The Ancient Commentators of Plato and Aristotle

Abstract

In late antiquity the works of Plato and Aristotle were subject to intense study, which eventually led to the development of a new literary form, the philosophical commentary. Until recently these commentaries were understood chiefly as sources of information for the masters, Plato and Aristotle, they commented upon. However, in recent years, it has become increasingly acknowledged that the commentators themselves - Aspasius, Alexander, Themistius, Porphyry, Proclus, Philoponus, Simplicius and others - even though they worked in the Platonist-Aristotelian framework, contributed to this tradition in original, innovative and significant ways such that their commentaries are philosophically important sources in their own right. This book provides the first systematic introduction to the “philosophy” of the commentators: their way of doing philosophy and the kind of philosophical problems they found interesting. The book begins with an examination of the commentary method as a way of practising philosophy, the commentators’ own understanding of their task, and why the philosophical commentary emerged as it did. The central chapters then explore the most important philosophical themes that occupied the commentators: questions concerning the nature and justification of knowledge, the nature of the soul, questions about the explanation of change in nature as well as cosmological discussions about whether the world is eternal or created. These discussions lead to a treatment of the metaphysical assumptions behind the psychology and epistemology of the commentators, the development of the metaphysical doctrines themselves, and, finally, to the question how the commentators developed the ethical doctrines of their predecessors. In her discussion of these key themes, Miira Tuominen shows how the commentators formulation of philosophical problems can be understood in the framework of similar contemporary problems and in so doing helps integrate the commentators into the same continuum of thinkers who have worked in different historical periods and employed different methods. Although there was no philosophy of the commentators in the sense of a definite set of doctrines, Tuominen shows how the commentary format was nevertheless a vehicle for original philosophical theorizing and argues convincingly that the commentators should take their place alongside other philosophers of antiquity in the history of western philosophy.

Philosophy of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle

“…In fact there is evidence that Philoponus was not alone in promoting such a theory but that, again, similar developments took place in Simplicius (Tuominen 2009: 142–3). In his polemic against Alexander’s theory of nature, Simplicius uses a simile of a marionette device that Alexander had apparently used to describe nature (cf.…”

Research, Practice, and the Space Between

“…(Christians, 2011, p. 61) The debates about the politics of knowledge creation have long histories that span many millennia and discursive doctrines (Erickson, 2011;Tuominen, 2009). Recall the rationalist/empiricist debates of the early modern era; or the objective/subjective debates of the late modern era; or the enduring positivist/relativist dualism of postmodernism (Christians, 2011;St.…”

“…The links between rational thought and subjectivity were central to philosophical thought from the classical period, if not before, and continued as a necessary condition of knowledge creation until about the time of René Descartes (1637; also see Foucault, 2001b;Tuominen, 2009). Since Descartes, rationality has been increasingly associated with the confinement of the emotions to quasiresearch roles (van Woerkom, 2010. p. 347), while the "rigorous" work of investigation and hypothesis testing within a neoliberal audit culture has been left to "objective" research processes (Christians, 2011;Cunliffe, 2004;Denzin, 2011;St.…”

Neoplatonism

“…22 Tuominen's book in the same series is entitled Th e Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle. 23 Despite its title, the volume deals exclusively with commentaries on Aristotle (as she states on 16, 32), and is a reliable guide to these commentaries. I caught only one real slip, when T is trying to explain the potential diffi culty of the Categories for Platonists and says, by way of contrast, that "for a late ancient Platonist, the Metaphysics was not problematic" (201) -a statement that would surprise Syrianus.…”