BMCR 2009.04.76: Todd on Golitsis, Les commentaries de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon a la Physique d'Aristote: tradition et innovation. Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina. Quellen und Studien; Bd. 3

Pantelis Golitsis, Les commentaries de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon
a\ la "Physique" d'Aristote: tradition et innovation. Commentaria in
Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina.  Quellen und Studien; Bd. 3.
Berlin/New York:  Walter de Gruyter, 2008.  Pp. ix, 306.  ISBN
9783110195415.  $118.95.

Reviewed by Robert B. Todd ([email protected])
Word count:  1610 words
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For Simplicius of Cilicia (ca. 480-ca. 540 A.D.), pagan antiquity's
last major Platonist and its greatest philosophical scholar, the year
2008 was a good one.  Han Baltussen published a pioneering and
wide-ranging account of his methodology,[[1]] while Alan Bowen
completed a richly annotated translation of the astronomical material
from the commentary on the De caelo.[[2]]  Finally, in the volume under
review (part of de Gruyter's new series on the Aristotelian tradition)
Pantelis Golitsis has, despite his title, dealt with the "tradition"
upheld by Simplicius more extensively than the "innovation" introduced
by his contemporary, the anti-Aristotelian Christian John Philoponus
(ca. 490-ca. 570 A.D.).

This monograph emanates from a 2006 Paris 'the\se de doctorat' on the
interpretation of Aristotle's Physics from late antiquity to the
Byzantine period, and like some well-known papers by one of its
supervisors, Philippe Hoffmann, it aims to put material occasioned by
Aristotelian exegesis into a context that more adequately reflects a
commentator's individual projects.  In this vein it primarily focuses
on digressions, that is, passages in which Simplicius and Philoponus
expressed views in a more discursive and original fashion than when
commenting on successive parts of the text (le^mmata).

Pt. 1 (chs. 1-3: 7-80) covers (1) the intellectual and institutional
careers of the commentators; (2) their general conception of the
Physics and their exegetical methodology; and (3) their sources and
their assimilation of the earlier Greek philosophical tradition.
Simplicius dominates chs. 2 and 3, which amount to a more concise
version of the main thrust of Baltussen's study, in which "particular
emphasis" (Baltussen, p. 8) is also placed on Simplicius' commentary on
the Physics.

Pt. 2 (chs. 4-6: 83-280) surveys the digressions first in general terms
(83-88), then by analysing seventeen that cover fourteen topics
(89-195), with just four from Philoponus.  A brief conclusion (196-203)
precedes an appendix of clear, accurate, and annotated translations of
thirteen passages (207-280), two of which are from Philoponus.  The
ancillary material (bibliography; indices of names ancient and modern,
and of terms and loci) is unusually well presented.

Ch. 1 points up the contrast between the two commentators' careers and
exegetical procedures.  Simplicius, faced in 529 with the closure of
the philosophical schools at Athens, where he had migrated from
Alexandria, became "un mai^tre sans e/cole," a status that helps
explain the "purely literary" (22; cf. 18) character of his
commentaries as detailed compilations rich in source material rather
than the product of oral presentation.[[3]]  Golitsis wisely follows
others in rejecting any definitive hypothesis about Simplicius' final
post-Athenian location, while allowing that he was "isole/ peut-e^tre
en Syrie" (203), maybe in an exiles' collective (21-22).  Philoponus,
by contrast, published commentaries derived from lectures, but in the
case of that on the Physics was sharply critical of Aristotle.
Golitsis joins the growing consensus (27 n. 82) that rejects Koenraad
Verrycken's elaborate theory[[4]] that this critique represents a
revision of an earlier version of this commentary that had been derived
from his education at Alexandria under the pagan Ammonius.  Ch. 2 shows
that the learned Simplicius gave more attention than Philoponus to the
various "headings" (kephalaia) under which commentators classified
treatises (goal, title, structure, ordering, authenticity, utility),
while Ch. 3 discusses how Simplicius, unlike Philoponus (65 with n. 1),
offered detailed documentation of earlier Greek philosophy and used the
original works of earlier commentators.

As a whole, Pt. 1 offers a good orientation, well documented and
helpfully enriched, as is the whole book, by generous amounts of quoted
Greek, which is, with a few minor exceptions, translated.  Particularly
noteworthy are the two codas on, respectively, the method of reading
the text for its meaning (its nous) rather than its literal sense (its
lexis) (55-57), and on commentary as "recomposition." (58-64).  In the
second case the two commentators' dependency on Alexander of
Aphrodisias' lost commentary on the Physics is shown to derive in
Philoponus' case from Ammonius' teaching whereas Simplicius used
Alexander's text directly.  But to illustrate the nature of such
dependency Golitsis helpfully juxtaposes (at 62-64) passages from
Asclepius' commentary on the Metaphysics with their sources in
Alexander's commentary, an exercise impossible for Simplicius' Physics
commentary due to the loss of Alexander's commentary.  As Golitsis
notes (64), a commentator's originality is circumscribed by reliance on
such inherited material, which can often go unacknowledged.  Hence the
significance of this study's focus on digressions, since, as in
rhetorical practice generally, these afford an opportunity for more
independent thought.

Pt. 2 opens with a nuanced sketch of a typology ("esquisse d'une
typologie") (Ch. 4) of the digressions that are to be analysed and
translated.  While digressions are self-conscious deviations from
textual exegesis, they can also be more autonomous segments of text,
such as Simplicius' refutation of Philoponus' treatise Contra
Aristotelem (described as an "excursus" on p. 4, but appended to a list
of digressions at p. 86), and asides such as his discussion of the
theological dimension of physics (1359.5-1360.23), part of a comment on
Phys. 267b17-26 but involving a "harmonizing" comparison of Aristotle
and Plato.  That there should be some ragged edges in defining this
sub-genre is perhaps inevitable, and Golitsis extends it to include
texts like the lengthy Corollaria on time, place and void in
Simplicius, and on place and void in Philoponus, which are more like
mini-treatises.

Such digressions, I would note, are not without precedents in the
Aristotelian exegetical tradition, and perhaps have a forerunner in
Plato's self-conscious remarks at Theaetetus 177b7-c2.  Thus the fourth
century commentator Themistius includes a digression on the concepts of
matter and the substrate in his paraphrase of Physics 1.7, while in his
paraphrase of De Anima 3.5 he offers an independent and discursive
account of the intellect, in which he seeks to harmonize material from
Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus to support an interpretation coloured
in places by neoplatonic language.[[5]]  The CAG editors failed to
identify these digressions, just as Hermann Diels failed to isolate
several of the Simplician digressions discussed here (Golitsis, 85).

But digressions matter most for their content and purpose.  Golitsis
(87-88) divides the genus digression into the species of the
"harmonizing", the "scientific", and the "polemical."   The first two
of these dichotomize the texts analysed in Ch. 5, with a Philoponan
polemic on the eternity of time (124-127; 274-276) added to the first
group to identify this commentator's non-harmonizing program.  The
passages translated in the Appendix are mostly from the digressions
that involve harmonization.  The "scientific" digressions on matter,
place, void, time, the general theory of nature, and the case of
contra-natural motion involved in Philoponus' impetus theory[[6]]
receive more analysis (127-195) but less translation (just 240-251 on
nature, and 277-280 on the impetus theory).[[7]]   This "scientific"
material has received considerable attention in the recent past, with
the exception perhaps of the theory of nature (139-149; 240-251), where
Aristotle is taken to task by both Philoponus (147-149) and Simplicius.

Ch. 5 and the Appendix are in effect a source book (supported, for
example, by meticulous outlines; see 96, 131-132, 141, 152, 169, 175,
191), complete on the topic of harmonization, but unfortunately
incomplete on the aforementioned topics in physical theory.  In the
Appendix the translations are arranged in a different order from the
items in ch. 5 and have markedly different titles; they might just as
well have been appended to the relevant analyses, if only to avoid
lengthy quotations in ch. 5 being repeated in the Appendix.

The digressions on harmonization ("les digressions 'concordistes'") are
unquestionably the most important and valuable part of this study.  The
goal of reconciling Aristotle with Plato goes back to Antiochus of
Ascalon in the first century B.C., and has been the subject of two
recent studies.[[8]]  Golitsis offers what must be the first detailed
treatment of the most important evidence in Simplicius for a practice
also found in his standard "lemmatized" exegesis.[[9]]  He shows that
harmonization is not just a way of reconciling Plato and Aristotle on a
topic such as "mouvement" (kine^sis; 108-121; 252-262), where
differences can be seen as superficial, but can also be a device for
embracing the earlier Greek tradition in natural philosophy (89-100;
207-219).  This is notably so in case of Parmenides (100-108; 220-231),
with whom Simplicius' engagement is seen not merely as generating those
much studied quotations in Diels-Kranz but as having been part of a
creative exercise in self-definition (108).  Of particular interest is
Simplicius' "harmonizing" reconstruction of Aristotle's account of
tukhe^ in religious terms (108-114; 252-258).

Ch. 6 and its coda (202-203) offer a comparison and contrast:
Philoponus is seen as liberated by his Christian beliefs from adherence
to the pagan philosophical tradition, Simplicius as seeking to sustain
that tradition in a strongly personal project.  But this familiar
polarization now rests on the neglected evidence of the digressions so
that the main objective ("objet principal") of this study, that of
putting the digressions into relief ("la mise en relief des
digressions") (3), is duly realized.  Simplicius is perhaps implicitly
privileged by the amount of attention he receives, for if Philoponus
is, as has been claimed, "philosophically the most brilliant of all the
commentators",[[10]] this is not how he emerges in a study in which he
tends to be used as a foil for Simplicius,[[11]] albeit to good effect
at 196-201 on exegetical methodology, and which ends (200-201) with an
eloquent appreciation of the Simplician project of using digressions as
an exercise that leads to truth.

Golitsis has, then, provided a valuable account of some central issues
in the study of two major Aristotelian commentators, and in particular
has made Simplicius' unique contribution to the practice of
harmonization more easily understood and appreciated.  One must hope
that he will soon manage to fill the hiatuses left by the present
study.


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Notes:


1.   H. Baltussen, Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: the
methodology of a commentator (London, 2008).  A review is forthcoming
in BMCR.  My review will appear in Aestimatio
(http://www.ircps.org/publications/aestimatio/aestimatio.htm) .

2.   See A.C. Bowen, "Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle, De caelo
2.10-12: an annotated translation," Sciamus 4 (2003) 23-58, completed
at Sciamus 9 (2008) 25-131.

3.    Alexander's commentaries can be similarly characterized; see R.W.
Sharples, "The School of Alexander?", in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle
Transformed (London, 1990), 95-97, to be added to the references at 60
n. 75, where the fortuna of the Alexandrian method of commenting is
traced to Simplicius via Proclus (cf. also 57).

4.   See his "The Development of Philoponus' Thought and its
Chronology," in Aristotle Transformed (preceding note), 233-274.

5.    See Themistius, In Physica, 25.24-27,13 (from which 26,12-24 is
cited at Golitsis, 71 n. 21), which has (27.12-13) the formulaic
conclusion used in various genres, as a TLG search confirms, namely,
"back to the point from which we digressed" (<greek>epanite/on o(/qen
ece/bhmen</greek>), which Golitsis, 86 n. 9, quotes from Philoponus as
though it was original with him.  On the intellect see Themistius, In
De anima 102.30-109.3.

6.    Regarding the secondary literature on this theory Golitsis, 188
n. 146 refers to a criticism by Christian Wildberg ("Impetus Theory and
the Hermenuetics of Science in Simplicius and Philoponus," Hyperboreus
5 [1999] 107-124) of a paper by Michael Wolff, "Philoponus and Rise of
Pre-classical Dynamics," in R. Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and the
Rejection of Aristotelian Science (London, 1987), 84-120.  Wildberg,
113-114, in fact reserves his main criticism for Wolff's earlier
Geschichte der Impetustheorie (Frankfurt, 1978) and at 114-115
describes the paper that Golitsis cites as "a less objectionable
account."

7.   Golitsis plans to publish translations of the Corollaria mentioned
above, and the Simplician polemic against Philoponus' Contra
Aristotelem'; see 4 n. 4.

8.   See L.P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (Ithaca, 2005),
reviewed at BMCR 2005.11.17 and G.E. Karamanolis, Plato and Aristotle
in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antochus to Porphyry
(Oxford, 2006), reviewed at BMCR  2007.05.36.

9.   R. Sorabji (ed.), The Philosophy of the Commentators 200-600 A.D.:
a sourcebook (London, 2004), vol. 3, 37-40 has only a few texts on
harmonization in a section on methodology in a volume on logic, none of
them the Simplician texts discussed by Golitsis.  Baltussen (note 1)
addresses harmonization at various places in his book, and in an
appendix (218-220) lists instances in Simplicius' commentaries of the
term sumpho^nia in a lexicographical exercise that picks up only one
case from the Physics commentary that coincides with one of the texts
discussed by Golitsis.

10.   Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators (preceding note), 10.

11.    See 196-197 where Philoponus is said not to have replicated
Simplicius' engagement with harmonization and religion but to have
developed the criticisms of Aristotle that led to his theories of
impetus and place by relying on a purely philosophical truth, founded
on experience of things themselves ("une ve/rite/ purement
philosophique, fonde/e sur l'expe/rience des choses elles-me^mes"),
which could be taken to imply Philoponus' philosophical superiority to
Simplicius.  See further Wildberg (note 6), 120-121, and idem Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus) .