Sara Ahbel-Rappe - Damascius Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

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DAMASCIUS PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS CONCERNING FIRST PRINCIPLES

Translated by Sara Ahbel-Rappe

Introduction and Notes by Sara Ahbel-Rappe

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Copyright 2010 by The American Academy of Religion

Translated from the Greek edition Damascius, Trait des premiers principes (3 volumes de la C.U.F.)

Copyright Les Belles Lettres.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Damaskios, ca. 480ca. 550.

[Aporiai kai lyseis peri ton proton archon. English]

Damascius Problems and solutions concerning first principles / translated from the Greek by Sara Ahbel-Rappe.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-19-515029-2

1. First philosophy. I. Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, 1960 II. Title.

B557.D23A6613 2009

186.4dc222009022872

First I wish to thank John M. Dillon, for his diligent assistance in this project. Without his careful work, the following translation would have suffered from many more flaws. Nevertheless, all remaining mistakes or infelicities are entirely the responsibility of the author alone. I must also thank Professor Valerio Napoli for the superb monograph (2008), sent to me by the author.

My thanks also go to Cynthia Read, senior religion editor at Oxford University Press and to Theodore Calderara, associate editor at Oxford University Press, for their patient encouragement of this work. Thanks also to Madame Marie-Jos dHoop of Bud Press for permission to use the critical Greek text of Westerink.

I gratefully acknowledge permission from Transaction Publishing to print a modified version of a chart displayed on pages 34243 of the article by Gabor Betegh, On Eudemus 150, in Eudemus of Rhodes, edited by I. Bodnar and W. Fortenbaugh (Transaction: New Brunswick, 2002).

Several grants and fellowships made this translation possible, especially a fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies and a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, in the winter of 2000. Sincere thanks to Deborah Boedeker and Kurt Rauflaab, former directors of the Center for Hellenic Studies; and to Heinrich Von Staden, director of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

I also gratefully acknowledge the publication subvention supplied by the Office of the Vice President for Research of the College of Letters and Sciences, University of Michigan, for generous financial support of this project.

Thanks to Rob Dobbin, Larry Dale Frye, Mike Sampson, and Ellen Poteet for their help in proofreading the earlier drafts of the manuscript. Thanks also to Margaret Case for her diligent assistance in editing the manuscript.

Finally, I wish to thank various members of my family, especially Karin Ahbel-Rappe, for her patient support of the project, John Raugust, for his encouragement over the years, and Eleanor Rappe-Raugust, for allowing me to use her etching on the cover of this book.

This book is dedicated to the memories of Professor Leendert Westerink and Father Joseph Combs, whose work is the inspiration for this translation.

TRANSLATION OF DAMASCIUS PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS CONCERNING FIRST PRINCIPLES

The following introduction and text presume a high degree of familiarity with the principal tenets, methods, exponents, and terminology that constitute the exegetical enterprise of Neoplatonism as it is found in its latest phase, in the sixth century CE. But to enter into a detailed analysis of the questions that Damascius posed for his Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, which in large part involves a retrospective glance at this tradition as a whole, would hardly be possible without some understanding of the history that led up to the complex dialectic of the Problems and Solutions. Therefore, this prolegomenon is offered as a readers guide to the first centuries of the philosophical movement we now refer to as Neoplatonism. Those who are already familiar with the tradition may prefer to proceed to the Introduction proper, where Damascius is introduced in the context of his life, major works, and in terms of the central philosophical disputes he had with his great predecessor Proclus.