Like many collections of essays, this work is a veritable omnium-gatherum, both in terms of topics and quality. Structurally, the work is divided into four main sections: The Aristotelian Tradition; Modern Approaches; Normative Considerations; and finally Epistemological and Metaphysical Considerations. One should be aware, however, that some of the essays could, and perhaps should, be placed in other sections, while one in particular, although good in itself, had virtually nothing to say on the topic of categories. What follows is a (...) brief summary statement about each essay. (shrink)

In the first section, our anonymous author discusses sophistria as an art. Like other authors who wrote sophistria, the author first shows that sophistria is a demonstrative science, not indeed in the sense that one is taught how to make sophistical arguments, but a science in the sense that knowledge about sophistical arguments is taught through demonstrations. In the subsequent questions on this topic, he makes a number of distinctions, for example, between a new and an old division of sophistrie, (...) between sophistria utens and docens, and between scientia realis and scientia rationis, ultimately identifying the science in question as a scientia rationis. He ends this section by identifying the ways in which the four causes pertain to this science. Unfortunately, a number of lines are missing in these questions, making it impossible to identify some of the author’s arguments which lead him to some of his positions. For example, in question 5, which asks whether the division of sophistrie into an older part and a newer part is suitable, only two arguments to the opposite are given; in question 6, which asks about the distinction between utens and docens, nothing but the question has survived, while in question 7, which asks whether the new logic of sophistria is distinct from the other parts, only one opposing argument is given. (shrink)

Unlike some of the shorter, introductory commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, such as those by Porphyry, Dexippus, or Simplicius’s teacher Ammonius, Simplicius’s commentary is, as he himself admits, a lengthy treatise that discusses Aristotle’s text lemma by lemma. As is customary, Simplicius begins his commentary with an introduction that includes two schemata of questions. The first situates the Categories within the larger context of Aristotle’s corpus and identifies the necessary qualities of good students and teachers. The second set of questions focuses (...) specifically on the Categories by addressing the goal of the work, its usefulness, its authenticity, its place within logic, the reason for its title, and its division into chapters. Most important in this introductory section is Simplicius’s discussion of the goal of Aristotle in writing the Categories, for at the time there was widespread disagreement as to whether the Categories is a work about words only, about things only, about concepts only, or somehow about all three. Of course, like many of the medievals who studied his commentary, Simplicius argues that it is about all three and contends that the goal “would be about the simple and most generic parts of speech which signify simple realities, and the simple notions which exist in conjunction with these simple realities”. (shrink)