BMCR 2009.05.19: Mueller on Baltussen, Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of a Commentator

H. Baltussen, Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of
a Commentator.  London:  Duckworth, 2008.  Pp. xii, 292.  ISBN
9780715635001.  L50.00.

Reviewed by Ian Mueller, University of Chicago ([email protected])
Word count:  1810 words
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[Table of contents provided at the end of the review.]

In this stimulating book Han Baltussen provides an account of important
specific features of the extant Aristotelian commentaries of the
Neoplatonist Simplicius. Baltussen focuses on the commentary on
Aristotle's Physics (in Ph.), but he also considers Simplicius's
polemic against the miaphysite Christian John Philoponus, the bulk of
which is found in the commentary on De Caelo (in Cael.).  He does not
make much use of the commentaries on the Categories (in Cat.) or on
Epictetus' Enchiridion, a commentary which does not fit so well with
some of Baltussen's characterization of Simplicius's work.  More
surprisingly, he does not mention, even in his brief discussion of
Simplicius's oeuvre (pp. 12-14),[[1]] the commentary on the De Anima,
ascribed to Simplicius in the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca but the
authenticity of which is under dispute,  mainly because it is different
in character from Simplicius's other Aristotelian commentaries.[[2]]
Nevertheless, in Cael., in Ph., and in Cat. do constitute a set of
works which are both quite similar and quite distinct from the other
extant ancient commentaries on Aristotle.

What evidence we have suggests that Simplicius was born somewhere in
Cilicia, studied with Ammonius in Alexandria (as did Philoponus, who
apparently never left Alexandria), moved to Athens, where the so-called
Platonic Academy was led by Damascius, a vigorous anti-Christian, and
then departed with Damascius and other "philosophers" for the court of
Chosroes I (Persian emperor from 531 CE) in Ctesiphon, a departure
standardly associated with the 529 decree of Justinian I banning the
teaching of philosophy in Athens.  Agathias, our source for the story
of this departure, mentions as motivation only the philosophers'
rejection of Christianity and their belief that they would be moving to
an ideal society governed by a philosopher-king. In Agathias'
representation they found a corrupt society and a king who was no
philosopher.  Unable to bear the situation, they returned home
(<greek>e)panh/|san</greek>; <greek>oi)/kade a)peno/sthsan</greek>) as
quickly as possible. Their return was made comfortable for them by the
inclusion in the "Eternal Peace" signed by Constantine and Chosroes in
532 of a clause stating <greek>to\ dei=n e)kei/nous tou\s a)/ndras e)s
ta\ sfe/tera h)/qh katio/ntas bioteu/ein a)dew=s to\ loipo/n e)f'
e(autoi=s, ou)de\n o(tiou=n pe/ra tw=n dokou/ntwn fronei=n h)\
metaba/llein th\n patrw/|an do/can a)nagkazome/nous</greek>.

This is basically all we know about the life of Simplicius.
Understandably a great deal of ink has been spilled over the treaty
clause and what it might mean for the final stage of Greek philosophy.
For most of the twentieth century it was assumed that Simplicius
returned to either Alexandria, where some Aristotelian philosophy
continued to be taught in the later sixth century, or to Athens, for
which there is no evidence that philosophy continued to be taught after
529.  In 1986 Michel Tardieu argued that the philosophers went from the
court of Chosroes to Carrhae (Harran) at the Persian edge of the
Byzantine empire where they joined an already flourishing Platonic
"Academy", an Academy which became the key link in the transmission of
Greek philosophical ideas to the Islamic world. Although initially
important scholars embraced Tardieu's hypotheses about the whereabouts
of Simplicius and his companions and the role of Harran in the history
of philosophy, subsequent discussions[[3]] have been quite skeptical,
with the result that the question where Simplicius and the others went
must be considered open. Baltussen appears to incline to the hypothesis
of a return to Athens (p. 204), but his more important suggestion is
that Simplicius's commentaries should not be thought of as the basis
for teaching actual students (as most of the extant ancient
philosophical commentaries clearly were), but that Simplicius was
writing for "an imaginary student body" (p.51), "a potential rather
than a real audience" (p. 201).  To the latter characterization
Baltussen adds the proviso that the commentaries are written for
teachers rather than "for individual use by the students themselves."
This proviso seems to me to undermine the suggestion it qualifies.  We
do not know what kind of instruction was offered to advanced students
in late antiquity, and, if we are going to hold that Simplicius's
commentaries were not teaching texts, we might just as well rely on
another suggestion made by Baltussen, namely that they were written as
explanatory repositories of the wisdom of the ancients, which was so
important to Simplicius and which he thought was being destroyed by the
new religion.

Internal references suggest that the three commentaries were written in
the order in which they are listed at the end of the first paragraph of
this review. In in Cael. Simplicius refers to Philoponus' Contra
Proclum, which is firmly dated to 529; and a reference to a personal
observation involving the Aboras River makes it seem likely that
Simplicius wrote in Cael. after his departure from Athens.  Simplicius
refers several times to that commentary in in Ph., and once to in Ph.
in in Cat..  Simplicius refers to Damascius as deceased in in Ph., and
Damascius is standardly taken to have still been alive in 538.  This
information, which Baltussen presents in a somewhat jumbled and
incomplete way (p. 12), suggests that the death date he assigns to
Simplicius (ca. 540) should be moved forward, perhaps to 550 or even
later.  Precise dating is impossible in these matters, but it would not
seem unreasonable to suppose that Simplicius was in Alexandria for some
period between 505 and 520 and in Athens for some period between 515
and 532.

The three commentaries are distinguished from other Aristotelian
commentaries in a number of ways, the most obvious of which is length.
To make a simple comparison using the TLG Canon word counts,
Philoponus' in Cat. is less than one half the length of Simplicius's,
and his in Ph. is less than 60% of Simplicius's. Baltussen focuses on a
number of sources of this greater length.  One is Simplicius's
inclusion of lengthy quotations from earlier authors, the most
important of which are undoubtedly his quotations of the Presocratics.
Baltussen's attempt to connect this use of quotation with Plato's
disparagement of writing (pp. 47-48) seems weak; Simplicius's major
concern is interpretation, and he wants to make his case as strong as
possible.  Another distinctive mark of Simplicius's commentaries is his
discussion of alternative interpretations, including his polemic with
Philoponus on the eternity of the world.  Baltussen discusses this
polemic in his last chapter and the concluding epilogue and quite
rightly emphasizes the religious content of Simplicius's outlook,[[4]]
but I think more stress could have been laid on the fact that for
Simplicius and other Neoplatonists religion in any ordinary sense is
just one part of a whole cultural, social, and intellectual tradition
which gave Simplicius his identity and which he saw as facing imminent
destruction. A third mark, which Baltussen does not treat in much
detail is Simplicius's digressions on various subjects, including the
so-called "corollaries" in the in Ph., corollaries which have less
circumstantial analogues in Philoponus' in Ph..[[5]] Probably the most
striking feature of Simplicius's commentaries is his frequent
insistence on the harmony of Greek philosophers from the Presocratics
to Aristotle in general, and of Plato and Aristotle in particular.
Baltussen (see, e.g. pp. 8-9) quite rightly associates this with
Christian insistence on the disagreements among the pagans, e.g. on the
question of the eternity of the world. Although Baltussen stresses
harmonization as a feature of Simplicius's commentaries, I think he
understates the difference between Simplicius and other Neoplatonists
whose works have come down to us.  There is certainly no doubt that
Neoplatonists, like most philosophers, read the work of their
predecessors in terms of their own ideas and saw more in common between
Plato and Aristotle than most contemporary scholars do. But Simplicius
is extreme in his treatment of, e.g., Empedocles and Anaxagoras as
believers in a Platonic intelligible world and of even Aristotle's most
direct attacks on Plato as arguments against readings of Plato which
Aristotle knows to be superficial and wants to prevent others from
adopting as Platonic truth.

The largest segment of the book (chs. 2 to 5) is a chronologically
organized survey of Simplicius's use of earlier philosophers (excluding
Plato and Aristotle) from Parmenides to Damascius (chs. 2-5). This
survey, which includes independent discussions of the philosophers used
by Simplicius, are undoubtedly valuable and can be recommended to
anyone wishing to undertake the study of Simplicius's voluminous works.
A number of the positions Baltussen takes seem to me debatable, but it
would not be reasonable for me to debate any of them here.

In explaining his purposes Baltussen emphasizes that until fairly
recently scholars and philosophers, particularly English-speaking ones,
have not been very kind to Simplicius or to late Neoplatonism in
general. It seems fair to say that for much of the twentieth century
Simplicius was a quite obscure figure, cited most frequently as a
source for the doctrines of the Presocratics, early attempts to square
the circle, and the astronomical work of Eudoxus. Baltussen's attempt
to resuscitate (or perhaps establish) Simplicius's reputation as an
intellectual is entirely laudable, but it may be that the best that can
be done along these lines is to establish that Simplicius is worth
reading even if the distinctive features of his interpretations are
far-fetched and unacceptable as interpretations.  As Baltussen puts it
in his discussion of Simplicius and the Presocratics, even if
Simplicius's approach is forced and faces fundamental objections it
still "deserves consideration." I do not know whether Baltussen has
established that Simplicius's work as a whole deserves consideration or
even whether this is something that can be established in any simple
sense, but I sincerely hope that Baltussen's book will attract younger
scholars to try to answer the question for themselves.

I conclude by noting three perplexing lapses in the book:

On p. 78 <greek>para/deigma</greek> is translated as 'proof ', but
Simplicius is saying only that the next lines he quotes, in which
Empedocles describes the way painters represent many things using only
a few colors, offer an example of the way different things come to be
from the same things.

On the next page <greek>e)nergei/a|</greek> is translated as
'potentially', thus reversing Plotinus' interpretation of Anaxagoras.

On p. 158 Syrianus is described as a teacher of Simplicius, a
chronological impossibility.

Table of contents

Introduction. Simplicius of Cilicia and Philosophy in Late Antiquity
1. The Scholar and His Books
2. Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy? Origins of Ancient Wisdom
3. Towards a Canon: the Early Peripatetics
4. Ghost in the Machine? The Role of Alexander of Aphrodisias
5. Platonist Commentators: Sources and Inspiration
6. Polemic and Exegesis in Simplicius: Defending Pagan Theology
Epilogue. Simplicius and Greek Philosophy: The Last Pagan Gospel?
Appendix I. The 'Library' of Simplicius
Appendix II
A. New Evidence on Alexander
B. Distribution of Alexander References in in Phys.
Appendix III.  Sumpho^nia in Simplicius.
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Notes:


1.   For a fuller discussion of Simplicius' oeuvre see Ilsetraut Hadot,
"The life and work of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic sources," in
Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, London: Duckworth, 1990,
pp. 289-303.

2.   See most recently (?) Matthias Perkams, "Priscian of Lydia,
commentator on the 'de Anima' in the tradition of Iamblichus,"
Mnemosyne 4.58 (2005), 510-530, with bibliography.

3.   See, for example, Robin Lane Fox, "Harran, the Sabians, and the
late Platonist 'movers', " in Andrew Smith (ed.), The Philosopher and
Society in Late Antiquity, Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2005,
pp. 231-244, with bibliography.

4.   Here Baltussen follows Philippe Hoffmann; see, e.g., "Simplicius'
polemics," in Richard Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and the Rejection of
Aristotelian Science, London: Duckworth, 1987, pp. 57-83.

5.   On this topic see Pantelis Golitsis, Les Commentaires de
Simplicius et de Jean Philopon a\ la Physique d'Aristote, Berlin and
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008, pp. 83-280.