Porphyry On Aristotle Categories This page intentionally left blank Porphyry On Aristotle Categories Translated by Steven K. Strange B L O O MS B U RY LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London NewYork WC1B3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic First published in 1992 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Paperback edition first published 2014 ©Steven K. Strange, 1992 Steven K. Strange 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. 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The general editor further wishes to thank John Dillon for his comments on the translation and Ian Crystal and Paul Opperman for their help in preparing the volume for press. Typeset by Derek Doyle & Associates, Mold, Clwyd. Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Introduction 1 Plotinus and Porphyry on the Categories 1 Porphyry's Platonising interpretation of the Categories 3 Textual Emendations 13 Felicianus' headings for Porphyry On Aristotle Categories 19 Translation 27 Concerning Synonyms 49 Concerning Substance 76 Concerning Quantity 94 Concerning Relatives 111 On the Qualified and on Quality 136 Concerning Action and Affection 157 Bibliography 159 Appendix: the commentators 160 English-Greek Glossary 170 Greek-English Index 173 Subject Index 182 This page intentionally left blank Introduction* Plotinus and Porphyry on the Categories The claim is often made that the most extensive of Plotinus' treatises, On the Genera of Being (Peri ton genon ton ontos, Enn. 6.1-3), contains a polemical attack on Aristotle's theory of categories.1 This claim would seem to be well-grounded, given that in the first part of the work (6.1.1-24),2 Plotinus proceeds through the list of categories given by Aristotle and systematically raises a series of powerful objections to claims Aristotle makes about them in the text of the Categories. At the same time, Plotinus' student Porphyry is rightly given credit for establishing Aristotle's Categories, along with the rest of the Aristotelian logical treatises usually referred to as the Organon, as the fundamental texts for logical doctrines in the Neoplatonic scholastic tradition, and through this tradition later for medieval philosophy, by means of his Isagoge3 or introduction to the Categories and his commen- taries on that work. Taken together, these two propositions tend to give the impression that there was deep and * A different version of this introduction appeared as 'Plotinus, Porphyry, and the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Categories', in W. Haase and H. Temporini (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rbmischen Welt 2.36.2 (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 1987), pp. 955-74. 1 See, for example, E. Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung III.24 (Leipzig, 1904), p. 578, n. 4, p. 698; E. Brevier, Les Enneades de Plotin (Paris, 1924-1938), introduction to Enn. 6.1-3, pp. 9-10; A.C. Lloyd, 'Neoplatonic logic and Aristotelian logic', Phronesis 1 (1955-56), pp. 58-72, 146-60, at p. 58; P. Merlan in A.H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1967), p. 38. R. Wallis, Neoplatonism (London, 1972), p. 45, makes the work part of Plotinus' 'anti-Aristotelian polemic'. 2 The Enneads will be cited by chapter and line number of the editio minor of P. Henry and H. Schwyzer (Oxford, 1964-1982). 3 A. Busse (ed.), Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca [hereafter GAG] IV. 1 (Berlin, 1887), translated in this volume. 1 2 Introduction substantive disagreement between master and pupil about the value of the theory found in the Categories. This impression is reinforced by the implication in the introduction to the extant commentaries on the Categories of Dexippus4 (5,1-12) and Simplicius5 (2,3-8) that Porphyry, in the massive commentary on the Categories which he dedicated to Gedalius, probably one of his students, replied in detail to Plotinus' objections against the Categories.6 Indeed, in Porphyry's extant catechism-commentary7 and throughout Dexippus' and Simplicius' commentaries, both of which seem to be following closely either Porphyry's lost To Gedalius or lamblichus' lost commentary, itself based on To Gedalius, we can see Porphyry doing precisely this. Moreover, it is clear from the text of Simplicius that many of the objections Plotinus raises against the Categories in On the Genera of Being he got from a work or works of Lucius and Nicostratus, who were certainly hostile to Aristotle.8 Nevertheless, I am convinced that this simple way of putting the matter is more than a little misleading: it both misrepresents the nature and originality of Porphyry's contribution to the history of logic and metaphysics and distorts our view of the fundamental 4 A. Busse (ed.), CAG IV.2 (Berlin, 1888), translated in this series by John Dillon. 5 C. Kalbfleisch (ed.), CAG VIII (Berlin, 1897). 6 cf. especially Simplicius' words Plotinos de ho megas epi toutois [i.e. Lucius and Nicostratus: see below, n. 7] tas pragmateiddestatas exetaseis en trisin holois bibliois tois Peri ton gendn tou ontos epigegrammenois t6i ton Kategorion biblidi prosegage. meta de toutous ho pantdn hemin ton kaldn aitios Porphurios exigesin te entele tou bibliou kai ton enstaseon pasdn luseis ouk aponds en hepta bibliois epoiesato tois Gedaleidi prosphone'theisi k.t.l. 7 A. Busse (ed.), CAG IV. 1 (Berlin, 1887), translated in this volume. 8 Simpl. in Cat. 1,18-22 refers to them as skhedon tiprospanta ta eirgmena kata to biblion enstaseis komizein philotimoumenoi, kai oude eulabos, alia kataphorikds mallon kai aperuthriakotds. I follow K. Praechter, 'Nikostratos der Platoniker", Hermes 57 (1922), 481-517 (= idem, Kleine Schriften [Collectanea 7, Hildesheim, 1973], 101-37), in taking Nicostratus at least to have been a Platonist, not a Stoic as affirmed by Zeller, op. cit. (n. 1), III.l, pp. 716-17n., even if he is not identical with the otherwise known second-century AD Platonist as Praechter argues. If Lucius was a Stoic, Nicostratus' dependence on him might help to account for the Stoic elements found in his fragments. Certainly Lucius at Simpl. in Cat. 64,18-19 seems to be following a line of objection due to the Stoics Athenodorus and Cornutus, based on the assumption that the Categories is about different kinds of words; cf. Simpl. in Cat. 18,27-19,1, Porph. in Cat. 59,9-14, 86,22-4. At Simpl. in Cat. 48,1-34, Porphyry is quoted as using a Stoic distinction to refute an objection of Lucius', which may be evidence that Lucius was a Stoic. On the other hand, Nicostratus' assumption that Forms exist (Simpl. in Cat. 73,15-28, where however his name is linked with that of Lucius) as well as immaterial mathematical objects (429,13-20) seems conclusive for his having been a Platonist. Introduction 3 Neoplatonic problem of the relationship between Plato and Aristotle. Elsewhere I have tried to sharpen the statement of the historical situation by examining some of the connections between Porphyry's interpretation of the Categories and Plotinus' discussion of the problem of the nature of the categories, especially the category of substance, in On the Genera of Being. I have suggested that Plotinus' and Porphyry's attitudes toward the Categories are much closer to one another than has previously been supposed, and that in particular Porphyry's position on the nature of categories has been deeply influenced by Plotinus' arguments.9 I will now look at some of the more important features of Porphyry's interpretation of the Categories that enabled him to downplay the evidently anti-Platonic metaphysical elements that the work contains and to turn it into a basic textbook of logic for his revived school-Platonism. Here I will be relying heavily upon an important and seminal paper by A.C. Lloyd.10 Porphyry's Platonising interpretation of the Categories Prima facie, it is hard to see how the Categories could ever have come to serve as a basic introductory text for a Platonist philosophical school. There are a number of ways in which it seems to be an explicitly anti-Platonist work. This is most clear in chapter 5 of the Categories, the chapter on substance or ousia. Aristotle takes over the philosophical use of the term ousia from Plato and transforms it. The fundamental meaning of ousia in both Plato's and Aristotle's metaphysics seems to be 'primary or basic kind of being*. In the Phaedo (78d) and the Timaeus (29c), Plato uses ousia to refer to the separate Forms, and Aristotle's adoption of the term as the name of his first category is connected with his denial, in conscious opposition to Plato's middle-period Theory of Forms, that non-substantial items such as qualities and quantities have being in the primary sense, even considered 9 Steven K. Strange, 'Plotinus, Porphyry, and the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Categories', in W. Haase and H. Temporini (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt 2.36.2 (Berlin and New York, 1987), pp. 955-74. 10 A.C. Lloyd, op. cit. (n. 1).