The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD, A Sourcebook: Logic and Metaphysics / Edition 1

by Richard Sorabji

Overview

This is the first work to draw on the four hundred years of transition from ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval philosophy of Islam and the West. During this period, philosophy was often written in the form of commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Many ideas wrongly credited to the Middle Ages derive from these centuries, such as that of impetus in dynamics and intentional objects in philosophy of mind. The later Neoplatonist commentators fought a losing battle with Christianity, but inadvertently made Aristotle acceptable to Christians by ascribing to him belief in a Creator God and human immortality. The commentators provide a panorama of up to a thousand years of Greek philosophy, much of which would otherwise be lost. They also serve as the missing link essential for understanding the subsequent history of Western philosophy.

The second volume of The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD, A Sourcebook, deals with physics. The physics of the commentators was innovative: the Neoplatonists thought that the world of space and time was causally ordered by a nonspatial, nontemporal world, and this view required original thinking. Of the sixth-century Neoplatonists, Simplicius considered his teacher's ideas on space and time to be unprecedented, and Philoponus revised Aristotelianism to produce a new physics built around the Christian belief in God's Creation of the world. The thinkers of the Middle Ages borrowed from Philoponus and other commentators the proofs of a finite past, the idea of degrees of latitude in change and mixture, and in dynamics the idea of impetus and the defense of motion in a vacuum. All sources appear in English translation and are carefully linked and cross-referenced by editorial comment and explanation. Bibliographies are provided throughout.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801489884
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/23/2004
Series:	Philosophy of Commentators 200 - 600 AD , #2
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	225
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard Sorabji is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at King's College London and an Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He is the author, editor, translator, and annotator of more than a hundred books.

Table of Contents

	Sources	xiii
	Preface and Acknowledgements	xv
	Introduction	1
1	The Character of Logic	31
1(a)	Aristotle's logic	31
1(b)	Is logic a part or an instrument of philosophy?	32
2	Methodology	37
2(a)	Methodology of the commentators	37
(i)	Harmony of Plato and Aristotle and qualities of the commentator	37
(ii)	Order of study	41
(iii)	Innovation, traditionalism, loyalty, plagiarism	43
(iv)	Decisions of authenticity of texts	46
(v)	Relevance of dramatis personae to interpretation	48
(vi)	Impossible thought experiments	48
2(b)	Methodology of Plato and Aristotle	51
(i)	Dialogues vs. plays	51
(ii)	Proems of dialogues	51
(iii)	Myths	52
(iv)	Obscurity	54
3	Categories	56
3(a)	The attack on Aristotle's Categories	56
3(b)	Is Aristotle's Categories about words, concepts, or things?	61
3(c)	Why ten categories and why these ten?	62
3(d)	Plotinus' attack and replies: substance	67
3(e)	Plotinus' denial of substancehood to sensible substances	72
3(f)	Iamblichus' intellective interpretation in further categories: where	74
3(g)	Plotinus' attack and replies: quantity	76
3(h)	Plotinus' category of change, and replies	78
3(i)	Aristotle's category of relatives and Cambridge change	79
3(j)	Plotinus on the reality of relatives	88
3(k)	The four Stoic categories	90
3(l)	Plotinus on quality, and replies	91
3(m)	Plotinus on the origin in the intelligible world of qualities	94
3(n)	Plotinus on when and where, and replies	95
3(o)	Plotinus on action and passion, and replies	98
3(p)	Plotinus against 'having on' (wearing), and replies	102
3(q)	Plotinus against posture, and replies	103
3(r)	Plotinus: intelligible being as a unity characterised by 'Five Kinds'	103
3(s)	'Present in' and 'said of'	106
3(t)	Inseparability of particular accidents	107
3(u)	Is Socrates an accident of place?	109
3(v)	Are we to treat as accidents present in a subject what is in a species?	110
3(w)	How do differentiae fit into the categories?	111
3(x)	Are differentiae potential or actual in the genus?	120
3(y)	Is form substance or an accident of matter?	122
3(z)	Is matter in any category?	125
4	Predicables	126
5	Universals	128
5(a)	The move away from transcendent universals	128
5(b)	Forms defended from the Third Man argument	131
5(c)	Seven kinds of universal	133
(i)	1, 3, 4: Platonic Forms, Aristotelian universals in things, Aristotelian concepts	135
(ii)	4, 5: Aristotelian assembled concepts and Platonic recollected concepts	138
(iii)	6: Aristotelian abstracted concepts in mathematics vs. Platonic concepts	142
(iv)	7: Geometrical universals extended and pluralised in the imagination	143
(v)	2: Forms as creative logoi in the mind of God	144
5(d)	Stoic universals	147
5(e)	Alexander's universals	149
5(f)	Porphyry's universals	156
5(g)	Boethius' interpretation of Alexander's universals	159
5(h)	Forms as causes: genus as causative in Neoplatonism	160
5(i)	Forms as causes: dunamis in Neoplatonism	162
6	Particulars	164
6(a)	Forms of individuals in Aristotle	164
6(b)	The individual as a unique bundle of characteristics	165
6(c)	Individuals treated like species	168
6(d)	What differentiates individuals?	169
(i)	Distinctive qualities	169
(ii)	Place	171
(iii)	Matter	172
(iv)	The Stoics on all three	173
6(e)	Particular forms in Aristotle	174
6(f)	Particularity of unmoved movers in Alexander	175
6(g)	Forms of individuals in Plotinus	176
6(h)	Persistence over time	176
(i)	Biological growth in Aristotle	176
(ii)	Biological growth in Alexander and Philoponus	177
(iii)	Biological growth in the Stoics and others	178
(iv)	Can events or states return to existence?	179
(v)	The next life - Stoics and Alexander	179
(vi)	The next life - Christians	181
(vii)	The Platonist soul vehicle	183
(viii)	The next life - Epicureans	183
(ix)	Perishing cannot be a merely relational change - Stoics	184
(x)	Parfit on survival	186
(xi)	Same only in form	187
7	Philosophy of Language	205
7(a)	Do words mean thoughts or things?	205
7(b)	The thoughts as an inner language	211
7(c)	Are names natural or conventional?	213
7(d)	Names given by God	220
7(e)	Names as descriptions	226
7(f)	Writing	228
7(g)	The primary bearers of truth and falsity	229
7(h)	Ambiguity, homonymy	230
(i)	Are hononyms ambiguous names, or things named ambiguously?	230
(ii)	Do homonyms have definitions, or can they include individuals?	232
(iii)	What is it for homonyms to have the same name?	233
(iv)	The kinds of homonymy	234
7(i)	Metaphor	235
7(j)	First and second imposition of expressions	237
7(k)	Parts of speech and parts of sentence	239
7(l)	The verb 'to be'	240
7(m)	Speech acts and types of sentence	244
7(n)	Communication and projection of concepts	245
7(o)	Learning language	249
8	Syllogism	250
8(a)	Aristotelians vs. Stoics and Galen on syllogism	250
(i)	The contrast	250
(ii)	Can Aristotelian syllogism discuss comparative size?	251
(iii)	Stoic syllogisms with one premiss	252
(iv)	Aristotelians against indemonstrable hypothetical premisses of Stoics	253
(v)	Wholly hypothetical arguments reducible to Aristotelian categoricals?	256
8(b)	Fourth syllogistic figure	258
8(c)	Aristotle's 'perfect' syllogisms	259
8(d)	Syllogisms concerning every case and most cases	259
9	Induction and Certainty	262
9(a)	Induction	262
9(b)	Innate logoi to fill the necessity gap	263
9(c)	Spotting the essence by intellect from one example	264
9(d)	Tekmeriodic proof to fill the gap	265
9(e)	Analysis	268
9(f)	Scepticism and philosophy	271
10	Modal Logic	273
10(a)	What kind of possibility is contingency (endekhomenon)?	273
10(b)	Alexander: necessity and contingency partly reduced to time	275
10(c)	Do modal relations include the actual?	278
10(d)	Syllogisms with mixed necessary and actual premisses	278
10(e)	'This man has died' - possible because of previous worlds?	280
11	Existence of the Subject in Affirmative and Negative Statements	283
11(a)	Alexander vs. the Stoics on singular statements	283
11(b)	Other disputes arising from Aristotle	286
(i)	Affirmations	286
(ii)	Predication of indefinite names and verbs	288
(iii)	Simple denials	289
11(c)	General terms, Stoics and Neoplatonists	290
12	Philosophy of Mathematics	293
12(a)	Alexander: mathematical objects abstracted, not substantial as in Plato	293
12(b)	Neoplatonist geometrical figures projected from thought into imagination	293
12(c)	Neoplatonists on objects of arithmetic residing in thought	300
13	Simplicity and the Need for the One	304
14	The Three Hypostases: Soul, Intellect, One	310
14(a)	Plotinus	310
14(b)	Later Neoplatonism	311
14(c)	Christianity and monotheism	312
15	Realism vs. Intentionality	317
15(a)	Sensibles	317
15(b)	Objects of discursive thought	317
15(c)	Intelligibles	317
16	Consciousness Pervasive	326
17	The Unity of Minds	332
17(a)	We and our soul are the intelligibles, are all things	332
17(b)	Becoming Intellect	334
17(c)	Union with the One	338
17(d)	Are all souls one with each other and is soul indivisible?	340
17(e)	Are all intellects one with each other and is Intellect indivisible?	347
18	Problems about the Differentiation of Selves	350
18(a)(i)	Introduction	350
18(a)(ii)	The true self	352
18(b)	Do Platonic Forms of individual souls differentiate persons?	362
18(c)	What differentiates souls, or intellects, or selves?	368
(i)	In the body	368
(ii)	When discarnate, but below the intelligible world	368
(iii)	Souls in the intelligible world	370
18(d)	The analogy of a theorem	372
	The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle translation series	377
	Translators in the Sourcebook	379
	Abbreviations and Sigla	381
	Main Thinkers Represented in the Sourcebook	383
	Index Locorum	387