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In "On the Soul" 3.1-5, Aristotle goes beyond the five senses to
the general functions of sense perception, the imagination and the
so-called active intellect, whose identity was still a matter of
controversy in the time of Thomas Aquinas. In his commentary on
Aristotle's text, Simplicius insists that the intellect in question
is not something transcendental, but the human rational soul. He
denies both Plotinus' view that a part of our soul has never
descended from uninterrupted contemplation of the Platonic forms,
and Proclus' view that our soul cannot be changed in its substance
through embodiment. Continuing the debate in Carlos Steel's earlier
volume in this series, Henry Blumenthal assesses the authorship of
the commentary. He concludes against it being by Simplicius, but
not for its being by Priscian. In a novel interpretation, he
suggests that if Priscian had any hand in it at all, it might have
been as editor of notes from Simplicius' lectures.
In chapter 1 of "On the Heavens" Aristotle defines body, and then
notoriously ruptures dynamics by introducing a fifth element,
beyond Plato's four, to explain the rotation of the heavens, which,
like nearly all Greeks, Aristotle took to be real, not apparent.
Even a member of his school, Xenarchus, we are told, rejected his
fifth element. The Neoplatonist Simplicius seeks to harmonise Plato
and Aristotle. Plato, he says, thought that the heavens were
composed of all four elements but with the purest kind of fire,
namely light, predominating. That Plato would not mind this being
called a fifth element is shown by his associating with the heavens
the fifth of the five convex regular solids recognised by geometry.
Simplicius follows Aristotle's view that one of the lower elements,
fire, also rotates, as shown by the behaviour of comets. But such
motion, though natural for the fifth element, is super-natural for
fire. Simplicius reveals that the Aristotelian Alexander of
Aphrodisias recognised the need to supplement Aristotle and account
for the annual approach and retreat of planets by means of
Ptolemy's epicycles or eccentrics. Aristotle's philosopher-god is
turned by Simplicius, following his teacher Ammonius, into a
creator-god, like Plato's. But the creation is beginningless, as
shown by the argument that, if you try to imagine a time when it
began, you cannot answer the question, 'Why not sooner?' In
explaining the creation, Simplicius follows the Neoplatonist
expansion of Aristotle's four 'causes' to six. The final result
gives us a cosmology very considerably removed from Aristotle's.
This text is a transation of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's
"On the Heaven 1.1-4".
The "Enchiridion" or "Handbook" of the first-century AD Stoic
Epictetus was used as an ethical treatise both in Christian
monasteries and by the sixth-century pagan Neoplatonist Simplicius.
Simplicius chose it for beginners, rather than Aristotle's
"Ethics", because it presupposed no knowledge of logic. We thus get
a fascinating chance to see how a pagan Neoplatonist transformed
Stoic ideas. The text was relevant to Simplicius because he too,
like Epictetus, was teaching beginners how to take the first steps
towards eradicating emotion, although he is unlike Epictetus in
thinking that they should give up public life rather than
acquiesce, if public office is denied them. Simplicius starts from
a Platonic definition of the person as rational soul, not body,
ignoring Epictetus' further whittling down of himself to just his
will or policy decisions. He selects certain topics for special
attention in chapters 1, 8, 27 and 31. Things are up to us, despite
Fate. Our sufferings are not evil, but providential attempts to
turn us from the body. Evil is found only in the human soul. But
evil is parasitic (Proclus' term) on good. The gods exist, are
provident, and cannot be bought off. With nearly all of this the
Stoics would agree, but for quite different reasons, and their own
distinctions and definitions are to a large extent ignored. This
translation of the "Handbook" is published in two volumes. This is
the second volume, covering chapters 27-53; the first covers
chapters 1-26.
The "Enchiridion" or "Handbook" of the first-century AD Stoic
Epictetus was used as an ethical treatise both in Christian
monasteries and by the sixth-century pagan Neoplatonist Simplicius.
Simplicius chose it for beginners, rather than Aristotle's
"Ethics", because it presupposed no knowledge of logic. We thus get
a fascinating chance to see how a pagan Neoplatonist transformed
Stoic ideas. The text was relevant to Simplicius because he too,
like Epictetus, was teaching beginners how to take the first steps
towards eradicating emotion, although he is unlike Epictetus in
thinking that they should give up public life rather than
acquiesce, if public office is denied them. Simplicius starts from
a Platonic definition of the person as rational soul, not body,
ignoring Epictetus' further whittling down of himself to just his
will or policy decisions. He selects certain topics for special
attention in chapters 1, 8, 27 and 31. Things are up to us, despite
Fate. Our sufferings are not evil, but providential attempts to
turn us from the body. Evil is found only in the human soul. But
evil is parasitic (Proclus' term) on good. The gods exist, are
provident, and cannot be bought off. With nearly all of this the
Stoics would agree, but for quite different reasons, and their own
distinctions and definitions are to a large extent ignored. This
translation of the "Handbook" is published in two volumes. This is
the first, covering chapters 1-26; the second covers chapters
27-53.
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On Aristotle "Physics 5" (Hardcover)
Of Cilicia Simplicius; Volume editing by J.O. Urmson; Peter Lautner; Translated by J.O. Urmson
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R4,036
Discovery Miles 40 360
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Aristotle's "Physics Book 3" covers two subjects: the definition of
change and the finitude of the universe. Change enters into the
very definition of nature as an internal source of change. Change
receives two definitions in chapters 1 and 2, as involving the
actualisation of the potential or of the changeable. Alexander of
Aphrodisias is reported as thinking that the second version is
designed to show that Book 3, like Book 5, means to disqualify
change in relations from being genuine change. Aristotle's
successor Theophrastus, we are told, and Simplicius himself, prefer
to admit relational change. Chapter 3 introduces a general causal
principle that the activity of the agent causing change is in the
patient undergoing change, and that the causing and undergoing are
to be counted as only one activity, however different in
definition. Simplicius points out that this paves the way for
Aristotle's God who moves the heavens, while admitting no motion in
himself. It is also the basis of Aristotle's doctrine, central to
Neoplatonism, that intellect is one with the objects it
contemplates. In defending Aristotle's claim that the universe is
spatially finite, Simplicius has to meet Archytas' question, "What
happens at the edge?". He replies that, given Aristotle's
definition of place, there is nothing, rather than an empty place,
beyond the furthest stars, and one cannot stretch one's hand into
nothing, nor be prevented by nothing. But why is Aristotle's
beginningless universe not temporally infinite? Simplicius answers
that the past years no longer exist, so one never has in infinite
collection.
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On Aristotle "Physics 5" (Hardcover)
Of Cilicia Simplicius; Volume editing by Peter Lautner; Aristotle; Translated by J.O. Urmson
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R4,041
Discovery Miles 40 410
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In the sixth century AD Simplicius produced detailed commentaries
on several of the works of Aristotle, which help in our
understanding of the "Physics", and of its interpretation in the
ancient world. This is Urmson's translation of Simplicius'
commentaries on "Physics 5" in which Aristotle lays down some of
the principles of his dynamics and theory of change. What does not
count as a change: change of relation?; the flux of time? There is
no change of change, yet acceleration is recognized. Aristotle
defines "continuous", "contact" and "next", and uses these
definitions in discussing when we can claim that the same change or
event is still going on.
Is there such a thing as three-dimensional space? Is space inert or
dynamic? Is the division of time into past, present and future
real? Does the whole of time exist all at once? Does it progress
smoothly or by discontinuous leaps? Simplicius surveys ideas about
place and time from the preceding thousand years of Greek
Philosophy and reveals the extraordinary ingenuity of the late
Neoplatonist theories, which he regards as marking a substantial
advance on all previous ideas.
In "Categories" chapters 7 and 8 Aristotle considers his third and
fourth categories - those of Relative and Quality. Critics of
Aristotle had suggested for each of the non-substance categories
that they could really be reduced to relatives, so it is important
how the category of Relative is defined. Arisotle offers two
definitons, and the second, stricter, one is often cited by his
defenders in order to rule out objections. The second definition of
relative involves the idea of something changing its relationship
through a change undergone by its correlate, not by itself. There
were disagreements as to whether this was genuine change, and
Plotinus discussed whether relatives exist only in the mind,
without being real. The terms used by Aristotle for such
relationships was 'being disposed relatively to something', a term
later borrowed by the Stoics for their fourth category, and perhaps
originating in Plato's Academy. In his discussion of Quality,
Aristotle reports a debate on whether justice admits of degrees, or
whether only the possession of justice does so. Simplicius reports
the further development of this controversy in terms of whether
justice admits a range or latitude (platos). This debate helped to
inspire the medieval idea of latitude of forms, which goes back
much further than is commonly recognised - at least to Plato and
Aristotle.
Chapters 5 and 6 of Aristotle's "Categories" describe his first two
categories, Substance and Quantity. It is usually taken that
Plotinus attacked Aristotle's "Categories", but that Porphyry and
Iamblichus restored it to the curriculum once and for all.
Nonetheless, the introduction to this text stresses how much of the
defence of Aristotle Porphyry was able to draw out of Plotinus'
critical discussion. Simplicius' commentary is our most
comprehensive account of the debate on the validity of Aristotle's
"Categories". One subject discussed by Simplicius in these chapters
is where the differentia of a species (eg the rationality of
humans) fits into the scheme of categories. Another is why
Aristotle elevates the category of Quantity to second place, above
the category of Quality. Further, de Haas shows how Simplicius
distinguishes different kinds of universal order to solve some of
the problems.
Aristotle argues in "On the Heavens" 1.5-7 that there can be no
infinitely large body, and in 1.8-9 that there cannot be more than
one physical world. As a corollary in 1.9, he infers that there is
no place, vacuum or time beyond the outermost stars. As one
argument in favour of a single world, he argues that his four
elements, earth, air, fire and water, have only one natural
destination apiece. Moreover they accelerate as they approach it
and acceleration cannot be unlimited. However, the Neoplatonist
Simplicius, who wrote the commentary translated here in the sixth
century AD, tells us that this whole world view was to be rejected
by Strato, the third head of Aristotle's school. At the same time,
he tells us the different theories of acceleration in Greek
philosophy.
Book two of Aristotle's "Physics" is thought by some to be the most
interesting and representative book in the whole of his corpus. It
explains his conception of nature, of physics as opposed to
mathematics, of causation and explanation, of chance and of purpose
in nature. Simplicius, writing in the 6th century AD, is the most
comprehensive of all the commentators. He reports interpretations
of Aristotle from the preceding 800 years by Eudemus, Posidonius,
Porphyry and Syranius. His accounts of the various definitions of
nature and of chance are highly useful, are as his analyses of
Aristotle's technical terms, per accidens and privation. He often
carries out the project, which Aristotle himself proposed but never
undertook, of putting Aristotle's scientific explanations into
syllogistic form.
This is the commentary attributed to Simplicius on Aristotle's "On
the Soul". It is intended to provide a wider readership with the
opportunity to assess the disputed question of authorship. Is the
work by Simplicius, or by his colleague Priscian, or by another
commentator? The commentary is a source for late Neoplatonist
theories of thought and sense perception and provides insight into
this area of Aristotle's thought. In this volume the Neoplatonist
commentator covers the first half of Aristotle's "On the Soul",
comprising Aristotle's survey of his predecessors and his own rival
account of the nature of the soul.
There has recently been considerable renewed interest in Book 7 of
the Physics of Aristotle, once regarded as merely an undeveloped
forerunner to Book 8. The debate surrounding the importance of the
text is not new to modern scholarship: for example, in the fourth
century BC Eudemus, the Peripatetic philosopher associate of
Aristotle, left it out of his treatment of the Physics. Now, for
the first time, Charles Hagen's lucid translation gives the English
reader access to Simplicius' commentary on Book 7, an indispensable
tool for the understanding of the text. Its particular interest
lies in its explanation of how the chapters of Book 7 fit together
and its reference to a more extensive second version of Aristotle's
text than the one which survives today.
Aristotle believed that the outermost stars are carried round us on
a transparent sphere. There are directions in the universe and a
preferred direction of rotation. The sun moon and planets are
carried on different revolving spheres. The spheres and celestial
bodies are composed of an everlasting fifth element, which has none
of the ordinary contrary properties like heat and cold which could
destroy it, but only the facility for uniform rotation. But this
creates problems as to how the heavenly bodies create light, and,
in the case of the sun, heat. The value of Simplicius' commentary
on "On the Heavens 2,1-9" lies partly in its preserving the lost
comments of Alexander and in Simplicius' controversy with him. The
two of them discuss not only the problem mentioned, but also
whether soul and nature move the spheres as two distinct forces or
as one. Alexander appears to have simplified Aristotle's system of
55 spheres down to seven, and some hints may be gleaned as to
whether, simplifying further, he thinks there are seven ultimate
movers, or only one.
Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's "Categories" falls into two
parts. First, it examines the six categories dealt with in chapter
9 of "Categories", namely acting, undergoing, being in a position,
when, where, and having. Secondly, it examines the so-called
"Postpraedicamenta" consisting of chapter 10-15, which treat four
kinds of opposition (relatives, contraries, possession, and
privation, affirmation and negation), along with priority,
simultaneity, movement and (again) having.
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