Bøger i Ancient Commentators on Aristotle serien

On the General Science of Mathematics is the third of four surviving works out of ten by Iamblichus (c. 245 CE-early 320s) on the Pythagoreans. He thought the Pythagoreans had treated mathematics as essential for drawing the human soul upwards to higher realms described by Plato, and downwards to understand the physical cosmos, the products of arts and crafts and the order required for an ethical life. His Pythagorean treatises use edited quotation to re-tell the history of philosophy, presenting Plato and Aristotle as passing on the ideas invented by Pythagoras and his early followers. Although his quotations tend to come instead from Plato and later Pythagoreanising Platonists, this re-interpretation had a huge impact on the Neoplatonist commentators in Athens. Iamblichus' cleverness, if not to the same extent his re-interpretation, was appreciated by the commentators in Alexandria.

In 'On The Soul' 2.1-6, Aristotle gives a very different account of the soul from Plato's by tying the soul to the body. He defines soul and life by reference to the capacities for using food to maintain structure and reproduce, for perceiving and desiring. Philoponus gives a 'cognitive' view.

Book 2 of the Physics is arguably the best introduction to Aristotle's work, both because it explains some of his central concepts, such as nature and the four causes, and because it asks some gripping questions that are still debated today: Is chance something real? If so, what? Can nature be explained by chance, necessity and natural selection, or is it purposive?Philoponus' commentary is not only a valuable guide, but also a work of Neoplatonism with its own views on causation, the Providence of Nature, the problem of evil and the immortality of the soul.

Philoponus was a brilliant Christian philosopher who turned the ideas of the pagans of the Neoplatonist school against them. Here, he attacks the most devout pagan philosopher, Proclus, defending the Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' arguments to the contrary.

Boethius (c 480-c 525) was a Christian philosopher and author of many translations and works of philosophy. "On Interpretation" is the second part of the "Organon", as Aristotle's collected works on logic are known; it deals comprehensively with the relationship between logic and language. This title presents a translation of this work.

In "On the Heavens" Aristotle discusses his theory that the stars are carried round us on a transparent sphere. This text provides a translation of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's work.

Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the Christian Emperor Justinian stopped the teaching of the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. This was one of the earliest examples of the sixth-century diffusion of the philosophy of the commentators to other cultures.Tantalisingly, Priscian fully recorded in Greek the answers provided by the Athenian philosophers to the king''s questions on philosophy and science. But these answers survive only in a later Latin translation which understood both the Greek and the subject matter very poorly. Our translators have often had to reconstruct from the Latin what the Greek would have been, in order to recover the original sense. The answers start with subjects close to the Athenians'' hearts: the human soul, on which Priscian was an expert, and sleep and visions. But their interest may have diminished when the king sought their expertise on matters of physical science: the seasons, celestial zones, medical effects of heat and cold, the tides, displacement of the four elements, the effect of regions on living things, why only reptiles are poisonous, and winds. At any rate, in 532 AD, they moved on from the palace, but still under Khosroes'' protection. This is the first translation of the record they left into English or any modern language.This English translation is accompanied by an introduction and comprehensive commentary notes, which clarify and discuss the meaning and implications of the original philosophy. Part of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership and includes additional scholarly apparatus such as a bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.

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.

Philoponus was a brilliant Christian philosopher, steeped in Neoplatanism, who turned the pagans' ideas against them. Here he attacks the devout Athenian pagan philosopher, Proclus, defending the Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' arguments to the contrary.

Concerning embryos, Porphyry takes an original view on issues that had been left undecided by his teacher Plotinus and earlier by the doctor Galen. What role is played in the development of the embryo by the souls or the natures of the father, of the mother, of the embryo, or of the whole world?

Explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true.