Philoponus: Against Proclus On the Eternity of the World 9-11

175 Pages·2010·1.2 MB·English

by  Philoponus

PHILOPONUS
Against Proclus
On the Eternity of
the World 9-11
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PHILOPONUS
Against Proclus
On the Eternity of
the World 9-11
Translated by
Michael Share
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published in 2010 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition (cid:192) rst published 2014
© 2010 by Michael Share
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General Editor’s 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
Arts and Humanities Research Council; Gresham College; the
Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown Trust; Mr
and Mrs N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation for Scienti(cid:192) c
Research (NWO/GW); the Ashdown Trust; Dr Victoria Solomonides,
the Cultural Attaché of the Greek Embassy in London.
The editor wishes to thank Pamela Huby, Robert Todd, Edward
Hussey, and William Charlton for their comments, Fiona Leigh
for preparing the volume for press, and Deborah Blake at Duckworth,
who has been the publisher responsible for every volume
since the (cid:192) rst.
Typeset by Ray Davies.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Introduction 1
Translator’s Note 7
Departures from Rabe’s Text 9
Translation 13
Chapter 9 15
Chapter 10 54
Chapter 11 68
Notes 105
Bibliography 131
English-Greek Glossary 133
Greek-English Index 139
Subject Index 161
Index of Passages Cited 167
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Introduction
Richard Sorabji
Books 9 to 11 of Philoponus’ Against Proclus constitute one of the
most interesting parts of one of the most interesting philosophical
treatises of late Greek antiquity. Philoponus’ thought was inde-
pendent of traditional authorities even when he was writing com-
mentaries on Aristotle,1 let alone when he was writing an explicit
attack on the authority of Proclus, and rejecting his eighteen argu-
ments for the beginningless existence of the universe. As a Christian,
Philoponus used the ideas of Platonists like Proclus and of Aristotle
to show that the pagan Greek philosophers should really draw the
opposite of their own conclusion. They should concede the Christian
view that the universe was created out of nothing and therefore had
an absolute beginning. This work of Philoponus in Alexandria was
written in 529 AD against a treatise of the Athenian Neoplatonist
Proclus from the preceding century.
In Book 9 and the very short Book 10, Philoponus discusses some
of Proclus’ arguments against creation out of nothing. But Book 11 is
particularly interesting, because there Proclus’ argument against
creation out of nothing turns on Aristotle’s idea of prime matter. A
body, for Aristotle, was a subject endowed with properties, and prime
matter was the most fundamental subject of those properties. It could
only be imagined by stripping away in thought all the properties of a
body, and thinking of the subject of all its properties. This at any rate
is the concept of prime matter which Philoponus thinks Proclus
inherited from Aristotle2 and which he ridicules and seeks to replace
with his own very innovative alternative. In the seventeenth-century
English tradition, John Locke still talked (under another name) of
Aristotelian prime matter as a ‘something-I-know-not-what’.
To return to Book 9, an infinite regress argument for a beginning-
less universe is stated and answered at 339,2-341,23. The argument
had been announced in 314,13-15. It is a variant on Aristotle’s
argument about matter that will be considered in Book 11. Every-
thing that comes into being does so from something that was already
in being. So the universe as a whole (kosmos) cannot have come into
being. For if one tries to imagine it doing so, one will find something
2 Introduction
earlier from which it came into being, and the need for pre-existing
matter will confront one in an infinite regress, however far back one
goes in one’s imagination.
Philoponus replies, starting at 339,25, that, even on Aristotelian
theory, nature engenders in pre-existing matter particular forms
that did not exist before, for example particular forms of flesh, bone,
blood vessels and sinews, when it brings into being a baby, as
Aristotle thinks, out of menstrual fluid. But God must be able to do
more than nature. Hence he must be able to bring into being pre-
viously non-existent matter as well as form. This means that he could
produce the whole universe without producing it from something
that was already in existence.
Part of Philoponus’ reply was translated into Arabic, and there
wrongly ascribed to someone much earlier than Philoponus around
200 AD, the great Aristotelian defender and commentator, Alexander
of Aphrodisias. But the correct re-assignment to Philoponus was
made by Ahmad Hasnawi.3
In Book 11, at 445,28-452,4, Philoponus opposes another version
of Aristotle’s regress argument, this time a version that concentrates
more fully on the idea of matter. The argument is that matter exists
in order to make generation possible and co-exists with generation.
But matter (and hence generation, and hence the universe) can have
had no beginning. For the generation of matter would require prior
matter. The last point is explicitly ascribed to Aristotle.4
A further point is also ascribed to Aristotle both here and in two
later works by Philoponus, that it is not possible for generation to
pass through an infinite number of stages.5 Very clearly in the two
later texts, and more obscurely here at 448,21-449,13, Philoponus
seeks to draw the opposite conclusion from Aristotle’s. His retort is
that if something comes into existence now, it cannot, on Aristotle’s
own principles, be the product of an infinite chain of ancestors, and
hence the preceding chain of events must have been finite and have
had a beginning.
It is Philoponus’ next point that concentrates more closely on the
role of matter (449,13-452,4). The Christian postulate that matter
was at some time created does not threaten to give us an infinite
regress of prior matter out of which it would need to be created. For
any kind of matter, say bronze or water, is generated not out of
bronze or water, but out of something other than bronze or water. It
is only with the efficient cause that cause and effect are of the same
kind, as when a human begets a human. But we are talking about
the material cause, that out of which something is created. Babies
are created not out of babies, but, on Aristotle’s view, out of men-
strual fluid, plants out of soil and water, fire out of air (gas), scientists
out of non-scientists. This conclusion should be applied to the most
fundamental kind of matter, prime matter viewed in separation from
Introduction 3
any properties. For it too there will not be any earlier prime matter
out of which it needs to be created.
Further, matter is a subject of properties and does not have its
existence in a subject. That also shows why it does not need a
pre-existing subject or matter in order to come into being.
The concern of Philoponus’ opponents with matter in their argu-
ments in Book 11 for beginningless existence gives Philoponus the
opportunity to introduce his own radical view of prime matter.6
Prime matter is the ultimate subject of a body’s properties. Phi-
loponus’ view had developed over time and is here seen in its most
revolutionary form. Prime matter is now for him neither incorporeal,
nor formless, which Aristotle’s prime matter was conceived as being.
Aristotelian prime matter was thought of as the subject that takes
on first three dimensions, and then, super-imposed on these three
dimensions, various other properties. In itself it had no properties at
all and was formless and not a body, since any body is prime matter
endowed with properties. But why, asked Philoponus (405,9-406,14;
413,27-415,10; repeated at 426,22; 428,2.23-5; 435,20; 442,19-20),
should not the most fundamental subject of properties be the three
dimensions themselves, albeit7 viewed without any specification of
measurements? At least the three dimensions are familiar, unlike
Locke’s ‘something-I-know-not-what’.
Moreover, why should not three-dimensional extension be form as
well as matter (423,9-428,25)? It is the form of body (427,8; 435,21),
or in other words its defining characteristic, as well as being the
prime matter of body. For provided we can distinguish spatial exten-
sion from corporeal extension,8 three dimensions will constitute the
defining characteristic of body. Thus prime matter is neither incor-
poreal nor divorced from form, as Aristotle’s prime matter was
supposed to be. It can be called body.9 Moreover, if it is the form, it is
also the substance (424,24; 425,5-6) of body.
It might be thought that the three dimensions would be classified
by Aristotle under the category of quantity, not under the category of
substance. But, as Frans de Haas has shown, correcting Sorabji,
Philoponus takes a leaf from the book of another earlier Neoplatonist,
Porphyry.10 Porphyry had considered the status of those qualities
that served as the differentiae of types of substance. An example
might be rationality, if this differentiates humans from other types
of animal. Because such a differentiating quality would enter into the
definition of a substance, mankind, Porphyry classified it as a sub-
stantial quality. Philoponus suggested that the three dimensions
should be classified not as a mere quantity, but as a substantial
quantity (405,23-7; 423,11-424,11). This confronted the difficulty that
might otherwise be felt about calling the three dimensions the sub-
stance of body.
I have elsewhere argued that Philoponus’ approach to treating the