on the value that the commentators must have as philosophers, rather than merely interpreters or paraphrasers. (shrink)

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements he first formulated of logical validity and explanatoriness. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration (...) over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27 34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science is the same in genus as the superordinate, but different in species. (shrink)

This is the first full discussion of Philoponus' account of matter.

This book examines the place of physical bodies, a major topic of natural philosophy that has occupied philosophers since antiquity. Aristotle's conceptions of place (topos) and the void (kenon), as expounded in the 'Physics', were systematically repudiated by John Philoponus (ca. 485-570) in his philosophical commentary on that work. The primary philosophical concern of the present study is the in-depth investigation of the concept of place established by Philoponus, putting forward the claim that the latter offers satisfactory solutions to problems (...) raised by Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition regarding the nature of place. Philoponus' account proposes a specific physical model of how physical bodies exist and move in place, and regards place as an intrinsic reality of the physical cosmos. Due to exactly this model, his account may be considered as strictly pertaining to the study of physics, thereby constituting a remarkable episode in the history of philosophy and science. (shrink)

Originally published in 1991. Philoponus’ long commentary on Aristotle’s definition of light sets up the major concerns, both in optics and theory of light, that is discussed here. Light was of special interest in Neoplatonism because of its being something incorporeal in the world of natural bodies and therefore had a special role in the philosophical analysis of the interpenetration of bodies and also as a paradigm for the soul-body problem. The material investigated in this book contains much about the (...) physiology of vision as well as the propagation of light. Several chapters investigate the philosophical theory and its origins in ‘multiplication of species.’ These issues in the history of science philosophy are looked at further and an analysis is offered of the development of the distinction between Aristotle’s kinesis and energeia. The book covers a substantial amount of the philosophy of mathematical science from the point of view of Philoponus, drawing on more of his works relating to three dimensionality. (shrink)

According to Philoponus, the activity of drawing syllogisms is a dynamic operation. Following the classical idea that actions are specified by their objects and habitual powers by their actions, Philoponus concludes that only a dynamic power can elicit the act of syllogizing. This power is identified with discursive reasoning (dianoia). Imagination, on the contrary, is a static power, that cannot elicit that particular motion of drawing a syllogistic inference. The issue, however, is not entirely uncontroversial, because Ammonius maintains that sophistical (...) syllogisms can only be formed by imagination, since they involve “empty concepts” as terms and only imagination can form such concepts. In this paper I will reconstruct Philoponus’ and Ammonius’ theories about the “activity” of syllogizing, and I shall explain how Philoponus can deal with sophistical syllogisms in a consistent way. (shrink)

Aristotle’s notion of experience occupies an important place in his account of scientific understanding and its methodology. It is linked, not only to sense-perception and the principles of skill and scientific understanding, but also, methodologically, to ἐπαγωγή. Due to its various involvements it has a complex job to perform. Such a complexity – or Janus-face – gives rise to many questions concerning its status and content. Many of these questions were raised in later antiquity. In the introductory part of the (...) paper I shall give a very brief summary of Aristotle’s notion of experience, concentrating on issues that will be relevant next, and then discuss the explanation we find in a commentary which has come down to us under the name of Philoponus. I do it in the hope that the discussion sheds light on novelties in the commentator’s approach which deserve attention. (shrink)

The paper aims to show that Philoponus’ theory of sense-perception does not fit in with the spiritualist claim that the sensory process does not involve an extra material change in the sense-organ. Both the specific sense-organs and the primary sense-organ contract or expand in the perceptual process. On the other hand, the literalist claim needs to be modified as well since only the tactile sense-organ takes on the relevant qualities. Contraction or expansion in the sense-organ is triggered, not by physical (...) changes in the medium, but by the formal activities arising from the perceptible objects: colours make the visual sense-organ contract or expand. At the level of sense-organs, the physiological process underlying sense-perception has three stages. The change in specific sense-organ will be transmitted to the primary sense-organ of the particular sense , and then reaches the common sense-organ, the pneuma. The primary sense-organs are spatially distinguishable parts of the common sense-organ which is otherwise homogeneous, not allowing for qualitative differences. The homogeneity of the pneuma establishes the unity of sense-perception at the level of physiological processes. (shrink)

It has been strongly disputed that Philoponus is the author of the commentary on the third book ofDe Animaprinted in vol. xv ofCAGunder his name, and Stephanus of Alexandria has been taken to be its real author. The evidence for the authorship of Stephanus is as follows: (I)Codex Parisinus gr. 1914, written in the twelfth century, has an adscript by a later hand saying βιβλ⋯ον τρ⋯τον ⋯π⋯ ϕωνης στεϕ⋯νου (‘third book from the voice of Stephanus’), and the same appears in (...) the fifteenth-centuryCodex Estensisiii F 8. (II) In 543.9 there is a clause saying ὡς ⋯ν τῷ περ⋯ ⋯ρμηνε⋯ας ⋯μ⋯θομεν (‘as we learnt in theDe Interpretatione’), which was taken by M. Hayduck to be direct reference to Stephanus' commentary on theDe Interpretatione, edited also by Hayduck in vol. xiii/3 ofCAG. (III) The third book, says Hayduck, is short (brevis) and jejune (jejunus), in contrast to the verbosity of the preceding two books. (IV) The commentary on the third book ofDe Animais divided into lectures (πρ⋯ξεις), but the first two books are not. (V) Some locutions are used constantly in the third book and in Stephanus' inDe Interpretationeas well. (VI) In theCodex Vaticanus gr. 241 fol. 6 (fourteenth century) we are told that Stephanus also wrote a commentary on theDe Anima. (shrink)

In commenting on Aristotle’s κοινότατος λόγος of the soul – which portrays it as ‘the first actuality of a natural body having life in potentiality’– Philoponus suggests that seeds and embryos are not potentially alive bodies, despite ‘having become ready to receive life from the soul’ (209.17). To the extent that something’s suitability to be ensouled turns it eo ipso into a potentially alive thing, Philoponus’ remark may betray a contradiction, that can be handled by tinkering with the scope of (...) a closely attached adverb. This paper argues that no such intervention is required, however, and that apparent inconsistencies vanish as soon as Neoplatonic embryology and Philoponus’ lexical background are given their due. (shrink)