It is commonly agreed that the doctrines of classical Greek philosophers and scientists were transformed by commentators of, roughly, the second to sixth centuries AD. It is, however, less clear how these transformations precisely took place. This article contributes to the discussion by exploring explanative practices in ancient Greek commentaries on authors such as the Hippocratic Corpus, Aristotle, and Euclid and by arguing that among the practices concerned there was a tendency to blur the distinction of nature and text. Among (...) the commentators discussed are Apollonius of Citium, Galen, Proclus, Pappus, Palladius, Simplicius, and Eutocius. Disciplines concerned are mathematics, medicine and natural philosophy. Having distinguished ontological and pragmatic approaches to explanation, I provide an overview of exegetical practices in commentaries which deal with natural phenomena through authoritative texts. The second part of the paper discusses the commentator’s problem of how to decide where to stop explaining or how to select the problems that deserve explanation. The last part analyzes the habit of many commentators to turn perceived gaps into stories. I conclude by returning to the communicative functions of the explanations discussed. It turns out that they, to differing degrees, all contain self-referential aspects that serve to enhance the commentator’s position within his field. (shrink)

En la obra que ahora presentamos al público hispanoparlante, reunimos diez trabajos previamente publicados en lengua italiana que abordan importantes cuestiones que ocupan en este momento a los estudiosos de la filosofía helenística y romana. Sus autores son diez de los más importantes especialistas italianos actuales en el estudio de este periodo histórico.

In explicating a passage from Physics A 3, Simplicius reports a criticism by Alexander of Aphrodisias against Plato’s conception of not-being in the Sophist. Alexander deems this conception contradictory, because it posits that unqualified not-being is. Simplicius defends Plato and gives a diagnosis of what he regards as Alexander’s interpretative mistake in raising his objection. I unpack this debate and bring out ways in which it sheds light on important aspects of Plato’s project in the Sophist and of Simplicius’ own (...) philosophical background, notably in Damascius’ De principiis. (shrink)

This paper lists and examines the explicit references to Aristotle’s Topics in the Greek Neoplatonic commentaries on the Categories. The references to the Topics by Porphyry, Dexippus, Ammonius, Simplicius, Olympiodorus, Philoponus and David are listed according the usual prolegomena to Aristotle’s works. In particular, the paper reconstructs David ’s original thesis about the proponents of the title Pre-Topics for the Categories and compares Ammonius’, Simplicius’ and Olympiodorus’ doxographies about the postpraedicamenta. Moreover, the study identifies two general trends. The first one (...) is that all the commentators after Proclus share the same general view about: the authenticity of the Topics, Aristotle’s writing style in them, the part of philosophy to which they belong, their purpose, their usefulness and their place in the reading order. The second one is that whereas Porphyry, Dexippus and Simplicius use the Topics as an aid to understanding the Categories, Ammonius, Olympiodorus and David do not. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss some features of the doctrines of the agrapha dogmata in Neoplatonism, starting from the reading of an anecdote, presented in the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, in which Plato dreams that close to death he becomes a swan which hunters are unable to catch. In fact, the dream is an explanation of the development of the Platonic tradition, and, more precisely, it presents a story of several exegetical disagreements that have survived till (...) the present day. Compared to modern interpretation of the Aristotelic testimony on the “so-called unwritten doctrines”, we can state that the late antique interpretations of them focus and depend on what Plato has left us in his written dialogues, which are the best living images of his oral dialogues. This conclusion is, then, a consequence of a study carried out on Ancient and Neoplatonic texts that leads to the acknowledgement of a Platonic philosophical system as well as to an overview of modern secondary bibliography produced by the esoteric interpretation of Plato and various views of scholars who are against this account. (shrink)

This paper looks into the known evidence on the origins of the type of argument called the circumstantial ad hominemargument in modern logic textbooks, and introduces some new evidence. This new evidence comes primarily from recent historical work by Jaap Mansfeld and Jonathan Barnes citing many cases where philosophers in the ancient world were attacked on the grounds that their personal actions failed to be consistent with their philosophical teachings. On the total body of evidence, two hypotheses about the roots (...) of the circumstantial ad hominem are considered. One is that it came from Aristotle through Locke. The other is that it may have had separate roots in these ancient philosophical writings that criticized philosophers for not practicing what they preached. (shrink)

The present paper focuses on some aspects of the Neoplatonist literary-metaphysical theory, which has clearly been expressed in the anony­mous Prolegomena to Plato’s philosophy and further confirmed in Proclus’ exegesis of the Timaeus. Thus, this contribution, examines and compares several passages from the Prolegomena and from Proclus’ Commentary on the Timaeus with a view to showing that it is legiti­mate to speak of a certain cosmogony of the Platonic dialogue that is analogous to that of the macrocosm. Moreover, the analogy (...) between macrocosm and microcosm makes it possible to further investigate the similarity between the λόγος-ζῷον of the Demiurge and that of Timaeus, on the one hand, and the reality which the λόγος expresses, on the other. This similarity turns out to be both structural/morphological and content-related/semantic. Thus, by combining the natural and theo­logical science, the analysis of the “generation” of the macrocosm and microcosm brings out the strongly analogical nature of Plato’s dialogues, which is particularly visible in the Timaeus. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the Middle Platonists’ appeal to the Timaeus was grounded in a complex and effective philosophical reasoning: the Middle Platonists conceived of Plato’s text as a web of passages which Plato himself had carefully established. Only a few of them were granted a qualified priority, namely, those offering a complete and comprehensive philosophical account of the key elements which the Platonists regarded as fundamental. This will allow us to show that the Middle Platonists’ preference for (...) the Timaeus does not depend on the fact that it is systematic. Rather it is systematic insofar as it proves capable of giving context to passages from other dialogues and provides them with an account that is philosophically sound. (shrink)

In late antiquity, in the context of the jagged tradition of Neo-Platonism,Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the specific science that is traced out in itare indicated with the current denominations of meta ta physika andtheologikē pragmateia, which are seen as consistent with one anotherand closely interconnected. In this connection, the Metaphysics, in thewake of previous philosophical readings, is considered as a treatise on“theological science” — the most elevated among the sciences — and thedenomination meta ta physika is seen in a specifically theological (...) sense.According to a widespread Neo-Platonic reading, the science thematizedin the Metaphysics is “metaphysics” in that it is theological science,an epistemic discourse on divine realities, which, within the ordo rerum,transcend the physical ones, and, therefore, according to the ordo cognoscendi,must be studied after the latter. (shrink)

With the use of a particular metaphor, which appears at the end of the Cratylus and is taken up with perfect symmetry at the beginning of the Theaetetus, Plato certainly wanted to indicate the succession of Cratylus–Theaetetus as an order for reading the two dialogues, which Trasillus faithfully reproduced in structuring the second tetralogy of Platonic dialogues. The claim of the theory of ideas, with which the Cratylus ends, must therefore be considered the background in which to place not only (...) the analysis of the name carried out in the Cratylus, but also the discussion and criticism of the epistemological theories examined and refuted in the Theaetetus. The transition from the discussion of the name to that of the logos is another important theoretical element that connects the two dialogues. Another one is the theory of knowledge, already precisely elaborated in the Cratylus, and taken up and deepened in the Theaetetus. Finally, the theme of false and error is a third theoretical element common to the two dialogues, which, starting from Euthydemus, finds its solution in the Sophist. (shrink)