Philoponus on Aristotle physics 1.4-9

192 Pages·2009·1.36 MB·English

by  Aristotle.

PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Physics 1.4-9
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PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Physics 1.4-9
Translated by
Catherine Osborne
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published in 2009 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Paperback edition (cid:192) rst published 2014
© 2009 by Catherine Osbourne
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to be identi(cid:192) ed as Author of this work.
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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 Board of the British
Academy; 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); Dr Victoria Solomonides, the Cultural
Attaché of the Greek Embassy in London. The editor wishes
to thank Alan Lacey, William Charlton, Peter Lautner, Christopher
Taylor and Devin Henry 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
Abbreviations vi
Introduction 1
Textual Emendations 27
Translation 29
Notes 135
Bibliography 154
English-Greek Glossary 155
Greek-English Index 160
Subject Index 180
Index of Passages 183
Abbreviations
CAG = Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, ed. H. Diels, 23 vols (Ber-
lin: Reimer, 1882-1909).
DK = Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokra-
tiker, 3 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951).
KRS = G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philo-
sophers, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Ross = W.D. Ross, Aristotle’s Physics: A Revised Text with Introduction
and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936).
Introduction
1. Aristotle Physics Book 1
At least on the surface, Aristotle devotes most of the first book of the
Physics to an investigation of the Presocratic philosophers: to their
attempt to identify the first principles of being, and their difficulties
concerning change. Even where these difficulties are concerned with
change in the natural world, in things subject to natural processes of
change – hence falling under what Aristotle calls ‘physics’ – they are
issues that we would today identify as falling under the domain of
metaphysics. In the chapters discussed in this section of Philoponus’
Physics commentary Aristotle explores a range of questions about the
basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of
change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether
things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that
is true.
These are key issues in Aristotle’s own thought and much of Aris-
totle’s work in these chapters is, in fact, offering new and positive
contributions from Aristotle’s own voice, despite the fact that the struc-
ture of the book continues, at least superficially, to follow the pattern of
reviewing the past contributions in the field, which we tend to regard
as the standard Aristotelian method on beginning a new subject.1 Here
in Chapters 4 to 9, having already dismissed the Eleatics (in Chapters
2 and 3) on the grounds that they do not make a contribution within the
field of natural philosophy at all,2 Aristotle turns to look at those
Presocratic thinkers who were making a positive contribution to the
analysis of the first principles underlying natural things, and to the
explanation of natural change (according to Aristotle’s criteria). Aris-
totle’s discussion purports to be a survey of all the possible positions
that one can take on these issues, but with particular reference to the
various positions that Aristotle’s predecessors have severally chosen to
take. Is there one first principle, or more than one? What options are
there for how we generate things from the basic principles? In what
sense do things come from what is not?
In reality almost none of Aristotle’s work in these chapters is focused
on exegetical analysis of the Presocratics. Almost all of it is his own
constructive work, designed to yield results on topics such as the
relation between form and matter, and the best way to analyse change.
2 Introduction
The survey of past thinkers assists Aristotle in explaining what are the
seductive traps that we need to avoid in developing a satisfactory
position on these matters, and how his own proposed theories will
address these risks in a more satisfactory way. The Presocratics are
mentioned, of course, but not for the sake of accurately reporting what
they said so much as for the sake of diagnosing and addressing issues
of metaphysical importance.
2. Key features of Philoponus’ commentary style
In this volume we encounter Philoponus in mid-stream, taking up the
thread at page 86 of the CAG edition, which is the beginning of his
discussion of Chapter 4 of Physics Book 1. There is, therefore, no
introductory material as there might be at the start of a new book or
lecture course. However, the entire text is a model of clarity and good
order, and follows Philoponus’ normal method of presentation of his
commentary in the form of a twofold exposition of carefully defined
sections of text. Each section, which perhaps formed the work for a
single session of the School seminar, comprises a double treatment of
the chosen portion of text. The first treatment is expository. Elsewhere
Philoponus sometimes called this section the protheôria.3 It explains
the issues that arise in the chosen section of text and Aristotle’s
motivation for treating these issues. This is followed by a more detailed
section of exegesis and textual analysis, sometimes called lexis or
exêgêsis tês lexeôs,4 which deals with problems or puzzles about the
precise way to understand what Aristotle wrote.
In this translation these divisions in Philoponus’ work are explicitly
articulated with the use of numbered headings, showing how the first
section of expository discussion precedes a related section (sometimes
very brief) of short textual commentary. The headings here are all
editorial. Philoponus does not use headings, and in some cases the
editor of the Greek text in the CAG (Vitelli) did not clearly identify the
structure either. In certain cases the CAG edition fails to mark out the
new lemma at the start of the lexis section, frequently, though not
invariably, because it repeats the words of the lemma that started the
entire section.5 Furthermore, a number of lemmata in the lexis sections
run on as continuations of a preceding passage, and in these cases it can
be difficult to judge how strong a division to make, since Philoponus
often builds the lemma into his own sentence.6
As we might expect, then, the section of commentary translated here
opens with an outline of the contents of part of Chapter 4 of the first
book of the Physics; that is, the section from 187a10 to 187b4. Most of
Philoponus’ sections are subdivisions within the larger chapters that we
have in our editions but on occasion his division of Aristotle’s text does
not exactly match the chapter divisions in our modern editions. For
instance, in the part identified in this translation as section 7 he treats
Introduction 3
a large portion of text that goes across the division currently made in
our texts between Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, and does not break at all
at what we take to be a new chapter.
3. Key issues in the interpretation of Aristotle and
the Presocratics
The discussion opens with an analysis of the work of several Presocratic
thinkers who (according to Philoponus, reporting Aristotle) had an
acceptable account, whereby it is rightly said that all things are in some
sense one: namely because they originate from a single source. This is
by contrast with the unacceptable monism of the Eleatics which had
been discussed in the earlier chapters.
Philoponus offers a brief survey (86,21-87,10) of the ways in which
this development from a single source is realised by the various non-
Eleatic thinkers who offered a single material principle (that is, Thales,
Anaximenes, Anaximander and Heraclitus), and then proceeds (87,11)
to analyse the work of Anaxagoras (a thinker identified not with a single
first principle but with the idea of deriving a plurality from a mixture,
by extraction).
The account of Anaxagoras is recognisable, in so far as Philoponus
mentions Anaxagoras’ ‘uniform parts’ (the so-called homoiomeries)
which contain portions of everything in them, and Mind or Nous which
is the force that is responsible for separating things out. However,
Philoponus implies that the failure to secure the total separation of pure
substances from the mixture has something to do with Mind’s failure to
complete the task, as though there were no obstacle in principle to the
idea that Mind might extract a pure sample of some stuff. Indeed
Philoponus speaks (87,21) as though the ‘portions’ within the mixture
are particles, like seeds in a heap of mixed grain. However he swiftly
acknowledges (87,30) that this model does not exactly achieve what is
intended since in the case of a heap of grain it is perfectly possible to
pick out a grain that is pure barley. By contrast in Anaxagoras’ world,
the divine Mind can never pick out a pure stuff. That task is impossible.
We might ask whether Mind fails to pick out single grains only because
it is still at the stage of taking scoops that do, as it happens, contain a
mixture of different things, as though the mixture is not in fact uniform
through and through ad infinitum, but is just so thorough that the task
has yet to be completed (and will perhaps always be uncompleted
however long you go on). Or is it that there is an important disanalogy
between Philoponus’ heap of grain and the model envisaged by
Anaxagoras, so that the reason that it is impossible for Mind to reach a
pure substance by extraction is that there really are not pure particles
there to be had? Philoponus seems to note a failure in his analogy, but
does not adequately diagnose where the disanalogy lies, except in
respect of the mismatch between possibilities.