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Commentaries on Aristotle's writings have been produced since the
2nd century AD. This edition contains Greek commentaries on his
work from the 3rd to the 8th centuries AD by, among others,
Alexander of Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius
in Greek.
Commentaries on Aristotle's writings have been produced since the
2nd century AD. This edition contains Greek commentaries on his
work from the 3rd to the 8th centuries AD by, among others,
Alexander of Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius
in Greek.
Commentaries on Aristotle's writings have been produced since the
2nd century AD. This edition contains Greek commentaries on his
work from the 3rd to the 8th centuries AD by, among others,
Alexander of Aphrodiensias, Themistios, Joh. Philoponus, Simplicius
in Greek.
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 an infinite
collection.
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 elements, 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.
Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Categories is the most
comprehensive philosophical critique of the work ever written,
representing 600 years of criticism. In his Categories, Aristotle
divides what exists in the sensible world into ten categories of
Substance, Quantity, Relative, Quality and so on. Simplicius starts
with a survey of previous commentators, and an introductory set of
questions about Aristotle's philosophy and about the Categories in
particular. The commentator, he says, needs to present Plato and
Aristotle as in harmony on most things. Why are precisely ten
categories named, given that Plato did with fewer distinctions? We
have a survey of views on this. And where in the scheme of
categories would one fit a quality that defines a substance - under
substance or under quality? In his own commentary, Porphyry
suggested classifying a defining quality as something distinct, a
substantial quality, but others objected that this would constitute
an eleventh. The most persistent question dealt with here is
whether the categories classify words, concepts, or things.
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 both in its preservation of 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.
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