Alexander of Aphrodisias

This collection of essays presents a novel interpretation of a signature work of Alexander of Aphrodisias, and of the Stoic philosophy he seeks to refute. It covers all chapters of the work, challenging existing scholarship in significant ways.

Alexander of Aphrodisias picks up Aristotle’s insufficient treatment of simultaneous perception and develops an adequate solution for the problem, thereby offering an account of the unity of perceptual consciousness—the single mental activity of a single subject with complex content. I show the adequacy of the solution by using as criteria the requirements that have been identified by Aristotle and approved (and explained) by Alexander. I analyze Alexander’s solution in two turns. First, with respect to heterogeneous perceptibles, Alexander adopts and reformulates (...) Aristotle’s metaphorical account invoking the analogy with a point. Second, with respect to homogeneous opposites, accordingly, perception is judgement, but it involves physical changes in diverse parts of the primary sense-organ. By this account Alexander resolves the issue of the unity of the subject on the level of the capacity of the soul, and coordinates the complexity of content with the complexity on the physical level. In addition to being adequate, the solution is faithful to Aristotle. I suggest that the interpretative decisions Alexander makes (the clarification of the analogy; the reference he finds to the analogy; the two components of the solution, judgement and parts of the organ) form an ingenious extension of Aristotle’s treatment. Interestingly, even though many elements in Alexander’s interpretation are taken up by modern commentators, no one has followed it in its entirety, nor even treated it in its own right. (shrink)

A fairly long (~15,000 word) overview of ancient theories of freedom and determinism. It covers the supposed threat of causal determinism to "free will," i.e., the sort of control we need to have in order to be rightly held responsible for our actions. But it also discusses fatalistic arguments that proceed from the Principle of Bivalence, what responsibility we have for our own characters, and god and fate. Philosophers discussed include Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, Carneades, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Plotinus. (...) Plato is mentioned in passing a few times in connection with other philosophers. (shrink)

En este artículo se toma en consideración la noción de providencia en Alejandro de Afrodisias, como hito principal de los esfuerzos del aristotelismo para responder a la noción estoica de “destino” o “hado”. Se tienen en cuenta los precedentes aristotélicos sobre este tema, sobre todo el tratado _De mundo_. El aristotelismo siempre ha recalcado la mayor sujeción al poder divino de los cielos respecto del mundo sublunar, pero será Alejandro quien convierta esta providencia primariamente concentrada en el cielo en una (...) “providencia general” en sentido estricto. Ahora bien, si los dioses sólo conocen las especies y no los particulares, entonces es preciso rechazar la interpretación de Sharples. Según él, la concepción de providencia sostenida por Alejandro pretendía responder a una línea de crítica como la de Ático; pero, de acuerdo con Alejandro, los dioses seguirían sin saber la calidad de la conducta humana, luego no se daría satisfacción a las objeciones de Ático. Se finaliza atendiendo al parentesco de la concepción de Alejandro con el medioplatonismo, una semejanza que podría justificar este viraje adoptado por el filósofo peripatético. (shrink)

Dans le De fato, Alexandre construit une théorie péripatéticienne du destin et réfute les Stoïciens, partisans dune conception dure du destin. Par là il offre un document majeur sur le déterminisme dans lAntiquité. Louvrage montre comment lexégèse dAristote lui permet de proposer une conception nouvelle de la responsabilité.

To study the influence of divinity on cosmos, Alexander uses the notions of ‘fate’ and ‘providence,’ which were common in the philosophy of his time. In this way, he provides an Aristotelian interpretation of the problems related to such concepts. In the context of this discussion, he offers a description of ‘nature’ different from the one that he usually regards as the standard Aristotelian notion of nature, i.e. the intrinsic principle of motion and rest. The new coined concept is a (...) ‘cosmic’ nature that can be identified with both ‘fate’ and ‘divine power,’ which are the immediate effect of providence upon the world. In the paper it is exposed how the conception of providence defended by Alexander means a rejection of the divine care of the particulars, since the divinities are only provident for species. Several texts belonging to the Middle Platonic philosophers will convince us that such thinkers (and not directly Aristotle) are the origin of the thesis that will be understood as the conventional Aristotelian position, namely that divinity only orders species but not individuals. (shrink)

Alexander of Aphrodisias's commentary (about AD 200) is the earliest extant commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, and it is the most valuable indirect witness to the Metaphysics text and its transmission. Mirjam Kotwick's study is a systematic investigation into the version of the Metaphysics that Alexander used when writing his commentary, and into the various ways his text, his commentary, and the texts transmitted through our manuscripts relate to one another. Through a careful analysis of lemmata, quotations, and Alexander's discussion of (...) Aristotle's argument Kotwick shows how to uncover and partly reconstruct a Metaphysics version from the second century AD. Kotwick then uses this version for improving the text that came down to us by the direct manuscript tradition and for finding solutions to some of the puzzles in this tradition. Through a side-by-side examination of Alexander's text, his interpretation of Aristotle's thought, and the directly transmitted versions of the Metaphysics, Kotwick reveals how Alexander's commentary may have influenced the text of our manuscripts at different stages of the transmission process. This study is the first book-length examination of a commentary as a witness to an ancient philosophical text. This blend of textual criticism and philosophical analysis both expands on existing methodologies in classical scholarship and develops new ones. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

A collection of eight studies on Theophrastus' Metaphysics, presenting an overview of the first reception of Aristotle.

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon are valuable sources for both Stoic and early Peripatetic logic, and have often been used as such – in particular for early Peripatetic hypothetical syllogistic and Stoic propositional logic. By contrast, this paper explores the role Alexander himself played in the development and transmission of those theories. There are three areas in particular where he seems to have made a difference: First, he drew a connection between certain passages from Aristotle’s Topics and (...) Prior Analytics and the Stoic indemonstrable arguments, and, based on this connection, appropriated at least four kinds of Stoic indemonstrables as Aristotelian. Second, he developed and made use of a specifically Peripatetic terminology in which to describe and discuss those arguments – which facilitated the integration of the indemonstrables into Peripatetic logic. Third, he made some progress towards a solution to the problem of what place and interpretation the Stoic third indemonstrables should be given in a Peripatetic and Platonist setting. Overall, the picture emerges that Alexander persistently (if not always consistently) presented passages from Aristotle’s logical œuvre in a light that makes it appear as if Aristotle was in the possession of a Peripatetic correlate to the Stoic theory of indemonstrables. (shrink)

At the beginning of his Isagoge, Porphyry establishes a famous set of questions concerning genera and species, which is the origin of the medieval “Quarrel of universals”. But this text gave rise to difficulty for interpreters: does Porphyry, when elaborating this set of questions, refer to historical positions or does he offer these alternatives in a lingua franca, which would be neutral from a doctrinal point of view? This article focusing on the first of the three alternatives raised by Porphyry (...) aims to show that replacing Porphyry's text in its historical and philosophical background can shed light on the meaning of this alternative. During the Post-Hellenistic period (100 B.C.–200 A.D.), the different schools discussed the ontological status of universals. Therefore, not only does Porphyry use the terminology shaped by former philosophers, but he also alludes to the debate between Stoics, Middle Platonists and Peripatetics. Alexander of Aphrodisias constitutes a precious help to reconstruct this dispute, which this article tries to depict. (shrink)

This article is about the terms used in the works traditionally ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias to mean the process of abstraction through which intellect separates form and matter. The passages are studied in order to identify what nouns and verbs are used. Since in two works of dubious authorship aphaireô and aphairesis are found, the usage of these terms in the works that can be ascribed with certainty to Alexander is studied. The results obtained are examined in the light (...) of the hypotheses about the authorship and chronology of the cited works formulated by scholars so far. (shrink)

The Opening Chapter of De Anima II, in which Aristotle outlines an extremely general and universally applicable characterization of the soul (κοινότατος λόγος), closes with a perplexing comparison, which seems to contradict the general drift of that definiens1. After carefully arguing that the body-soul relation is a token of the hylomorphic model, which accounts for the substantial unity of every natural compound, Aristotle writes, “[F]urther, it remains unclear [ἄδηλον] whether the soul may not be the actuality of its body in (...) the sense in which the sailor is the actuality of the ship” (413a8–9).2 Far from being found in the body as the functional organization of its matter, this remark suggests that the soul .. (shrink)

In view of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s and Porphyry’s respective positions on the issue, I discuss whether logos apophantikos is to be defined, as DI 4 seems to imply, by its being true or false or rather, as DI 5 seems to imply, by its representing the ontological combination/separation of substrate and attribute through the logical combination/separation of subject and predicate.

This piece of work intends to shed light on Alexander of Aphrodisias from the second-century Aristotle commentator through the history of Aristotelian psychology up to the sixteenth century's clandestine prompter of the new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death the head of the Peripatetic school in Athens served as the authority on Aristotle in the Neo-Platonic school, survived the Arabic centuries of philosophy as Averroes' exemplary exponent of the mortality of the soul and as such was not (...) considered worthy of translation by the Latin Scholastics. This attitude changed only in the Late Middle Ages, when the resistance against Averroes grew fierce and Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to him. In 1495 his account of Aristotle's psychology was translated and published and the underlying principles of a natural philosophy, based on sense perception and exempt from metaphysics, became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander's teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century. (shrink)

This piece of work intends to shed light on Alexander of Aphrodisias from the second-century Aristotle commentator through the history of Aristotelian psychology up to the sixteenth century's clandestine prompter of the new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death the head of the Peripatetic school in Athens served as the authority on Aristotle in the Neo-Platonic school, survived the Arabic centuries of philosophy as Averroes' exemplary exponent of the mortality of the soul and as such was not (...) considered worthy of translation by the Latin Scholastics. This attitude changed only in the Late Middle Ages, when the resistance against Averroes grew fierce and Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to him. In 1495 his account of Aristotle's psychology was translated and published and the underlying principles of a natural philosophy, based on sense perception and exempt from metaphysics, became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander's teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of universals is traditionally framed as the problem about the ontological status of universals. It is often said that the ontological status of universals is a post-Aristotelian problem that was bequeathed to the Middle Ages by a famous sentence in Porphyry's Isagoge. 1 Porphyry raises but then refuses to answer three questions about the ontological status of genera and species, saying that they are too "deep" for the present investigation. 2 Although Porphyry is the first to announce (...) the problem, it was Boethius's commentary on Porphyry, rather than the Isagoge itself, that made this sentence famous and that is therefore responsible for the problem of universals in .. (shrink)

According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, our potential intellect is a purely receptive capacity. Alexander also claims that, in order for us to actualise our intellectual potentiality, the intellect needs to abstract what is intelligible from enmattered perceptible objects. Now a problem emerges: How is it possible for a purely receptive capacity to perform such an abstraction? It will be argued that even though Alexander's reaction to this question causes some tension in his theory, the philosophical motivation for it is a (...) sound one. Rather than a calculation of actualities and potentialities, the doctrine of receptivity is supposed to explain how human beings come to grasp universal aspects of reality in an accurate manner. (shrink)

Este ensayo, dedicado a las doctrinas psicológicas de Alejandro, se divide en tres partes: la primera ilustra, a través de ejemplos tratados por el De anima, la concepción que tenía Alejandro de su actividad filosófica. Dado que Aristóteles ha transmitido las doctrinas más verdaderas, cree Alejandro, lo que hay que hacer es simplemente exponerlas de nuevo del modo más claro y completo, valiéndose de todo lo que dice Aristóteles respecto de las funciones psíquicas, incluso en obras diferentes del tratado principal. (...) La segunda parte del ensayo se centra en la sección inicial (1-26 Bruns) del tratado alejandrino, donde principalmente se prueba que el alma, como cualquier otra forma, es sólo la conjunción de las capacidades del cuerpo, cuya forma es el alma. Más aún, argumenta Accattino, tales capacidades anímicas nunca pueden expresarse independientemente del cuerpo, y menos aún con la desaparición del cuerpo. Por lo tanto, como forma del cuerpo, el alma es completamente mortal. La otra tesis célebre de Alejandro (la identificación del intelecto activo con el dios aristotélico de Metafísica Lambda) es tratada por Accattino en la tercera parte de su ensayo. Allí examina la noética del De intellectu de Alejandro y la sección dedicada a la noética en su De anima (80, 16-91, 6). En esta parte de su artículo el autor aclara, primero, los términos usados en la noética alejandrina (intelecto en potencia o intelecto “material”, intelecto entendido como “hábito”, intelecto “que viene de afuera”, el intelecto “agente”); luego ilustra el modo en que Alejandro da cuenta de la actividad intelectiva del intelecto humano y, finalmente, se concentra en el papel diferente que atribuye al intelecto agente (o el intelecto “que viene de afuera”, identificado por Alejandro con el intelecto divino) en el De intellectu y en la sección del De anima, respectivamente, de modo de mostrar que la posición más madura de Alejandro es la indicada en el De anima. (shrink)

The Prior and Posterior Analytics were entitled Ta Analutika by Aristotle himself. But it is not at all clear what Aristotle had in mind in grouping these two works together and in giving them this common title. This question was discussed at length by the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle. Two main possibilities emerged. The first is that taken by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ammonius, and Philoponus in his commentary on APr. According to this line of thought, Aristotle has in mind (...) the analysis that shows how a complex arises out of simple entities; both Analytics show us how to subject all lines of syllogistic reasoning (including demonstration) to such analysis. According to the second approach, found in the commentary on APo., 2 attributed to Philoponus, in giving APo., 2 the title 'Analytics' Aristotle has in mind the analysis that reasons from effects to causes. Demonstrations reveal the causes of things, and APo., 2 shows how this is the case. In this paper, the two approaches are compared, and a third approach, which builds on the second, but allows 'Analytics' to have a continuity of sense in its use as a title, is proposed. (shrink)

Carlo Natali se ocupa de examinar las bases y detalles del debate de Alejandro con los deterministas, así como sus razones para mostrar el papel decisivo de la deliberación en la explicación de la acción. El punto de partida de Alejandro es el capítulo 9 del De interpretatione, texto que indica de una manera bastante clara que Aristóteles visualizó las consecuencias, absurdas en su opinión, del determinismo. En su discusión Natali examina la influencia de los argumentos de Alejandro en el (...) comentario de Boecio al De interpretatione; un aspecto particularmente destacable del ensayo de Natali es que éste muestra que Alejandro –y Aspacio antes de él–, aun dando por supuesta la relevancia decisiva de la deliberación en la explicación de la acción, modifica en parte la teoría aristotélica de la deliberación, ya que trata de adaptarla a la nueva situación cultural y al nuevo debate filosófico de su tiempo. Natali hace notar que la aparente incorporación por parte de Alejandro de terminología y nociones estoicas (como la de asentimiento) es parte de una inteligente estrategia para combatir a los deterministas estoicos en su propio terreno: lo decisivo es la deliberación como ingrediente central en la explicación de la acción, así como el hecho de poder elegir una cosa o algo distinto de ella (De fato 178, 22), si eso parece preferible. (shrink)

R. W. Sharples provides a new edition, with introduction and commentary in English, of the Greek text. The Mantissa is a collection of short discussions, transmitted as a supplement to the treatise On the Soul by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200 AD).The collection includes discussion of a range of topics, among them the nature of soul and intellect, theories of how seeing takes place, issues in ethics, and the nature of fate. The text is based upon a new (...) collation of the principal manuscript, the ninth century Venetus Marcianus graecus 258, and the apparatus corrects Bruns' misreportings of the principal manuscript and of the others that he used. Account has also been taken of the medieval Arabic and Latin versions of some of the sections which circulated independently, notably On Intellect which had a substantial influence on medieval philosophy. The introduction is chiefly concerned with the manuscripts and the relation between them. The commentary is based on the notes to the editor's English translation of the work (London: Duckworth and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); however, the commentary also takes into account more recent work on the collection by various scholars. (shrink)

Résumé — En Enn., VI, 3 [44], 5, Plotin fait usage de doctrines péripatéticiennes concernant la substance, l’inhérence et la prédication. Ces doctrines correspondent de manière frappante à l’interprétation anti-extensionaliste de la substance physique développée par Alexandre d’Aphrodise contre les thèses des commentateurs plus anciens . Le parallèle entre Plotin et Alexandre ne doit cependant pas conduire à penser que Plotin se borne à suivre les thèses du commentateur, et que leurs doctrines soient donc identiques. Plotin vise plutôt à transposer (...) les principes de l’hylémorphisme d’Alexandre dans un contexte philosophique différent, fondé sur des prémisses métaphysiques qui portent sur la causalité des substances intelligibles. Comme Plotin le montre en VI, 3 [44], la forme hylémorphique n’est en effet pas substance : elle s’identifie à un amas de qualités accidentelles qui dépendent d’une essence véritable et extra-physique, le logos. On parvient à des conclusions analogues si l’on aborde la discussion de la causalité démiurgique chez Alexandre et Plotin. Les deux auteurs adressent des critiques approfondies au modèle artisanal de la causalité . Il n’est pas invraisemblable que les thèses d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise aient joué un rôle dans la genèse de la doctrine plotinienne de la causalité. Il faut cependant remarquer, encore une fois, que le cadre conceptuel dans lequel s’inscrivent les critiques de la causalité démiurgique chez Alexandre et chez Plotin est très différent. Pour Alexandre, la causalité démiurgique est rejetée en faveur d’une doctrine cosmologique de la finalité, qui rattache les récurrences naturelles aux mouvements cycliques des astres. Pour Plotin, en revanche, l’ordre naturel s’explique par l’action de principes extra-physiques et sa critique de la causalité démiurgique ne se comprend qu’à l’intérieur de la doctrine de la causalité des êtres intelligibles.Hylémorphisme et causalité des intelligibles.— In Enn., VI, 3 [44], 5 Plotinus outlines some doctrines regarding substance, inherence and predication. Such doctrines are similar to the anti-extensionalist reading of Aristotle’s physical substance that was developed by Alexander of Aphrodisias against previous Aristotelian commentators . The parallel between Plotinus and Alexander is striking : it can safely be inferred that Plotinus’ discussion is based on that of the commentator. This, however, should not lead to assume that Plotinus simply follows Alexander, so that their theories of physical substance are identical. Instead, Plotinus aims to transpose the philosophical principles of Alexander’s Peripatetic hylomorphism into a different doctrinal framework, where metaphysical premises involving the intelligible substances and their causality play a prominent role. As Plotinus shows in VI, 3 [44], the hylomorphic form is not a substance, but a bundle of accidental properties depending on an extra-physical substantial principle, i.e. the logos. The analysis of Alexander’s and Plotinus’ discussions of demiurgic causality lead to the same conclusions. Both philosophers criticize the demiurgic scheme of causality . It can reasonably be assumed that Alexander of Aphrodisias’ treatment played a role in the genesis of Plotinus’ view of causality. However, it is worth noting that the criticism of demiurgic causality has a quite different position within the systems of the two philosophers. Alexander rejects the presence of a demiurgic cause in favour of a cosmological conception of finalism, where natural recurrences are regarded as depending on the cyclical motions of the stars. According to Plotinus, instead, the order of nature is completely caused by extra-physical principles ; his criticism of demiurgic causality points to his doctrine of intelligible causes. (shrink)

In his De anima, Alexander of Aphrodisias identifies the active intellect with the first mover and describes this “first cause” as an immaterial and separate form. In this article, we try to explain the differences between Aristotle and Alexander on this point. Aristotle never defines the first mover as a form but claims that its being is actuality. How is it possible for Alexander, well known for being “the Commentator par excellence”, to assert such a thesis which seems dangerously close (...) to platonism ? We want to show that this description of first mover as a pure face (eidos) is not accidental in Alexander's work and is linked up with his epistemological conceptions as much as his metaphysics. (shrink)

Italian translation with facing Greek text of Alexander's commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics I-V, and of pseudo-Alexander's commentary on the remaining books of the Metaphysics.

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.

In the second half of Book One of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle reflects on the application of the formalized logic has developed in the first half, focusing particularly on the non-modal or assertoric syllogistic developed in the first seven chapters. These reflections lead Alexander of Aphrodisias, who was a great exponent of Aristotelianism in the late second century, to explain and sometimes argue against subsequent developments of Aristotle's logic and alternatives and objections to it, ideas associated mainly with his colleague (...) Theophrastus and with the Stoics. The other main topic of this part of the Prior Analytics is the specification of a method for discovering true premises needed to prove a given proposition. Aristotle's presentation is sometimes difficult to follow, and Alexander's discussion is extremely helpful to the uninitiated reader. In his commentary on the final chapter translated in this volume, Alexander provides an insightful account of Aristotle's criticism of Plato's method of division. (shrink)

Aristotle's account of place in terms of an innermost limit of a containing body was to generate serious discussion and controvery among Aristotle's later commentators, especially when it was applied to the cosmos as a whole. The problem was that since there is nothing outside of the cosmos that could contain it, the cosmos apparently could not have a place according to Aristotle's definition; however, if the cosmos does not have a place, then it is not clear that it could (...) move, but it was thought to move, namely, in its daily revolution, which was viewed as a kind of natural locomotion and so required the cosmos to have a place. The study briefly outlines Aristotle's account of place and then considers its fate, particularly with respect to the cosmos and its motion, at the hands of later commentators. To this end, it begins with Theophrastus' puzzles concerning Aristotle's account of place, and how later Greek commentators, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and others, attempted to address these problems in what can only be described as ad hoc ways. It then considers Philoponus' exploitation of these problems as a means to replace Aristotle's account of place with his own account of place understood in terms of extension. The study concludes with the Arabic Neoplatonizing Aristotelian Avicenna and his novel introduction of a new category of motion, namely, motion in the category of position. Briefly, Avicenna denies that the cosmos has a place, and so claims that it moves not with respect to place, but with respect to position. (shrink)