Philoponus: On Aristotle Posterior Analytics 2

224 Pages·2009·1.18 MB·English

by  Goldin

PHILOPONUS(?)
On Aristotle
Posterior Analytics 2
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PHILOPONUS(?)
On Aristotle
Posterior Analytics 2
Translated by
Owen Goldin
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
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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 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 Marije Martijn, Sarah Francis, Ian
Mueller, Martin Achard, Mossman Roueché, Richard McKirahan
and Orna Harari for their comments, Fiona Leigh and Martin
Achard 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
Preface vii
Conventions x
Introduction 1
Textual Information 12
Translation 13
Notes 143
Bibliography 189
English-Greek Glossary 193
Greek-English Index 197
Index of Passages Cited 205
Index of Names 209
Subject Index 211
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Preface
Richard Sorabji
The Posterior Analytics contains Aristotle’s Philosophy of Science. In
Book 2, one of the important issues is illustrated by the following
question. How does the scientist discover what sort of loss of light
constitutes lunar eclipse? The scientist has to discover that the moon’s
darkening is due to the earth’s shadow. Once that explanation is known
the scientist possesses the full scientific concept of lunar eclipse as the
moon’s being darkened by the earth’s shadow. He can then use that
definition to explain other necessary features of the phenomenon, such
as its periodicity, shape, brevity, copper colouring and so on.
The present commentary, whose ascription to Philoponus is contro-
versial, offers some interpretations of Aristotle that are unfamiliar
nowadays. For example, at 437,15-438,2, the scientific concept of a
human is acquired from observing particular humans. This results in
marks being rubbed or wiped off (this is the metaphor in apomorxis,
apomorgnunai, apomassesthai) in the aisthêma. It is familiar that an
aisthêma might receive marks of the particular distinctive charac-
teristics by which an individual is recognized, such as long hair and
paleness (the examples given here). The unfamiliar idea is that it can
also receive the marks of universal human characteristics, such as
rationality. This need not be startling if the aisthêma is simply the
perceptual content, for then the idea will be that we perceive individu-
als as rational as well as long haired, and this may well be one of the
things that the text wants to convey. But in Aristotle, I believe, the
aisthêma had been a sense-image and even in our text the metaphors
of marking by rubbing and wiping treat it as if it were a visual, rather
than a propositional, entity. The pervasive talk of the aisthêma being
imprinted (tupoi) in the imagination strengthens this idea and makes
it harder to see how the aisthêma receives the marks of a universal such
as rationality.
The idea that the aisthêma is marked by universals such as ration-
ality is offered by our commentary as an explanation of Aristotle’s
unexpected departure from his normal view that perception appre-
hends only the particular. At 100a14 to b5, Aristotle says that
perception is also of the universal. An earlier commentator, Themistius,
viii Preface
in the fourth century had already given some of the same interpretation
of this remark in his commentary on the Posterior Analytics at 64,2-9.
To obtain a fuller story, we need to put these two commentaries together
with a third commentary on the same work, that of Eustratius, 266,14-
29, from the eleventh to twelfth century.
Our commentary adds a special role for the imagination: it is to the
imagination that the aisthêma is transmitted and in this it is imprinted
(entupoun). The language of imprinting had again been used in Aris-
totle in his treatise on memory, I believe, for the imprinting of pictorial
images and the imagination had served as a storehouse for the im-
printed images. In other commentaries Themistius (in DA 98,35-99,10),
Philoponus (in DA 5,38-6,4) and other Platonists equally speak of
imprints (tupoi) in the imagination.
Our text adds that the first aisthêma transmitted supplies only a dim
knowledge of the universal concept of human. Further similar ais-
thêmata need to be transmitted to the imagination as well. Themistius
64,24-65,2 and Eustratius agree that several reports from sense percep-
tion need to be assembled together (sunageirein, athroizein). But
Eustratius adds that perception must already have some recognition of
the universal human, or it would not be able to assemble relevantly
similar aisthêmata (I here correct what I said in my Sourcebook, vol. 1,
174).
Both Themistius and Eustratius supply a possible explanation of the
dimness of which our commentary speaks: the universal as appre-
hended by perception is still muddled up with the particular.
Our commentary holds, 440,1-12, that it is intellect (nous) that in the
end apprehends the scientific concepts (e.g. of human) which are the
first principles for science. Eustratius says that the universal human
character apprehended by perception must be transmitted to reason.
On one interpretation it is reason, or reason’s highest faculty, intellect,
that finally separates out the universal concept from the particular by
some process of abstraction (Sourcebook, vol. 1, 3 (g), 4-13). But is the
transmission to reason a later stage than the transmission to imagina-
tion, of which our commentary speaks, or could these be the same
transmission? In commentaries on another work of Aristotle, a number
of Platonists including Themistius and Philoponus identify the lowest
kind of intellect with imagination (Sourcebook, vol. 1, 3 (j)), although
Aristotle himself would not have allowed this. This Platonist interpre-
tation makes it possible that different levels of intellect process the
transmitted aisthêmata. The lowest level, imagination, stores a series
of similar aisthêmata until enough have been assembled, while higher
levels of intellect are able by abstraction to separate the marks of the
universal retained in these aisthêmata from the particulars in which
they are embedded.
As regards the authorship of our commentary, Owen Goldin initiated
an exchange of emails. He pointed out that, among known commenta-
Preface ix
tors who may have been responsible for the present text, the commen-
tary’s very marked preference for the word êgoun (512 occurrences in
106 pages), first noticed by Ian Mueller, is approached only by Asclepius
(114 occurrences in 452 pages), another pupil of Ammonius, who re-
ported Ammonius’ lectures on the Metaphysics. This might suggest
some influence from Asclepius. Martin Achard has added another argu-
ment in favour of this conclusion – Asclepius’ Metaphysics commentary
sometimes reads more like a paraphrase of Aristotle, displaying the
same reduced philosophical and expository content as does the com-
mentary on the second book of the Posterior Analytics in comparison
with Philoponus’ commentary on the first book.1 I would now add a third
consideration, which takes account of Goldin’s further discovery that
there are traces resembling Philoponus as well as Asclepius in our
commentary. L.G. Westerink suggested that Philoponus corrected and
expanded Asclepius in another commentary reporting Ammonius’ lec-
tures on Nicomachus’ arithmetic. Philoponus corrected Asclepius’
arithmetical errors and doubled the size of Asclepius’ report of Am-
monius’ lectures. (‘Deux commentaires sur Nicomaque: Asclépius et
Jean Philopon’, Revue des études grecques 77, 1964, 526-35). This might
suggest a new conclusion. Could Philoponus after all be the author of
our commentary on Book 2 of the Posterior Analytics, but again have
been correcting and expanding Asclepius’ report of Ammonius, so as to
produce a better paraphrase commentary?
Note
1. When Asclepius attempts more analysis, he sometimes shows a compara-
tive lack of philosophical acumen. See Martin Achard, ‘How the physicist should
define: Asclepius’ interpretation of Metaphysics E.1, 1026a2-3’, Dionysius 27
(2009) forthcoming.