Alexander of Aphrodisias: Supplement to On the Soul

320 Pages·2014·16.516 MB·English

by  Alexander of Aphrodisias, Robert W Sharples

ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS
Supplement to On the Soul
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Alexander of
Aphrodisias
Supplement to
On the Soul
Translated by
R. W. Sharpies
B L O O MS B U RY
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published in 2004 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition first published 2014
© R.W. Sharpies, 2004
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBNHB: 978-0-7156-3236-9
PB: 978-1-4725-5773-5
ePDF: 978-1-4725-0109-7
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Acknowledgements
The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from
the following resources: 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); Centra Internazionale A.
Beltrame di Storia della Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University;
the Leventis Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Borad of the British Academy;
the Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; the
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO/GW). The editor wishes to thank
Pamela Huby, Inna Kupreeva, Alan Lacey, JanOpsomer, and RobertTodd for their comments.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter-headings 9
Translation 11
Notes on the Text 238
Abbreviations and Bibliography 247
English-Greek Glossary 261
Greek-English Index 277
Index of Passages Cited 305
Subject Index 311
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1
Introduction
This Supplement to Alexander of Aphrodisias' book On the Soul is
transmitted in the MSS as the second book of that work. In fact it
consists of a series of short and more or less independent pieces.
Its description as a Mantissa - literally 'makeweight' - or Supplement
is due to Freudenthal,2 and was adopted by Ivo Bruns who edited
the Greek text in 1887.
Subsequently Bruns argued (1892, xii-xiii) that the Mantissa
contained texts of two types. One, the majority, consists of list of
arguments - or sometimes just indications of how one might
develop an argument - against specific theses, often identifiably
those of rival philosophical schools. Into this category fall §§3, 4, 6,
14, 20 (against the Stoics), §7 against a view held by Numenius,
and §§9-13 against non-Peripatetic theories of vision. §8 too may be
directed against the Stoics, though the issue to which it relates had
been controversial within Aristotelianism; §18 and perhaps §19
(which differs in arguing for a thesis rather than attacking one)
relate rather to discussion of the interpretation of Aristotle within
the Peripatetic school. That the context of these collections was a
practical one of live debate is suggested, as Bruns notes, by such
passages as 113,28, 114,6-9, 118,7-8 and 122,21.
Bruns 1892, xii regards the remaining sections as forming a
single group, 'comments completed by Alexander himself and
published separately'. In fact they are more heterogeneous than
this might suggest. §§1 and 25 are reworkings in condensed form
of themes treated at more length by Alexander elsewhere; §1
gives a general account of the soul, treated at much greater length
in Alexander's D(e) A(nima), and §25 appears to be a reworking of
material from his (De) Far(o) into what is at least superficially a
more organised and positive exposition of his own distinctive
1 This Introduction is an abridgement of material discussed more fully
in Sharpies (forthcoming, 2).
2 Bruns 1887, v.
2 Introduction
doctrine of fate. §23, an account of responsibility ('what depends
on us', to eph' hemiri), also draws on and develops arguments in
Fat. and can be seen as a development of one particular aspect of
that work; it relates to several of the Quaestiones and Ethical
Problems attributed to Alexander. §§15 and 16 set out aspects of
the Aristotelian theory of vision and colour, showing a close
relation to discussions in Alexander's DA and also in his commen-
tary on Aristotle's De sensu; no doubt if we possessed Alexander's
commentary on Aristotle's DA, of which commentary Accattino
and Donini (1996, vii-viii) have suggested Alexander's own DA is an
abridgement, parallels would be apparent there too. The latter part
of §15 is an attempt to explain the perception of distance and
movement within the Aristotelian theory of vision, and can plausi-
bly be seen as a reaction to criticisms such as those made by
Galen. The theme of §16 is also discussed in Quaestio 1.2 attrib-
uted to Alexander.
§§5 and §21 are arguments for particular points of interpretation
within Aristotelian doctrine, which differ from texts like §§8 and 19
chiefly by not being cast in the form of a sequence of arguments.
(§5 shows some affinity to such a sequence, but also to the form of
a problem in the narrow sense of that term.) §5 is linked by
subject-matter both with Alexander, DA 14,24-15,5, and with
Quaest. 1.8, 1.17 and 1.26. The starting-point of §21 is a remark in
Aristotle's Metaphysics. §24 is an orthodox exposition of the
Aristotelian doctrine of chance, disregarding rather than develop-
ing difficulties raised by Fat; it may be connected in some way
with Alexander's lost Physics commentary. (I do not however wish
to suggest that these texts are simply extracts from the commen-
taries; their form is too self-contained to suggest that they have
been taken from the commentaries without any recasting.)
Accattino 2001 persuasively argues that §2, On Intellect, which
has historically been the most influential of the entire collection, is
an early work by Alexander. It is composed of three originally
separate sections, of which the first (A) is an exposition of Alexan-
der's doctrine of intellect, developed and in important respects
modified in his later DA, while the second and third sections (B
and C) record treatments of the topic which *he heard in school
discussion, probably from one of his teachers, followed in B by his
own development of the argument and in C by his rejection of it.
Introduction 3
§17 is a criticism of earlier attempts to formulate an Aristotelian
view on the characteristically Stoic topic of 'the first appropriate
thing'; §22 is the report of an eccentric defence of non-determinist
reponsibility within the Aristotelian system, which it is difficult to
believe expresses views Alexander himself ever held, though he
may have recorded them. (See however below, 205 n.683).
Connections in subject-matter cut across these distinctions by
literary form. §§9-16 form a sequence relating to the theory of
vision, and may have a connection to Alexander's lost work On
How We See (see below, introduction to §9) and to the treatise On
Vision of his teacher Sosigenes. This leads to the broader question
of the thematic unity of the collection as a whole. Bruns 1892, xiii
took the minimalist view that it was labelled 'On the Soul' simply
because that is the theme of its first section; and indeed in the
primary MS, V (Venetus Marcianus gr. 258), §1 has no separate
title of its own. (See below, 88-9.) However, the collection does
seem to constitute a series of texts which have been arranged,
without regard to their literary form, approximately in the
sequence in which topics are discussed in Aristotle's DA and,
following it, Alexander's. Thus §1 sets out the general doctrine of
soul; §§3-6 relate to general issues concerning the hylomorphic
theory, with implications for the relation between body and soul,
and §2 could have been placed where it is because of its denial of
individual immortality to the human intellect (an issue which is
raised early in Aristotle's DA at 1.1 403a3-10, 2.1 413a6-7), even
though the principal discussion of intellect comes toward the end
of that work). §§7 and 8 could be seen as having implications, not
indeed spelled out, for nutrition and respiration respectively;
§§9-16 on vision follow them, as the account of sensation follows
the general account of soul and that of nutritive soul in Aristotle,
DA and Alexander, DA; and §§17-20 and 22-25 are in the broadest
sense concerned with ethics, which could be loosely linked with
the account of the appetitive faculty in Aristotle, DA 3.9-11 and
Alexander, DA73, 14-80,15.
The fit is indeed a loose one, but the arrangement of sections
does seem to have an internal logic, and one bearing at least some
relationship to Aristotle, DA. And such an arrangement would not
be without parallel in the collections of minor texts attributed to
Alexander; for Moraux 1942, 23 observed that those of the