BMCR 2004.10.14, Celluprica/D'Ancona (edd.), Aristotele e i suoi

Vincenza Celluprica, Cristina D'Ancona (edd.), Aristotele e i suoi esegeti
neoplatonici. Logica e ontologia nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe.
Atti del convegno internazionale Roma 19-20 ottobre 2001.  Roma:
Biblopolis, 2004.  Pp. xxi, 282.  ISBN 88-7088-461-9.  EUR 30.00.

Reviewed by Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto
(lloyd.gerson@utoronto)
Word count:  1684 words
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This volume contains seven papers originally delivered at a conference
at Rome in 2001 on the topic of the reception of Aristotle's philosophy
in late antiquity, especially among Greek Neoplatonists and Arabic
philosophers. The authors and titles of the papers are: R. Chiaradonna,
"Plotino e la teoria degli universali. Enn. VI 3 [44], 9"; F. A. J. de
Haas, "Context and Strategy of Plotinus' Treatise On Genera of Being
(Enn. VI. 1-3 [42-44]); H. Hugonnard-Roche, "La constitution de la
logique tardo-antique et l'e/laboration d'une logique 'mate/rielle' en
syriaque"; C. Ferrari, "Der Duft des Apfels. Abu l-Farag 'Abdallah Ibn
at-Tayyib und sein Kommentar zu den Kategorien des Aristoteles"; M.
Rashed, "Ibn 'Adi et Avicenne: sur les types d'existants"; A.
Bertolacci, "La ricezione del libro <greek>*G</greek> della Metafisica
nell'Ilahiyyat del Kitab al-Sifa di Avicenna"; C. Martini Bonadeo,
"<greek>w(s e)rw/menon</greek>: alcune interpretazioni di Metaph.
<greek>*L</greek> 7".

The period of the history of philosophy from, say, Alexander of
Aphrodisias (2nd-early 3rd century CE) to Anselm of Canterbury
(1033-1109) remains pretty much frontier territory except for the
specialist. There are of course certain exceptional nodes of interest,
including I suppose Plotinus (204/5-270), Augustine of Hippo (354-430),
and Boethius (ca 480-524). Yet, during the above period, philosophy in
the Platonic tradition flourished and the great flowering of the
Islamic appropriation of ancient Greek thought began. One can, however,
still find -- if not in theory, then in practice -- followers of the
benighted Will Durant who, after writing a chapter on Aristotle in his
immensely popular The Story of Philosophy (17th printing, 1964), paused
only for a few desultory and condescending remarks about
post-Aristotelian philosophy and the philosophy of the Middle Ages
before moving on blithely to Francis Bacon. Naturally, there are
reasons for the professional lack of interest, including linguistic and
ideological ones. Perhaps the greatest scholar of medieval philosophy
in the 20th century, Etienne Gilson, realized only too late in his very
long life that one could not adequately understand Scholasticism
without immersing oneself in its roots, especially in Arabic
philosophy. In addition, as Gilson himself famously demonstrated,
Descartes' philosophy was itself firmly rooted in Scholasticism. To
pretend otherwise is to contribute to or to acquiesce in the ongoing
marginalization of the history of philosophy, particularly its early
history. The present volume, by, and no doubt primarily for,
specialists in the field, amply rewards study by those who would like
to be reminded that the "story of philosophy" is much richer and
complex than it is usually made out to be.

Chiaradonna's paper analyzes Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle's theory
of categories of reality in Ennead VI 3. He aims to show that Plotinus,
unlike his disciple Porphyry, took Aristotle's account of the structure
of the sensible world as fundamentally incompatible with Platonism. By
contrast, Porphyry, according to Chiaradonna, began the Neoplatonic
project of harmonizing Aristotle with Platonism. In particular, for
Plotinus, the absolute priority of sensible substance is not
reconcilable with a hierarchical ontology according to which the
intelligible is prior to the sensible. Chiaradonna demonstrates that
Plotinus grasped that the contrast between universal and particular
does not adequately represent the contrast between intelligible and
sensible and that it is the latter that Plotinus wished to maintain.
Chiaradonna argues further that Porphyry restores harmony by
distinguishing the sort of relative priority that sensible substance
has from the absolute priority of the intelligible to the sensible.

Against Chiaradonna, De Haas argues that the harmonization of Aristotle
and Platonism is Plotinus' project, too. He holds that Plotinus treats
Aristotle's Categories as a "quasi ontology of the sensible realm". He
rejects the approach taken by Chiaradonna and others that Porphyry
"saved the Categories from Plotinus' devastating attack". The key to De
Haas' interpretation of Plotinus is the claim that Plotinus saw that
Aristotle's categorical schema could not be genera of being, since the
primary category, substance, was itself hierarchically constructed
(i.e., form is prior to composite and composite is prior to matter). In
addition, as Plotinus understood, Peripatetics, following those in the
Academy, denied that members of a hierarchy could be arrayed under a
single genus. Thus freed of the burden of proposing an alternative to
the Platonic categorical structure of reality, Aristotle's Categories
could be seen as an application of the Platonic schema to the sensible
world.

Hugonnard-Roche explores the reception of Aristotle's Organon in late
antiquity, especially Categories. He describes the standard approach,
found in the enormously influential teachings of the Neoplatonist
Ammonius (ca 440-after 517) and later in Al-Farabi (ca 873-950),
according to which the demonstration syllogism as analyzed in Posterior
Analytics is the focus of the work in general and Categories, De
Interpretatione, Prior Analytics are preliminary studies of its
elements -- terms, propositions, and formal syllogistic structure.
Hugonnard-Roche contrasts this approach with another, found in the 6th
century Syriac writings of Paul the Persian and discernable in some
later Islamic thinkers. On this approach, Categories is not understood
as the most preliminary work, one dealing with the ultimate elements of
demonstration. Thus, De Interpretatione does not presuppose Categories.
Rather, that work explores the modalities of relation between that
which is signified by predicates and subjects in demonstration, for
example, genera and species. Accordingly, the sort of division of terms
described in Categories is irrelevant to the syllogism.

Ferrari examines how the later Arabic philosophical tradition deals
with the earlier Greek tradition in respect to a particular logical
puzzle. The puzzle is that for Aristotle an accident is inseparable
from a substance, but it seems that, for example, in the case of an
apple's fragrance, which is an accident of it, is in fact also
separable from it. Ferrari examines the work of Abul-Farag ibn
at-Tayyib (d. 1043), a Nestorian Christian philosopher and physician,
who preserves three of the Greek solutions to this puzzle in his
commentary on Aristotle's Categories. The first solution rests upon a
doctrine of physical emanation, according to which the accidental scent
is defined as a stream of particles streaming out through the air. The
second rests upon the idea of air as a medium through which the
accident is perceived. The third solution has the accident impressed on
the air and the air on the perceiver. It is the third solution that Ibn
at-Tayyib argues is the correct one, and the one endorsed by Aristotle.
In fact, Ferrari shows that the Greek commentators preferred yet
another solution based on temporal modalities, according to which
Aristotle should be interpreted as maintaining that an accident can be
separated from that in which it was, though not from that in which it
is.

Rashed's article (to which is appended the first translation of Yahya
ibn 'Adi's (d. 974) treatise on universals) explores in rich detail the
problem crucial for Neoplatonists and medieval philosophers of the
ontological status of essences. Rashed explains how Avicenna (980-1037)
argued against the realism of the Neoplatonic tradition, exemplified by
Porphyry, and carried forward by Ibn 'Adi, according to which essences
had an existence of their own. Avicenna wanted to insist that while an
essence could exist in the divine mind, our minds, and things
exemplifying it, that did not entail that it had its own existence.
However, since this makes universality extrinsic to essence, the
question remains of the ontological status of the essence as such. Ibn
'Adi wanted to argue that the possibility of an essence existing so
diversely entailed its having its own unique existence. By contrast,
Avicenna held that "pure" essence or form was itself non-existent
precisely because it did not have the complexity required of something
that exists.

Bertolacci examines Avicenna's efforts to apply the account of being
qua being in Book G of Aristotle's Metaphysics to a unified
understanding of metaphysics. Avicenna famously claimed not to have
fathomed Aristotle's Metaphysics until he chanced upon Al-Farabi's
commentary on that work. This unified understanding depends on
establishing the scientific character of metaphysics according to the
strictures of Posterior Analytics. That scientific character is
manifested in a universal demonstrative science of being qua being and
being's commensurately universal properties. Metaphysics is thus
distinguished from dialectic, and theology is subordinated to a branch
of metaphysics, not identified with it. As a branch of metaphysics,
theology studies the principle and cause of being, God, the necessary
self-caused source of being. It is noteworthy I think that Avicenna,
who here claims to be following Aristotle, actually gives a Neoplatonic
rendering of the place of a first principle of all in relation to
universal science.

Bonadeo explores the Arabic philosophical interpretations of Book L,
chapter 7 of Aristotle's Metaphysics wherein the prime unmoved mover is
characterized as "goal" or "end" of the entire universe. The
contemporary (and traditional) interpretations of God's finality and
the problems with these are well known. Aristotle distinguishes two
sense of "end", the "internal" result of the operation of an efficient
cause and the "external" purpose for which something is done. However,
neither of these senses of "end" seems to make sense when applied to
the unmoved mover as the separate and self-existing "end" of the entire
universe. There is a rich alternative tradition of late Greek and
Arabic commentary on this passage, and the prevailing interpretation
within that tradition (perhaps deriving from an alternative text),
assimilates the finality of the unmoved mover, as ultimate good, to a
type of paradigmatic causality. This paradigmatic status is not
adventitious and sporadic; it must flow from the efficient causality of
the paradigm, that is, operate on all that its causal scope embraces.
That is why the unmoved mover is paradigmatically good. The resistance
to this interpretation is undoubtedly owing to the assumption that
paradigmatic causality is resolutely rejected by Aristotle.
Nevertheless, the general idea that Aristotle's philosophy was hostile
to Platonism was not an assumption shared by Arabic-Islamic falsafa.

This is altogether a welcome and impressive collection, with much
stimulating material both for the specialist and for the generalist
willing to explore the vast and intricate terrain situated between the
classical period and Latin Scholasticism. The greatest benefit for the
casual reader will be found in the fresh interpretive perspectives
brought by Arabic philosophers to their reading of the Greeks.