Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition)

450 Pages·2008·2.1 MB·English

by  Lloyd A. Newton

Medieval Commentaries on
Aristotle’s Categories
Brill’s Companions
to the
Christian Tradition
A series of handbooks and reference works
on the intellectual and religious life of Europe,
500–1700
VOLUME 10
Medieval Commentaries
on Aristotle’s Categories
Edited by
Lloyd A. Newton
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
Cover illustration: Avicenna, Opera, Venice, 1508, folio 2 verso. Printed edition. Photograph
by Megan Bickford. With kind permission of Ed Macierowski.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Medieval commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories / edited by Lloyd A. Newton.
p. cm. — (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition, 1871–6377 ; v. 10)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-16752-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Aristotle. Categoriae.
2. Categories (Philosophy).
I. Newton, Lloyd A. II. Title. III. Series.
B438.M43 2008
160—dc22
2008014809
ISSN 1871-6377
ISBN 978 90 04 16752 0
Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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CONTENTS
Preface ......................................................................................... vii
The Importance of Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s
Categories ................................................................................... 1
Lloyd A. Newton
The Medieval Posterity of Simplicius ’ Commentary on the
Categories: Thomas Aquinas and al-Fārābī ............................. 9
Michael Chase
Avicenna The Commentator ...................................................... 31
Allan Bäck
Albertus Magnus On the Subject of Aristotle’s Categories ......... 73
Bruno Tremblay
Interconnected Literal Commentaries on the Categories in the
Middle Ages ............................................................................ 99
Robert Andrews
Thomas Aquinas on Establishing the Identity of Aristotle’s
Categories ............................................................................... 119
Paul Symington
Reading Aristotle’s Categories as an Introduction to Logic:
Later Medieval Discussions about Its Place in the
Aristotelian Corpus ................................................................... 145
Giorgio Pini
Simon of Faversham on Aristotle’s Categories and The Scientia
Praedicamentorum ....................................................................... 183
Martin Pickavé
Duns Scotus’s Account of a Propter Quid Science of the
Categories ............................................................................... 221
Lloyd A. Newton
vi contents
Fine-tuning Pini ’s Reading of Scotus ’s Categories
Commentary ........................................................................... 259
Todd Bates
How Is Scotus’s Logic Related to His Metaphysics?
A Reply to Todd Bates ........................................................... 277
Giorgio Pini
John Buridan : On Aristotle’s Categories ....................................... 295
Alexander W. Hall
A Realist Interpretation of the Categories in the Fourteenth
Century: The Litteralis sententia super Praedicamenta Aristotelis
of Robert Alyngton ................................................................ 317
Alessandro D. Conti
Thomas Maulevelt’s Denial of Substance ................................. 347
Thomas Maulevelt: Quaestiones super Praedicamenta:
Quaestio 16 ............................................................................... 358
Robert Andrews
Categories and Universals in the Later Middle Ages ................ 369
Alessandro D. Conti
Bibliography ................................................................................ 411
List of Contributors .................................................................... 429
Index ........................................................................................... 433
PREFACE
St. Augustine ’s account of the ease with which he understood Aristotle’s
Categories is, as he himself admits, an anomaly. Unfortunately, the rest
of us, like Augustine’s contemporaries, struggle to understand what
was for centuries, and still is, a fundamental text. On the surface,
Aristotle’s Categories is a markedly anti-platonic text: things are equivo-
cal, not univocal; individual substances are primary, whereas universals
are secondary; and Aristotle lists ten highest genera or categories of
things, not fi ve, as Plato does.1 From its earliest reception, though, many
commentators such as Porphyry and Boethius go to great lengths to
reconcile it with Platonism , with the predictable result that many other
commentators—Ockham comes immediately to mind—go to equally
great lengths to purge it of any remaining traces of Platonism. Such
attempts often hinge on what one takes to be the subject of the book: is
the Categories about words, concepts, or things? Or is it somehow about
all three: words, concepts and things? Regardless of how one answers
this question, the philosophically more important question remains:
to what extent do words, concepts and things parallel or mirror one
another?
Of course, these are not the only questions pertaining to Aristotle’s
brief text. Given its wide range of topics, from the nature of equivocity
to the different kinds of motion, coupled with its terse and introduc-
tory remarks on a number of issues, Aristotle’s Categories generated a
disproportionate number of commentaries since its fi rst appearance in
antiquity. These commentaries, though, are often far from being simple,
literal expositions of the text. More often than not, they are occasions to
1 As far as possible, I have endeavored to distinquish between ‘Categories’, which
refers to the name of the work by that title, and the ten ‘categories’, which, when not
italicized, refer to the subject matter of that work, namely, to the ten principal genera
of being discussed by Aristotle. Unfortunately, though, the distinction is not always
clear, especially since Aristotle’s Categories is essentially about the ten categories. This
confusion is particularly evident in subsequent discussions about the subject of the
Categories, which discussions I presume to be about the subject of the book, but which
are also closely related to discussions about the way in which the ten categories are
the subject of a science (which discussions are not about the subject of the book but
about the ten genera).
viii preface
explore philosophical problems, or opportunities to attack a particular
philosopher’s thesis, or the chance to defend one’s own thesis. Bearing in
mind, then, that commentary writing was traditionally a way of doing
philosophy, it is not surprising that hundreds of extant commentaries on
Aristotle’s Categories exist, and that these commentaries often contradict
one another, explore different topics of concern, and are philosophically
rich, as the ensuing articles amply demonstrate.
While the vast majority of the extant commentaries on Categories
are still not translated and largely inaccessible, things are beginning
to change. The “Ancient Commentaries on Aristotle” series, published by
Cornell Press, has recently made a number of early commentaries
on the Categories available in English. Likewise, several medieval com-
mentaries have recently been published and others are, I hope, soon to
follow. Correspondingly, there has recently been an increasing interest in
medieval logic in general, and in categories in particular, with a number
of conferences, articles and books devoted to the subject.
When Julian Deahl fi rst suggested the subject of this book in 2002 to
Jorge J. E. Gracia at a medieval conference, Gracia remarked that, at the
time, he did not think that more than half a dozen people in the fi eld
were qualifi ed or interested in the subject. Fortunately, Gracia recom-
mended that I be one of the contributors should the project ever get
off the ground. While doing my own research on Scotus ’s commentary
on Aristotle’s Categories, I realized that more scholars were interested
in the subject and approached Julian with the current project. To my
surprise, Julian liked the project and asked if I would be interested in
editing it. Consequently, I wish to thank Jorge J. E. Gracia for introduc-
ing and recommending me to Julian, to Julian Deahl for having the
confi dence in me to edit this work; and to Marcella Mulder and Gera
van Bedaf of Brill, without whose assistance, this book would not be
possible. Most of all, though, I am grateful to my wife, Lori, and to
our three children for their support.
LLOYD A. NEWTON
INTRODUCTION
THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDIEVAL COMMENTARIES
ON ARISTOTLE’S CATEGORIES
Lloyd A. Newton
Aristotle’s Categories is the subject of an extensive number of commen-
taries and of an unusual amount of debate, and for good reasons.1 To
begin with, in spite of its relatively short length, it can be a rather dif-
fi cult text to understand, even for the trained philosopher, to say nothing
of those who are just beginning their study of philosophy. Yet, because
it laid the foundation for many subsequent philosophical discussions in
general, and for logic in particular, it was, during much of the Middle
Ages, often the very fi rst philosophical text students encountered. Even
contemporary philosophers who are steeped in philosophy and who have
studied the Categories in depth often fi nd it diffi cult, albeit for different
reasons. One diffi culty, as the ancient commentators on the Categories
recognized, is that Aristotle himself is ambiguous about the subject of
the work. What exactly is he categorizing? Is it ‘things that are’ or ‘things
that are said’ or something in between, such as a concept? Furthermore,
depending on how one understands its purpose, the Categories can be
seen in harmony with, in contrast to, or even in contradiction to, Plato’s
own theory of the fi ve highest genera. For all of these reasons the
Categories has historically acted like a magnet, attracting commentaries
from Aristotelians, Platonists, and Stoics alike. Quite naturally, some
of these commentaries defend Aristotelianism, whereas others defend
either Platonism or Stoicism by attacking Aristotle’s Categories. Finally,
still others, especially during the Late Middle Ages, use the Categories
as a means to expound their own philosophical systems in the process
of interpreting Aristotle.
1 According to my count of the texts listed by Charles Lohr, roughly two hundred
extant Latin commentaries on the Categories were written during the Middle Ages. Of
course, this number does not take into account the commentaries that are not extant,
nor the ones written in Greek, Arabic, or Hebrew. Cf. the lists of extant commentaries
cited by Charles Lohr in Traditio, vols. 23–29.