Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 1.19-34

224 Pages·2014·0.99 MB·English

by  John Philoponus

PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Posterior Analytics 1.19-34
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PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
Posterior Analytics 1.19-34
Translated by Owen Goldin
and Marije Martijn
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published in 2012 by Bristol Classical Press
Paperback edition fi rst published 2014
© 2012 by Owen Goldin and Marije Martijn
Owen Goldin and Marije Martijn have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Authors of this work.
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accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN HB: 978-1-7809-3090-9
PB: 978-1-4725-5799-5
ePDF: 978-1-4725-0175-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
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 Scientifi c Research (NWO/GW); the Ashdown
Trust; Dr Victoria Solomonides, the Cultural Attaché of the Greek
Embassy in London. The editor wishes to thank Jonathan Barnes,
Orna Harari, Mariska Leunissen and Richard McKirahan for their
comments, Sebastian Gertz for preparing the volume for press, and
Deborah Blake, who has been the publisher responsible for every
volume since the fi rst.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Conventions vi
Introduction 1
Textual Information 15
Translation 18
Notes 141
Bibliography 181
English-Greek Glossary 183
Greek-English Index 196
Index of Names 215
Subject Index 216
Conventions
[] Square brackets enclose words or phrases that have been added
to the translation or the lemmata for purposes of clarity, as well as
those portions of the lemmata which are not quoted by Philoponus.
<> Angle brackets enclose conjectures relating to the Greek text,
i.e. additions to the transmitted text deriving from parallel sources
and editorial conjecture, and transposition of words or phrases.
Accompanying notes provide further details.
() Round brackets, besides being used for ordinary parentheses,
contain transliterated Greek words and Bekker page references to
the Aristotelian text.
Introduction
This book is the third volume of a translation into English of a
commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics written by the late
Neoplatonic commentator Philoponus (c. 490-c. 570). We are told
initially that the commentary is ‘based on meetings with Ammonius,
son of Hermeias, with some of his own observations’ (1,2-4). That is
to say that while the commentary is in the main a record of the close
reading of the Posterior Analytics offered in lectures by Philoponus’
teacher Ammonius (c. 440-c. 520), Philoponus allows himself to in-
clude original observations and interpretations.1 On occasion Phi-
loponus identifies Ammonius as the source of an observation or
interpretation. Otherwise, the reader may take it as probable, but
not certain, that points of interpretation have Ammonius as their
origin.
Included in this volume is Philoponus’ commentary on 1.19-34. It
begins with Philoponus’ account of the long and complex argument of
1.19-23, to the effect that scientific demonstrations can neither be
infinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of
new middle terms. In commenting on this argument, Philoponus
offers a distinction, familiar from the later scholastic tradition, be-
tween ‘natural predications’, in which a term referring to the
ontological subject of the predicate serves as the grammatical sub-
ject, and ‘unnatural predications’, in which this is not so. Philoponus
also here offers an interesting discussion of Aristotle’s rejection of
Platonic Forms. In 1.24 Aristotle argues that universal demonstra-
tions are superior to particular ones. Philoponus’ commentary on this
chapter is an important source of his own metaphysical analysis of
universal predications. After two chapters completing the discus-
sion of the superiority of certain kinds of demonstrations (25-6),
the remaining chapters of Book 1 of the Posterior Analytics offer a
variety of topics, such as the precision of sciences (27), the scien-
tific genus (28, 32), and the distinction between scientific
understanding and other forms of cognition (among others percep-
tion, opinion, and acumen). Philoponus’ commentary on these
chapters is interesting for his views on the scientific genus and on
intellect.
2 Introduction
Philoponus and the Forms
Are there Forms such as those posited by Plato in some of his
dialogues? If so, what metaphysical and epistemological role do they
play? Is the existence of these Forms compatible with Aristotelian
philosophy? If so, was Aristotle aware of this? These were all live
questions among the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle. In
different contexts Philoponus said different things. This invites a
developmental account of Philoponus’ thought concerning Forms,
and an evolution of his understanding of the history of philosophy.
One standard account of Philoponus’ philosophical development2 can
be summarised as follows. In the beginning of his career, Philoponus
followed his teacher Ammonius in seeing Plato and Aristotle as in
agreement in regard to Forms. He later came to see them in disagree-
ment. According to the later view of Philoponus, Aristotle does not
believe that there are any Platonic Forms at all, not even as logoi
(rational expressions) in the mind of God. Because God, on this new
understanding, does not know the things in the physical world, He is
not understood to be responsible for their existence. Hence, Phi-
loponus comes to see Aristotle as positing a God that is a mere final,
not efficient, cause of the world. On this developmentalist account,
Philoponus comes to understand Aristotle’s metaphysics in a way
that brings it more in line with Christian teachings, according to
which God is independent of the world, and can, and did, exist, apart
from His creative activity. We here suggest that this account of
Philoponus’ development rests on a misreading of the evidence,
including a crucial passage of the present commentary (242,14-
243,25), which signals a new understanding of Aristotle’s metaphys-
ics as in opposition to Plato concerning the Forms. But this is because
he now takes Aristotle to interpret Plato’s Forms according to a
literal reading of the Timaeus, according to which they are inde-
pendent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. Philoponus
himself continued to believe in Forms as ‘demiurgic logoi’ inherent
within, and posterior to the Divine Intellect, and there is no clear
evidence that he did not follow Ammonius in attributing this same
view to Aristotle.
It is generally agreed that at least part of Philoponus’ commentary
on the Posterior Analytics dates from the earlier part of his career, as
it is largely a record of Ammonius’ lectures on the Posterior Analytics.
But as we shall see, there is no question that Philoponus’ under-
standing of what Aristotle had to say of Plato’s Forms underwent
some change from very early in Philoponus’ career; what is at issue
is exactly what that change is. It would be in order to briefly review
the evidence. At in DA 37,16-38,16 (an uncontroversially early work3)
Philoponus comments on Aristotle’s assertion at DA 1.1, 402b7 that
‘The living being in general is nothing or something posterior.’ Phi-
Introduction 3
loponus points out that these lines could be, and have been, taken as
evidence that Aristotle rejects Forms as Plato conceives them, but he
here rejects this reading. He instead follows the entrenched tradition
within the Neoplatonic study of Aristotle’s treatises that took Plato
and Aristotle to be in accord in regard to the main theses of their
philosophies.4 Philoponus defends those who take the approach of
reconciling Aristotle with Platonism, as he, following Ammonius
(who in turn follows Proclus) understands it: the Forms exist at two
levels, as subsistent eternal beings prior to the Demiurge, to which
the Demiurge’s intellectual activity is directed, and as logoi within
the Demiurgic Intellect, by which creation is accomplished. He offers
the following considerations in support of this reconciliation. (1)
Following Ammonius, Philoponus points to Aristotle Metaph. 12.10,
1075a11-25, in which Aristotle asserts that the universe contains the
good both as something separate and as something internal, and, to
show how this might be so, considers an army, of which the goodness
consists both in the leader outside of it and the order within it.
Aristotle elaborates on what he means by the order within it: there
is an interconnectedness of all things in the cosmos, according to
which lower beings are for the sake of higher beings, and so forth, all
contributing to one end. Philoponus adopts a Platonic perspective
according to which the commander is the Demiurge of the Timaeus;
He has within his mind the Form of Animal itself, and the cosmos has
its internal order by virtue of being created according to the exemplar
of the Animal Itself. (2) Philoponus points to Aristotelian assertions
that the intellect is identical with its objects, and that God is an
intellect, for which reason God too is identical with His object of
thought. ‘Again, in the Metaphysics, when discussing the Divine
Intellect, he says that the forms of all things are present in it; at any
rate, he says that when seeing itself it sees all things, and when
seeing all things it sees itself’ (37,27-9). Philoponus’ paraphrase
employs a plural not present in the text of the Metaphysics itself,
showing that he follows the Neoplatonic reinterpretation of the
Divine Intellect as a unity embracing a plurality of intelligibles.
Philoponus accordingly interprets Aristotle’s ‘The living being in
general is nothing or something posterior’ by appealing to the famil-
iar Neoplatonic distinction between the Form as Divine exemplar
and the ‘deflated’ Form as shared characteristic, whose universal
characteristic is a consequence of the mind’s consideration of particu-
lars.5 ‘In general’ here renders to katholou, which can also have the
sense of ‘universal’; for Philoponus, Aristotle is saying that there are
no universals that exist in themselves, only shared characteristics,
which are dependent on and necessarily inherent in particulars. (The
same account of universals is attributed to Aristotle at 272,31-
273,75. There, in a telling passage that reveals his lingering Platonic
tendencies, Philoponus insists that, although shared characteristics