Alexander of Aphrodisias On Aristotle Metaphysics 1 This page intentionally left blank Alexander of Aphrodisias On Aristotle Metaphysics 1 Translated by William E. Dooley SJ B L O O M S B U RY LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic First published in 1989 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Paperback edition first published 2014 © William E. Dooley, 1989 William E. Dooley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBNHB: 978-0-7156-2243-8 PB: 978-1-7809-3362-7 ePDF: 978-1-7809-3362-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Derek Doyle & Associates, Mold, Clwyd. Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction Richard Sorabji and Robert W. Sharpies 1 The commentary on Metaphysics 1 1 Alexander and his commentary 2 Translator's preface 5 Textual emendations 7 Translation Chapter 1 11 Chapter 2 25 Chapter 3 41 Chapter 4 57 Chapter 5 62 Chapter 6 77 Chapter 7 93 Chapter 8 98 Chapter 9 111 Chapter 10 178 Appendix: the commentators 181 Bibliography 192 Indexes English-Greek Glossary 199 Greek-English Index 205 Subject Index 223 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments The editor and translator would like to thank all those who have helped with their valuable comments on this volume: Jacques Brunschwig, Gail Fine, M.M. Mackenzie, Bruce Perry, David Robinson, Christopher Rowe, Robert Sharpies and Christian Wild- berg. We are further grateful to Robert Sharpies for providing the main part of the Introduction and Bibliography. The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from the following sources: The National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency of the USA; The British Academy; The Jowett Copyright Trustees; The Royal Society; Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Liverpool University; and by the collaboration of I. Hadot (Paris), CNRS (Paris), and the Institute of Classical Studies (London). We further wish to thank Eric Lewis, John Ellis and David Barlow for their help in preparing the volume for press. IOANNEI ADELPHOI • PHILIAI Introduction Richard Sorabji and Robert W. Sharpies The commentary on Metaphysics 1 In the first two chapters of Metaphysics I, Aristotle asks what is philosophy and in particular philosophical wisdom (sophia), and how is it related to philosophy? He answers that it is a knowledge of causes, or rather of explanations, including God, who is a cause or explanation in one of the few distinguishable ways. The remaining eight chapters examine the account given of cause or explanation by his predecessors.1 Alexander of Aphrodisias was the greatest expositor and elabor- ator of Aristotle's philosophy. But his commentary on this book has a curious feature: over half is devoted to the two chapters in which Aristotle discusses Plato. From this we learn not only about Alex- ander, but also far more than we could from Aristotle's text itself about Aristotle, Plato and Plato's Academy. Aristotle's battery of objections against the theory of Ideas is spelled out, with fragmen- tary quotations and paraphrases from four of his lost works, On the Ideas, On the Good, On Philosophy and On the Pythagoreans. There is an expanded account of the 'unwritten doctrines' which Plato developed late in his career, according to which the Ideas are numbers, namely the One and the Indefinite Dyad. 1 The following is a summary of the contents of Aristotle's chapters: (1) To show that philosophical wisdom (sophia) is a knowledge of causes, Aristotle passes in review lower types of cognition. (2) It is a knowledge of first causes, ultimately of God, who is a final, rather than an efficient, Cause. (3), (4) Anticipations of the doctrine of four causes by the Presocratics: material and efficient causes. (5) Pythagorean material causes and the Eleatics on cause. (6) Plato on Forms as formal causes and on the material and formal causes of Forms. (7) Earlier thinkers support the distinction of four causes, although they treat formal and final cause inadequately. (8) Criticism of the Presocratics on cause. (9) Criticism of the Platonic theory of Forms and its later development, and of the arguments for it. (10) The inadequacy of earlier treatments of cause. 1