Overview

This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators. First published in 1990, the collection is now brought up to date with a new introduction by Richard Sorabji. New generations of scholars will benefit from this reissuing of classic essays, including seminal works by major scholars, and the volume gives a comprehensive background to the work of the project on the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, which has published over 100 volumes of translations since 1987 and has disseminated these crucial texts to scholars worldwide. The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence – uncovered in some of the chapters of this book – that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve anti-Aristotelian material which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they present Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sir Richard Sorabji (University of Oxford, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Edition:   2nd edition
Weight:   0.894kg
ISBN:  

9781350123656

ISBN 10:   135012365
Pages:   648
Publication Date:   14 November 2019
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Prefaceto the First Edition Acknowledgments List of Contributors Introduction to Second Edition 1. The ancient commentators on Aristotle Richard Sorabji 2. Review of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca Karl Praechter 3. The earliest Aristotelian commentators Hans B. Gottschalk 4. The school of Alexander? Robert W. Sharples 5. Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle? Henry J. Blumenthal 6. The harmony of Plotinus and Aristotle according to Porphyry Pierre Hadot 7. Porphyry’s legacy to logic: a reconstruction Sten Ebbesen 8. How did Syrianus regard Aristotle? H.D. Saffrey 9. Infinite power impressed: the transformation of Aristotle’s physics and theology Richard Sorabji 10. The metaphysics of Ammonius son of Hermeias Koenraad Verrycken 11. The development of Philoponus’ thought and its chronology Koenraad Verrycken 12. The life and work of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic sources Ilsetraut Hadot 13. Neoplatonic elements in the de Anima commentaries Henry J. Blumenthal 14. The Alexandrian commentators and the introductions to their commentaries L.G. Westerink 15. Boethius’ commentaries on Aristotle James Shiel 16. Boethius as an Aristotelian commentator Sten Ebbesen 17. An unpublished funeral oration on Anna Comnena Robert Browning 18. The Greek commentators on Aristotle’s Ethics H.P.F. Mercken 19. Philoponus, ‘Alexander’ and the origins of medieval logic Sten Ebbesen 20. Aristotle’s doctrine of abstraction in the commentators Ian Mueller Note on the frontispiece: ‘Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias’ by Ulocrino Donald R. Morrison Select bibliography Index locorum General index

Reviews

[A]nyone working in this subject area would be strongly advised to buy and read [this book] ... The amount of scholarship that is surveyed is jaw-dropping, and S[orabji]'s command of detail is impressive. * Classics for All Reviews * This hefty volume of 20 scholarly essays on the history, development, and influence of early Greek Aristotelian commentators is essentially a reprinting of the first edition (CH, Oct'90, 28-0896). For this second edition Sorabji (King's College London, UK) wrote a new introduction of some 40 pages, in which he summarizes and updates the essays and offers some critiques and revised interpretations based on new scholarship of the intervening 25 years. As Sorabji acknowledges, much of the content of the introduction is included and considered in more detail in Aristotle Re-interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators (2016), also edited by Sorabji, which is intended as a sequel to Aristotle Transformed. The essays compiled in Aristotle Transformed constitute indispensable scholarship on ancient commentary tradition, but either of the editions would seem sufficient, given the forthcoming Aristotle Re-interpreted. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *

Author Information

Sir Richard Sorabji is Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford, and Emeritus Professor, King's College, London, UK. He is the world's leading scholar on the commentators on Aristotle and founder and co-editor of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, published by Bloomsbury. He is also the author of the three sourcebooks on the ancient commentators: The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD, vols 1–3.

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