Simplicius: On Aristotle Physics 2

225 Pages·2014·1.03 MB·English

by  Fleet, Barrie

Simplicius
On Aristotle Physics 2
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Simplicius
On Aristotle
Physics 2
Translated by Barrie Fleet
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published in 1997 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition first published 2014
© Barrie Fleet (Appendix, Richard Sorabji) 1997
Barrie Fleet has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
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a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-2732-7
PB: 978-1-7809-3864-6
ePDF: 978-1-7809-3863-9
Acknowledgements
The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from the
following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs,
an independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the
Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello
Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University; the Leventis Foundation; the Humanities
Research Board of the British Academy; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust. The editor wishes to thank
Dr Margaret Atkins, Dr Gillian Clark, Dr Mark Edwards, Pamela Huby, Mr Edward Hussey, Dr Katerina Ierodiakonou
and Professor Donald Russell for their comments, and Drs Rob Wisnovsky and Sylvia Berryman
for their help in preparing the volume for press.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Introduction 1
Textual Emendations 8
Translation 9
Chapter 1 13
Chapter 2 37
Chapter 3 65
Chapter 4 86
Chapter 5 93
Chapter 6 106
Chapter 7 123
Chapter 8 132
Chapter 9 151
Notes 161
Bibliography 188
Appendix: The Commentators 190
English-Greek Glossary 200
Greek-English Index 206
Index of Works Cited in the Notes 213
Subject Index 215
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Introduction
Part One
Richard Sorabji
Book 2 of the Physics is arguably the best introduction to Aristotle.
It contains ideas that are central to his thought, but also of continuing
philosophical importance today.
In Chapter One, he defines nature, because his subject is natural
science, and distinguishes natural objects from artefacts.
In Chapter Two, he distinguishes the subject matter of the natural
scientist from that of the mathematician, although he relates the two.
In Chapter Three, he introduces his seminal distinction of the four
causes, or four modes of explanation.
In Chapters Four, Five and Six, he explains what both luck and
chance are: various kinds of coincidences. He does not yet make the
anti-determinist decision, which I believe he later makes in Metaph.
6.3, that coincidences lack a cause, since they lack an explanation.1
After resuming in Chapter Seven the theory of four causes, he
argues in Chapter Eight that there is purpose in nature, even in the
absence of consciousness. A rival theory of purposeless natural selec-
tion can safely be rejected because it lacks the refinements of the
modern theories of natural selection.2
In Chapter Nine, Aristotle shows how matter or the material cause
explains: not as materialists think as a necessitating cause, but as a
prerequisite presupposed for the attainment of natural purposes.
What does Simplicius add to Aristotle’s bold theory of nature?
Simplicius cites the interpretations of many predecessors, reserv-
ing a special rivalry for the greatest commentator of the former
Aristotelian School, Alexander of Aphrodisias. Alexander’s commen-
tary on the Physics is lost, except for some newly discovered excerpts
from the later books, currently being edited by Marwan Rashed, who
has used them to argue that Simplicius’ reports of Alexander are
unfair to him.3
1 Sorabji (1980) ch. 1.
2 Sorabji (1980) chs 10-11.
3 Rashed (1996).
2 Introduction
Simplicius also provides some very useful summaries of five dis-
tinct definitions of nature (CAG pp. 282,30-285,12), of Aristotle’s first
two chapters (309,2-31), and of his account of luck and chance (356,31-
358,4).
Discussing nature, Simplicius sees a problem about the relation of
soul to nature. Aristotle might arguably have been willing to treat
the souls of living things as one kind of nature,4 and Alexander takes
this to have been Aristotle’s view at least for the case of the suppos-
edly living heavens.5 But the Stoics disagreed, concentrating on the
case of plants. Long before Descartes,6 they rejected Aristotle’s re-
cognition of a non-conscious soul in plants with merely nutritive
functions. Instead they substituted nature as the property of plants
and contrasted soul.7 This may help to explain why Simplicius and
Philoponus as reported by Simplicius8 can take nature and soul to be
distinct agencies in living things. Despite this, they think that living
things can be acted on by both soul and nature, but they also believe
this calls for explanation, and Philoponus complains that Aristotle is
not consistent in explaining celestial motion by soul as well as nature.
Elsewhere, Philoponus identifies soul and nature in living things.9
If soul and nature are distinct, what is the difference? Simplicius
says that nature is a principle that permits things to be moved
passively rather than one that causes motion.10 Aristotle had needed
this idea in order to pave the way for his divine unmoved mover. For
this he uses the rule that whatever moves is moved by something,
and by something sufficiently distinct from itself. But how does this
rule apply to things which move in accordance with their own inner
nature, like falling rocks and rising steam? Their inner nature is not
sufficiently distinct from them for Aristotle’s purposes. He therefore
insists that their motion requires a releaser, which acts as an acci-
dental cause: the person who dislodges the rock, or takes the lid off
the kettle, or boils the water in the first place. The inner nature of
the rock or steam thus permits it to be moved passively by the releaser
or generator. But does this distinguish nature from soul? For in the
same book Aristotle says that the soul of an animal also has to be
stimulated by the outer environment.11 But he there also insists that
4 Sorabji (1988) 222.
5 ap. Simplicium in Cael. 380,29-381,2; 387,12-19; in Phys. 1219,1-7.
6 Descartes, ‘Reply to objections brought against the Second Meditation’, §4, in the
fifth objection, translated by Haldane and Ross, vol. 2, p. 210.
7 Galen, PHP 6.3.7 (SVF 2.710); Clement, Stromateis 2.20 (SVF 2.714).
8 Simplicius below in Phys. 262,13-263,11; 286,20-287,25; 379,28-9; also in Cael.
387,12-19. Philoponus, contra Aristotelem bk. 2, fr. 49-50, translated in this series from
Simplicius, in Cael. 78,12-79,14; 199,27-35 Wildberg (1988) 160-5.
9 Philoponus, in Phys. 2 197,4-5.13-22; 198,7 Lacey (1993).
10 Simplicius below in Phys. 287,10; also in Cael. 387,12-19.
11 Phys. 8.2, 253a7-20; 8.6, 259b1-20; cf. DA 3.10, 433b13-19.
Introduction 3
in a certain sense soul is unmoved, or is moved only in a restricted
sense.12 This makes it different from nature.
In discussing the natural scientist as against the mathematician,
Simplicius quotes a precious summary, at page length, of Posidonius’
lost treatise on Meteorology, on the subject of mathematical astron-
omy.13
On the subject of causes, Simplicius gives the Neoplatonist list
which expands Aristotle’s four causes to six.14 There is the instrumen-
tal cause15 and the paradigmatic cause.16 Aristotle had called his form
or formal cause a paradigm, but he did not accept the Platonic Forms,
which are what constitute the Neoplatonist paradigmatic cause.
Aristotle’s efficient cause is rarely called a poiêtikon cause by
Aristotle himself, but by the later commentators. Moreover, the late
Neoplatonist commentators added a twist. Simplicius tells us of a
whole book written by his teacher Ammonius, to show that Aristotle’s
God was not only a final cause of motion, but also an efficient cause
of existence for the universe.17 A poiêtikon cause is here a sustaining
cause of being, not merely an efficient cause of other effects.
Simplicius reflects another Neoplatonist view about causation
when he allows that causes need not be like their effects, in those
cases where they are greater than the effects.18 He is talking about
the Platonic Forms as causes. An even clearer example in Plotinus is
that of the One which is beyond the Forms.19
Simplicius is also well versed in the Stoic sub-distinctions among
causes.20 The Stoics took from Plato21 the idea of joint causes (sunai-
tia). These used each other in order to produce the effect. Co-operating
causes (sunerga) are defined by the Stoics as intensifying the effects
of other causes or making them easier to achieve. They are not, like
sunaitia, on a more or less equal footing with each other. The Stoic
containing or cohesive cause (sunektikon) is the pneuma, i.e. the
elements of fire and air which sustain things by permeating them and
holding them together.22 Containing causes are also sufficient causes
which explain the behaviour of the things they hold together. They
12 Phys. 8.5, 258a7; a19; DA 1.3, 406a3; b7-8; 1.4, 408b5-18; 2.5, 417a31-b16; 418a1-3.
See Sorabji (1988) ch. 13.
13 Below in Phys. 291,21-292,31.
14 ibid. 316,23-6.
15 ibid. 316,9.10.25; 317,24; 318,24.
16 ibid. 298,17; 316,24; 317,31; cf. p. 363.
17 Simplicius, in Phys. 1361,11-1363,12, translated with discussion in Sorabji (1988)
ch. 15.
18 Below in Phys. 297.
19 Plotinus 6.7.17; Sorabji (1983) 315-16.
20 Below in Phys. 316,25; 326,15-16; 359,18-21; 360,16; 370,15. For the Stoic sub-
distinctions, see Frede (1980) 217-49.
21 Plato, Timaeus 46C.
22 Sorabji (1988) 85-9.