Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina

This book offers a study of the history of the transmission of Aristotle’s treatises known under the collective denomination Parva naturalia on the basis of all of the available manuscripts, as well as the ancient and Byzantine receptions of the texts, with special focus on the commentary on De sensu by Alexander of Aphrodisias and the commentary on the other treatises of the collection by Michael of Ephesus, which depends on prior exegetical materials known through scholia that had not been edited so far. It uncovers a new independent branch of the transmission, hitherto unknown to editors of Aristotle’s text, for which the main witness is the neglected 15th-century manuscript Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Phillipps 1507. The existence of this branch accounts for the special status of manuscrit Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1339 and offers many opportunities to improve on the current reconstruction of Aristotle’s text.

This volume reconstructs Alexander of Aphrodisias’s doctrine of the soul and, in particular, his theory of intellect to present it as an enlightening, innovative, and systematizing interpretation of Aristotelian philosophy. It reveals the relevance of Alexander’s interpretation for current debates about the intellect and highlights the originality of his contribution to the historical terminological development of the idea of reason.

How were Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations read in Antiquity? What were the perceived intentions, messages and problems of this treatise, the last within the Organon?

This book presents newly discovered fragments from the lost ancient commentaries by Aspasios, Herminos, Alexander and Syrianos on Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. After presenting the fragments, which were preserved by the humanist and philosopher Agostino Nifo (ca. 1473-1538), the introduction makes the case for their authenticity. There follows an edition of the fragments, accompanied by a translation and detailed commentary. This material sheds new light on the history and philosophy of logic, and especially on the theory of fallacies. It further documents how the Sophistical Refutations were interpreted and used in ancient Aristotelianism. Finally, it complements our knowledge of the philosophy of two major Aristotelians, Herminos and his pupil, the great Alexander of Aphrodisias.

This study is of immediate relevance to readers with an interest in philosophy, logic, history, and/or Greco-Roman antiquity. Because it concerns the use and abuse of fallacies, and ways to counteract them, it also has countless practical applications in all fields of mundane life.

Neoplatonists from Plotinus onward incorporate Aristotle’s logic and ontology into their philosophies: this process is of both intrinsic and historical interest and paves the way for subsequent philosophical debates in the Middle Ages and beyond. The ten essays collected in this book focus on the readings of Aristotle by Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Their discussions cover key issues in the history of logic and metaphysics such as substance, hylomorphism, causation, existence, and predication. Among the topics tackled in this volume are Plotinus’ criticism of Aristotle’s physical essentialism, which is a major chapter in the history of metaphysics, and the interpretation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, one of the most influential and enigmatic works in the history of philosophy. Further essays focus on the readings of Aristotle’s categories developed by Porphyry and Iamblichus, which raise interesting questions at the intersection of logic and ontology, and on the integration of Aristotle’s ontology into Neoplatonist accounts of being and existence.

Anonymous’ and Stephanus’ commentaries, written in the 12th century AD, are the first surviving commentaries on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Their study, including the environment in which they were written and the philosophical ideas expressed in them, provides a better understanding of the reception of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Byzantium, the Byzantine practice of commenting on classical texts, and what can be called “Byzantine philosophy”. For the first time, this book explores the context of production of the commentaries, discusses the identity and features of their authors, and reveals their philosophical and philological significance. In particular, I examine the main topics discussed by Aristotle in the Rhetoric as contributing to persuasion, namely valid and fallacious rhetorical arguments, ethical notions, emotional response and style, and I analyse the commentators’ interpretations of these topics. In this analysis, I focus on highlighting the value of the philosophical views expressed, and on creating a discussion between the Byzantine and the modern interpretations of the treatise. Conclusively, the two commentators need to be considered as independent thinkers, who aimed primarily at integrating the treatise within the Aristotelian philosophical system.

This volume includes twelve studies by international specialists on Aristotle and his commentators. Among the topics treated are Aristotle’s political philosophy and metaphysics, the ancient and Byzantine commentators’ scholia on Aristotle’s logic, philosophy of language and psychology as well as studies of broader scope on developmentalism in ancient philosophy and the importance of studying Late Antiquity.

The Tria Opuscula by the Late Antique Neoplatonist Proklos are accessible in full in the translation into medieval Latin by Wilhelm von Moerbeke, as well as in fragments in the Greek texts of Late Antique and Byzantine authors. Using the form of a commentary on passages, this work assesses what we can learn from these sources about the original Greek text of the three works. At the same time the commentary serves the elucidation of the first complete Greek retroversion of the Tria Opuscula, which is published here.

Forms and Concepts is the first comprehensive study of the central role of concepts and concept acquisition in the Platonic tradition. It sets up a stimulating dialogue between Plato’s innatist approach and Aristotle’s much more empirical response. The primary aim is to analyze and assess the strategies with which Platonists responded to Aristotle’s (and Alexander of Aphrodisias’) rival theory. The monograph culminates in a careful reconstruction of the elaborate attempt undertaken by the Neoplatonist Proclus (6th century AD) to devise a systematic Platonic theory of concept acquisition.

The volume collects the most important papers Pierluigi Donini wrote in the last three decades with the aim of promoting a better assessment of post-hellenistic philosophy. The philosophical relevance of post-hellenistic philosophy is now widely (though not yet universally) recognized. Yet much remains to be done. The common practice of focusing each single school in itself detracts from a balanced assessment of the strategies exploited by many philosophers of the period. On the assumption that debates among schools play a major role in the philosophy of the commentators, Donini concentrates on the interaction between leading Aristotelians and Platonists and demonstrates that the developments of both systems of thought were heavily influenced by a continuous confrontation between the two schools. And whereas in cases such as Alcinous and Aspasius this is basically uncontroversial, for other authors such us Alexander, Antiochus and Plutarch the pioneering work of Donini paves the way for a better understanding of their doctrines and definitely confirms the intellectual importance of the first imperial age, when the foundations were laid of versions of both Aristotelianism and Platonism which were bound to influence the whole history of European thought, from Late Antiquity onwards.

In Greek Late Antiquity philosophy defined itself above all through the interpretation of authoritative texts such as Plato’s dialogues or the treatises of Aristotle.

This work looks at the last Late Antique commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics, the pagan Simplicius and the Christian Philoponus (both 6th cent. AD). Golitsis demonstrates how differently the two contemporaries interpreted the philosophical tradition and how this led them to deduce different routes to finding the truth.

This book is the first study of the ontological system of Alexander of Aphrodisias (floruit c. 200 AD), famous for his commentaries on the works of Aristotle. By drawing not only on the entire known corpus of the commentator's works, but also on numerous new Greek and Arabic sources, Marwan Rashed aims at defining Alexander’s place in the history of metaphysics. Alexander’s attempt to substantiate the objectivity of the Aristotelian form draws down the curtain on the phase of the Hellenistic peripatos, at the same time marking the beginning of medieval Aristotelianism.

The no longer extant commentary by Alexander of Aphrodisias (approx. 200 AD) on Aristotle’s Physics is one of the most important works of antiquity ‑, as a source text having influenced both the Greek commentators on Aristotle and ‒ through the mediation of Arab scholars ‑ Western medieval philosophy. This volume presents the first edition and study of nearly 700 recently discovered Byzantine scholia, which allow a more exact reconstruction of Alexander’s teachings on physics, and at the same time contribute to a better understanding of Aristotelianism and preclassical physics.