Philoponus : on Aristotle on the soul 2.1-6

193 Pages·2005·1.027 MB·English

by  Philoponus, William Charlton, William Charlton

PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
On the Soul 2.1-6
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PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
On the Soul 2.1-6
Translated by
William Charlton
Duckworth
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Contents
Preface vii
Translation 1
Notes 129
English-Greek Glossary 149
Greek-English Index 162
Subject Index 183
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Preface
Richard Sorabji
Philoponus in the sixth century AD is writing a commentary on On the
Soul 2.1-6, where Aristotle gives a very different account of the soul
from Plato’s. Aristotle talks of the soul in a sense that we all recognise
as something we possess. The soul is the life-manifesting capacities that
distinguish living things, and explain their behaviour. This clarifies his
initial definition, which ties soul closely to body as its form. He defines
soul and life by reference to the capacities for using food to maintain
structure and reproduce, for perceiving and desiring, and for rational
thought, the first available even to plants, the second distinguishing
animals and the last available only to humans. Capacities have to be
defined by their active operation, and their active operation by reference
to the objects to which it is directed. The five senses are defined by
reference to their objects, as perception of colour, sound, etc., but it is by
perceiving these objects that one also perceives other objects by more
than one sense – size, shape, etc. Thirdly, we perceive physical objects.
Later he will speak of facts too as being perceived.
In perceiving, Aristotle says, we receive perceptible forms, e.g. col-
ours, without matter. On one interpretation, the eye jelly takes on
patches of colour, but not material particles, from the scene perceived.
But Philoponus interprets otherwise. The reception of perceptible form,
he says, is not a physiological change, e.g. in the eye jelly, but only a
cognitive reception (gnôstikôs), 303,5-6; 309,15-29. Moreover, ‘without
matter’ is not designed to exclude reception of particles, but rather to
say that sense does not act like wax receiving an imprint, because it does
not act as matter to the sensible qualities that it receives, but receives them
non-physically. Franz Brentano understood Aristotle in a similarly non-
physiological spirit, as anticipating here the seminal idea that things
perceived are only, in the medieval terminology which he has made
familiar,intentional objects. They do not have to exist in reality in order to
serve as objects. Some scholars agree in endorsing a non-physiological
interpretation and take Philoponus as their patron. Myles Burnyeat has
the most powerful arguments for a version of it. But Sorabji has argued
that the commentators were slowly forced to reinterpret Aristotle’s mean-
viii Preface
ing, as they found that his physiological story ran into difficulties over
the collision of different perceptible forms as they were received.1
Given that Aristotle ties the soul so closely to the body, it comes as a
surprise when he says at On the Soul 2.1, 413a8-9, that it is not yet clear
whether the way in which the soul is the actuality (entelekheia) of the
body is like the way in which the sailor actualises the defining functions
of the ship. Surely, we think, the sailor, unlike Aristotle’s soul, can exist
quite independently of what he is in. Perhaps that is why the last great
commentator of the Aristotelian school, Alexander, who wrote around
AD 200, substitutes ‘art of navigation’ for ‘sailor’ at DA 15,10, when he
denies the possibility of such independent existence for the soul. But
other commentators, Themistius in DA 43,30-5, ‘Simplicius’ in DA
96,3-10 and Philoponus in DA 224,28-37 (cf. 241,27-8; 242,18-19) allow
independent existence and think that Aristotle’s concession concerns
the intellectual part of the human soul as surviving bodily death.
Nonetheless, Philoponus must allow that there is for Aristotle some
unclarity about the independence of the intellect. Philoponus explains
that the intellect is like the navigator. As one who is exercising the
activities of navigator, he cannot exercise those in separation from the ship,
but at the same time as a human, he is something separate from the ship
and can separate himself from it. Similarly with the human intellect.
I mentioned that Aristotle allows perception to grasp facts and
physical objects. At Nicomachean Ethics 3.10, 1118a20-3, the lion per-
ceives that the ox is near. But Aristotle wants animals to be able to do
this without possessing a faculty of reason. He is opposed to the view of
Plato, Theaetetus 186B-187A that being (ousia) has to be grasped not by
perception, but by reason and belief.2 That is why Philoponus, faithful
to Aristotle at 317,25-32, says that the dog recognises its master by
perception, not reason, because it knows its master not as a being
(ousia, line 30, Plato’s word in the Theaetetus), but as such and such a
friendly shape. He adds to Aristotle not only the reference to friendli-
ness and hostility as what is stored, but also to the imagination
(phantasia) as the place where the imprints are stored.
Philoponus knew Alexander’s work very well. One sign of this is his
allowing into the interpretation of Aristotle Alexander’s anti-Platonic
account of universals as constructs of the mind, 307,35, reflecting
Alexander DA 90,2-11; Quaestio 2.28 (78,18-20; 79,16-18). These are
just a few of the highlights of this part of Philoponus’ commentary.
Notes
1. Richard Sorabji, ‘From Aristotle to Brentano: The development of the
concept of intentionality’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy suppl. vol. 1991,
227-59.
2. Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, London & Ithaca,
N.Y. 1983, ch. 2.
PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
On the Soul 2.1-6
Translation