Dans l'horizon de l’étude de la philosophie naturelle d'Averroès, le nouveau travail de Ruth Glasner intitulé Averroes’ Physics: a Turning Point in Medieval Natural Philosophy occupera assurément une place de premier plan. Dans cet ouvrage, RG propose une étude analytique des trois commentaires d'Averroès à la Physique d'Aristote – l’ Abrégé, le Commentaire Moyen et le Grand Commentaire. La force incontestable de son travail réside tout d'abord dans son approche double du texte d'Averroès, à la fois philologique et théorique. Tout (...) au long de son analyse, ces deux aspects restent intimement liés et la mobilisation des instruments philologiques n'est jamais une fin en soi. Cette analyse a en effet pour but ultime de reconstruire le système du monde tel qu'Averroès le concevait. L'enjeu fondamental de cette étude est alors de supplanter la vision d'un Averroès interprète servile de la physique aristotélicienne et de présenter sa conception de la nature comme un système cohérent, organique et original. (shrink)

This paper presents a detailed reconstruction of Theophrastus’ account of human ontogeny, which is built around Aristotle’s notoriously difficult claim in Generation of Animals II 3 that “νοῦς alone enters from without”. I argue that this account (which is known to us via quotes from Theophrastus’ de Anima II and On Motion I) provides a viable alternative to the traditional trilemma between naturalist traducianism, creationism, and pre-existence, as well as offering an attractive but so far unappreciated interpretation of Aristotle’s account (...) of human ontogeny. More specifically, I argue that the extant evidence poses a challenge to the two dominant interpretations of “νοῦς from without” in the last decades: a dialectical one, according to which Aristotle ultimately rejects this claim, and a naturalizing one (often inspired by Alexander of Aphrodisias) that obliterates the essential difference between νοῦς and the other parts of the soul. (shrink)

In his own De anima, Alexander of Aphrodisias famously identifies the “active” (poietikon) intellect with the prime mover in Metaphysics Λ. However, Alexander’s claim raises an issue: why would this divine intellect come in the middle of a study of soul in general and of human intellection in particular? As Paul Moraux asks in his pioneering work on Alexander’s conception of the intellect, is the active intellect a “useless addition”? In this paper, I try to answer this question by challenging (...) a solution according to which the active intellect would intervene directly with the material intellect to trigger its ordinary working. I argue that the active intellect acts as a final cause, both for human intellect and for its ordinary objects of thought. The active intellect is twice “cause of the intellection”, i.e. cause of the actualization of human thought: once (i) when it offers thought occasions for thinking through objects, and again (ii) when it actualizes mediately the human intellect itself in its development. This reading agrees with Alexander’s usual position about the prime mover’s causality. It accounts for the multiplicity of expressions with which Alexander describes the causality of the active intellect in his De anima. It also explains why the development of human intellect has been described without direct reference to active intellect, since substances do not aim directly at the First cause, but their aiming at it is mediated by their desire for their own good. (shrink)

The existence of common points between Alexander of Aphrodise and Bardaisan the Syrian has been pointed out on various occasions. However, this question has not been explored in depth. The article proposes to analyse the cosmological ideas of Alexander and Bardaisan. Because both authors are known for their anti-determinist and anti-astrological polemics, it is preferable to place this comparison in the context of the astrological interpretation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The article discusses the Aristotelianism of Bardaisan, who may be the (...) first representative of the reception of this doctrine in Syriac. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the philosophical fragment found in 1977 in the Bactrian city of Aï Khanum. Both its content and origin are still a matter of dispute among scholars. I provide first a new edition of the three remaining columns of the fragment, based on a new reading of its photographic reproductions. The second part of this paper deals with the difficult problem of its origin. I give new evidence in favour of the hypothesis according to which the (...) transmitted text is a piece of the second book of Aristotle’s lost dialogue Περὶ φιλοσοφίας. First, the comparison between this fragment and the opening lines of Theophrastus’ so-calledMetaphysicssuggests that both of them were written shortly after Plato’s death in the same historical and philosophical context, viz inside the Assos circle. Then, I examine the hypothesis of Louis Robert and Paul Bernard according to which an epigram written at the end of a list of Delphic maxims also found in Aï Khanum must be attributed to Clearchus of Soli, the pupil of Aristotle during the Assos period. The close connection between Clearchus’ main philosophical interests and the first book of Aristotle’s lost dialogue explains why he chose to bring it with him during his journey through the East, and left it in Aï Khanum. Finally, the reconstruction of the general structure of the Περὶ φιλοσοφίας leads to the conclusion that the fragment must come from its second book. (shrink)

Does Anaxagoras admit that the world is destructible? Aëtius’ doxographical handbook says as much, and so does a doxographical scholion derived from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ lost commentary on Aristotle’sPhysics(Frag. 539 Rashed) according to the transmitted text. However, because of other difficulties occurring in the same scholion, Rashed was led to correct not only this text, thus making it contradict Aëtius’ testimony, but also the entry dedicated to Plato. My article suggests that while Rashed’s corrections are superfluous, the problems that triggered (...) them are of great interest for the history of the doxographical tradition, for the way in which this tradition was used by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius in their commentaries on Aristotle’sPhysicsand, last but not least, for the understanding of the difficulties that ancient interpreters had to confront when they had to make sense of the lines now known as Anaxagoras B12 DK – difficulties that modern interpreters have still to confront. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relation between version α of the seventh book of Aristotle’s Physics and the two byzantine families which shape the transmission lineage of most Aristotelian texts. To this end, it establishes a stemma codicum of all known manuscripts of version α. The first step reexamines Simplicius’ testimony in order to overcome the stemmatic problem arising from it: Simplicius’ statement that there was a version β for chapters 4 and 5 seems to be mere speculation on his (...) part. This allows for the more plausible assumption that only the first three chapters of book VII were transmitted in two versions. The paper then deals with the witnesses of version α, which either transmit version α as a whole or a mixture of the two versions. H and I are shown to stem from the same manuscript ι. ι was used by E2, who famously annotated Paris. 1853 and copied in its margins scholia derived from Philoponus’ commentary as well as κεφάλαια of book VII, both of which also feature in manuscripts close to H and I. Though ι is the source of both a version α and a version β, the original version of manuscript ι was βι. Therefore, version α cannot be associated with certainty to either of the two byzantine families of Aristotle’s natural works. Although version α may come from a now extinct third family, there is no trace of such a family in either Paris. 1859 or Vind. 64, which both got the text of book VII from the same manuscript φ. In any case, the evidence points to all direct witnesses of version α coming from only two sources: ι and φ. (shrink)

This study explores Theophrastus’ uses of two Aristotelian key concepts, energeia and entelekheia. Texts from the De causis plantarum come first into discussion. There, Theophrastus gives a kinetic...

L’étude d’un document épigraphique antinoïte, jusqu’ici négligé, suggère que le géomètre Serenus, auteur de deux traités "Sur la section du cylindre" et "Sur la section du cône", vivait au début du IIIe siècle. Le réexamen plus précis d’un certain nombre d’éléments tirés tant des traités de Serenus que de la tradition indirecte permet de faire de celui-ci le continuateur tardif d’une tradition de recherches sur les coniques très liée à la catoptrique, remontant aux travaux pré-apolloniens sur la question menés autour (...) de Conon de Samos et de Pythion de Thasos. Cette hypothèse pose, corrélativement, le problème de la nature du platonisme de Serenus: on l’examine à la lumière du constructivisme de Ménechme. Enfin, la prise en compte d’un détail de la tradition arabe des "Coniques" d’Apollonius permet de préciser un élément dans la transmission textuelle des deux traités de Serenus. (shrink)

Dans l'horizon de l’étude de la philosophie naturelle d'Averroès, le nouveau travail de Ruth Glasner intituléAverroes’ Physics: a Turning Point in Medieval Natural Philosophyoccupera assurément une place de premier plan. Dans cet ouvrage, RG propose une étude analytique des trois commentaires d'Averroès à laPhysiqued'Aristote – l’Abrégé, leCommentaire Moyenet leGrand Commentaire. La force incontestable de son travail réside tout d'abord dans son approche double du texte d'Averroès, à la fois philologique et théorique. Tout au long de son analyse, ces deux aspects (...) restent intimement liés et la mobilisation des instruments philologiques n'est jamais une fin en soi. Cette analyse a en effet pour but ultime de reconstruire le système du monde tel qu'Averroès le concevait. L'enjeu fondamental de cette étude est alors de supplanter la vision d'un Averroès interprète servile de la physique aristotélicienne et de présenter sa conception de la nature comme un système cohérent, organique et original. (shrink)