Themistius : on Aristotle physics 4

161 Pages·2003·1.17 MB·English

by  Themistius & Robert B. Todd

THEMISTIUS
On Aristotle Physics 4
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THEMISTIUS
On Aristotle
Physics 4
Translated by
Robert B. Todd
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Preface and Appendix © 2003 by Richard Sorabji
© 2003 by Robert B. Todd
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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;
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(NWO/GW). The editor wishes to thank David Furley, Stuart
Leggatt and Pamela Huby for their comments, and John Bowin
for preparing the volume for press.
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Preface Richard Sorabji vii
Introduction 1
Place, Void and Containers 7
Textual Emendations 9
Translation 15
Place: Chapters 1-5 17
Void: Chapters 6-9 36
Time: Chapters 10-14 52
Notes 75
Bibliography and Abbreviations 112
Appendix: The Commentators Richard Sorabji 116
English-Greek Glossary 127
Greek-English Index 130
Index of Passages Cited 145
Subject Index 148
To the memory of
Henry J. Blumenthal
Preface
Richard Sorabji
Henry Blumenthal, to whose memory this volume is dedicated, asked,
and answered in the affirmative, a very important question in an
article on Themistius which he entitled, ‘Themistius: the last Peripa-
tetic commentator on Aristotle?’ Themistius was an orator, politician
and essayist of the fourth century AD, in the capital city of Constanti-
nople, and devoted only some of his time to philosophy in a privately
run institution, so was not obliged to take sides between schools. But
in the introduction to my forthcoming Sourcebook, The Philosophy of
the Commentators, 200-600 AD, I shall answer Blumenthal’s question
by saying that he does side with contemporary Neoplatonism too
much to be considered a member of the Peripatetic, i.e. Aristotelian
school, e.g. requiring Platonic Forms to explain biological reproduc-
tion (so Devin Henry, see the translator’s bibliography), and rejecting
Aristotle’s empiricist account of concept formation (in DA 3,31-4,11).
The fact that Themistius’ commentaries are called paraphrases
should not be allowed to conceal their importance. Thomas Aquinas
famously appealed to another commentary by Themistius in his
controversy with the followers of Averroes who denied individual
immortality to the human intellect. Aristotle could be enlisted in the
service of the Christian belief in individual survival, in the light of
Themistius’ commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul. More than that,
as Robert Todd says in his introduction to the present translation,
Themistius offers information and ideas not found elsewhere. In fact,
some of his ideas are very original. He is also taken very seriously by
later commentators. I shall illustrate this from the present commen-
tary, starting with that on Physics Book 3, and progressing to that on
Book 4.
Themistius, commenting on the preceding Book 3 of Aristotle’s
Physics, solves a problem that confused other commentators. Aris-
totle in this book defines change. He had described a change (kinêsis),
such as walking a mile, as incomplete until the mile is done, yet at
Physics 3.1, 201a10-11, he calls change a completion (entelekheia) of
what is potential. How can it be both incomplete and a completion?
viii Preface
Themistius saw, 69,7-20, that it matters crucially what is meant by
‘what is potential’. The completion of the bronze matter of a statue as
something having the capacity to have been sculpted, would be a
statue. But the completion of the bronze as something having the
capacity to be in process of being sculpted would be a change (kinêsis),
namely, the process of being turned into a statue.
InPhysics Book 4, Aristotle defines place and time, and denies the
possibility of vacuum. Themistius here has two tussles with Galen,
the great doctor-philosopher of the late second century AD. First, we
hear at 149,4-19 that Galen regarded time as self-revealing and
accused Aristotle of circularity in his attempt to define it. Aristotle
had defined it as involving the possibility of counting changes and
marking them as before or after. Galen complains that this has to be
understood as the before and after of time, the very thing that was
supposed to be being defined. In response, Themistius first offers
Aristotle’s own defence, that the appeal is to the before and after of
position, not of time. This is not entirely satisfactory, because posi-
tions are only thought of as before or after in relation to an imagined
movement which reaches one position chronologically before another.
But Themistius adds his own reply, that if there is a circularity, it is
benign, because it is only right and proper that the definition should
mean the same as what is being defined. The great sixth-century
Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius demurs in his in Phys.718,13-
719,18.
At 114,7-12, it appears that Galen had replied to Aristotle’s denial
that there is such a thing as three-dimensional space, distinct from
the three-dimensional volume of a body. Aristotle thought it was
enough to describe a thing’s place, roughly speaking, as its surround-
ings, the surroundings into which it fits exactly. To postulate space as
well would give us too many three-dimensional entities. Themistius
defends Aristotle at 133,31-135,1. It would be very odd, he says, if a
vacuum, or even space, could exist where a body is, and penetrate
right through the body. Extensions exclude each other, and that is
why bodies exclude each other – because they are extensions.
Galen, however, argued for the reality of space distinct from a
body’s volume, by imagining a bronze jar whose contents shrink,
without any other matter coming in to fill the gap. Themistius accuses
Galen of begging the question, by assuming the very spatial exten-
sion, or gap, that he wants to prove. But in the early sixth century AD
Philoponus was to defend Galen, in Phys. 576,12-577,1 (Corollaries;
see p. 82 nn. 128-9 below), by saying that he only hypothesises that
no matter comes in after the shrinkage.
At 163,1-7, Themistius criticizes Aristotle, rightly I believe, for
saying that there would be no time if there were no soul to count off
the different positions in a movement. Aristotle’s definition of time as
the countable aspect of change in respect of before and after should
Preface ix
require only that change is capable of being counted, not that there is
an opportunity of counting it, such as would be supplied by the
existence of souls to do the counting.
Finally, Themistius offers ingenious ideas on how Aristotle’s outer-
most sphere which carries the stars can, on Aristotle’s view, have any
place. For Aristotle, a thing’s place is its surroundings, and the
outermost sphere has no surroundings. Themistius suggests among
other things, 121,1-4, the solution that the outermost sphere could
have as its place the surface of the next sphere in, that of the planet
Cronus or Saturn. Simplicius (in Phys. 590,27-32; 592,25-7; see p. 86
n. 188 below) and Philoponus (in Phys. 565,21-566,7) reject this,
partly on the ground that such a place would not be of equal size.
Philoponus adds that the surface of the next sphere in cannot provide
a place to the outermost sphere, when it also receives its place from
there.