Michael Share - Philoponus: On Aristotle Categories 6-15

Ancient Commentators on Aristotle

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This prestigious series translates the extant ancient Greek philosophical commentaries on Aristotle. Written mostly between 200 and 600 AD, the works represent the classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools in a crucial period during which pagan and Christian thought were reacting to each other. The translation in each volume is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. Making these key philosophical works accessible to the modern scholar, this series fills an important gap in the history of European thought.

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Four of Philoponus seven Aristotelian commentaries are described in their titles as his notes from Ammonius seminars. it is much more likely that they were made by Philoponus.

An examination of the part of Philoponus translated in the present volume reinforces Lunas findings. On the one hand there is, as anticipated, a considerable amount of verbal agreement between the two commentaries and I have identified about eighty pairs of passages showing such agreement.

He gives additional reasons for Aristotles treating quantity second after substance (83,684,4).

He adds a long excursus on line, surface, and body (84,986,10). (But he omits Ammonius report that some people say that there are really only three species of quality at the corresponding point.)

He adds the argument that place and time are not continuous quantities in their own right (86,1287,20).

He adds an alternative explanation for Aristotles not counting motion as a species of the continuous (87,2532).

He adds a stone as an example of a thing with internal parts with relative position (88,224).

Unlike Ammonius (or Aristotle himself), he includes speech among things that exhibit natural order (89,79).

He adds a statement that inner language is, if anything, a quality of the soul (90,57).

He adds comments on the common boundary at which the parts of the body meet (91,415).

He adds an explanation of why quantity cant be defined and a description of how Aristotle looks for its distinctive feature as a substitute (93,1728).

He greatly expands on the statement that large and small and many and few are relatives (94,1031).

He adds a lengthy discussion of why there are no indefinite quantities (95,996,22).

He adds a lengthy excursus on (i) the correct use of large and small, long and short, and many and few, and (ii) whether Aristotle uses many and few consistently (98,499,15).

He expands Ammonius six lines on the non-occurrence of up and down in nature by a further twenty-one lines (99,26100,15).

He adds the point that quantities are receptive of contraries and counters some supposed exceptions to the rule that quantities have no contraries (101,919).

He adds a paragraph on the possibility of calling the category the relative in the singular (103,517).

He adds additional examples. And he seems to understand the interpretation of relatives reported by Ammonius differently from Ammonius himself (103,1831).

He expands Ammonius account of Protagorean relativism, adding extra examples and referring to Aristotles refutation of it as well as to Platos (103,31104,25).

He adds that relatives have no being of their own but occur in other categories and that they have been likened to suckers or to mutually supporting logs (104,2836).

He adds a paragraph on the verbal expression of relationship, which Ammonius only deals with later (105,1929).

He adds an analysis of the difference between positions and items in the category being positioned (107,718).

He criticizes Aristotle for saying that virtue and vice and knowledge and ignorance are relatives. They would be relatives under the first definition of relatives, but under it items in the nine categories of accidents would all be relative to substances (108,31109,26).