THEMISTIUS On Aristotle Physics 4 This page intentionally left blank THEMISTIUS On Aristotle Physics 4 Translated by Robert B. Todd LONDON(cid:2)(cid:222)(cid:2)(cid:48)(cid:39)(cid:57)(cid:2)(cid:38)(cid:39)(cid:46)(cid:42)(cid:43)(cid:2)(cid:222)(cid:2)(cid:48)(cid:39)(cid:57)(cid:2)YO(cid:52)(cid:45)(cid:2)(cid:222)(cid:2)SYDN(cid:39)(cid:59) Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 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 Plc First published in 2003 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. (cid:51)(cid:68)(cid:83)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:69)(cid:68)(cid:70)(cid:78)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:3)(cid:192)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:88)(cid:69)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:21)(cid:19)(cid:20)(cid:23)(cid:3) Preface and Appendix © 2003 by Richard Sorabji © 2003 by Robert B. Todd Richard Sorabji and Robert B. Todd have asserted their rights under the Copyright, (cid:39)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:76)(cid:74)(cid:81)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:51)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:20)(cid:28)(cid:27)(cid:27)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:82)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:76)(cid:71)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:192)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:36)(cid:88)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:82)(cid:73)(cid:3)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:90)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:78)(cid:17) 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. ISBN HB: 978-0-7156-3199-7 (cid:3) (cid:51)(cid:37)(cid:29)(cid:3) (cid:28)(cid:26)(cid:27)(cid:16)(cid:20)(cid:16)(cid:23)(cid:26)(cid:21)(cid:24)(cid:16)(cid:24)(cid:26)(cid:23)(cid:19)(cid:16)(cid:26) (cid:3) (cid:72)(cid:51)(cid:39)(cid:41)(cid:29)(cid:3)(cid:28)(cid:26)(cid:27)(cid:16)(cid:20)(cid:16)(cid:23)(cid:26)(cid:21)(cid:24)(cid:16)(cid:19)(cid:20)(cid:19)(cid:24)(cid:16)(cid:28) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Acknowledgements The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from the following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, an independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University; the Leventis Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the British Academy; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown Trust; Mr and Mrs N. Egon; (cid:55)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:49)(cid:72)(cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:79)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:50)(cid:85)(cid:74)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:68)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:3)(cid:73)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:3)(cid:54)(cid:70)(cid:76)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:192)(cid:70)(cid:3)(cid:53)(cid:72)(cid:86)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:70)(cid:75) (NWO/GW). The editor wishes to thank David Furley, Stuart Leggatt and Pamela Huby for their comments, and John Bowin for preparing the volume for press. Typeset by Ray Davies Printed and bound in Great Britain Contents Preface Richard Sorabji vii Introduction 1 Place, Void and Containers 7 Textual Emendations 9 Translation 15 Place: Chapters 1-5 17 Void: Chapters 6-9 36 Time: Chapters 10-14 52 Notes 75 Bibliography and Abbreviations 112 Appendix: The Commentators Richard Sorabji 116 English-Greek Glossary 127 Greek-English Index 130 Index of Passages Cited 145 Subject Index 148 To the memory of Henry J. Blumenthal Preface Richard Sorabji Henry Blumenthal, to whose memory this volume is dedicated, asked, and answered in the affirmative, a very important question in an article on Themistius which he entitled, ‘Themistius: the last Peripa- tetic commentator on Aristotle?’ Themistius was an orator, politician and essayist of the fourth century AD, in the capital city of Constanti- nople, and devoted only some of his time to philosophy in a privately run institution, so was not obliged to take sides between schools. But in the introduction to my forthcoming Sourcebook, The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD, I shall answer Blumenthal’s question by saying that he does side with contemporary Neoplatonism too much to be considered a member of the Peripatetic, i.e. Aristotelian school, e.g. requiring Platonic Forms to explain biological reproduc- tion (so Devin Henry, see the translator’s bibliography), and rejecting Aristotle’s empiricist account of concept formation (in DA 3,31-4,11). The fact that Themistius’ commentaries are called paraphrases should not be allowed to conceal their importance. Thomas Aquinas famously appealed to another commentary by Themistius in his controversy with the followers of Averroes who denied individual immortality to the human intellect. Aristotle could be enlisted in the service of the Christian belief in individual survival, in the light of Themistius’ commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul. More than that, as Robert Todd says in his introduction to the present translation, Themistius offers information and ideas not found elsewhere. In fact, some of his ideas are very original. He is also taken very seriously by later commentators. I shall illustrate this from the present commen- tary, starting with that on Physics Book 3, and progressing to that on Book 4. Themistius, commenting on the preceding Book 3 of Aristotle’s Physics, solves a problem that confused other commentators. Aris- totle in this book defines change. He had described a change (kinêsis), such as walking a mile, as incomplete until the mile is done, yet at Physics 3.1, 201a10-11, he calls change a completion (entelekheia) of what is potential. How can it be both incomplete and a completion? viii Preface Themistius saw, 69,7-20, that it matters crucially what is meant by ‘what is potential’. The completion of the bronze matter of a statue as something having the capacity to have been sculpted, would be a statue. But the completion of the bronze as something having the capacity to be in process of being sculpted would be a change (kinêsis), namely, the process of being turned into a statue. InPhysics Book 4, Aristotle defines place and time, and denies the possibility of vacuum. Themistius here has two tussles with Galen, the great doctor-philosopher of the late second century AD. First, we hear at 149,4-19 that Galen regarded time as self-revealing and accused Aristotle of circularity in his attempt to define it. Aristotle had defined it as involving the possibility of counting changes and marking them as before or after. Galen complains that this has to be understood as the before and after of time, the very thing that was supposed to be being defined. In response, Themistius first offers Aristotle’s own defence, that the appeal is to the before and after of position, not of time. This is not entirely satisfactory, because posi- tions are only thought of as before or after in relation to an imagined movement which reaches one position chronologically before another. But Themistius adds his own reply, that if there is a circularity, it is benign, because it is only right and proper that the definition should mean the same as what is being defined. The great sixth-century Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius demurs in his in Phys.718,13- 719,18. At 114,7-12, it appears that Galen had replied to Aristotle’s denial that there is such a thing as three-dimensional space, distinct from the three-dimensional volume of a body. Aristotle thought it was enough to describe a thing’s place, roughly speaking, as its surround- ings, the surroundings into which it fits exactly. To postulate space as well would give us too many three-dimensional entities. Themistius defends Aristotle at 133,31-135,1. It would be very odd, he says, if a vacuum, or even space, could exist where a body is, and penetrate right through the body. Extensions exclude each other, and that is why bodies exclude each other – because they are extensions. Galen, however, argued for the reality of space distinct from a body’s volume, by imagining a bronze jar whose contents shrink, without any other matter coming in to fill the gap. Themistius accuses Galen of begging the question, by assuming the very spatial exten- sion, or gap, that he wants to prove. But in the early sixth century AD Philoponus was to defend Galen, in Phys. 576,12-577,1 (Corollaries; see p. 82 nn. 128-9 below), by saying that he only hypothesises that no matter comes in after the shrinkage. At 163,1-7, Themistius criticizes Aristotle, rightly I believe, for saying that there would be no time if there were no soul to count off the different positions in a movement. Aristotle’s definition of time as the countable aspect of change in respect of before and after should Preface ix require only that change is capable of being counted, not that there is an opportunity of counting it, such as would be supplied by the existence of souls to do the counting. Finally, Themistius offers ingenious ideas on how Aristotle’s outer- most sphere which carries the stars can, on Aristotle’s view, have any place. For Aristotle, a thing’s place is its surroundings, and the outermost sphere has no surroundings. Themistius suggests among other things, 121,1-4, the solution that the outermost sphere could have as its place the surface of the next sphere in, that of the planet Cronus or Saturn. Simplicius (in Phys. 590,27-32; 592,25-7; see p. 86 n. 188 below) and Philoponus (in Phys. 565,21-566,7) reject this, partly on the ground that such a place would not be of equal size. Philoponus adds that the surface of the next sphere in cannot provide a place to the outermost sphere, when it also receives its place from there.