The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD, A Sourcebook: Logic and Metaphysics / Edition 1 available in Paperback
The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD, A Sourcebook: Logic and Metaphysics / Edition 1
- ISBN-10:
- 0801489881
- ISBN-13:
- 9780801489884
- Pub. Date:
- 12/23/2004
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0801489881
- ISBN-13:
- 9780801489884
- Pub. Date:
- 12/23/2004
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD, A Sourcebook: Logic and Metaphysics / Edition 1
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Overview
This is the first work to draw on the four hundred years of transition from ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval philosophy of Islam and the West. During this period, philosophy was often written in the form of commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Many ideas wrongly credited to the Middle Ages derive from these centuries, such as that of impetus in dynamics and intentional objects in philosophy of mind. The later Neoplatonist commentators fought a losing battle with Christianity, but inadvertently made Aristotle acceptable to Christians by ascribing to him belief in a Creator God and human immortality. The commentators provide a panorama of up to a thousand years of Greek philosophy, much of which would otherwise be lost. They also serve as the missing link essential for understanding the subsequent history of Western philosophy.
The second volume of The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD, A Sourcebook, deals with physics. The physics of the commentators was innovative: the Neoplatonists thought that the world of space and time was causally ordered by a nonspatial, nontemporal world, and this view required original thinking. Of the sixth-century Neoplatonists, Simplicius considered his teacher's ideas on space and time to be unprecedented, and Philoponus revised Aristotelianism to produce a new physics built around the Christian belief in God's Creation of the world. The thinkers of the Middle Ages borrowed from Philoponus and other commentators the proofs of a finite past, the idea of degrees of latitude in change and mixture, and in dynamics the idea of impetus and the defense of motion in a vacuum. All sources appear in English translation and are carefully linked and cross-referenced by editorial comment and explanation. Bibliographies are provided throughout.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780801489884 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
Publication date: | 12/23/2004 |
Series: | Philosophy of Commentators 200 - 600 AD , #2 |
Edition description: | New Edition |
Pages: | 225 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Richard Sorabji is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at King's College London and an Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He is the author, editor, translator, and annotator of more than a hundred books.
Table of Contents
Sources | xiii | |
Preface and Acknowledgements | xv | |
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | The Character of Logic | 31 |
1(a) | Aristotle's logic | 31 |
1(b) | Is logic a part or an instrument of philosophy? | 32 |
2 | Methodology | 37 |
2(a) | Methodology of the commentators | 37 |
(i) | Harmony of Plato and Aristotle and qualities of the commentator | 37 |
(ii) | Order of study | 41 |
(iii) | Innovation, traditionalism, loyalty, plagiarism | 43 |
(iv) | Decisions of authenticity of texts | 46 |
(v) | Relevance of dramatis personae to interpretation | 48 |
(vi) | Impossible thought experiments | 48 |
2(b) | Methodology of Plato and Aristotle | 51 |
(i) | Dialogues vs. plays | 51 |
(ii) | Proems of dialogues | 51 |
(iii) | Myths | 52 |
(iv) | Obscurity | 54 |
3 | Categories | 56 |
3(a) | The attack on Aristotle's Categories | 56 |
3(b) | Is Aristotle's Categories about words, concepts, or things? | 61 |
3(c) | Why ten categories and why these ten? | 62 |
3(d) | Plotinus' attack and replies: substance | 67 |
3(e) | Plotinus' denial of substancehood to sensible substances | 72 |
3(f) | Iamblichus' intellective interpretation in further categories: where | 74 |
3(g) | Plotinus' attack and replies: quantity | 76 |
3(h) | Plotinus' category of change, and replies | 78 |
3(i) | Aristotle's category of relatives and Cambridge change | 79 |
3(j) | Plotinus on the reality of relatives | 88 |
3(k) | The four Stoic categories | 90 |
3(l) | Plotinus on quality, and replies | 91 |
3(m) | Plotinus on the origin in the intelligible world of qualities | 94 |
3(n) | Plotinus on when and where, and replies | 95 |
3(o) | Plotinus on action and passion, and replies | 98 |
3(p) | Plotinus against 'having on' (wearing), and replies | 102 |
3(q) | Plotinus against posture, and replies | 103 |
3(r) | Plotinus: intelligible being as a unity characterised by 'Five Kinds' | 103 |
3(s) | 'Present in' and 'said of' | 106 |
3(t) | Inseparability of particular accidents | 107 |
3(u) | Is Socrates an accident of place? | 109 |
3(v) | Are we to treat as accidents present in a subject what is in a species? | 110 |
3(w) | How do differentiae fit into the categories? | 111 |
3(x) | Are differentiae potential or actual in the genus? | 120 |
3(y) | Is form substance or an accident of matter? | 122 |
3(z) | Is matter in any category? | 125 |
4 | Predicables | 126 |
5 | Universals | 128 |
5(a) | The move away from transcendent universals | 128 |
5(b) | Forms defended from the Third Man argument | 131 |
5(c) | Seven kinds of universal | 133 |
(i) | 1, 3, 4: Platonic Forms, Aristotelian universals in things, Aristotelian concepts | 135 |
(ii) | 4, 5: Aristotelian assembled concepts and Platonic recollected concepts | 138 |
(iii) | 6: Aristotelian abstracted concepts in mathematics vs. Platonic concepts | 142 |
(iv) | 7: Geometrical universals extended and pluralised in the imagination | 143 |
(v) | 2: Forms as creative logoi in the mind of God | 144 |
5(d) | Stoic universals | 147 |
5(e) | Alexander's universals | 149 |
5(f) | Porphyry's universals | 156 |
5(g) | Boethius' interpretation of Alexander's universals | 159 |
5(h) | Forms as causes: genus as causative in Neoplatonism | 160 |
5(i) | Forms as causes: dunamis in Neoplatonism | 162 |
6 | Particulars | 164 |
6(a) | Forms of individuals in Aristotle | 164 |
6(b) | The individual as a unique bundle of characteristics | 165 |
6(c) | Individuals treated like species | 168 |
6(d) | What differentiates individuals? | 169 |
(i) | Distinctive qualities | 169 |
(ii) | Place | 171 |
(iii) | Matter | 172 |
(iv) | The Stoics on all three | 173 |
6(e) | Particular forms in Aristotle | 174 |
6(f) | Particularity of unmoved movers in Alexander | 175 |
6(g) | Forms of individuals in Plotinus | 176 |
6(h) | Persistence over time | 176 |
(i) | Biological growth in Aristotle | 176 |
(ii) | Biological growth in Alexander and Philoponus | 177 |
(iii) | Biological growth in the Stoics and others | 178 |
(iv) | Can events or states return to existence? | 179 |
(v) | The next life - Stoics and Alexander | 179 |
(vi) | The next life - Christians | 181 |
(vii) | The Platonist soul vehicle | 183 |
(viii) | The next life - Epicureans | 183 |
(ix) | Perishing cannot be a merely relational change - Stoics | 184 |
(x) | Parfit on survival | 186 |
(xi) | Same only in form | 187 |
7 | Philosophy of Language | 205 |
7(a) | Do words mean thoughts or things? | 205 |
7(b) | The thoughts as an inner language | 211 |
7(c) | Are names natural or conventional? | 213 |
7(d) | Names given by God | 220 |
7(e) | Names as descriptions | 226 |
7(f) | Writing | 228 |
7(g) | The primary bearers of truth and falsity | 229 |
7(h) | Ambiguity, homonymy | 230 |
(i) | Are hononyms ambiguous names, or things named ambiguously? | 230 |
(ii) | Do homonyms have definitions, or can they include individuals? | 232 |
(iii) | What is it for homonyms to have the same name? | 233 |
(iv) | The kinds of homonymy | 234 |
7(i) | Metaphor | 235 |
7(j) | First and second imposition of expressions | 237 |
7(k) | Parts of speech and parts of sentence | 239 |
7(l) | The verb 'to be' | 240 |
7(m) | Speech acts and types of sentence | 244 |
7(n) | Communication and projection of concepts | 245 |
7(o) | Learning language | 249 |
8 | Syllogism | 250 |
8(a) | Aristotelians vs. Stoics and Galen on syllogism | 250 |
(i) | The contrast | 250 |
(ii) | Can Aristotelian syllogism discuss comparative size? | 251 |
(iii) | Stoic syllogisms with one premiss | 252 |
(iv) | Aristotelians against indemonstrable hypothetical premisses of Stoics | 253 |
(v) | Wholly hypothetical arguments reducible to Aristotelian categoricals? | 256 |
8(b) | Fourth syllogistic figure | 258 |
8(c) | Aristotle's 'perfect' syllogisms | 259 |
8(d) | Syllogisms concerning every case and most cases | 259 |
9 | Induction and Certainty | 262 |
9(a) | Induction | 262 |
9(b) | Innate logoi to fill the necessity gap | 263 |
9(c) | Spotting the essence by intellect from one example | 264 |
9(d) | Tekmeriodic proof to fill the gap | 265 |
9(e) | Analysis | 268 |
9(f) | Scepticism and philosophy | 271 |
10 | Modal Logic | 273 |
10(a) | What kind of possibility is contingency (endekhomenon)? | 273 |
10(b) | Alexander: necessity and contingency partly reduced to time | 275 |
10(c) | Do modal relations include the actual? | 278 |
10(d) | Syllogisms with mixed necessary and actual premisses | 278 |
10(e) | 'This man has died' - possible because of previous worlds? | 280 |
11 | Existence of the Subject in Affirmative and Negative Statements | 283 |
11(a) | Alexander vs. the Stoics on singular statements | 283 |
11(b) | Other disputes arising from Aristotle | 286 |
(i) | Affirmations | 286 |
(ii) | Predication of indefinite names and verbs | 288 |
(iii) | Simple denials | 289 |
11(c) | General terms, Stoics and Neoplatonists | 290 |
12 | Philosophy of Mathematics | 293 |
12(a) | Alexander: mathematical objects abstracted, not substantial as in Plato | 293 |
12(b) | Neoplatonist geometrical figures projected from thought into imagination | 293 |
12(c) | Neoplatonists on objects of arithmetic residing in thought | 300 |
13 | Simplicity and the Need for the One | 304 |
14 | The Three Hypostases: Soul, Intellect, One | 310 |
14(a) | Plotinus | 310 |
14(b) | Later Neoplatonism | 311 |
14(c) | Christianity and monotheism | 312 |
15 | Realism vs. Intentionality | 317 |
15(a) | Sensibles | 317 |
15(b) | Objects of discursive thought | 317 |
15(c) | Intelligibles | 317 |
16 | Consciousness Pervasive | 326 |
17 | The Unity of Minds | 332 |
17(a) | We and our soul are the intelligibles, are all things | 332 |
17(b) | Becoming Intellect | 334 |
17(c) | Union with the One | 338 |
17(d) | Are all souls one with each other and is soul indivisible? | 340 |
17(e) | Are all intellects one with each other and is Intellect indivisible? | 347 |
18 | Problems about the Differentiation of Selves | 350 |
18(a)(i) | Introduction | 350 |
18(a)(ii) | The true self | 352 |
18(b) | Do Platonic Forms of individual souls differentiate persons? | 362 |
18(c) | What differentiates souls, or intellects, or selves? | 368 |
(i) | In the body | 368 |
(ii) | When discarnate, but below the intelligible world | 368 |
(iii) | Souls in the intelligible world | 370 |
18(d) | The analogy of a theorem | 372 |
The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle translation series | 377 | |
Translators in the Sourcebook | 379 | |
Abbreviations and Sigla | 381 | |
Main Thinkers Represented in the Sourcebook | 383 | |
Index Locorum | 387 |