Al-Hasan ibn Musa al-Nawbakhti, Commentary on Aristotle "De generatione et corruptione": Edition, Translation and Commentary [Bilingual ed.] 3110443643, 9783110443646, 9783110444582, 9783110436808
This book contains a new edition and English translation of the oldest commentary on Aristotle written in Arabic and pre
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Table of contents :
CONTENTS
I. TEXT AND TRANSLATION
Introduction to the Critical Edition
Sigla
Summary of the Book On Generation and Destruction
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
II. COMMENTARY
Introduction of the Work
Section 1: On Generation, Destruction and the Categories
Section 2: On Generation, Non-Being and Matter
Section 3: On Matter, Form and Generation and Destruction
Section 4: On Generation, Substance and Accidents
Section 5: On the Different Changes and the Change According to Place
Section 6: On Growth
Section 7: On Nutrition
Section 8: On Contact
Section 9: On Action and Passion
Section 10: On Mixing
Section 11: On the Elements
Section 12: On the Reciprocal Change of the Elements
Section 13: Formation of Homoeomers
Section 14: Generation and Destruction and the Celestial Bodies
III. AL-ḤASAN IBN MŪSĀ AL-NAWBAḪTĪ
The author of the treatise: al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī
1. Pars destruens: the author is not Avicenna
2. Pars construens: the author is al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī
Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī as a philosopher
Bibliography
Index of Arabic words
Index nominum
Index locorum
Citation preview
Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī, Commentary on Aristotle De generatione et corruptione
Scientia Graeco-Arabica herausgegeben von Marwan Rashed
Band 19
De Gruyter
Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī, Commentary on Aristotle De generatione et corruptione Edition, translation and commentary by
Marwan Rashed
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-044364-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-044458-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-043680-8 ISSN 1868-7172 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ∞ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com
PREFACE
The present book contains the editio princeps, together with a translation and a commentary, of an anonymous Arabic commentary on Aristotle’s treatise On generation and corruption. Although this commentary has until now escaped the notice of historians of Arabic philosophy, it is of considerable interest. If the date (around the year 900 AD) that I suggest for the work is accepted, then not only is it the oldest surviving Arabic commentary on Aristotle, but also a rare document from a very little known period of the history of philosophy: the short century separating the activity of alKindī (ca 800–after 860) from that of al-Fārābī (870–951). Until now, we have not had in our hands any commentary on Aristotle going back to these decades, in which great energy was devoted to the translation of philosophical texts from Greek into Arabic. Of course, we have suspected that knowledge of the corpus aristotelicum, which was still rudimentary in alKindī, was refined during the second half of the 9th century, until it attained the degree of exegetical perfection characteristic of al-Fārābī in the first half of the 10th century. Part of the value of this new text is that it proves by its very existence that al-Fārābī did not simply appear ex nihilo, nor above all did he, as he liked to claim, depend immediately on his Greek predecessors and their Syriac transmitters. Rather, his work as a commentator was prepared for by a philosophical activity of the highest order, one which, as we will see, reveals a mastery of the Aristotelian essentialism of Alexander of Aphrodisias down to its smallest details. Before coming to the identity of the author, his context and his project, let me say a few words about his reliance on Alexander. Throughout his own commentary on the first book of De generatione et corruptione, he relies systematically (although without saying so) on Alexander’s lost commentary. In particular, this influence is overwhelming in the second part of the book, beginning with chapter 5. The treatment of growth, of contact, of action and passion, of mixture, is so close to what we know from other sources of Alexander’s philosophical theses, that it enables us to reconstruct to a large extent his lost exegesis. The two most remarkable chapters from this point of view are the treatment of growth—divided into two sections by the author, one On Growth and the other On Nutrition— and the treatment of mixture. In the case of growth, we now understand for the first time how Alexander interpreted GC I, 5 in a markedly anti-Galenic
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Preface
direction, by rejecting the profusion of Galenic powers/capacities (δυνάμεις) and preferring the more mechanistic physiology of Erasistratus, the Alexandrian doctor whom certain ancient sources associate with Aristotle. In the case of mixture, we see the antecedents of an important chapter in the Medieval discussions of form and quality. Until now, much confusion has surrounded the formulation of Alexander’s own doctrine concerning the “qualitative” nature of the elementary forms. The new text allows us to understand it better. We can now see how the notion of power (δύναμις) stands at the centre of Alexander’s analysis, allowing him to avoid reducing the forms of the elements to pairs of primary qualities and at the same time to preserve a close link between the two. As one can see from reading through our commentary, many other passages attest to the influence of Alexander. The new text is therefore a third and essential piece of evidence, alongside the commentaries of Philoponus and Averroes, for the nature and content of Alexander’s lost commentary. In particular, it allows us to establish that in his Epitome of the treatise On Generation and Corruption, Averroes faithfully follows Alexander’s exegesis. Following the discovery of substantial Greek portions of Alexander’s lost commentary on the Physics in a Byzantine manuscript,1 this new text allows us to refine still further our understanding of the natural philosophy of the greatest Aristotelian of Antiquity. Now, a word about the author of the Arabic commentary. Although the text has been transmitted anonymously in the two manuscripts, this mysterious commentator has left clues enough for us to determine his identity. He is the Imamite scholar and theologian Abū Muḥammad ibn Mūsā alNawbaḫtī (ca 850–ca 920). Of the forty or so works that bio-bibliographers attribute to him, only one was known up until now, the well-known Book of Šī‘ī Sects (Kitāb Firaq al-Šī‘a) edited in 1931 by Hellmut Ritter. His identification with the author of the new commentary carries with it two historical consequences. First of all, the present text is unique in documenting the Aristotelian turn taken by the Mu‘tazilism of the Baghdad School, as opposed to that of the Baṣra School. It has long been suspected, on the evidence of later doxographic reports—by Šayḫ al-Mufīd (d. 1022) in particular—that al-Nawbaḫtī had adopted, on a certain number of points, the Aristotelian theses of Abū al-Qāsim al-Ka‘bī (d. 931), the leading figure of the Baghdad School. This suspicion has now been confirmed by two facts: (i) the Aristotelian turn taken by the kalām of Baghdad, which See M. Rashed, Alexandre d’Aphrodise, Commentaire Perdu à la Physique d’Aristote (Livres IV-VIII): Les Scholies Byzantines, Édition, Traduction et Commentaire, Berlin / New York, 2011. 1
Preface
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used to be traceable only through later and often tendentious doxographies, is now attested to by a text dating to the very time at which the turn occurred; (ii) al-Nawbaḫtī was indeed a major actor—along with Abū alQāsim al-Ka‘bī—in the adaptation of the Aristotelian ontology of the sensible world to the conceptual framework provided by the atomism of the mutakallimūn. This assimilation had in turn an effect on how Aristotle was read. We shall see how, on several occasions, the ontology of the kalām gave a particular direction to the interpretation of Aristotle. We see the result of this mutual influence in this original and fascinating work, which combines the essentialism of Alexander of Aphrodisias, together with his marked interest in the problems of εἶδος, and the theory of predication of the kalām, which takes any formulable determination, whether positive or privative, to indicate the real existence of an attribute. This symbiosis of the kalām and of falsafa occurred at the same time as a crucial event in Šī‘ī history. In 874, al-Ḥasan al-‘Askarī, the eleventh descendent of the Prophet, died without an heir apparent. My last chapter will be devoted to showing that there is perhaps a relation between, on the one hand, the theory of Occultation that was hastily put into place in order to justify the change of regime and, on the other, the return to the philosophy of Aristotle. Indeed, al-Nawbaḫtī belonged to one of the most eminent Šī‘ī families, one of whose tasks it became to make the connection between the Hidden Imam and Abbassid society as a whole. They also, and especially, needed to take up on a theoretical level the task of explaining the Imam’s epoch-making transition from manifest presence to hidden presence. It is in light of this that the return not only to the kalām but also to falsafa must be understood—a return carried out by our author, the “organic intellectual” of the Banū Nawbaḫt. Indeed, it was Alexander’s theory of essence that enabled him to build an anthropology compatible with Shī‘ism’s new demands as a doctrine of Revelation. It is my great pleasure to thank four people who have helped me in the realisation of this project. Pauline Koetschet obtained a copy of the Istanbul manuscript for me; Salimeh Maghsoudlou reread several of my analyses; Stephen Menn invited me to give a seminar on the text at the Humboldt University in Berlin, in June and July 2013; Brian D. Prince corrected my English and translated the last chapter.
CONTENTS
I. TEXT AND TRANSLATION Introduction to the Critical Edition .................................................................................. 3 Sigla ................................................................................................................................. 5 Summary of the Book On Generation and Destruction ................................................... 6 ............................................................................................................ 6 Section .................................... 6 Section ................................................ 8 Section ............................. 12 Section ........................................... 14 Section ............. 18 Section .......................................................................................... 22 Section ....................................................................................... 24 Section ......................................................................................... 32 Section ....................................................................... 40 Section ........................................................................................ 44 Section ............................................................................... 50 Section ...................... 54 Section .............................................................. 58 Section ...................... 60
II. COMMENTARY Introduction of the Work ............................................................................................... 67 Section 1: On Generation, Destruction and the Categories ........................................... 73 Section 2: On Generation, Non-Being and Matter ........................................................ 79 Section 3: On Matter, Form and Generation and Destruction ....................................... 87 Section 4: On Generation, Substance and Accidents .................................................... 99 Section 5: On the Different Changes and the Change According to Place ................. 117 Section 6: On Growth .................................................................................................. 141 Section 7: On Nutrition ................................................................................................ 159 Section 8: On Contact .................................................................................................. 191 Section 9: On Action and Passion ............................................................................... 219
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Section 10: On Mixing ................................................................................................ 237 Section 11: On the Elements ....................................................................................... 273 Section 12: On the Reciprocal Change of the Elements .............................................. 283 Section 13: Formation of Homoeomers ....................................................................... 291 Section 14: Generation and Destruction and the Celestial Bodies .............................. 307
III. AL-ḤASAN IBN MŪSĀ AL-NAWBAḪTĪ The author of the treatise: al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī ........................................ 343 1. Pars destruens: the author is not Avicenna ........................................................ 343 2. Pars construens: the author is al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī ......................... 346 Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī as a philosopher ...................................................... 363
Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 393 Index of Arabic words ..................................................................................................409 Index nominum ............................................................................................................ 423 Index locorum .............................................................................................................. 429
I. TEXT AND TRANSLATION
INTRODUCTION TO THE CRITICAL EDITION In the modern lists of Avicenna’s writings, we find a work entitled Talḫīṣ kitāb al-kawn wa-al-fasād, “Summary of the book On generation and corruption”.1 This evidence, so far as I know, has never been discussed by Avicennan scholars after Mahdavi.2 Gutas’ silence, in particular, is rather disappointing, given the scholar’s project of reconstructing Avicenna’s philosophical work by taking into account how it defined itself “by constant reference, whether explicit or implicit, to the Aristotelian corpus and tradition” and how it stood “in a dialectical relationship to both of them”.3 In fact, Avicenna’s sole commentary on Aristotle known to us nowadays is his Šarḥ on Metaphysics Λ, 6-10.4 Thus, if the text to which the present book is dedicated is indeed, as it implicitly claims to be—and as it will be shown to be—a masterful paraphrase of Aristotle’s treatise On generation and corruption, the question of its authorship is of great interest for a right understanding of Avicenna’s attitude towards Peripatetic philosophy of nature. Anawati’s bibliography indicates a single witness for this work,5 Topkapõ, Ahmet III 1584 (ms. A). This manuscript was copied in 914 Hiǧra 1
See O. Ergin, “Ibni Sina Bibliyografyasõ”, in BŸyŸk TŸrk Filozof ve Tib †stadõ Ibni Sina. Şasiyeti ve eserleri hakkõnda tetkikler [TŸrk Tarih Kurumu Yayõnlan, VII.1], Istanbul, 1937, p. 10; G. C. Anawati, Essai de bibliographie avicennienne, Cairo, 1950, pp. 129-130; Y. Mahdavi, Fihrist-i nuskhah-hā-yi muṣannafāt-i Ibn Sīnā, Tehran, 1954, pp. 266-267. 2 See J. L. Janssens, An Annotated Bibliography on Ibn Sīnā (1970-1989), Leuven, 1991 and D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s Philosophical Works, Second, Revised and Enlarged Edition, Including an Inventory of Avicenna’s Authentic Works, Leiden / Boston, 2014. 3 Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, p. xxiii. 4 Avicenna mentions a commentary by himself on the Physics, on the De caelo and on the De anima. See Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, respectively pp. 448-449 and 453. On the Book of the Available and the Valid (Kitāb al-Ḥāṣil wa-alMaḥṣūl), Òin about twenty volumesÓ according to AvicennaÕs Autobiography, from which these commentaries might stem, see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, pp. 94-100 and 426. 5 If we leave out of consideration the fact that Father Anawati suggests to identify the Talḫīṣ kitāb al-kawn wa al-fasād with Avicenna’s Risālat al-‘urūš, copied in numerous manuscripts. But the two treatises are clearly different. See already Mahdavi, Fihrist, p. 266 (more below, p. 343). The other two mss mentioned by Ergin, “Ibni Sina BibliyografyasõÓ, p. 10, namely Hamidiye 1447 and Ragõp Paşa 1461, do not contain
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(= 1508/09 CE) by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. ‘Alī b. al-Mu’ayyad, the famous jurist and theologian Mu’ayyadzāde ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Efendi (1456-1516).6 In all likelihood, Mu’ayyadzāde was residing in Istanbul at this date, since we know that he then held the highest positions in the capital. Mahdavi listed another copy, ms. Gotha 1158 (ms. G). This manuscript was copied in 928 Hiǧra (= 1521/22 CE). Its history is complex. At an early date, it fell apart into two codicological units, one kept in Cairo, the other in Aleppo. It was indeed in these two cities that Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1767-1811) says he came across them between 1802 and 1804.7 Since the Istanbul and the Gotha manuscripts are closely connected from a stemmatic point of view, as will become clear, and since the text they transmit seems to have remained unknown in the Persian area, I would be tempted to infer that the textual tradition, by the end of the Mamluk era, was confined to Egypt’s cultural sphere of influence.8 In the absence of more cogent facts, that must of course remain a mere hypothesis.9 our treatise. I am very grateful to Prof. Y. Michot, who was kind enough to check their content in situ for me. 6 See F. E. Karatay, Topkapõ Sarayõ MŸzesi KŸtŸphanesi Arapça yazmalar kataloǧu, Istanbul, 1966, vol. 4, p. 380. For the identification of this scribe, see D. C. Reisman, The Making of the Avicennan Tradition. The Transmission, Contents, and Structure of Ibn SīnāÕs al-Mubāḥāṯāt (The Discussions), Leiden / Boston / Köln, 2002, p. 52 and, for further bibliography on Mu’ayyadzāde, p. 93, n. 172. 7 Seetzen travelled in the Middle East during these years. See W. Pertsch, Die orientalischen Handschriften der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Gotha, Theil 3, vol. 2 [= Die ar. Handschr. der Herz. Bibl. zu G.], Vienna, 1880, pp. 364-372, p. 364, n. 2: “Dass diese Handschrift [i.e. n. 1158] in drei Theile zerissen und in unserer Bibliothek unter drei verschiedenen Nummern (1647 = Fol. 1–19 und 116–133; 541 = Fol. 20–115, und 838 = Fol. 134–182) aufgestellt war, ist nicht weiter auffallend, da dergleichen mehrfach vorgekommen ist. Merkwürdig aber ist der Umstand, dass einer dieser Theile von Seetzen in Cairo, ein anderer in Aleppo gekauft worden ist; der dritte, als Nr 838 bezeichnete Theil scheint, da ihm von Seetzen keine Nummer eingeschrieben ist, von dem als Nr. 1647 bezeichneten erst bei der Aufstellung in unserer Bibliothek abgetrennt worden zu sein”. Pertsch then adds “Habent sua fata libelli!”. Indeed. 8 As a matter of fact, the only quotations of this treatise I was able to identify, apart from two clear echoes in Avicenna’s part of the Šifā’ dedicated to generation and corruption (on which see below, pp. 99-100 and 300), occur in Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī’s Kitāb al-mubīn fī šarḥ alfāẓ al-ḥukamā’ wa-al-mutakallimīn. See below, p. 209 and n. 400. After his formative years in Anatolia and Baghdad, al-Āmidī, as is well-known, spent most of his life in Egypt and the bilād al-Šām. 9 All the more so, since Mu’ayyadzāde had close connections with Šīrāz where, from 1479 until 1483, he studied under the supervision of Ğalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī, the scholar from whom he received his iǧāza. See R. Pourjavady, Philosophy in Early Safavid Iran. Najm al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Nayrīzī and His Writings, Leiden / Boston, 2011, pp. 11 and 15-16.
Introduction to the Critical Edition
5
In both manuscripts, as already stated in the Preface, the treatise appears with no indication of an author’s name. It is divided into fourteen chapters, which basically correspond to the structure of Aristotle’s treatise On generation and corruption, but with some changes and omissions. The Arabic summary is complete and well-preserved. There is no passage in which the text transmitted seems to be irremediably corrupt. Mechanical errors such as cases of saut du même au même are rare. Both testimonies are clearly independent from one another. As a rule, ms. A, which is also slightly older, has a better text than ms. G, which moreover contains a fair amount of loci fenestrati. Still, ms. A has its own mistakes. In practice, I have followed it whenever possible, and adopted the reading of ms. G only in the cases where ms. A was clearly mistaken. In a few places, both manuscripts seem to share the same error, which shows that their latest common ancestor is not the author’s draft.
SIGLA
= ﺍاIstanbul, Topkapõ, Ahmet III 1584, a. 1508/9 AD, 81r-93v = ﻍغGotha, Forschungsbibliothek, or. 1158, a. 1521/2 AD, 141v-153v
Summary of the Book On Generation and Destruction In the Name of God, the Merciful the Compassionate
Our aim in this book is to investigate absolute generation and destruction and to explain the difference between them and the other changes. We shall also scrutinize related topics, namely nutrition, growth, diminution, contact, mixture, action, passion. Similarly, we shall examine the things which are generated and destroyed, and how what is generated among them is generated. Similarly, we shall study the things which are efficient causes in an absolute way for all of them. As to the substratum proper to each generated and destroyed being, as well as its proper agent, they must be dealt with when this generated being, with its proper form and proper perfection, is addressed. The aim, here, is rather to deal with the general things belonging to all generated and destroyed beings, from the point of view of their generation and destruction. It is not the case that all of them have a general form, but they all have a general substratum, viz. the four elements. For each of these is generated out of the other, while the rest of the generated beings are generated out of them all together. Similarly, they share a general agent in common, viz. the celestial beings, even if these beings are remote agents for some of them and proximate agents for others. Therefore, we must deal here, among the causes of absolute generation and destruction, with the material cause and the efficient cause. At this point, we shall have reached the completion of what we were aiming at. God, may He be exalted, is the Helper. Section 1.1. Generation is the thing’s coming into existence after its non-existence, destruction is its change from existence to non-existence. The things generated and destroyed are either individual substances or individual
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Summary of the Book On Generation and Destruction
things whose existence is in the substances, like the classes of accidents. Generation and destruction in reality belong only to substance, for among all categories, substance is what exists in an absolute way and subsists by itself, while the existence of the rest of the categories is only due to the fact that they are in it and that each of them is one of its many attributes. That is the reason why the substance exists separately by itself with no thing bearing it (like man, water, earth), while blackness, heat, circularity, do not exist separately, but in some substance bearing them, whose attributes are the black, the hot and the circular. Consequently, generation and destruction belong to substance and do not belong to any of the other entities that do not subsist by themselves separately but are present in the substances, either in the substance itself or in one of the other entities existing in it. And when some substance is generated or destroyed, it is subject to generation or destruction in an absolute way. But when it is generated or destroyed in one of these entities which are its attributes, it is subject to generation or destruction under this respect. Example: we say that Zayd is generated in an absolute way if his essence exists after not having been existent; and for this reason we say that he is destroyed in an absolute way if his essence has changed from existence to non-existence. But if it is something other than his essence that has changed, e.g. if there is blackness which was not there before, we say that he comes-to-be black and we do not say that he comes-to-be in an absolute way, for he is not generated per se, but according to something belonging to him, other than his essence (and similarly in the case of the destruction of an accident present in him). Consequently, generation and destruction in an absolute way belong to substance, because it is substance that exists in an absolute way. In the case of the other things, whose existence is in the substance, their generation and destruction take place only insofar as both are related to substance. Section 2.1. Nothing is generated out of what is wholly non-existent. First, because there is no substance which comes into existence after absolute privation, without there having been something of it existing at all (and similarly because no substance, after its existence, is destroyed into absolute privation in such a way that nothing of it would remain at all); secondly, because what is wholly non-existent is not suitable for being a substratum
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Summary of the Book On Generation and Destruction
for something, or for changing in order to become something else. Therefore, every generated substance is generated out of something else which exists, and the latter cannot be something else than a substance, for no accident exists separately nor subsists by itself in such a way that a substance would be generated from it, and because every substance is always generated out of another substance similar to it according to the genus and different from it according to the species. For the things generated from one another and destroyed into one another are similar according to the genus and different according to the species, since no substance is generated out of an accident, but out of another substance belonging to the same genus. And blackness is not generated out of heat but out of whiteness, which belongs to the same genus. And just as nothing is generated out something different from itself according to the genus, similarly it is neither generated out of what has the same species nor destroyed into it. For everything is generated into something else, different from what it was—for otherwise, it would not need to be generated—and similarly, it is destroyed into something else—for otherwise, it would remain as it is without changing at all. Therefore, for everything generated, something belonging to it was in existence before its generation, and something belonging to it exists after it has ceased to be. Similarly, for everything destroyed, something belonging to it remains in existence after its destruction as it was before its destruction, and something ceases to be after the thing has ceased to exist. And what ceases to be after the thing has ceased to exist in the case of the destruction is what exists after its privation in the case of generation; and what existed before the generation is what remains after the destruction. 2.2. Therefore, the things generated and destroyed remain eternally in virtue of their matter and changes eternally in virtue of their forms. And one and the same matter by itself is the substratum of opposed forms; it receives one of them and releases the other; and the generation is the matter’s reception of a form which was in it in potentiality, whereas the destruction is the matter’s releasing of a form which was in it in actuality. And when the matter is considered alone, qua being the essence of a single thing in all the forms, it has a single nature of its own; but when it is considered qua being a different matter and qua being potentially a single thing, I mean when the intellect grasps a single common nature suitable to receive all the forms according to a single reception in actuality and existence, it is not one, since in actuality, it is the substratum of different forms and subsists only with the form.
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Summary of the Book On Generation and Destruction
Section 3.1. Matter is one and it is the substratum of opposed forms, which it receives successively. It is never deprived of some form, because its existence in actuality is with the form. Similarly, the form’s actual existence is in the matter. So, when something is generated (i.e. when its form is produced) and comes to be actual, this does not happen in a substratum lacking any form, since this substratum would not have existence in actuality without any form at all. Therefore, this happens in a substratum having a form in actuality. And when the substratum starts receiving the second form, it releases the first form gradually, proportionally to the degree to which it receives the second one. Thus, the end point at which the latter appears in actuality goes together with the end point at which the former disappears, the beginning of the latter’s generation is the beginning of the former’s destruction, and the completion of the latter’s generation is the completion of the former’s destruction, in the sense that the thing composed out of the matter and the form is first gradually destroyed and another thing is generated out of it according to the degree of its destruction, inasmuch as the end point of the former’s destruction coincides with the completion of the latter’s generation. Therefore, the destruction of anything goes with the generation of something else, because the matter cannot release a form if some other form does not appear in substitution; and the matter subsists in both states, being the substratum of what is secondly generated, just as it was the substratum of what was destroyed. One of the two forms came to be in actuality after its potential existence, while the other ceased to be after its existence in actuality. And the first whole, which is composed out of the matter and the form, is the particular individual, i.e. the actual existent. 3.2. Thus, generation and destruction exist forever, with no intermission, for the sole reason that the common matter, i.e. the substratum of the opposed forms, is one and will remain everlastingly; this matter is suited to receive all these forms successively in a single manner, not being opposed to receiving another form in substitution. Therefore, generation and destruction exist forever; neither is subject to privation in the world, and neither exists without the other, because when there is generation, there is destruction and when there is destruction, there is generation. They follow one another forever—not that they are one and the same by essence and different by consideration, but they are two things following each other
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because the release of one form by matter is not its reception of another form, but matter does not release a form unless it receives another form; and similarly, its reception of one form is not the release of another form, but the reception occurs with the release of another form. Therefore, neither occurs without the other. As a consequence, the generation of everything occurs with the destruction of something else and the destruction of everything occurs with the generation of something else—not that the generation of something is the destruction of something else nor that the destruction of something is the generation of something else. Section 4.1. The change occurring in the substance itself is called generation and destruction, while the change which affects the substance, not however in itself, but in some of its accidents—the substance itself remaining as it is— is not called generation and destruction in an absolute way. If it occurs in the magnitude of natural substances, it is called growth and diminution, if it is in their sensible qualities, it is called alteration, and if it is in their place, it is called motion. Changes occurring in the other categories do not have conventional names but we must relate each of them to its genus or species and say, for example, ‘change in position’ or ‘in relation’, etc. 4.2. A change of man in his essence is generation and destruction in reality, whereas a change in his qualities, himself remaining as he is, e.g. his change from whiteness to blackness, is alteration. The change of the white-man as a whole into the black-man is generation and destruction for this whole, since the white-man does not remain when he becomes a blackman. For this reason, the change of man from whiteness to blackness is alteration for what is only man, and generation and destruction insofar as it is a man qualified by blackness and whiteness—and similarly for the other accidents. 4.3. And when a substance becomes another substance in such a way that another quality, or accident, remains in both states, we must not think that this remaining thing is the form, nor that the form according to which generation and destruction occur consists in accidents present in this remaining thing, nor that it is for this reason that the former changes and the latter remains. For this kind of change is alteration, not generation and destruction. An example of this is water when it becomes air: the
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substratum of both water and air changes from the water’s coldness to the air’s warmth, while transparency remains as it is in both states. We must not think here that the form of water and air is one, namely transparency, nor that it remains one and the same in both states, nor that warmth and coldness are two accidents in it, whose substratum would be changing from the first to the second. For if things were that way, water would not have been destroyed, nor would air, which is another substance, have been generated, but the transparent body would have been altered from coldness into warmth, in the same way as iron, for example, changes from coldness to heat while keeping its very same form. It is not the case that warmth and coldness are present in the transparency, nor that the transparency is present in them, but all of them are present by essence in the matter, which is their substratum and bearer. Accidentally, however, they are present in one another, in the sense that they are all present in something which is one by essence. The situation is the same for all the other things which, when generation and destruction occur, remain one and the same and belong to what is generated as they previously belonged to what is destroyed. 4.4. And when we consider that question more attentively, it appears that no accident remains when its substance is destroyed, so as to be one and the same thereafter in the generated thing. For when some single accident belongs to what is generated and to what is destroyed, what was present in the destroyed thing has been destroyed with it, and what comes to exist with the generated thing is another one, similar to the first, its existence being concomitant with the existence of the form of the generated thing. For what remains, when generation and destruction occur, is only matter. And everything that pertains to the forms in which generation and destruction take place disappears with them. Afterwards, it may happen that some accident pertains to the generated thing, which is similar to the destroyed thing, in such a way that we think that this accident, in itself, remains in both states. But if the accident were to remain after the destruction of the substance, then every accident attached to the destroyed thing would inevitably belong to the generated thing. But things are not that way. 4.5. Therefore, let it be agreed that it is some one accident which belongs to the generated thing and which appears in it after its coming-tobe or with its coming-to-be, in the same way as it belonged to the thing that was destroyed. And maybe things are different from that.
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Section 5.1. Generation, alteration and growth are all changes from potentiality to actuality, namely: generation is a change from a certain substance in potentiality to that substance in actuality, alteration is a change from a certain quality in potentiality to the same quality in actuality, and growth is a change from a certain quantity in potentiality to the same quantity in actuality. They all share in common being changes from potentiality to actuality, but each is a change from a different potentiality to a different actuality. 5.2. Change according to place may also belong to these changes: in the case of growth, by necessity, in the case of generation, sometimes by necessity and sometimes as a possibility, in the case of alteration, in an accidental way. For what is subject to growth changes according to place in the sense that its place is subject to variation and that it proceeds to another place, different from the place where it was first, not because it leaves one place and reaches another, but because as a whole it is stable in this location, though it occupies a wider place when it becomes more extended and wider by itself. So, as long as a thing’s growth keeps progressing, this thing occupies an always greater place. 5.3. And the motion of a growing thing in its place is not similar to that of a circular body moved in itself. For the latter’s place remains one and the same, the only change being that of the contact between its parts and the parts of the body in which motion occurs—since all of its parts are essentially touched, one after another, by the parts of the body in which motion occurs. 5.4. Similarly, the motion of a growing thing in its place is not similar to the motion of a body moved in a straight line or circle. For the latter occupies its place as a whole, then leaves it and is transported to another place, and as long as it is subject to motion, it is essentially in some other place, whereas the growing thing remains in its place and is not transported to another place. On the contrary, the thing remains there and its place becomes wider with respect to what is other than itself, whether its first place is suppressed and another place is produced, wider than the former, as this happens in the case of the air (or any other fine body when something is growing in it), or whether it is its very place which becomes more extended and wider as the growing body becomes wider, as in the case of bodies subject to elongation and extension without being torn apart or dismantled. But in whichever way, the centre of what grows sticks to the
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centre of the place where it grows, and does not leave it. Thus, its motion is local. Moreover, it becomes wider and more extended in all its dimensions, I mean the six directions that belong to it. And its place changes according to this. And the contrary of what belongs to the growing thing with respect to its place belongs to the diminishing thing. 5.5. Concerning what is generated, however, it does not universally belong to it that its place place be subject to variation when generation occurs. For it necessarily belongs to the things whose mass becomes larger or smaller when they are generated that their places vary, as when water becomes air or air becomes water—and similarly the things possessing places proper to them and distinguished by nature, as when the heavy becomes light and the light becomes heavy: for when one of the two becomes the other, it does not remain stable at its first place by nature, but when it changes to the other nature, it starts moving. However, in the case of a thing whose generation does not occur in one of these two ways, its place does not necessarily vary, but it is possible for it to remain at its first place, as when something inert becomes alive: for it is possible for this, when it becomes alive, to remain at its own place, and it is possible for it to be moved. And when something alive becomes dead, it is possible for it to remain at its place by nature, unless some mover moves it by force. 5.6. And in the case of things whose generation is attached to motion, most move after having been generated and after the form has come to be in actuality, not at the generation, except in the case of the things that proceed to larger or smaller masses during their generation. For water, when it is exposed to heat, comes to be a larger mass while still remaining water which has not become air, so that the growing of its magnitude belongs to it during the process of generation, and its motion upwards belongs to it at its coming to be air. In the case of growth, however, the change of place occurs by necessity not after the thing having grown, but during its very process of growing. 5.7. With regard to alterations, motion according to place does not belong to them at all: neither when the thing is altered nor after it has been altered, insofar as it is subject to alteration per se. And when this accidentally occurs to a body which is altered in its accidental sensible qualities, i.e. when it is transported to another place, either when it is subject to alteration or after that, its motion occurs in virtue of another cause, either natural or violent, but not in virtue of its alteration. For it was an accident for it to be moved and altered simultaneously.
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Section 6.1. Growth is an increase in the body’s magnitude, but not every increase in the body’s magnitude is growth. For when we pour water into another body of water, it becomes larger than it was before; this process, however, is not growth, but the conjunction of one body with another body similar to it. Similarly, when water becomes air: for the bodily substratum becomes larger, but this is not growth but dilation. And no body becomes larger in any other way than these three. 6.2. The notion of growth needs five things for its completion. The first is that every part of the growing body becomes larger than it used to be. The second is that its growth occurs by something coming to it from without—i.e. not because it would become larger than it used to be without any addition of something from without, as is the case with dilation. The third is that the nature of the nutriment is different from the nature of the growing thing. The fourth is that there is, in the growing body, a power capable of changing the nutriment, which is dissimilar, so as to make it similar to the growing body. The fifth is that the growing body still has, after its growth, the same nature which it had before its growth. 6.3. Things being thus, the conjunction of one body with another body similar to it and its becoming larger than it used to be is not growth. For even if a body comes to it from without, in virtue of which it becomes larger while remaining of the same nature, not all the conditions of growth are satisfied. Similarly, the dilation of the body and its becoming larger in magnitude is not growth, because it does not become larger in virtue of another body coming to it from without, so that all the conditions of growth are not present. 6.4. And it is not possible for that which comes to the growing body, and in virtue of which growth occurs, to be pure matter, for it is not only the matter of the growing body which is subject to augmentation, but also its dimensions, since matter does not exist deprived of every form.
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6.5. Similarly, it is not possible for growth to result from pure corporeality, because pure corporeality deprived of matter has no subsistence enabling it to come to the body and because it is not just the growing body’s magnitude which is subject to augmentation—for that would be dilation—but its matter as well as its magnitude are subject to augmentation. 6.6. Similarly, what accedes to the growing body is not an unqualified body, because every body existing in actuality is such that it has a sensible nature and quality and because, if a body existed without any quality or character whatsoever, it would be necessary for accidents and qualities to exist purely and separately. 6.7. Neither is it possible for the acceding thing to be a body in potentiality, so that it would become a body in actuality, because if one of the bodies were to be created from no body, some void would be required at the moment of its creation in order for it to occur therein. But the void does not exist at all. For if things were that way, that would entail the body’s creation and generation, not the growing thing’s growth. 6.8. Consequently, growth occurs out of a body existing in actuality and possessing a certain nature opposed to the nature of the growing thing. It is then changed into the nature of the growing thing, and the growing thing grows in virtue of it. Section 7.1. One should not think that when the nutriment is conjoined with what is nourished in such a way that each of the two becomes larger than it used to be in virtue of the other’s coalescence to it, it would be worth claiming that each of the two has grown in virtue of the other, i.e. that it would be worth claiming both that what is nourished has grown in virtue of the nutriment and that the nutriment has grown in virtue of what is nourished. For the substance of what is nourished remains preserved as it was, while the nature of the nutriment changes in the direction of the nature of what is nourished. And when it has been conjoined with what is nourished, it is no longer existent as it was, but it turns out to share the substance of what is nourished. Growth, then, belongs to what is nourished and not to the nutriment. Moreover, the power that produces the change in the nutriment, makes it similar to what grows, and couples it with what grows, is present in what is nourished, not in the nutriment.
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7.2. And every growing thing is composed out of anhomoeomerous parts, each of which is composed out of homoeomerous bodies, in the way the hand, the head, etc., are all composed out of homoeomers like flesh, bone, sinew, etc. Growth is primarily in the homoeomers and secondarily in the anhomoeomers, for the latter are composed out of the homoeomers. And the growing thing becomes larger than it used to be in virtue of the nutriment, and the nutriment must be similar to the growing thing. Otherwise, its conjunction with the growing thing would not occur. And everything that nourishes itself does so in virtue of something differing from it according to the form. For plants nourish themselves with earth and water, animals with plants and water. But even if things occur in this way, nothing nourishes itself from everything differing from itself, nor from everything whatsoever, but from something sharing some peculiar feature and affinity with itself, i.e. from something similar in potentiality but not in actuality to itself. Then, when the nutriment accedes to the thing, the power responsible for the change produces change in it and makes it similar to itself; next, the nutriment is joined to it because of the coincidence of the form and because of their actual similarity, so that the thing takes it as its nutriment and its mass becomes larger than before—and that is growth. And it is not the case that it is joined to the thing and then, when inside it, made similar; nor that it is made similar outside the thing and then joined to it. But the power responsible for the change brings it closer to itself and makes it similar to itself little by little, until it comes into contact with itself while being closely similar; then, any magnitude from the nutriment and made similar to the growing thing becomes conjoined with it. 7.3. And one should not think that, since the nutriment is a body and what is nourished is a body, when every part of what is nourished has received some of the nutriment, i.e. when the nutriment enters the totality of what is nourished, a body penetrates a body. For the nutriment does not reach what is nourished as a whole in the sense that its totality would touch the other’s totality—for that would be interpenetration—but in the sense that it is a restitution in compensation for what gets dissolved from what is nourished. If the lack affects its surface, it is the surface’s restitution that occurs; if the lack affects some parts of its totality, so that cavities or atrophies occur within it, the return takes place in virtue of the attraction displayed by the attractive power in the direction of the place needing augmentation; then, when it returns to where there is a lack or to where augmentation is needed, it is as a whole that the thing is nourished through it, because the whole is self-continuous; so at whatever place something alien is joined to the thing nourished, it is in its totality that it is augmented
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by this thing, in a single way, because the part to which the nutriment is joined is not isolated from the rest of the parts, so that the augmentation would occur to it per se and to the other parts by accident. 7.4. Neither also should we think that growth does not occur to matter but to form, like the measure which becomes larger essentially, because some matter flows out of it and what returns to the thing as a substitute is greater than what flowed out, so that the thing becomes more extended and larger essentially. For nothing is such that the growing thing remains as it is while it becomes larger essentially, while the nutriment, like stuffing, goes out from it essentially and a greater amount comes back, so that its mass becomes wider and larger than it was. For the growing thing that grows and becomes wider does not exist independently of its matter, which is subject to dilation, and it is the body composed of matter and form, dimensions and qualities, that gets destroyed. Consequently, there is nothing in it that becomes more extended and wider, flowing out and coming back in a greater amount, but the substance of the parts that exist in actuality and are composed of the opposed bodies is destroyed, diminishes little by little and returns to them in substitution for the lack, thanks to the nutriment. If the magnitude of what has been lost returns, the body remains as it is; if the magnitude is greater after the return, it is growth; if it is smaller, there is a lack. 7.5. Growth and nutrition are not the same notion. For nutrition consists in a part receiving something similar to it in substitution for what has been lost from it; then, when another body, different from the thing, has been conjoined to it, the thing’s magnitude becomes larger than it was before the conjunction—i.e. not before its destruction and diminution. Thus, insofar as what is conjoined to it is similar to it, it is its nutriment; but insofar as it has a magnitude which makes the thing larger, it is a factor of growth, as in the case of flesh: for inasmuch as what is conjoined to it is flesh, nutrition occurs; but inasmuch as it is something having a quantity, growth. Thus, one and the same thing is a factor of nutrition and a factor of growth, but nutrition occurs in virtue of its form while growth occurs in virtue of its magnitude. And every nutriment makes what absorbs it grow, for every body to which another body is conjoined becomes larger than it was, except that what is used here is the magnitude which occurs after nutrition. not the magnitude prior to nutrition, but the magnitude prior to the destruction because of which nutrition was needed. For the nutrition does
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not occur only because of the destruction, but the body becomes also larger than it was. For if nutrition were occurring because of the destruction, the aim would be the preservation of the prior magnitude, and the augmentation beyond it would be unnatural. But that is not the case. For each thing has a magnitude determined by nature, which it must reach by developing itself gradually. This happens when a body having the disposition to become similar to it is conjoined with it, and the nutritive makes it change and couples it with the growing thing, in order for the latter to be augmented, develop itself, and reach the magnitude it was aiming at. 7.6. At this stage, however, the body we are considering diminishes essentially, because of the destruction always affecting it because of the contrariety between the elements constituting its substratum. Thus, it needs first to oppose this destruction by having replaced what it has lost, and then it aims at augmentation. And as long as the power remains powerful and suitably disposed matter is present, it does both tasks together, I mean it opposes the destructive process and reaches the complete magnitude it is aiming at. And when the thing has reached the limit it was aiming at, growth, i.e. complete augmentation, stops, and the thing starts preserving its first growth, I mean the augmentation in substitution of what was lost and in compensation for what was destroyed—until, when either the power weakens or the nutriment does not cooperate, or the amount of destruction is greater than can be opposed, the augmentation, I mean the replacement for what has been lost, becomes less than what is lost, so that the body becomes smaller, little by little, than it used to be—and that is diminution, the contrary of growth. 7.7. Every growth is natural to the body, I mean opposition in compensation of what has been destroyed, as well as augmentation beyond it, until the thing reaches the necessary magnitude it was aiming at; every diminution, on the other hand, is unnatural, because there is no aim consisting in this body losing the magnitude the achievement of which constituted its primary aim. On the contrary, the aim for the thing is to reach this magnitude when it is smaller than that magnitude and to retain it when it has reached it, except that by force and necessity the thing becomes smaller than prescribed because of some deficiency happening at the level of the causes required by this magnitude in order for it to remain. This happens either because of the nutritive power, or the nutriment, or the amount of the destruction.
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7.8. Therefore, nutrition and growth are two natures, while diminution is unnatural. Growth was the augmentation in all the dimensions according to the natural proportion in everything, up to a certain limit. Then this augmentation stops, not because of some weakness of the power, as if there were some deficiency, but because it has reached the natural and determinate magnitude it was aiming at. Then afterwards, if this power is powerful and hits upon a suitable nutriment, the body is augmented more than diminished, not however in every dimension, but in width and thickness, while there is no augmentation of tallness. That is how the body’s fatness occurs, which is unnatural, and constitutes an augmentation beyond the necessary magnitude. And symmetrical to this process, there is consumption, which is a diminution affecting width and stoutness without affecting tallness. Section 8.1. It is necessary for generation, destruction, growth, nutrition and alteration to occur, that there exist action and passion, for nothing changes without these, neither in substance nor in quality nor in magnitude. And it is impossible for anything to change by itself, for if its essence were the cause of change for its essence, it would perpetually change and would never remain stable in one and the same state; moreover, everything would be changing and passing away. The agent, therefore, is different from the patient, and the agent does not act upon the patient except after having been put in contact with it, because if it does not meet it, either by itself or by the intermediary of something else, its effect would not reach it at all. And there is no difference if it is the agent or the intermediary that meets the patient, insofar as it reaches it, for when fire heats wood by the intermediary of air, it first heats and meets the air, until the air becomes hot in actuality and starts heating the wood by being in contact with it. Thus, the agent meets the patient in both cases, except that the air has acquired the active power from another agent. And whether the agent has acquired the power from something else or whether the power belongs to it in virtue of its essence, it does not act except after having met the patient and been in contact with it.
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8.2. It is not necessary to think that contact is not sufficient for action and passion to occur but that more ways of reaching than that is needed, namely that there be holes and ducts into which the agent enters and through which it reaches the patient’s most interior parts; for even if it enters the ducts inside the patient, it reaches nothing but the surfaces of these ducts and it comes into contact with the patient only insofar as it is in contact with them, so that what occurs is nothing but contact and meeting from without. It is also not possible for the agent to pervade the patient’s totality, for both are bodies and a body does not enter a body. Nor is it possible that there be cavities inside the patient by which the agent reaches its totality, for in that case a vacuum would exist. For in whichever way a body enters the cavity of another body, nothing happens but its surface meeting the surface of the cavity. And for it to reach the patient’s totality is impossible, unless the first is a vacuum or if a body enters a body—but both claims are absurd. Therefore, it does not reach it except by way of contact. And since contact is sufficient, contact may be either from without or within a cavity; however, when their meeting occurs at the surfaces of cavities, they meet in greater proportions than when they meet only from without, so that action gets faster and stronger. Therefore, the cavities and the ducts are not a cause of action and passion, but a cause of the fact that both of them come about faster and more efficiently. 8.3. Neither should we think that the body which is acted upon must be cut into parts by the agent in the process of being acted upon, so that the agent would pervade it and be mixed with it. For it does not belong to the nature of the patient that the agent should pervade it, nor that it be mixed while its substance remains preserved, like water when it is mixed with wine so that it is similar to the wine in taste and colour (for the water remains in its initial state even if the wine has been mixed with it, and the wine remains in its initial state even if the water has been mixed with it). On the contrary, affection occurs between them in such a way that the patient remains as it was from the point of view of its corporeality and its continuity, while it receives in its body the quality of the agent, and loses the quality opposite to the one it receives little by little. For when the body of the cold thing remains as it is with respect to its continuity, it is the substratum of coldness as well as of heat, except that when one of the two is present in it in actuality, the other is present in potentiality, and when the
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second defeats the first, the body receives it and becomes its substratum in actuality without its corporeality being cut, acted upon or changed at all. 8.4. And since generation and destruction, growth, and alteration need touch of necessity, like action and passion, then either the agent is first mixed with the patient and subsequently changes it and acts upon it, or it meets it and is in contact with it from without; for action and passion do not need mixture of necessity, nor is it the case that every agent and patient are mixed together, since it is impossible for the rough and the rough as well as for the rough and the smooth to be mixed. Indeed, the presence of mixture in action and passion is accidental, in the sense that when the agent and the patient are liquid and fine, and then meet and come into contact, they mix together. Mixture, then, only occurred between them insofar as it happened that they both were moist. But when one of them is rough and not liquid— or if both are so—mixture does not occur, and the only thing that occurs will be action and passion, exclusively by contact and meeting. 8.5. We must then recall what contact, action and passion, and mixture really are; also because mixture, even though it is not the cause of action and passion, either is helpful for some things, or is the cause of some other thing being produced, different from the two things mixed together. Thus we say: the differentia of contact is that the limits of the things are together and that there is between them nothing different from them. And natural contact, by which action and passion occur, takes place between two natural bodies the limits of which are together, when one of them is like the other in potentiality, and when the one in actuality is more powerful than the other insofar as it is endowed with the capacity of having an effect upon the other and of making it change towards its own substance. Such is natural, i.e. real, contact. 8.6. We may also find cases of ‘contact’ analogous to that in certain beings, such as mathematical bodies. For just as we can conceive of mathematical bodies as separated from all qualities and changes, it is also possible to conceive of them as having limits in such a way that these limits will be together, so that they will be in contact and come together at these limits. However, such ‘contact’ is not real, because real contact is between things having position, and position belongs to the thing that has a place,
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since position is the thing’s relation to its own place. But mathematical bodies are not really in a place, so they do not really have positions, so they are not really in contact. Therefore, mathematical bodies do not display any of the features pertaining to real contact. 8.7. And there may be real contact, i.e. meeting of the limits, between bodies subject to generation and destruction on the one hand and celestial bodies on the other, but no action and passion. For even if the limit of fire is in contact with the heavens, no action and passion occur between them, because if the fire were acted upon by the heavens, the position it occupies would not be the place really natural and appropriate to it. And no body meets anything in the heavens by which it would be acted upon, for it is neither the case that these bodies which are acted upon go up to the heavens, nor that anything from the heavens moves itself in a rectilinear way so as to reach these bodies. 8.8. And each time one celestial body is in contact with another one, it is only the case that it meets it at its limit, without any action or passion between them, since there is no contrariety there, nor generation and destruction. 8.9. And a thing may also act upon another thing and be acted upon by it even though there is no place at which they meet. This is not called ‘contact’, and if it is, then the term is used metaphorically. For the soul has an effect on the body, and in the same way the soul’s accidents make the body get warmer and colder and they make the body’s qualities and states change without any contact with the body, since these accidents are not bodies which would meet the body at their limits and make it acquire the quality which they possess in actuality, since the soul does not possess this quality and is not in contact with the body, not being herself a body. It has become customary, however, to call some of the things connected with these accidents from without by the name of ‘contact’, as when we say that offense and injustice ‘have touched’ us. In the case, however, of what is produced within the body which is acted upon, we do not use the term ‘contact’, for we do not say, in the case of someone getting angry or sad because of his own self, that anger or sadness ‘has touched’ him. 8.10. Therefore, contact exists on the one hand between mathematical entities in a certain way, without any effect taking place at all. On the other hand, there is, in what is connected to the soul, an effect taking place without there being any contact at all. Finally, both things are present in bodies subject to generation in a complete and proper way, since these bodies have qualities subject to change. Thus, insofar as they are bodies, their contact is
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different from the contact of mathematical entities; insofar as they are qualities subject to change, their mutual contact is different from the mutual contact of the celestial bodies or from the mutual contact of the heavens and fire; and insofar as each member of the pair, agent and patient, is a body having in itself a quality contrary to the quality in the other, it is different from the effect of the changing soul on the body or from the changing body on the soul, and from the effect of the states and the accidents on the soul. Section 9.1. What is similar in an absolute way does not act upon what is similar to itself and is not acted upon by what is similar to itself, because when two things similar under every respect are joined together, it is not the case that one of them makes the other change; for insofar as there is no difference between them at all, none of them deserves more than the other to be agent or to be patient, and if one of them were to change the other into something different, it would also make its own essence change, and if it were itself changing in virtue of the other thing, it would change also itself in virtue of itself—for if such a notion was the cause of action and passion, the thing and what is similar to it would equally partake of it, so that if the thing were acting on what is similar to itself or were acted upon by what is similar to itself, it would also act upon itself and be acted upon by itself; and in this case, there would exist nothing remaining in a definite state, since everything would make itself change and would be changed in virtue of itself, because we would need no other thing, different from the very thing being changed. Therefore, action and passion take place between different things, except that difference in an absolute way does not necessarily imply either action or passion—for otherwise, everything would act upon everything and everything would be acted upon by everything, so that it would be impossible for anything to remain in its own state and it would be impossible to have more than one thing in a single substratum; even more, it would be impossible for composition to take place, for the conjunction of the different things would make action and passion necessary; thus, everything would be simple and, besides that, nothing would meet anything different from itself under any respect. Therefore, the mere notion of difference is not sufficient to account for action and passion, but we also need the notion of something different endowed with the capacity of acting or being acted upon, and this second notion is contrariety.
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9.2. A thing and something similar to it cannot be perfectly joined in a single substratum in actuality. For even if the substratum is a substratum for them both equally, they cannot both occur in it simultaneously, but only successively; and if a thing can be perfectly conjoined with another thing in a single substratum simultaneously, like sweetness and warmth, they are not contrary, but altogether different. All contrary things are concordant in one respect and different in another, in the sense that the two contraries are two species belonging to one and the same genus. And if this were not the case, the substratum would not be a substratum for them both equally and on the same footing, receiving them both successively in one and the same way. Therefore, action and passion procede from things concordant in genus and different in species; action is the effect of the contrary on its contrary and its making it similar to itself—for the hot thing heats the cold thing, i.e. it makes it hot like itself, while passion consists in receiving this effect and in the process of becoming in virtue of it. 9.3. Therefore, passion consists in the change of the patient towards the nature of the agent, since the form does not change towards the form, but it is the substratum which releases the first form and receives what the agent provides. The form, then, is acted upon by the agent, but in its substratum, and the substratum is acted upon in virtue of what is acted upon, i.e. it receives the effect, but in virtue of its form. For this reason, the substratum of everything that acts upon a thing or is acted upon by it is one and the same, for if the substratum of the cold and the substratum of the hot were not one and the same, the cold would deserve it more than the hot does and the substratum would not release its coldness and receive the heat. 9.4. And every agent acting upon a patient is in turn necessarily acted upon by it, because contrariety is a relation holding between them equally—i.e. the contrariety of the first to the second is not superior or inferior to the contrariety of the second to the first. And it is not the case that anything acts upon something else so that it changes it towards its own nature solely because of contrariety; but it does so both because it is a contrary and because it is a more powerful contrary. For when both are on the same footing in terms of power, neither of them defeats the other and action and passion do not occur in a perfect way, but what occurs between them is something well-balanced and intermediate, since both act and are acted upon by the same amount, so that a third thing is produced from them and composed out of them, in which both powers are present, except, however, that they are broken in such a way that they are neither at variance with one another nor divergent from one another. And whenever
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one of the contraries is more powerful, it acts more and is less acted upon, so that its acting upon its contrary is manifest and its being acted upon by its contrary is not manifest. 9.5. There may be some things which act but are not acted upon, like the medical skill which acts for the sake of health; however, this is not a natural agent. For it is not a natural body endowed with a quality contrary to the quality of the patient in such a way that it would be in contact with it and act upon it; but it is an agent like a craft, in the sense that it makes use of the natural agent and brings it close to the thing acted upon; for medical skill does not change the body by itself, but it makes use of a drug, or a nutriment, or some other natural thing, which acts upon the body and makes its quality change. Thus, every power that is not in a substratum shared by itself and what it acts upon is not something acting naturally upon the latter. This is the reason that this power is not acted upon by what it acts upon, while the natural agent that this first agent makes use of is acted upon by it. Section 10.1. If mixed things remain in the state they had before being mixed without enduring any change at all in their essence, then the condition of being mixed is an accident affecting them from without, and the claim that they have mixed together is no more cogent than the claim that they have not. For if each of them remains as it was, preserving its existence in all its states, nothing at all mixes with it, and the only thing to grasp in the notion of mixing is the fact that one thing has come into another, the two things differ in substance, and that they have become unified, so that the combination of them both is something else. If, on the other hand, one of the things mixing together is destroyed and its substance changes into the substance of the thing subject to mixture, nothing compels us to say that one of them has mixed with the other, but we must say instead that the second has been destroyed, transformed into the nature of the first, and made continuous with it. Similarly, if both have been destroyed together and a third thing has resulted from the process, the result is not a mixture in them, but a generation out of them, since they have both been destroyed. And things which have suffered destruction are not said to mix with one another. Therefore, mixture takes place between things that do not remain after mixing together just as they were before mixing; but, on the other hand, they are not
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destroyed—neither some of them nor all of them—in such a way that nothing would remain from their first nature. 10.2. And things not belonging to the same genus do not mix together at all; blackness, for example, does not mix with sweetness, nor circularity with heat, nor whiteness and circularity with body: for whiteness and circularity are not in the body in the way a thing mixed with another thing is, but they are in the body in the way a thing is in a subject, each of them preserving its own nature and notion. In sum, everything that is able to exist with something else while perfectly preserving its own nature and notion cannot mix with that thing. And a thing does not mix with what is similar to itself, but is unified with it, since they are not different from one another in such a way that the first gets mixed with the other and a third thing results from them both. 10.3 For mixture is a different notion, resulting from the things from which there is mixing, not out of which there is generation. Therefore, its elements are not destroyed; its elements, however, are not present in the mixture in actuality; for otherwise, the process would be combination and conjunction, not mixing. Therefore, the elements of the mixture are present in the mixture neither in pure potentiality—for they are not destroyed in a complete way—nor in pure actuality—for they do not preserve their natures as they were prior to their mixing. Therefore, when in the mixture, they are in between potentiality and actuality. 10.4. And we should not think that the process of mixing consists in the fact of both mixed bodies being cut into small parts, so that each of their parts is juxtaposed to some part of the other and not of its own body, as when dust mixes with flour. For this process is combination, even if it is out of small parts, and in whichever part of the mixture, both notions are not present together, but both natures are still there, each preserving its own notion, even if every part of each nature is close to another part that is different from it. But result of the mixing must be homoeomerous in its totality, so as to be a single thing not only according to our perception but also in its essence, in the way a single and simple nature is a single thing; and any part of a mixture, whichever part it may be, is also a mixture, in the way any part of a simple body is simple. In view of this, mixing must take
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place between things acting upon one another and being acted upon by one another, for when one of two things is merely acting upon the other without being acted upon by it, it destroys it without being mixed with it, like fire in wood: for it does not mix with it in such a way that something resulting from the combination of fire and wood might be created out of them, but fire is generated little by little and the wood is destroyed little by little. Similarly, things whose action does not take place by meeting what is acted upon do not mix. The physician, for example, even if he has some effect and action upon a body, does not mix with it, since they do not have the same substratum and since he acts not by meeting and contact but rather in the sense that he makes use of an agent that touches and meets, e.g. a drug or food. Therefore, mixing takes place between things whose nature consists in acting and being acted upon and being unified with one another in their totality, in such a way that all of them might become a single homoeomerous body, the process not being solely in terms of conjoined limits—for that is not a mixing of the forms but a conjunction of the bodies. 10.5. Mixing, therefore, results from the fact that fine and seeping bodies seep into one another; then the powers act and are acted upon by one another so that a combined power results from them, intermediate between the initial powers; then the continuous body resulting from these bodies becomes the substratum of the intermediate form commonly and equally created by them all; and the fact that the forms and the powers become one is prior to the becoming one of the body, since the body is acted upon by another body, not in virtue of itself but because of the difference between the forms, so that when the one form is produced, that brings about the continuity of the substratum body. Mixing, therefore, is between things subject to acting and being acted upon; it results, then, from things contrary to one another. 10.6. And when what is mixed is not proportionate to the things with which it is mixed, it is destroyed in them or it becomes evanescent and imperceptible, like a drop of wine mixed with a bucket of water. Therefore, mixing is between things contrary, acting and acted upon, and in a definite proportion, so that the following conditions are met: they are not destroyed, neither all nor some of them; they do not remain, neither all nor some of them, as they were before mixing; something else results from them, intermediate between them all; the resulting thing is intermediate in its
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essence and not just according to perception (for that would be combination, not mixing); the mixture is homoeomerous in its totality; it is not identical with one of the things from which it results, neither in complete potentiality nor in complete actuality, but intermediate between them, whether the ingredients of the mixture can be separated out from the mixture again, or whether that is impossible. Section 11.1. The elements of the things generated and destroyed, out of which they are combined and into which they dissolve, must be bodies endowed with contrary sensible qualities. —That they are bodies: because everything generated and destroyed is a body; —‘Contrary sensible qualities’: in order for the notion of action and passion to find its realization. And since they are contrary bodies, they must be more than one, given that no pair of contraries exists simultaneously in complete actuality in the same substratum. 11.2. Therefore the elements of things generated and destroyed, which are elements in actuality and existence, are more than one. In potentiality, however, all things have the same element, i.e. prime matter. And we say ‘in potentiality’ because it cannot be separated at all, but its existence is always associated with some contrariety. And if all things did not have the same element, they would not all change into one another, since the hot changes into the cold not because the hot is an element, but only because the element of the hot and the element of the cold are one and the same in essence, something receiving them both indifferently, whichever of them it is, in a single way. And things being thus, the elements of these beings which are subject to generation and destruction are either in potentiality, like matter and the contrary qualities, or in actuality, like the bodies combined out of them. 11.3. And I mean by ‘contrary qualities’ the sensible qualities like heat, coldness, etc., and not every contrariety that may exist; for the black and the white, the sweet and the bitter, and the other sensible contrarieties are not elements, because some elementary qualities must be active, others passive, the active contrarieties being heat and coldness, the passive one being wetness and dryness. With these four, generation and destruction find their realization. Heat is more active and coldness less active, neither,
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moreover, acting in the same way. And wetness is more passive and dryness less, neither being acted upon in the same way. 11.4. The rest of the contrary sensible qualities can be reduced to these four. For the hard, the brittle, the rough and the coarse are all reducible to the dry in a certain way, while the soft, the viscous, the smooth and the fine are all reducible to the wet in a certain way, and there are no secondary qualities reducible to heat and coldness. What defines the hot is aggregating things of the same kind—and it follows from this that it segregates things which are different from one another, since the entities within something composed out of different things would not be aggregated into a single place, if it were not for fire producing the dissolution of the combination and dissociating these aggregated things. What defines the cold is aggregating things that are of the same kind and things that are not of the same kind according to a single pattern. What defines the wet is being hard to bound by its own limit and easily bounded by the limit of another body. What defines the dry is being easily bounded by its own limit and hard to bound by the limit of another body. In these definitions, and also up to the end of the next section, there are places for doubts and scrutiny, and we have summarized them as much as possible. And since the rest of the qualities mentioned are reducible to these four, and these four cannot be ranged under one another—since none of them belongs to the species of any of the other three—it follows necessarily that these four are among the primary qualities. 11.5. And when these four qualities are combined, six combinations result from their pairing: hot-dry (i.e. fire), cold-wet (i.e. water), cold-dry (i.e. earth), hot-wet (i.e. air). For among them, the hot-cold and the wet-dry are no conjunction, since the contraries cannot be put together. 11.6. The fire has its existence at the periphery, at the highest border, the earth at the centre, which is the lowest place, and the water and the air are in the middle—except that the water is above the earth with the air between itself and the fire, since water and fire are contraries in every respect, while the air is contrary to each of them in one respect and shares
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something in common with it in another respect. And the situation of the air with regard to the earth is similar: it is contrary to it in every respect, while the water, between them, shares something in common with each of them in one respect and is contrary to it in another respect. 11.7. And the heat of the fire is above the heat of the air but its dryness is below the dryness of the earth; the heat of the air is below the heat of the fire but its wetness is above the wetness of the water; the coldness of the water is above the coldness of the earth but its wetness is below the wetness of the air; the coldness of the earth is below the coldness of the water but its dryness is above the dryness of the fire. The fire, then, is prior according to the hot, the air according to the wet, the water according to the cold and the earth according to the dry. Section 12.1. Each one of these four bodies changes into the other three, since each of them is contrary to the other three in a certain respect, and where there is a contrariety, there is action and passion and a factor of change. The fire is contrary to the air by its dryness, to the earth by its heat, and to the water by both together; similarly, the air is contrary to the fire by its wetness, to the water by its heat and to the earth by both together; the water is contrary to the air by its coldness, to the earth by its wetness and to the fire by both together; and the earth is contrary to the water by its dryness, to the fire by its coldness and to the air by both together. 12.2. Thus, each one is generated from each of the other three and is destroyed into them, except that there is some difference according to the process’s ease and difficulty, speed and slowness; for, for each pair sharing a quality reflecting how they are spatially disposed, the change of the first into the second is easier; and when they do not share anything in common, and their contrariety is due to both qualities, and their positions are not adjacent, the change of the first into the second is more difficult. For a change according to one entity is easier than a change according to two. Thus, fire changes into air and into earth faster than into water, for it changes into air when only its dryness has been destroyed, into earth when only
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its heat has been destroyed, but into water when both have been destroyed. Similarly, air changes into fire and water faster than into earth, for it changes into fire in virtue of the destruction of only its wetness, into water in virtue of the destruction of only its heat, but into earth in virtue of the destruction of both together. Similarly, water changes into earth or air faster than into fire, for it changes into earth in virtue of the destruction of only its wetness, into air in virtue of the destruction of only its coldness, but into fire in virtue of the destruction of both together. Similarly, earth changes into fire or water faster than into air, for it changes into fire in virtue of the destruction of only its coldness, into water in virtue of the destruction of only its dryness, but into air in virtue of the destruction of both together. And the terms of the pair into which one thing changes easily are contrary to one another with respect to both qualities, so that the change of one of them into the other is hard and difficult; but a thing able to change into them both does this easily, because it is an intermediary between them, sharing with each of them a definite entity in virtue of which it is contrary to the other one. 12.3. And even if these primary bodies are disposed on a straight line, they change into one another circularly, for that is how change along a regular path is easiest. For fire changes into air, air into water, water into earth, earth into fire, and then another cycle takes place. And the change is not interrupted when it comes to fire or earth, i.e. the extremities in terms of position—for change exists perpetually. Neither is it the case that when it reaches the extremity, it turns back in the opposite direction. Otherwise, each of the extremities, fire and earth, would change in one of its two qualities, while each of the intermediaries, air and water, would change in both of its qualities; thus, none of the four bodies would be endowed with the capacity of changing into the other three according to the same relation, so that changes, generation and destruction would not be well-balanced and ordered. Therefore, it naturally belongs to the elements that they be generated out of one another and destroyed into one another in a circle, even if their mutual disposition in the world’s whole is rectilinear.
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Section 13.1. When contrary things are not well-balanced, the weaker is destroyed by the stronger so that not all of them exist perpetually; but the elements exist perpetually; therefore, they are well-balanced. And their being wellbalanced is not in virtue of their magnitudes, in the sense that all of them would have the same magnitude. For action and passion between them are not in virtue of their magnitudes, but in virtue of their powers. Thus, their equilibrium is in virtue of their powers, even if their magnitudes are different. And when two contraries differ with respect to their magnitudes but are equal with respect to their powers, they have no effect on one another, whereas when they differ with respect to power, the stronger has an effect on the weaker, even if they are equal according to magnitude. 13.2. And nothing is generated out of an element that remains the same, since generation is a change according to form, and when the element’s form does not change the element remains as it was; whereas when it changes according to form, some other element is produced out of it, contrary to it. Therefore, nothing is generated out of a single element except another element; as for the other beings, they are generated out of two elements, or three, or four. 13.3. And the thing created must be some other entity, different from its constituents, since its constituents have contrary powers, so that when they come together, they act and are acted upon in such a way that there results a mixture of these powers, intermediate between them. And none of the mixture’s constituents exists in it in actuality, endowed with the same power it had previously, because their combination is neither being adjacent—for it is a mixing and a unification—nor a total destruction—since the destruction of an element cannot but lead to an element contrary to the first (thus, if all the constituents of a mixture were destroyed in totality, the result would be these constituents as such). Therefore, they produce something different and intermediate, a homoeomer resulting from the combination of all the entities in which these constituents exist in potentiality. 13.4. And although this combination can be subject to an endless excess and defect of its constituents, however, as far as nature is concerned, it is something definite and limited, because it is not the case that every combination produces everything; for on the contrary, flesh is endowed
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with a given combination, bone with another, iron with another again, and everything in the same way. Moreover, each of these combinations has a latitude which tolerates excess and defect up to a certain limit which it does not overstep; for whenever it oversteps it, the thing loses its essence. 13.5. And it may be obvious at first sight that there are, in all things generated on and inside the earth, earthy substances, and that watery substance is also present in animals and plants. And when something is composed of earth and water, it is necessary that there be present in it also fire and air, because this combination does not consist in merely being adjacent, but is a mixing and a unification. But such a process happens only after both have changed their own forms, not in totality but according to a given amount, and their change takes place in virtue not of themselves, but of their contraries, and their contraries are fire and air. Therefore, the four elements are present in all these combined beings, even if not all of them are manifest to perception. For in the metals, the earthy substance is manifest but the other ones are not manifest; in the animals, the earthy, watery and fiery substances are manifest but the air is not manifest; in the plants, the water and the earth are manifest but the fire and the air are not manifest. And what manifests itself from these elements is not this element in reality, but this element as having changed up to a certain limit, without having lost its notion in totality—and its change takes place only when its contrary is mixed with it. Therefore, the four elements are present in these combined beings. Section 14.1. Generated beings share in common with the celestial bodies the fact of having a substratum and a form; but the difference between them consists in the fact that on the one hand, the substratum of each celestial being is a substratum exclusively for its own form, is not suitable for any other form, and is not a substratum for numerous and opposite forms that it would successively receive; while, on the other hand, the substratum of each of the beings that are subject to generation and destruction is a substratum for a certain form as well as for a form opposed to the prior one. None of them has any precedence over the others, and that is the reason why, although it receives them all, and all these forms are present in it in actuality, it is impossible for them, in virtue of their opposition, to be simultaneously present in it in actuality according to their perfection, and why the substratum must receive them successively, by releasing one of them in
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order to receive another. And that is the material cause for generation and destruction. And the matter of all these things subject to generation and destruction consists in the four elements, but the four elements are also subject to generation and destruction, and their generation does not take place out of some other thing distinct from these four, in such a way that they would be generated out of it, either like when a form changes in totality, as when air is generated from water, or according to combination, as when plants are generated from the elements. However, they are generated from one another in the same way as we made clear for all the things generated from the elements. For everything generated among the elements and bodies other than the elements is generated from the elements, except that in the case of the elements, they are generated out of a single element and the change is total, whereas in the case of the other beings subject to generation, they are generated out of all the elements, and the change is not total. 14.2. And the forms of the things subject to generation are multiple, each of them being endowed with a different type of elemental combination. 14.3. And the forms, in the case of natural beings, are the ends. 14.4. With regard to the agent, in the case of animals and plants which reproduce themselves, the agent is what they are born from, and the process takes place with the collaboration of the celestial bodies; but in the case of those among them that do not reproduce themselves, the agent consists of the celestial bodies, since it is in virtue of the changing state of the celestial bodies that their own state is submitted to generation, destruction and change—they are therefore tied to them. In the case of the impressions in the atmosphere, they are produced by the celestial bodies, since their generation and destruction, as well as their various states, follow from the different states in the celestial bodies. Thus, the impressions in the atmosphere, as well as the animals and the plants that are generated and destroyed in virtue of the seasons of the year and of the different states in the celestial bodies without reproduction, have as their proximate agent cause heat and coldness, and as their remote cause the celestial bodies; for the heat and the coldness which are their agent result from the celestial bodies. With regard to the animals and plants that reproduce themselves, those whose reproduction has some knowable period are more in need of celestial influences than those who reproduce themselves in whatever state of the celestial bodies. End of the treatise, endless praise to the Giver of the Intellect
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II. COMMENTARY
Introduction of the Work1 In his introduction, the author announces that he will deal with “absolute generation and destruction”, and that he will “explain the difference between them and the other changes”. He will also, he tells us, examine the causes of generation and destruction. Since the causes set forth in the present treatise must be general, and since the form (which in natural beings, as the author will tell us later, is identical to the final cause) is particular, the author will deal with the general agent and the general substratum only. Each of the three types of particular cause—substratum, agent, form2—will be addressed later, probably in other treatises belonging to Aristotle’s natural corpus. The author makes explicit what the general substratum and the general agent are. The former consists in “the four elements” (earth, water, air and fire), the latter in “the celestial beings”. The celestial beings are proximate agents in some cases, remote agents in others—the last chapter of his compendium will explain this in more detail.3 Note that the author mentions neither prime matter as the general substratum nor God as the general agent. He appears to be keen on giving natural philosophy strict boundaries, probably to keep it immune from metaphysical or theological contamination. At any rate, the “generality” he alludes to is clearly different from logical universality. The causes studied in GC are not abstractions or causal notions, but they must, directly or indirectly, be causes for every generated being. In other words, they are individual beings. There is no contradiction with what Aristotle himself says at GC I 3, 318a 6-8. This concern for the distinction between notional and ontological priority plays a major role in the first book of the Physics of the Šifā’: Avicenna dedicates the whole third chapter to it.4 Similarly, Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics is clearly indebted to this discussion.5 It is a fair guess, then, that Alexander’s reflexions lurk in the backgrounds of our three Ara1
For a discussion of the title, see below, pp. 351-352. The author uses here “form” and “perfection” as synonymous. That is a more or less remote influence of Alexander’s doctrine of τελειότης. See below, p. 139. 3 See below, pp. 307-340. 4 See Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Šifā’, Al-Ṭabī‘iyyāt, 1, Al-Samā‘ al-Ṭabī‘ī, ed. S. Zayid, Cairo, 1983, pp. 21-25 (Fī kayfiyyati kawni hāḏihi al-mabādi’ muštarika). 5 See Cristina Cerami, Génération et Substance. Aristote et Averroès entre physique et métaphysique, forthcoming in the series Scientia Graeco-Arabica, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York, chapter VII, § 1.1, pp. 291-300. 2
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bic texts. In both proems—to his commentary on the Physics and on GC— Alexander is likely to have distinguished two main significations of commonness. It is plain that the author is paraphrasing Aristotle’s opening words here: On the other hand, about generation and corruption of those things that come to be and perish in the course of nature, in respect of all of them alike, we must distinguish both the causes and the accounts of them.6
What Aristotle means by “the causes and the accounts” (τάς τε αἰτίας … καὶ τοὺς λόγους) is unclear. Philoponus discusses the issue in his commentary. He writes: We must distinguish, he says, ‘the causes’ of the things which come to be and perish, speaking in the plural, not the singular. For the substratum is a cause, and the form itself and the source from which changes begins, i.e. the efficient cause, and that-for-the-sake-of-which is a cause, namely, the end. For he is going to speak about all of these. The phrase ‘the accounts of them’, despite being in parallel with it, would not mean the same thing, as the connective ‘both’ makes clear. Rather, some people have understood ‘causes’ to mean the universal causes common to all the things that come to be (e.g. what is the universal efficient cause of perishing and coming-to-be? What is the matter common to them all? And so on for the rest) and accounts as the particular, proximate causes belonging to each thing.7
Unfortunately, Philoponus is silent on the identity of the τινες who claimed that Aristotle aimed at distinguishing general from particular causes. We would have wanted to know more about how they justified their position. If, as seems probable, they believed that the particular causes designated by the word λόγους were envisaged in GC and not in some other, more specialized, treatise, the author plainly disagrees with them on this issue. For 6
Aristotle, GC I 1, 314a 1-3: Περὶ δὲ γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς τῶν φύσει γινοµένων καὶ φθειροµένων, ὁµοίως κατὰ πάντων, τάς τε αἰτίας διαιρετέον καὶ τοὺς λόγους αὐτῶν. 7 Philoponus, In GC 7.18-26. Translation Williams, pp. 27-28. Henceforth I will regularly cite the translations published in the series ‘Ancient Commentators on Aristotle’ edited by Prof. R. Sorabji. For GC in particular, I will make use of the three volumes dedicated to Philoponus’ commentary: On Aristotle On Coming-to-Be and Perishing 1.1-5, Translated by C.J.F. Williams, Introduction by Sylvia Berryman, London, 1999; Philoponus: On Aristotle On Coming-to-Be and Perishing 1.6-2.4, Translated by C.J.F. Williams, Introduction by Sylvia Berryman, London, 1999; Philoponus: On Aristotle On Coming-to-Be and Perishing 2.5-11, translated by Inna Kupreeva, London, 2005.
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on his interpretation, there is here no place for particular causes of any of the three kinds. But the author is not following Philoponus either. For the latter writes: In my view, however, by ‘causes’ he means the four we have mentioned, whether the common ones or the proximate ones for each of the things that come to be, while by ‘accounts’ he means accounts in terms of efficient causality of how each thing comes to be or perishes.8
Thus, according to Philoponus, Aristotle states from the start that he will deal with each one of the four causes. There is no suggestion that he will restrict his focus to the material and efficient causes only. No Greek source tells us anything about Alexander’s interpretation of Aristotle’s first words. It is theoretically possible that Alexander was one of Philoponus’ anonymous colleagues. But nothing compels us to make this assumption. On the contrary, Philoponus’ silence may be due to the fact that he just found nothing in Alexander helping him guess how the latter interpreted the λόγοι. Alexander would have taken the word in its usual sense of definition. According to him, Aristotle would have stressed the necessity, when discussing generation, destruction, etc., of providing some kind of definition of the topics addressed.9 It should be stressed that such an interpretation does not prevent us from tracing back to Alexander the restriction of the causes to matter and the agent. On the contrary: after making his rather innocuous point about the necessity of defining the notions at stake, Alexander will have added that not all of the four causes are concerned, but only two of them. There is perhaps a hint pointing to this. In his paraphrase (talḫīṣ, or, as usually translated, “Middle Commentary”), Averroes renders Aristotle’s first sentence in the following manner: The goal we aim at here and the necessary thing is to elucidate the general causes (al-asbāb al-‘āmma) for everything which comes into being and perishes in the course of nature […].10
What Averroes means by that is explained much later, at the beginning of his commentary on the last section of Aristotle’s treatise:
8
Philoponus, In GC 8.2-4. I owe this interpretation to Cristina Cerami. 10 Averroes, In GC 2.3-4 Eichner. 9
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Aristotle says: Since there are things which are generated and pass away— and that in the sublunar sphere—it is fitting that we explain the number of the principles common to and embracing all things which are generated and pass away and what these principles are. For in ascertaining this we shall readily ascertain also the causes of each and every particular thing which is generated and passes away, since the path of investigation from universals to particulars is the most familiar, in our opinion, in the study of nature, as we have stated elsewhere. We maintain that the principles involved in things which are ungenerated and in things which are generated are equal in number and identical in kind, although they are applied according to prior and posterior. They are, in general, three in number, namely, matter, form, and efficient cause. The first two causes are not sufficient to account for generable and corruptible things without the efficient motive cause, just as they are not sufficient in the case of the eternal bodies.11
This text remains globally faithful to Aristotle’s move in GC II 9, the chapter in which the efficient cause is dealt with. Despite the fact that there are three fundamental causes, the ancient philosophers recognized only two of them, namely matter and form. Averroes does not seem worried by the fact that the form is also taken here as a principle for generated and corruptible beings. Like Philoponus before him, he interprets Aristotle’s declaration at face value. This was not the case, however, in his first commentary on Aristotle’s GC, the “Summary” or “Epitome” (ǧawāmi‘), written some years before the “Middle Commentary”.12 At this earlier stage of his carrier, Averroes did not stress the complementarity of Aristotle’s three causes, but wrote: The generable and corruptible form […] cannot be subsumed under any category, but constitutes in each one of the particular beings that by which it is substantiated. Therefore, the explanation of these forms in the things which are particularized by them can come only from an examination of each one of these things. Since this is so, what we should investigate here is the ultimate efficient cause of generation and corruption […].13
We learn both from an explicit quotation further down in the text14 and from a number of parallels we shall discuss later, that at the time when he 11
Averroes, In GC 126.10-127.3 Eichner. On the chronology of Averroes’ commentaries on GC, see Ğ. al-‘Alawī, Al-Matn al-Rušdī. Madḫal li-qirā’at ǧadīda, Casablanca, 1986, pp. 55-57 and pp. 76-77: the Epitome was written in 554/1159, the Middle Commentary in 567/1172. 13 Averroes, Epitome 29.17-30.2. 14 Averroes, Epitome 35.10. 12
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wrote the Epitome, Averroes had access to Alexander’s commentary. It seems that at this relatively early period, Averroes was more prone to rely on Alexander than later in his life. Accordingly, I would suggest that he first borrowed Alexander’s doctrine of the two general causes of generation and corruption, and only later mentioned the three causes, on the basis of a better knowledge of GC II 9. If this is true, we are in a position, by means of a comparison between Philoponus, Averroes’ two commentaries and the new text, to reconstruct three different interpretations of Aristotle’s first words in Antiquity. First, Alexander’s exegesis, more or less endorsed by the author: both αἰτίαι and λόγοι are general. As we have just seen, Alexander is likely to have drawn a distinction between the causes as concrete beings—the substratum on the one hand, the celestial beings on the other, taken as particular items—and the definitions as accounts of what these beings are. Armed with this core distinction, Alexander will have applied the theory of scientific definition as it was articulated in the Posterior Analytics to the general mechanism of generation and corruption.15 The motion of the Sun in the ecliptic causes atmospherical changes in the sublunary world in the same way as the motions of the Sun and the Moon around the Earth cause eclipses.16 The anonymous τινες criticized by Philoponus are different from Alexander, and perhaps already known to (and discussed by) him. According to them, we have to posit two levels in GC, the first one general—the αἰτίαι— and the second particular—the λόγοι. Aristotle, they claimed, deals first with natural causes in general and next with their particular instances. This distinction may have explained, in their eyes, the subject matter of each of the two books of GC, the first being devoted to the αἰτίαι, the second to the λόγοι. Thirdly we should mention Philoponus’ own interpretation:17 the λόγοι must be (particular) explanations. It is not sufficient to identify the agent cause with the celestial motion, one must also explain what is really going on in terms of action and passion. The difference between Philoponus and Alexander would thus be that the former claimed that Aristotle already 15
See Aristotle, A. Po. II 18. I have tried to reconstruct Alexander’s exegesis of this difficult chapter in Essentialisme, pp. 221-231. 16 It is not impossible, moreover, that Alexander had considerations similar to those of the author on the impossibility of there being a general formal cause. As we have just seen, the mention of the “proper perfection” of each generated being is reminiscent of Alexander’s terminology. Alexander is very fond of the term τελειότης in contexts where he is eager to stress that the form proper to an individual substance, when it has reached its highest degree of realization, is, for this substance, its very perfection. 17 Cf. In GC 8.2: ἐµοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ κτλ.
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alludes here to particular explanations (meteorological mechanisms, for instance), while the latter stressed their general status. Whatever the different influences may have been, the author shows great concern for the idea that the highest causes of generation and destruction are general. That position is in itself interesting, insofar as it views the sublunary world as a unitary system, in which every process can be ultimately explained by the transformations of the four primary bodies and the revolutions of the celestial spheres. The existence of the primary bodies is a fact, and it contains, as a natural potentiality, their transformations into one another. In order for these transformations to obtain, the elements need an efficient cause. That is the role played, above the moon, by the circular locomotions of the celestial bodies, including—but the author remains interestingly silent on this issue18—the sun’s annual movement along the ecliptic. A long tradition, starting with Aristotle himself, ascribes to ‘the God’ (ὁ θεός) the providential design according to which generation and destruction never cease on earth.19 The author makes not the slightest allusion to this fact in the course of his treatise. We will have to reflect on this when we deal with the last chapter of the compendium, in which the issue of the celestial influence on the sublunary world comes back again.20
18
See below, pp. 336-340. See Aristotle, GC II 10, 336b 26-34. 20 See below, p. 339. 19
Section 1: On Generation, Destruction and the Categories This first section addresses the question of generation in the different categories. Aristotle deals with this issue only at the beginning of the last part of chapter I 3.21 Thus, the author has skipped the main part of the first chapter, the entire second chapter and the central part of the third, in which Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of substantial generation.22 Before commenting on what he says, it might be appropiate to sketch which topics he leaves aside. GC I 1 is largely doxographical. It primarily aims at refuting Empedocles’ alleged doctrine that the four primary bodies do not change into one another, although they have qualitative determinations. Aristotle, on the contrary, claims that if generation takes place by a change of the primary body’s qualitative determinations, it follows that their presence entails their mutual transformations. This doctrine is problematic, because it seems to assimilate the generation of the primary bodies to some kind of alteration, something Aristotle will deny a little below.23 This discussion gives rise to some arguments against Empedocles’ theory of elements and the problematic tension between plurality (the elements) and unity (the Sphairos) in his system.24 We find no trace of all this in the compendium. That is a feature we will observe throughout this work: the author systematically neglects everything pertaining to the doxographical genre. The case with GC I 2 is different. True, this chapter, which shows how infinite divisibility is possible, is also a refutation of Democritean atomism. But the discussion is far less doxographical than in chapter 1, and the refutation of corpuscularianism turns to be a necessary move before engaging in an explanation of the different changes presupposing continuity. For surely, even if there are no ultimate corpuscles of matter, it remains possible for generation to be a mere aggregation. But if corpuscularianism is true, it is impossible for generation not to be an aggregation. And that is 21
See GC I 3, 318b 33-319a 17. The first part of chapter 3 is dealt with in Section 2 and 3. 23 See GC I 4. 24 On this, see D. O’Brien, Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle. A Reconstruction from the Fragments and Secondary Sources, Cambridge, 1969, p. 242. I have proposed a new interpretation of some details in Empedocles’ cycle in M. Rashed, “La chronographie du système d’Empédocle: addenda et corrigenda”, Les Études Philosophiques, 2014, pp. 315-342. 22
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what Aristotle is eager to refute. From his perspective, it is thus important to start by explaining atomism away. A reader sensitive to Aristotle’s overall strategy cannot but be intrigued by the author’s choice. Prima facie, two explanations present themselves. The weak one is to assume that he wanted to be as concise as possible, so that he left aside everything which he did not deem necessary.25 The strong one is to ascribe to him an intellectual, or ideological purpose in suppressing chapter I 2. The author would have deleted Aristotle’s refutation of atomism because he was himself committed to some kind of corpuscularianism. The strong explanation is the more probable. First, because the weak one is no explanation at all, since it fails to explain why it was precisely this chapter that the author considered intrinsically less important than some other parts of GC. Secondly, because corpuscularianism is not a rare doctrine in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.26 For surely it might appear contradictory to write a compendium of GC, a treatise itself thoroughly continuist, and at the same time to uphold an atomist doctrine, for the latter view implies taking generation as a process of aggregation out of discrete parts. But there may be different manners of understanding Aristotle’s GC, even if they are not all entirely respectful of Aristotelian orthodoxy. If, for instance, one denies the soundness of Aristotle’s distinction between continuity and contiguity, claiming that all the processes Aristotle describes in GC can be explained by assuming contiguous parts endowed with the capacity of sticking to one another, then there is a possible interpretation of GC we may call neutral, or purely phenomenal. Every change, every process, will be describable in the way Aristotle describes it, except that there will be minimal parts, and that these parts will be endowed with certain qualitative properties (hot, cold, wet, dry in particular) acting on one another and being affected by one another. If that is indeed what the author had in mind, we must ascribe to him a very specific kind of Aristotelianism. What he borrows from GC will not be Aristotle’s chemistry, i.e. Aristotle’s theory of matter, but Aristotle’s description of its phenomenal effects, i.e. the consequences of the micro25
If we are not to suppose some kind of textual accident, of course. An accident seems to me the most likely explanation for the absence of the first two chapters of GC in Averroes’ own compendium (ǧawāmi‘). Averroes will have written this summary in a period when he still did not have a complete version of the text, before hitting upon a better manuscript allowing him to write his “Middle Commentary” (talḫīṣ), which takes the whole text into account, including the first two chapters. 26 The bibliography is extensive. On the Greek side, see e.g. C. Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, Oxford, 1928 and D. Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists, Princeton, 1967. A useful synthesis for the Medieval period will be found in B. Pabst, Atomtheorien des lateinischen Mittelalters, Darmstadt, 1994.
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scopic changes at the macroscopic level. That may explain why the author has skipped the middle part of GC I 3, namely Aristotle’s treatment of polarized substances,27 and integrated only his discussion of generation and the categories28 and of the formal structure and eternity of generation.29 In the first section of GC I 3, Aristotle argues that in every pair of substances susceptible to being generated out of one another, one of them is more a ‘definite something’ (τόδε τι), i.e. more a realized substance, than the other. The generation in the direction of the more realized substance is a generation simpliciter (γένεσις ἁπλῶς), while the generation in the direction of the less realized substance is a generation of something (γένεσίς τις). With these claims, Aristotle implicitly criticizes the old, Presocratic, understanding of change, according to which every change from A to B or from B to A can be viewed, indifferently, as the becoming, the γένεσις, of something.30 When he addresses the question of the categories in the passage commented upon by the author, he has not forgotten his initial concern, i.e. the question of polarity. What Aristotle wants to stress now is not just a matter of taxonomy—namely, the fact that γένεσις is said, properly speaking, of the primary substances of the Categories, and only derivatively of qualities and quantities. Rather, he points to the fact that even the common distinction between change in the things themselves and change in their properties, is due, at a deeper level, to the fact that substances are more of a “definite something” than their properties.31 Moreover, adds Aristotle, confirming our general reconstruction of this passage, even in the realm of properties (by contrast with primary substances) there is polarization: becoming knowledgeable, for instance, is not equivalent, in terms of polarization, to becoming ignorant.32 What now does the author make of all this? Let us first note that he does not show the slightest concern for Aristotle’s analysis of polarity. Just as he skipped the first part of chapter 3, which is devoted to this, in the same way he does not say a word here about the fact that substance is more of a “definite something” than the secondary categories. And he remains silent on the polarization taking place between each pair of properties susceptible to changing into one another. He replaces Aristotle’s nuanced 27
Aristotle, GC I 3, 318a 27-b 33. Section 1, corresponding to GC I 3, 318b 33-319a 17. 29 Section 2 and 3, corresponding to GC I 3, 317a 32-318a 27 plus GC I 3, 319a 1728
b 5.
30
For this interpretation, see M. Rashed, Aristote: De la génération et la corruption, Paris, 2005, pp. liv-lxxxv. 31 That was at least Averroes’ interpretation, which I endorse (see the reference in the previous note, pp. lxxx-lxxxii). 32 See GC I 3, 319a 14-17.
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account with a taxonomical description—which amounts to nothing more than reminding the reader of Aristotle’s categorial distinctions. The author’s assimilation of generation simpliciter to substantial change, of generation of something (or secundum quid) to accidental change, had already been tried by some thinkers in Antiquity. Philoponus criticizes them for that in two places. He first writes: So it is clear from the way the argument is set up that his concern is only with substances, why some substances are said to have simple comings-tobe, others to have, not simple, but copulative comings-to-be, and not, as some have thought, with accidents, as though substances came to be simpliciter and accidents not simpliciter.33
And a little below: This has led some people to the view that he is discussing substances and accidents and saying that the coming-to-be of substances is simple comingto-be and that of accidents the coming-to-be of something. But this is not so […].34
That is more or less the author’s thesis, when he writes: “And when some substance is generated or destroyed, it is subject to generation or destruction in an absolute way; but when it is generated or destroyed in one of these entities which are its attributes, it is subject to generation or destruction under this respect”. Thus, both the author and the anonymous commentators quoted by Philoponus emphasize the role of the categories as opposed to that of polarization in the discussion of GC. We cannot be sure, obviously, that the anonymous commentators were as silent as the author on the issue of polarity. But Philoponus presents their position as if their interpretation of the distinction simpliciter/secundum quid were univocal, i.e. solely in terms of the categories. If he is not misrepresenting their position, we cannot but conclude that the author is in agreement with them, or even that he took up their interpretation. As in the discussion of the Introduction, we do not know who those anonymous commentators were. They may have lived before Alexander (in particular if Philoponus borrows from him what he says about them), or in the time between Alexander and Philoponus. We are only aware of a single commentary before Philoponus other than Alexander’s, namely Themistius’ paraphrase, which seems to have been translated into Arabic, or at 33 34
Philoponus, In GC 52.17-21. Philoponus, In GC 54.19-21.
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least into Syriac.35 But Philoponus never cites Themistius by name in his commentary on GC, and it is unclear why he would not have called him by name, since he would have been criticizing him. The way Philoponus mentions these commentators seems more natural if we postulate that it was Alexander who made this reference to some previous exegesis—which was probably widespread among his masters’ generation—and that Philoponus borrowed his account from him, without knowing who the τινες were. We can add, by way of confirmation, that this type of exegesis would be very natural in the first generations of Aristotelian scholars, who were very fond of the Categories, and much less interested in the question of the form— which of course lies behind the whole discussion of polarity—than Alexander himself.36 Since both Alexander’s and Philoponus’ commentaries on GC were translated into Arabic, the author may have learnt about the categorial interpretation through both channels. We can only presume that he endorsed an exegesis which was explicitly condemned by his direct source. That is the case with Philoponus, whom we still read, but surely also with Alexander, whose concern for the form is omnipresent in his writings. In the present case, that led him to generalize the qualitative polarization to all kinds of qualities, even colours. Philoponus writes: It is something, he says, which all the categories have in common, whether we are looking at simple coming-to-be in the case of substances or at coming-to-be something as in the case of the other categories, namely, that change towards that which is more valuable is called coming-to-be, whereas change towards that which is less valuable and inferior perishing: thus white is called coming-to-be, whilst when this changes towards black, it is not the coming-to-be of black, but the perishing of white. That is how Alexander interprets in agreement with what is said in the Physics.37
To sum up, I would suggest that the author had access either to Alexander, or to Philoponus, or to both, and that he intelligently borrowed from his source, or his sources, what was useful for his purpose. For reasons that we shall have to investigate further, he did not adopt Aristotle’s doctrine of polarity such as it was expressed in GC. 35
Al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. R. Taǧaddud, Tehran, 1971, p . 311, only writes: “A commentary by Themistius on De generatione et corruptione has recently been found. It consists of two expositions, one large and one small”. 36 See Rashed, Essentialisme, pp. 1-31. 37 Philoponus, In GC 59.8-14.
Section 2: On Generation, Non-Being and Matter This section elaborates on two different passages from GC I 3. The first one (317b 18-35) is called the ‘second aporia’ of the chapter by Philoponus.38 In these lines, Aristotle shows the difficulties we have to face if we are to posit generation ‘from absolute non-being’. If we understand this expression as meaning ‘from nothing at all’, then pure non-being will exist, which is absurd; but if we understand it as meaning ‘from non substance’, then accidents will exist separate from substance, which is equally absurd. The author faithfully paraphrases Aristotle’s text but also adds an idea which, to my knowledge, does not appear anywhere else. Instead of just saying that accidents do not exist separately, he provides a second justification, that of the categorial homogeneity of the terms of change. A substance cannot be generated out of an accident, he says, also […] because every substance is always generated out of another substance similar to it according to the genus and different from it according to the species.39
After explaining this point in some details, the author appears to use it as an argument pointing to the fact that something must be common to the two terms of change. He writes: Therefore, for everything generated, something belonging to it existed before its generation, and something belonging to it exists after it has ceased to be.40
The conjunction ‘therefore’ (iḏan) seems indeed to indicate that according to the author, the fact that the terms of change belong to a common genus implies that there is something identical in their constitution, which remains present during the change from the first to the second. This claim, which posits a deep connection between the matter and the genus, is notoriously difficult. For this connection can be interpreted either as a mere identity— being homogeneous meaning nothing else than having the same physical matter—or in a looser way, according to which the “logical” fact of 38
Philoponus, In GC 48.17-49.5. Talḫīṣ 11.3-4. 40 Talḫīṣ 11.10-12. 39
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belonging to some common genus presupposes the physical identity of certain basic features. We have no hint in the text telling us which position, if any, the author professed on this issue. Perhaps all the implications of this debate were not entirely clear to him. Be this as it may, it is not difficult to see why the other commentators have probably not adopted this exegesis in terms of genus and species: it may be appropriate in the case of the primary bodies—if we postulate that each of the four bodies is a species and that they all together belong to the genus ‘body’—because it is fundamentally true of qualitative change and the four bodies change into one another in virtue of their primary qualities. But as soon as we envisage biological generation (the generation of a human being for instance), we fail to see which being would be similar to a generated human being according to the genus and dissimilar according to the species. The genus-species model, in other words, is acceptable in cases of action and passion,41 but has no real sense as soon as biological generation is at stake. But why, then, has the author elaborated on Aristotle’s text in this rather clumsy way? The only satisfactory answer is that he did not clearly grasp the biological implications of Aristotle’s theory of generation. He probably believed that the only phenomenon worthy of consideration, in the context of an analysis of change, was the generation of the primary bodies out of one another. It is true that in the GC at least, Aristotle makes no allusion to the generation of more complex bodies, like animals, from the “so-called elements” (τὰ καλούµενα στοιχεῖα). Hence, to a reader who focusses his attention on GC and who insists on the fact that this treatise offers a general treatment of generation, it may escape notice that Aristotle has other things to say on this issue. The difficulty lies, once again, in what we should understand under the term “general”.42 When we say that the transformations of the primary bodies apply to every being that is generated and destroyed, we do not say that these transformations constitute the general form of every possible transformation. We just say that if a being is susceptible of being generated and destroyed, then it is made of the four primary bodies. The shift from the first notion of the universality of change to the second is an easy step. Let us now address the second passage of GC I 3 used by the author in Section 2. It consists of the very last lines of Aristotle’s chapter.43 This passage is difficult. Let us first have a look at how an Arabic scholar of the 9th c. may have translated it. All the translations are lost in the original, but we 41
It is in these cases indeed where Aristotle makes an explicit use of it. See GC I 7 in particular. 42 See below, p. 310 sqq. for a similar discussion. 43 Aristotle, GC I 3, 319a 29-b 5.
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still have at our disposal the Latin and the Hebrew version of Isḥāq’s Arabic rendering of the Syriac translation made by his father Ḥunayn. Here is first the Greek text read by Ḥunayn: Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τὸ µὴ ὂν ἁπλῶς ἀπορήσειεν ἄν τις πότερον τὸ ἕτερον τῶν ἐναντίων ἐστίν, οἷον γῆ καὶ τὸ βαρὺ µὴ ὄν, πῦρ δὲ καὶ τὸ κοῦφον τὸ ὄν, ἢ οὔ, ἀλλ' ἐστὶ καὶ γῆ τὸ ὄν, τὸ δὲ µὴ ὂν ὕλη ἡ τῆς γῆς, καὶ πυρὸς ὡσαύτως. Καὶ ἆρά γε ἑτέρα ἑκατέρου ἡ ὕλη, ἢ οὐκ ἂν γίνοιτο ἐξ ἀλλήλων οὐδ' ἐξ ἐναντίων; τούτοις γὰρ ὑπάρχει τἀναντία, πυρί, γῇ, ὕδατι, ἀέρι. Ἢ ἔστι µὲν ὡς ἡ αὐτή, ἔστι δ' ὡς ἡ ἑτέρα· ὃ µὲν γάρ ποτε ὂν ὑπόκειται τὸ αὐτό, τὸ δ' εἶναι οὐ τὸ αὐτό. Περὶ µὲν οὖν τούτων ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον εἰρήσθω. However, a doubt might be raised whether this thing which is not simpliciter is one of the pair of contraries—earth, the heavy element, for instance, as what is not, and fire, the light element, as what is—or whether, on the contrary, earth too is what is, whilst what is not is the matter that belongs equally to earth and fire. Again, is the matter of each of these different? Or would that mean that they did not come into being from each other or from their contraries (for it is to these that the contraries belong, namely, to fire, earth, water, and air)? Or is there one way in which the matter is the same and another in which it is different? For the substratum, whatever it may be, is the same, but the being is not the same. So much, then, for these questions.
And that is Gerardus’ Latin translation of the Arabic: Verumtamen dubitat homo de esse non entis huius quod dicitur absolute, an est unum duorum contrariorum, sicut si dicas terra et graue est non ens, et ignis et leue est ens, aut non ita est, immo terra etiam est ens, et non ens vero est materia que est igni et terre secundum similitudinem unam; et an materia cuiusque eorum est preter materiam alterius. Aut, si esset materia cuiusque eorum alia ab illa que est alterius, non generaretur unumquodque eorum a compare suo neque generaretur contrarium a suo contrario? Nam contrarietas existit inter ignem et inter terram, et inter aquam et inter aerem. Dico ergo quod ipsa ex modo est una eadem et ex modo est diuersa. Subiectum quidem ens secundum dispositionem quandam est unum idem, sed ens non est unum. Hec est ergo summa quam dicimus in illo.44 44
The Latin text is still unedited (G. Serra announced its forthcoming publication more than forty years ago; see G. Serra, “Note sulla traduzione arabo-latina del ‘De generatione et corruptione’ di Aristotele”, Giornale Critico della filosofia italiana 52, 1973, pp. 383-427 and “Alcune osservazioni sulle traduzioni dall’arabo in ebraico e in latino del De generatione et corruptione di Aristotele e dello pseudo-aristotelico Liber de causis”, in Scritti in onore di Carlo Diano, Bologna, 1975, pp. 385-433). I am quoting a working text which I have produced on the basis of some Latin manuscripts.
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A brief comparison between the Greek and the Latin shows that Ḥunayn understood perfectly the Greek text he had. His translation is both faithful to the letter and sensitive to the argument. The Arabic text underlying the Latin version of the crucial sentence45 probably looked more or less like this: Fa-naqūlu inna-hā min waǧhin wāḥidatun bi-‘ayni-hā wa-min waǧhin muḫtalifatun. Fa-yakūnu al-mawḍū‘u al-mawǧūdu ‘alā ḥālatin mā wāḥidan bi-‘aynihi, wa-amma al-wuǧūdu46 fa-inna-hu lā yakūna wāḥidan. Thus, in Isḥāq’s translation, the Greek ὅ ποτε ὂν ὑπόκειται47 becomes almawḍū‘u al-mawǧūdu ‘alā ḥālatin mā, if we are to trust Gerardus’ (probably rigorous) translation subiectum ens secundum dispositionem quandam. For an Arabic reader, this text amounted to saying that while being unique in itself, i.e. while being a single item, the substratum can underlie different kinds of beings, i.e. beings differentiated by their formal features. The Arabic sentence, then, recalls what matter is: some unitary, albeit evanescent, entity by itself, and susceptible of many formal variations according to the forms it receives. The author elaborates on this issue in an interesting way. This is what he writes at the end of Section 2:
For an edition of the Hebrew version, see A. Tessier, “La traduzione arabo-ebraica del De generatione et corruptione di Aristotele”, Atti dell’Accademia dei Lincei, Serie viii, vol. xxviii, fasc. 1, 1984, pp. 5-123. 45 ἢ ἔστι µὲν ὡς ἡ αὐτή, ἔστι δ᾿ ὡς ἡ ἑτέρα· ὃ µὲν γάρ ποτε ὂν ὑπόκειται τὸ αὐτό, τὸ δ᾿ εἶναι οὐ τὸ αὐτό. 46 For the choice of this word in this context, I took two parallels into account. At Phys. IV 11, 319a 19-21, Aristotle writes: ἔστι δὲ τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον ἐν τῇ κινήσει ὃ µέν ποτε ὂν κίνησις [ἐστιν]· τὸ µέντοι εἶναι αὐτῷ ἕτερον καὶ οὐ κίνησις. In Isḥāq’s translation, we read: Wa-ayḍan fa-inna al-mutaqaddima wa-al-muta’aḫḫira fī al-ḥarakati ammā min ǧihati mā humā fī waqtin mā fa-inna-humā ḥarakatun, wa-ammā fī al-anniyyati fa-inna-humā šay’un āḫarun ġayru al-ḥarakati. At Phys. IV 11, 219b 1011, we have: τὸ γὰρ νῦν τὸ αὐτὸ ὅ ποτ' ἦν - τὸ δ' εἶναι αὐτῷ ἕτερον. Isḥāq translates: Wa-ḏālika anna al-āna wāḥidun bi-‘ayni-hi matā kāna, illā anna wuǧūda-hu yaḫtalifu. Since Gerardus tends to translate al-anniyyatu by anitas (see G. Serra, “Due studi arabo-latine, I. Note in margine a ‘anniyya-anitas’”, Medioevo 19, 1993, pp. 27-66), the word ens, here, is probably the translation of al-wuǧūdu in Isḥāq’s Arabic text. The sense, at any rate, is not affected. 47 On its signification, see A. Torstrik, “ὅ ποτε ὄν. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des aristotelischen Sprachgebrauch”, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 12, 1857, pp. 446523 and R. Brague, “Sur la formule aristotélicienne ὅ ποτε ὄν”, in Du temps chez Platon et Aristote, Paris, 1982, pp. 97-144.
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And when the matter is considered (u‘tubirat) alone, qua being the essence of a single thing in all the forms, it has a single nature of its own;48 but when it is considered (u‘tubirat) qua being a different matter and qua being potentially a single thing, I mean when the intellect grasps (iḏā aḫaḏa al-‘aqlu) a single common nature suitable to receive all the forms according to a single act of reception in actuality and existence, it is not one, since in actuality, it is the substrate of different forms and subsists only with the form.49
The general meaning of this paraphrase corresponds to the Arabic text. The author draws an opposition between two possible “expressions” (cf. u‘tubirat), two aspects, of matter. Inasmuch as it has some definite essence, namely its being-matter, it is something unitary. But inasmuch as at every instant, it underlies all the forms there are in the world, and is nowhere able to exist by itself without any of them, it is plural in actuality, and single only in potentiality. The author interestingly insists on the noetic aspect of this distinction. It is not just a distinction between something in potentiality and the same thing in actuality—nor the classical way of distinguishing actuality and potentiality. For surely in the present case also we may express the relation between both states by an appeal to our consideration of what is potentially something. But in normal situations at least, what is potentially something can become this thing in actuality. The case with matter is different, because it is not a question of becoming plural from being one, or the contrary. It is rather that at every moment, we can consider matter under either of its aspects. At every moment, there is a double point of view on matter, two ways of envisaging it. Philoponus commented upon this sentence as follows: Ἡ ὕλη, φησί, καθὸ ὕλη ἐστὶ καὶ κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν φύσιν ὅ ποτε ὄν ἐστιν, ἡ αὐτή ἐστι πᾶσιν οἷς ὑπόκειται. τὸ γὰρ ὅ ποτε ὂν τῷ Ἀριστοτέλει τὸ ὑποκείµενον οὖν καί, ἵν' οὕτως εἴπω, τὴν αὑτῆς φύσιν µία πάντων ἐστὶν ἡ ὕλη· ὁµοίαν γὰρ ἐπιτηδειότητα καθὸ ὕλη ἐστὶ πρὸς πάντα ἔχει. ἐπειδὴ δὲ τὸ εἶναι καὶ ὑπόστασις αὐτῇ ἀεὶ µετά τινός ἐστιν εἴδους, οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ ἔσται ὕλη κατὰ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἅπασιν. Matter, he says, insofar as it is matter and according to its own nature is whatever it is, is the same for all the things which it underlies. The phrase ‘whatever it is’ for Aristotle the substratum. So and, if I may speak in this way, in terms of its own nature, there 48
There is a corruption here in the common ancestor of our two manuscripts. I have supplied the words ‘it has a single nature of its own’. 49 Talḫīṣ 11.19-23.
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is one matter for all things; but insofar as it is matter, it has a suitability for everything alike. But since being and subsistence never belong to it without some form, matter will not be the same for everything in respect of form and existence.50
That both texts belong to a common exegetical tradition is not to be denied. The general idea they convey is identical, and we can even notice some terminological parallels. Let us mention the idea of the ‘nature’ (φύσις = ṭabī‘at) of matter; of its ‘suitability’ (ἐπιτηδειότης, cf. taṣluḥu) for receiving ‘everything/every form’ (πάντα, cf. ǧamī‘ al-ṣuwar); that of ‘being’ (τὸ εἶναι, ὕπαρξις = al-wuǧūd) and ‘subsistence’ (ὑπόστασις = qiwām); that of ‘always subsisting with some/the form’ (ἡ ὑπόστασις αὐτῇ ἀεὶ µετά τινός ἐστιν εἴδους = laysa lahā qiwāmun illā ma‘a al-ṣūrati). The first attempt at explaining these parallels is of course to suppose that Philoponus’ commentary was available to the author. That Philoponus’ commentary was circulating in 10th c. Baghdad is attested by al-Nadīm: “John the Grammarian [Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī] wrote a complete exposition of De generatione et corruptione, but the Arabic is inferior in excellence to the Syriac”.51 It had not disappeared some decades later, when Avicenna mentions it in his correspondence with al-Bīrūnī.52 It would be a reasonable guess, then, to suppose that the author borrowed his understanding of the unicity and plurality of matter from Philoponus. One should remain careful, however. In the absence of Alexander’s commentary, we cannot rule out that the similarities between Philoponus and the author are all to be explained in virtue of their common dependence on it. There is perhaps a hint pointing in this direction, namely the way the author insists on the noetic aspect of the distinction between the singular and the plural aspect of matter. We cannot know, of course, how exactly Alexander explained this text, even though the explanation of ὅ ποτε ὄν is likely to be his, since we find it in Simplicius’ as well as in Philoponus’ commentary on the Physics.53 But we should recall that he makes elsewhere a great use of the distinctio rationis (ἐπινοίᾳ, as he labels it). In par50
Philoponus, In GC 63.14-19. Al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p. 311. 52 Cf. Abū Rīhān al-Bīrūnī wa-Ibn Sīnā, Al-as’ila wa-al-aǧwiba, ed. S. Ḥ. Naṣr and M. Mohaghegh, Tehran, 1972, p. 13. 53 See in particular Aristotle, Physics IV 11, 219a 19-21, and Simplicius, In Phys. 712.24-713.16 and Philoponus, In Phys. 720.26-721.13. The use of the νοεῖν and its cognate terms is striking in both commentators. For Simplicius, see 712.30 (νοῶµεν and νοοῦµεν), 713.1 (νοοῦµεν), 713.10 (ἐννοοῦµεν), 713.12 (ἔννοιαν), and 713.16 (ἐπινοοῦντες, in a quotation from Alexander’s lost commentary); for Philoponus, see 721.6 (ἔννοιαν). 51
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ticular, he uses it each time he attempts to delineate real ontological aspects in one and the same being.54 More specifically, it is by an appeal to such a distinctio rationis that Alexander, at least twice, describes matter viewed as deprived of any form. At De anima 4.10, he says that matter, “being always with some form is separated from it only by thought”;55 at De anima 6.1718, that “we separate the matter from the form, since it is not separable, by thought and reason”.56 The appeal to ‘intellect’ (‘aql) on the part of the author may thus betray his use of Alexander’s commentary, the translator of which—be he Qusṭā ibn Lūqā or Mattā ibn Yūnus57—is likely to have rendered νόησις, ἐπίνοια or νοεῖν by this Arabic root.
54
See M. Rashed, Alexandre d’Aphrodise, Commentaire perdu à la Physique d’Aristote (Livres IV-VIII). Les scholies byzantines, Berlin / New York, 2011, pp. 5874. 55 οὖσα […] ἀεὶ σὺν εἴδει τινὶ χωρίζεται αὐτοῦ τῇ νοήσει µόνῃ. 56 τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ τὴν ὕλην τοῦ εἴδους χωρίζοµεν οὐκ οὖσαν χωριστήν. 57 According to al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p. 311, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā translated Alexander’s commentary on the first book only (to which the present passage belongs), while Mattā ibn Yūnus translated the entire work. It seems more likely that the author relied on Qusṭā’s translation. On this issue, see below, p. 355.
Section 3: On Matter, Form and Generation and Destruction This section is devoted to another paragraph of GC I 3, namely 318a 1-27, in which Aristotle explains why, assuming that destruction leads to nonbeing, and given the eternity of time, the universe is not annihilated at some point. The reason why this is not the case lies in the material cause of generation and destruction, or in other words in the general behaviour of the sublunar world. Since “the destruction of anything is the generation of something else”, no case of destruction leads to pure non-being. This point is even stronger for the author than for Aristotle, since, as we have just seen, he does not take the latter’s discussion of polarity into account. For him, in every process, there are just the substratum and two forms inhering in it, of which the second comes after the first.58 This straightforward explanation is of course to be found in every commentary on Aristotle’s passage, which is rather plain. Still, the way the author explains how one form succeeds the other seems unparalleled. For he characteristically insists on the gradual nature of this process: Therefore, the substratum has the form in itself in actuality, and when the substratum starts receiving the second form, it releases the first form gradually, proportionally to the degree to which it receives the second one. Thus, the end point at which the latter appears in actuality goes together with the end point at which the former disappears, the beginning of the latter’s generation is the beginning of the former’s destruction, and the completion of the latter’s generation is the completion of the former’s destruction, in the sense that the thing composed out of the matter and the form is first gradually destroyed and another thing is generated out of it according to the degree of its destruction, inasmuch as the end point of the former’s destruction coincides with the completion of the latter’s generation.59
Nothing in Aristotle’s text corresponds to this explanation. Nor is this kind of consideration typical for Alexander. We do not find anything really similar in his De mixtione, and in particular not in chapter XIV where he gives the essentials of Aristotle’s theory. In the Islamic period, this view is more 58
One could object that what we have here is nothing but Aristotle’s doctrine in the first book of the Physics: there is, for every change, an underlying subject, a form and a privation. But it is precisely the ontological discrepancy between the form and the privation that the author seems to deny. 59 Talḫīṣ 13.6-11.
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reminiscent of the physics of the rational theologians, the mutakallimūn, who tend to view every process of change as a succession of different accidents in a substratum.60 These thinkers generally claimed that substances themselves, or accidents themselves, are not subject to change, but what we call change is just the fact that one accident succeeds another accident in the substance. Since, moreover, they tend to analyse motion as a discrete succession of different positions—they usually speak, in this context, of the first, the second, the third, … instant of motion—it is probable that such was their view also concerning qualitative change. When a body changes from white to black, it is either because at instant-1, some of its atoms change from white to black, some others at instant-2, and so forth until at the end all atoms have changed from white to black; or because all of its atoms change at instant-1 from white to light grey, at instant-2 to a darker grey, until, at a certain instant-n, they all change from a very dark grey to black. Both models are discrete, since they postulate a discrete time, discrete atoms and a discrete range of colours. Thus, the bahshamite masters claimed that ‘change’ (al-taġayyur) and ‘becoming other’ (al-taġāyur) have one and the same sense and that they are not used in reference to a single thing but to a plurality of things, so that one says of a body, when some of the accidents (ma‘ānī) that are in it cease to be and other accidents come to be that “it has changed or has become other” […].61
The 11th c. scholar Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, in order to express this idea of the ‘ceasing to be’ and ‘coming to be’ of the accidents, uses the verbs zāla and ḥaṣala. It should be noted that they appear in exactly the same context in our anonymous text.62 True, the author of our text does not explicitly rewrite Aristotle’s doctrine of change in terms of discrete physics. But he 60
See e.g. S. Pines, Beiträge zur islamischen Atomenlehre, Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde Genehmigt von der Philosophischen Fakultät der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, Gräfenhainichen, 1936, O. Pretzl, Die frühislamische Attributenlehre. Ihre weltanschaulichen Grundlagen und Wirkungen, in Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophischhistorische Abteilung, Jahrgang 1940, Heft 4, p. 55, R. M. Frank, Beings and Their Attributes. The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mu‘tazila in the Classical Period, Albany, 1978, A. Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalām: Atoms, Space, and Void in Basrian Mu‘tazilī Cosmology, Leiden, 1994. 61 Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Fī al-tawḥīd, ed. ‘A. Abū Rīda, Cairo, 1969, p. 567, ll. 79. I borrow the present translation from Frank, Beings and Their Attributes, p. 109. 62 See p. 13, l. 8 of the Arabic text: ḥattā yakūna āḫiru ḥuṣūli hāḏi-hi bi-al-fi‘li ma‘a āḫira zawāli tilka.
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seems to stand halfway between standard Aristotelianism and the Atomism of the Muslim theologians. Like the former doctrine, he is still dealing with forms inhering in a substratum, and not with accidents inhering in an (atomic) substance; but like the latter, he envisages substantial change in terms of a progressive replacement of some entity, or set of entities, by another, something Aristotelians—or, at least, Aristotelian readers of Alexander of Aphrodisias—refrain from doing, since that ultimately leads to upholding that the form is in the matter as in a substratum.63 Things are, however, more complicated than that, and we cannot exclude the possibility that, even if the author was influenced by the general background of kalām, Alexander’s commentary encouraged him to proceed along this path. For at other places, Alexander tends to interpret the primary qualities of the four elements as identical with their forms. In this particular case—which is the one discussed here by the author—he allows for some contrariety between forms, against the warning of the Categories.64 Further, to a greater extent than anywhere else, he seems to think that these forms at least, as opposed to more elaborated ones, inhere in matter as in a substratum. Alexander’s De anima is perhaps the clearest evidence of the commentator’s position on this whole issue: τοῦ γὰρ πυρὸς ὄντος φυσικοῦ τε καὶ ἁπλοῦ σώµατος εἶδος µὲν ἡ θερµότης καὶ ἡ ξηρότης καὶ ἡ ἐκ τούτων τε καὶ ἐπὶ τούτοις γεννωµένη κουφότης, ὕλη δὲ τὸ τούτοις ὑποκείµενον, ὃ κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν οὐδὲν ὂν τούτων ὁµοίως τούτων τε καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων αὐτοῖς ἐστιν ἐπιδεκτικόν (δι' ἣν φύσιν αἱ τῶν ἁπλῶν σωµάτων εἰς ἄλληλα γίνονται µεταβολαί). Thus, the form of fire, which is a natural and simple body, is warmth, dryness, and the lightness begotten from them and supervenient upon them, while its matter is their substratum, which, while being none of them according to its own nature, is suitable to receive them as well as their contraries (this being the nature in virtue of which the mutual changes of the simple bodies take place).65
That Alexander sustained a similar view in his lost commentary on GC is attested by a variety of sources, which I have translated and discussed 63
Alexander explicitly addresses this issue in Quaestiones I 8, I 17, and I 26. In each of these three texts, he aims at showing that “the form is not in the matter as in a substratum” (µὴ εἶναι τὸ εἶδος ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ ὡς ἐν ὑποκειµένῳ). For a discussion of his stance on this issue, and his rebuttal of previous Peripatetic doctrine (Boethus’ in particular), see Rashed, Essentialisme, pp. 42-52. 64 Aristotle, Cat. 5, 3b 24-32. 65 Alexander, De anima 5.4-9.
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elsewhere.66 We should first recall that several Alexandrian commentators attribute to him the claim that while two substances as bodies cannot be contrary to one another, this is possible for substances as qualities.67 The next step obviously consists in assimilating elementary qualities to forms and in this way justifying Aristotle’s claim, made in GC II 8, that a substance may be contrary to another substance.68 Secondly, and more importantly, Averroes, in his commentary on the Physics, disagrees with Alexander on this issue. For, Averroes tells us, […] Alexander dicit ad hoc quod hoc quod dixit in libro Praedicamentorum est de substantiis quae sunt compositae ex forma et materia, et in libro De generatione loquitur de simplicibus, scilicet de formis tantum, quae sunt in prima materia. […] Alexander says on this issue that what said in the Categories pertains to substances composed of form and matter, while in the book On generation, he deals with simple ones, i.e. forms exclusively, which inhere in the first matter.69
A little further down in his commentary, Averroes explictly states that it was in his commentary on GC that Alexander put this thesis forward.70 We have a trustworthy report, then, that when addressing the question of elementary generation, Alexander adopted a distinction between matter and form very similar in principle to that between the substratum and its inhering accidents. We cannot exclude, in conclusion, that the author had access to this kind of explanation in Alexander’s commentary and that he slightly rewrote them in the light of contemporary kalām discussions. In the second part of Section 3, which still corresponds to GC I 3, 318a 127, the author deals with the question of what it means that “the destruction of this is the generation of something else and the generation of this is the
66
See Essentialisme, pp. 129-141. Cf. S. Fazzo, Aporia e sistema. La materia, la forma, il divino nelle Quaestiones di Alessandro di Afrodisia, Pisa, 2002, pp. 77-86. 67 See Elias, In Cat. 179.34-180.3 and an anonymous scholium to Ammonius, In Cat., which I have edited in Essentialisme, p. 131. 68 See Aristotle, GC II 8, 335a 3-6. 69 Averroes, In Phys. 215F-G. My prior discussion is now superseded by Cerami, Génération et Substance, pp. 397-400. 70 Averroes, In Phys. 216A: “Et hoc quod narrauimus de Alexandro est dictum in expositione eius in libro De generatione”.
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destruction of something else”.71 Neither Philoponus nor Averroes shows the faintest hesitation when commenting upon this identity. Philoponus, for instance, writes: Things do not perish, he says, into that which is not, as was postulated in setting up the dilemma, but by into something else which is, and the coming-to-be of one thing is the perishing of another. This then is the interchange and permutation (ἡ ἐνάλλαξις καὶ ἄµειψις) of the substratum, i.e. of the matter which changes in respect of its forms, and this kind of double course (ὁ δίαυλος ὁ τοιοῦτος) is the explanation of the way in which coming-to-be is kept going.72
The comparison with the δίαυλος, or ‘double course’, is interesting, because it shows clearly that Philoponus has the model criticized by the author in mind: the track can be covered in both directions, but, ‘in essence’, it is one. It is the same thing to run to one of its extremities or from the other one. True, from an orthodox Aristotelian point of view, the idea is plain. Since the change being considered here occurs between two contraries, for instance hot and cold, it is certainly equivalent to say that the hot thing becomes cold or not-hot; similarly, it is equivalent to say that the hot is destroyed or that the cold is generated. For the generation of ‘this’, namely the cold, is nothing else than the destruction of ‘something else’, namely the hot. And the ground for that assumption is that the hot and the cold, like every such pair of contraries, belong to a single scale of qualitative determinations. So, according to the orthodox view, it is true that both changes, as the author puts it, “are one and the same in essence and different by consideration”: just as I can consider the same road as departing from Athens or as going to Thebes, I can consider a unique process of change either as the generation of the temporally posterior term or as the destruction of the temporally prior term. The author, however, strongly disagrees. He stresses that generation and destruction follow one another forever—not that they are one and the same in essence and different by consideration, but they are two things following each other because the release of one form by matter is not its reception of another form, but matter does not release a form unless it receives another form; and similarly, its reception of one form is not the release of another form, but the reception occurs with the release of another form. 71
Aristotle, GC I 3, 318a 23-25: τὸ τὴν τοῦδε φθορὰν ἄλλου εἶναι γένεσιν καὶ τὴν τοῦδε γένεσιν ἄλλου εἶναι φθοράν. See also 319a 20-22. 72 Philoponus, In Phys. 51.20-24. See also In Phys. 45.8-18.
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Three reasons allow us to rule out the possibility that the author borrowed his distinction between identity and concomitance from Alexander. First, the identity between the generation of A and the destruction of the contrary of A is Aristotle’s thesis, after all. Secondly, it would be odd that neither Philoponus nor Averroes should have said a word in order to justify Aristotle’s and their own claim if they disagreed with Alexander on this issue. Thirdly, in Quaestio 3.4 at least, Alexander seems happy to endorse Aristotle’s position. For it is probably not just argumenti causa that he formulates the aporia in the following way: Εἰ προσιόντος µὲν ἐγγυτέρω τοῦ ἡλίου γένεσίς ἐστιν, ἀπιόντος δὲ πόρρω φθορά, ἔστιν δ' ἡ ἄλλου γένεσις ἄλλου φθορά, καὶ ἡ ἄλλου φθορὰ γένεσις ἄλλου, πῶς οὐχ ἅµα καὶ φθορᾶς καὶ γενέσεως αἴτιός ἐστι καὶ προσιὼν καὶ ἀπιών, εἴ γε δεῖ καὶ τὰ γινόµενα ἐξ ἄλλων τινῶν γίνεσθαι φθορᾶς, καὶ τὰ φθειρόµενα εἰς ἄλλων γένεσιν µεταβάλλειν; If there is coming-to-be when the sun approaches near, and passing-away when it recedes further away, and the passing away of one thing is the coming-to-be of another, how is it not the cause of coming-to-be and passing away simultaneously, both as it approaches and as it recedes, if it must be the case both that things that come to be do so from the passing away of some other things, and that things that pass away change into the coming-to-be of other things? 73
Needless to say, the phrase ἔστιν δ' ἡ ἄλλου γένεσις ἄλλου φθορά, καὶ ἡ ἄλλου φθορὰ γένεσις ἄλλου is an implicit quotation of our GC sentence. It is virtually certain, then, that Alexander’s exegesis was similar to that of his successors: he is likely to have paraphrased Aristotle’s passage without feeling the need to protect it against eventual objections. Thus, the claim that it is not true that the generation of one thing is the destruction of another seems peculiar to the author. Let us try to reconstruct his reasons, by considering a change from hot (H) to cold (C). If we label this change as µ(H,C), the generation of C as γ(C), and the destruction of H as φ(H), then we can say that according to the orthodox view, the three expressions are strictly equivalent. They refer to the same process by considering it from different perspectives. And the reason for this is not the sheer concomitance of γ(C) and φ(H)—i.e. the regular fact that each time the entity C occurs in the substratum, another entity, H, disappears from it—but the ontological fact that C is nothing but the contrary of H (and H nothing but the contrary of C). If we call the contrary of H ε(Η), we are just 73
Alexander, Quaestio 3.4, 87.3-7 Bruns. For the translation, see R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestiones 2.16-3.15, London, 1994, p. 47.
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saying, in conformity with the Aristotelian view, that γ(ε(Η)) is equivalent to φ(H). We are so accustomed to thinking in an Aristotelian way that we do not even recognize the possibility of seeing things differently. For us, as for Aristotle—even if it is on other grounds—hot and cold belong to a single scale, so that the cold can further be viewed as the privation or negation of the hot. But it would not be absurd to try to reduce their difference to some kind of entities present in the substratum. Let us suppose, for instance, that the cold and the hot inhere in the substratum more or less in the way two shapes (square and circular, for instance) do. Then, we could say that in virtue of some physical incompatibility both accidents cannot be combined in the same substratum, but the substratum cannot be deprived of both of them at the same time. This thesis is a physical doctrine which differs from Aristotle’s theory of matter only insofar as it denies that one of the contraries is less of a form, and more of a privation, than the other. The model we have just described is basically Democritean. As previously recalled, the basic principle of the physics of the Muslim theologians is that it is God who created the substances (the atoms) and who creates and annihilates the accidents inhering in them.74 They do not claim, therefore, that hot and cold are “secondary qualities” reducible to the atom’s figure, order and position,75 but that they are abstract and objective ‘entities’ (ma‘ānī) inhering in the atomic substance. Hot and cold, so to speak, are really there. The Aristotelian law of contrariety applies to them, i.e. even God cannot produce them both in the same place at the same time. Thus, change amounts to the fact that God annihilates some previous accidents in the substance and substitutes new accidents for them in accordance with this law. Within this framework, there are at least two important questions discussed among the theologians: the first is whether every accident has a contrary, while the second is whether the same accident can exist over at least two consecutive instants of time or must be recreated by God at each new instant.76 But this need not detain us here. The important fact is that the accident, according to this view, is always a “positive” entity, insofar as it is effectively produced by God. If, for instance, a substance which used to be white turns black, that means that God has replaced the first accident, namely the entity of whiteness, by the second, blackness. Black is not just the “negative” side of white (nor white of black), that is, it is not just a way of saying “absolutely not-white within the unitary spectrum of 74
See above, p. 88 and the contributions cited n. 60. See contra Democritus, A38 Diels-Kranz. 76 See D. Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, Paris, 1990, pp. 77-78 and 79-87 for the first thesis, and pp. 89-91 for the second. 75
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colour”, but a reality of its own.77 Now, if we return to our previous symbolism and reconsider the change µ(H,C) from hot to cold, it is no longer the case that γ(C), the generation of the cold, is equivalent to φ(H), the destruction of the hot. Under the kalām pressure, γ(C) has become only concomitant to φ(H), as stressed by the author.78 For the rational theologians do not claim that γ(ε(Η)) is equivalent to φ(H). The reason for this is that on their ontological view, ε(Η) is not just the contrary of H—it is also a reality of its own.79 We are beginning to grasp the author’s overall strategy. We had observed, when commenting upon Section 2, that the sole important passage of GC I 3 not taken into account by him was the central section on polarity.80 Here, in Section 3, he rejects the equivalence between γ(ε(Η)) and φ(H) and replaces Aristotle’s notion, which had been endorsed by all the commentators, by that of simple concomitance. These moves are mutu77
See Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, pp. 79-80: “Or du fait qu’il ne s’agit pas là de simples concepts, mais d’existants réels, on doit comprendre que la contrariété qui les oppose deux par deux n’est pas une simple contrariété logique […] mais une contrariété “ontologique”, existentielle. Le fait qu’un corps a tel état implique qu’il a en lui (plus exactement: dans les atomes qui le constituent) tel accident, et qu’il n’a pas l’accident contraire; la venue à l’être en lui du premier implique nécessairement en lui l’inexistence, la disparition du second. Autrement dit, deux accidents sont “contraires” quand nécessairement l’existence de l’un implique l’inexistence de l’autre; leur “contrariété” signifie incompatibilité, impossibilité de coexister (istiḥālat al-iǧtimā‘), exclusion réciproque (tanāfī)”. 78 Again, this concomitance is not to be interpreted in purely occasionalist terms, since Aristotle’s law of contrariety still holds. In other words, God is not free, when He wishes to annihilate the accident of coldness in a given substance, not to produce in lieu of it the accident of heat. By contrast, an occasionalist doctrine of a purer blend would claim that it is nothing but God’s habit to replace hot by cold, exactly as it is God’s habit to endow sensible objects with colours (that He could do otherwise is shown by air). On the issue of colour among Muslim theologians, see e.g. Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Al-Masā’il fī al-ḫilāf bayna al-Baṣriyyīn wa-al-Baġdādiyyīn, ed. M. Ziyāda and R. alSayyid, Beirut, 1979, pp. 130-133. 79 This point was understood perfectly by Maimonides. See Mūsā Ibn Maymūn, Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn, ed. Ḥ. Ātāy, Ankara, 1974, p. 196 and pp. 204-206. According to Maimonides, Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn, p. 196, the “seventh proposition” of the mutakallimūn is the following: “Both positive and negative properties have a real existence, and are accidents which owe their existence to some causa efficiens” (I borrow this translation from Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, translated from the original Arabic text by M. Friedländer, London, 1904, p. 120). See also Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn, p. 204 (The Guide of the Perplexed, p. 126): “The absence of a property is itself a property that exists in the body, a something superadded to its substance, an actual accident, which is constantly renewed; as soon as it is destroyed, it is reproduced”. 80 GC I 3, 318a 27-b 33.
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ally coherent and belong to the same exegetical stance: a clear tendency to reformulate Aristotle’s doctrine according to the main tenets of kalām ontology. There is, however, an objection to the hypothesis that the author has changed Aristotle’s doctrine in order to make it compatible with the physics of kalām. For, in the very same section where he reformulates Aristotle’s theory of the material cause of generation, he seems to endorse the view that the world is eternal—a view which is of course rejected by the totality of the theologians. Aristotle said: … νῦν δὲ τὴν ὡς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει τιθεµένην αἰτίαν εἴπωµεν, δι᾿ ἣν ἀεὶ φθορὰ καὶ γένεσις οὐχ ὑπολείπει τὴν φύσιν. But at present we are to state the cause which is placed in the class of matter, because of which generation and destruction do not fail to occur in nature. 81
Let us first observe Isḥāq’s translation. The Latin is still close to the original: In hoc autem loco ponemus sermones nostros in causa que ponitur cum specie materie propter quam non priuatur natura generatione et corruptione semper.82
To judge from this passage, Isḥāq must have translated the last part of the sentence by something like: al-sabab … al-laḏī min aǧli-hi lā taḫlū alṭabī‘atu min al-kawni wa-al-fasādi abadan. If this is correct, we may say that the idea of eternity, which remains rather discrete in the Greek—where it is conveyed by a simple ἀεί, i.e. with no precise reference to past and future eternity—is even more discrete in the Arabic, since Isḥāq rendered it by the construction “lā + imperfect verb + abadan”, which does not necessarily imply a full eternity a parte post, but rather the fact that it is impossible for the subject of the verb to do what this verb signifies as long as the subject exists. Two Quranic verses may serve to illustrate the point, namely Qur’ān 9.84, wa-lā tuṣalli ‘alā aḥadin min-hum māta abadan, “and never pray for any of them who died”, and Qur’ān 18.20, wa-lan tufliḥū iḏan abadan, “and in that case you will never be successful”. It is clear that in both cases, the speech is addressed to people living now, and tells them what they are not supposed to do until the end of their lives. Thus, Isḥāq’s translation can be understood at face value just as well in the framework of 81 82
GC I 3, 318a 9-10. Again my (uncritical) edition. See above, p. 81, n. 44.
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Aristotle’s cosmology, or in the case in which the world of generation and corruption will one day cease to exist. However, on this issue of eternity, the author seems prima facie to adopt a strategy which is contrary to what we would expect of him if his goal was really to rewrite Aristotle’s system in terms compatible with the kalām. For he writes: Thus, generation and destruction exist forever (abadan), with no violation, for the sole reason that the common matter, i.e. the substratum of the opposed forms, is one and will remain everlastingly (bāqiyyatun dā’iman); this matter is suited to receive all these forms successively in a single manner, being capable of nothing except receiving another form in substitution. Therefore, generation and destruction exist forever (abadan); neither is subject to privation in the world, and neither exists without the other, because when there is generation, there is destruction and when there is destruction, there is generation.83
We cannot tell, at this stage, whether the author used Isḥāq’s translation or not.84 But whatever text he used, it is not enough to resort to grammatical considerations in order to neutralize his move. For even if he read a text basically similar to Isḥāq’s, he nonetheless replaced its negative formulation of the eternity of generation (lā … abadan) by three expressions with a stronger connotation. For he twice uses abadan in a positive construction— which in the Qur’ān always has an eternalist meaning referring to something everlasting in the afterlife—and once the adverb dā’iman, ‘everlastingly’, which in Arabic philosophical texts tends to convey the idea of an a parte post eternity. True, at Qur’ān 70.23, al-laḏīna hum ‘alā ṣalāti-him dā’imūna, “those who remain constant in their prayers”, the word does not signify any kind of sempiternality. Still, the author does not appear particularly embarrassed by the eternalist connotations of what he is saying here. I do not believe, however, that this fact is sufficient to counter our hypothesis. For it should first be noted that the question of a parte post eternity is much less of a problem for Islamic theologians than that of a parte ante eternity. In a way, all Muslim theologians recognized the existence of an a parte post eternity, during which the afterlife will, at some point in time, succeed this world we live in. One or two exceptions aside, they do not claim that the afterlife will not be in time. Even if the astral motion is no longer there to allow us to reckon time, there will be time in the sense that the life of the blessed will have, precisely, an eternal dura83
Talḫīṣ 13.17-21. For an answer to this question, see below, pp. 355-358, where we shall see that it is more likely that he used Abū ‘Uṯmān al-Dimašqī’s translation. 84
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tion, during which they will enjoy an infinite succession of rewards.85 A mutakallim, in other words, may have spoken of the infinity of time a parte post without too much anxiety. A second argument is still more cogent: the author says in our very passage, hence in exactly the same context, that neither generation nor corruption will ever be suppressed from the world (min al-‘ālam). But this word, for an Islamic theologian, is perfectly unambiguous. In his doxographical Kitāb Awā’il al-Maqālāt (The Principle Theses), for example, alŠayḫ al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022) writes: I say that the world (al-‘ālam) is the heavens, the earth, what is between them, and the substances and accidents that are in them. I do not know of any dispute about this among the believers in God’s Unity.86
We may then understand our text as meaning that as long as the world will exist, generation and destruction will take place in it. The author is likely to have played with this ambiguity, saying both that according to Aristotle this world is eternal and that in truth, although time is infinite a parte post (but not a parte ante) this world is temporally finite. This strategy is already to be found in some passages of al-Kindī. Whereas an eternity a parte ante of the world is strongly rejected, things are not so clear with eternity a parte post, for which al-Kindī resorts to nuanced formulae reminiscent of Plato’s “open finitism” such as it finds itself expressed in the Timaeus.87 85
The famous dispute over Abū al-Huḏayl’s doctrine, according to which the motions of the people in Paradise will one day stop because otherwise, we should have to posit an actual infinity a parte post, is a clear sign pointing to this. So far as I know, nobody replied by saying that the actions of the blessed are not to be viewed as taking place in time. On Abū al-Huḏayl’s stance, see J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. Und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 6 vols, vol. III, Berlin / New York, 1992, pp. 255-263. 86 See Kitāb Awā’il al-Maqālāt (Principle Theses), edited by M. Mohaghegh, English Introduction by M. J. McDermott, Tehran, 1993, p. 42. I owe this translation to M. J. McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, Beirut, 1978, p. 213. 87 See Plato, Timaeus 41A-B. and al-Kindī, Fī al-ibānati ‘an al-‘illati al-fā‘ilati alqarībati li-al-kawn wa-al-fasād, in Rasā’il al-Kindī al-falsafiyya, ed. M. ‘A. Abū Rīda, Cairo, 1950, pp. 219-220: “We say that it has been explained in discussions about physics that generation and corruption occur only in that which has contrary qualities. The hot, cold, moist and dry are the primary contrary qualities. The outermost body of the world, I mean what is between the sphere of the moon up to the farthest limit of the body of the celestial sphere, is neither hot nor cold, neither moist nor dry. Neither generation nor corruption occurs in it during the days of its existence, which God, great be His praise, allotted to it” (I borrow this translation from P. Adamson and P. E. Pormann, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, Karachi, 2012, p. 159). On alKindī on the finite world, see P. Adamson, Al-Kindī, Oxford, 2007, pp. 74-105.
Section 4: On Generation, Substance and Accidents This Section corresponds rather closely to GC I 4, introduced by a small paragraph perhaps inspired by the last lines of GC I 4 (319b 32-320a 2), coupled with the first lines of GC I 5 (320a 8-15), a passage in which the different types of change are associated to different categories. The author says: Change occurring in the substance itself is called generation and destruction, while change which affects the substance, not however in itself, but in some of its accidents—the substance itself remaining as it is—is not called generation and destruction in an absolute way. If it occurs in the magnitude of natural substances, it is called growth and diminution, if it is in their sensible qualities, it is called alteration, and if it is in their place, it is called motion. Changes occurring in the other categories do not have conventional names but we must relate each of them to its genus or species and say, for example, ‘change in position’ or ‘in relation’, etc.88
The author is therefore at odds with the standard picture in Aristotle and his commentators. It is well known that Aristotle does not recognize the existence of change in categories other than substance, quality, quantity and place. He explicitly dismisses, in particular, the possibility of change in the category of relation.89 The author replaces this clear-cut distinction by another one, which to my knowledge never appears elsewhere, according to which there is change in every category, but this change is given a peculiar name only in the case of substance, quality, quantity, and place. By contrast, change remains nameless in the categories of position (waḍ‘), relation (iḍāfa) and the like. True, Avicenna admits of a change according to the category of position (waḍ‘), but his claim is dictated by the very peculiar question of the motion of the last sphere.90 It does not reflect, in other words, a doctrine according to which there would be change in all categories. The most we can say is rather that Avicenna may have been encouraged to solve the magna quæstio in terms of positional change through his awareness of the fact that some thinkers, including the author, 88
§ 4.1. See e.g. Aristotle, Phys. V 2, 225b 11-13. 90 On this, see M. Rashed, “Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la ‘Magna Quaestio’. Rôle et indépendance des scholies dans la tradition byzantine du corpus aristotélicien”, Les Études Classiques 63, 1995, pp. 295-351. 89
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did not hesitate to postulate change in all categories whatsoever. This hypothesis, which at this stage might appear too far-fetched, will receive some support when we state that Avicenna is likely to have known the present compendium.91 In the Physics, Aristotle writes: In respect of substance there is no motion, because substance has no contrary among things that are. Nor is there motion in respect of relation; for it may happen that when one correlative changes, the other, although this does not itself change, may be true or not true, so that in these cases the motion is accidental. Nor is there motion in respect of agent and patient—in fact there can never be motion of mover and moved, because there cannot be motion of motion or becoming of becoming or in general change of change.92
Simplicius provides Alexander’s interpretation of this passage: Next he shows that there is no motion as such in the category of relation; for it is not through their own change that relationships between things are always in flux, but, when they themselves undergo no motion but other things do, relationships vary from time to time, so that it is not through their own motion that there is change in relationship. For things that are moved as such must themselves change, as are things altering, growing and travelling. But what was formerly on the right comes to be on the left when something else moves, and the same thing without change becomes greater and less, double and half, so that the same account is sometimes true and sometimes false as the situation varies. If, then, something changes in relation without moving, change in relation is not a motion, unless accidentally. For that changes as such to the right of which this happened to be, and so this comes to be on the left instead of the right. Those things also which are moving as such and through their own motion exchange their relation to each other either do so by moving according to place, like what comes to be on the left instead of the right, or according to quality, as what becomes like from unlike, or according to quantity like what becomes equal instead of unequal. Thus exchange or relationship comes to be in accordance with the motion of the terms in a certain respect. This is what Alexander excellently wrote about relation in clarifying what Aristotle said.93
91
See below, p. 300. Physics V 2, 225b 10-16. 93 Simplicius, In Phys. 834.22-835.11, translation Urmson modified (cf. Simplicius, On Aristotle Physics 5, translated by J. O. Urmson, notes by P. Lautner, London, 1997, pp. 40-41). 92
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Alexander’s explanation is enlightening, first because it explains why, according to Aristotle, there is no motion in the category of relation. The Aristotelian notion of change implies that some absolute—and not just relative—process occurs in the object considered. That is evidently true for alteration, in which a quality inhering in the object changes, as well as for augmentation and diminution. That is also true, on a standard Peripatetic interpretation, in the case of motion, which they never envisage as a mere change of coordinates according to some reference point. Locomotion, accordingly, is not just a variation of position between two objects, but a real process taking place in at least one of them.94 Since Aristotle’s world is finite, the extreme boundary of the last sphere, be it real or imagined, or the centre of the world, can very easily be taken as a point of reference allowing us to prove that such a real process obtains, i.e. to escape the objection that we cannot discern in principle the case of an object A moving with respect to another object B from the case of B moving with respect to A. Aristotle’s implicit strategy is to refer both A and B to the boundaries of his spherical world and to ask whether their position is changing according to them. Now, there is a difficulty in this account, namely that in order to understand Aristotle’s position we were obliged to make use of two English verbs, ‘to change’ and ‘to vary’, which are both translations of µεταβάλλειν. It would be more rigorous, maybe, to speak of change1 and change2. What we call change1 is the fact of being the substratum of a real change, i.e. of changing in respect to a fixed point of reference; what we call change2, on the other hand, is the fact of changing in respect to a point of reference which may be either fixed or itself changing (according to change1). While there is a distinction between these two senses of ‘change’, the same is not true of the word ‘motion’, which is always categorial: a κινεῖσθαι is either an alteration, or an augmentation-diminution, or a translocation, in the categorial sense. All this mirrors the fact that even when the relational status of an item changes (change2) without any change1 taking place in this item, but only because another object of its environment has changed (change1), it is necessary, from an Aristotelian point of view, that some change1 occurs in order for a relational change2 to occur. At the time when the author writes, this point is certainly not new. The Aristotelian commentator Boethus of Sidon, writing during the 1st c. BC, had already stressed the fact that in 94
On this issue, see J. Vuillemin, “D’Eudoxe à Kepler”, in R. Rashed and J. Biard (eds), Les doctrines de la science de l’antiquité à l’âge classique, Leuven, 1999, pp. 87103.
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order for relational change2 to take place, some change1 is necessary.95 The substratum has many determinations, which in turn are related to one another. Roughly speaking, in every relation Boethus distinguishes between the relation in itself, which he calls the πρός τί πως ἔχον, and the substratum, which contains all the material substances concerned, i.e. all the material substances implied by the relation itself. According to him, there is no need to distinguish, as far as relation is concerned, between a strong kind of relation, based in some state of the relata (the so-called ‘epistemological relatives’, like knower and known, sight and seen, etc.), and a weaker kind of relation subject to ‘Cambridge change’. Boethus claims that there is one and only one type of relation (which he labels πρός τί πως ἔχον), and this relation belongs to characteristics borne by the material substratum composed out of at least two substances. True, in the case of the relation ‘to the right’, the characteristics are difficult to seize, while in the case of the relation ‘sweet’ (sc. to the tongue: every food is ‘sweet’ with respect to some organ of taste), they are rather straightforward. The important fact, however, according to Boethus, is that in both cases, we have a material substratum, which is the bearer of some characteristics, and a relation arising from these characteristics, ultimately borne by their substratum. The question now is whether it makes sense to suppose that the author may have had in mind something similar to what Boethus claimed. If we consider the substance as a simple part of a (continuous) material environment, rather than focussing on the three-dimensional space delimited by the Aristotelian form, it seems possible to say that (i) a motion happens somewhere in the ‘contextual’ vicinity of the individual substance (not necessarily in it) and (ii) this motion produces some change in the relation involving the individual substance as one of its terms. The second point implicitly raised by Alexander as quoted by Simplicius is that of the subject of change. Do we say that it is the categorial determination itself which is in motion, or the individual substance according to it? Do we say, for instance, that it is the relation which progressively changes when an object which was to the right of another object is moved to its left, or that it is the unmoved object that changes according to the category of relation? And what exactly do we mean by saying this or that? We see that the question at stake is that of the articulation between the phenomenal description and the deep ontology of change. According to the 95
See M. Rashed, “Boethus’ Aristotelian Ontology”, in M. Schofield (ed.), Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC. New Directions for Philosophy, Cambridge, 2013, pp. 53-77, pp. 73-77.
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first perspective, there is change if between two instants of time, some categorial situation ‘has changed’, i.e. if the subject’s quality, quantity, place, but also relation, position, action etc. is not the same now as it used to be at a given instant in the past.96 According to the latter, there is change if there is something more than two distinct states at two different instants, i.e. if the process is something more than a cinematographic series of immobile states—in other words, if there is some particular entity which is intrinsically transformed along a continuous path according to some category. Place represents no real objection for Aristotelians, since the natural, or cosmological place of an object is part and parcel of its ontological realization—that is precisely what distinguishes ‘place’ (τόπος) from ‘somewhere’ (που) in Aristotle’s ontology.97 As a consequence, so long as we remain at the phenomenological level, there is no objection to the existence of change in all categories. By ‘change’, we shall designate the fact that the object is no longer the same as it used to be according to the category in question. Needless to say, this kind of approach is typical for the ontology of kalām, for two main reasons: the sequential view of motion and the impossibility of there being an accident of an accident.98 The mutakallimūn’s atomist stance led them to view also time and motion as sequential. Motion was considered to be a succession of minimal stations on the different place atoms adjacent to one another and linking the two extremities of the trajectory. By the same token, the tension between “phenomenal” and “deep” motion is much less important in kalām than in Aristotle, since “deep” motion is for the mutakallimūn, if perhaps not purely suppressed, at least severely downgraded. Moreover, the claim that an accident cannot inhere in another accident, but only in a substance, is sufficient to explain away the idea of a process linking together two accidental states, i.e. of an accident becoming different from what it was whilst 96
That is, I presume, what Aristotle says in the first book of the Physics. See Phys. I 7, 190a 31-b 1. For this reason, and pace Ross, we should avoid deleting καὶ ποτὲ at l90a 35. The Arabic translation has it, thus agreeing with the unanimous direct tradition. See Arisṭūṭālīs, Al-Ṭabī‘at, tarǧamat Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn, ed. ‘A. Badawī, 2 vols, Cairo, 1964-1965, vol. 1, pp. 60-61. 97 On this distinction, see e.g. B. Morison, On Location. Aristotle’s Concept of Place, Oxford, 2002, p. 5: “Aristotle believes that everything is somewhere, but that not all things have places. […]. The upshot is that places are not, unqualifiedly, answers to where-questions—only to certain where-questions”. 98 This principle appears on every page in kalām literature, and it was accepted by virtually all the theologians. For a brief presentation and discussion, see e.g. Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat fī aḥkām al-ǧawāhir wa-al-a‘rāḍ, ed. D. Gimaret, 2 vols, Cairo, 2009, vol. 1, p. 141.
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remaining ontologically the same. Since an accident, unlike an atom, cannot be a substratum, it cannot be itself the subject of a change. For instance, one and the same pressure, or one and the same colour, cannot become less or more intense (“stronger” or “weaker”, “more red” or “less red”, etc.) over a period of time. The only thing we can say is that the substance is the substratum of different accidents at different times. True, we can put on a scale the pressure exerted by the substance at one instant and the pressure exerted by the same substance at the successive instant, and say that the second is superior or inferior to the first. But we must understand that there is no ontological connection between the two, except that they are both accidents of the same substance. It is not the first pressure which has changed, but the substance itself, insofar as a second pressure took the place of the first. Hence, every expression implying a change of the accident itself is just an inadequate façon de parler. Paradoxically enough, then, the mutakallimūn are ready to allow for the existence of change in every category because they do not recognize change as something truly real. Change, and in particular change of accidents, being something of a terminological short cut, nothing prevents us from postulating its existence in every category. At § 4.2, the author writes: “the change of man from whiteness to blackness is alteration for what is only man, and generation and destruction insofar as it is a man qualified by blackness and whiteness—and similarly for the other accidents.” At first sight, he seems to be sticking to Aristotle’s idea that the generation of the “unmusical-man” (and the destruction of the “musical-man”) is in fact an alteration of the man (from “musical” to “unmusical”), because “musical” and “unmusical” are affections per se of man. But when we look more closely, we find an important discrepancy between Aristotle and the author. After an obscure sentence to which we shall come back shortly, Aristotle says: […] Otherwise it will be alteration. Take the example where the musical man perished and an unmusical man came to be, though the man remains the same thing. If being musical and being unmusical had not been affections per se (καθ᾿ αὑτό) of this thing, there would have been a coming to be of the one and a perishing of the other. So these are affections of the man, although there is coming to be and perishing of a musical man and an unmusical man. As it is, this an affection of what remains. Such cases, then, are alteration.99
99
Aristotle, GC I 4, 319b 24-31.
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The context then makes it clear that Aristotle’s aim here is not to allow for two ways of speaking of one and the same process. If he admits that we can speak both of the generation of the unmusical-man and of the alteration of the man from musical to unmusical, his argument leaves no room for doubt: if we are concerned with natural science, and not just with possible ways of describing things at a general and formal level, the process described is alteration, not generation. Obviously, then, the author distorts Aristotle’s argument in a formal way. He seems to think that if both ways of speaking are acceptable, there is no reason to favour one over the other. How is this discrepancy to be explained? We could suppose, first, that the author is just superficial. He has not grasped Aristotle’s natural philosophy because (like many modern commentators, by the way) he missed the fact that according to Aristotle, physics does not just amount to good grammar. Even if there are numerous ways of describing one and the same process, and even if language mirrors natural reality to a certain degree, it would be mistaken to claim that all these ways of describing a single process are physically well-founded.100 For the “unmusical-man” and the “musical-man” are one only by accident. Accordingly, their generation and destruction are physical processes only in an accidental way. However, a more appealing explanation also seems possible. In the light of what we have already seen, it is possible that the author did not subscribe to all aspects of Aristotle’s theory of substance. In particular, he did not borrow from GC I 3 the idea of polarized terms of change.101 The present case is similar, since what is at stake in Aristotle’s passage is the fact that in reality, we do not have a substance plus a quality, but a qualified substance. But according to the physics of the mutakallimūn, we do have a substance plus a quality.102 Hence, we are definitely entitled to consider them from the point of view of their association. On this interpretation, each entity (the substance and its accident) remains perfectly separate and independent from the other one. In § 4.3, the author keeps close to Aristotle’s text. Interestingly, he seems to subscribe to Alexander’s contextual formulation103 in a certain way,
100
This point has been much discussed among Aristotle’s commentators. For GC, see e.g. K. Algra, “On Generation and Corruption I. 3: Substantial Change and the Problem of Not-Being”, in F. de Haas and J. Mansfeld, Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption, Book I, Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford, 2004, pp. 91-121, pp. 120-121. 101 See above, pp. 75-76 and 94. 102 See Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, pp. 69-73. 103 See above, p. 89.
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according to which we can identify the form with one of the qualities borne by the substance. For he writes: And when a substance becomes another substance in such a way that another quality, or accident, remains in both states, we must not think that this remaining thing is the form, nor that the form according to which generation and destruction occur consists in accidents present in this remaining thing, nor that it is for this reason that the former changes and the latter remains. For this kind of change is alteration, not generation and destruction. 104
The author considers three determinations of a given substance: the first one, A, remains, while the second one, B, is replaced by the third one, C. This situation, he says, amounts neither to saying (i) that A, since it remains throughout the change, must be the form of the composite substance, nor (ii) that B and C, which are the forms, inhere in A. For they only inhere in the substratum common to them both and to A. Now, the phrase “nor that the form according to which generation and destruction occur consists in accidents present in this remaining thing” implies that there is a form according to which generation and destruction occur, and that this form is the accidental quality in virtue of which the primary bodies are what they are. This impression is corroborated by what the author writes a little later about iron’s accidental properties as opposed to its substantial form: […] as iron, for example, changes from coldness to heat while keeping its very same form.105
It is clear, then, that the author distinguishes among different kinds of accidents: on the one hand, there is the accident which is a form for the item under consideration, while on the other hand there is the accident which is, so to speak, purely accidental, i.e. accidental in a genuinely Aristotelian sense.106 This point is of paramount importance, because, as we shall observe later,107 it is what distinguishes the author’s stance from mainstream kalām. There is however a major difference between the author and a full-blooded Aristotelian like Alexander. It consists in the fact that while the latter refrains from viewing the form as an accident of the substratum, 104
Talḫīṣ 15.20-23. Talḫīṣ 17.6-7. 106 See Top. I 5, 102b 4-7. The second type of accident would be more akin to what Aristotle calls ‘per se accident’, συµβεβηκὸς καθ᾿ αὑτό. See Metaph. Δ 30, 1025a 3034. 107 See below, p. 186. 105
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i.e. firmly distinguishes accidental from essential properties, the former accepts such an identification. In other words, whereas the author, probably under the influence of kalām ontology, draws a core distinction between substances and accidents and then, in a second step, distinguishes accidental accidents from forms, Alexander does not allow for the existence of a class common to formal and accidental determinations of substances. On his essentialist reading of Aristotle, a formal determination belongs to the category of substance, while an accidental determination is by definition subsumed under some other category.108 Alexander is truer to Aristotle than the author. For Aristotle’s use of the καθ᾿ αὑτό attribution amounts precisely to stressing that the form is not an accident. καθ᾿ αὑτό, in this context, means that such a quality is not even understandable if it does not belong to such a substratum. In the same way, even and odd belong καθ᾿ αὑτό to number because nothing other than a number can ever be even or odd, “musical” and “unmusical” belong καθ᾿ αὑτό to man because nothing other than a man can be described as “musical” or “unmusical” (in the sense of “deprived of its natural musical ability”).109 But the elementary form does not belong to its substratum like a mere quality belongs καθ᾿ αὑτό to its substratum, because the elementary form’s substratum has no principle of distinction. On the contrary, when the author speaks, at the beginning of the passage quoted, of “another quality, or accident”, he is implicitly distinguishing it from the quality, or accident, which is the form. To stress it once again, this fact is probably to be explained on the ground that the author adheres to a philosophical doctrine which considers the distinction between substance and accidents as fundamental. Be that as it may, the author stresses that [i]t is not the case that warmth and coldness are present in transparency, nor that transparency is present in them, but all of them are present by essence in the matter, which is their substratum and bearer. Accidentally (bi-ṭarīq al‘araḍ), however, they are present in one another, in the sense that they are all present in something which is one by essence.110
The (rather scholastic) idea of an accidental inherence of the various accidents in one another does not appear expressis verbis in Aristotle’s text. We do find it, however, in the commentary of Philoponus, who writes: 108
See Alexander, De anima, 6.2-6 and my comments thereon in Essentialisme, pp. 42 sqq. 109 See Aristotle, A. Po. I 4, 73a 34-b 24. 110 Talḫīṣ 17.7-9.
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For hot and cold would not be said to be affections of the transparent, except per accidens (κατὰ συµβεβηκός), in virtue of the fact that they, I mean the hot and the cold, belong to the same matter .111
It is likely, then, that the author borrowed this idea from the Greek commentators, either Alexander—if he said something similar to what we find in Philoponus—or one of his successors.112 In § 4.4, the author explains at some length that when we find ‘the same’ accident in the generated and in the destroyed substance, this accident is not individually the same. The first accident perishes with the first substance, and a new accident, intrinsically similar to the first, comes to be with the second substance: And when we consider the question more attentively, it appears that no accident remains when its substance is destroyed, so as to be one and the same thereafter in the generated thing. For when some single thing belongs to what is generated and to what is destroyed, what was present in the destroyed thing has been destroyed with it, and what comes to exist with the generated thing is another one, similar to the first, its existence being concomitant with the existence of the form of the generated thing. For what remains, when generation and destruction occur, is only matter.113
Such an idea does not appear in Aristotle’s chapter. Here again, it was probably prompted by the author’s access to the Greek commentators. For Philoponus addresses this issue in the last part of his introduction to his commentary on GC I 4. He starts by saying that even if the water and the air are both wet, their wetness is not the same: for the wetness in the air and the wetness in the water are specifically (κατ᾿ εἶδος) different.114 He then adds: And if someone wanted that heat in fire and air or wetness in water and air are not specifically (µὴ κατ᾿ εἶδος) different, but differ only in being of greater or less intensity (κατ᾿ ἐπίτασιν … καὶ ἄνεσιν), they would have nevertheless to agree with this point at least, namely, that these qualities are numerically (ἀριθµῷ) different. For when mustard or pepper is sown it produces specifically the same heat in the plants which grow from it, 111
Philoponus, In GC 68.16-18. Not necessarily Philoponus. We shall see below that also Olympiodorus must be taken into account. 113 Talḫīṣ 17.12-16. 114 Philoponus, In GC 65.22-32. 112
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which are of the same species as it, but for all that, the quality that is in the seed and that which is in the fruit which comes to be from it are admittedly numerically different. In the same way, in the case of the elements too, the whole form of the air has to be understood as perishing when the water comes to be. So even if someone agrees that specifically the same wetness and transparency is produced in the water, he will still be compelled to say that it is numerically (ἀριθµῷ) different. In that case nothing remains of the air except the matter.115
We note, in particular, the similarity between the last sentence of this paragraph and the text of the author that we have just quoted. To the Greek ὥστε οὐδὲν ὑποµένει τοῦ ἀέρος πλὴν τῆς ὕλης corresponds the Arabic lianna al-laḏī yabqā ‘inda al-kawni wa-al-fasādi huwa al-hayūlā waḥda-hā. Both texts associate the idea of the impossibility of a numerical identity of the accidents in processes of substantial generation and destruction with that of the matter being the only thing that remains. It is interesting to try to identify the origin of this discussion, which was not directly necessitated by a mere explanation of Aristotle’s text. Even if there can be no certainty on this issue, it is a fair guess that it was first introduced by Alexander, as part of his polemics against the Stoics. At various places in his writings, Alexander reproaches them for having assumed that the qualities are bodies.116 It therefore makes sense, at this point of his exegesis of GC I 4, to block a possible counter-attack based on the phenomenal perdurance of certain qualities during processes of generation and destruction. The fact that transparency remains when water becomes air, the Stoics would say, is a good sign that transparency is a body. For if transparency is just an incorporeal attribute of the bodies, how are we to explain the fact that it remains over time when these bodies vanish? Alexander’s answer must have been straightforward: it is not the same transparency that we see now in the air and previously in the water. The two “transparencies” are not numerically identical. A confirmation of this hypothesis may be found in Alexander’s comments on the last chapter of GC. In GC II 11, Aristotle argues that nothing in the sublunary world can be generated anew while being numerically (ἀριθµῷ) the same. The only possibility of return occurs at the level of the species (κατ᾿ εἶδος).117 Alexander relies on this text in order to rebut the 115
Philoponus, In GC 65.32-66.6. See in particular Mantissa, § 6, Ὅτι αἱ ποιότητες οὐ σώµατα (122.16-125.4 Bruns). New edition and commentary in R. W. Sharples, Alexander Aphrodisiensis, De anima libri mantissa, Berlin / New York, 2008, pp. 63-66. 117 Aristotle, GC II 11, 338b 5-19. 116
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Stoic doctrine of the eternal return.118 Even if it were true that two individuals could be entirely similar (undistinguishable in the Leibnizian sense), he says, the fact that they come to be at two different instants of time is sufficient to rule out their being identical ἀριθµῷ. Numerical identity would presuppose some continuant, but, as we know, a cosmic conflagration (ἐκπύρωσις) occurs between each of the two κόσµοι where two such indistinguishable individuals are supposed to exist. Admittedly, this discussion is based on GC II 11; it is un-Aristotelian, nonetheless, insofar as it focusses on individual substances, in a manner foreign to Aristotle. It is not an Aristotelian question to ask whether the same individual understood as a bundle of accidents can come back again, for the simple reason that mere accidents are no objects of science. Aristotle limits himself to considering the eventuality of the same individual substance living another existence. He is not concerned with the question of what happens to pure, i.e. purely accidental, individuality. Alexander’s strategy might have been the same in both passages. The Peripatetic commentator replied to the Stoics on qualities and substances by appealing to Aristotle’s doctrine of generation. But the intrinsic needs of his refutation meant that he had to fight on his adversaries’ battlefield, which was no longer Aristotelian. We read at the end of § 4.4 an argument which does not appear in Philoponus. The author says: But if the accident were to remain after the destruction of the substance, then every accident attached to the destroyed thing would inevitably belong to the generated thing. But things are not that way.119
To my knowledge, this argument has no parallel in ancient polemics against Stoic qualities. It may thus have been introduced by the author, and this is all the more likely as it is reminiscent of the thesis of the Islamic theologians according to which there can be no accident deprived of any substratum.120 But we cannot exclude the possibility that it was already present in Alexander’s commentary. We should note, from this perspective, that its lapidary formulation reminds us of the series of brief arguments we find at Mantissa § 6, aiming to show that “qualities are not bodies”. 118
For a reconstruction of his argument based on Greek and Arabic sources, see M. Rashed, “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Particulars and the Stoic Criterion of Identity”, in R. W. Sharples (ed.), Particulars in Greek Philosophy. The Seventh S.V. Keeling Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Leiden / Boston, pp. 157-179. 119 Talḫīṣ 17.18-19. 120 See Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, p. 76.
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The conclusion of this section, § 4.5, raises interesting questions about the author’s context. He writes: Therefore, let it be agreed that it is some one accident which belongs to the generated thing and which appears in it after its coming-to-be or with its coming-to-be (ba‘da wuǧūdi-hi aw ma‘a wuǧūdi-hi), in the same way as it belonged to the thing that was destroyed. And maybe things are different from that.121
There are at least two points needing some explanation here, namely the being in time of the accident and the exact signification of the hesitation expressed by the author in the last sentence. To begin with the first issue—the temporality of the accident—let us try to understand the meaning of the distinction between after and with. The author is likely to envisage time as discontinuous, i.e. consisting of a succession of discrete instants. His view would then be that there is a first instant when the substance is generated, and a second instant when it receives an accident. Such a doctrine is unknown among the Greeks. It is well attested, by contrast, in kalām schools. As such, I even dare say that it constitutes a clear mark of provenance: no “mere” Peripatetic would ever have made such a point, which was had no significance from the point of view of Aristotelian physics. So, what is the issue at stake? The debate focuses on a premiss belonging to the main argument of the Mu‘tazilites aiming at proving that the world cannot be eternal a parte ante.122 This premiss says that there is 121
Talḫīṣ 17.20-21. If we are to follow the convenient presentation of Imām al-Ḥaramayn alĞuwaynī, Kitāb al-Iršād ilā qawāti‘ al-adilla fī uṣūl al-i‘tiqād, ed. M. Y. Mūsā and ‘A. ‘A. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd, Cairo, 1950, pp. 17-18, the famous argument is based on four definitions and six principles (uṣūl): (def-1) The world is everything existent except God (def-2) The world consists of substances and accidents (def-3) Substance is what has a three-dimensional situs (def-4) The accident is the entity the bearer of which is the substance. (pr-1) Establishment of the accidents (iṯbāt al-a‘rāḍ) (pr-2) Establishment of the fact that they are produced (iṯbāt ḥadaṯi-hā) (pr-3) Establishment that a substance cannot be deprived of accidents (pr-4) Things produced (ḥawādiṯ) cannot be without a beginning (pr-5) Substances are not prior to the things produced (lā tasbiqa al-ḥawādiṯ) (pr-6) What is not prior to the thing produced (al-ḥādiṯ) is produced (ḥādiṯ) The conclusion is that the substance is itself produced. The debate over the possibility of a substance having no accident at all, or some classes of accidents but not the others, arises in the discussion of pr-3 (see e.g. the substantial presentation provided by al122
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no substance without accident. It was accepted by virtually all the mutakallimūn,123 since with very few exceptions, they also all accepted the proof for creation e contingentia mundi.124 Despite this basic agreement, there were, however, disputes over details, even among the Mu‘tazilites. The Ash‘arites, following the previous teaching of Abū ‘Alī al-Ğubbā’ī, held that substances necessarily bear accidents from every genus that they are able to bear. That may have been the position of the Baghdadī Mu‘tazilites, although it is also possible—the sources are unclear—that they made one or two exceptions. The head of the school, Abū al-Qāsim al-Balḫī al-Ka‘bī, is likely to have included ‘colours’ (alwān) but excluded ‘locations’ (akwān) from the range of the accidents necessarily belonging to substances. On the other side, Abū Hāšim and his Basrian disciples claimed that the substances can be deprived of every sort of accident, including colours, except the akwān, namely: ‘association’ (iǧtimā‘), ‘dissociation’ (iftirāq), ‘motion’ (ḥaraka), and ‘rest’ (sukūn). They defended a rather odd doctrine on this issue. For they claimed that while the substance can be deprived of every accident (except akwān) ‘from the start’ (fī al-aṣl)125 or ‘at the beginning’ (ibtidā’an),126 it must have either this accident or its contrary once it has acquired it, and as long as it goes on existing as the same substance. Ibn Mattawayh, for instance, writes: Know that a substance which is the bearer of accidents can be deprived of everything whose existence in it is valid, such as colour, taste, smell, etc. We only say that it is impossible for it to be deprived of location, not because of something ascribable to the fact that it bears it—so that we shall be entitled to relate something other than itself to it—but because (i) its existence deprived of situs is impossible, (ii) the existence of a situs in no direction is impossible, and (iii) such a thing cannot be realized except by means of a location. So, in this way, the existence of the former includes the existence of the latter, something foreign to the other cases. Our master Abū ‘Alī considered it necessary that the substance should not be deprived of what it bears or of its contrary, if has a contrary Ğuwaynī, Kitāb al-Iršād, pp. 22-25). According to Abū Hāšim, this principle holds true because the substances cannot be deprived of locations (akwān). As a matter of fact, it is sufficient that a substance should necessarily have at least one genus of accidents in order for the argument to be valid. 123 The unique exception seems to have been Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Ṣāliḥī. See the references in Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, p. 47. 124 An exception is Ibn al-Rēwandī. See Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, p. 225. 125 Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 52, l. 9. 126 Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Ğuwaynī, Kitāb al-Šāmil fī Uṣūl al-Dīn, ed. ‘A. S. Naššār, F. B. ‘Awn and S. M. Muḫtār, Alexandria, 1969, p. 535, l. 1 ab imo.
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(for if has no contrary, will basically not be deprived of ). He argued for that in the way he did, viz. saying that a substance cannot be deprived of colour and the other accidents. That is also, generally speaking, the way adopted by our master Abū alQāsim, even if he is not reported to have indulged in the details recalled here. As to Abū Hāšim and his disciples, they held the view that the substance can be deprived of these determinations from the start. For if some colour comes to be in it, it is not valid that thereafter, it should be deprived of it, as long as it exists, except if it turns to the contrary, which situation is identical to the first insofar as (i) its existence in the substance is equally valid, (ii) its annihilation comes with its contrary, and (iii) its basic destruction can only proceed from its bearer’s destruction.127
This dispute between Abū ‘Alī and the Baghdadians on the one side, Abū Hāšim and his followers on the other, appears also in Abū Rašīd alNīsābūrī, who gives further details, which confirm globally what we already know.128 These texts allow us to reconstruct the general context of the remark made by the author—i.e. why he singled out the situation of the substratum at the first instant of the process of acquisition of a new determination—but also why he left open both possibilities, ‘with’ and ‘after’ the coming-to-be. The issue was an object of intense discussions between the greatest kalām authorities in Baghdad around 900. It was safer, then, to allow for both possibilities: either, with Abū Hāšim, that ‘from the start’, but not after it has acquired some determinations other than location, the substance might remain deprived of them; or, with al-Ğubbā’ī and al-Ka‘bī, 127
Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 52. See Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 62. See also Mānkdīm Šešdīv [ol. Qāḍī ‘Abd-al-Ğabbār], Šarḥ al-Uṣūl al-ḫamsa, ed. ‘A. ‘Uṯmān, Cairo, 1965, p. 111. It is worth noting that both Mānkdīm Šešdīv and al-Ğuwaynī attribute to the upholders of Aristotelian ‘matter’ the thesis that the substance can be deprived of every accident. Mānkdīm Šešdīv, loc. cit., writes: “There is a dispute here with the upholders of the hyle (aṣḥāb al-hayūlā). They form a group which went as far as to say that the inviduals (al-a‘yān) are eternal while the combinations (al-tarākīb; on this term, see infra, p. 314315) are produced. They have designated it with horrid expressions such as ‘the usṭuquṣṣ’, ‘the simple, ‘the clay’, ‘the element’, ‘the hyle’, and so forth”. Similarly, alĞuwaynī, Kitāb al-Iršād, p. 23: “The heretics allowed for substances being deprived of all accidents. The substances, in their terminology, are called ‘the hyle’ and ‘the matter’ (al-mādda) [relying on mss Ḥ and M, see n. 4], while the accidents are named ‘the form’”. Both criticisms may very well apply to our text, if we take the ‘after’, as opposed to the ‘with’, seriously. For in this case, what is described is indeed an initial state of the matter in which it is deprived of any form, this being understood as a combination (tarkīb) of the elemental qualities. 128
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that this ontological status is no less of a contradiction than al-Ṣāliḥī’s position,129 so that the substance must realize the whole range of its possible determinations as soon as it is what it is. Nothing in the present argument definitely implies that the author takes change to be continuous, nor discontinuous. Aristotle himself, after all, evokes, at least according to the tradition, the “first instant of change”.130 Maybe he felt that the issue was controversial, and not essential to his purpose after all. What strikes the reader, in this context, is the not unrelated fact that if we are right, the author tends to envisage the subject of change not as the atomic bearer of the accidents—in conformity with the kalām approach—but as an Aristotelian substance. Let us finally say a few words about the second interesting issue raised in § 4.5, namely the slight hesitation expressed by the author with respect to what he has just said. The sentence “[a]nd maybe things are different from that” obviously pertains to the more general issue dealt with in the last part of the chapter, namely whether the “same” accident in the first and in the second substance is one and the same being or only perfectly similar. Why does the author, we may ask, after having unambiguously affirmed that the identical accident in the two substances cannot be the same, now adopt such a non-committal position on this issue? Perhaps this question should not be pressed too hard. The author’s last sentence may just betray a sense of urbanity, by not giving the impression of scholastic pedantry. But if we want to make better sense of it, we can also remark that it would fit well within a kalām framework. The first, general reason is that it would suit a theologian discussing a thorny question of ontology to concede that, after all, since it is God who creates the substances and their accidents, it is perfectly possible to imagine that God is able to keep one and the same accident in existence even if there is some change at a deeper level— namely that of the composite of the substratum and the form. In other words, even if for a main stream mutakallim accidents are not bodies, it would be possible for him to claim, in (superficial) agreement with the Stoics, that one and the same accident may remain in two different substances. Although it is much more reasonable to think that we have two different accidents which are intrinsically similar, from a formal, i.e. purely theological, point of view, nothing prevents one and the same accident from remaining numerically present in both. 129
See above, p. 112, n. 123. See Aristotle, Phys. VI 6, 236b 19-23. For an insightful interpretation of what Aristotle means, see B. Morison, “Le temps primaire du commencement d’un changement”, in J.-F. Balaudé and F. Wolff (eds), Aristote et la pensée du temps, Nanterre, 2005, pp. 99-111, p. 101. 130
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There is a more cogent reason, however, grounded in the kalām discussions about the ‘return’ (or ‘resurrection’, i‘ādat). The Muslim theologians were not in agreement about which entities are able to be created again, i.e. to be the same again as what they used to be after a period of annihilation. An informative report is provided on this issue by the doxographer Abū Manṣūr al-Baġdādī: Our master Abū al-Ḥasan al-Aš‘arī, may God have mercy upon him, said that the return (al-i‘āda) of everything that has been annihilated after its existence, be it a body or an accident, holds true. Among our companions, al-Qalānisī said that the return of the bodies holds true, but not the return of the accidents. He built his assumption on his principle according to which what returns (al-mu‘ād) returns because of an entity grounded on it; but an entity cannot be grounded on an accident; that is why he rejected its return. And Abū al-Ḥasan assumed that the return is a second start. So, just as the first start held true of the body and the accident without any entity being grounded in the accident, so the second start holds true of it without any entity being grounded in it. And al-Ka‘bī and his followers from the qadariyya rejected the resurrection of the accidents. And al-Ğubbā’ī said: there are two species of accidents, persistent and not persistent. For the accident whose persistence holds true, its return after its annihilation holds true; for the accident whose persistence does not hold true, its return does not hold true. And he allowed for the return of all the accidents except those which, on his view, are not able to persist, or belong to human power. As to his son Abū Hāšim, on his view the return of what falls into the genus of what belongs to human power holds true, as far as it proceeds from God’s action, may He be exalted. And Abū al-Huḏayl said: everything the qualification of which I know is subject to return, everything the qualification of which I do not know is not subject to return. And the Karrāmiyya said that what has been annihilated after existing is not subject to return, be it a body or an accident, but that it is only possible that something similar to it should be created.131
Here again, we conclude that the author is likely to have been influenced by the contemporary debates of the theologians. They were not in agreement as to whether there can be an i‘ādat of the accidents. In the context of their discussion, the issue was naturally that of the Judgment Day and Resurrection. But in view of the etymology—the Arabic root ‘-w-d 131
Abū Manṣūr ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Baġdādī, Kitāb Uṣūl al-Dīn, Istanbul, 1928, 233.15-234.14. In order to make sense of the text, I have transposed Ibnu-hu Abū Hāšimin from l. 9 to l. 10, so as to read: wa-ibnu-hu Abū Hāšimin yaṣiḥḥu ‘inda-hu …; cf. Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Ğabbār, Al-Muġnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-al-‘adl, vol. 11 (Al-taklīf), ed. M. ‘A. al-Naǧǧār and ‘A. al-Naǧǧār, Cairo, 1965, p. 459, ll. 13-15.
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expressing the simple idea of return—one could not help applying the upshot of this discussion to the ontological discussion about the status of accidents. It was easy to recognize, in Alexander’s rejection of the Stoics, a move familiar to some Mu‘tazilites: Al-Ka‘bī in particular, whose stance was identical to Alexander’s insofar as he rejected the idea that any two accidents separated by a period of time can ever be considered as the same, but also, to some extent, Abū ‘Alī and Abū Hāšim, who, as was their wont, introduced refined distinctions in the formulation of the whole question. Against this background, it was natural to follow Alexander, but also to add a note of caution, in light of the Islamic debates held in the theological circles of the capital.
Section 5: On the Different Kinds of Change and Change According to Place This chapter corresponds to the first paragraph of the fifth chapter of GC (320a 8-27), the long section of the treatise devoted to growth. This paragraph is expanded by the author in an interesting way. For the text, as we shall see, may contain some precious indications of Alexander’s lost exegesis. The first part of this section, § 5.1, states that change takes place in four categories, and always proceeds from potentiality to actuality.132 The author follows his source closely. Aristotle had said: Change from this to that, from a potential to an actual substance, is generation; change in respect of size is growth; change in respect of an affection is alteration—the latter two being change from a potential to an actual size or affection. 133
132
See Talḫīṣ 19.1-5. Aristotle describes the change in each category as proceeding from something in potentiality (δυνάµει) to something ἐντελεχείᾳ. We should not think that the author is necessarily responsible for the rendition of this last term as bi-al-fi‘l, ‘in actuality’. It was already customary among the Arab translators, together with the transliteration of the Greek anṭalāḫiyā, tamām, kamāl and istikmāl. See R. Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context, London, 2003, p. 270, for the extensive presence of al-fi‘l in the translation of the Metaphysics. It is worth noting, however, that it was not Isḥāq’s usual way of translating ἐντελέχεια, in the Physics at least. For in this work, Isḥāq translates ἐντελέχεια eight times by istikmāl, twenty-four times by kamāl and only once by fi‘l (Phys. III 1, 201a 17)—see Wisnovsky, Avicenna’s Metaphysics, pp. 273274. In Gerardus’ translation of GC, ἐντελέχεια is systematically rendered by fi‘l (for ἐντελεχείᾳ = *bi-al-fi‘l = actu, see 16b 21, 24, 17b17, 24, 26, 20a 13, 20b 11, 26, 22a 6, 13, 26b 31, 34b 9, 34b 13; see also 20a 15 εἰς ἐντελέχειαν = ad actum, 20b 21, ὑπ᾿ ἐντελεχείας = ab actu, and 20b 33 εἰς ἐντελέχειαν µεγέθους = ad magnitudinem actu). The two occurrences from the second book (34b 9 and 34b 13) prevent us from assigning this terminological choice to the anonymous revisor postulated by Serra, “Note sulla traduzione arabo-latina del De generatione et corruptione”, pp. 419-427, for the first book of GC exclusively (I have suggested identifying the revisor as Ibrāhīm Ibn Bakkūs, a Syriac scholar living in Baghdad during the first half of the 10th c.: see M. Rashed, “De generatione et corruptione – tradition arabe”, in Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, Supplément, Paris, 2003, pp. 304-314, p. 308). To sum up, the translation of ἡ ἐντελέχεια by al-fi‘l does not provide any clear indication as to the authorship of the Arabic version used by the author. See below, pp. 355-358. 133 GC I 5, 320a 12-16.
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Aristotle does not mention the different categories according to which the change may occur, but only ‘the respect in which’ (the περὶ ὅ) it takes place. It was however plain to anybody that he was alluding to the categories. Philoponus, for instance, interprets the ‘respect in which’ as the matter of the change, and writes: […] all the change […] differ in respect of matter, because one subsists in a different category from another. For growth and diminution fall under quantity, coming-to-be concerns substance, and alteration concerns quality. This is what he means by the words ‘in respect of which’.134
Obviously, the author is not concerned with the explanation of Aristotle’s idiosyncratic terminology. What he retains from the beginning of the chapter is the basic fact of there being change according to four main categories. At § 5.2, the author briefly states the main tenets of the chapter to follow. Aristotle, after saying that the different changes may belong to different ‘in respect of whiches’, argues that the manner (τρόπος) of each change can also differ. Aristotle explains what he means in the following lines: each change may or may not imply a change according to place and if it does, its behaviour with respect to place is not the same. He writes: For, clearly, what alters does not necessarily change its place, nor does that which comes to be; but what grows and what gets smaller does, though not in the same way as what is in local motion.135
This sentence left the tradition with the sort of clarificatory task it was fond of. Local motion is not necessary in the case of alteration or generation. It was of course just a step further to claim that when alteration or generation takes place, local motion sometimes occurs and sometimes not. The author, however, has something more intriguing to say: The change according to place also may belong to these changes: in the case of growth, by necessity, in the case of generation, sometimes by necessity and sometimes as a possibility, in the case of alteration, in an accidental way.136
134
Philoponus, In GC 70.26-29. GC I 5, 320a 17-19. 136 Talḫīṣ 19.6-7. 135
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We shall understand this sentence better later, as the author will come back to the present issue. For the time being, it is enough to stress the difference between it and what Aristotle says. We can start our inquiry by comparing Aristotle’s original text with Gerardus’ version, in order to observe how such a text might have been translated into Arabic. Gerardus writes: Nos enim invenimus alteratum non mutare locum procul dubio neque generatum etiam; quod autem augmentatur et quod minuitur permutant, verumtamen illud est secundum modum alium ab illo …
Both texts are nearly identical. Yet there is a difference: instead of the “necessarily” (ἐξ ἀνάγκης) of the Greek, Gerardus’ version has procul dubio, ‘without (any) doubt’.137 It is likely, if Isḥāq is the author of this change, that he made it in order to avoid the dangerous ambiguity produced by the scope of the modal phrase. In the Greek, there is no such ambiguity because in the phrase φαίνεται γὰρ τὸ µὲν ἀλλοιούµενον οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης µεταβάλλον κατὰ τόπον, the negation οὐκ bears on ἐξ ἀνάγκης. This type of construction would not be natural in Arabic, where the negation, as in French for instance, bears more naturally on the whole phrase or sentence. To explain this, we can take the example of the Latin. Let us suppose that instead of Nos enim invenimus alteratum non mutare locum procul dubio, Gerardus had written: Nos enim invenimus alteratum non mutare locum ex necessitate. It would have been possible to understand this as meaning that it is necessary for what alters not to change its place. But what the Greek says is entirely different. For since the οὐκ bears only on ἐξ ἀνάγκης, the sentence means that there is no necessity that what alters changes its place.138 That probably explains why Isḥāq, or perhaps already Ḥunayn in Syriac, changed the Greek, replacing the modal notion of necessity by a different one. The expression procul dubio, “without (any) doubt”, contrarily to ex necessitate, cannot be understood as bearing on the whole previous phrase. It is immediately plain, for any reader of the Latin—and the same holds for the Arabic—that it must go with the negation. 137
In his translation more Gerardi of the medieval Hebrew version, A. Tessier (p. 100) chose the adverb omnino. 138 This can be understood in two different ways, namely as saying either (i) that local motion is always purely concomitant to the process of alteration, i.e. that every process of alteration, even accompanied by a local motion, can in principle occur without any local motion occurring, or (ii) that local motion occurs in some cases of alteration, and does not occur in some others. For the correct answer according to the author, see below, p. 132.
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Thus, both in the Greek and in Isḥāq’s Arabic, a classification was suggested, according to which change in place (i) necessarily/always belongs to change in quantity, i.e. growth and diminution; (ii) does not necessarily/only sometimes belong(s) to change in quality, i.e. alteration; (iii) does not necessarily/only sometimes belong(s) to change in substance, i.e. generation and corruption. Since in the present chapter at least, Aristotle is only interested in the relation of growth and diminution to place, he does not explain what he means by οὐκ ἀνάγκης in the case of alteration and generation. More specifically, he does not say whether he asssumes some difference between them. He thus leaves open the question whether what we have here is a tripartition or a mere bipartition. By contrast, the author draws a distinction between generation in the case of which, he says, change in place occurs “sometimes by necessity and sometimes as a possibility”, and alteration, in the case of which change in place is always purely accidental. We shall come back to this issue below. From the end of § 5.2 to the end of § 5.4, the author addresses the question of growth and its topological features. Although his treatment remains close to Aristotle’s text, we find some attempts at giving a more precise description of, so to speak, geometrical growth as opposed to biological nutrition, which he will envisage in the next chapter. These considerations are not without interest, so let us dwell upon them for a moment. The first notable element appears at § 5.3, where the author tries to capture the notion of the rotation of a sphere. Aristotle writes: […] that which is in local motion changes its place as a whole, whereas what grows is like something that is beaten out: this stays put, but its parts change their place, though not in the way the parts of a sphere do. For these change in the same amount of space, while the whole stays put. The part of a thing which grows, however, continually occupy more space, and those of a thing which gets smaller occupy less.139
Prima facie, Aristotle’s description seems rather plain. But on a closer look, there is something puzzling in it, namely the notion of the parts of a sphere. Moreover, Aristotle does not attempt to define rotation. He says that the parts of the sphere change their place, while the whole sphere, or the sphere as a whole, remains in the same place.140 Yet, this is a property 139 140
GC I 5, 320a 19-25. See also Plato, Resp. IV, 436D-E.
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of the rotation, not a definition. For one could envisage many permutations of the parts of an immobile sphere which obviously would not be rotations. Philoponus does not improve on Aristotle here. He contents himself with repeating more or less verbatim what Aristotle’s text said: On the other hand, he says, does not the way in which a growing thing changes in respect of place resemble the circular motion of a sphere? For as the growing thing changes in respect of its parts while remaining in its original place, so apparently does the sphere. Or is there a difference here too? For while the sphere continues as a whole to occupy the same amount of space despite having parts which change in respect of place, the parts of the growing thing expand into more space and those of the diminishing thing contract into less.141
Unlike Philoponus, the author felt unsatisfied with Aristotle’s description. The corresponding passage in his commentary is the following: And the motion of a growing thing in its place is not similar to that of a circular body moved in itself. For the latter’s place remains one and the same, the only change being that of the contact between its parts and the parts of the body in which motion occurs—since each of its parts is essentially touched by some other part belonging to the body in which motion occurs.142
The author takes Aristotle’s idea of the ‘parts’ (µόρια) of the sphere very seriously.143 Aristotle explained neither why he mentioned the parts of the sphere nor how they were supposed to move. He treated the matter as too obvious to need any further comment. The parts of the sphere are thus likely to be conceived as small portions (surfaces) of the sphere revolving around its centre. This being so, we could first suggest that § 5.3 spells out Aristotle’s text in more precise terms. The author would be underlining that the parts of the rotating sphere do not simply change their places, but revolve around the centre. We should assume, if we follow this interpretation, that the author’s way of stating this fact is to say that ‘the parts’ of the sphere are in contact, successively and essentially (ḏātiyyan), with the parts of the surrounding body. But such a claim appears rather arbitrary. Since these portions of the sphere, for Aristotle, cannot be ‘essential’ at all, but are described as lying on its outer surface by an act of our geometrical 141
Philoponus, In GC 71.31-72.2. Talḫīṣ 19.12-14. 143 More seriously, at any rate, than modern exegesis. See e.g. A. Code, “On Generation and Corruption I. 5”, in F. de Haas and J. Mansfeld, Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption, Book I, Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford, 2004, pp. 171-193. 142
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imagination, it is odd to pretend that they are essentially touched by ‘the parts’ of the surrounding body. In an Aristotelian world, what does not really exist has no essential property. Therefore, if we reject this interpretation in terms of “orthodox” parts, we may imagine that the author had another mereological doctrine in mind. Philoponus is silent. What about Alexander? A superficial answer would be that as a true Peripatetic, Alexander is unlikely to have departed from Aristotle on this issue. That is not necessarily the case, however. For Alexander had a very peculiar doctrine of mathematical objects, according to which their pure dimensions in some sense exist, namely insofar as the motion of the physical bodies occurs with respect to them.144 That appears from a Byzantine scholium preserving a fragment of his lost commentary on the Physics. In this text, Aristotle argued that something indivisible is moved only by accident, insofar as the body or the magnitude (ἢ τοῦ µεγέθους) in which it is present is moving.145 Commentators were thus left with an aporia, bearing on the exact meaning of this addition. How should we interpret it, if neither the surface nor the line exists apart from the moving body? As an answer to this aporia, Alexander said: In adding this, he did not mean that the surface or the line can subsist or move without body, but he claimed that they are thought in the body and that the body’s motion finds its perfection according to them, which somehow inhere in it. For motion occurs according to length and width.146
This explanation is enlightening with regard to Alexander’s theory of mathematical objects. It is of course perfectly Aristotelian to claim that these objects are somehow present in the sensible matter.147 It is much more interesting to link them to the motion of the sensible objects. The line and the surface exist, according to Alexander, because they are remarkable 144
For my reconstruction of Alexander’s mathematical ontology, with a discussion of the recent bibliography (in particular I. Mueller’s seminal paper, “Aristotle’s Doctrine of Abstraction in the Commentators”, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, London and Ithaca, NY, 1990, pp. 463-480 and R. Sorabji’s insightful remarks in The Philosophy of the Commentators. A Sourcebook, London, 2004, 3 vols, vol. 3, p. 293), see Commentaire perdu, pp. 58-65. 145 Aristotle, Physics VI 10, 240b 8-12. 146 For the edition, see Commentaire perdu, p. 416: οὐχ ὡς δυναµένης τῆς ἐπιφανείας ἢ τῆς γραµµῆς ἄνευ σώµατος ἢ ὑφεστάναι ἢ κινεῖσθαι τοῦτο πρόσκειται, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι ἐν τῷ σώµατι ἐπινοοῦνται καὶ ὅτι ἡ τοῦ σώµατος κίνησις κατὰ ταῦτά πως ἐν τούτῳ ὄντα ἀποτελεῖται· κατὰ γὰρ µῆκος καὶ πλάτος ἡ κίνησις. 147 See Metaph. M 3 in particular. This is the interpretation of J. Lear, “Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mathematics”, Philosophical Review 91, 1982, pp. 161-192.
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from the point of view of the motion of the natural body. Such a doctrine fits perfectly well with the idea that astronomy, i.e. the science of the moving spheres, is a branch of mathematics. For in this case at least, “lines” such as the equators and the axes of the spheres and “surfaces” such as the spheres themselves exist inasmuch as they are essentially connected to the motion of the spheres. In this neo-Aristotelian context, it is worth noting that in one place at least, Alexander seems to have described the surface of a body as one of its “parts” (µέρος)—provided that the body is then envisaged qua threedimensional. It would not be totally out of place, therefore, to suppose that Alexander considered the remarkable circles of any rotating sphere (its “meridians” in particular, if it is rotating in the plane of the “equator”) as a special kind of parts for it. To illustrate this possibility, let us dwell for a moment on another passage of the Physics and its interpretation by Alexander. In the fourth book of the Physics, Aristotle seems to imply that the surface is a part (µόριον or µέρος) of the body.148 The commentators were puzzled by this claim. Simplicius proposes two explanations. According to the first, Aristotle is speaking of the part in a relaxed way here. True, Aristotle argues in the Categories that a quality ἐν ὑποκειµένῳ cannot be considered a part of the item to which it belongs.149 But the context is not the same, and after all, it is possible to think, from a wider perspective, that everything that contributes to the completion of the individual substance (τὰ ὁπωσοῦν συµπληροῦντα) is one of its “parts”. Simplicius then suggests a second explanation, which he attributes to Alexander. He says: Also, if a body is composed of the three dimensions and the surface is one of the dimensions, as Alexander says, why should it not be called a part of the body?150
This quotation is not immediately clear. For, properly speaking, the surface is not a dimension of the body, but composed of two dimensions. This very objection is made by Simplicius in the lines which follow: But how can the surface be one of the three dimensions, if a surface is something having length and breadth? But is clear that also as such [i.e. also as having both length and breadth], it is a part. And if one takes a body to be
148
See Aristotle, Phys. IV 3, 210a 34-b 1. See Aristotle, Cat. 2, 1a 24-25. 150 Simplicius, In Phys. 554.16-18 (Urmson’s translation, p. 48). 149
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something limited, what prevents the limit being a part as contributing to the limited body?151
One may wonder whether Alexander really considered the surface one of the three dimensions. Fortunately, we have a parallel passage in another Byzantine scholium stemming from his lost commentary on the Physics, which provides the following considerations: We investigate whether the surface is in the body like a state or an affection and, generally, as in a subject, or rather, which is also better, like a part in a body (as Aristotle himself said), not qua of-such-a-magnitude or qua totality, but qua three-dimensional.152
If we are to trust this scholium, Alexander’s formulation was in fact less problematic than in Simplicius’ report. Alexander did not claim that the surface was a dimension of the body, but that it was a part of the body viewed as a dimensional object. It seems likely that the scholium is closer to Alexander than Simplicius. At any rate, Alexander had original ideas on mereology, according to which the geometrical dimension is either a part, or a constitutive element of a part of the body. Can Alexander’s mereological doctrine possibly explain what we find in the Arabic text? Once again,153 yes and no. Yes, because the author may have been aware of Alexander’s view, according to which the parts of the rotating sphere, i.e. a system of two perpendicular great circles viewed as its dimensions, touch the parts of their environment. No, because even if Alexander actually said something similar, we would have expected the author to be more explicit. The most we can say is that he adapted a general idea found in Alexander to another context. I would like to suggest that here again, the specific framework of the author is that of kalām atomism. The parts he alludes to are in all likelihood viewed as geometrical atoms constituting the surface of the sphere. He would say that when the sphere is rotating, each of its atoms touches, one after another, atoms of the containing body within which rotation occurs. The phrase “all of its parts are essentially touched, one after another, by the parts of the body in which motion occurs”, from this perspective, is illumi151
p. 48).
152
Simplicius, In Phys. 554.18-21 (Urmson’s translation substantially modified,
For the Greek text, see Commentaire perdu, p. 194: ζητοῦµεν ἡ ἐπιφάνεια ἐν σώµατι, ἆρά γε ὡς ἕξις ἢ πάθος ἐστὶ καὶ ὅλως ἐν ὑποκειµένῳ, ἢ µᾶλλον, ὅπερ καὶ ἄµεινον, ὡς µέρος σώµατος (ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς Ἀριστοτέλης εἶπεν), οὐχ ᾗ τοσόνδε οὐδὲ ᾗ ὅλον, ἀλλ᾿ ᾗ τριχῇ διαστατόν. 153 See above, p. 90.
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nating: it says that we can distinguish, on the sphere and on the interior surface of the containing body, minimal parts which exist essentially, or per se. This would be very natural if the author had been influenced by the physics of kalām. As already recalled,154 rational theologians were all, with one or two exceptions, atomists. Moreover, the atoms of the mutakallimūn had the peculiarity of being perfectly indistinguishable from one another from the point of view of shape and magnitude. Thirdly, these atoms were regularly designated as ‘parts’ (ǧuz’, pl. aǧzā’) by their upholders.155 All these features explain why and how the ‘parts’ of the sphere can touch the ‘parts’ of the containing body essentially (ḏātiyyan). What is at stake is a special case of contact in terms of kalām atomism. All the more so, as the contact of a sphere and a plane was a stock example of the Islamic defenders of atomism. Since Antiquity, the question of the tangency of a straight line and a circle had raised interesting questions among mathematicians and philosophers.156 If the circle touches the line at a single point, and not along a small segment of its circumference, the point, i.e. the indivisible, must have some existence. In the Islamic world, this model was considered one of the “geometrical proofs” in favour of atomism. Avicenna writes: They have established the indivisible part by means of different proofs. One of them consists in the motion of the sphere on the plane. They touch each other instant after instant, contact after contact. Therefore, it meets something indivisible.157
The strong tendency to ground physical atomism on geometrical considerations drawn from Euclidean epistemology antedates Avicenna by at least a century. Ibn Mattawayh explicitly attributes to Abū Hāšim al-Ğubbā’ī and Abū al-Qāsim al-Ka‘bī the comparison of their atoms to Euclid’s points and draws a deep analogy, from this perspective, between Euclid’s and Aristotle’s notion of a geometrical dimension. He writes: The ancients (al-awā’il) have different opinions. Some of them incline to our doctrine in this matter, while others are opposed to it. Abū al-Qāsim has related that they said:
154
See above, p. 88. See e.g. Dhanani, Physical Theory of Kalām, pp. 55-56. 156 See in particular Aristotle, Metaph. B 2, 997b 35-998a 6. 157 See Ibn Sīnā, Al-Mubāḥaṯāt, ed. M. Bīdārfar, Qum, 1413, p. 363. See also Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Al-Maṭālib al-‘āliyya fī al-‘ilm al-ilāhī, ed. A. Ḥiǧāzī al-Saqqā, Beirut, 1987, vol. 6, pp. 48-59. I have dealt with these texts in “Kalām e filosofia naturale”, Storia delle Scienza, vol. III: La civiltà islamica, Rome, 2002, pp. 49-72, pp. 54-55. 155
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[1] There exists an angle (zāwiya) such that nothing is narrower than it. It is impossible for lines to emerge from this angle. This shows their affirmation of the existence of the atom, otherwise all angles would have to be equivalent with respect to the emergence of lines from them. [2] In his book, Euclid mentions that a point has no parts, and that the distance from the center of a circle to its circumference is the same in all directions. But if the atom were divisible, then there would surely be infinite distances. [3] In the De caelo, Aristotle mentions that a line may be divided lengthwise but not breadthwise, that a surface is divisible in two directions, and a body is divisible in three directions; it has also been related that he, and others, held that the line has a single dimension, the surface has two dimensions, and the body has three dimensions. Abū Hāšim therefore said: This agrees with what we believe regarding the atom, otherwise, if [the division of a body] were not to reach a limit, then lines and surfaces would be similar to bodies in so far as they would have infinite distances, and therefore there would be no distinction between them.158
I would therefore suggest that the author was aware of such discussions, and influenced by the theologians’ explicit attempts, around 900, to connect their conception of the ‘indivisible parts’ with Euclidean points. Even though Ibn Mattawayh does not mention the contact of the sphere and the plane,159 this case seems to me to belong to the context of al-Ka‘bī’s and Abū Hāšim’s discussions. Here, as in the previous Sections, the author introduces into his discussion of Aristotle elements borrowed from kalām atomism. In the next paragraph (§ 5.4), the author draws a distinction between growth and translocation. Aristotle had only said that, what grows and what gets smaller , though not in the same way as what is translocated (τοῦ φεροµένου). For that which 158
See Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 75. I borrow this translation from Dhanani, Physical Theory of Kalām, pp. 148-149. 159 Note however that the first argument, that of the angle of contingency, implies considering the contact of a sphere and a plane. On this, see K. von Fritz, “Gleichheit, Kongruenz und Ähnlichkeit in der antiken Mathematik bis auf Euklid”, in Grundprobleme der Geschichte der antiken Wissenschaft, Berlin / New York, 1971, pp. 430508 and R. Rashed, “L’angle de contingence: un problème de philosophie des mathématiques”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 22, 2012, pp. 1-50 and Angles et Grandeur d’Euclide à Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī, Berlin / New York, 2015. We are not very far, then, from our theoretical model.
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is translocated (τὸ … φερόµενον) changes its place as a whole, whereas what grows is like what is beaten out: this stays put, but its parts change their place, though not in the way the parts of a sphere do.160
It is not easy to determine which category the motion of the sphere belongs to. For the rotating sphere does not change its place as a whole. But if its change is not a change according to place, it is difficult to decide according to which other category the rotating sphere changes. That is probably the reason why Aristotle remained unclear on this issue. Philoponus only repeats what Aristotle says. He writes in his commentary: That which grows or gets smaller, on the other hand, must necessarily go through a change in respect of place, not by exchanging its entire place for another, like that which is translocated, but by taking on more space etc.161
Averroes does not entirely resolve the difficulty but has the merit of coming to grips with it. In his Middle Commentary, he allows for two basic kinds of translocations, rectilinear and circular. He then implicitly chooses to interpret the whole textual sequence as dealing with each of these two kinds. In other words, the later mention of the ‘sphere’ is not a new element appearing out of the blue, but belongs to the initial comparison of growth and translocation: For that which is translocated is of one of two kinds; it is moved either rectilinearly or circularly. That which grows differs with regard to change of place from that which is being translocated in a straight line in that the latter changes its place as a whole, whereas that which grows—as well as that which is getting smaller—changes its place only with respect to its parts. It differs also from that which is being translocated in a circle, even though they both move only with reference to their parts, because the parts of a thing moving in a circle change their place in that they are shifted from it and in that they occupy an ever-increasing or even-decreasing place, whereas the parts of a thing which is growing change their places in that they occupy an ever-increasing place and the parts of that which is getting smaller change their places in that they occupy an ever-decreasing place.162
Is Averroes’ strategy convincing? We should refrain from being too severe. True, a rotation is not a revolution. But in an Aristotelian context, these two 160
GC I 5, 320a 18-22. Philoponus, In GC 71.18-20. 162 Averroes, In GC 34.3-9 Eichner. 161
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kinds of motion are hardly distinct from one another. What we could indeed otherwise interpret as an astral revolution, i.e. the motion of the stars and the planets around the earth, is in fact a rotation of the sphere in which their celestial bodies are inlaid. Hence, viewing revolution and rotation as a single phenomenon is perfectly understandable from an Aristotelian point of view.163 The author takes the opposite decision. Instead of equating revolution and rotation, he devotes a different section to each. He started, as we have seen, by drawing a distinction between growth and rotation. He now distinguishes between growth and translocation, be it rectilinear or circular. That implies that he is aware of the difference between the two types of circular motion from a topological point of view. This situation, it seems, can be explained in three different ways. (i) We can first imagine that there was nothing interesting, on this issue, in Alexander’s commentary. Alexander, like Philoponus, would have repeated Aristotle’s text, leaving the problem of the category of rotation open. What we find in our commentary would be an innovation introduced by its author. (ii) The author may have reproduced Alexander’s exegesis, contrarily to Averroes who attempted to justify Aristotle’s classification of motions in terms of the categories. (iii) Alexander’s exegesis may have been similar to Averroes’, whether because the latter, who still had the former’s commentary at his disposal, borrowed the basic ideas from it, or because both commentators, led by their deep understanding of Aristotle’s cosmology, reconstructed the present argument along similar lines. In this last case, as in the first, the author was original in drawing a distinction between rotation and revolution. A last word on the question of rotation. The first lines of the present chapter ascribe each kind of change to a different category. The author draws a distinction between growth, which belongs to quantity, and change according to place, to substance, and to quality. What about rotation, if this motion is not to be confused with revolution? For we are left with two equally uncomfortable answers: either rotation belongs to no category at all, or it falls into some category other than place (since only revolution is a change from place to place). I would like to suggest that it is this very puzzle that might have led Avicenna to affirm that rotation is a change according to the category of position (waḍ‘).164 For any reader of this compendium interested in the taxonomical aspect of GC I 5, such a claim was just one step further. 163
It is probably not fortuitous, then, if this assimilation appears in Averroes and not in Philoponus. For Averroes’ degree of Aristotelian orthodoxy is notoriously higher. 164 See above, pp. 99-100.
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In the second and last part of § 5.4, the author makes his ideas about the motion of augmentation in relation to place more precise. He singles out two different kinds. Their common feature is that the centre of the growing body remains in its place. But in the first case, growth occurs when we increase the size of the boundary enclosing the growing body, as in the case of air or any other expansive body to which we give more place, whereas in the second case, the proper limit of the growing body is extended from within. That happens, says the author, to the bodies “subject to elongation and extension without being torn apart or dismantled”. Aristotle draws a comparison between the growing body and ‘what is beaten out’ (τὸ ἐλαυνόµενον): for the latter “stays put, but its parts change their place”. Philoponus insists on the limits of this argument: is different from too. For that which is beaten out, when it increases the space it occupies in one dimension, necessarily decreases it in another; and again, if it occupies more space in one or two dimensions, it is bound to give up the space it previously occupied in the remaining dimension or dimensions. But that which grows or diminishes does so alike in three dimensions, either taking on extra space or decreasing that which it had originally.165
According to Philoponus, the total volume of the object which is beaten out remains constant. The common feature of what grows and what is beaten out is that they both have their centre remaining at the same place while their dimensions vary; their difference consists in that the volume of the former increases (or decreases) while the volume of the latter remains the same. It is its configuration alone which is subject to change. Contrary to Averroes, who does not say a word on this issue (either in his Epitome or in his Middle Commentary), the author comments upon Aristotle’s comparison. Curiously enough, he does not interpret it in the same way as Philoponus. For he seems to think it possible to submit some bodies to ‘elongation and extension’. Unfortunately, the author does not provide any example of such bodies. We cannot exclude the possibility that he did not take the care of defining the exact purpose and limits of Aristotle’s comparison. But it is equally possible that he saw the point at stake perfectly, and adopted another explanation. What the author says about the six directions, viz. up-down, right-left, forward-backward, may confirm this hypothesis. Philoponus, in his discussion of ‘what is beaten out’, introduces a consideration of the three dimensions (length, width, depth), to the effect that what is beaten out cannot be extended simultaneously in all of them. 165
Philoponus, In GC 71.25-31.
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Only what grows grows in every direction. It is probably not fortuitous, then, that the author mentions the six directions. He probably found this idea in a Greek commentary (Philoponus or Alexander), but intentionally hid the fact that it was a criterion for distinguishing ‘what grows’ from ‘what is beaten out’. In other words, he retained the dimensional considerations appearing in his source, but “forgot” their initial role, namely that of describing the process of being beaten out.166 In § 5.5, the author addresses the question of generation and its relation to place. Concerning what is generated, however, it does not universally belong to it that its place be varied when generation occurs. For it necessarily belongs to the things whose mass becomes larger or smaller when they are generated that their places vary, as when water becomes air or air becomes water—and similarly the possessing places proper to them and distinguished by nature, as when the heavy becomes light and the light becomes heavy: for when one of the two becomes the other, it does not remain stable at its first place by nature, but when it changes to the other nature, it starts moving. However, in the case of a thing whose generation does not occur in one of these two ways, its place does not necessarily vary, but it is possible for it to remain at its first place, as when something inert becomes alive: for it is possible for this, when it becomes alive, to remain at its own place, and it is possible for it to be moved. And when something alive becomes dead, it is possible for it to remain at its place by nature, unless some mover moves it by force.167
It does not universally belong to what is generated that its place should be subject to variation, because there are two basic types of generation. The author affirms that only one of them is necessarily accompanied by a change according to place, namely elemental generation. When a simple body, like water, is changed into another one, like air, there is a change of volume, which by definition implies some change of place. In such a change, some sort of spatial variation necessarily occurs, since it is necessary, when water changes into air, that the new body moves upwards. On the other hand, some substantial changes do not imply any spatial variation. When something inert becomes alive, generation is not accompanied by
166
Another explanation is that the author is simply paraphrasing Alexander. On this view, Philoponus silently departed from Alexander, while Averroes, left unsatisfied by Aristotle’s clumsy comparison as well as by Alexander’s explanation of it, decided to leave this minor issue aside from his commentary. 167 Talḫīṣ 21.3-11.
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any motion according to place—except perhaps by some internal motions, whereas the substance as whole remains unmoved. First of all, it is worth noting that the author seems to endorse an Aristotelian theory of the natural motions. The basic idea that earth and water move downwards, air and fire upwards, was probably taken up by Abū alQāsim al-Ka‘bī and his followers. Admittedly, I have been unable to find an explicit attribution of this doctrine to him but, as a rule, he tends to accept the basic features of Aristotle’s cosmology. He assumes, for instance, contrarily to Abū ‘Alī al-Ğubbā’ī, that the earth is spherical and immobile at the centre of the universe, and that the stars revolve around it.168 He also agrees with Aristotle that the four elements have ‘natures’ endowed with their own causality. Theologians were not unanimous, however, on this issue. The Baghdad school inclined to view the core features of the things around us, of Aristotle’s four elemental bodies in particular, as their natures.169 By contrast, Abū Hāšim and his followers of the Baṣra school denied that this tendency was natural to the bodies. According to them, there are no natures (ṭabā’i‘) in the world but, at most, entitative accidents regularly attached to such or such a body—its upwards or downwards impetus (i‘timād ṣu‘dan or suflan), for instance. True, the Basrians do not go as far as al-Aš‘arī, who denies the presence of an accident of i‘timād in the bodies and interprets the downward tendency of the stone and the upward tendency of fire as the direct result of a divine action.170 But they are in basic agreement with him when he characterizes the usual motions of the bodies as merely God’s habits (‘ādat).171 Even if they do not employ this term in this context, it is presupposed, I believe, by the criticisms they mount against the notion of a nature.172 The only divergence with al-Aš‘arī is that they posit the existence of an entitative attribute in the bodies, not that they would not allow the world to be otherwise than it is. That said, the present paragraph contains two elements that help us to situate it on the convoluted map of classical kalām. It holds (i) that water is 168
See Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, pp. 100-101. More on this below, pp. 367-371. 170 See Ibn Fūrak, Muǧarrad maqālāt al-Šayḫ Abī al-Ḥasan al-Aš‘arī, ed. D. Gimaret, Beirut, 1986, 272.3-10 and 276.1-4. 171 See Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, pp. 115-116. 172 See Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 133. As remarked by McDermott, AlShaykh al-Mufīd, p. 216: “The position of […] the Baghdadis has already been seen to be that God cannot intervene directly in the course of things to hold heavy bodies in the air. Now it appears that there are natural dispositions and courses according to which things exert their causality. The Basran school denies bothe these theses, giving God direct control of the course of nature. Here the Basrans show themselves quite close to the Ash‘arites”. 169
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able to change into air, and (ii) that air goes upwards. Both claims were hotly disputed by Basrian and Baghdadi Mu‘tazilites. As to (i), an entire mas’alat is devoted by Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī to the rebuttal of Abū al-Qāsim’s claim, made in the ‘Uyūn al-Masā’il, that water can change into air.173 Therefore, the author clearly sides with the Baghdadis on this issue. As to (ii), the claim that air goes upwards does not seem to have originally belonged to Basrian doctrine. Ibn Mattawayh informs us that alĞubbā’ī denied any tendency upwards even to fire.174 It is more than plausible, then, that according to him, no body at all shows an intrinsic tendency to upwards motion. Abū Hāšim did not agree with his father, recognizing an upwards motion to fire. In the case of air, however, he seems to have been hesitant. In his Magna Summa (Kitāb al-Ğāmi‘ al-kabīr), he is said to have assumed the presence of an i‘timād ṣu‘dan in the air,175 while in his Critical Examination of De caelo et mundo (Taṣaffuḥ al-Samā’ waal-‘ālam), he categorically denied it.176 Be that as it may, the thesis of air’s upwards motion might lend support to the conjecture that the author was evolving in the milieu of Abū al-Qāsim. The first sentence of the paragraph confirms this Baghdadi leaning. For in spite of the absence of any allusion pointing to this in Aristotle’s text, the author introduces a discussion of the natural motion of the elemental bodies and uses three times, in a single sentence, the word ‘nature’ (ṭab‘ or ṭabī‘a). If he is a mutakallim, this move cannot be fortuitous, for it betrays the influence of Aristotle’s commentators. More precisely, it is reminiscent of Alexander’s doctrine of natural place as the perfection of the natural bodies. To make the point clear, we can look briefly at how the Greek commentators commented upon Phys. VIII 4, 255a 28-30: “So, when fire or earth is moved by something the motion is violent when it is unnatural, and natural when it goes towards their proper activities, since they are in potentiality”.177 Alexander and Simplicius devoted some lines to explaining what these ‘activities’ (ἐνέργειαι) were. Let us first quote what Simplicius says about Alexander:
173
See Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, pp. 57-58. Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 314. 175 See Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 144. 176 Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 320. 177 τὸ δὴ πῦρ καὶ ἡ γῆ κινοῦνται ὑπό τινος βίᾳ µὲν ὅταν παρὰ φύσιν, φύσει δ᾿ ὅταν εἰς τὰς αὑτῶν ἐνεργείας δυνάµει ὄντα. 174
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But Alexander says that it is the places natural to the bodies that have been called their ‘activities’, i.e. their perfections. For, he says, Aristotle claims that each of the bodies is in actuality heavy or light, when it is in its proper place.178
Thus, according to Simplicius, Alexander holds that as long as the body is not in its natural place, it is not yet heavy or light. For instance, when water becomes air, the generated body will be called ‘light’ only when it will reach the top of the atmosphere. The air contained in a sealed bottle lying in the depths of the sea will not be said to be ‘light’, but, presumably, ‘heavy’, because of its unnatural position. It is curious that Alexander may have endorsed such a position. The situation is made even more complicated by the fact that the Byzantine scholia have preserved a cognate, albeit different interpretation of Aristotle’s passage: He calls the natural places of the bodies their activities, i.e. their perfections. For the earth is a perfect activity when it is at the centre.179
According to this new piece of evidence, Alexander agrees that the bodies are heavy or light as soon as they are what they are independently from their environment. When they reach their natural place by a translation upwards or downwards, they do not become light or heavy, but they acquire an ontological perfection which is related to the fact that they now realize the world’s order. Now, what about the author’s position on this issue? He mentions heavy and light and the fact that their mutual transformations do not happen without a change of place. But he does not state clearly whether this change of place precedes the body becoming actually heavy or light (i.e. whether this change of place is the very process of the body becoming heavy or light, as in Alexander according to Simplicius) or whether the local motion is only necessarily attached to it if nothing prevents this from happening (as implied by the Byzantine scholium). According to the second interpretation, the local motion, instead of being prior to the body becoming actually heavy or light (i.e. to the body having reached a state of actual heaviness or lightness), is posterior to it and, once accomplished,
178
Simplicius, In Phys. 1213.3-6: ὁ δὲ Ἀλέξανδρος τοὺς κατὰ φύσιν τοῖς σώµασι τόπους ἐνεργείας αὐτῶν εἰρῆσθαί φησι, τουτέστι τελειότητας. τότε γὰρ αὐτῷ δοκεῖ, φησίν, ἕκαστον τῶν σωµάτων ἐνεργείᾳ βαρὺ ἢ κοῦφον εἶναι, ὅταν ἐν τῷ οἰκείῳ τόπῳ ᾖ. 179 Cf. schol. 590, p. 523: τοὺς κατὰ φύσιν τόπους τῶν σωµάτων ἐνεργείας αὐτῶν καλεῖ, τουτέστι τελειότητας· τότε γὰρ ἡ γῆ ἐνέργειά ἐστι τελεία ὅταν ᾖ πρὸς τῷ κέντρῳ.
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gives the body already endowed with its natural form its ultimate perfection. The author will devote the next paragraph to this thorny issue. In § 5.6 indeed, the author pursues his line of thought. He has just explained that elementary generation is necessarily accompanied by two kinds of local motion: increase or decrease of the global volume, and upward or downward translation. But in the previous paragraph, as we have just seen, he had not specified the exact relation of these processes to the process of generation from a temporal point of view. Since the argument is somewhat bewildering here, let us quote § 5.6 in its entirety: And in the case of things whose generation is attached to motion, most move after having been generated and after the form has come to be in actuality, not at the generation, except in the case of the things that proceed to larger or smaller masses during their generation. For water, when it is exposed to heat, comes to be a larger mass while still remaining water which has not become air, so that the growing of its magnitude belongs to it during the process of generation, and its motion upwards belongs to it at its coming to be air. In the case of growth, however, the change of place occurs by necessity not after the thing having grown, but during its very process of growing.
With respect to things whose generation does not occur without local motion, the author distinguishes two cases. Most of them start moving after the generation of their form. The only exception seems to be the things that increase or decrease in volume when they go through substantial change. Again, the author provides the standard (and from a kalām point of view, controversial)180 example of water becoming air when heated. When, he says, the water starts being heated, it remains water for a while but it already gets more extended.181 By extrapolation, we can apply an intuitive principle of continuity and assume that, since water was already increasing before the instant at which the air came to be, there is no time interval during which the air can be generated without a simultaneous increase of volume. So far so good. Now, the difficulty is to interpret the phrase “and its motion upwards belongs to it at its coming to be air”. Prima facie, the author makes the very same point with elemental translation (upwards and downwards) that he is making with elemental transformation. Just as the transformation of water into air is accompanied by an increase of volume, the upwards motion of the body is concomitant with the coming-to-be of 180 181
See above, p. 132. Just before boiling, probably.
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the air. But how exactly should we exactly characterize the state of this body moving upwards? A natural answer would be that it is some sort of air, an air “in the making”. That amounts to Simplicius’ interpretation of Alexander.182 But that is not exactly what the author says. Rather, he seems to claim that it is the water which is moving upwards, which is odd, to say the least. But we should perhaps not press the text too hard. The author would not really mean that it is the water that moves upwards, but only the body arising from it. This body, obviously, is air, an air which would not yet be entirely “perfected” by being in its natural place. It goes upwards and becomes “perfected” air simultaneously. We are back to the scholium’s interpretation of Alexander. In conclusion, we must draw a distinction between the case of the transformation of the water into air and the case of the upwards motion of the air. On this interpretation, whereas the transformation of water is simultaneous with the process of generation, the translocation of air is immediately (cf. ‘inda, “at”) posterior to it, since the upwards motion begins when the air has just been generated. Even if the author speaks of ‘things’ (ašyā’) instead of ‘aspects’ of the process, he would actually be attempting to draw a distinction between two different phases of a single change, namely water becoming air. During the first phase, we observe an increase of volume, first of the water itself as it is heated, then of the boiling water becoming air. During the second phase, at the water’s becoming air, we observe an upwards motion of the air, which reaches its ontological perfection only then. Even if it might be questionable whether we are entitled to apply a kind of stemmatic logic to arguments in general, I believe that in the case of the evidence at stake we can do this: the agreement of the Byzantine scholium and the new Arabic text as against Simplicius makes it likely that they have preserved Alexander’s genuine explanation of Aristotle’s doctrine of the natural places. As confirmation, it seems appropriate to consider another similar case of opposition between Simplicius and the Byzantine material, namely their explanation of ‘in potentiality’ (δυνάµει) in the sentence quoted above.183 Let us put the evidence in two columns:
182 183
See my comments on the previous paragraph. See above, p. 132 and n. 177.
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Simplicius For the fire or the water or the earth or the air are not said to be in potentiality when they are not in their proper place. For if one of them were in potentiality, they would not be moved, but generated. But they are in actuality even when they are in foreign places. However, they receive their perfection when they are actual according to what they are.184
Scholium n° 591 The natural bodies are not heavy and light in potentiality before they reach their proper place—for in this case, they would not be moving any more, but they would become light or heavy –, but in actuality, they are light or heavy, while in potentiality, they are in the proper places where they get their perfection.185
Apart from minor differences in wording and syntax, these two texts are nearly identical. This similarity makes their sole divergence even more apparent: at the three (underlined) places where Simplicius mentions the ‘being’ and the ‘coming-to-be’ of the four elements without specification, the scholium speaks of ‘their being light or heavy’ and ‘their becoming light or heavy’. That leaves us with two possibilities: either it is Simplicius who has rewritten the original text and deleted the three mentions of heavy and light, or it is the scholiast who has inserted them into the text according to his own interpretation—an interpretation also found in the new Arabic text. In a difficult sentence from the same chapter of the Physics, Aristotle says (for reasons that will soon become clear, I refrain for the time being from adding any punctuation): τὸ γὰρ κοῦφον γίγνεται ἐκ βαρέος οἷον ἐξ ὕδατος ἀὴρ τοῦτο γὰρ δυνάµει πρῶτον καὶ ἤδη κοῦφον καὶ ἐνεργήσει γ᾿ εὐθὺς ἂν µή τι κωλύῃ.186 And he continues: ἐνέργεια δὲ τοῦ κούφου τὸ ποὺ εἶναι καὶ ἄνω, κωλύεται δ᾿ ὅταν ἐν τῷ ἐναντίῳ τόπῳ ᾖ.187 In general, the editors of the Physics write the phrase τοῦτο γὰρ δυνάµει πρῶτον in parenthesis, so as to translate: 184
Simplicius, In Phys. 1213.6-10: οὐ γὰρ πῦρ ἢ ὕδωρ ἢ γῆ ἢ ἀὴρ δυνάµει λέγεται εἶναι πρὸ τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οἰκείοις εἶναι τόποις· εἰ γὰρ δυνάµει τι τούτων ἦν, οὐκέτι κινούµενα ἦν ἀλλὰ γινόµενα, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα µὲν ἐνεργείᾳ ἐστὶ καὶ ἐν ἀλλοτρίοις ὄντα τόποις, τὴν δὲ κατὰ τόπον τελειότητα τότε λαµβάνει, ὅταν ἐνεργῇ καθ᾿ ὃ ἐστιν. 185 Schol. 591 (p. 525): τὰ φυσικὰ σώµατα οὐκ ἔστι βαρέα καὶ κοῦφα δυνάµει πρὸ τοῦ ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτῶν τόποις ἐλθεῖν – ἦν γὰρ ἂν οὐκέτι κινούµενα ἀλλὰ γινόµενα κοῦφα ἢ βαρέα –, ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεργείᾳ εἰσὶ κοῦφα ἢ βαρέα, δυνάµει δ᾿ εἰσιν ἐν τοῖς οἰκείοις τόποις ἔνθα τελειοῦνται. 186 Aristotle, Physics, VIII 4, 255b 8-11. 187 Ibid., 255b 11-12 (“The activity/actuality of the light consists in being somewhere, namely high up: when it is in the contrary place, it is being prevented”).
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Light is generated from heavy, e.g. air from water (for water is first such potentially), and air is actually light, and will at once realize its proper activity unless something prevents it.188
We learn from Simplicius and the scholia, however, that this was not Alexander’s interpretation. To trust the Byzantine evidence, Alexander said: That the air should be generated from water, indeed, that is the first ‘in potentiality’ with regard to air, the fact of being light.189
This scholium is confirmed by Simplicius’ commentary: Alexander understands the phrase “for it is such potentially and already light” (τοῦτο γὰρ δυνάµει πρῶτον καὶ ἤδη κοῦφον) with respect to the imperfect ‘in potentiality’ and in actuality heavy. Such a thing, he says, which is still heavy in actuality is said to be light in potentiality according to the potentiality called ‘first’; once transformed and having become light, it will immediately act according to the activity/actuality of the light. But Aristotle, at least, seems to me to say ‘and already light’ according to the imperfect ‘in potentiality’ not with respect to the heavy in actuality and light in potentiality. For the expression ‘and already light’ does not fit well with that, whereas it fits well with what has already become light in actuality.190
After criticizing Alexander this way, Simplicius gives his own solution in the following lines. The whole sentence pertains to the second potentiality, that of an object already having the ‘capacity’ (ἐπιτηδειότης) of doing something without however exercising this activity κατ᾿ ἕξιν. But how can this second potentiality be called ‘first’ (πρῶτον) by Aristotle? That is possible, says Simplicius, because the order at stake here is not that of generation (τὴν κατὰ γένεσιν τάξιν), but of perfection (τελειότητα). Under this respect, the second potentiality is of course prior to the first and may thus be called “first”. Consequently, according to Simplicius, we should put a full stop before τοῦτο γὰρ δυνάµει κτλ. and take the subsequent sentence as a whole. There are two difficulties, I believe, with Simplicius’ interpretation: the semantic inversion of τὸ πρῶτον on the one hand and, on the other hand, the fact that the neuter pronoun τοῦτο refers to the air (masculine in Greek) and not to the water (neuter in Greek). But the modern interpretation is not 188
I quote R. P. Hardie’s and R. K. Gaye’s translation in the ROTA, vol. i, p. 427. See schol. 594, p. 529: τὸ γὰρ ἐξ ὕδατος ἀέρα γενέσθαι τοῦτό ἐστι τὸ πρῶτον δυνάµει τοῦ ἀέρος, τὸ εἶναι κοῦφον. 190 Simplicius, In Phys. 1215.24-32. 189
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much better, since it takes τοῦτο to refer to the water, but arbitrarily implies that in adding immediately afterwards καὶ ἤδη κοῦφον, Aristotle has surreptitiously changed the implicit subject of the sentence.191 Be this as it may, Alexander’s interpretation is not without doctrinal interest. For it is part and parcel of his general stance on the issue of substantiality. Lightness is the first potentiality of the water, in the sense that water will be light as soon as it comes to be air, independently of its place in the universe. If the transformation occurs around the centre of the universe, the lightness will immediately be active, not in the sense that the air will immediately possess its highest perfection, but in the sense that it will immediately move upwards in order to acquire it. From this point of view, we should distinguish between the process implied by the verb ἐνεργεῖν and the state expressed by the noun ἐνέργεια. It seems that ἐνεργεῖν, “to display one’s ἐνέργεια” may have the meaning of reaching one’s full ἐνέργεια. In other words, it belongs to the very notion of ἐνέργεια to be able to engage in a process of acquiring this (full) ἐνέργεια.192 For the air at the bottom of the universe, already endowed with the form of lightness, it is already possible to ἐνεργεῖν according to this form. But this act will not just consist in the fact of being in its natural place. In a first stage, it will consist in the fact of reaching it.
191
Perhaps, in order to get rid of this difficulty affecting the general meaning of the passage (and to save Alexander’s interpretation), we should resort to conjecture, e.g. by adding a ὅ after πρῶτον, so as to read: τοῦτο γὰρ δυνάµει πρῶτον καὶ ἤδη κοῦφον καὶ ἐνεργήσει γ᾿ εὐθὺς ἂν µή τι κωλύῃ, “For water is potentially (according to the first sense) what is already light and will immediately be actual, unless something prevents it”. 192 That is presupposed by Aristotle, Top. VI 8, 146b 13-19: “Look and see also if that in relation to which he has rendered the term is a process (γένεσις) or an activity (ἐνέργεια); for nothing of that kind is an end (τέλος), for the completion of the activity or process (τὸ ἐνηργηκέναι καὶ γεγενῆσθαι) is the end (τέλος) rather than the process or activity itself”. This opposition between the present and the perfect contradicts Alexander’s interpretation of Aristotle’s use of the future ἐνεργήσει (assimilable to the present) in the Physics (see previous note). Alexander, In Top. 465.24-29, comments on the Topics passage in the following way: “It is as if someone were to say that ‘white’ is the body moving towards whitening. For since it is becoming white but has not yet reached its goal, i.e. has not yet become white, the definition is not correct, because it has not grasped the end. Or, again, ‘white is the colour distancing itself from blackness’. Here too, the definition is not correct. For the fact of distancing oneself from blackness is not enough to make the goal manifest”. It is worth noting that Alexander carefully avoids mentioning natural locomotion, although he introduces the κινεῖσθαι terminology absent from Aristotle’s text. That is probably because he already had his interpretation of the ἐνέργεια of the elements as a final and local τέλος in mind.
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This distinction may be what Simplicius failed to grasp in Alexander’s texts about natural place. True, the full ἐνέργεια of the light body, i.e. its ἐνέργεια viewed as a τελειότης, or as a state and not as a process, is to be located at the top of the sublunary world. But the ἐνεργεῖν of the light body may be either to reach this place or to be at it. Alexander’s texts were unclear, for he did not always spell out what he meant by the ἐνέργεια of the light and the heavy, that is whether he meant their fully accomplished state or only their being endowed with the form of lightness enabling them to reach their place. According to Alexander, the realization of the already existing form, e.g. that of lightness when air is at the bottom of the universe, occurs only after the light object has reached its natural place (the top of the atmosphere). But that does not mean that its lightness is only potential until then. That only means that it is not yet fully accomplished, or perfected. It is this point, I presume, that escaped to Simplicius. From texts in which Alexander was saying that the (already existing) lightness finds its realization only at the top of the universe, he extracted the conclusion that according to Alexander, lightness was only potential at the bottom of the universe. The mention of the ‘form’ (al-ṣūra = τὸ εἶδος) at the beginning of the paragraph193 might confirm the interpretation suggested. According to Alexander, perfection (τελειότης) is something like the form of the form. As such, it plays a crucial role in his essentialist interpretation of Aristotle. Perfection is the final state possessed by a substance which is already formed. According to the Byzantine scholia, Alexander claimed that it is the air in actuality, i.e. the air as already endowed with its natural form, that is naturally subject to upwards motion. The only thing it still has to acquire is the perfection of being at its natural place, namely at the top of the atmosphere. It is telling, then, that the author says that in most cases, motion occurs after the form has become actual. “In actuality” is implicitly opposed, here to “according to its perfection”. While the form of the air is already actual, the air has not yet reached its (local) perfection. It is plain that this discussion cannot have originated independently from Alexander. We have here a good account of his views on the question of elemental motion, at least such as we have reconstructed it out of the Byzantine testimonia. The fact that we find nothing similar on this issue in Philoponus’ commentary proves that the author had access to Alexander’s lost commentary on GC, and that he directly borrowed from it the present discussion of generation with respect to local motion. The author ends this section with an account of what happens to the body undergoing alteration in terms of change according to place. It is 193
See above, p. 134.
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never the case, he says, that this body qua undergoing alteration changes according to place. Every local motion is accidental to it.194
194
For a similar point, see Philoponus, In GC 71.6-15.
Section 6: On Growth This chapter is devoted to explicating growth. The problem is to distinguish growth from any increase of size whatsoever, without on the other hand assimilating it to nutrition. Growth must be confused neither with increase of size simpliciter, nor with nutrition as such. These two distinctions are partly symmetrical and partly not. They are symmetrical because every instance of growth is inseparable from an increase in size and from nutrition, while every increase of size and every nutrition are not necessarily accompanied by growth. They are not symmetrical, on the other hand, because the way growth is linked to an increase in size is not similar to the way it is linked to nutrition. Increase in size is, so to speak, the “genus” of the “species” growth, while nutrition is an intrinsic condition of it. In § 6.1, the author lists the three ways in which an increase of size is able to occur. The first one consists of the coalescence (or ‘conjunction’: ittiṣāl) of two portions of the same body. The second one consists of the dilation (taḫalḫul) taking place when one body is generated out of another. The third one is, implicitly, growth, which remains to be characterized. “And no body”, adds the author, “becomes larger in any other way than these three”. Three points are worth noting. First, these three ways already result from an implicit restriction, for we have not taken the cases of unnatural increase into account. At variance with Aristotle in the Categories,195 Alexander insisted, in his commentary on the Physics, that we should distinguish between natural increase, which is an αὔξησις in the proper sense of the word, and which implies nutrition, from the other cases, such as the addition of a gnomon to a square which should not be considered a real and physical αὔξησις.196 Secondly, the example of water becoming air was present in the Physics.197 And we know from a Byzantine scholium that Alexander had criti-
195
Cat. 14, 15a 29-31. See schol. 705 (ad Phys. VIII 7, 260a 29), p. 585: σηµείωσαι νῦν ὅτι αὔξησιν λέγει κυρίως καὶ φυσικῶς ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὡς ἐν ταῖς Κατηγορίαις ἔλεγεν τὸ τετράγωνον διὰ τοῦ γνώµονος αὔξεσθαι· οὐ γὰρ τρέφεται τὸ τετράγωνον. 197 Cf. Physics IV 6, 214b 1-3: … καὶ αὐξάνεσθαι οὐ µόνον εἰσιόντος τινὸς ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀλλοιώσει, οἷον εἰ ἐξ ὕδατος γίγνοιτο ἀήρ. 196
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cized Aristotle on this issue.198 This parallel suggests that the author borrows the argument from his lost commentary on GC, especially since it appears again in the De mixtione.199 Thirdly, this distinction between the three possible kinds of increase appears neither in Philoponus nor in Averroes. But it is to be found in Avicenna’s treatise On generation and corruption. Avicenna introduces the chapter on growth in a similar way. Let us translate his text: As far as growth is concerned, it always occurs by means of some kind of accretion, but not by means of every accretion. For when something like water changing into air thickens, so that its volume increases, this thing is destroyed and something else appears, endowed with its volume, so that it is not qualified by the motion of accretion that occurs. Nor do we have growth when the qualified being remains and no accretion is conjoined with it from without, as when water subject to dilation is altered and heated while still being water. Nor is every conjoined accretion growth. For when one body coalesces with another, or when some water is added to some water so that each of the conjoined portions remains still, nothing is altered and there is nothing but a conjoined accretion. This, then, is not growth, but it is necessary that the thing that remains according to its species moves as a whole so that it increases because of what reaches it. Nor however do we always have growth in such cases. For the old man, who is no more subject to growth, may fatten, just as the growing person, at the age of growth, may get thinner. Thus, the increase of fat is not due to growth, just as the loss of weight is not due to decay. To sum up, it is necessary that such an increase be continuous and subject to a harmonious process directed to the perfection of the organism.200
Avicenna’s list is more extended than the author’s, but it is clear that they belong to one and the same exegetical tradition. There are two ways of explaining the similarities between them: either one of them has borrowed its main lines from the other, or they are both dependent upon an ancient source—in all likelihood Alexander, since Avicenna had his commentary at his disposal201 and Philoponus does not write anything similar. 198
See schol. 110, p. 238: εἰ τὸ αὔξειν τοῦ θρεπτικοῦ καὶ ἐµψύχου, οὐκ αὔξεται ὁ ἀὴρ οὐδὲ τὸ ὕδωρ. καὶ εἰ ἐν τῷ αὔξειν φυλάττοµεν τὸ εἶδος, γίνεται τὸ παράδειγµα ἄτοπον· γένεσις γὰρ τοῦτο καὶ φθορά. In the full version of his criticisms, to judge from Simplicius, Alexander probably mentioned De anima II 4, 415b 26-28. See my commentary, ibid., pp. 239-240. 199 See Alexander, De mixtione XVI, 234.24a-27. 200 Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Šifā’, Al-Ṭabī‘iyyāt, 3, Al-Kawn wa-al-Fasād, ed. M. Qāsim, Cairo, 1969, 140.4-13. 201 See Rashed, “Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Stoic Criterium of Identity”.
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Although basically similar, the two lists display some slight differences. While according to the author there are only two cases of natural size increase which cannot be considered growth, there are four according to Avicenna. We may present the evidence as follows:202 Alexander, De mixtione XVI, § 6.1 234.24-28 Dilation of water becoming air
Avicenna 140.4-13
Dilation of water becoming hotter203 Conjunction of a body (like water) with another portion of the same body Mixing Increase of volume of the adult
Avicenna distinguishes two cases of dilation, while the author limits his description of this phenomenon to the metrical change accompanying elemental generation;204 Avicenna adds the case of an adult’s growing fatter, which is absent from our text. This last example is not as fanciful as it may appear at first sight, since it shows that even if growth is necessarily related to nutrition, it is not true that any increase in size due to nutrition is growth. When the complete size of a human body has reached its adult perfection, a supplementary increase is not growth, but mere fattening. Finally, we should note that while Alexander, in De mixtione, is alone in mentioning mixing, the two Arabic texts are alone in mentioning the conjunction of two portions of the same body. It is a fair guess, then, to suppose that Alexander himself, in his commentary on GC, mentioned the coalescence of the parts of the same body and not mixing. He probably modified the example in his monograph because of the topic at hand. If that is the case, the first three examples in the Arabic texts might stem from Alexander. As for Avicenna’s last example, we have no definite means of assessing whether it
202
For the sake of completeness, I add Alexander’s corresponding passage in the De mixtione. Alexander has an example in common with the author and Avicenna, but he is unique in rejecting mixing as a possible case of growth. This is prima facie puzzling, since as we shall see, Averroes attributes to Alexander the thesis according to which growth entails mixing. We shall come back to this issue later. 203 This seems also to be implied by Alexander in his commentary on the Physics, to judge from schol. 110 (οὐκ αὔξεται ὁ ἀὴρ οὐδὲ τὸ ὕδωρ). 204 The two cases are however known to him. See above, p. 141.
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comes from Alexander or was added by Avicenna. Its absence from our text makes the second possibility more likely. Once he has distinguished these three cases of natural increase, the author spells out what growth must not be confused with, however without yet specifying what it is. He proceeds to do this in the following lines (§ 6.2): The notion of growth needs five things for its completion. The first is that every part of the growing body becomes larger than it used to be. The second is that its growth occurs by something coming to it from without—i.e. not because it would become larger than it used to be without any addition of something from without, as is the case with dilation. The third is a power capable of changing the nutriment, which is dissimilar, so as to make it similar, to the growing body. The fifth is that the growing body still has, after its growth, the same nature which it had before its growth.205
This bit of text is difficult, first, because the Arabic text is corrupt in both manuscripts (hence our addition between brackets). For there is an obvious omission somewhere in the text after ‘The third is’ and before ‘The fifth is’. The omitted sequence of words must have contained the words ‘The fourth is’.206 To fill in the lacuna, we may observe that the text as we have it takes it for granted that the nutriment and the growing body are dissimilar.207 It would be clumsy to introduce this idea only at this stage, where we are characterizing something else, namely the power (quwwa) responsible for the transformation of the nutriment. It is likely, then, that what fell out from the text was the formulation of the third rather than the fourth condition, where the author stated that the nutriment and the growing body should be different. Let us now come to the content. That growth should satisfy a list of conditions appears already in Aristotle. But in the main passage in which 205
Talḫīṣ 23.7-12. True, the Arabic text as it stands is not ungrammatical. It could be translated as follows: “And the third is that there is a power capable of changing the nutriment, which is dissimilar, so as to make it similar, to the growing body. The fifth is that the growing body still has, after its growth, the nature which it had before its growth”. We might be tempted to correct, then, “The fifth is” to “The fourth is”. But since the beginning of the paragraph did mention the existence of five conditions for growth, there must be some lacuna in the transmitted text. 207 Cf. “a power capable of changing the nutriment, which is dissimilar, so as to make it similar, to the growing body”. 206
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he formulates this idea, Aristotle gives only three conditions and, what is more, insists that they are three: For the things which belong (τὰ ὑπάρχοντα) to a thing which grows or gets smaller must be saved in its definition, and these are three: (a) each part of the growing object possessed of size is larger—of flesh if it is flesh; (b) something accedes to the thing which grows; and (c) the thing which grows is preserved and remains.208
Philoponus and Averroes in his Middle Commentary remain close to Aristotle. They do not suggest that the list presented here might be incomplete. If the commentators had felt some dissatisfaction, they could for instance have suggested that the list was provisional, or that it focused on the major features of growth only or, perhaps, that it testified to Aristotle’s carelessness for details. The author, however, is not entirely isolated in adding something to Aristotle’s list. In his Epitome (but not, as we have already said, in his Middle Commentary), Averroes expounds four criteria for growth: And we say that in the investigation of this motion we must observe the peculiar characteristics of that which grows. One of them is that the growing thing grows in all of its parts and that every one of its perceptible particles becomes larger, and the reverse process, its diminution, also takes place in the same way, namely, in all its parts. The second is that it grows through the accretion to it of something from without, namely, food, and any statement to the contrary is erroneous or reflects a deficiency in human nature. The third is that there is in it something which persists in its original state. The fourth is that that which accedes from without causes growth only when it is altered and transformed into the substance of the growing thing, for bread does not cause growth until it is changed into blood nor blood until it is changed in the case of flesh into flesh and in the case of bone into bone.209
We can present the situation by means of the following table:
208 209
Aristotle, GC I 5, 321a 17-22. Averroes, Epitome 11.15-12.3.
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Aristotle, 321a 17-22 (a) each part of the growing object possessed of size is larger—of flesh if it is flesh.
Averroes, 11.15-12.3 One of them is that the growing thing grows in all of its parts and that every one of its perceptible particles becomes larger, and the reverse process, its diminution, also takes place in the same way, namely, in all its parts. (b) something accedes to The second is that it the thing which grows. grows through the accretion to it of something from without, namely, food.
(c) the thing which The third is that there is grows is preserved and in it something which remains. persists in its original state. The fourth is that that which accedes from without causes growth only when it is altered and transformed into the substance of the growing thing.
§ 6.2 The first is that every part of the growing body becomes larger than it used to be.
The second is that its growth occurs by something coming to it from without—i.e. not because it would become larger than it used to be without any addition of something from without, as is the case with dilation. The third is a power capable of changing the nutriment, which is dissimilar, so as to make it similar, to the growing body. The fifth is that the growing body still has, after its growth, the nature which it had before its growth.
The author’s fifth criterion corresponds to Aristotle’s (and Averroes’) third one. His third and fourth criteria, as well as Averroes’ fourth criterion, represent additions to the initial list. Is Averroes’ fourth criterion reducible to the author’s third and fourth? According to Averroes, “The fourth is that
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that which accedes from without causes growth only when it is altered and transformed into the substance of the growing thing, for bread does not cause growth until it is changed into blood nor blood until it is changed in the case of flesh into flesh and in the case of bone into bone”; according to the author, if our reconstruction is correct, “The third is , a power capable of changing the nutriment, which is dissimilar, so as to make it similar, to the growing body”. It is plain that the two passages are neither identical, nor completely dissimilar. The author’s third statement, as we reconstruct it, is very similar to Averroes’s fourth one. The fourth statement of the author, on the other hand, has no direct parallel in Averroes’ Epitome. Averroes does not mention the nutritive power of the growing body here. It is difficult, then, to reach a safe conclusion on this issue. Might Alexander be lurking in the background? A little earlier in the chapter, Aristotle says: It will be better at this point to take up, as though we were meeting it for the first time, the question what sort of thing growth or diminution is, whose causes we are seeking. It appears (φαίνεται) that when a thing grows every part of it has grown (ηὐξῆσθαι), and similarly when a thing diminishes every part has become smaller; also that it is by something’s acceding to it that it grows and by something’s leaving it that it diminishes.210
The liminary position of this passage, as well as its use of the verb φαίνεσθαι, could invite us to think that it aims to set out the criteria that a description of growth must meet before dealing with the process involved.211 That seems to be how Philoponus interpreted the text. His commentary is unfortunately damaged at this point. But if we accept the corrections of the Aldina, he wrote: He does this too in the Physics in his teaching about place. Intending to treat of this, he investigates first the properties that belong to it according to common sense, so that we can accept the conclusions about it if they accord with these, and throw them out if they do not, and so that he may show the solutions of the paradoxes which present themselves about place to be correct by their chiming in with the commonsense view of the properties of place. the features belonging to the growing thing , which are three; first, the fact that 210
GC I 5, 320b 34-321a 5. See G. Ε. L. Owen, “Τιθέναι τὰ φαινόµενα”, in Aristote et les problèmes de méthode, Louvain, 1961, pp. 83-103, cf. p. 84, n. 5. 211
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there is growth in every single part of the growing thing; secondly, the fact that growth takes place as the result of something acceding from outside; and thirdly, in addition to these, although he does not bring this out here but adds it in the following section, the fact that the growing thing remains and is preserved in the form it took previously.212
The first modern editor must be correct: according to Philoponus, these three features of growth belong to it “according to common sense”, κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν. It should be noted that in his commentary on the passage of the Physics referred to in this text, Philoponus makes exactly the same point in the same terms.213 On his interpretation of this passage, we must address the definition of place by taking into account the features that we attribute to it κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν. This idea does not appear in the other commentaries. But how are we to understand this designation in the context of Ammonian epistemology? We probably ought not interpret the κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὑπάρχοντα as mathematical κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι, i.e. as pre-empirical propositions having an axiomatic value that makes their acceptance unavoidable and primary for all rational beings. Rather, the expression κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν seems to signify some kind of immediate intuition, or preconception, of the attributes of the item at stake, even though these preconceptions are likely to be the result of an empirical apprehension. As such, they are identifiable either with something similar to the standard account 212
Philoponus, In GC 88.17-28: τοῦτο δὲ πεποίηκε κἀν τῇ Φυσικῇ ἀκροάσει ἐν τῇ περὶ τοῦ τόπου διδασκαλίᾳ. µέλλων γὰρ περὶ αὐτοῦ διαλαβεῖν, ἐζήτησε τὰ κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὑπάρχοντα τῷ τόπῳ, ὅπως ἂν τὰ περὶ αὐτοῦ ἀποδιδόµενα, εἰ µὲν σύµφωνα εἴη τούτοις, ἀποδεξώµεθα, εἰ δὲ µή, ἀποσεισώµεθα· καὶ τῶν ἐπιφαινοµένων κατὰ τοῦ τόπου ἀποριῶν τὰς λύσεις ἀποδείξῃ ὀρθῶς ἐχούσας, τῷ συµφωνεῖν τοῖς κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὑπάρχουσι *** ὑπάρχοντα τῷ αὐξοµένῳ τρία ὄντα, τό τε πᾶν ὁτιοῦν µέρος αὔξεσθαι τοῦ αὐξοµένου, καὶ τὸ προσιόντος τινὸς ἔξωθεν γίνεσθαι τὴν αὔξησιν, καὶ τρίτον πρὸς τούτοις (ὅπερ νῦν µὲν οὐκ ἐπιφέρει, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἑξῆς προστίθησι) τὸ ὑποµένειν τὸ αὐξόµενον καὶ σῴζεσθαι ἐφ' οὗ πρότερον ἦν εἴδους. I adopt Williams’ translation and emendation, see his footnote 317, p. 176. More precisely, I would add in the lacuna *** something like: ἐκτίθεται δὲ νῦν τὰ κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν. 213 Compare to the text cited in the previous footnote Philoponus, In Phys. 539.18540.2: Ἐντεῦθεν λοιπὸν τί ποτέ ἐστιν ὁ τόπος βουλόµενος ἀποδοῦναι, πρότερον ἐκτίθεται τὰ κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὑπάρχοντα τῷ τόπῳ, εἶτα ἐρεῖ πόθεν ὅλως κινηθέντες οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἤλθοµεν εἰς ἔννοιαν τοῦ τόπου, καὶ εἰπὼν τὴν αἰτίαν ἀκόλουθά τινα ταύτῃ θεωρήµατα προσθήσει, εἶτα λοιπὸν ἀποδώσει τοιοῦτον τὸν περὶ τοῦ τόπου λόγον, ὃς καὶ τὰς φεροµένας ἀπορίας πρὸς τὸν τόπον, ὡς αὐτός φησιν, ἐπιλύεται, καὶ τὰ κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν καθ' αὑτὸ ὑπάρχοντα τῷ τόπῳ δείξει ὑπάρχοντα, καὶ τὸ αἴτιον τῆς δυσκολίας τῆς περὶ τοῦ τόπου θεωρίας σαφὲς καταστήσει. πρότερον οὖν, ὡς εἶπον, τὰ κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν ὑπάρχοντα τῷ τόπῳ ἐκτίθεται, τέσσαρα ὄντα τὸν ἀριθµόν.
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of the Stoic κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι, or to the common sense conceptions if one follows Charles Brittain’s distinction between them and the common conceptions.214 It is alluring to suppose that while Philoponus had an interpretation of the list in terms of common sense conceptions, Alexander took it to contain the necessary preconceptions, or the “axiomatic” requisites, for growth. Fortunately, we can compare Alexander’s and Philoponus’ interpretations of the passage of the Physics alluded to by Philoponus. According to Alexander, there are various conceptions of place. Aristotle’s task in the first part of book IV (our chapters 1-3) was to show that some of these ἔννοιαι were mistaken, while some others are correct in spite of their “inarticulate” formulation.215 It is the scientific treatment proposed in the Physics which allows us to determine which ἔννοιαι are right and which are wrong. We learn immediately afterwards that this treatment proceeds from the essential properties (τὰ καθ᾿ αὑτὰ συµβεβηκότα καὶ τὰ παρακολουθοῦντα according to the scholia, τὰ καθ᾿ αὑτὰ ὑπάρχοντα according to the Greek commentators216) and, regressing from them, ends by capturing the essence (οὐσία). Therefore, the attributes Alexander and his followers call καθ᾿ αὑτά are called κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν by Philoponus. In a nutshell, Philoponus’ κοινὴ ἔννοια as common sense conception stands halfway between Alexander’s indeterminate ἔννοιαι and his καθ᾿ αὑτὰ συµβεβηκότα καὶ […] παρακολουθοῦντα. This shift is of paramount importance. Philoponus is struggling to avoid being committed to the idea of an essential property of a thing. It is safer to characterize these attributes by the fact that we, human 214
For the standard view, see M. Frede, “Stoic Epistemology”, in K. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld and M. Schofield (eds), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 295-322, pp. 319-320 in particular. For a more restrictive account of the Stoic κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι as a sub-set of the preconceptions, see C. Brittain, “Common Sense: Concepts, Definitions and Meaning in and out of the Stoa”, in D. Frede and B. Inwood (eds), Language and Learning. Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 164-209. It would not be atypical of the Neoplatonic understanding of the Physics to insist on their empirical (a posteriori) character, as opposed to the method in mathematics and theology. See Simplicius, In Phys. 18.24-34 for a similar discussion. 215 See Commentaire perdu, schol. 40, p. 199: οὐδὲν γὰρ µέχρι νῦν περὶ τόπου ἀπέδειξε, ἀλλὰ τὰς περὶ τὸν τόπον ἐννοίας ἐφ᾿ ἑκάτερα τὰς µὲν ἐξεκαίετο, τὰς δὲ διήρθρωσεν. The last word perspicuously refers to the Stoic doctrine of ‘articulation’ (διάρθρωσις). See Diogenes Laertius vii, 199 (= S.V.F. ii, 16) and Brittain, “Common Sense”, p. 182 and n. 68. 216 See Commentaire perdu, p. 200, on schol. 41: ὧν ἡ οὐσία αὐτόθεν δυσφορήτατος, τούτων ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς εὑρέσεως τῆς οὐσίας ἀπὸ τῶν συµβεβηκότων καθ᾿ αὑτὰ καὶ τῶν παρακολουθούντων γίνεται.
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beings, naturally tend to view them as belonging to the things we are investigating. We can now grasp why Philoponus, unlike Alexander, did not feel the need to add to Aristotle’s list. Since it was only an enumeration of common sense conceptions of growth, their number was not, after all, so important. Alexander, on the contrary, considering them quasi-axiomatic statements— he was also followed in this by Averroes—had to be as complete as possible. Although it is no longer possible to know exactly what he wrote, I shall dare to suggest that he made an addition similar to what we find in Averroes’ Epitome, and specified that the nutriment and the growing thing ought to be different. The author, in turn, went one step further, and inserted into the list already expanded by Alexander the theoretical high point of chapter I 5, namely the identification of the active principle of growth in the growing thing.217 By so doing, however, he was no longer interpreting the list as a recension of axioms leading to the articulation of the essence of growth, but as mere elements of its articulated description.218 In § 6.3, the author resumes the substance of the two previous paragraphs and argues that it is the five features of growth listed in § 6.2 that explain why addition and dilation are not identical to growth. Addition is not growth because the first, third and fourth conditions of growth are not satisfied. Dilation is not growth because the second, third and fourth conditions are not satisfied. There is a difficulty here. We had tentatively suggested that the omission of GC I 2 was due to the fact that the author might have been an atomist.219 But if this is the case, how can he accept the first feature of growth, namely that “every part (kull ǧuz’) of the growing body becomes larger than it used to be” (§ 6.2)? According to kalām physics, the ‘part’, i.e. the atom, cannot become larger that what it is. Only body, i.e. a conjunction of atoms, can become larger, if some new atoms join the initial structure from without. I must confess that I had no solution to this difficulty, before Mrs. Salimeh Maghsoudlou was kind enough to draw my attention to some passages in kalām texts in which the ‘thing endowed with a situs’ (al-mutaḥayyiz) is said to ‘become larger’ (yata‘āẓamu) by the
217
See Aristotle, GC I 5, 321a 29-b 10. It is to be noted, however, that to judge from his De mixtione, Alexander might have stated the fourth condition in a similar, albeit not identical, context. See below, p. 158, n. 244. 218 For an extra argument corroborating this hypothesis, see our remarks below on § 6.8, p. 158. 219 See above, pp. 73-74.
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conjunction of another part.220 True, this doctrine is greatly at variance with what Aristotle says in our text.221 Nonetheless, it was sufficient to suggest, at a superficial level of course, that it was not absurd to take the (atomic) ‘part’ of the growing thing as capable of becoming larger than it had been before.222 From § 6.4 to § 6.7, the author rejects four things that could be thought to play the role of the nutriment, namely ‘pure matter’ (hayūlā muǧarrada), ‘pure corporeality’ (ǧismiyya muǧarrada), ‘unqualified body’ (ǧism ġayr mukayyaf) and ‘body in potentiality’ (ǧism bi-al-quwwa). Our first task is to explain the meaning of these expressions and the rationale behind them. Why should we take these four abstract items as possible candidates for being the nutriment? In order to settle this point, we cannot avoid taking Alexander’s views about enmattered substance into account. He adopts a three layered conception of bodies. They can be theoretically analysed, he claims, into matter (ὕλη), magnitude (µέγεθος), and qualities. Μatter’s only feature, according to Alexander, is that it is threedimensional. That is clearly attested in a Byzantine scholium:
220
References are given in Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, p. 46. See Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 61: al-laḏī na‘nī-hi bi-qawli-nā mutaḥayyizun huwa mā la-hu wa-li-aǧli-hi tata‘āẓamu al-aǧzā’u bi-inḍimāmi al-ba‘ḍi ilā al-ba‘ḍ; Ibn Mattawayh, AlTaḏkirat, p. 9: al-mutaḥayyizu huwa al-muḫtaṣṣu bi-ḥālin li-kawni-hi ‘alay-hā yata‘āẓamu bi-inḍimāmi ġayri-hi ilay-hi and p. 86: fa-naḥnu iḏā qulnā inna la-hu misāḥatan fa-ġaraḍunā anna-hu mutaḥayyizun wa-anna-hu li-aǧli hāḏi-hi al-ṣifati yata‘āẓamu bi-ḍammi ġayri-hi ilay-hi. 221 For what the mutakallimūn meant by this is not that the (already existing) size of the atom becomes larger, but that the unextended atom—which is identical, from a topological point of view, to a mere situs (a geometrical point)—starts participating in size as soon as it is conjoined with another one. The context is less concrete, therefore, than abstract in the Leibnizian sense. For the passages recorded in the previous note describe the status of the “situated” indivisible part, unextended by itself but able to bring about extension when taken in conjunction with other atoms. On this doctrine, according to which the atom “shares in extension” (la-hu ḥaẓẓun/qisṭun min al-misāḥa) see Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 86 and Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 58. For a presentation of the texts, see Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalām, pp. 106-113. Against the view that Abū Hāšim held the atoms to be extended, see Rashed, ‘Kalām e Filosofia Naturale’, p. 60. 222 Compare the phrase an yaṣīra kullu ǧuz’in min al-nāmī a‘ẓama mimmā kāna in our text with the use of ta‘āẓama in the kalām texts quoted above, n. 220.
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[…] the matter taken in itself is undetermined and unlimited, but it is not unextended. It becomes a magnitude after it has acquired a limit.223
That is the main point of contention with Simplicius, who takes matter to be pure indefiniteness (ἄπειρον) and denies even three-dimensionality to it—dimension being already something of a form.224 The magnitude is stereometric, or a three-dimensional extension. As stereometric, it is finite and compact (unitary). It is produced by enclosing a three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional boundary. It is the space contained within this boundary that is the magnitude. It then has a shape. In the third place, we have the sensible qualities and the hylomorphic form. For a real body presupposes that the matter which has received a shape is also endowed with sensible qualities and form. We must understand, of course, that from the point of view of generation, and not of mere description, this presentation is deeply inadequate. For the hylomorphic form is always prior to the delimitation of the body, since such a delimitation is nothing but its effect. There exists no pure stereometric body in the real world. Matter is given at once geometric and qualitative form, the latter being the cause of the former. That explains why Alexander can say, according to the Byzantine scholium just quoted: The ‘magnitude’ is the composite of the extension and the form, while what is deprived of the form and the affective qualities is “matter”.225
There is no contradiction here, but just a slightly different manner of presenting the same idea: more analytical in the former quotation, more physical in the second. Now, we shall meet a similar issue again in our passage of GC I 5. In an arduous text, Aristotle addresses the question of the nutriment and makes the point that the growing thing cannot come out of “what is potentially possessed of size and corporeal, but actually incorporeal and sizeless”.226 He then goes on to elaborate on the modalities according to which this odd thing could exist. (a) It could be separate, or (b) it could exist within another body. If it is separate, there are two possibilities: (a.i) it 223
See schol. 19, p. 184: … ἡ ὕλη καθ᾿ αὑτὴν ἀόριστος µὲν καὶ ἀπεράτωτος, οὐ µὴν ἀδιάστατος· προσλαβοῦσα δὲ τὸ πέρας γίνεται µέγεθος. See also schol. 17, p. 182: µέγεθος γὰρ τὸ ὡρισµένον διάστηµα, ὕλη δὲ µεγέθους τὸ ἀόριστον. 224 See Simplicius, In Phys. 537.32-538.14. 225 Schol. 19, p. 184: µέγεθος µὲν συναµφότερον τὸ διάστηµα καὶ τὸ εἶδος, τὸ δ᾿ ἄνευ τοῦ εἴδους καὶ τῶν παθητικῶν ποιοτήτων, ὕλη. 226 GC I 5, 320a 29-31.
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could “occupy no space except like a point”,227 or (a.ii) it could be “void and imperceptible body.”228 Of these two last options—i.e. (a.i) and (a.ii)— the first leads to an impossibility, while the second can be reduced to the former case (b). That in turn leads to new difficulties: matter would inhere in something else, while being separate from it. As Aristotle puts it: […] it would be like air coming to be from water, not because the water underwent any change, but because the matter of the air had been contained in the water as if in a vessel.229
But, as Aristotle finally adds: In this case there would be nothing to prevent there being an infinite number of matters, which might accordingly actually come to be. Moreover it is clear that air does not come to be from water in this way, as though emerging from something which itself remains.230
The conclusion of this dilemma is that “it is better in every case to make the matter not separate, by way of being one and the same numerically though not one in definition”.231 At this stage, Aristotle adds a remark whose meaning and above all function is not entirely clear: But points cannot be posited as the body’s matter either; nor, for the same reasons, can lines: the matter is that of which these are the limit, and it is impossible for it ever to exist without affections and without shape.232
This sentence gives rise to an interesting discussion among the commentators. There are two positions. According to Alexander, we must interpret “But points cannot be posited” as if Aristotle had said “For points cannot 227
GC I 5, 320b 1. For what I take to be the correct construction of the Greek, which seems to have been misunderstood by ancient and modern commentators, see M. Rashed, Aristote: De la génération et la corruption, Paris, 2005, p. 122, n. 6. 228 GC I 5, 320b 2. 229 GC I 5, 320b 8-10. 230 GC I 5, 320b 10-12. 231 GC I 5, 320b 12-14. For my choice of ‘not separate’ instead of Williams’ ‘inseparable’, see D. Morrison, “Χωριστός in Aristotle”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 89, 1985, pp. 89-105, p. 102. 232 Aristotle, GC I 5, 320b 14-17: ἀλλὰ µὴν οὐδὲ στιγµὰς θετέον οὐδὲ γραµµὰς τὴν τοῦ σώµατος ὕλην διὰ τὰς αὐτὰς αἰτίας. ἐκεῖνο δὲ οὗ ταῦτα ἔσχατα ἡ ὕλη, ἣν οὐδέποτ᾿ ἄνευ πάθους οἷόν τε εἶναι οὐδ᾿ ἄνευ µορφῆς.
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be posited”.233 That construction implies that the matter mentioned in this sentence is identical to the matter alluded to in the previous one, i.e. to the matter of generated and corrupted beings in general. This matter is what the tradition calls prime matter. Furthermore, Alexander interprets the points and lines in the sentence as referring more fundamentally to the surfaces of the Timaeus. For he seems to have said (if Philoponus, as is very likely, is more or less quoting him on this issue): While it is his intention to attack those who produce bodies out of surfaces, he brings in points as well, since it would follow from their view that what is possessed of size is also produced from points too. For, as he says in On the Heavens, ‘The same thought that makes bodies out of surfaces makes them out of points too’, although this latter seems more ridiculous—to make something possessed of size out of that which is altogether without size.234
This way of interpreting Aristotle’s sentence as an attack mounted against Plato and the Platonists, as well as the erudition displayed by using De caelo III 1, 299a 6-7, is typical for Alexander. Interestingly, the issue for him is not only to refute Plato’s theory of elemental surfaces, but also to come to grips with the basic tenets of the rival ontology. According to Alexander, Aristotle’s present aim is to argue that the spatial limits of material objects are not produced by surfaces imposing their forms from above on three-dimensional extension, but are rather, as we have seen in scholium 19 on the Physics,235 the consequence of the activity of Aristotle’s hylomorphic form: That is the reason why lines are its limits, namely, because it is at no time without some affection of form (εἴδους), for its being is bound up with these. So it is in virtue of the fact that it is inseparable from affection and shape (µορφῆς) that the matter is actual body, and not in so far as it is formless and prime matter.236
So, by saying that “the matter is that of which these are the limit, and it is impossible for it ever to exist without affections and without shape”, Aristotle would be aiming to underline the fact that it is the hylomorphic forms, and they alone, that are responsible for the existence of limited threedimensional bodies endowed with affective qualities. 233
Philoponus, In GC 81.22-31. Philoponus, In GC 81.17-22. 235 See above, p. 152, n. 223. 236 Philoponus, In GC 82.22-26. 234
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On Alexander’s view, from 320b 12 to 320b 17 Aristotle expresses his thoughts on the constitution of material substance, with no particular focus on the topic of growth. On this view, the ‘matter’ (ὕλη) under discussion is not envisaged as the matter specifically considered in the process of growth, but rather as the matter belonging to any hylomorphic substance. Alexander might have located a shift between the ‘matter’ (ὕλη) of growth mentioned at 320a 33, which is equivalent to ‘the respect in which’ (περὶ ὅ, 320a 27) growth occurs, and the matter at 320b 13, which is matter in general. But it might also be the case that Alexander made no distinction between the various occurrences of ὕλη in the whole passage. In that case, he would have thought that the ‘matter’, i.e. ὕλη in general, was already an answer to the περὶ ὅ question. Philoponus disagrees. Aristotle has written “But points cannot be posited” purposely. The ἀλλὰ µήν at 320b 14 introduces a real rupture in the text. By resorting to this double particle, Aristotle intends to come back, after a sentence dealing with matter in general (320b 12-14), to the matter of growth more specifically, i.e. to ‘the respect in which’ growth takes place. Hence, on Philoponus’ interpretation, the matter mentioned at 320b 13 and the matter mentioned at 320b 15 are not the same. Unfortunately, we do not know how exactly Philoponus understood their difference. It is possible that he explained that issue some lines later, for there is a lacuna in his commentary precisely in the line where he announces an explanation.237 He is likely to have claimed that the matter of growth, unlike prime matter (or matter in general), is already possessed of some form and affections, so that we can dispense with introducing prime matter in the present argument.238 To sum up, both Philoponus and Alexander hold that matter cannot exist without some formal determination. But whereas Philoponus takes this formal determination as quasi definitional—since it is a proper feature of the matter of growth, by contrast with prime matter—Alexander interprets it as purely descriptive: prime matter does not exist separately, but always belongs to some composite of matter and form. We can now come back to the author. As we have just seen, he rejects four possible candidates for the matter of growth, namely ‘pure matter’, ‘pure corporeality’, ‘unqualified body’, and ‘body in potentiality’. At least three of these four types were implied in Alexander’s analysis of hylomor237
Cf. Philoponus, In GC 83.1. Let it be said in passing that Philoponus’ stance here may also reflect his doubts about the necessity of positing any prime matter at all. For an updated presentation of this issue (with bibliography), see R. Sorabji, Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, Second edition, London, 2010, pp. 19-20. 238
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phic substance. A body, for him, is a bit of prime matter delimited and qualitatively informed by the activity of a form. It is likely that the author elaborates on this by successively considering each of the three layers as a possible kind of matter for growth. First prime matter taken alone (‘pure matter’), then ‘pure corporeality’ taken alone, i.e. abstract dimensionality deprived of matter, then prime matter and pure corporeality taken together—what the author calls the “unqualified body” and which obviously amounts to Alexander’s matter when “having acquired its limit” (προσλαβοῦσα […] τὸ πέρας) “it becomes a magnitude” (γίνεται µέγεθος).239 At this stage, the author envisages one last possibility, namely that of viewing the matter of growth as ‘body in potentiality”, which, in the wake of Alexander, implicitly amounts to qualified magnitude. The way the author deals with each of the four possibilities is also in agreement with the details of Alexander’s doctrine of material substance. At § 6.4, he argues that the nutriment cannot be pure matter because pure matter is deprived of dimensions and we need dimensions to account first for growth and second for the form, hence the existence, of any object. The ‘dimensions’ (ab‘ādu-hu) are the actualized dimensions of the material objects, and not their pure three-dimensionality, which, as we saw, already belonged to the matter according to Alexander. In § 6.5, the author addresses what he labels ‘pure corporeality’ (ǧismiyya muǧarrada). This is not to be confused with the third item, ‘unqualified body’. For the author draws a distinction between two ways of understanding mathematical three-dimensional objects, which again correspond to two tendencies in Alexander. According to the first approach, mathematical objects result if we strip away from the physical object its matter and affections.240 What remains is a set of dimensions, which would exist just as well if the space underlying it were a mere vacuum and not matter. That is what ‘pure corporeality’ looks like. ‘Unqualified body’, by contrast, is produced when we abstract from the physical objects their affective qualities only. What then remains is a portion of matter delimited by its external surfaces. It is this very item (matter + spatial delimitation) that appears in the scholium on the Physics. We now understand the grounds for rejecting both versions of mathematica. The first (cf. § 6.5) is unacceptable because corporeality (i.e. dimensionality) has no subsistence in the world if it is deprived of (prime) matter, and, more specifically, because growth implies an increment of 239
See above, p. 152, n. 223. See e.g. Alexander, In Metaph. 201.4-11. On this difficult text, see Rashed, Commentaire perdu, pp. 60-61. 240
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matter itself, and not just of the matter’s volume. A mere increase of volume is dilation (taḫalḫul), not growth. This argument proves that the author attributes some physical reality to prime matter. The second version (§ 6.6) must also be rejected because it is qua having a form (εἶδος) that the body has a shape (µορφή), and thus is an organic unity, and the form as an efficient principle is inseparable from affective qualities. That amounts to Alexander’s point as quoted in Philoponus’ commentary.241 In conclusion, the author is very likely to have been influenced by Alexander’s ontology. Even if we cannot rule out the possibility that he has slightly rewritten and adapted what he found in his source, it is clear that he makes extensive use of Alexander’s analysis of material substance. Despite the lack of certainty here, it is tempting to attribute the distinction between ‘pure corporeality’ and ‘unqualified body’ to Alexander himself. The commentator would thus have distinguished between two ways of envisaging mathematica, either as pure dimensions in the world space (“pure corporeality”), or as material bodies taken as pure dimensions (“unqualified body”). We cannot exclude, however, the possibility that it is the author who recognized some tension in Alexander’s account, and that he made it explicit by distinguishing two ways of understanding the ontological status of mathematica, without, however, committing himself to crude abstractionism (mathematical objects as existing “in the mind”).242 241
It is worth comparing, from this point of view, § 6.6 (“Similarly, what accedes to the growing body is not an unqualified body, because every body existing in actuality is such that it has a sensible nature and quality and because, if a body existed without any quality or influence whatsoever, it would be necessary for accidents and qualities to exist purely and separately”) with Alexander ap. Philoponus, In GC 82.22-26: “That is the reason why lines are its limits, namely, because it is at no time without some affection of form (εἴδους), for its being is bound up with these. So it is in virtue of the fact that it is inseparable from affection and shape (µορφῆς) that the matter is actual body, and not in so far as it is formless and prime matter”. 242 Independent confirmation may be provided by a scholium on the Categories written by the scholar al-Ḥasan Ibn Suwār, who attributes to the beginning of the second book of the treatise On generation and destruction the distinction between ‘first matter’, ‘unqualified body’ (al-ǧism ġayr al-mukayyaf) and ‘sensible body’ (al-ǧism al-maḥsūs). See Kh. Georr, Les catégories d’Aristote dans leurs versions syro-arabes. Édition de textes précédée d’une étude historique et critique et suivie d’un vocabulaire technique, Beirut, 1948, pp. 373.15-376.8 and H. Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar zu Aristoteles’ De generatione et corruptione, Schöning, 2005, p. 170, n. 87. Since this threefold distinction is not found in Aristotle’s text (nor in Philoponus’ commentary), it may come from Alexander’s lost exegesis. The possibility that our treatise influenced Ibn Suwār can be excluded, the latter being explicit about the passage in which ‘Aristotle’ states such a doctrine.
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Finally in § 6.8 the author reassesses the conditions of growth, without however mentioning again the problematic fourth feature of § 6.2.243 This omission might be significant, since it was one of the two additions made to Aristotle’s text and, of the two, the more problematic. More interestingly, while Averroes’ Epitome added a condition similar to the author’s third one,244 there was nothing corresponding to his fourth condition in his text. I would suggest again that Alexander, followed by Averroes, added the condition about the dissimilarity of the nutriment and the growing thing, but that the mention of the assimilative power at this place was due to the author.
243
See above, p. 150. It was Averroes’ fourth condition (see the table above, p. 146). We may however note that at De mixtione, XVI, 233.14-234.15, when he presents the requisites of growth, Alexander adds to Aristotle’s three conditions, which he has presented in a rather loose way, some considerations which virtually contain the author’s two supplementary conditions. See ll. 28-33 in particular: … οὔτε τὸ τυχὸν τῶν εἰς τὴν αὔξησιν συντελούντων αὔξεται, ἀλλὰ τὸ σωζόµενόν τε αὐτῶν καὶ ὑποµένον, καὶ ἔτι τὴν αὐξητικήν τε καὶ θρεπτικὴν ἔχον δύναµιν ἐν αὑτῷ. διὰ ταῦτα γὰρ οὐχ ἡ τροφὴ αὐξανόµενον, καίτοι καὶ αὐτὴ σῶµα καὶ γινοµένη τῆς αὐξήσεως αἰτία, ἀλλ' ᾧ ἡ τροφὴ προσκρίνεται. ἡ µὲν γὰρ µεταβάλλει, τὸ δὲ σώζεται· καὶ ἡ θρεπτικὴ δύναµις ἡ µεταβλητική τε καὶ προσκριτικὴ τῆς τροφῆς ἐστὶν ἐν τούτῳ (following Groisard’s edition). In this text, καὶ ἔτι τὴν αὐξητικήν τε καὶ θρεπτικὴν ἔχον δύναµιν ἐν αὑτῷ and καὶ ἡ θρεπτικὴ δύναµις ἡ µεταβλητική τε καὶ προσκριτικὴ τῆς τροφῆς ἐστὶν ἐν τούτῳ closely correspond to the author’s fourth condition, and ἡ µὲν γὰρ µεταβάλλει perhaps less closely to the third (but as we saw the Arabic text is lacunose at this point). Whatever Alexander’s exact argument in his commentary on GC may have been, it presumably contained some elaboration on Aristotle’s three requisites. 244
Section 7: On Nutrition The present section is rather long compared to the author’s usual practice. It is continuous with Section 6, and is devoted to nutrition. It corresponds roughly to the second part of GC I 5, from 321a 29 to the end of the chapter. Yet the commentary is rather loosely connected to Aristotle’s argument and often seems to follow some Greek exegesis. Its main purpose is to explain the process by which nutrition occurs. In § 7.1, the author reassesses a point already made in the previous section: it is not true that both bodies, namely the nutriment and what nourishes itself, undergo a process of growth. Only what nourishes itself does, because the principle of growth inheres in it. The nutriment, by contrast, is assimilated and vanishes in the course of the process. These remarks are substantially identical to what Aristotle says at GC I 5, 321a 29-b 10. § 7.2 corresponds to the following section in Aristotle’s text, namely to 321b 10-22 plus 321b 35-322a 4. Aristotle first reviews some features of growth already mentioned,245 and then makes a new point: The anhomoeomers grow in virtue of the homoeomers’ growing, for every anhomoeomer is composed of these; flesh, bone, and all such parts are twofold, as are the other things that have a form in matter. Both the matter and the form are called flesh and bone.246
This remark is taken up by the author, who says: And every growing thing is composed out of anhomoeomerous parts, each of which is composed out of homoeomerous bodies, in the way the hand, the head, etc., are all composed out of homoeomers like flesh, bone, sinew, etc. Growth is primarily in the homoeomers and secondarily in the anhomoeomers, for the latter are composed out of the homoeomers. 247 245
Cf. GC I 5, 321b 12-16: “[…] that in growth the growing body remains and something accedes to it, and in getting smaller something departs from it; again, that every perceptible point has become larger, or smaller; and that the body is not void, nor do two objects possessed of size occupy the same place, nor does a thing grow by anything incorporeal”. 246 GC I 5, 321b 17-22. 247 Talḫīṣ 27.1-4.
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In the following lines, the author expounds a view on the nature of the nutriment that is the objet of 321b 35-322a 4. That is, he leaves aside lines 321b 22-34, with their important claim that it is the form that grows rather than the matter, to which he will come back shortly.248 For the time being, he deals with the following bit of text: Nevertheless the whole becomes larger through the accession of something which is called nourishment, and is contrary, but which changes into the same form. For example, wet could accede (προσίοι) to dry, and having arrived (προσελθόν) could change and become dry. For in one way like grows by like, in another way by unlike.249
Aristotle does not develop this point further. We do not learn what it means for the nutriment to be in one way similar to what grows and in another way dissimilar. Moreover, it is not clear how to interpret the two verbs of motion (προσιέναι and προσέρχεσθαι) appearing in this passage. Are they harmless, or do they describe a physical aspect of the process of growth? Aristotle is so elusive about the concrete details of the process that the question has some importance. Here is how Philoponus comments upon this passage: Since that which grows does so by the addition of something similar (for flesh has to grow by flesh and bone by bone), for this reason it is necessary that the thing which makes it grow should be similar to the thing that grows. But again, since the nourishment has to be affected by the thing that is nourished and caused to grow, and like is not affected by like but contrary by contrary, for this reason again the thing which nourishes and which causes growth has to be contrary to the thing which is nourished and which grows. So if the thing which causes growth has to be affected by the thing which grows and thus change into the substance of the latter, it must needs be similar to it in potentiality, but contrary to it in actuality.250
The author comments on the passage along the same vein: And the growing thing becomes larger than it used to be in virtue of the nutriment, and the nutriment must be similar to the growing thing. Otherwise, its conjunction with the growing thinkg would not occur. And everything that nourishes itself does so in virtue of something differing from it according to the form. For plants nourish themselves with earth and water, 248
See § 7.4 and our comments below, p. 176 sqq. Aristotle, GC I 5, 321b 35-322a 4. 250 Philoponus, In GC 115.5-13. 249
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animals with plants and water. But even if things occur in this way, nothing nourishes itself from everything differing from itself, nor from everything whatsoever, but from something sharing some peculiar feature and affinity with itself, i.e. from something similar in potentiality but not in actuality to itself.251
The idea is plain: in order for it to be assimilated, the nutriment must be similar in potentiality to what assimilates it. This process of assimilation will make it similar to it in actuality. This development is a qualification of the idea already expressed several times by the author, that food must be different from what assimilates it,252 or even “possessing a nature opposed (muḫālifa) to the nature of the growing thing” (§ 6.8). Paraphrasing Aristotle, the author now restricts this difference to cases in which a transformation of the nature of the food into that of the living being is possible. Even if their interpretation is identical, we should not necessarily suppose that the author consulted Philoponus. First, because the explanation they offer is so obvious that it may have been independently provided by several scholars. Secondly, because even if the author is using some previous source, we cannot exclude the possibility that it was Alexander. It should be noted in particular that this interpretation arises in Averroes’ Middle Commentary just before a long quotation from Alexander’s commentary.253 What follows in both commentaries is more remarkable. Philoponus writes: The nourishment itself does not change by itself, nor in separation from the thing that is nourished and caused to grow. For it is not a case of flesh acceding to flesh and in this way nourishing it and causing it to grow. For if the nourishment changed into the substance of that which it nourishes before it was incorporated into the latter, this sort of thing would be a case rather of coming-to-be, not of growth; but the nourishment has first to be mixed with what it nourished and then, after being affected by the latter, to change into its substance […]. The nourishment is first joined to the substratum and then the nature that is in this makes it change into its own substance.254
Here is the parallel passage in the author:
251
Talḫīṣ 27.4-9. See §§ 6.2, 6.8 and 7.1. 253 See Averroes, In GC 43.5-9 Eichner. 254 Philoponus, In GC 115.16-30. 252
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Then, when the nutriment accedes to the thing, the power responsible for the change produces change in it and makes it similar to itself; next, the nutriment is joined to it because of the coincidence of the form and because of their actual similarity, so that the thing takes it as its nutriment and its mass becomes larger than before—and that is growth. And it is not the case that it is joined to the thing and then, when inside it, made similar; nor that it is made similar outside the thing and then joined to it. But the power responsible for the change brings it closer to itself and makes it similar to itself little by little, until it comes into contact with itself while being closely similar; then, any magnitude from the nutriment and made similar to the growing thing becomes conjoined with it.255
The two texts are obviously similar. But they are not identical. While they both adopt a strong interpretation of the motion verbs at 322a 2, they diverge in their respective analyses of the relationships between local motion and qualitative transformation. Whereas Philoponus is rather straightforward in upholding a strict temporal succession between translocation and affection, the author adopts a more nuanced stance. According to him, translocation and affection progress along a single path. The closer to what is nourished the nutriment finds itself, the more similar to it it is. And at the instant when the nutriment enters into contact with what grows, it becomes identical with it. In this context, the author explicitly rejects a statement that we find in Philoponus. The latter said: “The nourishment is first joined to the substratum and then (εἶτα) the nature that is in this makes it change into its own substance”. It is hard not to see an answer to this claim in the former’s words: “And it is not the case that it is joined to the thing and then (ṯumma), inside it, made similar”. How then is this situation to be explained? Although other stories are possible, the most probable seems to be that Philoponus adopted Alexander’s exegesis of this passage, and that the author, who is generally influenced by the Alexander, criticized him on this rather minor point. That suggestion seems more economical than supposing that the author used Alexander and Philoponus together, and rejected only Philoponus’ view. For why, if Alexander was already making the claim that we find expressed in Arabic, would Philoponus have departed from him on this uncontroversial issue? Moreover, the author’s formulation echoes his general concern with gradual processes, which we have already met.256 Our hypothetical reconstruction gains further support from a text in Alexander’s De mixtione: 255 256
Talḫīṣ 27.9-13. See above, § 3.1 and our comments p. 88.
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The absorption of nutriment by bodies that are nourished occurs by a process of alteration involving the assimilation of nutriment by the body that is nourished; the nutriment does not first become the same as the thing that is nourished and then absorbed by it. That would be the coming-to-be of flesh, not nutrition. But the ultimate nutriment, blood in redblooded creatures, and its analogue in other things, by passing through the vessels that belong to them in each body that is being nourished and flowing in, is altered and assimilated by the body that is nourished through the faculty that each possesses.257
This text is closer to Philoponus than to the author. It makes no allusion to the direct proportionality between local vicinity and qualitative similarity, but only states that the nutriment is not altered before being acted upon by the growing body. Hence, it is just one step farther to claim that Alexander assumed the same position in his lost commentary. The author introduces a supplementary refinement into the play by rejecting the alternative between two opposites (touching vs non touching) and replacing it by a continuous process (more or less remote). In § 7.3, the author briefly sketches how the process of growth occurs. The first two sentences make a claim which is not atypical for Alexander. Against the background of Stoic physics, Alexander is eager to deny the possibility of one body penetrating another body. The statement is made, of course, at the beginning of chapter XVI of the De mixtione, since it was precisely in order to disprove this view that Alexander came to deal in an Aristotelian fashion with the topic of growth at the end of his treatise. Moreover, Averroes informs us in his Middle Commentary that Alexander insisted on the role of mixture in the process of growth in order to avoid the danger of interpenetration.258 We shall address this issue in the next paragraph.259 For the time being, let us consider how the author introduces his discussion: And one should not think that, since the nutriment is a body and what is nourished is a body, when every part of what is nourished becomes something of the nutriment, i.e. when the nutriment enters the totality of what is nourished, a body penetrates a body. For the nutriment does not reach what is nourished as a whole in the sense that its totality would touch the other’s
257
Alexander, De mixtione, XVI, 238.10-17 (translation R. B. Todd, p. 173). That is implicit in Averroes, In GC 47.13-15 Eichner. I quote the passage in full below, p. 166. 259 See our comments on § 7.4. 258
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totality—for that would be interpenetration—but in the sense that it is a restitution in compensation for what gets dissolved from what is nourished.260
The main difficulty arises from Aristotle’s statement that in the process of growing, every part of what is nourished increases. For such a claim seems to lend some support to the Stoics. That is not so, says the author, because the nutriment comes only as a compensation for what is lost. Prima facie, such an explanation seems puzzling. For if nutriment only replaces some loss in the body, nothing distinguishes Aristotle from the atomists. Nutrition will consist in filling some gaps affecting a given organic body. Have we fled from the Stoic Charybdis to the Epicurean Scylla? In order to understand better what the author has in mind, let us read the end of the paragraph: If the lack affects its surface, it is the surface’s restitution that occurs; if the lack affects some parts of its totality, so that cavities or atrophies occur within it, the return happens in virtue of the attraction displayed by the attractive power in the direction of the place needing augmentation; then, when it returns to where there is a lack or to where augmentation is needed, it is as a whole that the thing is nourished through it, because the whole is self-continuous; so at whatever place something alien is joined to the thing nourished, it is in its totality that it is augmented by this thing, in a single way, because the part to which the nutriment is joined is not isolated from the rest of the parts, so that the augmentation occurs to it per se and to the other parts by accident.261
The author identifies two cases of substitution, according to whether the lack is superficial or affects the whole organ. This distinction is not immediately clear. The structure of the sentence is all the more ambiguous because in the first case (the lack affecting the surface), the author does not explain how the restitution happens. He is more explicit in the second case, giving two supplementary indications of how things go. He first connects the affection of the whole to the production of ‘cavities’ (taǧāwīf) and ‘atrophies’ (ḍumūr) in it, but without explaining the connection. Then he attributes the process of restitution to an ‘attraction’ (ǧaḏb) exerted by the ‘attractive power’ (al-quwwa al-ǧāḏiba), in virtue of which the emptied parts are filled up again. Finally, the author states what is likely to be an answer to the Stoic puzzle. The nutriment enters into contact with a single part of the growing body, but through it, this body grows in its entirety. The danger of interpenetration is thus avoided, but there is a cost: it has now 260 261
Talḫīṣ 27.14-17. Talḫīṣ 27.17-29.2.
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become obscure how Aristotle’s second requirement (every part of the growing body grows) is satisfied. Certainly the author is eager to explain that since the body is ‘self-continuous’, every part of it grows. But we are not told about the details of the process, that is about how continuity allows for an overall growth of the organ, or even of the whole body. Basically, we can imagine two kinds of explanation: either a strictly mechanical process, by means of which the growing part pushes the other parts forward and thus produces an increase of the whole volume; or a sort of capillarity, in virtue of which the nutriment passes from one part of the organ to another, so as to reach the whole organ at the end of the process. Again, in order to understand the author’s purpose, we must address the ancient tradition of Aristotelian commentators. For as we shall try to show, our text sheds some new light on the starting point of this tradition, Alexander’s lost commentary on GC. It is necessary to start with a close reading of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on GC, which takes issue with Alexander on the question of nutrition and growth. The starting point of Averroes’ criticisms is Alexander’s perplexity with regard to Aristotle’s claim that growth affects the form rather than the matter.262 Here are Averroes’ words: Alexander, the commentator of this book, says that Aristotle’s statements on this subject were made merely by way of persuasion and conciliation. For the matter in the growing thing does not disappear entirely nor is it completely dissolved, but some part of it remains and persists. Otherwise, it would be possible for form to exist apart from matter. Since there is in matter some part which persists, it is this part that necessarily grows. How does the matter grow? It must be by way of mixture. For it is the way of a growing body that when some part of it suffers diminution, that diminution is distributed throughout all of its parts, as happens in the case of the removal of blood from the body, i.e., when one part of the body suffers a loss of blood, the blood decreases in all parts of the body. Essentially the same holds true in the case of increase.263
And Averroes adds: Alexander goes on to say: There must, consequently, be dispersed in the growing limbs a certain moisture with which the food that enters them becomes mixed. When the food is transformed into the nature of this moisture, then the figure of the limb grows with the increase of that moisture in all of its parts and diminishes with the decrease of that moisture. For nature 262 263
On this, see below, § 7.4. Averroes, In GC 43.9-16 Eichner.
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preserves the shape of that limb when it grows through that moisture and reduces it when that moisture diminishes. This is the gist of what Alexander says on this subject though he did not couch it in these very words.264
After giving his own interpretation and criticizing Alexander, Averroes continues: Consequently, we must choose between two alternatives: either we remain satisfied for an answer to this problem with the answer which the Master gives to it; or we go on to seek further information which will serve to complement his answer.265
Averroes first provides what he takes to be Aristotle’s answer: Thus, it appears that growth requires mixture, as he (Aristotle) himself will show below. For without it the process will be one of generation for the parts of the flesh and the bone themselves, i.e., when food is transformed into bone and flesh in the bone and in the flesh respectively. This mixture necessarily occurs in growth from this point of view, but not from the point of view that growth occurs in all the parts without interpenetration. If we assume that, then the growing things would be nothing other than the miscible. How would we then explain the growth of a figure and, in general, the growth of an organic limb?266
Averroes’ strategy, in the absence of Alexander’s commentary, is not entirely perspicuous.267 His idea seems to be that even if we explain growth by means of mixture, as Aristotle does, a problem remains with the growth of the bones. For mixture necessitates a certain degree of humidity, which the bones seem to lack. Probably, Averroes is here following Alexander, even if their respective stances about mixture are slightly different. Alexander deeply modifies the strategy used in the De mixtione. In this text, as we have noted, growth, namely nutrition, is dealt with in order to present another instance, besides mixing, of a phenomenon that is better explained in a non-Stoic way, i.e. without resorting to interpenetration.268 264
Averroes, In GC 44.1-6 Eichner. Averroes, In GC 47.9-11 Eichner. 266 Averroes, In GC 47.11-16 Eichner. 267 On Averroes’ interpretation of GC I 5, see Cristina Cerami, “Mélange, minima naturalia et croissance animale dans le Commentaire moyen d’Averroès au De generatione et corruptione I, 5”, in J. Biard and Sabine Rommevaux (eds), La nature et le vide dans la physique médiévale. Études dédiées à Edward Grant, Turnhout, 2012, pp. 137-164. 268 See above, p. 163, n. 257. 265
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Consequently, the success of his strategy depended wholly on the fact that growth does not amount to mixing. Otherwise there would be no new point at all, but a mere reassessement of the Aristotelian thesis about mixture. Here, in the commentary on GC, it is plain that Alexander allows that there are some aspects of growth which amount to mixture. Averroes is explicit and seems trustworthy on this issue. I would guess, therefore, that in the more popular text of the De mixtione, Alexander concealed the mixing aspect of growth in order to present this phenomenon as an external confirmation of his views about mixing. If this is the case, we could make the further supposition that Averroes’ passage reflects the core of Alexander’s argument. It is Alexander who would have first suggested explaining growth by mixture, and who, in a second step, would have pointed to the difficulty of the growth of bones. This difficulty would have prompted him to suggest another solution, introduced by his typical ‘or’ (ἤ), which is perhaps still mirrored in Averroes’ following sequence: Or (aw) should we say that the limb contains a power expanding by nature in all dimensions? This lends it a certain dilation, in such a way that it is saturated by this nutritive moisture269 in all its parts, I mean in all the minute holes than which there can be no more minute in the flesh. When these holes expand and become filled with that moisture, then that moisture is transformed into particles of flesh which become united with the particles of flesh which are between these holes, and there are particles than which there can exist none more minute. Also, there are formed in these generated particles of flesh holes than which none more minute can exist. When the limb is extended a second time, all these holes absorb and become filled with the nutritive moisture, and this is accomplished by the attractive power whereby the limb absorbs the moisture and becomes saturated, just as a wick becomes saturated with oil and a sponge with water. When heat acts upon the moisture and solidifies it, it becomes flesh in the case of flesh and bone in the case of bone. Then the limb goes on absorbing moisture in the same manner until its growth is completed.270
This alternative solution is probably what Averroes has just described as a piece of “further information which will serve to complement Aristotle’s answer”. But how can we be certain that this passage reflects Alexander’s 269
At 48.1 Eichner, I suggest reading fa-yatašarrabu [i.e. al-‘uḍūwu] bi-tilka alruṭūbati al-ġizā’iyya in lieu of fa-tatašarrabu tilka al-ruṭūbatu al-ġizā’iyyatu (see the very close parallel—the same process being described—at 48.8: tašarrub al-‘uḍūwi bihā, i.e. bi-al-ruṭūbati al-ġizā’iyyati mentioned at 48.7). 270 Averroes, In GC 47.16-48.10 Eichner.
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commentary? The ‘or’, as remarked, is already a clue. But that is of course not sufficient. As H. Eichner puts it simply, “[m]öglicherweise stammt diese Darstellung nicht aus dem Kommentar des Alexander”.271 Yet, the new Arabic text will help us to come near to proof. First of all, let us note that if we suppose that Averroes did not have access to Philoponus, i.e. that every significant parallel between Averroes and Philoponus is to be explained by Alexander’s influence, then we are entitled to the conclusion that the latter made some use of the process of attraction in his commentary. For Philoponus writes: And when an addition of water is made to a tube made of skin and what is added is merely placed alongside the existing water, and when this has propelled forward what is in front of it, in this way the expansion of the water takes place equally at all points, and thus every part whatsoever of the tube is stretched to the same degree. This is just like what happens in the case of growth. The nourishment is converted into blood and is drawn along and made to flow everywhere through the veins in each of the homoeomers, and the nature in each of the parts digests this and changes it into the substance of the substratum, so that this is the way it comes about that growth occurs. For in the substance of the bones and in that of the flesh and of the rest there is a moistness which is distributed throughout, and particularly that in the parts that grow, for these contain more moisture. So the blood, circulating around each of the parts outside, is juxtaposed with this moisture and propels it forward, or rather, is drawn (ἑλκόµενον) all the way round by the parts, makes them larger in every dimension—moisture that, once digested by the nutritive power, is transformed into the substance of the substratum.272
However, important elements present in Averroes are absent from Philoponus. First of all, Averroes speaks of an ‘attractive power’, quwwa ǧāḏibiyya, while Philoponus only uses the participle ἑλκόµενον. True, R. B. Todd had already supposed, on the sole basis of Philoponus’ commentary, that Galen’s ἑλκτικὴ δύναµις was lurking in the background.273 But Averroes’ text, if its dependence with regard to Alexander could be confirmed, would allow us to settle the issue. Secondly, Averroes mentions an ‘expanding power’ (quwwa mumaddida) which is responsible for the dilation (taḫalḫul) of the body. Philoponus does not make the slightest allusion to this. This point is significant since, as we have seen, Alexander—in a passage not integrated by Philoponus—was careful to distinguish growth 271
Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, p. 110. Philoponus, In GC 107.27-108.9. 273 R. B. Todd, “Galenic Medical Ideas in the Greek Aristotelian Commentators”, Symbolae Osloenses 52, 1977, pp. 117-134, p. 119 in particular. 272
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from dilation.274 Here again, if Alexander’s authorship could be confirmed, we might reconstruct a subtle move in his commentary: starting from a distinction between the two notions, Alexander would be attempting, in a second step, to use dilation to account for the natural feasibility of growth. Thirdly, Averroes gives to the holes (ṯuqab) a prominent place in the process. According to him, the dilation of the limb brings about the formation of holes within it. These holes, then, encapture the natural moisture by means of the attractive power, until natural heat turns that moisture into the limb’s substance. To sum up: whereas Philoponus’ description of the process of growth by nutrition is vague and incomplete, Averroes’ corresponding description leaves nothing to be desired. But here again: how are we to decide whether Averroes is elaborating on what he found in Alexander or quoting him more or less literally? The new text allows us to settle this crucial point. Since Averroes is not aware of the existence of the anonymous paraphrase,275 the parallels between it and his commentary must be explained by their common ancestor, namely Alexander. Hence, we can safely credit Alexander with the introduction of the elements present in both texts, namely the ἑλκτικὴ δύναµις and the cracks produced by the dilation of the tissues.276 Since the ἑλκτικὴ δύναµις plays an important role in Galen’s theory of nutrition, R. B. Todd, followed by H. Eichner, has supposed that Alexander borrowed this notion from him. I believe, however, that this reconstruction needs further qualification. Certainly, Alexander’s elaboration in his commentary on GC I 5 would not be understandable if he had not read Galen’s De facultatibus. It is against this very background that the idea of the ἑλκτικὴ δύναµις comes to the fore. But Galen was not unique in trying to 274
See previous chapter. This is proved by the fact that he never alludes to it, either explicitly or implicitly. There is no parallel, either of form or of content, which is not better explained on the basis of a common source, namely Alexander. 276 From a philological point of view, it should be noted that Averroes and the author use two different words for these cracks: the author calls them “cavities” (taǧāwīf) and “atrophies” (ḍumūr), while Averroes uses the word “holes” (ṯuqab). That discrepancy may point to the fact that they were using two different versions of Alexander’s commentary. Thanks to the bibliographer al-Nadīm, we know that Alexander’s commentary on the first book of GC was translated twice: the first time at the end of the 9th c. by Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, who translated this book alone, and the second time in the first half of the 10th c. by Mattā ibn Yūnus, who translated the entire work. Since Averroes also had access to Alexander’s commentary on the second book, he must have consulted Ibn Yūnus’ version. We might suppose, then, that the author was using Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s version. This hypothesis will find some confirmation below. See p. 355, relying on chapters 11-14. 275
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explain the old paradox of nutrition, and his use of the ἑλκτικὴ δύναµις in this context is highly polemical. More precisely, it is directed against Erasistratus’ mechanical model. Galen charges his illustrious predecessor with having unduly viewed the process of nutrition as an instance of his principle of “the following into that which is being emptied” (ἡ πρὸς τὸ κενούµενον ἀκολουθία). We can say that in a way, the entire project of the treatise On the Natural Faculties is to reassess, against the Erasistrateans, the impossibility of a radical reductionism in the physiological realm. Against their mechanical principle, Galen will introduce another principle into the play, namely what he calls “the attraction of the specific property”. Here are his own words: These are the people who think that Nature is not artistic, that she does not show forethought for the animal’s welfare, and that she has absolutely no native powers whereby she alters some substances, attracts others and discharges others.277
Galen lists a great variety of natural powers or faculties (δυνάµεις), which are responsible for three fundamental aspects of animal physiology, namely generation, nutrition and growth. These powers are closely associated with the body’s capacity to exert various kinds of control over its nutriment. The different organs are endowed with a natural capacity of attraction, alteration, assimilation and repulsion. To quote Galen again: Nothing does everything artistically (τεχνικῶς) and equitably, possessing certain powers (δυνάµεις) by virtue of which each of the parts attracts to itself its appropriate fluid, and having done so attaches it to every part of itself and completely assimilates it, while those parts which are not mastered and which are not capable of complete assimilation, alteration and reception by the nourished parts are eliminated by another distinct expulsive faculty. 278
In a nutshell, “The great mistake of earlier physicians like Erasistratus and Asclepiades was to think that the fluid dynamics of the body can be
277
Galen, Nat. Fac. II 26-27 K. (= Scripta Minora III, 120.2-6). I owe this translation to Armelle Debru, “Physiology”, in R. J. Hankinson, The Cambridge Companion to Galen, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 263-282, p. 271. On Galen on Erasistratus, see the enlightening discussion in R. J. Hankinson, Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought, Oxford, 1998, pp. 302-306 and 374-379; see also id., “Galen and the Best Possible World”, Classical Quarterly 39, 1989, pp. 206-227. 278 Galen, Nat. Fac. II 29-30 K. (= Scripta Minora III, 122.9-16). I borrow this translation from R. J. Hankinson, “Philosophy of Nature”, in Hankinson, The Cambridge Companion to Galen, pp. 210-241, p. 223.
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reduced to principles like that of horror vacui.”279 Mechanical principles as such are unable to account for physiological functions like nutrition and growth, but also like conception,280 because they are unable to explain the specific character of attraction and repulsion. The best example of such a specificity can be found, according to Galen, in the attraction of the iron by the magnet. There exists a huge difference, therefore, between the action exerted by the magnet and the vacuum suction. To explain the effects of magnets by the motion of some particles, as the Epicureans do, is just preposterous. The action of the magnets is the best proof that there is in nature something like natural faculties: All the phenomena attest that there must exist in practically every part of the animal some nisus towards, or as it were an appetite for its appropriate quality, and an aversion to, or as it were a hatred for the alien one … thus from these things it has been demonstrated that there exist attractive and expulsive faculties in all of them.281
Before turning back to Alexander’s commentary on GC, I would like to dwell for a moment upon Quaestio II 23, “About why the stone from Heracleia attracts iron”. My guess is that the author is interested in this question above all because of the challenge set forward by Galen in his treatise On the Natural Faculties. The author—Alexander or some scholar belonging to his school—starts by listing three reputed solutions to this puzzle, put forward respectively by Empedocles, Democritus and Diogenes of Apollonia.282 He briefly dismisses each of them in turn, and then proposes his own attempt at solving the difficulty. The attraction of the iron by the magnet is due to fact that the magnet tends to “that which it lacks itself but the magnet possesses.”283 It is not enough to stress that this is a bad solution. To explain why it is so is more interesting. It seems to me that the reason for that is that the author was struggling to avoid Galen’s solution in terms of attractive power. He wanted to undermine Galen’s position in this specific case because he was well aware of Galen’s overall strategy in the De facultatibus. Having agreed that the magnet exerts an attractive power over the iron, it is just a step further to vindicate the general validity of this model for all sorts of biological processes. Hence my hypothesis: the real aim of Quaestio II 23 was not so much to explain “why the stone from Heracleia 279
Hankinson, “Philosophy of Nature”, p. 223. See Nat. Fac. II 84-85 (= Scripta Minora III, 162.11-24). 281 Galen, Nat. Fac. II 159-161 (= Scripta Minora III, 216.17-24). I owe this translation to Hankinson “Philosophy of Nature”, p. 224. 282 Alexander, Quaestiones 72.10-73.25. 283 Alexander, Quaestiones 74.23-26. 280
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attracts iron” as, more specifically, to suggest “why Galen’s interpretation of the stone from Heracleia in terms of attractive power was not necessarily the right one”. This reading of Quaestio II 23 is corroborated by an argument directly preceding the author’s solution: The womb, too, seems to attract the seed, and the veins and limbs seem to attract the nourishment. But the magnet does not attract the iron in this way. For of these things too284 those that attract by first drawing in the intervening air and moisture do this accidentally.285
Such a claim is violently anti-Galenic. In lieu of Galen’s parallel, it draws an opposition between the magnet and the nourished organ. Moreover, it argues that the way the womb respectively the nourished organ attracts the seed respectively the nourishment is not particularly specific, but is due to the fact that these organs first draw in “the intervening air and moisture.”286 Thus, he says, it is somewhat incidental if they also attract, after the air (for the womb) or the moisture (for the limbs), the seed or the nourishment. It therefore turns out that the author of Quaestio II 23 is not far from the Erasistrateans criticized by Galen. He explains the attraction at the instant of the conception, or when the nourishment is being assimilated, by resorting to mechanical principles reducible to “the following into that which is being emptied.” Galen, in the De facultatibus, rejects Erasistratus’ Aristotelian pedigree —on the sole basis, however, that Erasistratus was not a teleologist, which is a dubious reason.287 The sources make it plausible, however, that Erasistratus was closely connected to the Lyceum one generation after Aristotle. He may even have been Aristotle’s grandson (the son of Aristotle’s daughter Pythias), or a student of Metrodorus (the third husband of 284
Like the fire, which has been mentioned some lines above, at 74.10-14. Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestio II 23, 74.14-17. I borrow this translation from R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodias, Quaestiones 2.16-3.15, London, 1994, p. 31. 286 Since the author, even if he is not Alexander, obviously is an Aristotelian, he has replaced Galen’s description of the conception, according to which the semen is supplied by both male and female and “attracts to itself exactly the right amount of blood needed for its growth and the formation of the embryo (Nat. Fac. II 84-5, = SM 3, 162, 11-24)” (Debru, “Physiology”, p. 271), by his own doctrine. 287 H. von Staden, “Teleology and Mechanism: Aristotelian Biology and Early Hellenistic Medicine”, in W. Kullmann and S. Föllinger (eds), Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Stuttgart, 1997, pp. 183-208; on Erasistratus, see p. 185. 285
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Pythias), a student of Theophrastus, or simply a Peripatetic.288 Pace Galen, who tends to overemphasize Erasistratus’ mechanistic tendencies, it is not obvious at all, from the many fragments and testimonies preserved to this day, that Erasistratus showed so little concern for teleology. H. von Staden has recently made a strong case in favour of the contrary. Erasistratus’ mechanistic approach to physiology is likely not to have been so unAristotelian, but remained true to some aspects of Aristotle’s biological program. This is not the place to reopen this debate. Suffice it to say that there is at least an obvious chronological and methodological proximity between Erasistratus and his contemporary Strato. It made sense, then, for Alexander, to support Erasistratus’ views on nutrition against Galen. On the basis of the treatise On the Natural Faculties, Alexander must have judged that Erasistratus’ mechanical principles were sufficient, after all, to explain part of the process, and that Galen’s mysterious “attractive power” created more difficulties than it solved. Even if he is likely to have employed the expression ἑλκτικὴ δύναµις, Alexander used it differently from Galen. It was just a name for Erasistratus’ principle of “the following into that which is being emptied.” Like a wick attracts oil to itself or a sponge attracts water, the substance of the organs attracts the natural moisture mixed with the nourishing blood. But how would Alexander have answered Galen’s concern for the specificity of the nutritive attraction? We have no text on this particular issue, but he seems likely to have claimed that when the attraction takes place, the juices around the nourished organ are already susceptible to being assimilated. The discrimination between what can be assimilated and what cannot comes earlier, when the nutriment is ingested and converted into chyle within the stomach.289 Once the food has been converted into chyle and then incorporated into the blood, mechanical attraction asserts itself over the blood as it would do over any liquid whatsoever. Finally, it seems that we are in a good position to reconstruct the entire process of growth according to Alexander. It can be divided into nine stages. – 1st stage: the nutriment is swallowed and passes to the stomach. – 2nd stage: the food is reduced to chyle in the stomach. 288
For the references, see von Staden, “Teleology and Mechanism”, pp. 185-186. See Philoponus, In GC 75.19-23, who may rely here on Alexander: “For even in the case of growth, coming-to-be occurs first, as when the liver receives food which has been converted into chyle in the stomach and makes it blood; but the blood, once it has come to be, without losing its bulk, is assimilated by the parts of the body and adheres to them, and having become like them, brings about growth by the addition of itself”. More on this below, p. 174. 289
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– 3rd stage: the chyle passes from the stomach to the liver, where it gets mixed with unconcocted blood. – 4th stage: the unconcocted blood passes from the liver to the heart, where it undergoes a process of refinement through coction. – 5th stage: the perfected blood passes from the heart to the different limbs of the body. – 6th stage: the limbs extend themselves because of the power of dilation that they possess by nature; cracks appear in their mass. – 7th stage: the natural moisture dispersed throughout the flesh and bones gets mixed with the blood and is attracted into the small cavities of the cracks as soon as they are produced. – 8th stage: the natural heat concocts these small drops encapsulated within the cavities and makes them identical to the body. These new parts affects the parts with which they enter into contact directly, and push forward the older stuff, so that the limb may be said to grow in its totality.290 – 9th stage: the process repeats itself. Some remarks may be useful here. First, we see that mixing occurs twice in the process, when the food converted into chyle in the stomach meets the unconcocted blood in the liver, and when the blood refined in the heart meets the natural moisture of the limbs. It is understandable, then, that Alexander may have held, as Averroes tells us, that growth needs mixture. Secondly, I do not believe, contrary to R. B. Todd, that the idea of some blood being formed in the liver “cannot have been in Alexander’s commentary on the de generatione et corruptione”291 on the grounds that he was too much of an Aristotelian to have assumed that the blood was not formed in the heart. True, as Todd adds in a footnote to this sentence, “Galen’s works were excerpted at Alexandria in the fifth and sixth centuries”. Yet, this passage squares with Alexander’s usual attitude towards 290
Philoponus, In GC 119.6-14 writes: “Perhaps then it is not true to say that every part comes to be larger and is nourished, if this is asserted in the sense that every smallest part itself per se (καθ᾿ αὑτὸ) is nourished and increases. But just as the addition of nourishment is not made to every part, but on account of the continuity of the whole (διὰ … τὴν τοῦ ὅλου συνέχειαν) it is said as a whole to have something added; and with the whole becoming larger in this way because the whole is that which is composed of all the parts, it is reasonable to say that each part also is expanded along with the whole. In the same way, since the wole is also nourished and preserves its own character, any part too of flesh and the rest is said to be nourished, being kept together with the whole”. That is exactly the idea we find at the end of § 7.3, except that Philoponus does not say that growth happens “by accident” to the other parts (that element may be an extrapolation of the author). But the “per se” and the “continuity” of the whole are striking. 291 Todd, “Galenic Medical Ideas”, p. 120.
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not-entirely-Aristotelian debates.292 In all likelihood, he solved the difficulty by claiming that the refined or perfected blood is produced in the heart, as Aristotle had ever said, but that the liver furnishes the heart with the raw, unconcocted fluid. Thirdly, the role played by dilation is crucial. Even if growth is not dilation, the dilation of the tissues is fundamental for growth to obtain. For dilation produces cracks, which function as melting pots for the new particles of the limbs. It could be objected to Alexander that in his implicit criticisms of Galen’s model, he merely substituted one natural power, namely the power of dilation, for another. To some extent, this objection is valid. Perhaps he thought that dilation was less mysterious, and somehow more physical, than attraction? Our texts are silent on this issue. The following section, § 7.4, provides the argument in which Alexander’s influence is perhaps the clearest. It deals with Aristotle’s claim that growth occurs with respect to form rather than to matter.293 Aristotle had written: The thesis that every single part grows and that in growth something accedes to the growing object is a possible one in terms of the form, but in terms of the matter it is not. We should think of it as though someone were measuring out water in the same measure: that which comes to be is all the time different.294
As already remarked, Averroes criticizes Alexander for not having endorsed Aristotle’s thesis without reservation. Several problems arise from this. First, until now Averroes has been the sole testimony attributing this critical stance to Alexander. It is not just that we do not find it echoed by Philoponus. More problematically, we do not find the faintest trace of it in the chapter on growth in Alexander’s De mixtione. There, Alexander accepts Aristotle’s claim, apparently without hesitation. Secondly, Averroes’ objection is not entirely clear. He twice objects to Alexander for having said that Aristotle’s purpose was only to produce the ‘conviction’ of his reader.295 The Arabic word used here, al-iqnā‘, corresponds to the Greek πείθειν, πιθανόν, etc. It is surely excessive to translate the two 292
Like Stoic πρόνοια or, more appropriately, the relation between the heart and the brain. On this, see P.-M. Morel, “Cardiocentrisme et antiplatonisme chez Aristote et Alexandre d’Aphrodise”, in Th. Bénatouïl, E. Maffi, F. Trabattoni (eds), Plato, Aristotle, or Both? Dialogues between Platonism and Aristotelianism in Antiquity, Hildesheim / Zürich / New York, 2011, pp. 63-84. 293 GC I 5, 321b 22-34. 294 GC I 5, 321b 22-25. 295 Averroes, In GC 43.10 and 44.10 Eichner.
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sentences in which it appears as “Alexander, der Kommentator dieses Buches, sagt, daß das, was hierzu gesagt worden ist, nur rhetorisch und zur Beschwichtigung gesagt wurde” and “wie soll man denn von [Aristoteles] glauben […] daß er sich hier mit etwas rhetorischem begnügt hat […]?”296 Alexander could not have uttered something so offensive to Aristotle. More likely, he simply meant that without qualification the present passage was not entirely demonstrative, but only superficially persuasive. Unfortunately, Averroes does not tell us which qualification Alexander thought was appropriate. That leaves us with the third and last difficulty, the greatest of the three. I have often had occasion to highlight how Alexander was eager to assess, against some Aristotelian forerunners (Boethus in particular), the substantial role of the form with regard to the matter.297 If that is the case, how should we explain Alexander’s present move, which seems to allow for an independent existence of the matter in the process of growth? For this independence could easily lend some support to Boethus’ stance, according to which matter is per se substantial. Averroes says: It is in this manner that we must construe the view of the Master, and not as Alexander understood it. For Alexander tried to show that Aristotle’s view, namely, that growth takes place with respect to form and not with respect to matter because the latter is in constant flux whereas the former persists, is broken down since, as he (Alexander) claims, some matter is found to persist in limbs, in which case that matter will necessarily grow.298
Fortunately, Alexander’s objection is stated in more detail by the author, who endorses it without alluding to the fact that it contradicts Aristotle’s explicit declaration. He opens § 7.4 with the following statement: Neither also should we think that growth does not occur to matter but to form, like the measure which becomes larger essentially, because some matter flows out of it and what returns to the thing as a substitute is greater than what flowed out, so that the thing becomes more extended and larger essentially.299
296
See Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, pp. 93 and 94 respectively (emphasis mine). 297 See above, p. 89. 298 Averroes, In GC 46.15-18 Eichner. 299 Talḫīṣ 29.3-5.
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The Arabic term al-mikyāl (“gauge” or “measure”) shows that Alexander objected to Aristotle’s very example.300 Why we ought to reject it is explained thereafter: For nothing is such that the growing thing remains as it is while it becomes larger essentially, while the nutriment, like stuffing, goes out from it essentially and a greater amount comes back, so that its mass becomes wider and larger than it was.301
The nutriment is not “like stuffing” (ka-al-ḥašw) in the thing that is nourished. On the contrary, they are inseparable, the nutriment becoming part of the thing which assimilates it. As soon as the digestive process begins, there is no way to distinguish between them. The author indulges in some more explanations: For the growing thing that grows and becomes wider does not exist independently of its matter, which is subject to dilation, and it is the body composed of matter and form, i.e. dimensions and qualities, that gets destroyed. Consequently, there is nothing in it that becomes more extended and wider, flowing out and coming back in a greater amount, but the substance of the parts that exist in actuality and are composed of the opposed bodies is destroyed, diminishes little by little and returns to them, in substitution for the lack, thanks to the nutriment.302
This text can help us reconstruct Alexander’s position. There seem to be two reasons for denying that growth occurs with respect to form rather than to matter. The first one is consubstantial with the basic intuition of hylomorphism: it would be naive to separate the form from the matter of a composite substance too sharply. This reason is perhaps too general, however. It is not the only passage where Aristotle draws a distinction between the form and the matter, and Alexander is not always at odds with this way of presenting things.303 We are thus led to the second reason, which is more 300
Cf. GC I 5, 321b 24: ὥσπερ εἴ τις µετροίη κτλ. Philoponus, In GC 113.13 makes explicit the idea of using an instrument of measure: “In the case of things that are being measured, they are the same in respect of the measure (κατὰ µὲν τὸ µέτρον), but in respect of the substratum and the matter they are not the same: it is just so in the case of things that are being nourished and are growing”. Let it be said that in his exegesis of this passage, Philoponus, contrarily to the author, does not qualify, let alone reject, the validity of Aristotle’s example. 301 Talḫīṣ 29.5-7. 302 Talḫīṣ 29.7-11. 303 For a typology of these texts, see Rashed, Essentialisme, p. 36.
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subtle, and more closely linked to what is at stake here. According to Alexander—if, as we believe, he lurks in the background of the present text—the matter is related to the dimensions, the form to the qualities.304 In Quaestio I 5, he makes a similar claim, saying that the matter is related to quantity, the form to quality.305 The two claims are hardly unconnected. For the ‘dimensions’ (ab‘ād) point to the quantitative aspect of the composite substance. But why, it will be objected, is this analysis difficult to match with the claim that growth takes place with respect to form? For Aristotle’s point in saying this is not to argue that the form has a quantity—since form is per se immaterial and unextended—but to underline that the form remains qualitatively one and the same during the process. Growth occurs with respect to form not because the form is growing, but because contrary to matter, form is not in a flow, but permanent, and its permanency accounts for the substance’s identity through time. And the question of perdurance over time is obviously central in Aristotle’s analysis. Every Aristotelian scholar knows that in a living being, the form as soul is the continuant, whereas the matter constituting the limbs, which is fluid and evanescent, cannot play this role.306 But a counterexample was found in Antiquity: the scars in our flesh and bones. In the only passage echoing Alexander’s concern for matter, Philoponus writes: But it must not be thought that the whole of the matter as a whole replaces itself over time, seeping away bit by bit, so that there is no bit of body in us when we have grown old which was part of the matter that was in us at the time of our original framing. For if that were so, it would be possible for animals to be immortal, their matter always being at its peak. As it is, however, the matter is not able to keep its form throughout its whole extent, since it becomes weary with time, the parts that have been fitted together being incapable of preserving everywhere the harmony and correct mixture as a result of their being affected by the contrary powers. So it must be supposed that not all the matter is dissipated, but that the more solid parts of it particularly remain always numerically the same. This is why we also see the scars of wounds which may chance to have been received in youth remain in flesh and bones until death. So for this reason too the form also must remain numerically the same.307
304
Note the remarkable expression “matter and form, i.e. dimensions and qualities”. 305 Alexander, Quaestiones 13.17-20. 306 See Averroes, In GC 56.15-57.6 Eichner. 307 Philoponus, In GC 107.3-14.
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The scars of wounds do not belong to our form since, far from being inborn characters, they have been acquired as a result of external circumstances; and they perdure over time. Thus, at least in their case, something material can be considered as a continuant. It comes as no surprise that the argument first appeared not in the school of Ammonius, but already in Alexander’s lost commentary. Averroes writes in his Epitome: But this transformation is not possible in all parts of matter—unless it were possible for corporeal form to exist separately—but only in some of its parts. Alexander brings a proof from the fact that in animals there are parts which persist from their generation to their corruption, like the marks of some wounds which remain with them throughout their life’s span. 308
We are now in a position to understand Alexander’s subtle strategy. Far from adopting Boethus’ stance on the substantiality of matter, he recognizes in Aristotle’s text a possible support for it. That is why he goes so far as to contradict Aristotle on this issue. Alexander saw that if, as Aristotle does in the present text, we connect substantiality and perdurance over time too closely, we run the risk, on the basis of the perdurance over time of the scars, of being forced to allow for the matter’s substantiality. But in this case, Boethus is right in his interpretation of Aristotle and the essentialist reading is wrong. It is against this background and for this reason, I suggest, that Alexander advocated here not for the substantiality of matter as such (that would basically be the same mistake), but for a strict hylomorphism. The form must not be viewed as something that perdures “above” the matter in a living being, but, on the one hand, as the very formula of the enmattered being and, on the other hand, as the sortal concept associated with this formula in virtue of Alexander’s essentialism.309 And as soon as we envisage the form in the matter as the snub in the nose and not as a mysterious continuant over time, there is no way even to consider it apart from matter.310 Hence Alexander’s characterization of Aristotle’s 308
Averroes, Epitome 13.20-22. Moreover, the idea that if the matter were really in a perpetual flow, living beings would be immortal is attributed to Alexander’s commentary on GC by the 10th c. philosopher of Baghdad al-‘Āmirī. The text is not entirely clear. See Eichner, pp. 109-110. Perhaps Alexander also believed that some parts of the bones resist the flow of matter. See Philoponus, In GC 109.21-111.13 for a difficult discussion of this point (no Arabic parallel, however). 309 See Inna Kupreeva, “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Mixture and Growth”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 27, 2004, pp. 297-334, p. 312. 310 Alexander discusses snubness (σιµότης) at three places, all in his commentary on the Topics. Cf. In Top. 49.7-50.7, 300.28-31, and 450.23-28. In each of these places, he is very cautious not to assimilate snubness to a substance (a form), but to stress that it
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argument as ‘persuasive’ only. By dealing with form and matter as if they were two distinct entities, and by forgetting that it is the sortality of the form, and not the persistence of the matter that accounts for the identity of the individual substance, the basic requirement of the doctrine is distorted. Finally, Alexander is likely to have added that this view ends by making zany assumptions such as the possible immortality of the composite living being. In § 7.5, the author follows the last section of Aristotle’s chapter on growth, namely GC I 5, 322a 16-33. Aristotle said: And what accedes to the growing thing is a given quantity, but not a quantity of flesh. In so far as it is potentially both these things, i.e. a quantity of flesh, it will produce growth (for it has to become both a quantity and flesh): in so far as it is potentially just flesh, it will nourish. This is how nourishment and growth differ in definition.311
The author remains relatively close to the text: Growth and nutrition are not the same notion. For nutrition consists in a part receiving something similar to it in substitution for what has been lost from it; then, when another body, different from the thing, has been conjoined to it, the thing’s magnitude becomes larger than it was before the conjunction— i.e. not before its destruction and diminution. Thus, insofar as what is conjoined to it is similar to it, it is its nutriment; but insofar as it has a magnitude which makes the thing larger, it is a factor of growth, as in the case of flesh: for inasmuch as what is conjoined to it is flesh, nutrition occurs; but inasmuch as it is something having a quantity, growth.312
Interestingly, the author makes it explicit that insofar as the body is nourished by its nutriment, it is the form which is at stake: is a quality (that explains why, according to him, it cannot be a difference of a substance, “if at any rate the nose is itself a substance” (εἴ γε ἡ µὲν ῥὶς οὐσία, In Top. 300.30). This being said, snubness has in common with the form being indissociable from its determined substratum (the nose). As Alexander, In Top. 49.19-22, puts it: “The snub is likely to contain in itself also the nose. For since snubness is a concavity in the nose, being the compound, it is presumably with the nose, together with it, and not separable from it as well as from the concavity. It is the composite indeed which is snub”. Alexander’s shift is significant: the compound is no longer viewed as made of “the matter” and “the form”, but it is the formal aspect itself (the snubness) which is, formally speaking, a compound of a form (the concavity) and a substratum (the nose). 311 Aristotle, GC I 5, 322a 19-24. 312 Talḫīṣ 29.13-17.
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Thus, one and the same thing is a factor of nutrition and a factor of growth, but nutrition occurs in virtue of its form while growth occurs in virtue of its magnitude.313
It seems plain that the possessive pronoun ‘its’ refers to the factor of nutrition and growth, not to the growing thing, which is not mentioned in this sentence. Nutrition occurs in virtue of the nutriment’s form because this form is potentially the form of the growing thing, which remains preserved throughout the process. Philoponus was not so clear about the form. The only sentence where he mentions it in his exegesis of this passage is the following: Since it is potentially both these things, when it changes into something actual, in so far as it is actualised as flesh, to that extent it has just nourished but not caused growth. For nourishment is the preservation of the form, but growth is the progress of this to a larger size.314
The form mentioned by Philoponus here is that of the growing thing. One could say that this makes no great difference, since the form of the nutriment is the form of the growing thing in potentiality. There is a slight shift of meaning, however. In Philoponus’ text, the ‘form’ refers both to the qualitative formula of the tissue and to its shape. In the author’s version of the argument, it would be strange to say that the form of the nutriment is in potentiality the shape of the growing thing. Thus, its formulation tends to stress the qualitative nature of the form, which fits well with Alexander’s doubts about the distinction between matter and form at 321b 22-24.315 It comes as no surprise, then, that we find a similar formulation in Averroes: When the food that accedes to the growing thing is potentially only form not possessed of quantity—not316 in actuality but in potentiality –, the form of the growing thing will not thereby become any larger; but when the food is potentially form possessed of quantity, the process is one of growth. 317
I readily admit that this may be a simple coincidence, since the idea of the form is omnipresent in the passage. But it seems to me probable that this 313
Talḫīṣ 29.18. Philoponus, In GC 120.26-29. 315 See above, p. 179. 316 I add ‘not’ (lā) for the sake of the coherence: ‘in actuality’, this thing does have a quantity. Since the tradition seems to be unanimous, the omission of the negation may be a lapsus calami of Averroes himself. 317 Averroes, In GC 50.17-20 Eichner. 314
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insistence on corporeal form is part and parcel of Alexander’s overall strategy. In what follows, the author elaborates on the same issue. The text is not entirely clear, also because it has suffered from a homoeoteleuton: And every nutriment makes what absorbs it grow, for every body to which another body is conjoined becomes larger than it was, except that what is used here is the magnitude which occurs after nutrition. not the magnitude prior to nutrition, but the magnitude prior to the destruction because of which nutrition was needed. For the nutrition does not occur only because of the destruction, but the body becomes also larger than it was. 318
The author’s aim is to settle formally the distinction between growth and nutrition. He first states that every nutriment makes what absorbs it grow. But this is true only if we consider the process that occurs after nutrition, i.e. when we consider the growing body as already nourished. The author probably views the process as consisting of three stages. First, some corporeal matter flows out of the thing; then nutrition in the proper sense of the term occurs, which brings about an exact compensation of the loss; then, once the initial quantity of matter has been restituted to the thing, further nutrition produces its growth. Of course, we do not necessarily have to interpret these three stages as strictly chronological. It may well be that the first of them (the loss of matter) happens together with the other two. And even if the third must come after the second, there is no real distinction— no “double point” in the sense of Aristotle’s Physics319—between them. The closest parallel is not in Averroes, who does not say anything similar, but in Philoponus: I do not mean to deny that nourishment always makes a certain addition in respect of quantity to the thing it is nourishing […], but what he means by not being actualized as far as quantity is concerned is not to be able to make any addition to the size of the thing because the outflow is copious or equal.320
It is reasonable to think that Philoponus is basically following Alexander, and that the author adds some explanation of his own. In the last part of § 7.5, the author puts forward some considerations about the natural aim of growth: 318
Talḫīṣ 29.18-31.1. See e. g. Physics VIII 8, 262a 12-b 8. 320 Philoponus, In GC 121.8-12. 319
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For the nutrition does not occur only because of the destruction, but the body becomes also larger than it was. For if nutrition were occurring because of the destruction, the aim would be the preservation of the prior magnitude, and the augmentation beyond it would be unnatural. But that is not the case. For each thing has a magnitude determined by nature, which it must reach by developing itself gradually. This happens when a body having the disposition to become similar to it is conjoined with it, and the nutritive makes it change and couples it with the growing thing, in order for the latter to be augmented, develop itself, and reach the magnitude it was aiming at.321
Such a situation is somewhat paradoxical, since in the extant commentaries influenced by Alexander, we find no trace of this discussion. Neither Philoponus nor Averroes says anything about the “aim” of growth. The author, by contrast, adopts a view which is clearly teleological. After dealing at length, throughout this chapter, with the mechanical cause of growth, he now addresses its final cause. This interpretation testifies to an acute sensitivity to Aristotle’s usual patterns of argumentation. The mechanical explanation of growth was given in terms of material, formal and efficient causality. Whereas these three causes have constantly been taken into account in the course of this chapter, Aristotle made no mention of the final cause. It is a nice hypothesis, then, to suppose that it was in the last lines of the chapter that Aristotle intended to deal, or should have dealt, with the latter. As a matter of fact, even if Aristotle makes no explicit mention of final causality, there is one place where it is not unlikely that he had something of the sort in mind, namely 322a 24-25, “[a]ccordingly, a thing is nourished as long as it is maintained in existence even if it gets smaller but is not always in the process growing” (διὸ τρέφεται µὲν ἕως ἂν σώζηται καὶ φθῖνον, αὐξάνεται δὲ οὐκ ἀεί). The phrase αὐξάνεται δὲ οὐκ ἀεί being negative, we are not told until when growth occurs. The author, as we said, is the only ancient commentator who “translates” Aristotle’s clause into a positive statement. The author’s interpretation draws on the fact that growth is not purely mechanical. Even if the process of growth combines various mechanical interactions, it cannot be reduced to them, because it stops at the point where nature, so to say, wants it to stop. At the end of his summary of GC I 5, Averroes writes: What it is whereby this motion takes place and what is its efficient cause may be ascertained in the De generatione animalium as consisting in natural heat. Furthermore, it may be seen in the De Plantis that it also takes place in plants through something similar to natural heat and through the heat of the 321
Talḫīṣ 29.22-31.5.
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stars and especially of the sun. But it will be seen in the case of both of them, i.e., animals and plants, that the remote mover for this motion is the nutritive soul (al-nafs al-ġāḏiyya) and the heat serves it as an instrument.322
Given that Averroes’ Epitome seems to stick to Alexander, the mention in both texts of the nutritive soul is likely to point to a common dependence. Philoponus did not preserve this portion of Alexander’s commentary. It is impossible for the entire paragraph just quoted to come from Alexander, for the simple reason that he tells us elsewhere that he had no access to Aristotle’s De plantis.323 Moreover, the passage referred to by Averroes is perhaps recognizable in the text of Nicolaus of Damascus which at that time was mistaken for Aristotle’s treatise.324 There is no evidence, on the other hand, that Alexander made this mistake. I have said that both texts, those by the author and Averroes, evoke the nutritive soul. That is not entirely accurate. In both manuscripts of the treatise, the author only says ‘the nutritive’ (al-ġāḏiyya). That may be a mistake of their common ancestor. But it may also be an abbreviated way of speaking either of the nutritive soul as in Averroes (nafs = ψυχή), or of the nutritive faculty (quwwa = δύναµις). Aristotle and Alexander employ both denominations (θρεπτικὴ ψυχή and θρεπτικὴ δύναµις) interchangeably and, at any rate, view the nutritive faculty as belonging to the soul.325 It is important not to add, as Kurland did in his translation of Averroes, to the word ‘this motion’ (first line of the text), the words ‘of nutrition’; or, if we do, to interpret them broadly. For although Averroes remains vague, it is likely that he is pointing to both actions directed by the nutritive soul, namely growth and nutrition as opposed to growth. In other words, he does not take this ‘motion’ as equivalent to nutrition in the strict sense settled in the last part of GC I 5 (nutrition as opposed to growth). The two texts are thus very similar, since they refer to the role of the nutritive soul insofar as it is responsible for the growth of the organic body. The point is implicit in Averroes and explicit in the author. It is Alexander, therefore, who adopted this exegesis of GC I 5. Now, the mention of the nutritive soul is particularly suggestive if we connect it to Alexander’s attempt to explain growth without using Galen’s 322
Averroes, Epitome 14.6-9. Alexander, In de sensu 87.11-12. 324 See [Aristotle], De plantis, 817a 23-25: “The nutritive principle in plants in derived from the earth, the generative principle is derived from the sun” and chapter II 8 on the nutritive material. 325 See the numerous references in H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, Berlin, 1870, 333a 58-b 4. 323
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attractive faculty.326 The only way to combine both aspects is to suppose that the nutritive soul is responsible for the natural heat, and that the end of growth may also be due to some kind of dessication of the flesh and bones under the natural heat’s influence. It is not un-Aristotelian to attribute the production of the natural heat exclusively to the nutritive soul. This heat has a triple effect: the dilation of the tissues, the coction of the nutriment, and the dessication of the limbs, which in its turn blocks the process of growth at the opportune time. Nature thus controls the entire process, aiming at the preservation of the individual substance (nutrition) and of the species (reproduction). As we shall stress again when we comment on § 7.8, we can say either that growth stops because it has reached the development nature was aiming at, or because the natural heat has consumed the internal humidity of the body. And, from an Aristotelian point of view, we should probably say both. § 7.6 consists of an explanation of the natural diminution characteristic of old age. The limbs are made of the elements, which have contrary properties. It is necessary, then, that they affect and destroy each other perpetually. Until the body has reached its adult size, and for some time after this moment, the nutritive power is sufficient to replace what is lost. But later, diminution necessarily occurs, for three possible reasons: insufficiency of alimentation, increasing weakness of the nutritive power, or an affection too massive to be countered. Thus, according to the author, there are three stages in the biological life: nutrition and growth, nutrition without growth nor diminution, nutrition unable to resist diminution. Although the body is said to diminish ‘essentially’ or ‘per se’ (ḏātiyyan) in § 7.6, it is said now, in § 7.7, that growth is ‘natural’ (ṭabī‘ī), while diminution is ‘unnatural’ (ḫāriǧ ‘an al-ṭab‘).327 Thus, the author draws a distinction between what occurs essentially and what occurs naturally. Some processes may be essential by reference to the fact that it is necessary for them to occur, in virtue of the natural composition of the body in which they take place, but they are not natural, because they cannot be properly described as nature’s aim. The end of the organic life is a natural consequence of its structural conditions, but, in an Aristotelian framework, it has
326
See above, p. 171. In accordance with the first meaning of φύσις listed by Aristotle, Metaph. Δ 4, 1014b 16-17: φύσις λέγεται ἕνα µὲν τρόπον ἡ τῶν φυοµένων γένεσις, οἷον εἴ τις ἐπεκτείνας λέγοι τὸ υ. 327
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no teleological value.328 Aristotle did not say anything similar at the end of his chapter. Therefore, in spite of its harmless appearance, § 7.7 is a strong claim in favour of natural teleology, which is all the more remarkable if the author, as I believe, is a Muslim theologian. And if Alexander is his source, here as elsewhere in this chapter, it is a clear sign that there was for him no contradiction between the mechanical explanation of growth and the fact that this process had a strong teleogical import. The mechanical import of Alexander’s interpretation allows him to solve certain specific difficulties raised by Aristotelian teleology. Allan Gotthelf lists the different modern interpretations and groups them according to the following typology:329 1. Strong irreducibility is the view according to which “living organisms and their parts do not come to be by material necessity alone”.330 Teleological explanation is required as soon as there is no material-level account beforehand. 2. The regulative/pragmatic view holds that “living organisms and their parts come to be by simple material necessity alone”.331 Teleological explanation belongs to another realm, which can be conceived in a variety of ways, but which never includes the reasons according to which something is the case. 3. Limited irreducibility consists in holding that while what comes about results from material causality, its goodness, hence its essence, is not explainable in non-teleological terms. 4. Weak irreducibility considers that biological facts are constantly brought about by a combination of material and teleological causation, the latter acting as a ‘program’. This interpretation is reducible to a version of the following one. 5. Intrinsic causes/anti-eliminativism maintains that “the question whether or not Aristotle thought living organisms and their parts come to be by material necessity […] is irrelevant to his endorsement of teleological explanation”. What counts, according to the upholders of this position, 328
Aristotle never says, for instance, that death has the (teleological) value of avoiding overpopulation, although this idea was widespread in Near-Eastern and Greek archaic culture (as attested by the fr. 1 of the Cypria = schol. ad Il. 1.5). See W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Harvard, 1992, pp. 100-106. 329 See A. Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, in Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology, Oxford, 2012, pp. 67-89, pp. 71-74. 330 Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, p. 71. 331 Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, p. 71.
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is the “presence of a ‘reliable mechanism’ for generating organic outcomes.”332 Sylvia Berryman has shown that the existence of complex mechanisms able to serve as models for biological processes is posterior to Aristotle, and should rather be situated in the Hellenistic age.333 Thus, she claims, at the time of Galen there are not two but three basic positions with regard to natural teleology. Parallel to the reductionist account pursuing the old atomist tradition, and to the account in terms of indispensable qualitative powers (δυνάµεις) priviledged by Galen himself, we find a mechanical approach, inspired by the contemporary development of complex artefacts, which Galen criticizes for its incapacity to describe how Nature actually produces its outcomes. With some anachronism, we could compare the first option to the “regulative/pragmatic” view, i.e. by reference to a distinction between material necessitation and teleological explanation. Necessitation is on the side of the ‘essence’ of things, i.e. of their being what they are, i.e. of their informed matter, while explanation is on the side of their ‘nature’, i.e. of their natural purpose.334 By contrast, the second option, by drawing a distinction between lower-level dunameis which are related to the elements and work in terms of material causation, and higher-level dunameis, is reminiscent of Gotthelf’s “strong irreducibility” thesis.335 Against this background, it was to be expected, as suggested by Berryman, that the mechanical approach suggested itself to thinkers trying to escape from the dilemma—if not Aristotle himself, at least some of his successors.336 That Alexander indulged in this approach, and was followed by the author, finds a nice confirmation in the distinction we have seen between “natural” and 332
Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, p. 73. See S. Berryman, “Galen and the Mechanical Philosophy”, Apeiron 35, 2002, pp. 235-253. For the whole (more complex) picture, see ead., The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy, Cambridge, 2009. Provided that that is the case, the fifth explanation is, according to Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, p. 83, not only un-Aristotelian, but even anachronistic. 334 See R. Sorabji, Necessity, Cause, and Blame. Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory, London, 1980, pp. 155-174 in particular. 335 Cf. A. Gotthelf, “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality”, in Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology, Oxford, 2012, pp. 3-44, p. 36: “My account of the dunamis of the whole allows for dunameis of the materials to be at work—anything hypothetically necessitated by the actualization of the dunamis for the form of the whole will be so necessitated only given the basic natures and potentials of the elements; but it does not allow that they be sufficient for the outcome. If they are sufficient, then there is simply no place for a dunamis of the whole”). 336 See also S. Berryman, “Teleology without Tears: Aristotle and the Role of Mechanistic Conceptions of Organisms”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37, 2007, pp. 351-370, pp. 365-366. 333
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“essential” (or per se). According to this interpretation of Aristotle indeed, as pointed out by Gotthelf, “[w]hether or not living organisms and their parts come to be by material necessity is irrelevant to his endorsement of teleological explanation”.337 For, he adds, “[t]hat denial derives from Aristotle’s insistence, against his accidentalist rivals, that the coming to be of an organism and its parts has an intrinsic (efficient) cause of the appropriate sort”, meaning by such a cause the αἴτιον καθ᾿ αὑτό of Aristotle.338 This notion is precisely what the author tried to capture by explaining that decrepitude is per se but not natural. The best representative of this third group is certainly Erasistratus, whom Galen presents in this very posture.339 The suggestion that, to some extent, Alexander preferred Erasistratus’ mechanical stance to Galen’s profusion of powers is, in a sense, more paradoxical and interesting. Obviously, Alexander is very unlikely to have explained away every kind of psychic power in Aristotle. But it seems undeniable, on the basis of the present evidence, that he was unusual among Aristotle’s commentators in his efforts to solve the Aristotelian dilemma, or at least to file its horns, by reducing the number and importance of the δυνάµεις on the one hand, and by interpreting material causation in terms of mechanical efficiency on the other.340 § 7.8 addresses this issue again. Prima facie, there seems to be some tension here between a teleogical and a mechanical explanation. For the author says: Growth was the augmentation in all the dimensions according to the natural proportion in everything, up to a certain limit. Then this augmentation stops not because of some weakness of the power, as if there were some deficiency, but because it has reached the natural and determinate magnitude it was aiming at.341
337
Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, p. 73. Cf. Gotthelf, “Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology”, p. 73, n. 25, where he explains that, following Susan S. Meyer, “Aristotle, Teleology, and Reduction”, Philosophical Review 101, 1992, pp. 791-825—herself a proponent of the fifth interpretation in Gotthelf’s list—he is here “translating aition kath’ hauto, often rendered ‘per se cause’, as ‘intrinsic cause’”. 339 See above, p. 172. 340 For Alexander’s parallel integration of some mechanical features into Aristote’s cosmology, see Rashed, Essentialisme, pp. 278-281. Galen himself is not unaware of the difficulties of his solution. See Hankinson, Cause and Explanation, pp. 373-403. 341 Talḫīṣ 33.1-4. 338
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We have stressed that in an Aristotelian context, one should not contrast the two approaches so as to make them incompatible. If, by stating that growth stops because it has reached its aim, we are just claiming that the material processes taking place in the biological world are possessed of some kind of final orientation, such a claim may be acceptable; if, on the other hand, we wish to argue that matter is used by Nature like a tool by a rational agent, we betray Aristotle’s basic intuition about causality. The quoted sentence seems, however, to argue in favour of the second option. It seems to assume the existence of some mysterious rational agent which stops acting as soon as it has reached its goal. However, the author adds: Then afterwards, if this power is powerful and hits upon a suitable nutriment, the body is augmented more than diminished, not however in every direction, but in width and thickness, while there is no augmentation of the body’s tallness. That is how the body’s fatness occurs, which is unnatural, and constitutes an augmentation beyond the necessary magnitude.342
With this, we are back to a mechanical explanation: the nutritive power is always present. It is a change in the underlying matter of the body which entails a change in the spatial direction of the process. Even if the expression is a bit clumsy, the whole argument appears to confirm the proposed reconstruction of Alexander’s general theory of growth and nutrition. The nutritive power remains, and probably still acts on the blood by means of the natural heat. The stopping of growth is not due to a rational decision, nor to a mere deficiency in the nutritive power, but to material changes within the body, which are themselves induced by this power. The augmentation according to “width and thickness”, therefore, seems to confirm that Alexander combined mechanical and teleological explanation, against Galen and following in the footsteps of Erasistratus.
342
Talḫīṣ 33.4-7.
Section 8: On Contact The next section of the text is devoted to the topics of GC I 6, namely contact. In Aristotle’s treatise, there is a rather long introduction to this chapter, dealing with the requisites of a study of the elements.343 This study presupposes an inquiry into the process of mixing,344 and the latter presupposes an inquiry into the processes of acting and being affected. The latter, in turn, requires that we address the question of contact. It is plain, thus, that this introduction announces the subsequent development of the treatise. Chapter I 6 will be devoted to contact, chapters I 7-9 to acting and being affected, chapter I 10 to mixing. Then, from chapter II 1 onwards, Aristotle will deal with the reciprocal change of the elements. The author does not stick to this presentation, but from § 8.1 to § 8.4, he borrows from the three subsequent chapter of GC (7-9, not 6), which are devoted to acting and being affected. He first writes: It is necessary for generation, destruction, growth, nutrition and alteration to occur, that there exist action and passion, for nothing changes without these, neither in substance nor in quality nor in magnitude.345
There is no mention of the elements nor, at this stage, of contact. The author’s main focus seems to be action and passion. His exegetical approach is confirmed by what follows. For the next idea in the author’s first paragraph comes from Aristotle’s next chapter, GC I 7. That testifies to the author’s striving to present the Aristotelian material in the best possible order. At the beginning of GC I 7, Aristotle wrote: Again, if something is capable of being affected by what is like it, it will also be capable of being affected by itself; and if this were the case there would be nothing imperishable or immovable, given that like qua like is capable of acting, for everything would move itself.346
We may compare what the author says at § 8.1:
343
GC I 6, 322b 1-26. More on this below, p. 201. 345 Talḫīṣ 33.10-12. 346 GC I 7, 323b 21-25. 344
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And it is impossible for anything to change by itself, for if its essence were the cause of change for its essence, it would perpetually change and would never remain stable in one and the same state; moreover, everything would be changing and passing away.347
The rest of § 8.1 explains that acting and being affected require contact. The author stresses that the agent need not be in contact with the patient itself, but that if they are not in contact they must be linked together by a chain of beings in contact, which are in a relation of mutual acting and being affected: The agent, therefore, is different from the patient, and the agent does not act upon the patient except after having been put in contact with it, because if it does not meet it, either by itself or by the intermediary of something else, its effect would not reach it at all. And there is no difference if it is the agent or the intermediary that meets the patient, insofar as it reaches it; for when fire heats wood by the intermediary of air, it first heats and meets the air, until the air becomes hot in actuality and starts heating the wood by being in contact with it. Thus, the agent meets the patient in both cases, except that the air has acquired the active power from another agent. And whether the agent has acquired the power from something else or whether the power belongs to it in virtue of its essence, it does not act except after having met the patient and been in contact with it.348
Here the author develops what can be found in the slightly different context of GC I 9. In the last section of the treatment of acting and being affected, Aristotle had written: Anything which has grown together to make one thing is incapable of being affected. So too are things that are in contact neither with each other nor with other things whose nature is to act and be acted upon: I mean, for example, that fire heats not only when in contact with things but also when it is at a distance from them; for the fire heats the air and the air heats the body, air being of a nature both to act and to be affected.349
At § 8.2, the author elaborates on a few lines from the end of GC I 8. There Aristotle says:
347
Talḫīṣ 33.12-14. Talḫīṣ 33.14-21. 349 GC I 9, 327a 1-6. 348
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Speaking generally, it is superfluous to posit the existence of passages. If nothing can act by means of contact, it will not act by penetrating through passages. If, on the other hand, it can do so by contact, even if there were no passages, some things would be affected and others would act, provided each sort were of the appropriate nature to be related in this way to the other. From these considerations it is clear that speaking of passages in this way, as some have supposed necessary, is either mistaken or futile. Since bodies are divisible at any point, it is absurd to posit the existence of passages; for where they are divisible, they can be separated.350
The author repeats more or less the same idea, but introduces a somewhat different perspective. He writes: It is not necessary to think that contact is not sufficient for action and passion to occur but that more than that is needed, namely that there be holes and ducts into which the agent enters and through which it reaches the patient’s most interior parts; for even if it enters the ducts inside the patient, it reaches nothing but the surfaces of these ducts and it comes into contact with the patient only insofar as it is in contact with them, so that what occurs is nothing but contact and meeting from without. It is also not possible for the agent to pervade the patient’s totality, for both are bodies and a body does not enter a body. Nor is it possible that there be cavities inside the patient by which the agent reaches its totality, for in that case a vacuum would exist. For in whichever way a body enters the cavity of another body, nothing happens but its surface meeting the surface of the cavity. And for it to reach the patient’s totality is impossible, unless the first is a vacuum or if a body enters a body—but both claims are absurd. Therefore, it does not reach it except by way of contact. And since contact is sufficient, contact may be either from without or within a cavity […].351
To Aristotle’s claim that positing passages is unnecessary and deprived of any explicative value, the author adds some considerations absent from his source and from Philoponus. For he seems to envisage the πόροι as an (ineffective) alternative to Stoic physics.352 The Stoics—be they real or fictional—assumed that in order for acting and being affected to occur, it is necessary to allow for the possibility of two bodies being in the same place.353 The first body is the agent, and it affects the second body by 350
GC I 8, 326b 21-28. Talḫīṣ 35.1-10. 352 Note in particular the sentence “[i]t is also not possible for the agent to pervade the patient’s totality, for both are bodies and a body does not enter a body”. 353 On Stoic compenetration, see the fragments gathered in H. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, vol. ii, Berlin, 1903, pp. 151-158 (fr. 463-481). For an 351
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touching it at any point. The passages are conceived by the author as doing the job. According to their upholders, it is possible by their means for the agent to reach the totality of the patient. It is worth noting that the author categorically rejects the possibility of a vacuum. In so doing, he is in agreement with the Baghdadi mutakallimūn, who, contrarily to their Baṣrian colleagues, sided with the Aristotelian tradition on this issue.354 So far as I am aware, there is no parallel to this text in the exegetical tradition. Neither Philoponus nor Averroes mentions the impossibility of two bodies being in the same place on the occasion of their refutation of the πόροι. The author may be original here. But he might also have found the main lines of his interpretation in Alexander’s lost commentary. For it suits Alexander’s habits to read Aristotle’s physical discussion of his predecessors in the light of the hellenistic context. That is particularly the case with Aristotle’s refutation of Democritean atomism, which is read by Alexander in close connexion with contemporary discussions of Epicurean physics.355 It may very well be the case, then, that interpreting the ducts as a strategy against the Stoics stems from the same kind of context. The last part of § 8.2 contains another idea that is not genuinely Aristotelian, and does not appear in Philoponus. The author says: […] however, when their meeting occurs at the surfaces of cavities, they meet in greater proportions than when they meet only from without, so that action gets faster and stronger. Therefore, the cavities and the ducts are not a cause of action and passion, but a cause of the fact that both of them come about quicker and more efficiently.356
Averroes is unclear on this issue. He is silent in his Middle Commentary and seems to contradict himself slightly in his Epitome, where he expresses his view in the following way: As for the pores which one of the ancient philosophers believed to be the cause of passion, they are more aptly taken as an accidental rather than an essential cause, though in a certain sense as a facilitating cause.357 enlightening discussion of the issue (with further bibliography), see J. Groisard, Alexandre d’Aphrodise: Sur la mixtion et la croissance, Paris, 2013, pp. lxxxii-xc. 354 Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, pp. 47-51 and Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, pp. 47-55. 355 See Rashed, Commentaire perdu, pp. 355-358 and now F. Verde, Elachista. La dottrina dei minimi nell’epicureismo, Leuven, 2013, pp. 120-121 and 309-313. 356 Talḫīṣ 35.10-13. 357 Averroes, Epitome 16.18-19.
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But he adds immediately afterwards: In virtue of this (wa-li-ḏālika), some parts of a thing are more receptive to passion than others just as we find stretching through mines veins of silver which are receptive to certain transformation though the area around them is not. The reason for this (wa-al-‘illatu fī ḏālika) lies in the greater predisposition of some parts of a thing to be acted upon than others. The view of those who believe, on the other hand, that the cause of passion is the penetration of atoms into the two things which act upon and suffer action from one another is a view that is reared upon the assumption of the existence of atoms and the invalidity of this assumption has been demonstrated in Book VI of the Physics.358
In the first sentence quoted, Averroes agrees with the author in taking the pores as facilitating action and passion. Though he does not state the reason explicitly, it is obviously that they multiply the areas of contact between the agent and the patient, thus making their interaction easier. In the second paragraph, Averroes explains the “veins” in the mines first as the result of ‘this’ (ḏālika), which in this context can only point to the presence of ducts, and secondly as due to the greater ‘predisposition’ (isti‘dād) of some parts of the mineral to being affected. It seems difficult to interpret this predisposition as only resulting from the presence of pores in some parts of the mineral. Aristotle’s text is rather plain, the vein in the metal is an example of how we should interpret the πόροι, namely as a zone, in the continuous matter, of greater propensity to being affected. The vein does not contain many πόροι, it is itself a πόρος of some sort. And that seems to be what Averroes intends to say when he writes “[t]he reason for this lies in the greater predisposition of some parts of a thing to be acted upon than others”. It would be unnatural to take this sentence as referring again to the presence of pores. In short, in the second part of this paragraph, Averroes seems to follow Aristotle more closely than in the first, exactly as he will do in his Middle Commentary. I am tempted to interpret this tension in the Epitome as a trace of Alexander’s influence. For while it is absent from Philoponus’ commentary, the interpretation of the πόροι as making action and passion easier appears in no less than three Arabic sources. Besides Averroes and the author, we should also mention Avicenna: And some of the Ancients said that the agent does not act upon the patient as long as it has not penetrated into holes present in it. They did not grasp that 358
Averroes, Epitome 17.1-6.
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the most these holes are able to manage is to make it possible that there should be an increase of the meeting together. For if the meeting together occurs without holes, some action results in the patient, and what brings about alteration is the meeting together and the contact, while each time the agent gets more mixed, the affection is more diffuse.359
The move in these three texts is virtually the same. We could suppose, first, that the author influenced Avicenna, and that the latter in turn was used by Averroes. But there is no clear influence of Avicenna’s text on Averroes’ Epitome. In all likelihood, this idea was expressed in Alexander’s commentary, where it was found independently by at least the author and Averroes. Whether Avicenna borrowed it from the author or directly from Alexander is an open question. The mention of the ‘Ancients’ in the Šifā’ and the Epitome, which is not to be found in our text, makes it on the whole more likely that the three Arabic texts are independent from one another and trace back to Alexander. In the light of what we have observed in the last chapter, this result is not without interest. It points to the fact that Alexander systematically allows for a two level analysis of change, one in terms of the natural ability of the stuff to actualize some feature present in it in potentiality, and the other in terms of micro-structure. Aristotle himself paved the way in at least two passages of GC. In the second chapter, at the end of his refutation of atomism, he explained that even if generation and destruction are not reducible to aggregation and segregation of small particles, the fact of having small particles makes the process of generation and destruction easier: However, things do become easily corruptible as a result of being segregated and aggregated: for instance, the smaller the particles into which drops of water are divided the sooner (θᾶττον) they become air; if they are aggregated the process is slower (βραδύτερον). But this will become clearer in the following discussions.360
The same kind of allusion to the micro-structure of matter in explaining not so much the real as the auxiliary cause of a process returns again in the chapter devoted to mixture, GC I 10:
359
Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-Šifā’, Al-kawn wa-al-fasād 126.8-11. See Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, p. 133. 360 GC I 2, 317a 27-30.
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Small quantities, too, put alongside small quantities, mix better, because they change one another more easily and quickly (ῥᾷον καὶ θᾶττον), while large quantities acted upon by large quantities take a long time (χρονίως) to do this. Accordingly amongst things which are divisible and capable of being affected those which are easily bounded are capable of being mixed, since they divide easily into small parts, which is precisely what it is to be easily bounded. For example, liquids […].361
Aristotle repeats the same idea in similar words a little further down, at 328b 14-17. Alexander is entitled, then, to analyse micro-structures in terms of auxiliary causes. It is interesting that he pursues this line of thought even in places where Aristotle did not follow this path. The most striking case was Alexander’s analysis of growth. But it also appears here, in the course of the treatment of action and passion. The characterization of the ducts as auxiliary causes of action and passion is crucial, since interaction is explanatory of the entire range of physiological processes belonging to Aristotelian chemistry. Alexander suggests that it is not sufficient to highlight contact as a general condition for action and passion. We also ought to explain how contact can be optimized, namely by increasing the surfaces of the agent and the patient by means of cavities. This move helps us define his stance with regard to, respectively, Stoic and (broadly speaking) Epicurean physics. While the former is erroneous, the second has a partial truth, once we grasp that what it considers as a full cause, namely contact, is merely auxiliary. § 8.3 corresponds to no clear passage in Aristotle. It deals with a topic, however, that appears also in Philoponus’ commentary—but not in Averroes’. It is interesting that the author and Philoponus strongly disagree on the issue at stake. The object of their discussion is not crystal clear. The author is keen to show that mixing is not a precondition for action and passion. In order for it to take place, affection does not require that the agent should be mixed with the patient. Their case is not similar to that of water and wine when they mix together: And we should not think that the body which is acted upon must be cut into parts by the agent in the process of being acted upon, so that the agent would pervade it and be mixed with it. For it does not belong to the nature of the patient that the agent should pervade it, nor that it be mixed while its substance remains preserved, like water when it is mixed with wine so that it is 361
GC I 10, 328a 33-35.
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similar to the wine in taste and colour (for the water remains in its initial state even if the wine has been mixed with it, and the wine remains in its state even if the water has been mixed with it).362
We should not think that the author means that mixing does not presuppose acting and being affected. That would blatantly contradict what Aristotle says and what he will himself claim at § 8.5 and §§ 10.3-4. Rather, the text assumes that the persistence of the patient’s form is not a requirement for action and passion although it is a requirement for mixing. In the case of wine and water, for instance, even if the taste and colour of the mixture are those of the wine (and not of the water), we are entitled to think that both forms are still present at a deeper level, since they are separable again. In other words: On the contrary, affection occurs between them in such a way that the patient remains as it was from the point of view of its corporeality and its continuity, while it receives in its body the quality of the agent, and loses the quality opposite to the one it receives little by little. For when the body of the cold thing remains as it is with respect to its continuity, it is the substratum of coldness as well as of heat, except that when one of the two is present in it in actuality, the other is present in potentiality, and when the second defeats the first, the body receives it and becomes its substratum in actuality without its corporeality being cut, acted upon or changed at all.363
The example of the cold thing that becomes hot without its substratum “being cut, acted upon or changed at all” is enlightening, because it points to the reciprocal transformation of the elements. No mixing is needed for water, which is cold, to become air, which is hot. Action and passion occur between two masses which only need to be in contact, directly or indirectly. Even though their material aspect remains unchanged, the form of the patient turns into the form of the agent. Philoponus has a different opinion. But before addressing it, let us say something about Aristotle’s introduction to GC I 6. This text is not just a presentation of the issue at hand, namely contact. It marks a new start in the progression of the treatise, by linking the topics dealt with in the first book to the discussion of the ‘so-called elements’ that will follow in the second book. Here are the first lines of GC I 6:
362 363
Talḫīṣ 35.14-18. Talḫīṣ 35.18-37.2.
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Since we must first discuss the matter of generation and corruption and the so-called ‘elements’, whether or not they really are such, and whether each is eternal or comes to be in some way, and if they do come to be, whether they all come to be from one another in the same manner or whether one of them is primary—before this, we must speak of things which are at present talked about in a confused way. All philosophers, both those who make the elements come to be and those who make things come to be from the elements, make use of aggregation and segregation, action and passion. Now, aggregation is mixing; but what we mean by ‘mixing’ is not clearly determined. What is more, it is impossible for there to be alteration, or segregation and aggregation, unless there is something which acts and something which is affected.364
The present passage lends itself to two different interpretations. According to the first, Aristotle is roughly endorsing his predecessors’ opinion about the connection between the different subject matters of the physical inquiry. He assumes that even if, contrary to what they believed, mixing in the proper sense of the word does not amount to mere aggregation, explaining mixing is a necessary step in order to deal with the “so-called elements”. On the second interpretation, Aristotle is being more critical of Presocratic physics. He claims that it is necessary to study mixing as well as action and affection in order to contrast them with elementary transformation. We shall come back to this alternative shortly. For the time being, let us indulge in two remarks. First, whichever interpretation we prefer, the study of contact is a prerequisite both for that of action and passion and for that of mixing. As Aristotle puts it: […] If consideration has to be given to action and passion and to mixing, it must necessarily also be given to contact; for neither is acting and being affected possible in the strict sense for things which cannot be in contact with each other, nor can things be mixed unless they have first had some sort of contact. So we must get clear about these three things, what contact is, what mixing is, and what action is.365
Secondly, in spite of the ordered progression of the second half of GC I, Aristotle nowhere clearly states that the study of action and passion is a condition for that of mixing. It is only in the course of his treatment of mixing that he will make use of acting and being affected—as he will explain that the elements of the mixture are both acting and being affected, 364 365
Aristotle, GC I 6, 322b 1-11. Aristotle, GC I 6, 322b 21-26.
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or agent and patient. But to repeat a point already made, there is no passage in which Aristotle claims that the study of acting and being affected is preliminary to that of mixing. It it worth noting, from this point of view, that in the last sentence of the passage quoted, mixing is mentioned after contact and before action, as if Aristotle did not want to suggest a straightforward progression. Disregarding for a while the obvious fact that acting and being affected belong to the characterization of mixing, we can only conclude that the relation between acting and mixing is left underdetermined by Aristotle. Scholars at least since Averroes have always interpreted Aristotle’s introductory remarks as justifying a straight progression in the argument: first contact, then acting and being affected, then mixing, and, finally, elementary constitution and change. Yet, in a neglected text, Philoponus takes the opposite view: But if it is necessary to speak of acting and being affected, obviously, he says, it is necessary also to discuss mixing. For things which act upon and are affected must first have been mixed with each other, since they would not act upon or be affected by one another while they were bodies standing at a distance from each other. […] So for an account of elements an account of acting and being affected is necessary, and for this an account of mixing (for the things which act and are affected must have been mixed with each other), and for this an account of contact; for how should things that have not touched be mixed with each other? So we have to have an account of contact and of mixing and of acting and being affected.366
Philoponus seems to be unique among the commentators in reversing the order of acting and mixing. Mixing becomes preliminary to action and passion, rather than the other way round. Why? We have already observed that, from an exegetical point of view, it was possible to remain cautious about the exact relationships between mixing and acting. For Aristotle himself is perhaps not as clear on this issue as it may appear at first sight. But what about a possible doctrinal reason? In the first passage translated, Aristotle was saying that “aggregation is mixing” (ἔστι δ᾿ ἡ σύγκρισις µίξις).367 With respect to the scientific treatment of mixing in GC I 10, such a claim is obviously false. Everyone knows that according to Aristotle, aggregation is not mixing, and that mixing is something more than aggregation. Aggregation is only a superficial appearance of mixing, which vanishes as soon as we focus on the microscopic level, 366 367
Philoponus, In GC 125.19-31. GC I 6, 322b 8. Cf. Philoponus, In GC 125.24: ἡ γὰρ σύγκρισις µίξις τίς ἐστιν.
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where we can distinguish each particle from the next.368 On the other hand, some kind of aggregation is necessary in order for mixing to occur. We have just seen that according to Alexander, the pores made contact easier. In the case of mixing, the microscopic structure is even more important: aggregation is auxiliary in a stronger sense, since there is no mixing if there is no aggregation taking place. That explains why, according to the Aristotelian tradition, there is mixing only between liquids.369 Once two liquids have been aggregated to one another, action and passion takes place. Each of them reaches a new state, intermediary between the two initial states; then the matter becomes totally unified. To sum up: µίξις in the technical Aristotelian sense is nothing but an aggregation followed by reciprocal action and passion. Or, to put it slightly differently: µίξις in the technical sense is nothing but µίξις in the popular sense followed by reciprocal action and passion—which brings us nearer to Philoponus’ claim. But one problem remains: apart from the fact that Philoponus does not draw any distinction, in this context, between the two senses of µίξις,370 it seems obviously false that every instance of action and passion presupposes some mixing of the agent and the patient. If the fire warms the pot and the pot warms the water, it seems dubious at the extreme that the fire gets mixed with the pot and the pot with the water—not to speak of the fire getting mixed with the water. That is, however, what Philoponus implies in the passage quoted. The absurdity of such a claim is reduced a little some pages later, when Philoponus draws an opposition between the cause of motion (τὸ κινοῦν) and the agent (τὸ ποιοῦν). The agent, according to him, does not produce just any kind of change, but only a change in the category of quality. The cause of motion, on the other hand, produces a change in any category according to which motion can obtain (quality, quantity, place). Nevertheless, the doctrine remains odd: nothing compels us to believe that there should be a process of mixing every time an agent brings about some qualitative change in a given patient. Philoponus is very unlikely to have maintained such an absurdity. Maybe there is something wrong in the transmitted text. For after having written what we have quoted from him at the beginning of his commentary 368
See GC I 10, 327b 31-328a 17. On this, see Groisard, Sur la mixtion et la croissance, pp. lxxi-lxxxii. 370 See however Philoponus, In GC 187.23-25, the beginning of the commentary on GC I 10: “And here he uses ‘mixing’ (µίξιν) in the more special sense, to apply to mingling (ἐπὶ τῆς κράσεως); for ‘mixing’ (ἡ µίξις) is a more general term than ‘mingling’ (κράσεως) and ‘juxtaposition’ (παραθέσεως) and the rest, but mingling (ἡ κρᾶσις) is also called ‘mixing’ (µίξις) in a more special sense, and it is that which is the topic of the present discussion”. That explains the value of the τις in Philoponus’ quotation above, p. 200, n. 367. 369
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on GC I 6, Philoponus does not address this question again. Not only that: in his commentary on GC I 10 in particular, he plainly contradicts himself by claiming, like his fellow commentators, that action and passion is a condition for mixing, and not the other way round. Consider the following passage, for instance: Having rejected the false notions about mixing, and wishing finally to say what mixing is and how it comes about, he reminds us of the things that have been said about acting and being affected, namely, that, of the things which act, it is those which share a common matter with each other which are also mutually affected, and those which do not have a common matter which are not mutually affected. So since it is the things which act upon and are affected by each other that are mixed, and things which are alike in matter act upon and are affected by each other, it is these things, which share the same matter, which will be mixed with each other. So this is what mixing is: the action upon one another of things alike in matter.371
Therefore, we can only conclude that there was no clear import behind Philoponus’ exegetical move at the beginning of GC I 6. His interpretation is difficult, not to say absurd, and, above all, it is incoherent with regard to what follows in his own commentary. Let us sum up our results. When he starts commenting on GC I 6, Philoponus stresses that mixing is a necessary condition for action and passion. Later on in his commentary, he does not return to this claim, but sides with the unanimous tradition in affirming that action and passion are a necessary condition for mixing. Things would be rather simple, then, if the author of the new text had not been so eager to refute the doctrine upheld in the first passage by Philoponus. The whole of § 8.3 and, as we shall shortly see, § 8.4 and the beginning of § 8.5 are devoted to that task. I have no wholly satisfactory explanation for this situation. Even though other stories are possible, the most likely, in my view, is that something went wrong when Philoponus gathered together Ammonius’ teaching notes in order to write down the full commentary as we have it.372 He may have misinterpreted a passage in which Ammonius was recalling criticisms put forward by Alexander against a possible objection with regard to the ordering of the chapters. Alexander may have said that some people claim that mixing is a preliminary condition for action and passion, on the grounds that bodies must be in close contact in order for them to act upon 371
Philoponus, In GC 197.9-16. See P. Golitsis, Les Commentaires de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon à la Physique d’Aristote, Berlin / New York, 2008, p. 24. 372
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and be affected by each other. But that is false, and there is no flaw in the chapter sequence. While Philoponus seems to have skipped the critical part of this doxographical report and sided incidentally—to judge from the rest of his commentary—with the people criticized by Alexander, the author of the Arabic text has faithfully summarized the commentator’s argument here, just as he does elsewhere. And it would actually make sense, in a context still marked by the Hellenistic agenda, if some Aristotelian commentator influenced by Stoic ideas claimed that, after all, as the ordering of the last sentence of the introduction to GC I 6 suggested, mixing was a condition for action and passion. In the same way that the Stoic God—the only true agent—pervades the κόσµος in order to inform it by acting upon it,373 Aristotle might have thought that mixing was a preliminary condition for action and passion. Alexander would have rejected this claim, the dubious origin of which he would have recognized, and reasserted the correct Aristotelian progression: first contact, next action and passion, and then mixing. § 8.4 does not add anything new, but helps make the author’s thoughts more explicit: And since generation and destruction, growth, and alteration need touch of necessity as well as action and passion, then either the agent is first mixed with the patient and subsequently changes it and acts upon it, or it meets it and is in contact with it from without; for action and passion do not need mixture of necessity, nor is it the case that every agent and patient are mixed together, since it is impossible for the rough and the rough as well as for the rough and the smooth to be mixed. Indeed, the presence of mixture in action and passion is accidental, in the sense that when the agent and the patient are liquid and fine, and then meet and come into contact, they mix together. Mixture, then, only occurred between them insofar as it happened that they both were moist. But when one of them is rough and not liquid—or if both are so—mixture does not occur, and the only thing that occurs will be action and passion, exclusively by contact and meeting.374
The discussion of mixing elaborates upon the example of water and wine at § 8.3.375 Like Alexander in his De mixtione, the author insists on the fact that mixing (µίξις in the proper sense of ‘mingling’, or ‘blending’, κρᾶσις)
373
See Groisard, Sur la mixtion et la croissance, pp. lxxxiii-lxxxvi. Talḫīṣ 37.3-11. 375 See above, p. 197. 374
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occurs only between two liquids376—something that is perhaps also true, but less explicit, in Aristotle.377 The similarity between the two strategies is another clue that the author is drawing from Alexander’s lost commentary. The author begins addressing the question of contact at § 8.5. He first gives a general definition of contact: Thus we say: the differentia of contact is that the limits of the things are together and that there is between them nothing other than them.378
The other sources do not mention the fact “that there is between them nothing different from them”. Philoponus, for instance, says: He constructs his account of how the things that have a position are also in contact with one another from his definition of things in contact, given in Physics 5. There he says that being in contact is this: things’ having their extremities together.379
Averroes says something similar both in his Middle Commentary and in his Epitome.380 Both commentators refer to Aristotle’s canonical definition of contact in the Physics: ἅπτεσθαι δὲ ὧν τὰ ἄκρα ἅµα.381 In all likelihood, that is what Alexander did in his lost commentary. A first explanation of the discrepancy between the commentators and the author would be to assume that the latter used Aristotle’s definition not of contact, but of connection. A little below in the Physics, Aristotle characterizes connection by distinguishing it from succession. While the ‘successive’ (ἐφεξῆς) is οὗ µετὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν ὄντος ἢ θέσει ἢ εἴδει ἢ ἄλλῳ τινὶ οὕτως ἀφορισθέντος µηδὲν µεταξύ ἐστι τῶν ἐν ταὐτῷ γένει καὶ οὗ ἐφεξῆς ἐστιν,382 the ‘connected’ (ἐχόµενον) is ὃ ἂν ἐφεξῆς ὂν ἅπτηται.383 Therefore, the author would be combining Aristotle’s two definitions of contact and connection in order to get the best possible account of the relation described here by Aristotle. Although it would have been more straightfor376
See Alexander, De mixtione 228.36-37: “Hence mixture qua blending occurs among malleable, i.e. liquid, bodies” (διὸ ἐν τοῖς εὐορίστοις τε καὶ ὑγροῖς ἡ ὡς κρᾶσις µῖξίς ἐστιν). 377 Cf. GC I 10, 328a 33-b 5. 378 Talḫīṣ 37.14-15. 379 Philoponus, In GC 131.19-22. 380 Cf. Middle Commentary 54.13-14 Eichner and Epitome 14.15-16. 381 Physics V 3, 226b 23. 382 Physics V 3, 226b 34-227a 1. 383 Physics V 3, 227a 6.
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ward to define contact by a simple reference to 226b 23, the author or his source also drew from 227a 6. Prima facie, such Aristotelian skill might seem to point to Alexander. But in his commentary on the relevant passage of the Physics, Alexander has another interpretation of connection. According to a Byzantine scholium, he claims there that ‘connection’ (τὸ ἐχόµενον) holds true only of two objects belonging to the same species, while ‘contact’ can be said of every pair of objects, whether homospecific or not.384 By contrast, nothing similar is implied by his interpretation of GC I 6 (to judge from Philoponus and Averroes). Moreover, it is very difficult to imagine that the author, who elsewhere makes no allusion to other Aristotelian treatises, would have been aware of such a tiny nuance in the Physics, so as to paraphrase ‘contact’ in terms of ‘connection’. The answer to this puzzle comes, once again, from kalām physics. I take it that here again, the author was influenced by Islamic atomism and, more specifically, by the Baghdadi trend of kalām, rather than by Aristotle’s topology. The Baṣrian theologians defined ‘vicinity’ (al-muǧāwara, al-taǧāwur), which according to them is synonymous with ‘contact’ (almumāssa), as “the occurring of the two parts in a limit in such a way that there is no third place between them” (ḥuṣūl al-ǧuz’ayni fī ḥaddin lā yabqā makānun ṯāliṯun bayna-humā).385 As to the existence of a vacuum, the Baṣrians generally expressed their view by claiming that “it is not impossible that there should be two substances in such a way that there is no third one (i.e substance as opposed to place) between them” (ġayru mustaḥīlin ḥuṣūlu ǧawharayni ‘alā waǧhin lā ṯāliṯa bayna-humā).386 It is of course the variation from ‘place’ (makān) to (implicitly) ‘substance’ (ǧawhar) which, in the two definitions quoted, produces all the difference between the characterization of a contact and that of a void. As we have already noted, the Baghdadi mutakallimūn, as opposed to the Baṣrians, sided with Aristotle in denying the possibility of a vacuum in the universe. Therefore, by adding the clause “there is between them no thing (šay’un) other than them”—an addition again which, from the perspective of Aristotle’s topology, was unnecessary387—to the standard definition of contact, the author is implicitly denying the Baṣrian thesis. The use of the Arabic šay’, ‘thing’ is obviously intended to dismiss the distinction between ‘place’ (makān) and ‘substance’ (ǧawhar) which backs such a doctrine. We do not know 384
Cf. Rashed, Commentaire perdu, schol. n° 259 (ad 227a 6), p. 323. Cf. Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 337. See Frank, Beings and Their Attributes, p. 100 and p. 117, n. 28. 386 Ibn Mattawayh, Al-Taḏkirat, p. 47. See above, p. 194, n. 354. 387 Since the conditions for ‘connection’ are stronger than those for ‘contact’. 385
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whether Abū al-Qāsim al-Balḫī had a definition of contact. But we can be pretty sure that if he had one, this one, with its implicit rebuttal of Baṣrian ontology, would have been most appropriate: two bodies are in contact if there is between them nothing apart from them.388 It is this background that prompted him to add the strange clause to Aristotle’s definition of contact. As for the definition itself, he found it in Alexander, as quoted in the first part of his own definition (“… that the limits of the things are together”, ὧν τὰ ἄκρα ἅµα). In the last part of § 8.5, the author defines, by contrast with contact in general, physical contact (al-tamāss al-ṭabī‘ī): And natural contact, by which action and passion occur, takes place between two natural bodies the limits of which are together, when one of them is like the other in potentiality, and when the one in actuality is more powerful than the other insofar as it is endowed with the capacity of having an effect upon the other and of making it change towards its own substance. Such is natural, i.e. real, contact.389
Physical contact occurs when the two bodies touching each other in the sense of the Physics are similar in potentiality and one of them acts upon the other. That is ‘real’ (ḥaqīqī) contact, i.e. contact in the strict sense. Therefore, according to this distinction, contact as defined in the Physics (i) was not physical contact and (ii) was not contact in the strict sense. Since it would be excessive to claim that the definition given by Aristotle in the Physics is erroneous, we must draw the conclusion that it was only general, i.e. not yet adequate to the proper objects of physical inquiry. Two interpretations of this claim are possible. According to the first, the definition of the Physics is still nominal. It is not concerned with real things, but only with the sense of the words. And the word ‘contact’ has a range of significations that goes beyond its physical uses. The mathematician is perfectly entitled to speak of the contact between a circle and a straight line, even if this instance of contact is not real contact. In other words, on the first interpretation, mathematical contact is a real meaning of contact, but it is not real contact. According to the second interpretation, the generality of the definition of contact in the Physics is not due to its nominal character, but to the fact that it is meant to subsume two distinct physical situations occurring in Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. In the treatise On the Heavens, Aristotle alludes to the contact between the celestial bodies while assuming, as is 388 389
Because there is no ‘thing’ which is not at the same time a substance. Talḫīṣ 37.15-18.
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well-known, that these bodies are not subject to action and affection.390 In GC, on the other hand, the primary meaning of contact is contact between two sublunary bodies susceptible of mutual interaction. According to this interpretation, the definition of contact given in the Physics is a real definition (as opposed to a nominal one), but it includes in its scope both sublunary and celestial contact, which are heterogeneous. We shall come back to this important issue shortly. The next paragraph is devoted to explaining why mathematical contact is not real contact. The difficulty with mathematical objects is, of course, that they seem prima facie to verify Aristotle’s canonical definition of contact. This point is stated by the author in the first part of § 8.6: We may also find cases of ‘contact’ analogous to that in certain beings, such as mathematical bodies. For just as we can conceive of mathematical bodies as separated from all qualities and changes, it is also possible to conceive of them as having limits in such a way that these limits will be together, so that they will be in contact and come together at these limits.391
We should take the description of mathematical contact as ‘analogous’ (munāsib) to the physical kind seriously. For analogy (al-tanāsub = ἀναλογία) is one of the Aristotelian ways of being one.392 Two things may be one according to the species, according to the genus, or by analogy. Thus, identity by analogy links together two objects that are, ontologically speaking, possibly the most remote from one another, while being one (for they share in some common property that is not merely metaphorical). That is the case with mathematical contact with respect to real, or physical contact. There is an analogy between them, because mathematical contact is to mathematical objects what physical contact is to physical objects. And since mathematical objects are physical objects “separated from all qualities and changes”, i.e. purely three-dimensional bodies, consisting of nothing but their extremities, there is a possible analogy between the two pairs of items: mathematical bodies are to mathematical extremities what physical bodies are to physical extremities. Or, to put it slightly differently: mathematical bodies are to mathematical contact what physical bodies are to physical contact. In order to elucidate the connection between the two realms which allows us to draw the analogy it is useful to compare our text to Philoponus’ commentary: 390
See De caelo I 9, 279a 21: they are ἀπαθῆ. Cf. GC II 10, 337a 20: ἀναλλοίωτον. Talḫīṣ 37.19-22. 392 See Metaph. Δ 6, 1016b 31-1017a 3. 391
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But mathematical objects too belong to those objects which have position, so these too would count as being in contact with one another. For we say that the line touches the line or the surface, e.g. a circle or some other thing. But the mathematical body, since it has extremities, would also touch either a mathematical body or a line. But even if mathematical bodies were said to touch, this would not be in the strict sense, but only in the way that they also have being. They have this in thought (ἐπινοίᾳ); in this way then they also have position and touch one another. And this is true of them in virtue of the things which have position and touch in the strict sense of the words, I mean natural bodies by the abstraction from which (ὧν ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως) the mathematicals exist.393
Philoponus too underlines the rôle of ‘thought’, or ‘conception’ with regard to mathematical existence. The parallel with the author’s text shows that he is following Alexander. As usual when he deals with mathematical objects, Alexander seems to have claimed that they exist ‘by thought’, ἐπινοίᾳ, and the term has been translated into Arabic by wahm.394 It is possible that for Philoponus, this meant that mathematical objects exist only in thought. But as we saw, Alexander’s position was more subtle. In certain contexts at least, he considered mathematical objects as existing by thought, i.e. as describing remarkable formal features of the physical objects.395 That explains why, according to him, mathematical contact is analogous to physical contact, and not merely metaphorical with respect to it: since stereometrical objects can be mapped onto physical objects, the correspondence between the two realms is sufficiently robust to allow for the validity of the analogy.396 The author elaborates a little upon the issue of ‘position’ (waḍ‘): However, such ‘contact’ is not real, because real contact is between things having position, and position belongs to things that have a place, since position is the thing’s relation to its own place. But mathematical bodies are not 393
Philoponus, In GC 131.11-19. R. Arnzen, Aristoteles’ De anima. Eine verlorene spätantike Paraphrase in arabischer und persischer Überlieferung, Leiden / New York / Köln, 1998, p. 113, notes that in the Kindī-Circle, wahm or tawahhum translate φαντασία or φάντασµα and remarks, without explaining this change, that “[i]n den Übersetzungen jüngeren Datums wird wahm / tawahhum mehr und mehr durch taḫayyul oder taḫyīl ersetzt”. This change might have been provoked, I would suggest, by the specialisation of wahm / tawahhum in the rendering of ἔννοια and ἐπίνοια. 395 See above, pp. 122-124. 396 Confirmation that the substance of this paragraph comes from Alexander may be drawn from Averroes, Epitome 14.18, who also mentions the contact of a line and a circle. 394
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really in a place, so they do not really have positions, so they are not really in contact. Therefore, mathematical bodies do not display any of the features pertaining to real contact.
The author basically follows Aristotle, who explains that mathematical beings are not in contact because they are not in a position because they are not, properly speaking, in a place.397 It is probably because mathematical ‘place’ (makān = τόπος) is only analogous to physical place that the rest of the analogy follows.398 Unlike the other commentators, the author justifies the connection between position and place by proposing a definition of the former that contains the latter: “position”, he says, “is the thing’s relation to its own place” (li-anna al-waḍ‘a huwa nisbatu al-šay’i ilā makāni-hi). Although this definition seems to be unknown amongst Greek commentators,399 we find it in at least one other Arabic source.400 §§ 8.7 and 8.8 deal with celestial bodies and introduce an original interpretation of the relationship between contact and action/passion. First, § 8.7 addresses the question of contact between the sublunar and supralunar spheres:
397
Cf. GC I 6, 323a 6-9. In this sense, our treatise is typical for an Aristotelian tradition criticized by the geometer al-Ḥasan b. al-Haytham and vindicated against his attacks by the Aristotelian philosopher ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī. On this debate, see R. Rashed, Les Mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle, vol. iv: Ibn al-Haytham: Méthodes géométriques, transformations ponctuelles et philosophie des mathématiques, London, 2002, pp. 655-685 and 901-953. 399 It would sound more or less as follows: θέσις ἐστὶν ἡ τοῦ πράγµατος σχέσις πρὸς τὸν τόπον αὐτοῦ. 400 Namely, in Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī’s glossary of philosophical and kalām terminology, Kitāb al-mubīn fī šarḥ alfāẓ al-ḥukamā’ wa-al-mutakallimīn. See ‘A. alA‘sam Al-Muṣtalaḥ al-falsafī ‘inda al-‘Arab, Cairo, 1989, pp. 303-388, p. 376: “Position is a state which happens because of the relation of the parts of the thing to the parts of its place”. Al-Āmidī might be influenced by our text, since his definition of contact (al-tamāss) is very similar to what we read in the previous paragraph, and this definition is not Aristotelian (see above, p. 205). See Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī, Kitāb almubīn, p. 349: “Contact is an expression for the meeting together of the beings (I read ‘an talāqī al-ḏawāt in lieu of ‘an mā yulāqī al-dawwāb printed by the editor) in such a way that there is absolutely no interval (bu‘d) between them”. This influence, if confirmed, would be noteworthy, because it might point to the fact that al-Āmidī recognized in our text an enterprise prefiguring his own (and for which he suffered so much in his life): reconciling what was sound in falsafa with Islamic rational disciplines. 398
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And there may be real contact, i.e. meeting of the limits, between bodies subject to generation and destruction on the one hand and celestial bodies on the other, but no action and passion. For even if the limit of fire is in contact with the heavens, no action and passion occur between them, because if the fire were acted upon by the heavens, the position it occupies would not be the place natural and appropriate to it. And no body meets anything in the heavens by which it would be acted upon, for it is neither the case that these bodies which are acted upon go up to the heavens, nor that anything from the heavens moves itself in a rectilinear way so as to reach these bodies.401
In order to grasp the originality of this piece of commentary, we must first explain its Greek antecedents. Alexander devoted much effort to smoothing a double difficulty in Aristotle’s account of contact. The first difficulty was, as we have observed, that the notion of contact proposed in GC was different from that of the Physics.402 The second consisted in the fact that if contact implies action and passion by definition, the infelicitous conclusion follows that the celestial spheres are not in contact with one another, but separated by a vacuum. Philoponus, who is likely to repeat Alexander here, proposes two way of escaping from this aporia. The first is to consider the whole heavens as a unique body. The second is to restrict the validity of the present definition of contact to sublunar contact, with which the present treatise is concerned. Here is the text: So either he is taking the celestial body to be a single thing, which neither has a position nor is in a place […] or else the present discussion is not concerned with this at all but with things which are in contact within the sphere of coming-to-be and perishing, which both share a common matter enabling them to act and be affected in response and are in all cases either above or below.403
Alexander is quoted just after this passage. Aristotle next says that: […] all things that are in contact with each other will possess heaviness or lightness, either both or just one.404
401
Talḫīṣ 39.4-9. Of course, the formal definition of the Physics is alluded to in the GC I 6, 323a 3-4. But there is further distinction between physical contact and contact tout court. 403 Philoponus, In GC 133.27-134.7. 404 Aristotle, GC I 6, 323a 8-9: … ἅπαντα τὰ ἀλλήλων ἁπτόµενα βάρος ἂν ἔχοι ἢ κουφότητα, ἢ ἄµφω ἢ θάτερον. 402
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It is rather clear from the context that Aristotle meant that what is taken “either both or just one” is heaviness and lightness, and not the two bodies in contact. Alexander, however, suggests another possible understanding of this phrase: But if what is said is to be understood as applying to the body whose motion is circular as well, in order to make the account more general, then, in Alexander’s opinion, ‘either both or just one’ must be taken to refer, not to lightness and heaviness, but to the things that are in contact themselves. For it is in all cases necessary that there should be two things that touch, and these touching things, either both or just one of them, necessarily have either heaviness or lightness.405
Next Aristotle adds that […] things like this are capable of being affected and of acting; so it is evident that the things whose nature is to be in contact with one another are those discontinuous objects having size whose extremities are together and which are capable of changing and being changed by one another. 406
This prompts Alexander’s reassertion of the same point: He also says that ‘by one another’ where Aristotle says ‘being capable of changing and being changed by one another’ is to be understood as an alternative to ‘one by another’, as in the Categories Aristotle uses the phrase ‘genera under one another’ to mean not each genus being subordinate to the other, but one to another.407
It does not take long to realize how far-fetched Alexander’s suggestion is from an immanent point of view. In adopting this stance, he is only trying to save an important feature of his account of Aristotelian providence.408 It 405
Philoponus, In GC 135.2-7. Aristotle, GC I 6, 323a 9-12: Τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα παθητικὰ καὶ ποιητικά· ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ταῦτα ἅπτεσθαι πέφυκεν ἀλλήλων, ὧν διῃρηµένων µεγεθῶν ἅµα τὰ ἔσχατά ἐστιν, ὄντων κινητικῶν καὶ κινητῶν ὑπ' ἀλλήλων. 407 Philoponus, In GC 135.8-11. 408 For a general account of Alexander on providence, see R. W. Sharples, “Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and Innovation”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Teil II: Principat, Band 36.2, Berlin / New York, 1987, pp. 11761243, pp. 1216-1218, cf. p. 1216: “Providence is rather to be found in the effect of the regular heavenly motions on the sublunary world, in preserving the continuity of coming-to-be and passing away and hence of sublunary species; but it does not extend to the fortunes of individuals”. 406
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is essential for his cosmology that the celestial sphere have some effect on the sublunary world. The heavens act as an agent, whose influence exerts itself upon the four elements. Now, since Aristotle in GC I 6 systematically assimilates contact to action and passion, and since contact is described as implying reciprocal action and passion, there is a danger precisely of suppressing every contact whatsoever between the sublunary and the supralunary world. And in this case, providence, which is brought about by the heavens being able to move the sublunary world, would be threatened. Aristotle’s treatment of contact in GC I 6 contains two dubious claims. Not content with including action and passion in his definition of contact, Aristotle also shifts from acting and being affected to moving and being moved, in order to allow for cases with no reciprocity of the relation. For if, as Aristotle claims, something can move another thing without being moved by it, it can in that case act upon it without being affected by it, and, finally, touch it without being touched by it. To put it simply, such an argument seems to indulge in confusion between the extension and the intension of the concept of motion. The pair moving and being moved is, so to speak, the genus of the pair acting and being affected (the latter indicating a motion in the category of quality). Thus, if it were extensionally true that everything that moves can move without itself being moved, Aristotle’s shift from acting to moving would be correct. But if such a claim obtains only in the case of some instances of movers and moved—namely, of movers and moved according to place—it is not. The second option is obviously correct, if it is true that Aristotle is here alluding to the specific relationship between the first mover(s) and the stars. Therefore, the argument collapses. Alexander rewrites the whole argument. In order to eliminate its shortcomings and save his own account of providence, he comes to grips with its two most problematic aspects. He first interprets the restriction of contact to action and passion as a verbal distinction between different meanings of contact. Alexander’s solution consists in distinguishing three different meanings of contact, from the loosest to the strictest, which imply three different kinds of action and passion. The first meaning is that of the Physics. It is at stake when we speak of contact in mathematics, but also, probably—Philoponus does not specify this—if we posit a multiplicity of celestial spheres touching each other.409 The second meaning is instantiated by a single case, namely the contact between the supralunary and the sublunary world. Philoponus describes it in the following terms: 409
For Alexander, the two cases would be more or less identical. See above, pp. 122-123.
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[…] the second meaning involves the one causing change and the other being changed: for he says, ‘and are capable the one of being moved and the other of moving’. According to this definition mathematical objects are not in contact with one another, nor those things where it is not the case that the one is capable of acting and the other of being affected, but celestial bodies do touch those here, since the one acts and the other is affected.410
That this was Alexander’s view is confirmed by the parallel in Averroes’ Epitome: And in a similar sense [sublunary contact is not the contact which we mean when] we say that the lunar sphere touches the sphere of the planet Mercury. The kind of contact intended here is that in which each one of two bodies in contact, as we have defined them, acts upon, and suffers action from, the other, as happens when two opposite natural bodies which have one common proximate matter approach each other and touch at their extremes. Those bodies, one of which only acts, while the other suffers action, as in the case of the lunar sphere and fire, are said to touch only in a remote sense of this true contact, for contact implies passion, and passion is relative.411
The third meaning is the contact between two objects in physical interaction.412 With regard to the second problem in Aristotle’s demonstration, Alexander, as we read in the text just quoted, does not interpret the sentence ‘and are capable the one of being moved and the other of moving’ as pointing to the relationship between the first mover(s) and the moved bodies, but de facto restricts the genus moving and being moved to its species acting and being affected. That allows him to interpret Aristotle’s clause as a reference to the relationship between the supralunary and the sublunary world. As a consequence, both Alexander’s moves lead him to reassert the claim that the heavens act on the world of generation and corruption. We are in the presence of a systematic interpretation, extending throughout the whole second part of GC I 6, which does some violence to Aristotle’s text in a conscious and, if I dare say, masterly way. We are now in a position to better understand what the author does with Aristotle’s text. He is original in maintaining that “even if the limit of a fire is in contact with the heavens, no action and passion occur between them, because if the fire were acted upon by the heavens, the position it occupies would not be the place natural and appropriate to it”. Two 410
Philoponus, In GC 138.2-6. Alexander is quoted just before, at 137.27. Averroes, Epitome 14.18-15.4. 412 Philoponus, In GC 138.6-9. More on interaction in next chapter. 411
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elements are remarkable here. First there is the claim that the fire is not acted upon by the heavens, which is at odds with Alexander’s main concern in this chapter; secondly, there is the argument in terms of natural place. For the sublunary bodies have a natural place and are in mutual interaction. The author’s idea becomes clear, however, when we read the following lines: “And no body meets anything in the heavens by which it would be acted upon, for it is neither the case that these bodies which are acted upon go up to the heavens, nor that anything from the heavens moves itself in a rectilinear way so as to reach these bodies”. Thus, what the author probably meant is that in order for action and passion between fire and the sphere of the moon to obtain, fire ought to have a natural tendency to go up to the heavens and, hitting and shaking the celestial body, it could thus be reciprocally affected by it. But in this case, what we consider its ‘natural place’ would not be natural any more, since a natural place is defined precisely by the natural tendency of the body to reach it and, once having reached it, to remain within its boundaries. It seems impossible to determine why the author was led to such an interpretation without discussing his identity. For the time being, let us only suggest that he must have had deep reasons for objecting to Alexander’s interpretation of the chapter. If, as we have assumed, Alexander was indeed moved by his theory of providence, it is a reasonable guess to suppose that the author felt unsatisfied with it. The only ground I can imagine for this dismissal of Alexander’s reading is that the author might have been an outspoken opponent of astral determinism. But we will say much more about this in the chapters on his identity and philosophy.413 § 8.8 confirms that the author is being cautious so as not to assimilate contact and action: And each time one celestial body is in contact with another one, it is only the case that it meets it at its limit, without any action or passion between them, since there is no contrariety there, nor generation and destruction.414
Taken at face value, this sentence is similar to what we find in the other commentaries. There is, however, a difference in tone: since, unlike his fellow commentators, the author draws a firm distinction between contact and action, he does not feel himself at odds, like them, with the “extreme” case of the relationship between the celestial spheres. According to him, real contact is “mathematical” contact, i.e. contact in the sense of Physics 413 414
See below, pp. 343-361 and 363-392 respectively. Talḫīṣ 39.10-11.
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V, between any pair of real, i.e. natural, objects, be they generable and corruptible or celestial. Contact between two mathematical objects, i.e. two objects conceived of by the mind, is not real contact, not because of their topological relationship, but because objects of thought are not real objects. At § 8.9, the author discuss a class of objects whose mutual contact is even more remote from real contact than mathematical contact, namely objects in metaphorical contact. This is the contact between body and soul. To this section we find nothing corresponding in the commentators, but I shall argue that there is good probability that its core doctrine is drawn from Alexander’s commentary. The author claims that […] the soul has an effect on the body, and in the same way the soul’s accidents make the body get warmer and colder and they make the body’s qualities and states change without any contact with the body, since these accidents are not bodies which would meet the body at their limits and make it acquire the quality which they possess in actuality, since the soul does not possess this quality and is not in contact with the body, not being herself a body.415
The text is plain: the soul is not a body, her accidents are not bodily accidents, but the soul acts on the body. That thoughts may have an effect on the body’s colour, warmth, etc. is obvious. If we posit that the soul is not a body, we must hold that something that is not a body acts upon a body. The author then adds: It has become customary, however, to call some of the things connected with these accidents from without by the name of ‘contact’, as when we say that offence and injustice ‘have touched’ us.416
The example of offence and injustice that have have “touched” us is only superficially similar to what Aristotle says at the end of his chapter: After all, we say at times that a man who grieves us ‘touches’ us, but we do not touch him.417
Here Aristotle is giving an illustration of what he was just saying about the unmoved mover and the moved. Certainly, in his cosmology the unmoved 415
Talḫīṣ 39.13-16. Talḫīṣ 39.16-18. 417 Aristotle, GC I 6, 323a 32-33. 416
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mover is incorporeal, while the celestial spheres are bodies. But that is not the point here: Aristotle is only interested in the asymmetry of the relation mover-moved, and does his best to apply it to the relation touchingtouched. Here again, we must go deeper into the strategy displayed by the author’s source. Let us start by noting a slight contradiction in Philoponus. At the beginning of the chapter, he was maintaining a strict correspondence between contact and action-passion: […] if there is one of the things that are whose nature is to act and another whose nature is to be affected by it in the strict sense of the words, these must first be in contact with one another. […] He says ‘in the strict sense’ because of slander, since this is said to have an effect on the mind, whereas it does not touch the mind. For it does not act in the strict sense because it is not in the strict sense that it is said to touch; so it is said to touch in the same sense as that in which it is said to act. The same could be said about the portrait, the fodder and the object of desire in general; for these too do not act in the strict sense. But in so far as they do act, to this extent they first touch. For first they touch the imagination and make an impression on it; then they change it by producing an alteration in it. And it is impossible for anything to be affected by the object of desire if it has not been in contact with it by receiving an impression on its imagination. So he is obliged first to undertake an account of contact.418
In this passage, Philoponus develops a materialist view of emotions. In order for me to be affected by some object, I must be physically touched by its image, i.e. by the enlightened medium between me and it. The parallel between touching and acting must be taken in the strictest sense: there is no action without physical contact. Some pages later, however, Philoponus is less radical: But why is it that for the most part what touches something touches what touches it? Because the things around us, i.e. things that are in process of coming-to-be are practically all moved in turn when they cause motion. He is right to say ‘practically’ because neither the portrait nor the beloved nor, generally speaking, what is desired, while causing other things to move, is in turn moved itself. […] the celestial bodies touch the things that are here, but these do not touch the celestial bodies, and the slander touches the person slandered, but the person slandered does not touch the slander. The same
418
Philoponus, In GC 130.19-27.
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holds for what is desired and the faculty of desire where we speak of ‘touching’ in the more general sense, not in the strict sense.419
I believe that Philoponus is more original in the first passage than in the second where, I take it, he is following Alexander closely. We find a clue to this difference in both series of examples: “the portrait, the fodder and the object of desire in general” in the first passage and “the portrait […] the beloved” and “generally speaking, what is desired” in the second. The word for ‘fodder’, χόρτος, means cattle feed, as opposed to human food, σῖτος.420 The ‘portrait’ (εἰκών) intended here is of course that of the beloved person, which fills the lover with love when he contemplates it in his or her absence. Therefore, the mention of ‘fodder’ between the ‘portrait’ and the ‘object of desire in general’ might betray a contemptuous disregard of human love and desire, assimilating them to the attraction exerted by hay upon cattle. This intention seems to me better explained against Philoponus’ Christian background than against Alexander’s. If this supposition is correct, we should conclude that Philoponus showed a tendency to interpret Aristotle’s chapter in a more materialistic way than Alexander. And that is perfectly understandable. As a Neoplatonist, Philoponus draws a strong distinction between the material part of the self, which is subject to emotions, and the higher part, which is divine.421 For him, desire is a material consequence of a series of bodily impressions. He has no theoretical difficulty, therefore, with equating touch and action in so strict a manner. Alexander envisages the issue from a different perspective, namely the necessity of building an Aristotelian theory of emotions and the soul which will not pave the way to Stoic materialism. It would be risky, from this perspective, to insist too much on the necessity of some physical contact taking place in order for action and passion to occur. True, Alexander is as aware as Philoponus of the material side of perception. But he is unlikely to stress as emphatically as the latter that there is no emotion of the soul which is not reducible to a chain of physical contacts. Against the Stoics, it was safer to focus on the soul as such, in her opposition to the body, and to underline that the “contact” between the soul and the body is not only not real, but even metaphorical.
419
Philoponus, In GC 138.24-139.2 See L.S.J., s.v. χόρτος, II a. 421 On Philoponus’ dualist stance with regard to the status of emotions, see R. Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind. From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, Oxford, 2000, pp. 266-270. 420
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The last paragraph of the chapter on contact (§ 8.10) does not bring much new. It has the merit of presenting the results of the chapter as interpreted by the author in a clear way. Two points should be noted. First of all, the clear distinction, peculiar to the author, between contact and action is reassessed: there are cases of contact without action and cases of action without contact. Secondly, the results are presented in a combinatoric form.422 Body may exert an influence upon body, something in the soul upon something in the soul, body upon the soul, the soul upon the body.423
422
For another case, see below, pp. 314-318. In MS Parisinus Graecus 1853 (Aristotle’s famous manuscript E), we find, amongst other “syllogisms on the soul” (συλλογισµοὶ περὶ ψυχῆς), the following text (edited in M. Rashed, Die Überlieferungsgeschichte der aristotelischen Schrift De generatione et corruptione, Wiesbaden, 2001, p. 49): “That, given the fact that there are four habitus, one of them starts with the soul and stops with it, another starts with the soul and ends with the body, while the other two occur in the opposite way: the first starts with the body and ends with the soul, the other one belongs solely to the soul and starts with it. For instance, you could say that the spirit dwells only in the soul, that seasickness and fear start with the soul and end with the body, that in the opposite way the quality of the warmth of the medium starts with the body and ends with the soul, and that whiteness and blackness start with the body and do not go beyond it”. I would not rule out a common influence of Alexander’s lost commentary on this piece of text, which probably goes back to late Antiquity, and on the author in this chapter. 423
Section 9: On Action and Passion Section 9 broadly corresponds to GC I, 7-9. Important parts are missing, however. GC I 8, in particular, has been curtailed and, as we saw, was already integrated into Section 7 On Nutrition. Schematically, Section 9 incorporates elements from GC I 7 and GC I 9, with what is likely to have been Alexander’s exegesis in his lost commentary. In § 9.1, the author paraphrases Aristotle’s introduction to GC I 7. Following his usual pattern, he keeps silent on the doxographical aspect of Aristotle’s account, and focuses on the main ideas. Aristotle is concerned with the question of which kinds of things interact with each other. He notes that his predecessors have upheld two doctrines in this regard. The great majority of them (οἱ … πλεῖστοι) assumed that in order for two things to have this relation, they must be different from one another. If they are similar, these people claim, they cannot interact. Only Democritus, on the other side, claimed that two things entirely different from one another could not act and be affected. If a thing acts on another thing, both things must be similar. And if, properly speaking, they are not entirely similar, it is however qua mutually similar that they act and are affected.424 Once he has described the two opinions in play, Aristotle, in his usual patronizing way, gives a satisfecit to each of both. Things that act and are affected are indeed dissimilar and similar. They are dissimilar because if they were entirely identical, a given thing would be affected by itself. They are similar because if they were altogether different, everything would be affected by everything at random. In both cases, the order and regularity of the physical world would be suppressed. But how can two things be similar and dissimilar with respect to each other at the same time? Aristotle explains this in the following way: But, since action and passion belong naturally, not to any old thing, but only to things which have contrariety or are contraries, agent and patient are necessarily alike and the same in genus but unlike and contrary in species. For it is natural for body to be affected by body, flavour by flavour, colour by colour, and generally things that are of a given genus by other such things. The reason for this is that contraries are all in the same genus, and it is necessary
424
I am summarizing GC I 7, 323b 1-15 here.
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that in one sense agent and patient should be the same and in another sense different and unlike one another.425
Aristotle’s starting point is that in order for them to act and be affected reciprocally, two things must form a pair of contraries. Such a statement is not entirely axiomatic but is presented as dictated by an (incomplete) induction. Take, says Aristotle, a body, a flavour, a colour. One will remark that each of them is affected by its contrary: a contrary body, a contrary flavour, a contrary colour. True, as he said a few lines before, the colour white is not changed into grey by an object entirely different such as a line, but by another colour, namely black. When we have stated this, we have the answer we were searching for: since what acts and what is affected are contraries, they are two different species belonging to the same genus. Hence, they are dissimilar as species and similar as falling under one and the same genus. All this is rather straightforward. Unfortunately, immediately after the text quoted, Aristotle adds another argument which seems to contradict the first: And, since patient and agent are the same and like in genus but unlike in species, and it is contraries that are like this, clearly the things which are capable of acting on and being affected by one another are the contraries and the intermediates […].426
Let us call ‘i’ the relation of acting an being affected, ‘ii’ the relation of contrariety, ‘iii’ the relation of belonging to the same genus and to different species and ‘iv’ the relation of being similar in some sense and dissimilar in some other. In the first passage, Aristotle argues along the following line: ((i if ii) & (ii if iii) & (iii if iv)) ⟶ (i if iv)
In the second passage, he claims: ((i if iii) & (iii if ii)) ⟶ (i if ii)
The problem is not so much that the conclusion is not the same in each argument. It is rather that the middle term, which is supposed to give us the cause of the conclusion, is different. In the first text, the middle term is the relation of contrariety (ii). It is because we know that the agent and patient 425 426
Aristotle, GC I 7, 323b 29-324a 5. Aristotle, GC I 7, 324a 5-8.
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are contraries and that contraries are different species belonging to the same genus that we are entitled to draw the conclusion that the agent and patient are two different species belonging to the same genus. It is thus disturbing that in the second text, Aristotle seems to say that it is because the agent and patient are two species belonging to the same genus (iii) that they are contraries (ii). The problem was already noted by Alexander, who probably described the whole proof (δεῖξις) as circular (διάλληλος) and more persuasive than demonstrative.427 Averroes tells us that: This proof, although it does not in itself yield absolute conviction, since it is an argument in a circle, does, nevertheless, as Alexander says, yield a conviction of some sort.428
In his first paragraph (§ 9.1), the author paraphrases Aristotle’s first section of GC I 7, omitting, as we observed, any doxographical element. What he retains from Aristotle amounts to saying that the agent and the patient must be different, but not altogether different. He concludes: Therefore, the mere notion of difference is not sufficient to account for action and passion, but we also need the notion of something different endowed with the capacity of acting or being acted upon, and this second notion is contrariety.429
The author will then devote § 9.2 to the explanation of this remark, explaining why contrariety meets the condition of similarity and dissimilarity imposed on the terms of every process of action and passion. He starts by stating: A thing and something similar to it cannot be perfectly joined in a single substratum in actuality. For even if the substratum is a substratum for them both equally, they cannot both occur in it simultaneously, but only successively; and if a thing can be perfectly conjoined with another thing in a single substratum simultaneously, like sweetness and warmth, they are not contrary, but altogether different.430 427
On this distinction, see above, p. 175. Averroes, Middle Commentary 60.8-9 Eichner. Philoponus, In GC 144.13, without quoting Alexander’s name, writes: ἔστι δὲ ἡ δεῖξις διάλληλος. Given the parallel between both texts, I conclude that Philoponus borrows these two terms from Alexander. 429 Talḫīṣ 41.20-21. 430 Talḫīṣ 43.1-4. 428
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‘The thing and what is similar to it’ (al-šay’u wa-šabīhu-hu) refers to the agent and patient as described in the previous lines: ‘similar’ must be taken in its bivalent meaning, as opposed to “altogether different” and to “identical”, and not in its monovalent meaning, as opposed to “altogether different” only, i.e. including “identical” in its scope. The argument developed by the author is not to be found elsewhere. It is grounded on the way the two determinations are related to their substratum. As in Aristotle, the argument is inductive, but it is not the same induction that is at stake. The author does not say that body is affected by body, flavour by flavour, etc. (which, by the way, seems rather dubious: could not a yellow body provoke a change of colour in another yellow body?), but that while two altogether different determinations can always be present at the same time in a substratum, this is not the case with two cognate determinations.431 It is precisely this fact that is the ground of what we mean by genus and species or, alternatively, contraries: All contrary things are concordant in one respect and different in another, in the sense that the two contraries are two species belonging to one and the same genus. And if this were not the case, the substratum would not be a substratum for them both equally and on the same footing, receiving them both successively in one and the same way.432
Understood in this way, species and genus provide a formal bridge between language and the physical world of change. The notion of change includes that of contrariety, because if a given substratum loses the determination A, it necessarily acquires the determination not-A, both determinations belonging to a single spectrum. The author then concludes: Therefore, action and passion belong to things concordant in genus and different in species; action is the effect of the contrary on its contrary and its making it similar to itself—for the hot thing heats the cold thing, i.e. it makes it hot like itself, while passion consists in receiving this effect and in the process of becoming in virtue of it.433
To sum up, to the four relations ‘i’, ‘ii’, ‘iii’, and ‘iv’,434 the author adds a new fourth one, ‘S’, that of not being possibly present together in the same substratum. He argues: 431
A body can be hot and red at the same time, but it cannot be hot and cold nor red and blue. 432 Talḫīṣ 43.4-7. 433 Talḫīṣ 43.7-9. 434 See above, p. 220.
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((i if ii) & (ii if S) & (S if iii) & (iii if iv)) ⟶ (i if iv)
The proof is now established on firmer grounds. ‘i if ii’ is a reasonable induction taken from the world around us, i.e. from our very way of grasping what it means to act and be affected. ‘ii if S’ may be interpreted as expressing something like a quasi definition, or an essential property,435 of every pair of contraries. For it is Aristotle himself who holds that “contraries cannot belong at the same time to the same thing”;436 and conversely, in virtue of the reversibility of the definition, if two attributes cannot belong to the same substratum at the same time, then they are contraries (or, of course, made of contraries). In a nutshell, ‘ii if S’ plays the role of a real (physical) definition of contrariety. ‘S if iii’, in turn, brings us back from the physical to the logical level. If two physical determinations are such that they cannot inhere at the same time in the same bearer, then there are three class concepts such that, taken in extension, one of them is the set resulting from the union of the two other sets. If any bearer of colour is either black or white, then the world of coloured substances is made of two species: the subset of white things and the subset of black things. Each element of this world will be either coloured and white, or coloured and black. Finally, ‘iii if iv’ is a non-formal description of the relationship between species and genus. To be two species belonging to the same genus is to be at the same time similar and dissimilar. Now, one might ask, why does the author not simply turn to the Aristotelian definition of the contraries as “the things that differ most among those in the same genus”,437 in order to derive ‘ii if iii’ directly? Certainly, as Bonitz recalls, “suum ac peculiarem locum notio τοῦ ἐναντίου habet in explicanda mutationis natura et causa”.438 Basically, then, the reformulation of § 9.2, and in particular the introduction of the entailment ‘ii if S’, might have been proposed by any competent scholar prior to the author, and particularly by Alexander. We cannot rule out the possibility, however, that this move was introduced by the author himself, in order to make Aristotle’s text more demonstrative, especially if he was alerted by Alexander’s reservation about its overall coherence. The reason for this is likely to have been his concern for the physical import of the doctrine of contrari435
What the later tradition will call a concomitant of the essence. Aristotle, Metaph. Γ 6, 1011b 17-18: οὐδὲ τἀναντία ἅµα ὑπάρχειν ἐνδέχεται τῷ αὐτῷ. For a list of parallel passages, see H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, Berlin 1870, 247a 36-40. 437 Aristotle, Metaph. Δ 10, 1018a 27-28: … τὰ πλεῖστον διαφέροντα τῶν ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ γένει. 438 Bonitz, Index, 247a 31-33. 436
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ety. It is because real things cannot bear contrary determinations that these determinations are contrary, and not the other way round. This identification of the subject with the substratum is not un-Aristotelian, but goes even better with the materialist ontology of the mutakallimūn, according to which to be a determination is to be a real entity belonging to a bearer.439 In the absence of other clues, I see no way to settle this historical point. In the next paragraph (§ 9.3), the author explains the basic principles of his theory of action and passion. A patient is necessarily composed of a substratum and a form. Properly speaking, it is not the form that is changing, but the informed substratum. As such, the form is unchangeable. The substratum, on the other hand, receives a form, and as such it is as unchangeable as the form. Thus, the immutability of the form and that of the substratum are different. While the former either persists as it is or, under the influence of an agent, perishes, the latter persists one and the same throughout the change, receiving one form after another. Therefore, the only object that is really changing is the composite. All this is similar to what Alexander says in his commentary on De sensu: Someone might learn from these comments Aristotle’s opinion concerning things which act and which are affected. For bodies do not seem to him either to act or to be affected, as is the doctrine of the Stoics, and neither do things without a body, as it seemed to Plato and his followers, but it seemed to him that bodies act and are affected by virtue of the oppositions in them which are without body. And so, if water’s being water is dependent upon heat and dryness, how is it that water is not opposite to fire in so far as water is water and fire is fire? Is it that, even though each of these is given form as much as possible by virtue of these qualities, nevertheless these qualities are not fire and water. For fire and water are not merely forms, but there is also something underlying the forms which possesses these qualities, in conjunction with which one is water and the other is fire. At any rate the inclination in them is not primarily opposite. For water is not the heaviest in the way that fire is the lightest. But their being is in conjunction with matter, which is the same in them all.440 439
See above, pp. 93-94. Alexander, In de sensu 73.18-30: Μάθοι δ' ἄν τις ἐκ τούτων τὴν Ἀριστοτέλους δόξαν περὶ τῶν ποιούντων τε καὶ πασχόντων. οὔτε γὰρ τὰ σώµατα αὐτῷ δοκεῖ ποιεῖν τε καὶ πάσχειν, ὡς ἀρέσκει τοῖς ἀπὸ Στοᾶς, οὔτε πάλιν τὰ ἀσώµατα, ὡς ἐδόκει τοῖς περὶ Πλάτωνα, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὰς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐναντιώσεις οὔσας ἀσωµάτους. πῶς οὖν, εἰ τῷ µὲν ὕδατι τὸ εἶναι ὕδατι ἐν ὑγρότητι καὶ ψυχρότητι, τῷ δὲ πυρὶ ἐν θερµότητι καὶ ξηρότητι, οὐκ ἐναντίον τὸ ὕδωρ τῷ πυρὶ καὶ καθὸ ὕδωρ καὶ πῦρ; ἢ εἰ καὶ ὅτι µάλιστα κατὰ ταῦτα εἰδοποιεῖται ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν, ἀλλ' οὐ ταῦτά ἐστι τὸ πῦρ καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν εἴδη 440
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Let us dwell for a moment upon the similarities. The first thing to note is that Alexander gives, in his commentary, an explanation of Aristotle’s doctrine of action and passion (τὴν Ἀριστοτέλους δόξαν περὶ τῶν ποιούντων τε καὶ πασχόντων). It is legitimate, therefore, to suppose that his explanation of GC I 7-9 proceeded along a similar path. Alexander interprets Aristotle’s doctrine as an appropriate answer to Stoic materialism and to the Platonists’ doctrine of immaterial agents.441 There is a difficulty here, and perhaps an ambiguity, regarding the rejection of the Stoic thesis. For it would be hard to deny, for an Aristotelian, that it is the bodies (τὰ σώµατα) that interact with each other. Alexander’s claim is comprehensible, however, in the light of his polemics against the Stoics. For he often criticizes them for having reduced the notion of a body—which is always composed out of an immaterial form and some matter—to that of pure matter. Hence, when Alexander objects to the Stoics that they take action and passion to occur between bodies, he means: between bodies as the Stoics understand them, i.e. between lumps of matter deprived of any formal principle. The position attributed to the Platonists probably goes back to a strict reading of Plato’s rebuttal of the “sons of the Earth” at Soph. 246A sqq. According to the Platonists known to, or depicted by, Alexander, Plato endorses the thesis of the upholders of the Forms. Everything that is not a Form, every body in particular, is by them reduced to pieces, and they call these entities becoming floating around rather than being.442 Unlike the “friends of the Forms” of the Sophist, however,443 Alexander’s Platonists are likely to maintain that action and passion as characteristics of being can occur only between incorporeal Forms. But if, as Alexander claims, action and passion take place neither between bodies nor between incorporeals, how are these processes to be explained? Alexander argues that they belong to “bodies in virtue of the contrarieties that are in them and which are incorporeal”.444 Alexander’s position is extremely subtle. He claims that µόνον, ἀλλ' ἔστι καὶ ὑποκείµενόν τι αὐτοῖς ἔχον ταύτας τὰς ποιότητας, σὺν ᾧ τὸ µὲν ὕδωρ ἐστί, τὸ δὲ πῦρ. ἡ γοῦν ῥοπὴ αὐτοῖς οὐκ ἔστι πρώτως ἐναντία· οὐ γὰρ ὥσπερ τὸ πῦρ κουφότατον, οὕτως καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ βαρύτατον· ἀλλὰ καὶ µεθ' ὕλης τὸ εἶναι αὐτοῖς, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἡ αὐτὴ ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτοῖς. I borrow the English translation from A. Towey, Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Aristotle On Sense Perception, London, 2000, pp. 74-75. 441 See V. Cordonier, “Corps, matière et contact. La cohérence du sensible selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise”, Les Études Philosophiques, 2008, pp. 353-378. 442 Plato, Soph. 246B: τὰ δὲ ἐκείνων [sc. the materialists] σώµατα καὶ τὴν λεγοµένην ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν ἀλήθειαν κατὰ σµικρὰ διαθραύοντες ἐν τοῖς λόγοις γένεσιν ἀντ᾿ οὐσίας φεροµένην τινὰ προσαγορεύουσιν. 443 See Plato, Soph. 248C. 444 The text ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὰς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐναντιώσεις οὔσας ἀσωµάτους is either very elliptical or, more probably, corrupt. I suggest the following addition: ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὰς ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐναντιώσεις οὔσας ἀσωµάτους. The omission will be due to a homoeoteleuton (haplography provoked by the succession of the two sequences of letters ΑΤΑ). 445 See above, pp. 89-90. 446 Corroborated also by Averroes, Epitome 15.15-16: “Therefore, heat cannot become cold nor cold heat, but rather it is their substratum that becomes hot after having been cold and cold after having been hot”.
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And every agent acting upon a patient is in turn necessarily acted upon by it, because contrariety is a relation holding between them equally—i.e. the contrariety of the first to the second is not superior or inferior to the contrariety of the second to the first.447
This idea is confirmed at the end of the paragraph: And whenever one of the contraries is more powerful, it acts more and is less acted upon, so that its acting upon its contrary is manifest and its being acted upon by its contrary is not manifest.448
Thus, whenever we do not see the reaction concomitant to a given action, it is only because this reaction escapes our senses. This idea might have been expressed by Alexander since, as we saw, this was the way he defined the third meaning of contact, namely contact “in the strictest sense”.449 Even if this is the case, I would not rule out the possibility that unlike Alexander, the author had special reasons for insisting on this aspect of action and passion. For it was crucial for him not to take the pair constituted by the sphere of the Moon and the sphere of fire as agent and patient. That explains why he was sensitive to the question of symmetry and eager to distinguish such a relation between two items from that of mere conversion. A converse relation only states that if x acts upon y, y is affected by x. A symmetrical relation states that if x acts upon y, y acts upon x. Every relation has a converse, but not every relation is necessarily symmetrical. The disagreement between the author and the other commentators is about action and passion. The author holds that the binary relation “… acts upon …” not only has a converse (“… is affected by …”), but is also symmetrical: if x acts upon y, y acts upon x. That corresponds to Alexander’s third meaning of contact, but neither to the first, nor to the second, which the author rejects precisely for this reason. He will come back to this issue again in the next paragraph (§ 9.5), showing by his insistence the great store he sets by this question.450 According to § 9.4, there are two types of action and passion. In each, the agent and the patient are contrary, i.e. compound substances possessing contrary qualities. But in the first case, one of the two substances is ‘more powerful’ than the other, so that it changes it ‘into its own nature’ (ilā ṭabī‘ati-hi). What the author has in mind is, for instance, that when the cold of the first substance is more intense than the hot of the second, it is the 447
Talḫīṣ 43.16-18. Talḫīṣ 45.1-2. 449 See above, p. 206. 450 See our commentary below, pp. 234 sqq. 448
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cold substance that changes the hot substance into a cold one. The author’s theory does not lead him to claim that the second substance does not act upon the first. But its acting upon it is not manifest. It is a side effect which does not impede the cold substance from turning the hot substance into a cold one. The author does not further describe this transformation of the affected substance into the acting one. It seems clear, however, that the weaker substance passes away, and becomes identical to the stronger. This process is opposed to another one, not named here by the author, where the two bodies have more or less equal powers: And it is not the case that anything acts upon something else so that it changes it towards its own nature solely because of contrariety; but it does so both because it is a contrary and because it is a more powerful contrary. For when both are on the same footing in terms of power, neither of them defeats the other and action and passion do not occur in a perfect way, but what occurs between them is something well-balanced and intermediate, since both act and are acted upon by the same amount, so that a third thing is produced from them and composed out of them, in which both powers are present, except, however, that they are broken in such a way that they are neither at variance with one another nor divergent from one another.451
Two cases are distinguished from one another. We have already dealt with the first, when the two powers in play are unequal. The second case is that of two entities that “are on the same footing in terms of power”. I have tried to render, by means of this rather cumbersome translation, the vagueness of the expression ‘alā naḥwin wāḥidin min al-quwwa. It conveys the idea that the two powers do not need to be strictly equal. Unfortunately, the author does not elaborate on this here. It is probable that he had the idea of a ‘latitude’ (πλάτος) of qualities in mind, i.e. of a qualitative spectrum within which the two bodies can mix. We find this idea farther down in our text, in Philoponus, and in the Arabic readers of Alexander (Avicenna and Averroes), so that it was probably already present in the latter’s commentary.452 That the author depends upon an Ancient source is attested by the notion, appearing in the same sentence, of a “broken” state of the two powers in the end product. They are both, as the author puts it, munkasiratāni and made similar to each other by this breaking of their respective excess. This notion of a ‘break’ (inkisār) of the qualities is significant. The new text lends some support to the hypothesis that it was present in Alexander’s 451 452
Talḫīṣ 43.18-45.1. More on this below, pp. 294-301.
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lost commentary on GC, even though he does not mention it in his De mixtione. Some philological considerations are appropriate here. In the Greek text of Philoponus, the corresponding notion is not that of broken, but of chastened qualities. In Zabarella’s treatise De mixtione, both terms are mentioned on a par.453 This is surely to be explained by the fact that Zabarella read Philoponus’ commentary in the Greek, which he uses extensively in his own commentary on GC. He was competent enough, of course, to understand that the Latin translation fractus from the Arabic was nothing but the erroneous rendering of the Greek κεκολασµένος. Scholars implicitly assume that the word castigatus was used already in the Middle Ages, i.e. before the direct consultation of the Greek text of Philoponus during the Renaissance. I have not been able to find a single confirmation for this claim, whose origin, I suspect, is a rather vague passage in Anneliese Maier’s pioneering study devoted to this topics.454 Even in the two passages in which Burgundio of Pisa translates, along with Aristotle’s treatise, Greek scholia from ms. Laur. 87.7 containing a form of κολάζειν, he does not use the verb castigare but the participle remissus.455 453
In describing Avicenna’s theory of mixing, Zabarella, attributes to him the claim that there are castigatas et fractas qualities, while Avicenna, like all the other authors writing in Arabic, mentions broken qualities exclusively. See Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, p. 186, n. 137. 454 See Anneliese Maier, An der Grenze von Scholastik und Naturwissenschaft, 2. Auflage, Rome, 1952, p. 23: “Avicenna hat das Aristoteleswort von dem Erhaltenbleiben der dynamis oder potentia so ausgelegt, dass die formae essentiales oder formae substantiales im mixtum unverändert bewahrt bleiben, und nur ihre Qualitäten eine remissio, d. h. eine Verminderung in intensiver Beziehung, erfahren, wodurch die erforderliche Veränderung die in dem Satz « mixtio est miscibilium alteratorum unio » gefordert wird, gewährleistet ist. Diese qualitates remissae oder fractae oder castigatae verschmelzen zu einer sogenannten complexio, einer mittleren Qualität, mit der die Grundqualität des mixtum gegeben ist”. We find the same type of general, or even false, statements in Nelly Tsouyopoulos, “Die Entstehung physikalischer Terminologie aus der neoplatonischen Metaphysik”, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 13, 1969, pp. 7-33, p. 32, n. 35, R. B. Todd, “Some Concepts in Physical Theory in John Philoponus’ Aristotelian Commentaries”, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 24, 1980, pp. 151-170, p. 167, n. 74, F. de Haas, John Philoponus’ New Definition of Prime Matter, Leiden / New York / Köln, 1997, p. 156, n. 79. Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, p. 185, n. 137, is more cautious. 455 On Burgundio’s translation, see G. Vuillemin-Diem and M. Rashed, “Burgundio de Pise et ses manuscrits grecs d’Aristote: Laur. 87.7 and Laur. 81.18”, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 64, 1997, pp. 136-198 and Rashed, Überlieferungsgeschichte, pp. 132-159. In GC II 7, 334b 13 (µεταξύ, cf. Philoponus, In GC 274.29), the Laur. 87.7 has the following note (fol. 237v, l. 18): τὸ µίγµα ἔχει ποιότητας κεκολασµένας, and Burgundio translates mixtura habet qualitates remissas (cf. Bodl. Seld. 24, fol. 60, l. 9). A little below, GC II 7, 334b 25 (τούτων, cf. Philoponus, In GC
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The first conclusion we may draw from all this is that neither the Arabs, nor the Latin scholars before the Renaissance seem to have ever heard about chastened qualities. The second conclusion is that it is likely, given our new evidence (which shows no trace of Philoponian influence), that the term chosen by the Arabic translator(s) of Alexander was ‘broken’ and not ‘chastened’. We can leave undecided the question whether or not the translation of Philoponus On GC was identical on this issue. As Alexander was undoubtedly much more influential, to say the least, on the subsequent Arabic tradition, Arab philosophers borrowed from him what they believed was his terminology.456 The existence of a doublet corresponding to a single word in Greek is explainable on the ground of the phonetic vicinity of the two perfect participles, κεκολασµένα (chastened, participle of κολάζω) and κεκλασµένα (broken, participle of κλάω), which differ by a single letter. It is arguable, then, that the Arabic munkasir, ‘broken’, ultimately rests on a false reading of the Greek κεκολασµένον, ‘chastened’. The philological issue now being settled, we can attempt to reconstruct the history of the problem. We should start by quoting a text of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on GC II 7, in which he rejects Galen’s theory of mixture as expressed in the Περὶ κράσεων. Averroes first presents a tripartition of action and passion, and explains in which of the three cases mixture is possible: The manner in which mixture takes place, as well as what things are miscible, has already been discussed above. As for the mixture of contrary things, that, as we have already said, may take place when neither of them dominates the other and when the force of neither of them is equivalent to that of the other. For if the force of one of them were to dominate absolutely that of the other, that would spell the corruption of the dominated and the generation of the dominating one; and if the force of each one of them were equal to that of every other, no form whatever would be generated as has been explained in Book IV of the Meteorologica. If, then, the force of one of them does not dominate absolutely but dominates and is itself dominated, then there is generated between the two a mean. This mean, however, will neces277.17) the Laur. has (fol. 238, l. 12) τῶν δ´ στοιχείων µιγέντων καὶ κεκολασµένων, and Burgundio translates: iiiior mixtis et remissis (Seld. 24, fol. 60, l. 16). There is no significant gloss in the Laur. 87.7 at the other places where Philoponus uses a form of the verb κολάζειν (188.25, 192.12, 198.27, 202.22, 203.13, 245.3, 271.6-7). 456 The word appears also in al-Fārābī, Falsafat Arisṭūṭālīs, ed. M. Mahdi, Beirut, 1961, p. 105, l. 12, and Mabādi’ ārā’ ahl al-madīnat al-fāḍila, ed. F. Dieterici, reprint Frankfurt, 1999, p. 31, ll. 9-10. D. I owe these references to Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, p. 186, n. 137.
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sarily tend more towards the nature of the dominating one; for example, it will tend to be greater in power of heating than of cooling, or greater in power of cooling than of heating.457
Averroes’ stance is different from the author’s. The latter, as we saw, envisaged only two cases: strong inequality of the ingredients or broad equality. The former has instead a tripartition. The two ingredients can be either extremely unequal in power, of perfectly equal, or slightly unequal. It is only in the third case that a process of mixing is able to take place. This theory, put forward in the Middle Commentary, does not appear in the Epitome. I would suggest, on the basis of the next lines, that it was slowly elaborated by Averroes when he had to confront Galen’s theory of mixture:458 Consequently, while this mean will tend more to one of the two extremes than to the other, it will have latitude which permits of differences of more or less. From this one can realize the impossibility of the existence of the perfectly balanced blending which Galen postulated, i.e., a balance relative to the absolute extremes, not a balance relative to the extremes of the mixture of the species. But that is a subject for the science of medicine to investigate.459
In many of his writings, and in particular in his De temperamentis, to which Averroes dedicated a special refutation, Galen assumed that a perfectly balanced mixture between the four main qualities is possible. And in many places Galen alludes to the existence of a punctual (precisely determined) state of the qualities. This notion appears in two distinct, albeit connected, contexts in his works. First, Galen seems to presuppose that the health of human beings in general, as opposed to that of other animal species, can be defined by a perfectly well-balanced mixture of the four elements. On the other hand, he insists on the fact that we should not assume that every deviation from this absolute health amounts to sickness. Rather, Galen admits of a ‘latitude’ (πλάτος) of health, according to which men are still healthy even if their humoral composition is not perfectly well-balanced.460
457
Averroes, In GC 123.2-10 Eichner. See below, pp. 233-234. 459 Averroes, In GC 123.10-14 Eichner. 460 See V. Boudon, Galien: Exhortation à l’étude de la médecine; Art médical, Paris, 2002, p. 401, n. 4. 458
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Secondly, the notion of a punctual state plays an important role in Galen’s theory of idiosyncrasy.461 Galen holds that each individual is characterized by a determinate humoral proportion. Even if his qualitative state can vary around this precisely determined value, his nature proceeds from it. It requires a divine gift to be able to determine, for each human being, exactly what his particular nature is, but if he masters the conjectural art (τεχνικὸς στοχασµός), the doctor’s knowledge can come closest to truth.462 It follows from this that the Aristotelians and Galen are not in disagreement on the question of the latitude, or πλάτος, of health taken as the form of a living being. For both sides accept that there is a spectrum, inside the boundaries of which a qualitative form is preserved. Rather, their disagreement consists in the fact that the philosophers have no need to claim that there exists, somewhere on the spectrum of the possible realizations of the form, a precisely determined state where this form would be more perfect than at the other points on the spectrum. The reason for this may lie in the fact that unlike Galen, the philosophers draw a clear distinction between the form (εἶδος) as such and the temperament (κρᾶσις).463 Galen, who radically downgrades the Aristotelian form,464 understands it as, basically, a quality, susceptible of intensification and remission according to a linear scale of possible realizations. For Alexander, and for Averroes as well, the form is not completely reducible to the temperament, even though their relationship is not always easy to understand, since separate Platonic forms are rejected.465 Thus, a single form corresponds to a whole range of “values” for the temperament at another level. One could object that in the text quoted, Averroes allows for “a balance relative to the extremes of the mixture [i.e. temperament] of the species” (al-i‘tidāl al-laḏī bi-ḥasabi 461
See R. Chiaradonna, “Universals in Ancient Medicine”, in R. Chiaradonna and G. Galluzzo (eds), Universals in Ancient Philosophy, Pisa, 2013, pp. 381-423, pp. 413423; id., “Scienza e contingenza in Galeno”, in S. Perfetti (ed.), Conoscenza e contingenza nella tradizione aristotelica medievale, Pisa, 2008, pp. 13-30. 462 His knowledge will be ἐγγυτάτη τῆς ἀληθείας. For further references and comment, see Chiaradonna, “Universals in Ancient Medicine”, p. 419. 463 See Galen, Quod animi mores 37.16-24. On this text, cf. V. Cordonier, “Matière, qualités, mélange. La physique élémentaire d’Aristote chez Galien et Alexandre d’Aphrodise”, Quaestio: The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics 7, 2007, pp. 79-103, pp. 88-96. 464 On Galen’s dismissive attitude towards the Aristotelian εἶδος, see R. Chiaradonna, “Platonismo e teoria della conoscenza stica tra II e III secolo d. C.”, in M. Bonazzi and C. Helmig (eds), Platonic Stoicism—Stoic Platonism, Leuven, 2007, pp. 209-241, pp. 232-234. 465 For Alexander, see Cordonier, “Matière, qualités, mélange”, pp. 85-88.
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aṭrāfi mizāǧi al-naw‘), as opposed to “a balance relative to the absolute extremes”. Yet, that does not imply that, like Galen, he posits an ideal value for each species. Averroes is just saying that the blending of the elements is possible for any pair of values taken within a range of possible realizations,466 but that the blend must not amount to the exact mean of the four ‘extreme’ qualities as realized in pure fire, pure air, pure water and pure earth.467 At any rate, in the text just quoted Averroes’ objection to Galen is not ontological, but chemical. The Commentator claims that the precisely determined state by which Galen defines the perfection of human health, that of a perfect balance of the four elements, is impossible because the four qualities, if they are perfectly equal in power when they meet, cannot mix with one another. Galen’s ontological mistake—his exaggerated materialism, which led him to confuse the form with temperament—is augmented by a chemical one. Had he meditated upon the fourth book of the Meteorology, he would have avoided this chemical mistake.468 This, finally, explains Averroes’ tripartition. Contrary to what Galen supposed, a perfect balance of the elements does not lead to their mixing together, not to speak of a perfect mixture. A perfect equality of the elements ends with their mutual destruction. As already noted, Averroes’ Epitome, which is always much closer to Alexander than the Middle Commentary, shows no trace of the polemical stance against Galen that we find in the later work. That is a first hint that Averroes was original in his rebuttal of Galen’s notion of the perfect balance of the elements. This hint is definitely confirmed by the fact that Averroes devotes a monograph to the refutation of the treatise De temperamentis, and that he utters some criticisms on the same topics again in his Colliget.469 This evidence seems sufficient to prove that he does not 466
Provided that the two values are not exactly equal. Even if Averroes were assuming, in this context, something more or less similar to Galen’s ideal value (with the difference, of course, that according to Averroes, this ideal value would be confined to the specific temperament of each species), we still could not equate Averroes’ position with Galen’s. For Averroes might well have thought that a precisely determined state was “better” than the others in the sense that it is for this value that the temperament is the most suitable for the individuals of the species. Still, a gap would remain between this temperament as such and the specific form of the individual. To be in a better human condition does not make someone more of a human being. That is not necessarily the case for Galen if, as he holds in the Quod animi mores, the soul is nothing but the κρᾶσις of the bodily elements. 467 On the notion of ἄκρον at stake here, see next chapter, pp. 265-267. 468 See Aristotle, Meteor. IV 1; 4, 381b 23-382a 8. 469 See Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, pp. 150-160.
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borrow the tripartition of the Middle Commentary from Alexander. What then was Alexander’s position? I would tentatively suggest that it was the same as the author’s. Averroes’ silence with regard to this issue in the Epitome might be explained on the ground that he was already reluctant to adopt it. Alexander, on this view, distinguished between, on the one hand, the ingredients of very dissimilar powers and ingredients of similar powers, i.e. of powers more or less equal, on the other hand. Unlike Averroes, he did not specify, in the second case, that the two powers must not be perfectly equal. But neither did he say, like Galen, that each species can be defined by an ideal value. And even if he did hold this theory, it must have been restricted to his account of temperament, and had no impact on his views about the form (εἶδος) and its qualitative variability (πλάτος, latitudo). We have already met the topics of § 9.5, so we can be brief. The author again addresses the question of the symmetry of the relation ‘x acts upon y’. The author, as we saw, is unique among the commentators in maintaining that it is intrinsically necessary for every action to be symmetrical: if A acts upon B, then B acts upon A. Aristotle is not entirely clear on this issue. In GC I 7, 324a 24-18, he explains that acting is not necessarily symmetrical. The first term of a series of items acting and acted upon can be said to ‘act’ upon the others without being acted upon by them. Aristotle writes in particular: In the case of action the first agent is unaffected, but the last is also a patient. Things that do not share the same matter act without being acted upon; e.g. the medical skill, which produces health without itself being in any way affected by the thing which is made healthy, whereas the food, in acting, is also affected in some way or other.470
The commentators do not add very much to this statement. Following Aristotle, Philoponus and Averroes claim that the action is reciprocal if the agent and the patient have the same matter, and that it is not if their matter is different. The author takes up this statement, but he introduces a shift in the argument. His main deviation from the tradition consists in the fact that, as we saw, he is eager to restrict action to the cases where both terms interact. Since Aristotle as well as his commentators are very clear on the fact that the first term of the series both acts and is not acted upon, the author cannot simply throw the whole theory away. He prefers to resort to an 470
Aristotle, GC I 7, 324a 32-b 2.
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original qualification of the agent, distinguishing the natural agent from the other types (left unspecified). He writes: There may be some things which act but are not acted upon, like the medical skill which acts for the sake of health; however, this is not a natural agent. For it is not a natural body endowed with a quality contrary to the quality of the patient in such a way that it would be in contact with it and act upon it; but it is an agent like a craft, in the sense that it makes use of the natural agent and brings it close to the thing acted upon; for medical skill does not change the body by itself, but it makes use of a drug, or a nutriment, or some other natural thing, which acts upon the body and makes its quality change.471
The distinction drawn by the author is philosophically interesting. Natural agents are, according to him, natural bodies, i.e. bodies constituted out of the four primary qualities. But what are unnatural agents? The author follows Aristotle in mentioning the ‘medical skill’ (al-ṭibb = ἡ ἰατρική).472 Ontologically, the art of medicine is nothing but a power, or faculty, of man: Thus, every power that is not in a substratum shared by itself and what it acts upon is not something acting naturally upon the latter; this is the reason that this power is not acted upon by what it acts upon, while the natural agent that this first agent makes use of is acted upon by it.473
This use of the term “power” (quwwa) is what unifies all kinds of agents. To be an agent is to have a power of some sort. This power may be natural, as in the case of the natural bodies, or unnatural, not in the sense that its bearers are not natural beings—human beings are obviously natural—but in the sense that they are susceptible of voluntary action. This implies some basic powers, or faculties, which play a crucial role in Islamic theology. It is well-known that the question of human free-will and power was heartily 471
Talḫīṣ 45.3-7. There is a divergence between the two manuscripts here. The Istanbul ms. (A) writes al-ṭibb, ‘the medical skill’, twice, and compares it with a ṣan‘a, a ‘craft’, while the Gotha ms. (G) has twice al-ṭabīb, the doctor’ and compares him with a ṣāni‘, a ‘craftsman’. Such a divergence is too systematic to result from a scribal mistake. One of the two versions is a correction of the other. Since the first set of variants is difficilior (it is less natural to think of medical skill as an agent than the doctor), and closer to Aristotle’s text, I consider it genuine (let us also remark as confirmation that A is generally better than G). Of course, someone could maintain that the author was only speaking paraphrastically here and that some reader must have emended his text on the basis of Aristotle’s treatise. But this seems too far-fetched to be true. 473 Talḫīṣ 45.7-9. 472
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disputed among theologians.474 Human beings seem to accomplish skilful actions. But are they the true agents of what appear to be their actions? Am I really acting when I seem to be, or is it God who acts through the atoms forming my body? If the author, as seems to be the case, had connections with theological circles, or if he was himself a theologian, the present passage tends to suggest again that he was on the side of the partisans of freewill.475 What remains untackled is the disagreement expressed by the author with regard to the exegetical tradition concerning the relationships between the supralunary and the sublunary world. According to the entire tradition, excepting only the author, both spheres are in contact and one of them acts upon the other without being acted upon by it. According to the author, both spheres are in contact but no action whatever takes place between them. The author was clear enough in the previous chapter to avoid any need for a new discussion at the present stage. Shall we guess that he assumed the heavens to have no unnatural power on the sublunary world, because they have no power at all on it? Or did he take them, on the contrary, to have some unnatural power on the sublunar world? In the latter case, are the heavens acting as a skilful, rational, agent, or in some third way? These questions are difficult, and we shall have to address them when commenting on the last Section of the treatise.476 For the time being, let us posit with the author only two types of powers: the natural powers, and the powers possessed by a living being able to act in a skilful way.477
474
See, generally, D. Gimaret, Théories de l’acte humain en théologie musulmane, Paris, 1980. 475 Namely, a Mu‘tazilite. This argument should not be pressed too far, however, insofar as the rival school of the Ash‘arites, while denying human free will, had nonetheless a subtle theory of human action as such, based on the notion of ‘acquisition’ (iktisāb). On the author’s doctrine of man in general—if, as I suspect, he is to be identified with Ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī—see below, pp. 384-391. 476 See below, pp. 318 sqq. 477 Unfortunately, the author is silent about the dynamic power possessed by an object moving through some medium, either a projectile or a body moving according to “natural” motion.
Section 10: On Mixing Section 10 is devoted to mixing. It corresponds to GC I 10, which is the last chapter of the first book of Aristotle’s treatise. The author starts by positing basic criteria for mixing, and progresses towards a precise and articulated description of this process, which he will provide at the end of the section. It is interesting that the author does not seem to consider it useful to give a definition of mixing. Since this process is too manifold to belong to a single category, it is perhaps wise to remain at the level of merely describing it. We shall come back to this issue when commenting upon § 10.6. In § 10.1, the author states the most general aporia concerning mixing, that of the status of the ingredients. Put very briefly, this aporia says that the ingredients can neither remain what they were before being combined in the mixture, nor be destroyed so that the mixture would be nothing but the generation of a new substance out of two bodies that were destroyed. But if the ingredients are neither the same, nor not the same, as they were before mixing together, we confront a difficulty, which seems to threaten the logical coherence, hence the very existence, of the process of mixing. Perhaps, after all, is mixing nothing but an epistemic illusion such as e.g. the vacuum, the existence of which is posited by some physicists but denied by Aristotle.478 This aporia opens Aristotle’s own chapter and can be found, in more or less the same form, throughout the whole tradition of GC. Aristotle writes as follows: We have to enquire […] whether there is such a thing as mixing or whether this is false. For it is impossible for one thing to be mixed with another according to what some people say; for supposing that the things after being mixed still are and have not been altered, they say that now they are no more mixed than they were before, but are just the same; and that if one of the two things is destroyed, they have not been mixed, but one exists and the other does not, whereas mixing is of things in the same condition; and that it is no different if, when the two things have come together, each of the things being mixed is destroyed, because they cannot be things that have been mixed if they cannot be said to be at all. 479 478 479
See Physics IV 6, 213a 12-22. Aristotle, GC I 10, 327a 32-b 6.
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Aristotle mentions three possibilities: either no ingredient is changed at all, or one (and only one) of the two is destroyed while the other remains as it is, or both of them are destroyed. In none of these three cases can we say that what we have is a process of mixing. The author proceeds along the same path. We find, in the same order, Aristotle’s three possibilities: If mixed things remain in the state they had before being mixed without enduring any change at all in their essence, then the condition of being mixed is an accident affecting them from without, and the claim that they have mixed together is no more cogent than the claim that they have not. For if each of them remains as it was, preserving its existence in all its states, nothing at all mixes with it, and the only thing to grasp in the notion of mixing is the fact that one thing has come into another, the two things differ in substance, and that they have become unified, so that the combination of them both is something else. If, on the other hand, one of the things mixing together is destroyed and its substance changes into the substance of the thing subject to mixture, nothing compels us to say that one of them has mixed with the other, but we must say instead that the second has been destroyed, transformed into the nature of the first, and made continuous with it. Similarly, if both have been destroyed together and a third thing has resulted from the process, the result is not a mixture in them, but a generation out of them, since they have both been destroyed.480
The only serious difference is that the author has, as usually, omitted Aristotle’s historical allusion.481 He is not interested in the fact that some people might have raised an aporia against the existence of mixing but only wants to stress the difficulty of the notion. The conclusion of this aporia is not formulated in the same way by Aristotle and by the author. Aristotle says: Now what this argument is after seems to be to clarify the difference between mixing and coming to be or ceasing to be, and between a mixture and a thing that comes to be or ceases to be. So once these are clear the problems should find their solutions.482
The author, on the other hand, writes:
480
Talḫīṣ 45.11-20. Cf. 327a 35: “according to what some people say”. 482 Aristotle, GC I 10, 327b 6-10. 481
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Therefore, mixture takes place between things that do not remain after mixing together just as they were before mixing; but, on the other hand, they are not destroyed—neither some of them nor all of them—in such a way that nothing would remain from their first nature.483
Thus, while Aristotle remains rather vague as to the solution he will offer to the difficulty he has just stated, the author is more explicit. The solution will be to recognize the existence of an ontological state in which the ingredients are neither exactly what they were, nor entirely different from this prior state. § 10.2 expounds an idea which seems dear to the author, that of the generic unity of two different species: And things not belonging to the same genus do not mix together at all; blackness, for example, does not mix with sweetness, nor circularity with heat, nor whiteness and circularity with body; for whiteness and circularity are not in the body in the way a thing mixed with another thing is, but they are in the body in the way a thing is in a subject, each of them preserving its own nature and notion. In sum, everything that is able to exist with something else while perfectly preserving its own nature and notion cannot mix with that thing. And a thing does not mix with what is similar to itself, but is unified with it, since they are not different from one another in such a way that the first gets mixed with the other and a third thing results from them both.484
Basically, this is what Aristotle himself claims in the following lines: On the other hand we do not say that wood has been mixed with fire, nor, when it is being burnt, that it is being mixed, either with its own parts or with the fire: we say rather that the fire comes to be and that the wood is destroyed. Similarly we do not say that food is mixed with the body, nor that the shape is mixed with the wax when it impresses itself on the lump. Nor can body and white, nor in general can affections and dispositions, have been mixed with the things that have them; for we see that they are preserved. No more can whiteness and knowledge have been mixed, nor can any of the other non-separables.485
483
Talḫīṣ 45.20-47.2. Talḫīṣ 47.3-9. See also above, p. 143. 485 Aristotle, GC I 10, 327b 10-19. 484
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The author therefore makes the unity of the genus explicit in Aristotle’s examples. He suggests that in order for mixing to take place, the two ingredients ought to be neither too different from one another, nor too similar. The distance between them is also important if they do not belong to the same proximate genus. But if they belong to the same species, i.e. if they have a similar form, we shall not have mixing, but a mere unification of the two ingredients, as when one drop of water gets unified with another one. Although there is no parallel to § 10.2 in Averroes’ Epitome (nor, of course, in the Middle Commentary), we can pretty confidently attribute the substance of this paragraph to Alexander’s lost commentary. For the idea that “a thing does not mix with what is similar to itself, but is unified with it, since they are not different from one another in such a way that the first gets mixed with the other and a third thing results from them both” seems to be borrowed from the commentator. For the latter writes in his De mixtione: Hence mixture qua blending occurs among very malleable and moist bodies, and just as the composition of random bodies was not mixture so the unification of random moist bodies is not blending and mixture; for water is not blended with water, although unified with it, nor oil with oil, and not even oil with water, in this latter case because of its viscosity.486
This parallel suggests that at least implicitly, Alexander claimed that the ingredients of the mixture should be neither too different, nor identical. However it might be the author who interpreted this general claim in terms of species and genus. Aristotle presents his solution in the paragraph that follows: Since, however, some things that are, are potential, and some actual, it is possible for things after they have been mixed in some way both to be and not to be. Some other thing which comes to be from them is actually, while each of the things which were, before they were mixed, still is, but potentially, and has not been destroyed. This is the puzzle raised by the previous argument […].487
Aristotle’s last sentence (“This is the puzzle raised by the previous argument”, τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ λόγος διηπόρει πρότερον) is not entirely clear. It is not perspicuous whether he intends to give another formulation of the first aporia, or a sketchy solution for it. If the latter, this solution leaves much to 486 487
Alexander, De mixtione 228.37-229.3 (translation R. B. Todd, p. 149). Aristotle, GC I 10, 327b 22-27.
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be desired. For the mere notion of potentiality does not seem of much explicative value, since the process of generation, too, is nothing but a change from potentiality to actuality (water, which is air in potentiality, becomes air in actuality when heated). And the present aporia consists precisely in distinguishing mixing from generation and destruction. Thus, potentiality must be qualified. That, I presume, is what Aristotle does in the following lines: But things that are mixed manifestly come together from having formerly been separate, and are capable of being separated again. So neither do they both remain in actuality like the body and its whiteness, nor do they perish— either of them or both—because their potentiality is preserved.488
Aristotle seems to give a specific criterion for the potentiality of the ingredients of a mixture. It consists not only of being able to produce the mixture, but also of being “capable of being separated again”. This qualification, however, is still problematic. For after all, when water comes to be air, this air is capable of becoming water again. Such an objection probably explains Aristotle’s last remark, namely that “their potentiality is preserved”. The Greek says σώζεται γὰρ ἡ δύναµις αὐτῶν. It seems reasonably clear that in this sentence, the term δύναµις does not have the same meaning as a few lines before, when Aristotle was using it in the dative (δυνάµει, ‘in potentiality’).489 For at the beginning of the text, ‘potentiality’ refers to the process of change. Being potentially something is not having the power to exert one’s activity, i.e. the range of all the features constituting the nature of the substance considered. Rather, it amounts to being capable of being changed into some other nature. Water is potentially air because it is intrinsically capable of being changed into air. By contrast, the “potentiality” mentioned at the end of the paragraph is an allusion to the intrinsic nature of the substance, namely to its constitutive “powers”, which are responsible, as it were, for its external behaviour. According to this meaning, fire and air have the δύναµις of heat, earth and water the δύναµις of coldness. By this, we do not mean that the fire and the air can be changed into something hot, but that they are hot—heat being indeed a constitutive feature of their nature. This is what Aristotle alludes to in his last sentence. In the mixture, the heat of the fire present as an ingredient will remain preserved. Now, we should ask ourselves what ‘because’ (γάρ) means in the sentence “because their potentiality is preserved.” First, we could wonder 488 489
Aristotle, GC I 10, 327b 27-31. See GC I 10, 327b 23 and 25.
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whether the explanation bears on what has just been said (“nor do they perish—either of them or both—”) or to the previous sentence (“are capable of being separated again”). To make this point more evident, we might consider two ways of punctuating this ambiguous passage. Either: But things that are mixed manifestly come together from having formerly been separate, and are capable of being separated again. So neither do they both remain in actuality like the body and its whiteness; nor do they perish (either of them or both), because their potentiality is preserved.
Or: But things that are mixed manifestly come together from having formerly been separate, and are capable of being separated again. So neither do they both remain in actuality like the body and its whiteness, nor do they perish— either of them or both. For their potentiality is preserved.
According to the first reading, the last remark is an innocuous comment on the fact that the ingredients do not perish. They “survive” insofar as their nature, which finds its realization in their δύναµις, is preserved. On the second reading, the γάρ does not refer to the immediately previous sentence, but, more loosely, to the penultimate one. Aristotle would be explaining the capacity to return to the initial state by relying on the fact that the power of the initial bodies is preserved. The second reading is more difficult, for two reasons. The first one is philological: it is not so easy, in Greek, to understand the γάρ as referring to the penultimate sentence. The second reason stems from a consideration of the argument at stake. It is not immediately obvious that two ingredients preserving their respective powers would, for this very reason, be able to be separated again. After all, there might very well be some other factors impeding this from happening. We could imagine, for instance, that each of the two contrary powers “fixes” the other and, by blocking it in its mixed state, impedes it from returning to its previous state of separation. For both reasons, it seems more reasonable to opt, as the modern translators have done, for the first reading of the text. The ingredients are not destroyed because (i.e. insofar as) their powers are preserved. That leaves us with two new problems. First, Aristotle does not give us the slightest justification for the fact that the ingredients are “capable of being separated again”. How can he be so confident in the possible reversibility of every process of mixing? Secondly, if we equate, as we do, the δύναµις of the ingredients with their nature and claim that their δύναµις is preserved (σώζεται), we will certainly have explained that the ingredients are not
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destroyed, but not in which sense they “do not remain in actuality”. For our postulated notion of the δύναµις of a body amounts more or less to that of its actuality, characterized by its ability to exert its natural power. Ever since Alexander, Greek, Arab and Latin commentators have addressed these two problems. Their solution to the second has been much discussed by modern scholars, but the first seems to have escaped their attention. The new text allows us to reconstruct Alexander’s formulation of the problem, and the solution he offers to it. Since however the author postpones his answer to the first problem until the end of the chapter, we shall not discuss it right now. Let us just say a few words on the second issue. The author writes: For mixture is a different notion, resulting from the things from which there is mixing, not out of which there is generation. Therefore, its elements are not destroyed; its elements, however, are not present in the mixture in actuality; for otherwise, the process would be combination and conjunction, not mixing. Therefore, the elements of the mixture are present in the mixture neither in pure potentiality—for they are not destroyed in a complete way— nor in pure actuality—for they do not preserve their natures as they were before being mixed. Therefore, when they are in the mixture, they are in between potentiality and actuality.490
According to this text, it is not only the power of the ingredients which is preserved in the mixture, but also the ingredients themselves. The ingredients are not explicitly assimilated to their powers, but it is probable—and will be confirmed a little below—that by mentioning their ‘natures’ (ṭabā’i‘a-hā), the author is alluding to them. His solution consists in suggesting that when they are in the mixture, the ‘natures’ of the ingredients are neither potential nor actual. They are ‘in between potentiality and actuality’. This description is vague and rather inappropriate. For an Aristotelian scholar, there is no intermediate state between actuality and potentiality. This is because these two notions are to be understood as basically functional. That means, first of all, that there is no “absolute” value of actuality/potentiality, but these notions are always relative to other degrees of potentiality and actuality on a scale of possible realizations. Hence, what is actual from one point of view can be potential from another. Secondly, potentiality and actuality are functional because they are relative to one another. Hence, it would be absurd for something to be, strictly speaking, “in between” potentiality and actuality, i.e. neither potential nor actual: this 490
Talḫīṣ 47.10-14.
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state would be actual with regard to a state that is potential relative to its present state, and potential with regard to a state actual relative to its present state. But perhaps should we not pursue this issue too far. For this kind of relativity is probably exactly what the author means: the miscibles are ‘in between’ potentiality and actuality in the sense that they are more actual than the state of an element with regard to another element into which it can be transformed (water being potentially air), and more potential than the state of an element with regard to its pure, unmixed, state. That is more or less what we find in Averroes’ Epitome: Since mixture is neither of these [i.e. generation and corruption], it must mean that out of each one of the miscibles, as they become mixed, there emerges a third thing in actuality which is uniform in its properties but different in form from each of the miscibles in that each one of the latter exists in it with a potentiality bordering upon, not remote from, actuality, as has been attested concerning all miscibles whether natural or artificial. 491
Averroes and the author are likely to draw their interpretation from Alexander, even if the former is perhaps closer to Alexander’s formulation. In the author’s description, contrarily to Averroes, the ingredients are not said to display a kind of potentiality distinct from the capacity of an element to be changed into another element. Philoponus sides with Averroes, and that may hint at Alexander’s influence: Since, he says, some things exist potentially and some actually, the things that are mixed might remain the same potentially in the mixing, but not actually. For in the wine that has been mingled, both the wine and the water exist potentially, but I am not using ‘potentially’ in the sense I did earlier, in terms of suitability, in which water is potentially air, and not simpliciter in the second sense, merely in connection with a disposition, as is the sleeping geometer. Rather, in the way in which the geometer who is drunk and is trying to do geometry is actualized in terms of his disposition, but not purely— that is how it is with the wine and the water in the mixture; for in the mixing each operates in a chastened way (κεκολασµένως).492
The combination of this reflection on the different degrees of potentiality, paralleled in Averroes, with the theory of the “chastened” powers of the ingredients appearing in the previous chapter of the present commentary, points to Alexander’s influence. As we saw, he is very likely to have char491 492
Averroes, Epitome 17.14-17. Philoponus, In GC 188.15-23.
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acterized the potentiality of the powers of the ingredients this way. On the face of it, I would not rule out the possibility that he was also the author of the comparison of the restrained state of the power of the mixed wine with that of the demonstrative power of the drunk geometer unable to solve a mathematical riddle. But in the absence of any parallel in Arabic, this must remain a mere guess. In the following section, Aristotle seems to rebut two possible ways of explaining mixing. I believe that they can be attributed, respectively, to the Atomists (chiefly, but perhaps not only, Democritus) and Anaxagoras.493 According to the Atomist view, mixing occurs between two bodies when each particle of the first is alongside some particle of the second. According to Anaxagoras, every portion of the first body we might take, however small it is, must be alongside a portion of the other body. In other words, Aristotle considers that the Atomists and Anaxagoras differ not by assuming that mixing amounts to juxtaposition, but by endorsing, or not endorsing, an infinite division. The atomists are presented as claiming that each of the two mixed bodies contains a finite number of small particles. Thus, according to them, mixing must be understood exactly as when “grains of barley are mixed with grains of wheat”, the only difference being that the particles, which totally escape our perception, are much smaller than grains. To Anaxagoras, by contrast, is implicitly attributed a doctrine of the actual infinity of the particles in each body. Hence, we can never stop in the process of division. In whatever portion of the mixture, however small, we shall always find particles of the two bodies alongside each other. Aristotle thinks that Anaxagoras’ doctrine is simply impossible (ἀδύνατον). The only model he regards as possible, apart from his own, is the atomist view. Yet, it ought to be noted that Aristotle does not discuss the atomist hypothesis explicitly as such. Admittedly, he takes for granted that “there is no such thing as a thing’s being divided into parts which are the smallest possible” (οὐκ ἔστιν εἰς τὰ ἐλάχιστα διαιρεθῆναι).494 But in the present context, this claim aims more at refuting Anaxagoras than the alleged Democritean view according to which the atom is an ἐλάχιστον.495 If we consider the way these particles are described by Aristotle more attentively, we notice that nothing compels us to identify them with Democritus’ atoms. At 327b 33 and 328a 7 and 12, Aristotle mentions a division εἰς µικρά or κατὰ µικρά; at 328a 1 and 9-10, he speaks of µόριον 493
Rashed, De la génération et la corruption, p. 48, n. 2. GC I 10, 328a 5-6. 495 For the use of this term in this context, see Aristotle, On the Heavens III 8, 306b 34. 494
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and at 328a 5 and 11 of µέρος. In other words, Aristotle does not describe the elements of the mixture as atoms. It is sufficient for him to characterize them as small particles. Of course, these small particles might be atoms in the Democritean sense. But that is far from compulsory. Aristotle rejects a more general model, according to which mixing is nothing but the juxtaposition of small particles, be these particles atoms or divisible, but still invisible bits of matter. These considerations explain why the author, even if he felt so uncomfortable with Aristotle’s refutation of atomism in GC I 2 that he skipped it in his commentary, might not have been disturbed by Aristotle’s present refutation of mixing by juxtaposition. For it was perfectly possible to read this text as criticizing the idea of a juxtaposition of small, but not necessarily indivisible, parts. That is precisely what he does in the opening lines of § 10.4: And we should not think that the process of mixing consists in the fact of both mixed bodies being cut into small parts, so that each of their parts is juxtaposed to some part of the other and not of its own body, as when dust mixes with flour.496
The expression employed here for ‘small parts’, aǧzā’ ṣiġār, is never used by the Arab atomists to designate the basic constituents of reality, which they describe as ‘indivisible parts’ (aǧzā’ al-latī lā tataǧazza’a) exclusively or, more simply, as ‘parts’ (aǧzā’). In their usage, to say that these ‘parts’ are ‘small’ is precisely to suggest that they are not meant to be atoms. The author insists, in the following sentence, on this crucial distinction: For this process is combination, even if it is out of small parts, and in each part of the mixture, both notions are not present together, but both natures are still there, each preserving its own notion, even if every part of each nature is close to another part that is different from it.497
Here again, the author specifies that the elements of the mixture by conjunction are ‘small parts’, aǧzā’ ṣaġīra. There is little doubt as to his intentions: he wants us to avoid thinking that Aristotle aimed at criticizing the doctrine of atomism along with mixture by conjunction. The present passage is neutralized so as to have no further bearing on the issue of indivisible parts.
496 497
Talḫīṣ 47.15-17. Talḫīṣ 47.17-19.
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This overall strategy is telling with respect to the author’s philosophical stance. If we are not mistaken, he was an atomist but accepted Aristotle’s rebuttal of mixing by conjunction. The only way of making sense of this is to suppose that he drew a sharp distinction between the material constitution of physical reality (the atoms) and the nature of the sensible substances (the form). The author must have accepted a real presence of atoms in substances, but affirmed that the form has a power sufficient to extend itself throughout the whole composite of atoms, and to impose, as it were, a second level unity. This two level theory would be the best example, up to its time and beyond, of a synthesis between an Aristotelian theory of form and a doctrine of indivisible parts such as was claimed by the Muslim theologians.498 The author insists on the possibility of having homoeomerous bodies: But the result of the mixing must be homoeomerous in its totality, so as to be a single thing not only according to our perception but also in its essence, in the way a single and simple nature is a single thing; and any part of a mixture, whichever part it may be, is also a mixture, in the way any part of a simple body is simple.499
To repeat, this theory is only possible if a distinction can be drawn between the level of atomic matter and that of the form. It is not the atom itself, endowed with a given power, which will mix with other atoms, but the power of which it is the bearer. The powers inhering in the atoms will have an effect on each other, and a homoeomerous body will be produced out of them, which will in turn unify the many atoms into a continuous whole. The author will give some details of this dynamical aspect of mixing in the next paragraph. For the time being, he only insists on the importance of reciprocal action and passion for mixing to take place: In view of this, mixing must take place between things acting upon one another and being acted upon by one another, for when one of two things is merely acting upon the other without being acted upon by it, it destroys it without being mixed with it, like fire in wood: for it does not mix with it in such a way that something resulting from the combination of fire and wood might be created out of them, but fire is generated little by little and the wood is destroyed little by little. Similarly, things whose action does not take place by meeting what is acted upon do not mix. The physician, for example, 498
This will find some confirmation later, when we deal in more details with the author’s philosophical agenda—his views on the nature of the human being in particular. 499 Talḫīṣ 47.20-22.
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even if he has some effect and action upon a body, does not mix with it, since they do not have the same substratum and since he acts not by meeting and contact but rather in the sense that he makes use of an agent that touches and meets, e.g. a drug or food.500
The conclusion of this paragraph deserves to be quoted, because it not only reassesses what has just been said, but also adds precision which confirms our deduction concerning the mixture of the powers: Therefore, mixing takes place between things whose nature consists in acting and being acted upon and being unified with one another in their totality, in such a way that all of them might become a single homoeomerous body, the process not being solely in terms of conjoined limits—for that is not a mixing of the forms but a conjunction of the bodies.501
The author is very clear about the necessity of distinguishing between the ‘conjunction of the bodies’ and the ‘mixing of the forms’. Certainly, mixture takes place when the masses of the two bodies are in contact with each other. But contact is only an auxiliary cause, a mere condition of possibility for mixture. Without action and passion there would be no mixture at all, because the different powers of the ingredients could not become qualitatively unified. The author resumes his position in the next paragraph (§ 10.5), and spells out the different stages required by every process of mixing: Mixing, therefore, results from the fact that fine and seeping bodies seep into one another; then, the powers act and are acted upon by one another so that a combined power results from them, intermediate between the initial powers; then the continuous body resulting from these bodies becomes the substratum of the intermediate form commonly and equally created by them all; and the fact that the forms and the powers become one is prior to the becoming one of the body, since the body is acted upon by another body, not in virtue of itself but because of the difference between the forms, so that when the one form is produced, that brings about the continuity of the substratum body. Mixing, therefore, is between things subject to acting and being acted upon; it results, then, from things contrary to one another.502
We can distinguish four successive steps: 500
Talḫīṣ 47.22-49.7. Talḫīṣ 49.7-10. 502 Talḫīṣ 49.11-18. 501
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1) Interpenetration of the small parts of the miscibles (“fine and seeping bodies seep into one another”) 2) Reciprocal effect exerted by the different powers on each other (“then the powers act and are acted upon by one another so that a combined power results from them, intermediate between the initial powers”) 3) Production of a unique form (“and the fact that the forms and the powers become one is prior to the becoming one of the body, since the body is acted upon by another body, not in virtue of itself but because of the difference between the forms”) 4) Unification into a whole of the small parts of the miscibles (“when the one form is produced, that brings about the continuity of the substratum body”). My distinction between steps 2 and 3 is less firmly grounded in the text than the others. This relative uncertainty is due to the difficulty the author faced in providing a criterion of distinction between the powers of the body and its form. We might express the subtle difference between the two notions by saying that while the process of action and passion between the ingredients is above all a matter of contrary powers—whether these powers are forms or not plays no role at this stage—the unification of the composite substratum cannot be effected by a power which is not, at the same time, a form. Power transforms, form units. From §§ 10.4 and 10.5, it appears that unlike Aristotle, the author assumed that forms, assimilated to the powers of bodies, mix with each other. This idea is at least implicit in Alexander, and has recently been taken to play a role in Averroes.503 In the most explicit passage, Alexander writes: The diversity of forms observed in natural bodies need therefore occasion no surprise, since it is clear that the causes of this variety are contained within the substrates themselves. I mean that the plurality of forms found in the simple bodies serving as substrate for more complex bodies, and the different blending possible among them, offers a reasonable explanation of this diversity, however great it may be. For even in cases where the substrate is utterly simple—when, that is, it is matter in the absolute sense—and is thus incapable of differentiating in any way the beings formed out of it, the paired contraries “dry-moist” and “hot-cold” present in this bare substrate are nev503
See Valérie Cordonier, “Le mélange chez Averroès: sources textuelles et implications théoriques”, in Graziella Federici Vescovini and A. Hasnawi (eds), Circolazione dei saperi nel Mediterraneo. Filosofia e scienze (secoli IX-XVII), Firenze, 2013, pp. 361-376, p. 370.
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ertheless responsible for at least this degree of difference among the bodies generated from it: that, sc., they come to exist severally as fire, air, earth, water. Moreover, some of these bodies are heavy, some light, and they can even support both these qualities in succession. We are therefore fully justified in asserting that the composite bodies produced by the numberless combinations into which these primary bodies can be blended must exhibit the widest possible variations, both in their forms and in their dynamic capacities.504
Prima facie, the sentence τό τε γὰρ πλῆθος τῶν εἰδῶν τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὑποκειµένοις αὐτοῖς σώµασιν καὶ ἡ τούτων διάφορος µῖξις τῆς τοσαύτης παραλλαγῆς εὐλόγως ἂν τὰς αἰτίας φέροιτο (8.15-17) is ambiguous. For the pronoun τούτων can be understood as referring to τῶν εἰδῶν as well as to τοῖς … σώµασιν. Accattino and Donini opt for the second solution, translating “sarà ragionevole ritenere responsabili di una tale varietà la molteplicità delle forme presenti nei corpi che fan loro da sostratto e la diversa mescolanza di questi”.505 But it seems more natural, from a grammatical point of view, to understand it, as Fotinis does,506 as referring to “the forms”, τῶν εἰδῶν. Even if it is impossible to confidently assess what the correct construction is, and even if Alexander probably wished to remain somewhat ambiguous on this issue, the grammatical structure τε … καί … suggests a strong parallelism between the two phrases, which in turn makes it more plausible that πλῆθος and µίξις have the same reference. I conclude, then, that Averroes is not the first commentator to assume that there is a mixing of the forms. This doctrine appears already in Alexander’s De anima and, to judge from the Arabic commentary, was present in Alexander’s lost commentary on GC. It is through the latter channel that it might have been known to Averroes.507 It is now time to situate Alexander’s views about mixture in the history of the interpretations of GC. Frans de Haas has already devoted a sensitive
504
Alexander, De anima 8.13-25. Alessandro di Afrodisia, L’anima, a cura di P. Accattino e P. Donini, Roma / Bari, 1996, p. 9. 506 See A. P. Fotinis, The “De anima” of Alexander of Aphrodisias: A translation and Commentary, Marquette University, Ph. D., 1978, p. 11: “I mean that the plurality of forms found in the [simple] bodies serving as substrate for more complex bodies, and the different combinations possible among these forms, offer a reasonable explanation of this diversity, however great it may be”. 507 I will suggest below (see pp. 267-268) that in a sense, Averroes remains even more cautious than Alexander on this issue. 505
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paper to the question, and I will start by recalling his main results.508 De Haas first presents the traditional classification of the different positions about mixture that were maintained by the tradition of the commentators known to the Renaissance philosopher Jacopo Zabarella.509 According to Zabarella, the following four interpretations of Aristotle’s text have been propounded: 1) The substantial forms of the elements are preserved integrally, but the basic qualities are reduced (cap. II: Avicenna) 2) Both the forms and the qualities are preserved in reduced actuality, which explains in what sense the elements cease to be in favour of the forma misti (cap. III: Alexander, Philoponus, Averroes) 3) Both the forms and the qualities perish in the mixture and a new form and a new quality are generated, which exhibit only a degree of similarity with the original forms and qualities (cap. IV: Duns Scotus) 4) The forms perish entirely, but the qualities are preserved in reduced actuality, which is apparent from the fact that their potencies (vires or virtutes) are found in the mixture (cap. V: Marsilius of Inghen, Thomas Aquinas, Aegidius Romanus, Ludovicus Buccaferreus, etc.) F. de Haas explains why this picture is not entirely adequate. According to Zabarella, Philoponus held the same doctrine as Alexander (and Averroes), viz. the thesis according to which both the forms and the qualities are present in the mixture in reduced actuality. This, as De Haas points out, is true only of Philoponus’ commentary on GC I 10, a chapter where he seems to follow Alexander.510 In his commentary on GC II 7, on the other hand, which Zabarella does not seem to have read with the same care, Philoponus expresses some doubts concerning this position, and suggests in a personal note (ἐπίστασις) that it is wrong to claim that the substantial form of the elements can be reduced in its actuality while remaining the same form.511 It is consubstantial to each of the four elemental forms, says Philoponus, that it should be an “extreme” (ἄκρον) of one of the four fundamental qualities. Fire, for instance, contains “extreme” hot. If the hot is not extreme, then the substance into the constitution of which it enters cannot 508
See F. A. J. de Haas, “Mixture in Philoponus. An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality”, in J. M. M. H. Thijssen and H. A. G. Braakhuis (eds), The Commentary Tradition on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione. Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern, Turnhout, 1999, pp. 21-46. 509 See J. Zabarella, Liber de mistione, in: De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, Frankfurt, 1606-1607, col. 451-480. 510 De Haas, “Mixture in Philoponus”, pp. 38-40. 511 De Haas, “Mixture in Philoponus”, pp. 34-38.
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be fire. This leads Philoponus to reject Alexander’s model, or at least Alexander’s model such as it was formulated in the exegesis of GC I 10. In order to understand Philoponus’ personal strategy, we must try to reconstruct Alexander’s views on mixture. Apart from our new commentary, Alexander’s fragments transmitted in Ps.-Ğābir b. Ḥayyān’s still unedited Kitāb al-taṣrīf contain valuable evidence. The text, however, is difficult and, in the two interesting passages (§§ 29 and 35),512 probably corrupt. In the third chapter of the second book of GC, Aristotle gives the formula of each of the four elements. Fire is hot and dry, air is hot and wet, water is cold and wet and earth is cold and dry.513 Aristotle establishes a correspondence between the four traditional elements and the four pairs of basic qualities which he has singled out in the previous chapter. Since this argument is not logically cogent, but based on architectonic ideas about symmetry and economy of principles, Aristotle does not specify further how to understand the “equation” between the four elements and the four pairs of sensible qualities. Each element seems to be defined by a pair (συζυγία) of qualities.514 But does this pair capture an entire element, qua element, or does it refer to its formal aspect only? Are the four συζυγίαι per se elements? This question Aristotle left for his commentators to answer. They answered it in a rather strange way. After dealing with the formulae of the elements, Aristotle makes an innocuous point about the elements taken in their “pure” definition, or in their pure state as opposed to their sensible concrete realization in the world, where they are never pure, but always “mixed” with the other elements: Neither fire nor air nor any of those we have mentioned is in fact simple but mixed. The simple bodies are like these but not the same as them: that which is like fire is fiery, not fire; that which is like air is aeriform; and so on in the other cases.515
Philoponus first rejects what appears to the modern commentators516 to be the obvious meaning of this passage: 512
For the sake of simplicity, I reproduce the numeration adopted by E. Gannagé, Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle On Coming-to-Be and Perishing 2.2-5, London, 2005. 513 See GC II 3, 330b 1-7 and 331a 3-6. 514 See in particular GC II 3, 330a 30-b 1. 515 Aristotle, GC II 3, 330b 21-25. 516 See e.g. Joachim, Aristotle On Coming-to-Be, p. 217: “None of the ‘so-called elements’ is a pure example of πρώτη ὕλη informed by a couple of elementary qualities: they are all more or less ‘blends’”.
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Those who look at his words too hurriedly will think that what he is saying is that the elements are not simple or pure but mixed and always rendered spurious by each other, as many have held. This idea is worth consideration in its own right. And the next thing to investigate is how things stand in this regard—but only after we have first set out the true sense of what he says.517
If so, what then is the ‘true sense’ of the text? Philoponus explains it as follows: And he says that air and the others turn out not to be simple in the way the other principles, primarily and secondarily so-called, are simple; but the former, he says, are mixed and composite, having matter and form as their components. But the forms that constitute the contrarieties are, he says, simple; for the form of fire, which is regarded as constituted by the pairing of the qualities—I mean hot and dry—this is simple, just as matter is simple, but fire is already something composed out of both.518
Philoponus distinguishes two possible ways of considering an element. We can envisage it as a form alone, viz. as a pair of qualities; but we can also envisage it as a compound of form and matter, namely as a piece of prime matter informed by a pair of inhering qualities. Although Philoponus does not quote his precedessor here, he is likely to be borrowing this distinction from Alexander, for three reasons. First, this kind of concern for hylomorphism and, more precisely, for the status of the form, is very typical of Alexander’s philosophical stance. Secondly, in the following lines of his commentary, when he comes back to the issue of the purity of the elements, Philoponus draws a distinction between Plato’s claim in the Timaeus (31B), according to which the elements cannot be pure, and Aristotle’s claim, according to which if no external impediment prevents the element from existing in a pure state, it might come about (εἰ δὲ µηδέν ἐστι τὸ κωλῦον ἀλλ᾿ ἐνδέχεται, καὶ ἐκβαίη ἄν).519 Thirdly, and more precisely, we know that Alexander devoted much effort to explaining GC II 8, 335a 5-6, the passage in which Aristotle says: earth is the contrary of air and water of fire, in the way in which it is possible for one substance to be the contrary of another.
517
Philoponus, In GC 227.26-228.1. Philoponus, In GC 228.2-7. 519 See Philoponus, In GC 228.8-19. 518
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Thanks to a quotation in Simplicius’ comment on a sentence of the Categories claiming that a “characteristic of substances is that there is nothing contrary to them”,520 we know that Alexander discussed the GC passage in his own lost commentary on the Categories.521 Moreover, Averroes, in his commentary on Phys. V 2, 225b 10-11, mounts an attack against Alexander’s view that the mere form of the elements can be taken as a substance, and that this is what explains why Aristotle considers it possible for the four elements to constitute two pairs of contraries. He writes: Alexander said on this issue that what Aristotle said in the Categories concerns substances made out of form and matter, while in the book On generation, he addressed simple substances, i.e. the forms exclusively, which are in the first matter. 522
This evidence is confirmed by Ps.-Ğābir’s quotation of Alexander’s lost commentary at § 29. Unfortunately, the passage, as already noted, is in a very bad state. As it stands in the Paris manuscript, the text is as follows: Fa-innamā ya‘nī al-nāra bi-qawli-hi anna al-nāra allatī ka-al-ṣūrati. Waammā allatī hiya al-māddatu wa-‘alā ayyi ǧihatin, innamā yaqūlu inna alnāra innamā hiya li-ġalabati al-ḥarārati, min qibali anna al-hawā’a huwa ḥārrun wa-ḏālika anna alladhī huwa ḥārrun ‘alā al-qaṣdi al-awwali ḫāṣṣatan huwa nārun, wa-ḏālika anna al-nāra huwa ġalayānu al-ḥarārati wa-al-yubūsati. 523
E. Gannagé translates these lines as follows: By ‘fire’ he means the fire that is like form. As for the fire which is the matter and in which way [it is], he said that ‘fire is nothing but the excess of heat’, for the reason that air is hot, because what is essentially and properly hot is fire, for ‘fire is the boiling of heat and dryness’.
520
Aristotle, Categories 5, 3b 24-25. See Simplicius, In Cat. 168.15-169.2. For Greek parallels to this text, and a discussion, see Rashed, Essentialisme, pp. 128-132. 522 Averroes, In Phys. 215F-G. See Rashed, Essentialisme, p. 134. 523 See Gannagé, Alexander of Aphrodisias, p. 45 (French version of the same text in her paper “Matière et éléments dans le commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise In De Generatione et corruptione”, in C. D’Ancona and G. Serra (eds), Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella Tradizione Araba, Padua, 2002, pp. 133-149, see p. 134 sqq.). I have controlled the Arabic text on the Paris ms. Or. 599, fol. 130v. 521
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This seems difficult, for reasons of sense and grammar. It is plain that the sentence Fa-innamā ya‘nī al-nāra bi-qawli-hi anna al-nāra allatī ka-alṣūrati cannot be translated as “By ‘fire’ he means the fire that is like form”. The only possible meaning for the Arabic is rather: “He only means the fire by his claim that [reading inna for anna] the fire that is like the form”. In Arabic as in the present English translation, this sentence is incomplete. Before emending it, let us read the text a step further. The next sentence, Wa-ammā allatī hiya al-māddatu wa-‘alā ayyi ǧihatin, innamā yaqūlu inna … has a tolerable Arabic construction, but, so far as I can see, no intelligible sense. The relationship between the “fire which is the matter” and the second part of the sentence is arbitrary. It is clear, then, that some corruption has taken place. Fortunately, this impression might only be due to a misconstruction and misspelling in the way E. Gannagé quotes this important text. I would suggest replacing the transmitted Fa-innamā ya‘nī al-nāra bi-qawli-hi anna by the words Fa-innamā ya‘nī bi-qawli-hi al-nāra immā and, secondly, reading and spelling ammā allatī hiya al-māddatu wa‘alā ayyi ǧihatin as … immā allatī hiya al-māddatu; wa-‘alā ayyi ǧihatin … Putting all this together, I suggest emending the text as follows: Ṯumma innahu qāla inna al-nāra hiya ġalabatu al-ḥarārati (330b 25-26). Fainnamā ya‘nī bi-qawli-hi al-nāra immā al-nāra allatī ka-al-ṣūrati wa-immā allatī hiya al-māddatu. Wa-‘alā ayyi ǧihatin, innamā yaqūlu inna al-nāra innamā hiya li-ġalabati al-ḥarārati, min qibali anna al-hawā’a huwa ḥārrun wa-ḏālika anna allaḏī huwa ḥārrun ‘alā al-qaṣdi al-awwali ḫāṣṣatan huwa nārun, wa-ḏālika anna al-nāra huwa ġalayānu al-ḥarārati wa-al-yubūsati (330b 29). Furthemore, he said: “Fire is an excess of heat” (330b 25-26). By the word ‘fire’, he means either the fire that is like the form or the one which is the matter. And in either way, he is affirming that ‘fire is due to an excess of heat’ for the reason that air [also] is hot; but what is essentially and properly hot is fire, since ‘fire is the boiling of heat and dryness’ (330b 29).
Once correctly edited, this text clearly alludes to the idea of a double point of view about elemental substance which I have suggested attributing to Alexander. Therefore, in the previous section of his commentary (devoted to the lines 330b 21-25), not quoted in Ps.-Ğābir’s Taṣrīf, Alexander certainly drew the same distinction as the one found in Philoponus between the two ways of envisaging the elements. Against the Timaeus and in defence of his own views on form, Alexander highlighted that Aristotle wished to distinguish between the elements as pure forms and the elements
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as compounds of matter and form. Then, commenting on the next section of Aristotle’s text (330b 25-30), Alexander, this time as quoted by Ps.Ğābir, introduced his exegesis by saying that whatever view of the elements we adopt (ὁπoτέρως δ᾿ ἂν ᾖ vel sim.),524 viz. the form or the composite, our task is to grasp the reason why Aristotle said that “fire is an excess of heat”. Alexander’s understanding of this last issue can be reconstructed by means of Philoponus’ commentary and Ps.-Ğābir’s Taṣrīf. Let us begin with the latter. The reason given by Alexander for the claim that “fire is an excess of heat” is that “air [also] is hot”. Alexander’s idea seems to be that fire’s heat is an ‘excess’ (ὑπερβολή) by comparison to the heat of air. Fire’s heat is not excessive as such, it is only superior—namely, to the heat of air. This interpretation is difficult, because in the following lines, Aristotle draws a parallel between fire and ice, not water (which is colder than earth). He thus seems to envisage something endowed with more heat than simple, or elemental, fire. We are urged to make a distinction between the elemental fire, which is distinguished from elementary water (as the pair ‘hot+dry’ is opposed to the pair ‘cold+wet’), and a kind of extreme fire, distinguished from ice (as ‘extreme hot’ is opposed to ‘extreme cold’). That is more or less what Philoponus says: Here he is talking about the fire that is used in daily life, which he says is an excess of boiling, just as ice is an excess of cold. This is why no living thing can be engendered by ice or by the fire we are familiar with. The reason for this is that elemental fire and water, which both engender living things and are used for the cohesion of composite bodies, if they degenerate into excess, produce, in the case of water, ice, and in the case of elemental fire, this fire which we use in daily life and describe as ‘familiar’.525
That is not, however, how Alexander explains Aristotle’s argument in GC II 3. Let us read the next lines of the Taṣrīf, which seem to have preserved his entire exegesis. After having said that the ‘excess’ of heat that Aristotle attributes to fire must be understood in relation to air (and, by implication, not to some other kind of fire), Alexander goes on to say: Ṯumma qāla inna al-ǧalīda wa-al-ṯalǧa innamā yakūnu bi-ġalabati waimtidādi al-bard.
524
Wa-‘alā ayyi ǧihatin in the sense of Wa-‘alā ayyi ǧihatin kāna. Perhaps should we even add kāna into the text. 525 Philoponus, In GC 228.28-229.4.
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Then he said that ice and snow526 are brought about by an excess and an extension of cold.527
As often in Alexander, we do not have a word for word quotation here, but a slight paraphrasis of Aristotle’s words ὥσπερ καὶ κρύσταλλος ψυχρότητος.528 In all likelihood, Alexander wrote the following: εἶτα εἶπεν ὅτι ὁ κρύσταλλος γίνεται ὑπερβολῇ καὶ ἐπιτάσει τῆς ψυχρότητος. Be that as it may, Alexander faces a difficulty. If the excess of fire amounts to nothing other than its being hotter than air, the introduction of ice must be accounted for in a subtle way. Alexander writes: Fa-yakūnu ‘alā hāḏā al-qiyāsi al-ǧumūdu wa-al-ġalayānu ‘alay-hi, kamā qāla huwa nafsu-hu inna al-nāra huwa ġalabatu al-ḥarārati kamā anna alǧalīda ġalabatu al-bard. Thus, freezing and boiling are analogous, just as he himself said that “fire is an excess of heat, just as ice is an excess of cold” (330b 25-26).529
If it is agreed that exactly as fire is hot, so ice is cold, the excess of heat proper to fire seems not to be explainable with reference to air. A solution to this aporia consists in attributing to Alexander the idea that Aristotle only drew some kind of general analogy. It would amount to the following argument: in order to figure out what an excess of heat could be, let us just think of the excess of cold that ice, as opposed to liquid water, exhibits. Fire and ice are each, with respect to their proper determination, κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον. At this point, however, the analogy must stop: ice is not as such an element; the relation of fire to air is identical not to that of ice to water, but to that of frozen to liquid water. Yet, that does not seem to be the way Alexander interprets GC II 3 when commenting on the next sentences. There, he maintains that ice is really analogical to fire, and not just a physical example Aristotle provides in order to help us grasp what he means by saying that fire is a ὑπερβολή. To judge from a passage in Ps.-Ğābir that has hardly been noticed until now, Alexander developed this reading by suggesting that Aristotle remained close to Plato’s teaching in this chapter. Here is this important text: 526
The word “and the snow” (wa-al-ṯalǧ) is added in the inferior margin of fol. 130r by the scribe of the Paris ms. Since it is not paralleled in the direct tradition, it is likely to be a trace of a double translation, marked as such by the translator. 527 § 30 Gannagé. 528 GC II 3, 330b 26. 529 § 31 Gannagé.
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Wa-qāla ayḍan tafsīran li-kalāmi Flaṭūna mā qad qāla-hu Flaṭūnu tafsīran li-kalāmi Suqrāṭa wa-hāḏihi al-alfāẓu manqūlatun naqlan ‘alā sālifi alzamāni ḥikāyatu-hu fa-a‘lam ḏālika. Wa-ḏālika anna-hum qālū inna alġalayāna wa-al-ǧumūda humā ġalabatun wa-ammā ḏālika fa-ġalabatu alḥarārati wa-amma hāḏa fa-ġalabatu al-burūdati. Fa-in kāna al-ǧalīdu huwa ǧumūdu [huwa] mā huwa raṭbun bāridun, fa-al-nāru hiya [al-]ġalayānu alḥārri al-laḏī huwa al-yābisu. He said further, by way of explaining Plato’ discourse, what Plato had said by way of explaining Socrates’ discourse, these words having been repeated by an oral transmission throughout the past. Therefore, become aware of this ! For they said that “boiling and freezing are excesses, the one being an excess of heat and the other and excess of cold. If, therefore, ice is the freezing of what is moist and cold, so fire is the boiling of the hot which is dry” (330b 26-29).
Unlike Gannagé, I do not believe that it is Ps.-Ğābir who inserted the mention of Plato and Socrates into Alexander’s comments because of his own ideological agenda.530 True, the Arabic author probably added that Plato himself repeated what Socrates used to say.531 But in all likelihood, Alexander was already saying that Aristotle, here just as a little before,532 was alluding to Plato’s teaching. It is indeed typical for Plato to deny that a sensible state represents the true nature of an element in virtue of its opposition to the others. Their only true nature is geometrical.533 Ice, for instance, is not no-longer-true-(liquid)-water-but-water-affected-in-someway, it is a kind of water among others, i.e. a body ultimately reducible to eicosahedra. According to Aristotle, on the contrary, liquid water has preeminence. When, in the Meteorology and elsewhere, he defines ice as ‘frozen water’, ὕδωρ πεπηγός,534 he means that ice is the result of a certain transformation affecting true water. If, then, Alexander is perfectly right to characterize this passage as reflecting Plato’s teaching, it is not because ice appears in these lines as “affected” water—that is Aristotle’s doctrine, not Plato’s—but because in order to maintain the strength of Aristotle’s analogy, the passage holds that ice is one kind of water among others, and not an affection of the true (i.e. liquid) water. 530
See Gannagé, Alexander of Aphrodisias, p. 100, n. 59. The portrait of the young Socrates as a physicist such as we find it in the Phaedo seems to have left no trace in Arabic culture. 532 On this, see below, pp. 259-260. 533 See Tim. 53C-55C. 534 See Meteor. IV 9, 385b 7 and 10, 388b 11; Metaph. H 3, 1043a 9-10; A. Po. II 12, 95a 16-17; Part. an. II 3, 649b 11-12. 531
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We can go further: in the Timaeus, the four forms of ice, namely ‘hail’ (χάλαζα), ‘ice’ (κρύσταλλος), ‘snow’ (χιών), and ‘hoarfrost’ (πάχνη),535 are purer and, in this sense, more truly water, as it were, than liquid water. For the latter is composed out of atoms of water and fire, while the former is composed out of atoms of water exclusively. Plato writes: The water that has been mixed with fire—all of it that is fine and fluid— is called “fluid” because of its motion and the way it rolls along on the ground; and moreover, it is soft by virtue of the fact that its bases give way, since they are less sedentary than those of earth. Whenever this kind has been separated off from fire and deserted by air, it has become more uniform, but it has been pushed together into itself by them when they leave; and once congealed in this way, the part of it that is above the ground and has most suffered all this is called “hail”; and the part that is on the ground is called “ice”; and the part that is less congealed and is still only semi-solid is in turn called “snow” when it is above the ground but “hoarfrost” when it is congealed on the ground and has been born from dew. 536
It is nowhere truer than in the Timaeus, then, that what we call ‘ice’ is eminently water. Alexander was, if perhaps not entirely right, at least very clever to detect a Platonic presence between the lines of GC 330b 25-29. If Alexander meant only the Timaeus, it would be odd that he did not mention its title—which was well known to the Arabs.537 Since Ps.-Ğābir stresses the orality of this transmission, it seems to me that Alexander is likely to have alluded to Plato’s ἄγραφα δόγµατα. From this point of view, it is interesting to note that when commenting on the sentence appearing some lines above in the same chapter, in which Aristotle said that Plato maintained the existence of three elements ‘in the divisions’ (ἐν ταῖς διαιρέσεσιν),538 Alexander had already referred his argument to Plato’s oral teaching. Philoponus reports that after mentioning the divisions of the Sophist and the pseudepigraphic collection of Divisions, Alexander mentioned and favoured this hypothesis: So it is preferable to accept the final additional suggestion that Alexander makes, saying that Aristotle is speaking of Plato’s unwritten doctrines, which 535
See Timaeus, 59E. Ibid., 59D-E. 537 On the Arabic tradition of the Timaeus, see the informative survey in R. Arnzen, “Plato’s Timaeus in the Arabic tradition. Legends – testimonies – fragments”, in F. Celia and Angela Ulacco (eds), Il Timeo. Esegesi greche, arabe, latine, Pisa, 2012, pp. 181-267. 538 GC II 3, 330b 16. 536
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Aristotle himself had copied, and calls these ‘the Divisions”. In these, therefore, Plato posits the great and small and that which is between them. 539
This is confirmed by Averroes: Their postulations of the elements as three resembles Plato’s postulation of the principles as three in number, namely, the great, the small, and the one.540
Philoponus and Averroes diverge about the name given to Plato’s third principle. Philoponus cites “the great and small and that which is between them” (τὸ µέγα καὶ µικρὸν καὶ τὸ µεταξὺ τούτων), while Averroes evokes “the great, the small, and the one” (al-kabīr wa-al-ṣaġīr wa-al-wāḥid). It is plain that Averroes stands closer to Alexander. With his Neoplatonic background, Philoponus was reluctant to assume that the One could result from a mixture of the great and the small. He therefore opted for a softer designation of the third principle, calling it a mere intermediate. Averroes, on the contrary, had no difficulty with Alexander’s claim that according to Plato’s doctrine, the intermediate between the great and the small was the one (τὸ ἕν). Averroes’ passage seems never to be mentioned by modern scholars who have gathered evidence on Plato’s unwritten doctrines. In his collection of texts, K. Gaiser reproduces Aristotle’s passage and Philoponus’ commentary thereupon as, respectively, testimonies 46A and 46B.541 In his commentary on 46A, he rightly draws a parallel between what Aristotle is saying and other texts in which he attributes to his master “die Dreiheit von ἕν und µέγα καὶ µικρόν”.542 This point was explicit in Philoponus’ source. It should be noted as confirmation that when he commented on Phys. III 4, 202b 34-203a 16 (= text 23A Gaiser, p. 481), Alexander attributed to the treatise On the Good, in which Aristotle was supposed to have recorded Plato’s famous lecture, the claim that the principles of the first number, namely the number two, are “the one, and the great and the small” (τό τε ἓν καὶ τὸ µέγα καὶ τὸ µικρόν).543 One could object to this attempt to connect this passage about Plato’s διαιρέσεις with the argument on fire and ice, on the grounds that when 539
Philoponus, In GC 226.25-30. Averroes, In GC 96.11-12 Eichner. 541 See K. Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre. Studien zur systematischen und geschichtlichen Begründung der Wissenschaften in der Platonischen Schule, Stuttgart, 1963, pp. 523-524. 542 For the references, see Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre, p. 523, note on 46A. 543 Simplicius, In Phys. 454.34-35 (cf. Gaiser, ibid., text 23B, p. 483). 540
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Plato, in the Timaeus, deals with water and ice, there is absolutely no hint that he is alluding to an unwritten doctrine. But the matter is more complex than this objection suggests. For, as we saw, Plato allows for various species of water, the purest of which are the four subspecies of solid water. It is not absurd to recognize, in these numerous aspects of one and the same reality, a half-playful example of the ‘great and small’ as it offers itself at the physical level. Moreover, Alexander himself, in at least one passage, tends to interpret the physics of the Timaeus as dictated by the general structure of the unwritten doctrines. For in his commentary on the Physics, Alexander makes the point that the ‘matter’ (ὕλη) of the Timaeus is equivalent to the ‘great and small’ (µέγα καὶ µικρόν) of the ἄγραφα δόγµατα.544 The two situations are thus perfectly similar. The various appearances of water, including ice, are, in a way, mathematical realizations of the matter of the Timaeus. They are all expressions of the fact that measure, hence also unity, is imposed on the indefiniteness of matter. In view of this, it would be perfectly natural to consider these appearances as ordered, and hence also unified, expressions of the Great and the Small at the sensible level. After a brief explanation of the passage 330b 26-29, Alexander as quoted by Ps.-Ğābir turns to the next sentence of the passage: Ṯumma qāla: wa-li-ḏālika lā yakūna min al-ǧalīdi šay’un wa-lā min al-nāri ayḍan. Ka-ḏālika anna waḍa‘a al-dalīla min-hu ‘alā hāḏayni humā ġalabatāni (amma al-nāru, fa-ġalabatu al-ḥarārati wa-amma al-ǧalīdu faġalabatu al-burūdati), wa-qawlu-hu inna laysa yakūnu min-humā šay’un; wa-ḏālika anna laysa yakūnu šay’un lā mimmā ḥālatu-hu fī al-ḥarārati bihāḏihi al-ḥāli wa-lā ayḍan mmā huwa bāridun hākaḏā yakūna šay’un. Then he said: “that is why nothing is generated either out of ice or out of fire” (330b 29-30). Just as he took from him the proof establishing that both of them are excesses (for fire is an excess of heat and ice is an excess of cold), so his claim according to which nothing is generated out of them; for nothing is generated out of what is in the same state as the fire in terms of heat, and nothing is generated out of what is cold in this way.
This sentence is not entirely clear, and something might have gone wrong with the textual transmission. If our interpretation of this very poor Arabic is correct, the ‘from him’ (min-hu) in the second line is likely to refer to 544
See Alexander, In Phys., schol. n° 25 (ad 209b 35), p. 188: ὅπερ ἐν τοῖς ἐπάνω εἶπεν, ἄλλως εἰρηκέναι τὸν Πλάτωνα ἔν τε τῷ Τιµαίῳ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀγράφοις δόγµασι, τοῦτο νῦν λέγει. ὃ γὰρ ἐν τῷ Τιµαίῳ ὕλην εἶπε, τοῦτο ἐν ἐκείνοις µέγα καὶ µικρόν.
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Plato.545 Alexander therefore carries on with his exegesis in terms of historical influence, according to which Aristotle borrows his present argument from his master. His solution comes in the next paragraph. Indeed, Ps.-Ğābir continues as follows: Wa-ḏālika anna-hu innamā yusammī nāran hāḏihi allatī ‘alay-hā ḫāṣṣatan yuǧ‘alu ismu al-nāri (wa-yusammī-hā allatī li-al-ḫidmati wa-ḏālika anna bihāḏihi ḥāla-hā). Wa-ammā tilka hiya al-usṭuqussu laysat hākaḏā iḏ kānat tilka laysa ka-al-ġalayāni wa-lā ayḍan ka-al-ġalabati wa-li-hāḏā alsababi hiya muwallidatun ǧiddan wa-muṯmiratun. For he only names fire that which is exclusively given the name ‘fire’546 (and he names it ‘domestic fire’ because such is its condition). As for the fire which is the element, it is not like this, for it is neither like boiling nor like excess. This is the reason why it is very generative and fruitful.
We can extract two facts from this report. First, if we suppose that Ps.Ğābir used only Alexander, and not Alexander and Philoponus, it is Alexander who first specified that the fire mentioned by Aristotle was the πῦρ διακονικόν which appears in Philoponus’ commentary with no reference to his forerunner.547 But the crucial point is Alexander’s distinction between two “Platonic” states of fire and water. The commentator’s point is both terminological and physical. He first points to an oddity in our way of designating the elements. For while we have a special word for the water whose coldness is excessive (κρύσταλλος, ‘ice’), we do not have a similar term for fire whose hotness is in excess. We call it ‘fire’ indifferently, but we ought to understand that it is fire only in the way ice is water. Hence Alexander’s suggestion548 that we name this excessive fire ‘domestic fire’, in order to distinguish it from elemental fire. It is Platonic, however, to view these various states as expressions of Fire according to the indefinite Dyad of the Great and the Small. It is Platonic, in other words, to view domestic fire and (Aristotelian) elemental fire as mere variations of degree, without recognizing that the only real fire, among them, is the latter. Now, it is an Aristotelian doctrine that nothing is hotter than (elemental) fire, nor colder than (elemental) water. In the Metaphysics, Aristo545
Gannagé’s translation, p. 101, is remote from the text. She proposes no emendation. 546 Gannagé’s translation, which I follow here, is correct, but not the transliteration of the Arabic she gives at p. 46, n. 180 (yaj‘alu isma al-nāri). 547 Philoponus, In GC 228.28 and 229.3. 548 Wrongly attributed to Aristotle by Ps.-Ğābir, at least in the text as it is transmitted.
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tle writes that “fire is the hottest of the things (θερµότατον), for it is the cause of the heat of all other things”.549 Alexander, however, is more cautious. For he writes: Since fire is the cause, for the hot things, of their heat, and since it is itself hot, it is, for that reason, itself supremely hot (µάλιστα θερµόν). 550
It is certainly not accidental that Alexander reformulates Aristotle’s superlative ‘hottest’ (θερµότατον) as ‘supremely hot’ (µάλιστα θερµόν). For the expression with µάλιστα has a qualitative connotation absent from Aristotle’s mere superlative. It allows Alexander to bracket the question whether the heat of the element may be described as the highest possible on a given “quantitative” scale. It is sufficient to state that as such, the element is by nature supremely hot, i.e. it represents the body to which the property of heat most belongs. This interpretation finds some support if we read Quaestio II 17 attributed to Alexander. There, the author contrasts the ‘elemental fire’ (τὸ ὡς στοιχεῖον πῦρ) with the ‘boiling of fire’ (ἡ ζέσις τοῦ πυρός). He identifies the former with the ὑπέκκαυµα at the extremity of the sublunary sphere, and the latter with ‘the fire around us’ (τὸ παρ᾿ ἡµῖν πῦρ).551 If, he says, the elemental fire is not as hot as the fire among us, it is not because it is mixed with a colder body but, on the contrary, because it is purer than the fire we are accustomed to. The details of this explanation need not detain us here.552 What matters is rather that Alexander is well aware of the fact that the fire we know and use, namely the fire we name ‘fire’ in ordinary language, is not the elemental kind. There is not a single terminological oddity, then, but two. For not only do we have two words in the case of water (‘water’ and ‘ice’) to describe the two states of this body, while we only have one word for fire, but the very relation is also inverted: whereas, in the former case, ‘water’ is the word for the element and ‘ice’ for its 549
Aristotle, Metaph. α 1, 993b 25-26. Alexander, In Metaph. 147.26-27. 551 See Alexander, Quaestiones, 61.32-62.1. 552 See R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestiones 2.16-3.15, London, 1994, p. 114, n. 59. Cf. Theophrastus, On Fire 4.1-9 Coutant: τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν καὶ τὸ παρὰ τῶν παλαιῶν λεγόµενον, ὅτι τροφὴν ἀεὶ ζητεῖ τὸ πῦρ ὡς οὐκ ἐνδεχόµενον αὐτὸ διαµένειν ἄνευ τῆς ὕλης. διὸ καὶ ἄτοπον φαίνεται πρῶτον αὐτὸ λέγειν καὶ οἷον ἀρχήν, εἰ µὴ οἷόν τ' εἶναι χωρὶς ὕλης. οὔτε γὰρ ἁπλοῦν οὕτω γε οὔτε πρότερον τοῦ ὑποκειµένου καὶ τῆς ὕλης, εἰ µή τις ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ πρώτῃ σφαίρᾳ τοιαύτη φύσις, ὥστε ἄµικτον εἶναι θερµότητα καὶ καθαράν. οὕτω δὲ οὐκ ἂν ἔτι καίοι. πυρὸς δ' αὕτη φύσις, πλὴν εἰ ἄρα γε πλείους καὶ διάφοροι καὶ ἡ µὲν πρώτη καθαρὰ καὶ ἄµικτος, ἡ δὲ περὶ τὴν τῆς γῆς σφαῖραν µεµιγµένη καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ γένεσιν. 550
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excess, in the latter case, ‘fire’ is not the word for the element but for its excess. When we utter the word ‘fire’ in our usual idiom, we want to signify the boiling of elemental fire, by contrast with the elemental fire itself. That is what Alexander quoted by Ps.-Ğābir means when he says that the domestic fire is “that which is exclusively (ḫāṣṣatan) given the name ‘fire’”. Natural language, in this particular case, is unable to convey the deep structure of reality, obviously because it was more arduous, for those who established it, to discover the scientific truth that there are two forms of fire than to perceive the obvious distinction between water and ice. And natural language is (wrongly) closer to Plato than to Aristotle in the case of the fire, and (rightly) closer to Aristotle than to Plato in the case of the water/ice. We can represent this situation by means of the following table:
usual name
elemental fire extreme hot + dry —
boiling fire extreme hot in excess + dry πῦρ, ‘fire’
elemental water extreme cold + wet ὕδωρ, ‘water’
instantiation
celestial fire
terrestrial fire
water
formula
frozen water extreme cold in excess + wet κρύσταλλος, ‘ice’ ice
in the second row, we have distinguished between the primary quality in its pure elemental form—its being an extreme—from the same extreme quality when it is in excess. Although this distinction does not appear in the fragments we have from Alexander’s commentary on GC, his general argument seems to presuppose it. Such a distinction, which is meaningless if we think in terms of mere quantities on a linear scale (a scale of temperatures, for instance), is not implausible here, since in an Aristotelian context, qualities are, precisely, qualitative and not quantitative. Hence, for an Aristotelian like Alexander, being “the hottest of the things” is not similar to being “the tallest of the things”, but rather to being “the yellowest of the things”. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the buttercup is “the yellowest of the flowers”. That does not mean, for an Aristotelian, that its yellowness has a higher quantitative degree, on some linear scale, than the yellowness of other flowers. It only means that the intrinsic property of being yellow is in no flower better instantiated than in the buttercup. Yellowness is more intimately connected to the colour of the buttercup than to that of any other flower, e.g. daffodils. But even among the buttercups, there might be a distinct group, the yellowness of which shows some kind of pathological excess when compared to normal buttercups. Such an excess is not a real change of nature with regard to their yellowness—they remain buttercups—but a more superficial variation, due for instance to their environment. That is exactly what Alexander assumes in the case of fire: from an
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ontological (qualitative) point of view, nothing can be hotter than the elemental fire, in the sense that the heat is nowhere more intimately related to a given nature than in the nature of fire. But that does not mean that from an accidental point of view, which might well be described as quantitative, it is impossible to find something hotter than elemental fire. Not only is fire around us hotter, but, to judge from Quaestio II 17, metals, when they are heated, become hotter than the flame used by the smith. The only thing an Aristotelian thinker will deny is that the heated metal, or the fire in the forge, is substantially hotter than the elemental fire. As curious as it may appear to us, Alexander is forced to claim that the incandescent piece of metal in the forge is substantially (qualitatively) less hot than the elemental fire, but accidentally (quantitatively, as it were) hotter. But why do not we find this theory expounded in so many words in our Greek and Arabic sources? The answer, I suppose, is that the ancient authors must have felt uncomfortable with it. Philoponus, nonetheless, comes very close to it, in a passage already remarked by de Haas.553 He writes: […] one must know the following which is worthwhile remarking. For someone will say that if we say that the purely hot has not perished qua hot but it has perished qua purely hot (εἰλικρινὲς θερµόν), we can no longer say that fire too has perished qua pure fire (εἰλικρινὲς πῦρ) but not qua fire as such. For if fire insofar as it is fire is seen as maximally and purely hot (κατὰ τὸ ἄκρον καὶ εἰλικρινὲς θερµόν) (fire qua fire is not hot in relation to one thing and cold to another but maximally hot) — if, then, you say that the maximally hot qua maximally hot (τὸ ἄκρον θερµὸν ὡς ἄκρον θερµόν) has perished, and fire qua fire is maximally hot (ἄκρον θερµόν), it is clear that fire insofar as it is fire has perished in the compound. Moreover, it will be true that fire insofar as it is fire has completely perished, but the hot qua hot has not perished without qualification, but [only] qua maximally hot.554
Philoponus introduces his development as a ‘critical observation’, an ἐπίστασις. That means that he is adding a personal remark to Ammonius’ comments (which might in turn rely on Alexander’s lost exegesis).555 As pointed out by de Haas, Philoponus shows some dissatisfaction with Alexander’s stance, according to which the form, although reducible to a qualitative state, might not be destroyed when this qualitative state vanishes. 553
See De Haas, “Mixture in Philoponus”, p. 34. Philoponus, In GC 271.25-35. 555 The title of his “edition” of Ammonius’ glosses on GC is the following (Philoponus, In GC 1.1-2): Σχολικαὶ ἀποσηµειώσεις ἐκ τῶν συνουσιῶν Ἀµµωνίου τοῦ Ἑρµείου µετά τινων ἰδίων ἐπιστάσεων. 554
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Echoing Galen’s De temperamentis,556 Philoponus describes this qualitative state as ἄκρον, ‘extreme’.557 This allows him to shift from the adjective εἰλικρινές, ‘pure’, which is merely qualitative, to a description which, without being numerical, nevertheless displays a quantitative connotation. By so doing, Philoponus breaks with Alexander’s interpretation, according to which the form remains in reduced actuality within the mixture. If the hot is no longer extreme, says Philoponus, then it is not fire any more. There exists no fire “in reduced actuality”, only hot. Hot is susceptible of the more and the less, not fire. Philoponus’ move is illuminating with regard to Alexander. For it highlights, by contrast, the fact that Alexander has a double conception of the elemental qualities. As mere qualities, they give rise to the more and the less. But as entities very close to the essence of the four bodily elements, they remain supremely (µάλιστα) attached to them, even though their “phenomenal” being does not necessarily display the highest possible value.558 To sum up, Alexander is very keen to interpret the superlativity of the elemental qualities not as a position on a scale, but as an adequation to a form. Fire is supremely hot not because the “phenomenal” fire displays the highest degree of heat on a graduated scale, but because no form is as aptly definable as hot as the form of fire. According to Philoponus, on the other hand, we cannot any longer maintain that the heat is an entity “behind” the phenomenal hot. The supreme heat, i.e. the heat of fire, must also be the ‘extreme heat’ (ἄκρον θερµόν). As soon as it ceases to be characterized by extreme heat, fire vanishes. We already knew that at some stage of his development, Philoponus had thrown away Aristotle’s distinction between prime matter and threedimensional extension.559 It was a first step, so to say, towards a more abstract, or mathematical, view of substance. If we are not mistaken, we have here a similar move: no distinction remains between the (qualitative) form of the elemental body and the quality susceptible of the more and the less. The form corresponds to a single specific degree on a graduated scale of possible values. After underlining the importance of Philoponus’ ἐπίστασις on GC II 7 for a right understanding of his position concerning mixture, de Haas proposes a new classification of the ancient doctrines on mixture.560 Phi556
See Galen, Temp. I, 1.12, 1.17, 8.1 Helmreich. Galen, Temp. I, 1.18 Helmreich, glosses ἄκρως with ἐσχάτως. 558 Since it is not its nature in general to display it, as shown by the difference between elemental and domestic fire. 559 See above, p. 155, n. 238. 560 See de Haas, art. cit., p. 45. 557
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loponus, he says, is not to be understood as holding the same thesis as Alexander, namely that the forms, as well as the qualities, are preserved in reduced actuality, but as claiming that the forms, unlike the qualities that are preserved in reduced actuality, perish. This description holds true with regard to Philoponus: the comments on GC I 10 are much more likely to represent Ammonius’ interpretation of mixture. In the case of Alexander, however, without being false, it might fail to convey an important aspect of the doctrine. For, as we have seen, the form is perhaps not entirely reducible to the elemental qualities. As far as elemental quality is concerned, a body other than fire can be hotter than fire, but fire, qua fire, will always be supremely (and not: extremely) hot. By contrast, to speak of a “reduced actuality” of the form is not exactly mistaken—Alexander, as we observed, said more or less this in his comments on GC I 10—but, if this “reduction” is understood too much in terms of quantity, we run the risk of adopting, in our formulation of the whole problem, Philoponus’ rather than Alexander’s perspective. It would therefore be more accurate to say that insofar as Alexander’s elemental forms are qualities, Zabarella’s classification holds true;561 but insofar as they are distinct from them, it does not. To sum up, we should be reluctant to assign to Alexander a clear-cut position in group 2 (that of Averroes). In at least some contexts, it would be more appropriate to put him into group 1 (that of Avicenna). For sometimes, like Avicenna, although on different grounds, Alexander seems to imply that the elemental form enjoys a certain degree of independence from the elemental qualities (or powers). Alexander seems to have no name for the notion of an essential concomitant of the essence.562 We might ask ourselves why he did not recognize its diffuse presence in his ontology. Maybe it is because the omnipresence of the notion of a ‘power’ (δύναµις) of a substance concealed its latent presence as an articulation between substantial form and quality. In many places indeed, Alexander’s use of the term ‘power’ (quwwa, δύναµις) aims at describing the form (ṣūra, εἶδος) as essentially manifested by some of its qualitative determinations. It is the power, therefore, which stands halfway, in his ontology, between a substantial form and a quality. Averroes will lucidly draw the consequence of this ambiguity in Alexander. As shown by Cristina Cerami, he introduces the concomitants 561
See above, p. 251. The Arabic notion of the ‘concomitants’, lawāḥiq, of the essence, which is to become so important in medieval and modern philosophy, has no clear counterpart in Alexander’s writings. One should recall, however, that a newly discovered scholium on the Physics speaks about the παρακολουθοῦντα of the essence in this sense (see above, p. 149). This question deserves further research. 562
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(lawāḥiq) of the essence in order to cope with the initial difficulty.563 To put it differently, Averroes will attempt to dam up the proliferation of an uncontrolled and vague notion of power between the substantial form and the mere quality, and claim that the form is attached, but not reducible, to a set of inseparable, essential qualities: its concomitants. In the last paragraph of this section devoted to mixture, § 10.6, the author summarizes what has been said and gives some final indications about how the process of mixing takes place: And when what is mixed is not proportionate to the things with which it is mixed, it is destroyed in them or it becomes evanescent and imperceptible, like a of wine mixed with a bucket of water. Therefore, mixing is between things contrary, acting and acted upon, and in a definite proportion, so that the following conditions are met: they are not destroyed, neither all nor some of them; they do not remain, neither all nor some of them, as they were before mixing; something else results from them, intermediate between them all; the resulting thing is intermediate in its essence and not just according to perception (for that would be combination, not mixing); the mixture is homoeomerous in its totality; it is not identical with one of the things from which it results, neither in complete potentiality nor in complete actuality, but intermediate between them, whether it can be separated afterwards from the ingredients of the mixture, or whether that is impossible.564
563
See Cerami, Génération et Substance, p. 443: “En me ralliant à la thèse selon laquelle le mélange, d’après Averroès, constitue le mécanisme essentiel de toute transformation, y compris de la génération substantielle, je voudrais montrer que si, dans le cas des éléments, Averroès admet par moment qu’on puisse parler d’un mélange de leurs formes, en admettant une presque-identification entre ces dernières et leurs qualités affectives, il s’efforce d’une façon plus massive de distinguer nettement les qualités appelées essentielles et les formes substantielles, pour ranger les premières au nombre des concomitants des secondes”. It is true that Averroes holds this doctrine against Alexander, whom he accuses of claiming that the substantial form of the element and its pair of elemental qualities are convertible (on this, see Rashed, Essentialisme, p. 134; for my doubts about the accuracy of Averroes’ criticisms, see ibid., pp. 139-141). And it is true that Alexander is not very clear on the question of the status of the elemental quality, to say the least. But I think that the present analysis based on the new commentary and Ps.-Ğābir’s Taṣrīf has confirmed that Alexander’s stance was more complex than its picture in Averroes. At a deeper level of analysis, Averroes is not just criticizing Alexander, but elucidating what remained only halfformulated and perhaps even half-conscious in the Greek commentator. 564 Talḫīṣ 49.19-51.4.
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Since the author is here speaking in terms of ‘things’, this passage cannot be used either to confirm or undermine our previous analysis concerning the status of the form. It is plain that the items envisaged here are qualitative rather than purely formal. And there is no doubt that the qualities as such exist in the mixture in reduced actuality. What seems more interesting is the last sentence of the chapter, alluding to the possibility of recovering the initial ingredients once the mixture has been completed. At first sight, the fact that this recovery appears as merely possible, but not as a necessary condition of mixing, seems to tell against Alexander’s influence. For Alexander mentions this condition twice, in his treatise De mixtione, without recognizing that it might not be perfectly general. At De mixtione XIII, 228.13-16, for instance he writes: Now mixture and blending occur among things that are naturally independent substances; and bodies that have been mixed are considered capable of being separated from one another because they are combined from this source. If there is nothing else separable except substance, mixture and blending will be of substances.565
Alexander seems to claim that all bodies that have been mixed (τὰ µεµιγµένα) are capable of being separated. How is this discrepancy between the two texts to be explained? Do we have to suppose that the author is implicitly diverging from Alexander’s commentary on GC? Or is it the case that Alexander adopted two different views on the issue of the separability of the ingredients? Let us first note that the criterion of separability is not really present in Aristotle’s treatment of mixture. Aristotle only says that the mixed bodies “seem to be capable of being separated again”.566 Philoponus is conscious of a difficulty. There are two possible explanations, he says, for Aristotle’s difficult claim. Here is the first: […] he says this either because the things which are mingled (τὰ κεκραµµένα), since they do not lose their complete form but only the pure version of it, are naturally capable by means of certain separating and altering instruments of regaining their own form whole and entire once more.567 565
ἔστι δὴ ἡ µῖξίς τε καὶ ἡ κρᾶσις ἐν τοῖς καθ' αὑτὰ ὑφεστάναι φύσιν ἔχουσι. διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ δύνασθαι χωρίζεσθαι πάλιν ἀλλήλων τὰ µεµιγµένα ὅτι ἐκ τούτων συνῆλθεν. εἰ δὲ µηδὲν ἄλλο χωριστὸν παρὰ τὴν οὐσίαν, οὐσιῶν ἂν ἡ µῖξίς τε καὶ ἡ κρᾶσις εἴη. The same idea appears, for κρᾶσις alone, at De mixtione XV, 231.22-29. 566 Aristotle, GC I 10, 327b 27-29: φαίνεται […] τὰ µιγνύµενα […] δυνάµενα χωρίζεσθαι πάλιν. 567 Philoponus, In GC 191.26-28.
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The first explanation of Aristotle’s claim is thus not to take it as applying to mixed things in general, but to restrict it to mingled liquids (τὰ κεκραµµένα). In this case, says Philoponus, it is perhaps possible to think that the ingredients might be separated again. The second explanation is even more restrictive: Or, if this is thought to be impossible, since probably things that have been mingled could hardly literally have been separated again, we should understand ‘capable of being separated’ as meaning ‘being of a nature to subsist again in their own right in so far as in themselves they are capable of this’, if, that is, there should be something with the power to segregate them.568
Hence, according to the first explanation, only things mingled together are eventually capable of being separated again; while, in the second case, even mingled things are not all capable of this, but only those for which a substance exists whose power (δύναµις) is such as to segregate them. In his Middle Commentary, Averroes follows Aristotle’s text closely and does not elaborate upon this issue, so that it is difficult to deduce anything about Alexander’s possible influence.569 But in the Epitome, in which as a rule he stands closer to Alexander, things are different. We read: A sign of the fact that things mixed exist in the mixture in proximate potentiality lies in the fact that some of them can be separated out again after their blending and mixture, whether these be by nature or by art, just as the rennet separates out the curd of the milk from the whey.570
It is clear that Averroes is using the criterion of separability here in a very restricted way. Only some ingredients (ba‘ḍi-hā) are separable after having been mixed together. And their separability is not an instance of a general rule holding true of every mingling, but a mere sign (dalīl) pointing to the fact that the ingredients still exist in the mixture. The similarities between our three texts betray their common origin: it must have been Alexander who, in his commentary on GC, interpreted the 568
Philoponus, In GC 191.32-192.4. See Averroes, In GC 80.9-10 Eichner: wa-lā naqdira ayḍan an naqūla innahumā fasadā ilā al-nihāyati wa-lā wāḥidun min-humā, iḏ kānā naǧidu-humā yaftariqāni. 570 Averroes, Epitome 17.17-20: wa-min al-dalīli ‘alā anna wuǧūda al-ašyā’i almuḫtaliṭati fī al-mutawallidi ‘an-hā bi-al-quwwati al-qarībati anna fī ba‘ḍi-hā qad yumkinu anna yanfaṣila ba‘da al-mizāǧi wa-al-iḫtilāṭi, wa-ḏālika immā bi-al-ṭabī‘ati wa-immā bi-al-ṣinā‘ati, ka-al-ḥāli fī al-anfiḥati al-latī tumayyizu ǧubniyyata al-labani min mā’iyyati-hi. 569
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criterion of separability in this restricted way. His approach was less qualified, and more straightforward, in the De mixtione, probably because he was speaking there to the general public and not to the select audience of the Aristotelian school. In concluding this chapter, there are two ways of considering the issue of form in Alexander’s theory of mixture. If we mean by ‘form’ the ontological principle of individuation and preservation of the body, the form remains itself in the mixture and it is even inappropriate to claim that it remains in reduced actuality—for it just abides. But if, on the other hand, we mean by the form a kind of phenomenal activity, it remains in reduced actuality. Hence, three levels ought finally to be distinguished: that of the form properly speaking, that of its physical expression, i.e. of its power, and that of the quality considered independently from the fact that it is the physical expression of the form.571
571
It is of course very awkward to interpret, pace Gannagé, Alexander of Aphrodisias, p. 49, Alexander’s conception of the form of the elements as influenced in an anti-Aristotelian way by Plato’s doctrine of the Forms in the Timaeus. Alexander works very hard, on the contrary, to build a coherent doctrine of the Aristotelian form as opposed to Plato’s. That Alexander’s hylomorphism represents, as I have tried elsewhere to show, a version of Aristotle’s ontology closer than others to Platonism, is an altogether different story.
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130v […] Paris, ms. Or. 599, fol. 130r-v, emended text (cf. supra, pp. 252-262)
Section 11: On the Elements In the present section, the author deals in a very selective way with the first two chapters of GC II. According to his custom, he skips the doxographical aspects of Aristotle’s discussion, i.e. Aristotle’s criticisms of the Timaeus at GC I 1, 329a 13-24. Aristotle is not entirely clear, at the beginning of GC II, about the connection between this book and the previous one. After recalling that “we have discussed how mixing, contact, action, and passion belong to things which are naturally subject to change; also coming to be simpliciter and ceasing to be, how they occur and to what and for what reason; similarly we have discussed alteration, what alteration is, and what differentiates it from them”, Aristotle briefly adds that “it remains to consider the so-called ‘elements’ of bodies”.572 In other words, Aristotle does not specify whether the order he suggests is dictated by pedagogical reasons, or whether the treatment of the elements is made possible by an argumentative progression having its starting point in the first book. The author does not repeat Aristotle’s list of previous topics. He directly mentions the object of the next discussion, the elements—which, unlike Aristotle,573 he does not designate as the ‘so-called’ (καλούµενα) elements. The author is original, also, in claiming from the start, in a very explicit way, that the elements are bodies. That is only implied by Aristotle, especially at this stage of the discussion. The argument put forward by the author is original: the elements are bodies, he says, because the items subject to generation and corruption are bodies. These bodies, he adds, must be endowed with contrary qualities, because otherwise, there would exist no action and passion. Here again, he is not blindly repeating what Aristotle says. For Aristotle does not mention action nor passion in GC II 1,574 and he does not justify the fact that the ‘contrariety’ (ἐναντιώσεως, 329a 26), or the ‘contraries’ (αἱ ἐναντιώσεις, 329a 34) have a role to play in the constitution of the elements. The author, on the contrary, explains that it is necessary to have ‘contrary sensible qualities’ in order for action and passion to
572
See Aristotle, GC II 1, 328b 26-32. GC II 1, 328b 31. 574 He comes close to this idea, however, in GC II 2. See below, pp. 278-279. 573
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take place.575 This, moreover, justifies the claim that the elements are many and not one. To quote § 11.1: The elements of the things generated and destroyed, out of which they are combined and into which they dissolve, must be bodies endowed with contrary sensible qualities. - That they are bodies: because everything generated and destroyed is a body; – ‘Contrary sensible qualities’: in order for the notion of action and passion to find its realization. And since they are contrary bodies, they must be more than one, given that no pair of contraries exists simultaneously in complete actuality in the same substratum.576
Neither Philoponus nor Averroes adopt an interpretation similar to the author’s. In his Middle Commentary, Averroes follows Aristotle closely. The only divergence, which appears already in the Epitome, is that the ‘socalled elements’ (τὰ καλούµενα στοιχεῖα) of the Greek become the bodies/the things “which are called the elements of bodies”.577 But, to judge from Gerardus’ Latin translation, Averroes is here just quoting the Arabic version of Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn.578 It is contextually obvious that Averroes does not mean that the celestial bodies are composed out of the four elements, nor that they are not perceptible bodies (since we see them). And the point is made explicitly by Philoponus: “perceptible bodies”, he writes, “are not in all cases capable of coming-to-be and perishing, for instance the celestial bodies”.579 In the Epitome, on the other hand, Averroes introduces matter and form in his explanation, and that move is paralleled in Philoponus. Averroes writes: We maintain that all generable and corruptible bodies are of two kinds, simple and compound; and each one of these kinds is composed of matter and form, as has been shown in an earlier work.580
According to Philoponus:
575
The author has established the connection between contrariety and action and passion in his discussion of this last topic. See above, pp. 219 sqq. 576 Talḫīṣ 51.6-10. 577 See Averroes, In GC 86.8 Eichner: fī al-aǧsāmi al-latī tud‘ā usṭuqussāti alaǧsām; and Epitome 21.6: ‘an al-ašyā’i al-latī tud‘ā usṭuqussāti al-aǧsām. 578 The (still unedited) Latin has “in rebus quae dicuntur elementa corporum”, which may well render fī al-ašyā’i al-latī tud‘ā usṭuqussāti al-aǧsām in the lost original. 579 Philoponus, In GC 206.2-4. 580 Averroes, Epitome 21.7-8.
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[…] the true principles and primary elements of things subject to coming-tobe and perishing are matter and form, out of which these so-called elements are themselves composed, and coming-to-be and perishing occur in them.581
The similarity between both passages is too striking not to be explained by Alexander’s influence, especially if we take Alexander’s concern for form into account.582 An interesting hint might be gained from the comparison, on this issue, of Averroes’ Epitome and Middle Commentary. Whereas, in the former text, Averroes is not shy about explaining the primary contrarieties of the elements in terms of forms, he carefully avoids such a formulation in the latter. In his whole discussion of GC II 1 in the Middle Commentary, Averroes does not use the word ‘form’ even once, while he makes constant use of the words ‘contraries’ and ‘contrariety’.583 Cristina Cerami has convincingly argued that in the course of his carrier, Averroes strived to distinguish in a satisfactory way the elementary contrarieties from the forms of the elements.584 It is clear that this evolution can be reconstructed as a progressive distancing from Alexander’s ambiguous stance.585 True, in some texts at least, Alexander seems to be willing to dissociate the elemental forms from the elemental qualities.586 But he often tends to equate them, on the rather unsatisfactory grounds that they both constitute the determination of some underlying substratum. It is of course difficult—and dangerous—to account for an absence. But the fact that the author remains silent about ‘form’ throughout this entire section, and mentions only the ‘contrary qualities’, is a clue pointing to the fact that he is not depending on Alexander for his present exegesis. It looks rather as if he were reading Aristotle’s text solely by himself, independently from previous exegesis, and trying to make the best sense of it. The same conclusion emerges from what follows. First, as already noted, the author skips the doxography which occurs in the middle of the chapter.587 He does not dedicate a single word to the anonymous physicians who identified the underlying substratum with one, two, three or four of the simple bodies, nor to Empedocles, the only Presocratic thinker mentioned 581
Philoponus, In GC 205.23-25. See the previous chapter on mixing in particular. 583 See Averroes, In GC 88.13 (al-aḍdād), 14 (al-taḍādd); 89.2 (al-taḍādd), 6 (almutaḍāddāt), 7 (al-mutaḍāddat al-ūlā), 15 (al-aḍdād) Eichner. 584 See above, p. 268, n. 563. 585 See above, p. 267. 586 See Alexander, De anima 20.24-26. 587 GC II 1, 328b 33-329a 24. 582
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by name in the present discussion.588 Furthermore, the author remains silent about Plato’s theory of the receptacle (τὸ πανδεχές) in the Timaeus, although Aristotle devotes a whole paragraph to its rebuttal.589 After recalling those of his predecessors who have something to say about the first substratum of all things, Aristotle states his own solution. We have to distinguish three distinct levels in material causality. First, there is ‘a matter of the perceptible bodies’. This matter, Aristotle adds, “is not separated but is always together with a contrariety”.590 A little below, Aristotle says that this matter, “though not separated, does underlie the contraries”.591 To sum up: first that which is perceptible body in potentiality is principle, and secondly the contrarieties (I mean, for example, heat and cold), and only thirdly fire and water and the like.592
In § 11.2, the author clearly explains Aristotle’s basic distinctions: Therefore, the elements of things generated and destroyed, which are elements in actuality and existence, are more than one. In potentiality, however, all things have the same element, i.e. first matter. And we say ‘in potentiality’ because it cannot be separated at all, but its existence is always associated with some contrariety. And if all things did not have the same element, they would not all change into one another, since the hot changes into the cold not because the hot is an element, but only because the element of the hot and the element of the cold are one and the same in essence, something receiving them both indifferently, whichever of them it is, in a single way. And things being thus, the elements of these beings which are subject to generation and destruction are either in potentiality, like matter and the contrary qualities, or in actuality, like the bodies combined out of them.593
The author adds two minor points. He first interprets the ‘potentiality’ of the matter by claiming that it is not separable from its contrary determinations. Secondly, he claims that the contrarieties, as well as the matter, are potential. The author does not take the trouble to explain why. But his claim is easily understandable: the rationale for the potentiality of the contrarieties is identical to that of the potentiality of the matter. In the same 588
See GC II 1, 329a 3: “as Empedocles did”. GC II 1, 329a 5-24. 590 GC II 1, 329a 24-26. 591 GC II 1, 329a 30-31. 592 GC II 1, 329a 32-35. 593 Talḫīṣ 51.11-18. 589
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way that the substratum cannot be deprived of any determination, so the determinations cannot be deprived of any substratum. To be potential, therefore, has the same meaning in the case of the matter and in the case of the substratum’s determinations: their existence is not potential insofar as they are able to exist later in a separate way, but insofar as they are unable to exist in a separate way at all. By contrast, the so-called elements are capable of having an actual existence, even if this actual existence is posterior, from the point of view of their ontological simplicity, to the existence of matter and its determinations. In the next paragraph (§ 11.3), the author justifies Aristotle’s choice of the four primary qualities hot, cold, dry and wet. He strongly abbreviates and paraphrases the content of GC II 2. Aristotle’s move at the beginning of this chapter is rather odd. He states baldly, with no further justification, that since we are in search of the principles of perceptible bodies, we must discover the principles of tangible bodies.594 This is why, he adds, [n]either whiteness and blackness, nor sweetness and bitterness, nor, equally, any of the other perceptible contrarieties, serve to make an element.595
And now that we have equated the perceptible with the tangible, [w]e must first pick out from amongst the tangible qualities themselves which are the primary differentiae and contrarieties. These are the contrarieties that belong to touch: hot-cold, dry-wet, heavy-light, hard-soft, viscousbrittle, rough-smooth, coarse-fine. Of these heavy and light are not capable of acting or being affected. They are not said of things in virtue of their acting upon something else or being acted upon by something else. The elements, however, have to be capable of acting upon, and being acted upon by, one another, since they mix and change into one another.596
There is an oddity in Aristotle’s way of arguing here. For he does not spell out the connection between tangible and active-passive qualities. From a general point of view, we could suppose that every perceptible quality (a colour, for instance, or a taste, or a smell, or a sound) is active, insofar as it acts upon our senses. If this is true, then every tangible quality is active, but the reverse does not hold true: every active quality is not necessarily tangible, but might belong to the realm of another perception. And that would 594
Aristotle, GC II 2, 329b 7-11. GC II 2, 329b 11-13. 596 GC II 2, 329b 16-24. 595
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explain why Aristotle restricted the tangible qualities to the active ones. He may have thought that in order to be counted as primary, the selected qualities should be at once active and tangible. This, however, is not exactly what Aristotle says in the quoted passage. For (i) he does not mention active qualities first and then, as a subspecies, tangible ones and (ii) he does not mention only active qualities, but active and passive ones. And in view of this, Aristotle cannot have the various sense-data in mind. For none of them seems to be passive. They all exert some kind of effect upon our senses. Moreover, it will be crucial for Aristotle’s chemistry—and, above all, from the very point of view of this chemistry—to consider some qualities, namely the hot and the cold, as active, and others, namely the wet and the dry, as passive. If, then, the heavy and the light are excluded because they are not active and passive, it is not only because they do not share with the sense-data the fact of being able to affect our senses, i.e. to make one of our sense organs similar to themselves. It is, rather, because they are not able to share in a process of action and passion such as it was described in GC I, 7-9. But again, in this case it is odd to mention tangible qualities first and only later qualities capable of acting upon, and being acted upon by one another. The fact of being tangible has no bearing on the issue at stake. The sole criterion to be taken into account is the fact of being active and passive in the sense of GC I, 7-9. In order to play their chemical role successfully, the elements must be able to interact to produce other, more complex beings. Uniquely among the extant commentators, the author perceived the difficulty. At any rate, he skips the characterization of the primary qualities as “tangible” and underlines the fact that they are active and passive: And I mean by ‘contrary qualities’ the sensible qualities like heat, coldness, etc., and not every contrariety that may exist; for the black and the white, the sweet and the bitter, and the other sensible contrarieties are not elements, because some elementary qualities must be active, others passive, the active contrarieties being heat and coldness, the passive ones being wetness and dryness. With these four, generation and destruction find their realization. Heat is more active and coldness less active, neither, moreover, acting in the same way. And wetness is more passive and dryness less, neither being acted upon in the same way.597
This interpretation has two subsidiary benefits. First, it absolves the author from counting the heavy and the light among the tangible qualities—a curi-
597
Talḫīṣ 51.19-53.2.
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ous choice indeed, unparalleled in the Aristotelian corpus.598 Secondly, since it is no longer the fact of being tangible that is primarily responsible for the primary bodies being elemental, the author’s interpretation allows him to distinguish, in both pairs of contraries, between a more and a less active quality, and between a more and a less passive one. In so doing, he paves the way to Aristotle’s chemistry. For whereas none of the four primary qualities is more “tangible” than the others, hot is most active, and wet most passive.599 In the next paragraph (§ 11.4), the author abbreviates Aristotle’s deduction of the tangible qualities in GC II 2. As we have just seen, Aristotle first distinguished hold-cold, dry-wet, hard-soft, viscous-brittle, rough-smooth, and coarse-fine (heavy-light being excluded as not being active and passive). The author lists the same six pairs: For the hard, the brittle, the rough and the coarse are all reducible to the dry in a certain way, while the soft, the viscous, the smooth and the fine are all reducible to the wet in a certain way, and there exists no secondary quality reducible to heat and coldness.600
We shall compare the terminology used here with that found in Averroes and Ps.-Ğābir below, in order to learn more about the Arabic translation used by the author.601 For the time being, let us remark only that the author does not feel very comfortable with Aristotle’s argument. Its lack of demonstrative rigour gives rise to the only personal remark in the whole treatise. For after listing the definitions of the four primary qualities,602 the author adds a note of perplexity. Unfortunately, this sentence is corrupt in 598
See De caelo, book IV, in particular. This is concordant with Aristotle’s line of analysis elsewhere. See Meteor., book IV 1, and 5, 382b 4-5, where he goes as far as saying ‘[a]nd so cold is more on the side of the passive qualities” διὸ καὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν τῶν παθητικῶν µᾶλλον. 600 Talḫīṣ 53.3-6. 601 See below, pp. 355-358. 602 “What defines the hot is aggregating things of the same kind—and it follows from this that it segregates things which are different from one another, since the entities within something composed out of different things would not be aggregated into a single place, if it were not for fire producing the dissolution of the combination and dissociating these aggregated things. What defines the cold is aggregating things that are of the same kind and things that are not of the same kind according to a single pattern. What defines the wet is being hard to bound by its own limit and easily bounded by the limit of another body. What defines the dry is being easily bounded by its own limit and hard to bound by the limit of another body”. 599
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both manuscripts, and the sense is not entirely clear. In the Istanbul manuscript, we read: wa-fī hāḏihi al-ḥudūdi wa-ilā āḫiri al-faṣli al-tālī aḫḏu alfaṣli mawāḍi‘un li-al-šukūki wa-al-naẓar. The underlined part of the sentence is absent from the Gotha manuscript, but the scribe has left a fenestra, indicating that there were some words unreadable at this place in his model. So, even if the Gotha text makes sense (we could translate it: “These definitions give rise to doubts and scrutiny”), while the Istanbul one does not, we must resist the easy temptation to print the former. We must rather try to understand and eventually emend the Istanbul text in the most economical way. Various reconstructions are possible. A first suggestion consists in interpreting the word al-faṣl, in conformity with its Arabic polysemy, in two different ways: first as a textual section and secondly as the differentia constitutive of the definition. We would just have to add the particle fī, ‘in’, in order to produce a correct sentence, which would read: wa-fī hāḏihi alḥudūdi wa-ilā āḫiri al-faṣli al-tālī aḫḏi al-faṣli mawāḍi‘un li-alšukūki wa-al-naẓar. We might translate this text as follows: “In these definitions, and up to the end of the next section, there are, in the grasp of the differentia, places for doubts and scrutiny”.603 But there are three difficulties. First, it is not totally clear why the author would have spoken here of “differentia”. Secondly, to speak of “the grasp of the differentia” without further specification is awkward. Thirdly, from a palaeographical point of view, the two nominal groups āḫir al-faṣl and aḫḏ al-faṣl are almost identical. I would thus suggest deleting aḫḏ al-faṣl as a varia lectio wrongly interpolated into the text, so as to edit and translate: wa-fī hāḏihi al-ḥudūdi wa-ilā āḫiri al-faṣli al-tālī mawāḍi‘un li-al-šukūki wa-al-naẓar, “In these definitions, and up to the end of the next section, there are places for doubts and scrutiny”. Yet, what the author labels the “next section” (al-faṣl al-tālī) remains unclear. Theoretically, we might imagine three possible candidates. First of all, the author could mean his own “next section”—in particular since he designates the chapters of his work by the Arabic term faṣl—which corresponds to GC II 4. The problem with this answer is that there is no real attempt at defining anything in this part of Aristotle’s text (nor, by the same token, in this part of the author’s summary of it). If not to GC II 4, the author could perhaps be alluding to Aristotle’s ‘next section’, i.e. to our chapter GC II 3 in which, as we have seen in the previous chapter,604 the question of the definition of fire was discussed. This hypothesis would be 603
Or, alternatively, “In these definitions, and up to the end of the next section about the grasp of the differentia, there are places for doubts and scrutiny”. The Arabic can be read both ways. 604 See above, p. 256.
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corroborated by the fact that the author entirely skips the discussion of the “extreme heat” which occurs at this place. We find nothing in his comments similar to Alexander’s discussion of the two kinds of fire. The present sentence, and especially the phrase which follows (“and we have abbreviated them as much as possible”) would aim at justifying this absence. A last possibility is that the author had a very restricted use of the term “section”, meaning by this only the end of GC II 2, where the various senses of ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ are envisaged—another passage entirely skipped by the author.605 After all, our “chapters” did not exist at that time. It might then be the case that what he called the ‘next section’ was nothing more, in this context, than the next textual unit (something like a modern paragraph). I confess that I see no way to gain certainty on this issue. It is interesting to note that the first person of the author, associated with his perplexity about Aristotle’s text, appears only now, at the beginning of his summary of Book II. For as we have already noted, he seems not to have access to Alexander’s commentary on GC II. It is tempting to try to connect these two facts together. Aristotle’s text would be all the more difficult to explain in the absence of Alexander’s exegesis. Be that as it may, we do not find any attempt to justify the reduction of the four pairs hard-soft, viscous-brittle, rough-smooth, and coarse-fine to wet and dry. The author, as we said, skips this entire issue and jump to the conclusion of GC II 2, 330a 24-29: And since the rest of the qualities mentioned are reducible to these four, and these four cannot be ranged under one another—since none of them belongs to the species of any of the other three—it follows necessarily that these four are the primary qualities.606
The last three paragraphs of Section 11 (§§ 11.5, 6 and 7) add practically nothing to Aristotle’s text of GC II 3. § 11.5 expounds the four pairings of the elements. § 11.6 relates the four elements resulting from the pairings of the primary qualities to the four natural places. And § 11.7 associates each of the elements with a specific quality: fire with heat, air with wetness, water with coldness and earth with dryness. It is perhaps to be noted that whereas Aristotle does not speak in terms of quantity,607 the author slightly modifies this account by saying:
605
See GC II 2, 329b 32-330a 24. Talḫīṣ 53.12-15. 607 GC II 3, 331a 4-6: “Earth belongs to dry rather than to cold, water to cold rather than to wet, air to wet rather than to hot, and fire to hot rather than to dry”. 606
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And the heat of the fire is above the heat of the air but its dryness is below the dryness of the earth; the heat of the air is below the heat of the fire but its wetness is above the wetness of the water; the coldness of the water is above the coldness of the earth but its wetness is below the wetness of the air; the coldness of the earth is below the coldness of the water but its dryness is above the dryness of the fire. The fire, then, is prior according to the hot, the air according to the wet, the water according to the cold and the earth according to the dry.
The author, by using the Arabic prepositions ‘above’ (fawqa) and ‘below’ (dūna), seems to have a scalar model in mind, according to which it would be possible to range the primary qualities along a graduated axis. This is reminiscent, as we have seen in the previous chapter,608 of Philoponus’ interpretation of the definition of fire. But of course we do not need to postulate any influence. The idea is natural enough to appear in two different contexts at two different times.
608
See above, p. 265.
Section 12: On the Reciprocal Change of the Elements This Section is devoted to GC II 4, to which it adds, in the last paragraph, an idea borrowed from GC II 5. In chapter II 4, Aristotle deals with the reciprocal transformations of the elements. In the first paragraph, he stresses that the four elements change into one another.609 In the second section, he explains how this change takes place.610 To this purpose he introduces the notion of a ‘counterpart’, σύµβολον. Each element is characterized by two counterparts: Fire is hot and dry, Air is wet and hot, Water is cold and wet and Earth is cold and dry. According to Philoponus, Aristotle describes three possible ways of changing from one state to another.611 The first type of transformation goes from one element to another element with which the former shares a counterpart in common.612 For instance, Fire and Air have the hot in common. The transformation between Fire and Air, then, occurs by the transformation of dry into wet (Fire ⟶ Air) or by the transformation of wet into dry (Air ⟶ Fire). The second kind of transformation links two “contrary” elements together, namely Fire and Water or Air and Earth.613 In that case, both counterparts present in the element must be transformed into the two opposite counterparts of the contrary element. In the case of the change from Fire into Water, hot must be changed into cold and dry into wet; similarly, in the case of the change from Air into Earth, wet must be changed into dry and hot into cold.614 So far, so good. The difficulty comes with Philoponus’ third type of transformation.615 It is sometimes the case that what produces a new element is not a single element, but a pair of elements. In order for such a transformation to occur, these elements must be opposite to one another, and they produce one of the two elements which are intermediary between them. Let us suppose, for instance, that the two elements from which we start are Water and Fire. Taken as a pair, they can produce either Earth, or 609
Aristotle, GC II 4, 331a 7-12. GC II 4, 331a 12-b 26. 611 See Philoponus, In GC 233.4, 7 and 19-25. 612 Aristotle, GC II 4, 331a 18-20. 613 Aristotle, GC II 4, 331a 16-18. 614 For a general discussion of both kinds of changes, see Aristotle, GC II 4, 331a 12-b 11. 615 Which, according to Philoponus, is dealt with by Aristotle at GC II 4, 331b 11332a 2. 610
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Air. If cold perishes from Earth and wet from Air, what will remain will be dry (for Earth is dry) and hot (for Air is hot), hence will be Fire. But if it is the dry present in the Earth and the hot present in the Air that perish, what will remain will be wet and cold, hence Water. Here, however, we encounter an objection already identified and discussed by Philoponus. The “perishing” of one of the four elements does not amount to merely ceasing to be. According to the commentator of Alexandria, when one of the counterparts perishes, that amounts to saying that the opposite counterpart comes to be. In other words, the two opposite σύµβολα are not contraries, like white and black, but contradictories, like white and not-white. True, what we are here calling “opposite” is named by Aristotle ἐναντίος four times.616 And, by that word, Aristotle means, in general, the fact of being a contrary in the technical sense of the term (for example, white and black).617 But it also happens that he uses this word to allude to one of the two terms of a contradiction.618 In his treatise On Sleep, for instance, he writes: […] in the case of some contraries one of the two must be present, while in the case of others this is not necessary.619
That he means the pair of contradictories by the first group of ἐναντία is made clear by the phrase immediately following in the text: […] waking is the contrary of sleeping, and one of these two must be present to every animal.620
For in the case of waking and sleeping, there is, properly speaking, no intermediary state: an animal is either sleeping or waking. If it is not sleeping, it is waking, and reciprocally. Now, the whole question in GC II 4, 331b 11 sqq., is to determine whether the word ἐναντίος has its technical meaning, or rather the rarer one that we find in the treatise On Sleep. If the σύµβολα are contradictories, it is of course misleading to think that the ceasing to be of one of them might be anything but the coming to be of its opposite. If the white perishes, the 616
See GC II 4, 331a 15-16 (τὰς διαφορὰς ἐναντίας εἶναι), 16 (ἐναντίαι), 331b 32 (λείπεται τἀναντία), 34 (ἐναντίον). 617 See Cat. 6, 6a 17 sqq. Cf. Int. 14, 23b 22 sqq., EN II 8, 1108b 33 sqq. 618 See Bonitz, Index, 246b 39-41. 619 Aristotle, Somn. 1, 454b 1-2: τῶν δ' ἐναντίων τῶν µὲν ἀνάγκη θάτερον ἀεὶ παρεῖναι τῶν δ' οὔ. 620 Ibid., 454b 2-3: τῷ δ' ἐγρηγορέναι τὸ καθεύδειν ἐναντίον, καὶ ἀναγκαῖον ἅπαντι θάτερον ὑπάρχειν.
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not-white comes to be. Similarly, if the hot and the cold are contradictories and if the hot perishes, the cold by definition comes to be.621 As we have just said, Philoponus interprets the opposite counterparts as contradictories. He writes: Now he exhibits a third variety of change, according to which from any two of the contraries a third one is produced, each of them changing in respect of one of its qualities, e.g. when from fire and water, which are contraries sometimes air and sometimes earth comes to be. For when fire changes in respect of dryness and water in respect of coldness, the heat of fire remains and the wetness of water, which together specify air; but when the heat of fire and the wetness of water perish, what remains is the coldness and dryness which are constitutive of earth.622
Philoponus contrasts his interpretation with Alexander’s: The overall sense of what is said is something of this sort, but it is possible to understand the remarks differently. For, on the one hand, Alexander gives the comparatively simple interpretation of it, which accords with what Aristotle himself is manifestly saying, an interpretation which claims that contrary elements can produce something numerically one, when each of them changes in respect of one of their qualities, while keeping the other.623
After some further considerations showing that, on Alexander’s view, one and only one quality constitutive of each element remains as such and joins with the remaining quality of the other element in order to produce a third element, Philoponus adds: This, then, is Alexander’s view. But it is possible, on the other hand, to hold that Aristotle says that one is produced from two, not numerically one, but specifically. For it is not possible that this particular quality should perish without its contrary coming to be.624
Modern scholars tend to adopt Philoponus’ view.625 But is Alexander’s explanation, which sticks to the more usual reading of the word ἐναντίος, really objectionable? Is it so unlikely that Aristotle would admit the possi621
For in that case, the equation ‘cold =def not-hot’ holds true. Philoponus, In GC 233.21-28. 623 Philoponus, In GC 234.19-24. 624 Philoponus, In GC 234.33-235.1. 625 See for instance Williams, Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, pp. 162163 and Rashed, Aristote, pp. 159-160. 622
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bility that prime matter should be capable of existing in an indefinite state? The main objection to this suggestion is that prime matter never exists deprived of any determination. At first sight, that might suggest that the primary qualities must be contradictories, so that for each pair of determinations, prime matter is never deprived of one of the pair of contradictories. But we might object to this account that in the first chapter of the second book, Aristotle only implies that prime matter is never deprived of some contrariety.626 If, as I tend to do, we take this assertion literally, it means that it is possible for prime matter to exist at some particular time with a positive determination belonging to a single pair of contrary qualities.627 That would also explain why Aristotle, after dealing with the two types of “one to one” transformation, comes now to this “two to one” transformation. If Philoponus and the modern commentators were correct, there would be no real point in bringing this situation into the foreground. For Philoponus is just describing a situation where two “one to one” transformations occur simultaneously and lead to the same result. On Alexander’s view, on the other hand, Aristotle is envisaging something really different: we do not transform either one single or two qualities of a single element, but destroy a single quality in each of two contrary elements. Each of the two “zeros” produced in each element is acted upon, when the two matters are brought into contact, by the “positive value” of the other one. In § 12.2, the author deals at length with the first two types of transformation, but does not say a word about the third. In virtue of what we have just said, this absence is a sign that the author is no longer relying on Alexander’s commentary. He contents himself with paraphrasing the first, easier, section. In § 12.3, the author develops an argument roughly corresponding to the second section of GC II 5.628 He does it, however, in a rather original way. In the first section of chapter II 5, Aristotle is concerned above all with the plurality of the primary qualities.629 He seeks to show that they cannot be one and that there cannot be any other perceptible element besides those we know. In the second section, Aristotle argues that no element can be prior 626
See GC II 1, 329a 24-26: “Our view is that there is a matter of the perceptible bodies, but that it is not separate but is always together with a contrariety, from which the so-called ‘elements’ come to be” (ἡµεῖς δὲ φαµὲν µὲν εἶναί τινα ὕλην τῶν σωµάτων τῶν αἰσθητῶν, ἀλλὰ ταύτην οὐ χωριστὴν ἀλλ' ἀεὶ µετ' ἐναντιώσεως, ἐξ ἧς γίνεται τὰ καλούµενα στοιχεῖα). 627 On this, see Rashed, Aristote, pp. xcii sqq. 628 Beginning at 332b 5. 629 Aristotle, GC II 5, 332a 3-b 5.
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to the others. It is this argument about priority that the author picks up. Aristotle’s way of arguing has the form of a disjunction: the alleged prior element ought to be one of the extremes or one of the means. In both cases, the supposition leads to an impossibility. Therefore, no element is prior to the others. It is remarkable, however, that Aristotle rejects both “priorities” on very different grounds: […] it is impossible, for any one of them, whether one of the extremes or one of the means, to be their principle. It will not be the case where the extremes are concerned, because everything would then be fire or earth, and this view is the same as the view that everything comes from fire and earth. Nor will it be the case where the means are concerned. This would be the view held by some that whereas air changes both into fire and into water and water both into air and into earth, the extremes do not similarly change into one another. For the process must come to a halt and not go on to infinity in a straight line in both directions: that would involve an infinite number of contrarieties belonging to one element.630
Thus, whereas Aristotle says that no ‘extreme’ is prior because that would entail that all other elements are nothing but a form of this extreme, he claims that no middle element can be prior on the ground that that would force us to recognize an actual infinity, for we should then admit an infinite number of (really existing) contrarieties. Aristotle develops his argument in the last part of GC II 5.631 His basic idea seems to be that in order for a middle to be really a middle, the chain of the transformations must start with it and never come back to it. For otherwise, we would have a circle, and, even if all elements would then become middle terms in the chain, none of them would be prior any more. Hence, in order for the element to be at the same time prior and middle, the chain must be infinite in both directions. The author substitutes a simpler argument for Aristotle’s rather subtle one. It is based on the overall symmetry of Aristotle’s scheme: And even if these primary bodies are disposed on a straight line, they change into one another circularly, for that is how change along a regular path is easiest. For fire changes into air, air into water, water into earth, earth into fire, and then another cycle takes place. And the change is not interrupted when it comes to fire or earth, i.e. the extremities in terms of position—for change exists perpetually. Neither is it the case that when it reaches the extremity, it turns back in the opposite direction. Otherwise, each of the 630 631
Aristotle, GC II 5, 332b 6-14. Aristotle, GC II 5, 332b 14-333a 15.
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extremities, fire and earth, would change in one of its two qualities, while each of the intermediaries, air and the water, would change in both of its qualities; thus, none of the four bodies would be endowed with the capacity of changing into the other three according to the same relation, so that changes, generation and destruction would not be well-balanced and ordered. Therefore, it naturally belongs to the elements that they be generated out of one another and destroyed into one another in a circle, even if their mutual disposition in the world’s whole is rectilinear.632
Aristotle’s passage seems to have been rewritten in light of the figures accompanying his text in some manuscripts.633 The first figure shows the four concentric spheres of the sublunar world: Fire Air
Water Earth
The second represents the circle of the elements: Hot AIR
FIRE Dry
Wet
WATER
EARTH Cold
632
Talḫīṣ 57.10-20. See for instance MS Parisinus Graecus 1859, fol. 118r-v, now available on the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105062303/f242.image.r=grec%201859.langFR 633
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The author understands Aristotle as saying that the two figures are entirely different. The first one belongs to cosmology, the second to chemistry. To interpret the former in a chemical sense would be misleading: even if earth and fire are extreme from a cosmological point of view, they belong to the same “circle” as the middle elements of cosmology from a chemical point of view.
Section 13: Formation of Homoeomers In the present section, the author summarizes three chapters: GC II 6, 7 and 8. As elsewhere, he omits Aristotle’s doxographical accounts, thus suppressing the main part of chapter 6, in which Aristotle refutes Empedocles on natural change. Chapters 7 and 8, by contrast, are paraphrased in a rather elaborate form. The sequence of chapters 6-7-8 represents a unitary treatment of the homeomers. Aristotle solves some aporiae pertaining to their status, explains how they come about, and shows that every natural homoeomer is composed of the four primary bodies. The author has preserved only the first argument from chapter 6.634 He has changed its signification in an interesting way. Aristotle meant it to be a refutation of Empedocles’ saying that the four roots are “all equal” (ἶσά τε πάντα). As long as Empedocles does not recognize the possibility of transformations between them, there is no way to consider them comparable nor, a fortiori, equal. In the course of this refutation, Aristotle distinguishes three possible meanings according to which two items may be ‘comparable’ (συµβλητά). They can be so either (i) according to their mere quantity (κατὰ τὸ ποσόν) or (ii) according to ‘how much they are capable of’ (ὅσον δύνανται) or (iii) ‘by analogy’ (κατ᾿ ἀναλογίαν). The two first possibilities imply some quantity by definition. In the first case, there is a direct correlation between two volumes, i.e. between the initial volume V1 of a body and the volume V2 of the body resulting from the former’s transformation. “For instance”, says Aristotle, “ten pints of air might come from a pint of water”.635 In the second case, the quantity still plays some role, but less directly: what is compared is now the capacity or power (δύναµις) of two different bodies, each endowed with a different volume, to exert an equal effect on something “e.g. if a pint of water had the same cooling effect as ten of air”.636 The third possibility consists in there being an analogy, according to which the relation of a body A to its property P is the same as (ὡς) the relation of a body B to its property Q, “e.g. as this is hot, so this is white”. Such a relation, Aristotle says, “signifies likeness and, in quantity, equality”.637 To put it more clearly: the relation “as …, so …” 634
Aristotle, GC II 6, 333a 16-34. Aristotle, GC II 6, 333a 21-22. 636 Aristotle, GC II 6, 333a 24-25. 637 In my Budé edition I have printed the following text: τὸ δ᾿ὡς τόδε σηµαίνει τὸ ὅµοιον, ἐν δὲ τῷ ποσῷ τὸ ἴσον, thus departing from the other editions, in which the 635
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signifies nothing but a likeness (τὸ ὅµοιον) between two relations, where each is a relation between a thing and one of its properties. It is only when it is applied to quantitative properties that this likeness between relations turns out to be an equality.638 The qualitative property of a thing, however, is not a quantity. Consequently, the fact that two Empedoclean elements are comparable in an analogical way (“as water is dark, so fire is bright”) is not equivalent to their being quantitatively συµβλητά, i.e. comparable in a quasi mathematical sense. The author, however, interprets this development not as a mere rebuttal of Empedocles, but as containing a positive fact about Aristotle’s view of the basic elemental properties. For he writes: When contrary things are not well-balanced, the weaker is destroyed by the stronger so that not all of them exist perpetually; but the elements exist perpetually; therefore, they are well-balanced. And their being well-balanced is not in virtue of their magnitudes, in the sense that all of them would have the same magnitude. For action and passion between them are not in virtue of their magnitudes, but in virtue of their powers.639
The author reformulates Aristotle’s text as if it addressed the following aporia: (i) if two elements endowed with contrary qualities are unequal, the stronger will destroy the weaker; (ii) the great masses of the elements have different sizes. How is it, then, that the elements in the smaller quantity are not destroyed by the elements in the greater quantity? The answer is furnished by Aristotle’s text: the interaction between them is in virtue of their powers (quwā = δυνάµεις) exclusively. The author adds: Thus, their equilibrium is in virtue of their powers, even if their magnitudes are different. And when two contraries differ with respect to their magnitudes but are equal with respect to their powers, they have no effect on one another, whereas when they differ with respect to power, the stronger has an effect on the weaker, even if they are equal according to magnitude.640
words ἐν µὲν ποιῷ (“in quality”) are added after σηµαίνει. But these words are absent in important mss of the a-family, and they are put at various places in the rest of the tradition—a possible sign of their having been interpolated at a later stage of the textual transmission. 638 See also Eth. Nic. V 6, 1131a 31-32. 639 Talḫīṣ 59.2-5. 640 Talḫīṣ 59.5-8.
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Thus, even if the primary bodies have unequal magnitudes, their powers, according to which they interact, are well-balanced. Therefore, none of them gets the upper hand over the others. In conclusion, we have learnt two things: from a cosmological point of view, the reason why the elements are eternal, although endowed with contrary qualities and different global sizes; and from a chemical point of view, why nature will always find some elemental stuff from each one of the four primary bodies to produce her various creatures. Such a reading of Aristotle’s passage is unique: it appears neither in Philoponus, nor in Averroes. In § 13.2, the author draws a distinction between the generation of the elements from one another, which is a one to one process—one single form (ṣūra) being generated out of one single form—and the generation of the homoeomers from the elements, which is a two to one, or three to one or four to one process. What is the sense of this “or”? According to what will follow in § 13.5, where we shall learn that the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) are present in each one of the homoeomerous bodies, it seems that the disjunction is merely pedagogical here. It leaves open something that will be specified further later in the text. The author does not give us any precision about the status of the “forms” of the elements when the homoeomers are generated. The question will be dealt with, however, in the next paragraph. In § 13.3, the author discusses the presence of the forms of the elements in the homoeomers. It would make no sense, of course, for the form of informed substances such as a man or a horse, to exist somehow without being the form of this man or this horse. The situation is different in the case of the elements, because they are not perfected substances. In this case, the form of fire can exist in some other body, namely a homoeomer, while being in some way the form of fire. The difficulty is to understand in which way, exactly. The author, like other commentators, reads GC II 7 in close connection with GC I 10 on mixture. He analyses the homoeomers as a mixture of the powers (al-quwā) of the elements. We have already remarked, when commenting on the author’s paraphrase of GC I 10, that this notion of “power” enabled him to draw a kind of bridge between the quality as a primary determination of the element and the definitional (substantial) form. The power is the expression of the form as a dynamical principle. It is, at the same time, a form and an active quality. On these grounds, the author can write: And the thing created must be some other entity, different from its constituents, since its constituents have contrary powers, so that when they come
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together, they act and are acted upon in such a way that there results a mixture of these powers, intermediate between them.641
It would be problematic, on the one hand, to hold that the forms themselves, as definitional principles, are mixed together; but neither would it do to claim that the forms of the ingredients remain as they are, and that what gets mixed consists merely of their qualities. That is the reason why the notion of power is central in the author’s reflection throughout this chapter. The elements are viewed as the bearers of powers that (i) are taken into account in their definitions, (ii) can interact with one another and (iii) can be augmented or diminished without immediately provoking the destruction of the forms to which they belong. These peculiarities explain why, in the quoted sentence, the author manifestly hesitates between the constituents of a thing and the powers of these constituents. While at the beginning of the sentence, the author seems to imply that the constituents are mixed together so as to produce the thing, we get the impression at the end of the sentence that the thing results from a mixing between their powers, and not between the constituents themselves. At the end of § 13.3, the author draws on what he has already said in the section devoted to mixture: And none of the mixture’s constituents exists in it in actuality, endowed with the same power it had previously, because their combination is neither being adjacent—for it is a mixing and a unification—nor a total destruction—since the destruction of an element cannot but lead to an element contrary to the first (thus, if all the constituents of a mixture were destroyed in totality, the result would be these constituents as such). Therefore, they produce something different and intermediate, a homoeomer resulting from the combination of all the entities in which these constituents exist in potentiality.642
Here the author simplifies Aristotle’s discussion in GC II 7. There Aristotle confronts a difficulty arising from his understanding of what it is to be an intermediate. The crucial point is to account for the difference between the mere lack of differentiation of what, being neither cold nor hot nor wet nor dry, is nothing but a ‘matter’ (ὕλη) and what results from the dynamical mixture of the four primary powers. In both cases, we are dealing with something like a middle, a µεσότης. But in the former case, this middle amounts to nothing at all, while in the latter, it encompasses a wide range of homoeomerous stuffs. That is the sense of Aristotle’s declaration: 641 642
Talḫīṣ 59.14-16. Talḫīṣ 59.16-20.
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For if flesh is from both [sc. fire and earth] and is neither of them, nor again a composite in which the components are preserved, what account of the phenomenon remains except the view that that which comes out of these is their matter? For the destruction of the one produces either the other or their matter.643
Prima facie, says Aristotle, the only possibilities for the end product of a substantial transformation are either being another element or being an indefinite qualitative zone, a ‘matter’ (ὕλη), in which all elemental determinations are lost. But on a closer look, we can distinguish between this undifferentiated matter and a proportionate mixture of the elements: Is there a possible solution on these lines, taking into account the fact that things can be more or less hot and cold? When one exists simpliciter in actuality, the other exists in potentiality; when however, it is not completely so, but as it were hot-cold or cold-hot, because in being mixed things destroy each other’s excesses, then what will exist is neither their matter nor either of the contraries existing simpliciter in actuality, but something intermediate, which in-so-far as it is in potentiality more hot than cold or vice versa, is proportionately twice as hot in potentiality as cold, or three times, or in some other similar way. It is as a result of the contraries or the elements having been mixed that the other things will exist, and the elements from these latter, which somehow are the elements in potentiality, not in the same way as matter but in the way we have explained. In this way what comes to be is a mixture, in that way it is a matter.644
The author has omitted the discussion of matter—which he does not mention at all—and jumped to Aristotle’s conclusion: there is an intermediate between the elements, constituted by the homoeomerous bodies resulting from their being mixed. This gives rise to some details in § 13.4: And although this combination can be subject to an endless excess and defect of its constituents, however, as far as nature is concerned, it is something definite and limited, because it is not the case that every combination produces everything; for on the contrary, flesh is endowed with a given combination, bone with another, iron with another again, and everything in the same way. Moreover, each of these combinations has a latitude which
643 644
Aristotle, GC II 7, 334b 4-7. Aristotle, GC II 7, 334b 8-20.
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tolerates excess and defect up to a certain limit which it does not overstep; for whenever it oversteps it, the thing loses its essence.645
Every homoeomer has a formula resulting from a proportion of the four elements. This proportion exists as such, but it does not need to be realized exactly: there is a range of possible states within whose boundaries the homoeomer is still what it is. This idea of a ‘latitude’ (‘arḍ) is absent from Aristotle’s text, but it is a common asset, as we shall see shortly, of the exegetical tradition.646 Aristotle writes, more generally, that ‘the middle’ (τὸ µέσον) between the four basic qualities is “numerous and not indivisible” (πολὺ καὶ οὐκ ἀδιαίρετον).647 His aim, in context, is to account for the possibility of the existence of all the homoeomers we encounter around us, despite the fact that they all must belong to the “middle”. This is possible because the middle is not an indivisible point, but has, so to speak, some extension. To quote Philoponus: And since this intermediate is not something indivisible, but has a latitude (ἀλλ᾿ ἐν πλάτει θεωρεῖται), therefore there is not one particular form of the intermediate, but several compounds—flesh, bones and the like.648
However, this notion of a “latitude” or “range” of the intermediate is probably not the invention of Philoponus himself: it was in all likelihood already present in Alexander’s exegesis of the doctrine of mixture in GC. For Averroes, in his commentary on the same chapter, uses the same term in the same context. He starts by explaining that the elements in the mixture cannot be perfectly equal. Otherwise, as has been proved in the Meteorologica, there will be no mixture at all: The manner in which mixture takes place, as well as what things are miscible, has already been discussed above. As for the mixture of contrary things, that, as we have already said, may take place when neither of them dominates the other and when the power of neither of them is equivalent to that of the other. For if the power of one of them were to dominate absolutely that of the other, that would spell the corruption of the dominated and the gener645
Talḫīṣ 59.21-61.3. For a first sketch of the history of this notion, see E. D. Sylla, “Medieval Concepts of Latitude of Forms: The Oxford Calculatores”, Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen-Âge 40, 1973, pp. 223-281. For the Greek tradition, see R. Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators. 200-600 AD. A Sourcebook, vol. 2: Physics, London, 2004, pp. 316-326. 647 GC II 7, 334b 27-28. 648 Philoponus, In GC 277.17-19. 646
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ation of the dominating one; and if the power of each one of them were equal to that of every other, no form whatever would be generated as has been explained in Book IV of the Meteorologica. If, then, the power of one of them does not dominate absolutely but dominates and is itself dominated, then there is generated between the two a mean.649
Then, Averroes adds: This mean, however, will necessarily tend more towards the nature of the dominating one, for example it will tend to be greater in power of heating than of cooling, or greater in power of cooling than of heating. Consequently, while this mean will tend more to one of the two extremes than to the other, it will have a latitude (la-hu ‘arḍun mā) which permits of differences of more or less.650
As remarked by Heidrun Eichner, the presence of such a parallel in Philoponus and Averroes (πλάτος and ‘arḍun) is best explained on the ground of Alexander’s common influence.651 Although it is obvious that the author stands in the tradition initiated by Alexander, it is worth noting that he has extended the use of the notion of a latitude from the elements to the homoeomers in general. In Philoponus as well as in Averroes, the innovation is rather a matter of terminology. Aristotle’s “numerous and not indivisible” middle is described as a “breadth” by both authors.652 On the author’s interpretation, by contrast, each homoeomer is able to find its realization within the boundaries of a given ‘latitude’. This extension of the notion of a “divisible middle” is not to be found elsewhere in the Greek Aristotelian tradition, but it is very reminis-
649
Averroes, In GC 123.3-9 Eichner. Averroes, In GC 123.9-11 Eichner. 651 See Eichner, Averroes’ Mittlerer Kommentar, p. 149: “Diese Stelle im Text des Averroes ist wohl als Beleg dafür anzusehen, daß die Kombination des Begriffes einer ‘(Streu-)Breite’ der Mischung und eines Stärker- und Schwächerwerdens der Eigenschaften bereits bei Alexander als Theorie angelegt war, und von Philoponus von diesem übernommen wurde”. 652 The fact that at this stage this invention is a merely terminological change is shown by the fact that in his Epitome, in which he generally stands closer to Alexander’s commentary than in his paraphrase, Averroes describes the phenomenon without calling it by its name. See Averroes, Epitome 26.15-16: “For the cause of this difference is the variation in the quantities of the elements in each compound and their presence in greater quantity in some and in lesser quantity in others”. 650
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cent of what we find in Galen’s On Temperaments.653 In the context of GC, it is an essential part of Avicenna’s celebrated theory of mixture. The Persian philosopher makes use of the concept of a latitude differently from Alexander and Averroes, but identically to the author. For he does not apply it to describe the extended middle between the four elements, but the nature of the elements themselves, and of every homoeomer. He says: Each one of these elements [i.e. the four elemental bodies] has a latitude insofar as it admits of excess and defect in its quality. For it can be augmented and diminished in its natural or accidental quality while still retaining its own form and species. But excess as well as defect in that quality have an extreme limit. When the quality oversteps this limit, the matter ceases to be perfectly disposed for its form, and it comes to be perfectly disposed for another form. It belongs intrinsically to the matter, when it is perfectly disposed for some form, that this form emanates to it from the one who gives forms to matters, so that the matter receives it. That is the reason why similar matters are characterized by various forms, this coming from the giver of forms.654
After some lines of clarification devoted to the notions of ‘power’ (quwwa), ‘matter’ (mādda) and ‘preparation’ (isti‘dād), Avicenna continues: And this is not the case for the elements only, but also for generated things. Each of these has its own mixture, and this mixture receives excess and defect up to a limit, the latitude of which is enclosed between two extremities. When it oversteps the extremities, it ceases to be disposed towards assuming its own form.655
This doctrine allows Avicenna to draw a distinction between the form as such and its qualitative realization. A single form can be realized by a determinate range of qualitative states. It is not the form itself which is susceptible of variation, but merely the qualitative state that is attached to it. That is the great difference between Avicenna and Alexander on mixture.656 According to some passages in Alexander—those in which he seems to assimilate the form and its primary qualities—the form of the elements is 653
See Galen, De temperamentis II 4, 63.3-22 Helmreich. Cf. R. Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators 200-600 AD, a Sourcebook, vol. 2, London, 2004, p. 316. 654 Avicenna, Šifā’, GC 190.10-16. 655 Avicenna, Šifā’, GC 191.5-7. 656 For Alexander, see above, p. 267.
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closely tied to the basic sensible qualities. The variation of the form entails a variation of the basic qualities, and vice versa. Hence, even if Alexander acknowledges a remissio of the form in the process of mixing, it is not because the form remains exactly as it is, stable and unchanged; on the contrary, Alexander assumes that the form as such (or, more equivocally, as a power) varies. Its actuality/power is reduced as soon as it gets mixed. Avicenna, on the other hand, believes that the form can remain as it is, stable and unchanged, provided its basic qualities do not overstep certain limits. Fire remains exactly the same fire (formally speaking) even if its heat is augmented or reduced inside a certain range of values. That explains why Avicenna rejects two competing views about the form of the body resulting from mixture. He describes their anonymous upholders as follows: (i) Among them, there are those who posit such a form as something intermediate between the forms of extreme intensity, and who consider that it gives the mixed body its disposition to acquire the specific form that belongs to the composed bodies. (ii) And among them, there are those who posit that this form is another form, the form of the specific entities, and who posit that the mixture is something accidentally supervening, not a form.657
According to the first thesis (i), the hylomorphic forms of the ingredients, when they are mixed together, produce an intermediate hylomorphic form. This, in turn, constitutes the bodily disposition which allows for the supervenience of the specific form, i.e. of the fact that the end product will be a member of the species defined by its “chemical” formula. This thesis seems to be a development of Alexander’s position, according to which the mixture represents an intermediate form of the ingredients, and according to which the mixture corresponds to a new specific entity. According to the second thesis (ii), the process of mixing is to be understood, above all, in terms of specific forms. Two specific forms produce, so to say, a third specific form. There is a theoretical gap between this specific form and the hylomorphic state of the compound substance, which is nothing but a qualitative form, hence something accidental. This thesis reminds us of Philoponus’ Neoplatonic stance. Everything sensible is qualitative. The true form of a sensible being, i.e. its specific form, is somewhat exterior to the sensible, and belongs to another realm of reality. Avicenna’s position
657
Avicenna, Šifā’, GC 133.8-11.
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stands halfway between these two doctrines.658 He rejects the more Peripatetic stance, which seems unable to formulate any clear distinction between the form and the elemental qualities. But he also rejects the Neoplatonic view, according to which there is no intrinsic relation between hylomorphic and specific form. Avicenna will assume, on the contrary, that the specific form is intrinsically tied to its substratum, but that it can be realized equally well within a whole range of qualitative values. The author and Avicenna have in common the idea of a latitude for the form of the composite. Even their vocabulary presents some striking similarities: § 13.4, 61.2-3
Šifā’, GC 191.6-7
ṯumma li-kulli wāḥidin min hāḏi-hi al-tarākībi ‘arḍun yaḥtamilu alziyādata wa-al-nuqṣāna ilā ḥaddin mā lā yataǧāwaza-hu; wa-matā taǧāwaza-hu, ḫaraǧa ‘an tilka alḥaqīqa.
wa-mizāǧu-hu yaqbalu al-ziyādata wa-al-nuqṣāna ilā ḥaddin mā maḥṣūri al-‘arḍi bayna ṭarafayni; wa-iḏā ǧāwaza ḏālika, baṭala isti‘dādu-hu li-mulābasati-hi liṣūrati-hi.
The echoes between the two passages seem strong enough to postulate a genealogical relationship between them. Both texts may derive from a third, unknown to us, or one of them may have the other as its source. Since the author shows no trace of Avicennan influence, but closely follows Aristotle’s treatise everywhere, the most probable solution is that Avicenna is making a free use of the author. He borrows essential ideas, and even terminology from him. The last phrase of the quotation, which is not entirely clear in the original (one can hesitate as to the intended subjects of the verbs taǧāwaza-hu and ḫaraǧa) is slightly rewritten by Avicenna, who, however, retains its structure with a protasis and an apodosis. If this genealogical reconstruction is correct, we can infer that Avicenna was not the first thinker to interpret Alexander’s “latitude” in this way, i.e. as characterizing the qualitative range assignable to every homoeomer, and not as the “extended” middle between the four elements. He borrowed this reading of Aristotle’s text from the anonymous commentary, which in all likelihood he had at his disposal. Of course, this idea is elaborated to a much greater degree in Avicenna. In the author’s text, it is still an incidental remark, which leaves many problems open. For instance, it is not at all certain that the author had the same view about the relationship 658
See A. Stone, “Avicenna’s Theory of Primary Mixture”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 18, 2008, pp. 99-119.
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between the form and the qualities as Avicenna: according to the latter, the possible variation of the primary qualities attached to the form obviously plays an important role in the chemistry of mixture. In particular, this scheme explains Avicenna’s “atomism” of mixture, and why the forms of the ingredients remain as they are during the process.659 For the forms of the ingredients are still preserved in the mixture, while their basic qualities are present in reduced actuality. We shall see, when commenting upon the next paragraph, that this was not the author’s interpretation. One last issue to be addressed is the question of the author’s source. The mention of “latitude” at this place proves that he had access to some previous material, either Alexander himself or a commentator influenced by him. It would be too hasty to claim that he had direct access to Alexander’s own commentary. For apart from this place, Alexander’s commentary on the second book of GC seems not to have been at the author’s disposal. Moreover, other commentaries were known as early as the 9th c. The bibliographer al-Nadīm tells us in particular that Olympiodorus’ commentary on GC, entirely lost today, had been translated by Usṭāṯ.660 We know that this translator was active around the middle of the century. Since the author is obviously later than this date, he may have had access to this text at the least. Other sources—Philoponus or Themistius in particular—are not to be excluded either. This source might have come closer than Alexander to Galen’s idea of a latitude of the healthy temperament, and adapted it to the constitution of the homoeomers, or the author himself might have done this.661 In § 13.5, the author offers a paraphrase of what Aristotle says in GC II 8. Two points are of interest. The first is related to Aristotle’s first sentence: All the mixed bodies, which are around the place of the middle (περὶ τὸν τοῦ µέσου τόπον), are composed of all the simple bodies. Earth exists in all of them, for a start, since each element is mostly and in the greater quantity in its own place.662
659
On this, see Stone, “Avicenna’s Theory of Primary Mixture”, pp. 113-114. See al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p . 311 (passage translated below, p. 338, n. 764). On the probability that the author may have used Olympiodorus’ commentary, see below, ibid., p. 338. 661 See above, pp. 297-298. 662 Aristotle, GC II 8, 334b 31-34. 660
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The author thinks that this indication of the place of the homoeomerous bodies is not precise enough. At any rate, he introduces the following specification in his paraphrase: And it may be empirically obvious that there are, in all things generated on and inside the earth, earthy substances, and that watery substance is also present in animals and plants.663
This sentence contains an implicit opposition. For what is generated “on and inside the earth” is not necessarily an animal or a plant. If it is something generated “inside earth”, i.e. underground, it is more likely to be a mineral substance. Animals and plants, on the other hand, are exclusively generated on the surface of the earth (even if it is true that plants have roots, or that in the case of some animal species, eggs are laid in the ground). That is exactly the idea which appears in Averroes’ Epitome: It has been demonstrated that these four bodies are the elements of all composite bodies. This may also be demonstrated by the fact that all composite bodies must contain some portion of earth because they are generated in the lower place which is the place of earth, whether on its surface (fī ẓāhiri alarḍi) as animals and plants or in its bowels (fī bāṭini-hā) as minerals.664
It can hardly be a coincidence that Averroes and the author display the same interpretation of the phrase περὶ τὸν τοῦ µέσου τόπον. In Averroes at least, this interpretation cannot have been suggested by an eventual double translation in Arabic. For Gerardus’ rendering of Isḥāq’s translation, which was used by Averroes, is almost identical to the Greek at this point: Omnia autem corpora mixta quorum esse non est nisi in loco medio sunt composita ex corporibus simplicibus omnibus.665
Nor can Philoponus be the source of both authors. For this distinction does not appear in his commentary. He writes: And he said ‘which are around the place of the middle’ not for contrast, as though there are some mixed bodies not around the middle place, the way 663
Talḫīṣ 61.4-5. Averroes, Epitome 25.7-9. 665 Gerardus’ scrupulous verbum de verbo method makes it even easy to suggest a retroversion from the Latin into the Arabic: *fa-kullu al-aǧsām al-muḫtaliṭa al-latī lā yakūna wuǧūdu-hā illā fī al-makāni al-awsaṭ murakkabatun min kulli al-aǧsāmi albasīṭa. 664
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some describe the concourse of the moist and dry exhalation, which, he says in the Meteorology, rise, being combined together (but these are not by nature mixed, nor do they result in something one, but are adjacent to each other in juxtaposition), but this phrase is equivalent to: ‘all the mixed bodies, which are also around the place of the middle’. 666
Thus, Philoponus draws an opposition between two different places in the universe, but not the opposition we find in the Arabic sources. While the author’s and Averroes’ contrast is inclusive (there is generation and corruption as well on the surface of the earth as inside it), Philoponus’ contrast is exclusive (there is generation and corruption around the middle place but not in the upper atmosphere).667 The two ideas, of course, do not contradict each other, but there is not the slightest reason to consider Philoponus as being the source for the Arabic distinction. Therefore, since Averroes makes constant use of Alexander’s commentary in his Epitome, we can only conclude that he has preserved, together with the author, Alexander’s lost exegesis of the beginning of GC II 8. Nevertheless, there is no need to suppose that the author had direct access to Alexander’s text. He might have found Alexander’s idea in a later source, such as Olympiodorus, that he had at his disposal.668 There might be further traces of possible ancient influence on the Arabic commentary. After having specified the place where generation and corruption of homoeomerous bodies take place, the author again addresses the question of the status of the primary qualities. He underlines the connection of the present chapter to what has been said before by making a clear allusion to the remissio of forms in mixtures. Thus, unlike Aristotle, he describes the production of the homoeomers as a mixture of the four elemental bodies. His interpretation is that for a homoeomer to be generated, it is necessary that the four elemental bodies be mixed with one another. Aristotle’s argued as follows: For these reasons, then, earth and water exist in them, but also air and fire, since they are the contraries of earth and water (earth is the contrary of air and water of fire, in the way in which it is possible for one substance to be contrary of another). Since, therefore, comings to be are from contraries, and one member of each pair of contraries exists in these things, the other mem666
Philoponus, In GC 278.10-16. Philoponus’ stance appears in Olympiodorus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology. See C. Viano, La matière des choses. Le livre IV des Météorologiques et son interprétation par Olympiodore, Paris, 2006, pp. 153-157. 668 See above, p. 301. 667
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bers must also exist in them; so that all the simple bodies are present in every composite body.669
Aristotle first takes it as empirically obvious that every homoeomer contains in itself earth and water. From this he concludes that air and fire are also present in it. He states this inference twice,670 without, however, explaining the principle at stake. But there is a difficulty. Aristotle seems to confuse the logical condition for change—change takes place between contraries, i.e. contrary “values”—and its physical condition. In other words, it might seem probable, on Aristotle’s premisses, that the four elemental powers are necessary to account for the reciprocal changes of the elements. But that does not necessarily mean that these powers, or “forms”, are present as such (even in a diminished state) in the homoeomers. Be that as it may, the author interprets Aristotle’s passage as an allusion to the mixing (iḫtilāṭ) of the four elemental bodies. On this interpretation, every generation of a homoeomerous body is a case of mixing. The author is not the first commentator to interpret the text this way. This reading is indeed already present in Philoponus’ exegesis: Having shown that water and earth are present in composites, he now proves that fire and air must be present in them too. For if we say that compounds are mixed (µικτά), and it is not any chance things that mix (µίγνυται), but those that are naturally disposed to being affected by each other, and things affected are contraries, it is clear that since there are earth and water, the contraries of these must be there too. And air is contrary to earth, fire to water. So if dry and cold are in a compound through earth, air, which is moist and hot, must also be there so that a mixture (µίξις) of contraries could come about.671
Averroes, on the other hand, is more cautious. In his Middle Commentary as well as in his Epitome, he avoids mentioning the term “mixing” in his description of the process at stake. This term does appear immediately above, when Averroes explains the presence of water in every compound. Aristotle was only saying that the wet (τὸ ὑγρόν) is necessarily present in it 669
Aristotle, GC II 8, 335a 3-9: Γῆ µὲν οὖν καὶ ὕδωρ διὰ ταύτας ἐνυπάρχει τὰς αἰτίας, ἀὴρ δὲ καὶ πῦρ, ὅτι ἐναντία ἐστὶ γῇ καὶ ὕδατι· γῆ µὲν γὰρ ἀέρι, ὕδωρ δὲ πυρὶ ἐναντίον ἐστίν, ὡς ἐνδέχεται οὐσίαν οὐσίᾳ ἐναντίαν εἶναι. Ἐπεὶ οὖν αἱ γενέσεις ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων εἰσίν, ἐνυπάρχει δὲ θάτερα ἄκρα τῶν ἐναντίων, ἀνάγκη καὶ θάτερον ἐνυπάρχειν, ὥστ' ἐν ἅπαντι τῷ συνθέτῳ πάντα τὰ ἁπλᾶ ἐνέσται. 670 See 335a 4-5: ὅτι ἐναντία ἐστὶ γῇ καὶ ὕδατι and 6-7: ἐπεὶ […] αἱ γενέσεις ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων εἰσίν. 671 Philoponus, In GC 279.9-15.
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because otherwise, it would fall apart.672 In both commentaries, Averroes goes a little further than Aristotle and evokes a mixture of earth and water.673 However, in the crucial passage that follows, Averroes, unlike Philoponus and the author, does not explicitly interpret Aristotle’s “composition” (cf. 335a 9: τῷ συνθέτῳ) as a process of “mixing”. In both texts, Averroes follows Aristotle in describing the homoeomer as a composite (murakkab) and not as a mixture.674 This situation is not easily explained. For if Averroes did not want to describe the composition of the elements as a mixture, his characterization of the composite of earth and water as a mixture is rather odd. On the other hand, it hardly seems possible, as already noted, that the absence of the term ‘mixture’ in the rest of the paragraph, both in the Middle Commentary and in the Epitome, should be fortuitous. The most plausible answer, then, seems to be that Averroes was hesitating slightly on this issue, because he considered that the homoeomers ought not to be considered as standard mixtures, even if their status was close to that of mixtures, and hardly describable in other terms. Finally, let us note that this hesitation was probably already integral to Aristotle’s passage. The break between chapters 7 and 8 is of course a modern choice, which should have no bearing on our understanding of the articulation of the text. This being the case, it is undeniable that what is said in “Chapter 8” is the direct sequel of the argument in “Chapter 7”. The commentators cannot be entirely mistaken, then, in reading the argument about composition in “Chapter 8” in the light of what is explicitly said on the topics of mixture in “Chapter 7”. If Aristotle is silent about mixture in “Chapter 8”, it is probably because he himself realized that he was about to take a dangerous path. He thus contented himself with alluding loosely to
672
Aristotle, GC II 8, 334b 34-335a 3. See Averroes, Middle Commentary 124.10-11 Eichner wa-ayḍan fa-inna almutakawwina lammā kāna bi-al-iḫtilāṭi wa-al-iḫtilāṭu innamā yakūnu bi-al-ruṭūbati waǧaba ayḍan li-ḏālika an yakūna al-mā’u ǧuz’an min al-ašyā’i al-mutawallidati ‘alā ǧihati al-iḫtilāṭi and Epitome 25.11-12 wa-lammā kānat al-arḍu laysa yumkinu bi-mā hiya yābisatun anna taqbulu al-inḥiṣāra wa-al-taškīla dūna anna yuḫāliṭa-hā almā’u … 674 Averroes makes a strong use of the term ‘composite’ (murakkab) and that must of course be a conscious choice of his. See Averroes, Middle Commentary 124.12, 14 (twice), 16, 17, 18 Eichner and Epitome 25.13, 14. What Kurland, Epitome, p. 128, renders as “the balanced blending found in the compound” is al-ta‘ādul al-mawǧūd fī al-murakkabi and should therefore be translated as ‘the equal balance found in the compound’. The Arabic al-ta‘ādul does not convey any connotation of blending, but of equality and balance only. 673
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his previous treatment of the contraries,675 speaking of the “composite” (σύνθετον), and quickly reversing from this theoretical dead end.
675
See Aristotle, GC I 7, 324a 8-9.
Section 14: Generation and Destruction and the Celestial Bodies The last section of our text corresponds to Aristotle’s three last chapters: GC II 9, 10 and 11. The author deals successively with the four causes of generation and corruption—material, formal, final, efficient. His treatment of the efficient cause contains some precious indications as to his cosmological views. Matter is the first cause to be addressed. Notably, the author does not begin with the four elements and the homoeomers alone, but also mentions the supralunary world: Generated beings share in common with the celestial bodies the fact of having a substratum and a form; but the difference between them consists in the fact that on the one hand, the substratum of each celestial being is a substratum exclusively for its own form, is not suitable for any other form, and is not a substratum for numerous and opposite forms that it would successively receive; while, on the other hand, the substratum of each of the beings that are subject to generation and destruction is a substratum for a certain form as well as for a form opposed to the prior one. None of them has any precedence over the others, and that is the reason why, although it receives them all, and all these forms are present in it in actuality, it is impossible for them, in virtue of their opposition, to be simultaneously present in it in actuality according to their perfection, and why the substratum must receive them successively, by releasing one of them in order to receive another.676
All physical bodies, in both the supralunary and the sublunary worlds, are compounds of form and matter. But while the supralunary substrates are monovalent, accepting one and only one form, the sublunary ones are plurivalent, accepting a range of different forms. In the case of the elements, they even receive contrary determinations at different times (but not simultaneously). Prima facie, such a distinction is a curious way to deal with generation and corruption. For we have already learnt that generation is the coming to be of a form in a substratum, and corruption its ceasing to be. In previous sections, however, we found no information about the extension of the realm of generation and corruption, the author leaving the question of the celestial bodies undecided. The description of their status only
676
Talḫīṣ 61.17-63.1.
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arrives now. In the passage quoted we learn two important facts about them: (i) The celestial bodies are composite: like other, i.e. sublunary, bodies, they have a substratum and a form. (ii) The substratum of the celestial bodies is suitable for one and only one form: unlike sublunary bodies, they do not receive different forms at different times. Thesis (i) has a Greek flavour, and at first sight it might seem typical for Alexander, who stresses again and again the role of form in his ontology. Moreover, in at least one passage, Alexander says that the celestial bodies have two forms, their soul and the unmoved mover attached to them. The clearest evidence for this is a Greek scholium from Alexander’s lost commentary on the Physics: One should not understand ‘in something’ (τὸ ἔν τινι) as ‘in a place’— given that it was proved to have no parts—or as a form of that in which it resides (ὡς εἴδους ὄντος τοῦ ἐν ᾧ ἐστιν)—for then it would be the soul and actuality of the potentiality of the first body—but as a substance in a substance (ὡς οὐσίας ἐν οὐσίᾳ), immaterial in itself, and not as a form. For if the heaven is indeed ensouled and moves in accordance with the soul in it, which is its form (ὃ εἶδός ἐστιν αὐτοῦ), still in addition to being moved in accordance with the soul in it, it needs something else that provides it with a principle of motion, given that, for all ensouled things, there is something outside that is a cause and principle for them which produces motion in accordance with soul, in respect of place—if indeed impulse and desire for something bring to fulfillment the motion of ensouled things in respect of place.677
In Simplicius’ quotation of this text, the phrase ‘which is its form’ is absent. Yet we should not take it as an interpolation. For it must have been Simplicius who, in virtue of his own ontological agenda, expurgated from Alexander’s text what was too reminiscent of the latter’s hylomorphic stance. This text must be read along with an important passage of Alexander’s commentary on the Metaphysics.678 In this commentary, Alexander draws a distinction between three philosophical disciplines. The first one deals with the unmoved substances, the second with the eternal and moved substances and the third with the generable and corruptible substances. I have suggested elsewhere that we recognize in these three levels three distinct kinds of forms, as suggested by the commentary on the Physics. The 677
See Commentaire perdu, schol. 818, p. 639. I borrow the English translation from P. Adamson and R. Wisnovsky, “Yaḥyā Ibn ‘Adī on the Location of God”, Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 1, 2013, pp. 205-228, p. 208. 678 Alexander, In Metaph. 251.23-38.
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first science is connected with forms entirely separable, the second with the “frozen” forms of the celestial beings, and the third with standard, hylomorphic forms.679 Prima facie, this observation might seem to invite us to attribute the author’s thesis to Alexander. For the first sentence of Section 14 elaborates upon the distinction between the second and the third level of forms, i.e. between “frozen” and “standard” hylomorphic forms. Moreover, the mention of the ‘substratum’ rather than the ‘matter’ of the celestial beings might point to Alexander. For Alexander would probably agree with the idea of a distinction between matter and substratum, and the claim that the heavens have a substratum but are deprived of matter. This is what he does, at any rate, in a brief remark from his commentary on the Metaphysics. Commenting on the statement that “the whole of nature, perhaps, has matter”,680 Alexander says that Aristotle added ‘perhaps’ to ‘the whole nature has matter’ because the body moved in a circle is natural, but its substratum is not matter.681
However, Alexander is not necessarily the author’s direct source. We have an interesting parallel for this doctrine in Olympiodorus’ commentary on the Meteorology. Commenting on the first sentence of Book IV, Olympiodorus writes the following: The aim of the present book is to deal with all homoeomers. But since this is false (for the heavens are homoeomerous, as well as the four elements which are dealt with here) we must add to what is said that this book deals with all homoeomerous composites. But since the heavens are composite as well as the elements (for they are composed out of a matter and a form), we must add “of the homoeomerous composites, those composed out of the four elements”.682
This text is strikingly similar to the passage quoted from the author. They both draw a parallel between the composition of the heavens and that of sublunary beings. They show no sign of apprehension in stating that the celestial bodies have a matter (or a substratum) and a form. Last but not 679
See Essentialisme, pp. 319-322. Aristotle, Metaph. α 3, 995a 17: ἅπασα […] ἴσως ἡ φύσις ἔχει ὕλην. 681 Alexander, In Metaph. 169.17-19: τὸ δὲ ἴσως τῷ ἅπασα γὰρ ἡ φύσις ἔχει ὕλην προσέθηκεν, ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ κυκλοφορικὸν σῶµα φυσικὸν µέν, οὐ µὴν ὕλη τὸ τούτῳ ὑποκείµενον. The question whether there is a matter of the heavens is dealt with in Quaestio I 10. See Essentialisme, pp. 183-184. 682 Olympiodorus, In Meteor. 272.5-11. 680
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least, this form is obviously not interpreted by both authors as a soul, but as a physical determination which explains why the celestial substance, no less than the four elemental bodies, is a homoeomerous body. The second point made by the author about the material cause consists in identifying it with the four elements. He writes: And the matter of all these things subject to generation and destruction consists in the four elements, but the four elements are also subject to generation and destruction, and their generation does not take place out of some other thing distinct from these four […].683
It would go beyond the scope of the present discussion to give a full account of the modern discussion about the notion of prime matter in Aristotle. In short, the issue at stake is to determine whether prime matter is a merely logical or abstract object, the function of which is to play the role of a substratum for the elements in their reciprocal change, or whether it is endowed as such with some physical consistency. The traditional account of the polemics often claims that the “traditional interpretation”, which holds that prime matter has the status of a physical being for Aristotle, was first criticized by H. R. King in his 1956 paper.684 King suggested that the tradition had mixed together an abstract concept, stemming from a logical analysis of sensible substance, and a physical entity identifiable as a part of the world’s furniture. The notion of a “physical” prime matter is therefore neither per se understandable, nor does it conform to what Aristotle thought, nor even to what he wrote, if we submit his texts dealing with matter to closer scrutiny. On this interpretation, Aristotle’s constant position consists in maintaining that the ultimate material cause is the four elemental bodies—fire, air, water and earth. It is true that modern discussions of Aristotle’s prime matter started with King’s rebuttal of the notion. Yet, it is not entirely accurate to claim that the ancient commentators were unanimous in their defence of the physical existence of prime matter. They probably felt the same difficulty as their modern successors. An interesting case is provided by Olympiodorus’ commentary on the Meteorology. As Cristina Viano has shown, the Alexandrian pupils of Ammonius distinguished between Plato’s matter, which they identified with the χώρα of the Timaeus, and Aristotle’s mate-
683
Talḫīṣ 63.2-3. See H. R. King, “Aristotle without prima materia”, Journal of the History of Ideas 17, 1956, pp. 270-389. 684
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rial cause, which they identified with the four elements.685 She quotes the following passage: It is a law of nature, that to the different forms belong different proximate matters, as to the horse and the throne. For these, being different forms, also have a different proximate matter, the former ensouled, the latter without soul, even if they have the same remote matter. For the four elements belong to both as matter.686
Thus, Olympiodorus assimilated Aristotle’s remote matter to the four elements. Although it would be too rash to conclude from this that he held the same position as those modern scholars denying any form of physical existence to prime matter as opposed to the four elements, it is nonetheless significant that in this context at least—that of Aristotle’s chemistry— Olympiodorus claimed that the four elements were the remote, i.e. prime, matter. We find Olympiodorus’ interpretation again in the Arabic text. Already in the first section, the author equates the material cause with the four elements. Let us recall this sentence: It is not the case that all of them [sc. the things subject to generation and destruction] have a general form, but they all have a general substratum, viz. the four elements. For each of these is generated out of the other, while the rest of the generated beings are generated out of them all simultaneously.687
Such a parallel indicates that the author was really keen on equating the cause of generation and destruction with the four elements. That fact is all the more remarkable in the context of a paraphrase of GC, which, of all of Aristotle’s treatises, seems to lend the most support to the notion of prime matter. C. J. W. Williams, for instance, lists no less than eleven passages in this work in which Aristotle might appear to be committed to this thesis.688
685
Viano, La matière des choses, pp. 144-149. Olympiodorus, In Meteor. 168.27-31: νόµος ἐστὶ φυσικός, ὥστε τῶν διαφόρων εἰδῶν διαφόρους εἶναι καὶ τὰς προσεχεῖς ὕλας, οἷον ἵππου καὶ θρόνου· ταῦτα γὰρ διάφορα ὄντα εἴδη καὶ διάφορον ἔχουσι τὴν προσεχῆ ὕλην, τὸ µὲν ἔµψυχον, τὸ δ' ἄψυχον, τὴν µέντοι πόρρω τὴν αὐτήν· ἄµφω γὰρ ὕλη ἐστὶ τὰ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα (ἄµφω in the last sentence is the indeclinable genitive form of the pronoun). 687 Talḫīṣ 7.10-12. 688 GC 319a 29-b 4, 320a 2-5, 320b 12-14, 322b 11-21, 328a 19-22, 329a 24-35, 332a 17-20, 332a 35-b 1, 334a 15-25, 334b 2-7, 335a 32-b 6. See Williams, Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, pp. 211-219. 686
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As in Olympiodorus, this agreement with the unorthodox view is of course only part of the evidence. For as we observed when commenting on Sections 2, 3 and 4, the author often claims that the four elements, with their different forms, share a unique matter. This matter is never deprived of form. It is always the matter of a composite of matter and form. When one form is present in actuality, the other, contrary form is present in potentiality. But that is precisely the way the traditional interpretation described prime matter. How should we interpret Olympiodorus’ and the author’s solution? Probably by drawing a distinction between matter as a part of the composite and matter as a cause for generation and destruction. When matter is envisaged as a part of the compound substance, it is not a cause for generation and destruction, because, being one and the same, it cannot by itself explain change, which implies a dynamic duality. As a part of the composite, matter is only a constitutive element for it, integral to its identity, to its being what it is. On the other hand, when matter is taken as a cause for generation and destruction, it is none other than the four elements, because the required dynamic duality is present in them: the two pairs of elements explain, from a material point of view, the constitution of what is generated and corrupted qua generated and corrupted (and not qua mere compounds). This idea of a difference between the generation and the being of the generated being is interesting. If we fail to distinguish the elements as a material cause of generation from the prime matter as a material cause of being, we miss the point at stake in Aristotle’s treatise, and its articulation with the rest of the natural treatises, the Meteorology in particular.689 The third aspect in the author’s treatment of matter which seems of some interest consists in the role played by the notion of composition, or combination (al-tarkīb), in his description of the homoeomers: And the matter of all these things subject to generation and destruction consists in the four elements, but the four elements are also subject to generation and destruction, and their generation does not take place out of some other thing distinct from these four, in such a way that they would be generated out of it, either like when a form changes in totality, as when air is generated 689
As a matter of fact, Olympiodorus follows Alexander on this issue as on many others. See Alexander, In Meteor. 224.12-16: “For it is least of all clear what the particular purpose is of each of these bodies [i.e. the elements], in which matter plays the greatest part, that is, which are nearer to matter. Those are nearest to matter which are the first to be produced out of matter, and these are the elements. Hence in compounds these have the definition of matter”. On this text, see E. Lewis, Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Aristotle Meteorology 4, London, 1996, pp. 21-26.
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from water, or according to combination (‘alā waǧhi al-tarkīb), as when plants are generated from the elements.690
What he means by this is to some extent explained in what follows immediately: However, they are generated from one another in the same way as we made clear for all the things generated from the elements. For everything generated among the elements and bodies other than the elements is generated from the elements, except that in the case of the elements, they are generated out of a single element and the change is total, whereas in the case of the other beings subject to generation, they are generated out of all the elements, and the change is not total.691
Basically, the author claims, every generation is an elemental transformation. When one of the four elements is transformed into another, the change is total (kullī). By this the author means that nothing remains from the previous element. It could be objected that when the two elements in question share an elemental quality in common, this quality remains. But this quality exists only as a part of the form. It has no real existence of its own. At the physical level of the composite, only the matter and the (total) form exist. Thus, from the point of view of the form, elemental change is not a change taking place out of an element, but a change taking place from an element. When element A is transformed into element B, nothing from A, i.e. nothing of its form, remains in B. By contrast, when a homoeomer, such as a plant, is generated, it is not generated from the four elements, but out of them, because “the change is not total”. As we have already been told, this is the direct consequence of the fact that in a mixture, the elements remain in reduced actuality. Therefore, in the author’s view it is equivalent to speak of “combination” or “mixing”. Or rather, he thus stresses two different aspects of the same process. The word ‘combination’ refers to the formal, perhaps even combinatorial, aspect of the transformation, while ‘mixing’ refers to its physical reality, i.e. to the actual action and passion taking place. The conjoint use of these two terms appeared in the previous section. For in §§ 13.3 and 4, the author was already saying: And none of the mixture’s constituents exists in it in actuality, endowed with the same power it had previously, because their combination (tarkību-hā) is 690 691
Talḫīṣ 63.2-5. Talḫīṣ 63.5-9.
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neither being adjacent—for it is a mixing (iḫtilāṭan) and a unification—nor a total destruction—since the destruction of an element cannot but lead to an element contrary to the first […]. Therefore, they produce something different and intermediate, a homoeomer resulting from the combination of (murakkabun min) all the entities in which these constituents exist in potentiality. And although this combination (hāḏā al-tarkību) can be subject to an endless excess and defect of its constituents, however, as far as nature is concerned, it is something definite and limited, because it is not the case that every combination (kullu tarkībin) produces everything; for on the contrary, flesh is endowed with a given combination (tarkībun mā), bone with another, iron with another again, and everything in the same way.692
In the first sentence of the first paragraph, the author equates combination and mixing. More precisely, he claims that ‘combination’ is a genus, the species of which are ‘mixing’ and ‘being adjacent’. The ‘combination’ of the elements producing the various homoeomers is a mixing and not merely being adjacent. In what follows, the author makes considerable use of the term ‘combination’. Even though it is a mixing and not a being adjacent, it is subject to the law of numerical proportions. Admittedly, proportions are indefinitely variable. The amount of fire, for instance, can theoretically be 10, 102, 103, etc. superior to the amount of earth. In practice, however, and “as far as nature is concerned” (‘inda al-ṭabī‘ati) their mutual proportion cannot exceed a certain range of values. We must distinguish the infinite set of all the possible quadruplets of values from the finite subset of the quadruplets of values realized in nature, i.e. actually able to produce something—a homoeomer. As we saw in the previous chapter, these quadruplets themselves have a “latitude” of possible realisations. In short, the author’s doctrine is that there is a finite set of ranges of four-dimensional values, each single range being constitutive of a specific homoeomer. Such an interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise in terms of combinatorics sits well in the general context of Arabic learning. We can begin with a lexical remark. In GC, Aristotle defines the homoeomer produced out of the four elements as the ‘composite’, τὸ σύνθετον.693 The translators rendered this family of terms by the second form of the root r-k-b.694 Its maṣdar, in particular, al-tarkīb, is the current translation of ἡ σύνθεσις. In an epistemological context, for instance, al-tarkīb designates the synthesis,
692
Talḫīṣ 59.16-61.1. See above, pp. 304-306. 694 See above, p. 305, n. 674. 693
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by contrast to al-taḥlīl, the analysis.695 However, the English word ‘composition’ is not perfectly adapted to convey the double meaning present in the Arabic al-tarkīb used in the sense of ‘composition’. For it means not only composition, but also combination. A tarkīb of a given set is more than the mere composition of its items, it is also their arrangement in a given order. That is the reason the term was employed for all types of combinatorial inquiries. As early as the 8th c., the great lexicographer al-Ḫalīl ibn Aḥmad had proposed a combinatorial analysis of language according to which the roots of the Arabic language are considered as the phonologically realized subset of all the possible combinations of n letters, with 1 < n ≤ 5.696 Later, in the 9th and 10th c., some alchemists, belonging mostly to the tradition of Ğābir b. Ḥayyān, would adapt this lexicographical model to their own purposes. In the same way that words are made of letters, substances would be classified according to the possible combinations of their basic properties.697 It seems likely that this is the idea lurking in the background of our text. This hypothesis is to some extent confirmed from the way in which the author describes not only the material, but also the formal cause of generation and destruction. He says in § 14.2: And the forms of the things subject to generation are multiple, each of them being endowed with a different type of elemental combination (min tarkībi al-usṭuqussāt).698
Thus, the notion of combination is prominent on two levels, material and formal. From a material point of view, the combination is still potential, and that is probably why the term al-tarkīb, in such a context, is translatable as “composition”. However, it does not designate any kind of composition, but a composition which, in order to become actual, must realize itself as a particular combination. Composition is to combination as matter to form. 695
All this is well-known. For one example among many others, see the Arabic translation of the first line of Galen’s Ars Medica in R. Rashed, “La philosophie des mathématiques d’Ibn al-Haytham”, MIDEO 21, 1993, pp. 87-275, pp. 272-275. 696 For a cursory presentation, see S. Wild, Das Kitāb al-‘Ain und die arabische Lexikographie, Wiesbaden, 1965, pp. 26-37. 697 See P. Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, Contribution à l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam. Jābir et la science grecque, reprint Paris, 1986, p. 173, n. 1 and p. 239, n. 10. 698 Talḫīṣ 63.10-11.
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This parallel between composition and combination on the one hand, matter and form on the other affected the later tradition of combinatorial analysis. When the mathematician al-Ḥalabī, for instance, attempted to classify the different kinds of “combinable eventualities” (al-iḥtimālāt altarkībiyya),699 he will name the number of eventual combinations of n objects taken k at a time, or Cnk , the ‘matter’ (al-mādda) of the k-species and, on the other hand, the number of eventual arrangements of the same kspecies, or Ank , the “composite of matter and form” (maǧmū‘ al-mādda waal-ṣūra). Furthermore, the form (al-ṣūra) of a given k-species is nothing but the number of all the eventual permutations of its objects, namely k!. That explains why Ank = k! · Cnk . There is one matter for k! forms possibly belonging to it, i.e. one composition for k! combinations. Finally, al-Ḥalabī reckons the combinable eventualities of matter and form with repetition (tikrār) for each k-species taken from a set of n objects, namely nk. Strikingly enough, Leibniz uses the very same terminology.700 In De l’horizon de la doctrine humaine, he writes: Pour prendre les choses de plus haut, il faut considerer que les Variations sont de la matière, ou de la forme, ou de toutes deux. Celles de la matière seule sont les Combinaisons, qui ne different, que parce qu’il y a une lettre ou note dans l’une qui n’est pas dans l’autre. Les Combinaisons sont simples ou redoublées. Les Combinaisons simples sont differentes selon le nombre des ingredians, sçavoir les solunions ou monades, comme a, b, c, etc. (s’il est permis de comprendres les monades sous les combinaisons, comme l’unité se comprend sous les nombres), les binions, comme ab, ac, bc, etc., les ternions, comme abc, abd, acd, bcd. Et ainsi de suite. […] Quant aux variations de la forme, on pourroit considerer le voisinage, les intervalles plus ou moins grands, et plusieurs circonstances, mais je n’y veux et ne dois considerer presentement que l’ordre. […] Quand il y a du redoublement mêlé dans les combinaisons, il est encor aisé de trouver le nombre de variations que la transposition peut produire, mais je ne veux pas maintenant m’y amuser; parce que j’ay expliqué cy dessus un
699
See R. Rashed, “Combinatoire et métaphysique: Ibn Sīnā, al-Ṭūsī et al-Ḥalabī”, in R. Rashed and J. Biard (eds), Les doctines de la science à l’âge classique, Leuven, 1999, pp. 61-86, pp. 73-75. 700 On this, see M. Rashed, “Théodicée et approximation: Avicenne”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10, 2000, pp. 223-257, p. 252, n. 70 and R. Rashed, “Algebra e linguistica: gli inizi dell’analisi combinatoria”, in Storia della Scienza, vol. III, Roma, 2002, pp. 86-93, p. 93.
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moyen general qui donne toutes les variations ensemble, soit de la matière ou de la forme.701
We can present the evidence in the following table: Modern notation Cnk
Ank k! nk
al-Ḥalabī
Leibniz
matter (“mādda”) composite of matter and form (“maǧmū‘ al-mādda wa-al-ṣūra”) form (“ṣūra”)
matter (“matiere”)
matter and form with repetition (“tikrār”)
form without repetition (“forme … quand il n’y a point de redoublement”) Matter and form with repetition (“Quand il y a du redoublement mêlé dans les combinaisons […] toutes les variations ensemble, soit de la matière ou de la forme”)
Even if in L’horizon Leibniz does not explicitly mention the arrangements without repetition ( Ank ), it is clear from his characterization of the arrangements with repetition (nk) as referring to matter and form that he would have assumed the same thesis in the former case. This being the case, the classification propounded in al-Ḥalabī and Leibniz is identical. To the form understood in this way we should assimilate the end. The author writes “that the forms, in the case of natural beings, are the ends”. This is what Aristotle himself suggests in the corresponding section of GC: So generation and corruption belong necessarily to what is capable of being and not being. That is why it is the cause by way of matter of things which come to be: the cause by way of ‘that for the sake of which’ is the shape or form, and this is the definition of the essence of each thing. 702
This doctrine finds echoes in Phys. II 8. Commenting on this passage, Philoponus says:
701
G. W. Leibniz, De l’horizon de la doctrine humaine—Ἀποκατάστασις πάντων (la Restitution Universelle), textes inédits, traduits et annotés par M. Fichant, Paris, 1991, pp. 46-49. 702 Aristotle, GC II 9, 335b 4-7.
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Having discussed material cause, he now treats separately of the form, saying that form is the essential rational principle of each thing. He terms it ‘that for the sake of which’, explaining that formal cause concurs with the final cause, as he said in the Physics too. For indeed nature has it as its goal and end to produce the form of each thing in matter, and that which results and which supervenes on matter, in fact, is form.703
Since the author was previously dealing with the homoeomers, it is likely that he still includes them under the general scope of the “natural beings” (al-umūr al-ṭabī‘iyya). If this is so, the various possible combinations of the four elements are not just a material or formal fact, but also a natural aim for nature. The meaning of λόγος, or definitional formula, to which Aristotle alludes in such contexts,704 should be understood as a chemical formula, i.e. a numerical proportion between basic constituents. Admittedly, the author evokes no actual proportions, nor even the presence of numbers that could be attached to the basic qualities forming the elements. But this absence is not necessarily to be explained by the lack of chemical tools which would have allowed him to analyse the constituents of the homoeomerous bodies. For in his time, alchemists were not just eccentric people pretending to turn lead into gold.705 Some of them were also seriously engaged in the project of discovering and classifying the manifold properties of material substances. Similarly, in virtue of his interpretation of GC II 6 in terms of elemental ‘powers’,706 at this stage the author is only presupposing that it is not out of our reach to measure the interacting ‘powers’ of the four elements. Each element can be associated with a distinctive ‘power’ responsible for its degree of interaction with the other three elements. Mixing in nature must occur according to combinatorial laws, which will verify the “equations” expressing the various combinations of these powers. Under the influence of this combinatorial model, Aristotle’s GC is being read here, perhaps for the first time in history, as laying down the foundations for a pre-chemical alchemy. The last part of the chapter consists in a presentation of the efficient cause of generation and corruption. This constitutes the central topic of GC II 910. Aristotle, as is well known, identifies the efficient cause of generation and destruction with the motion of the Sun on the ecliptic. By its regular 703
Philoponus, In GC 285.2-7. See Aristotle, Phys. II 9, 200a 14-15. 705 For an overview, see A. Y. al-Hassan, “Tecnologia della chimica”, Storia della Scienza, pp. 667-686. 706 See above, p. 292, our comments on § 13.1. 704
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variations throughout the solar year, the Sun brings about life cycles on earth. As we shall see shortly, however, the author’s presentation is only remotely related to Aristotle’s treatment of the question. Even though he deals with the efficient cause of generation, he does not mention the sun or the ecliptic, and he seems concerned with another purpose. Our main task will be to understand and reconstruct his agenda. Let us begin by quoting § 14.4: With regard to the agent, in the case of animals and plants which reproduce themselves, the agent is what they are born from, and the process takes place with the collaboration of the celestial bodies; but in the case of those among them that do not reproduce themselves, the agent consists of the celestial bodies, since it is in virtue of the changing state of the celestial bodies that their own state is submitted to generation, destruction and change—they are therefore tied to them. In the case of the impressions in the atmosphere, they are produced by the celestial bodies, since their generation and destruction, as well as their various states, follow from the different states in the celestial bodies. Thus, the impressions in the atmosphere, as well as the animals and the plants that are generated and destroyed in virtue of the seasons of the year and of the different states in the celestial bodies without reproduction, have as their proximate agent cause heat and coldness, and as their remote cause the celestial bodies; for the heat and the coldness which are their agent result from the celestial bodies. With regard to the animals and plants that reproduce themselves, those whose reproduction has some knowable period are more in need of celestial influences than those who reproduce themselves in whatever state of the celestial bodies.707
What the author says is straightforward: there are three categories of generated beings in the sublunary world. The first is constituted by species which reproduce themselves at any time of the year, the second by species which reproduce themselves at definite periods of the year, and the third by the species of spontaneously generated beings. For convenience in the following discussion, let us name them respectively the A-species, B-species and C-species. The author claims that the celestial bodies are the sole efficient cause of generation for the C-species, while the A- and B-species are caused by both a generator similar to themselves and the celestial bodies. Among these, the B-species are more in need of celestial collaboration than the A-species. We note two important differences between this account and what we read in Aristotle’s last chapters. First, the author mentions only the “celestial bodies” throughout the paragraph, and does not say a word about the 707
Talḫīṣ 63.13-22.
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sun as such or the ecliptic. Secondly, the distinction between these three categories of biological species is wholly absent from Aristotle’s treatise. In GC, Aristotle is silent about spontaneous generation, and draws no distinction between A- and B-species. More precisely, he seems to consider every species as a kind of B-species, i.e. as being generated according to definite cycles and periods.708 Interestingly, these divergences bear on two Aristotelian questions which were heartily disputed among the Greek, Arab and Latin commentators. The question of the different categories of generated beings is at stake when the commentators address the question of spontaneous generation and the synonymy principle in generation, while the replacement of the sun by the heavens as a whole raises the question of the celestial influences of the supralunary on the sublunary world and of the relationships between cosmology and astrology. Let us begin with the first issue, that of living beings produced by spontaneous generation (our C-species). Aristotle, Theophrastus, and all the ancient commentators claim that some living beings are generated out of inert stuff.709 This biological claim bears heavily on metaphysics, for one of Aristotle’s main objections against Plato’s theory of the Forms is that it is incapable of accounting for the generation of living beings.710 According to Aristotle, generation cannot be explained simply by claiming that sensible individuals come to share in a Form. We must postulate a process of reproduction, and reproduction in turn takes place in virtue of the synonymy principle, according to which the father and his offspring share the same nature. “A man begets a man, and the Sun as well”, says Aristotle,711 and this oft-repeated motto encapsulates much of what he has to say against Plato’s ontology.712 Under such conditions, it comes as no surprise that 708
See GC II 10, 336b 10-26. See Aristotle, GA III 11. On this beautiful chapter, see D. Balme, “Development of Biology in Aristotle and Theophrastus: Theory of Spontaneous Generation”, Phronesis 7, 1962, pp. 91-104; A. Gotthelf, “Teleology and Spontaneous Generation: a Discussion”, Apeiron 22, 1989, pp. 181-193; J. G. Lennox, “Teleology, Chance, and Aristotle’s Theory of Spontaneous Generation”, The Journal of History of Philosophy 20, 1982, pp. 219-238 (reprinted in J. G. Lennox, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 229-249); S. Stavrianeas, “Spontaneous Generation in Aristotle’s Biology”, Rhizai: A Journal of Ancient Philosophy and Science 5, 2008, pp. 303-338. 710 See GC II 9, 335b 7-16. 711 See Phys. II 2, 194b 13. Cf. Metaph. Λ 5, 1071a 20-24. 712 On this issue, see K. Oehler, “Ein Mensch zeugt einen Menschen. Über den Missbrauch der Sprachanalyse in der Aristotelesforschung”, Antike Philosophie und byzantinisches Mittelalter, Munich, 1969, pp. 95-145 and J. G. Lennox, “Are Aristotelian Species Eternal?”, in A. Gotthelf (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things. 709
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spontaneous generation might have been used by some Platonists as a weapon against Aristotle’s attacks.713 The fact that some animals’ generation does not take place according to the synonymy principle was a powerful counterexample indeed. For if at least one kind of living being, according to Aristotle himself, is generated from inert matter, then the synonymy principle is not necessary for the production of a form. And in this case, Aristotle’s rebuttal of Plato’s Ideas collapses. This is the reason the Aristotelian commentators tried to solve the aporia of spontaneous generation systematically. It looks as if we could distinguish two main lines of thought, the first—that of Themistius and Ammonius—more Platonic, the second—that of Averroes—more Aristotelian. There is no extant text of Alexander in which he addresses the question of spontaneous generation. But we can reconstruct his position by means of a quotation in Asclepius reporting Ammonius’ teaching on book Z of the Metaphysics, and of an allusion of Averroes in his commentary on Metaphysics Λ. Themistius’ text belongs to his commentary on book Λ. This work is lost in Greek, but wholly preserved in a Hebrew translation made from the Arabic, and also partially in Arabic.714 Averroes’ and Asclepius’ reflections are well-known. Both shed light on Alexander’s views about spontaneous generation. Commenting on the end of Metaph. Z 9, Asclepius addresses the two issues set forth by Aristotle.715 He first deals with the synonymy principle, and argues, following Aristotle, that the exception represented by spontaneously generated beings should be explained by taking into account the matter from which they come.716 They come to be in virtue of the fact that this preexisting matter has in itself the capacity of being moved in such a way as to give birth to the form of the living being. Spontaneous generation is thus certainly an exception to the synonymy principle, but an exception that can nonetheless
Philosophical and Historical Studies presented to David M. Balme on his Seventieth Birthday, Pittsburgh / Bristol, 1985, pp. 67-94 (reprinted in Lennox, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology, pp. 131-159). 713 Whether such refutations were real or virtual remains unclear. They were taken seriously, at any rate, by Aristotelian scholars, as will be shown. 714 See Thémistius, Paraphrase de la Métaphysique d’Aristote (livre lambda), traduit de l’hébreu et de l’arabe, introduction, notes et indices par R. Brague, Paris, 1999. 715 Metaph. Z 9, respectively 1034a 21-b 7 and 1034b 7-19. 716 See Aristotle, Metaph. Z 9, 1034b 4-7: “And the case of spontaneous generation is similar, for it occurs where the matter is capable of being set in motion both by itself and by the seed, in just the same way. Where this is not so, the things cannot come into being in any other way than from their own kind” (transl. Bostock).
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be explained in Aristotelian terms. This gives rise to the following comments by Asclepius: Having said these things, he immediately puts them under scrutiny, saying that, just as in the case of products of art, we see something produced by art and by chance, it is the same in the case of natural things. For health is produced by the doctor, but it is also generated by chance, since the nature which is in the body naturally resists and assists herself by dilating, for instance, a cavity and guiding the flow of blood, or producing some trouble of the stomach, and all this kind of thing which occurs when the body is moved in a natural way. We see then the same things, he says, also in the case of natural things. Some of them indeed are generated by a seed and an efficient cause (for a man begets a man, and a horse a horse), while others are not generated from a seed, but from some putrefaction, in the way bees are generated from the putrefaction of a dead bull, and other animals from some other putrefaction—as, according to what people say, snakes are generated from human corpses.717
It is at this stage that Asclepius introduces his first quotation from Alexander: But as Alexander says, if someone takes basil and puts it under a well humidified brick, scorpions cannot help but be fathered in this place.718
This sentence is followed by a passage which might either be the continuation of Alexander’s quotation, or some reflections made by Asclepius on the basis of Alexander—which for us amounts more or less to the same thing:
717
Asclepius, In Metaph. 407.32-408.4: Ταῦτα εἰρηκὼς ζητεῖ ἐφεξῆς, καί φησιν ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῶν τεχνητῶν ὁρῶµεν καὶ ἀπὸ τέχνης γινόµενόν τι καὶ ἐκ ταὐτοµάτου, οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν φυσικῶν. τὴν γὰρ ὑγείαν ποιεῖ καὶ ὁ ἰατρός, γίνεται δὲ καὶ ἐκ ταὐτοµάτου, ἐπειδὴ πέφυκεν ἡ φύσις ἡ ἐν τῷ σώµατι ἐπανίστασθαι καὶ βοηθεῖν ἑαυτῇ ἀναστοµοῦσα, εἰ τύχοι, ἀγγεῖον καὶ ῥύσιν αἵµατος φέρουσα ἢ τάραξιν γαστρὸς ποιοῦσα καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα γίνεται τοῦ σώµατος φυσικῶς κινουµένου. οὕτως οὖν, φησίν, ὁρῶµεν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν φυσικῶν πραγµάτων. τὰ µὲν γὰρ γίνεται ὑπὸ σπέρµατος καὶ ποιητικοῦ αἰτίου· ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ, καὶ ἵππος ἵππον· τὰ δὲ οὐκ ἐκ σπέρµατος ἀλλ' ἐκ σήψεως, ὥσπερ γίνονται µέλιτται ἐκ τοῦ τεθνεῶτος ταύρου σηποµένου, καὶ πάλιν τινὰ ζῷα ἐξ ἄλλης σήψεως. καὶ ὥς φασιν, ὄφεις γίνονται ἐκ τῶν ἀνθρωπείων σωµάτων. 718 Asclepius, In Metaph. 408.4-7: ὡς δέ φησιν ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, ἐάν τις λάβοι τὴν ὤκιµον βοτάνην καὶ ὑποθείη αὐτὴν πλίνθῳ καθυγρασµένῃ, πάντως σκορπίοι τίκτονται ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ τόπῳ.
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Here also, he makes matter responsible, saying that the seed of the drone has the same relation to the production of the bee as the natural formula which is in the corpse of the dead bull, and similarly in the case of the other beings generated out of some putrefaction. Where, therefore, we find some matter endowed with the power of being moved by itself, i.e. without seed, living beings are generated which are also capable of being generated from a seed. This is what we have just said in the case of bees. For they are generated from the dead ox as well as from the seed of the drone. But in case there is no demiurgic formula, it is impossible for generation to take place without seed.719
If these lines are a direct quotation from Alexander, the third person singular pronoun throughout the passage necessarily refers to Aristotle. If, on the other hand, it is Asclepius who is speaking in his own name, the third persons are ambiguous. They may refer either to Aristotle or to Alexander explaining Aristotle. In both cases, it seems likely that the text has preserved the substance of Alexander’s exegesis of the passage. If this is so, Alexander reinterpreted Aristotle’s mention of ‘the matter’ (ἡ ὕλη) at 1034b 5 in a subtle way. On his interpretation, the matter turns out first to be the ‘natural formula’ (ὁ λόγος ὁ φυσικός). It is no longer, as in Aristotle, matter simpliciter, but matter “endowed with the power (δύναµις) of being moved by itself”; and again, this power is characterized as being an incarnation of the ‘demiurgic formula’, the λόγος δηµιουργικός. After ten lines or so, we end up with a description of Aristotle’s matter as a hylomorphic form.720 Asclepius then addresses the very end of Chapter 9.721 Aristotle argues in favour of the ungenerability of the form, which he distinguishes from the ungenerability of beings in other categories, such as qualities and quantities. Forms as well as qualities and quantities arise together with matter. They cannot be separated from it. But there is a difference: while substance, i.e. form, is generated from a previous substance, the other categories do not need to be pre-existent: 719
Asclepius, In Metaph. 408.7-15: πάλιν οὖν καὶ ἐνταῦθα τὴν ὕλην αἰτιᾶται καί φησιν ὅτι ὃν λόγον ἔχει τὸ σπέρµα τοῦ κηφῆνος πρὸς τὸ ποιεῖν µέλιτταν, τὸν αὐτὸν ἔχει λόγον καὶ ὁ λόγος ὁ φυσικὸς ὁ ἐν τῷ σώµατι τοῦ τεθνεῶτος ταύρου· ὁµοίως δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν ἐκ σήψεως γινοµένων. ὅπου οὖν εὑρεθῇ ἡ ὕλη δύναµιν ἔχουσα τοῦ κινεῖσθαι ὑφ' ἑαυτῆς καὶ ἄνευ σπέρµατος, γίνεται τὰ ζῷα, δυνάµενα καὶ ὑπὸ σπέρµατος γίνεσθαι, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν µελιττῶν εἰρήκαµεν· γίνεται γὰρ καὶ ὑπὸ τεθνεῶτος βοὸς καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ σπέρµατος τοῦ κηφῆνος· ὅπου δὲ οὐκ ἔστι λόγος δηµιουργικός, ἄνευ σπέρµατος ἀδύνατόν ἐστι γενέσθαι. 720 For a similar move in Alexander’s commentary on GC I 5, see above, p. 179. 721 Metaph. Z 9, 1034b 7-19.
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But we can see from this discussion that it is peculiar to substances that for their generation there must already be another substance present, actually existing, which produces them: if, for instance, an animal is to be produced, an animal must already be present. But if a thing comes to be somehow qualified or quantified, this is not necessary: the quality or quantity need only pre-exist potentially.722
Four difficulties arise from this text. The first is that we do not immediately grasp the connection with what precedes it. The second is to understand what something deprived of any quality and any quantity would look like. It seems necessary, then, that quality and quantity pre-exist as well. The third bears on the function of the example “for instance, an animal”. If we adopt a charitable interpretation, the example does not exclude the possibility of an animal coming from something other than an animal, provided it is a substance. On a strict interpretation, however, an animal must necessarily be generated from an animal. But in this case, we have a contradiction with what has just been said above about spontaneous generation. The fourth difficulty elaborates on the third: how are we supposed to identify, in the case of the “charitable” interpretation, the pre-existent substance at stake? Let us read what Asclepius says on this range of issues: Having said these things he says immediately afterwards that as we have shown that it is impossible for the form to be generated itself by itself, in the same way this it impossible for quantity, quality or any other category. Indeed, they have their being in the matter. Substances nevertheless differ from accidents insofar as substances are generated out of other, pre-existing substances, for a man begets a man (Alexander, however, raises a puzzle as to which kind of substance pre-exists in the case of the things generated from putrefaction, and he makes the motion of the celestial bodies responsible for that; as for ourselves, we say for the sake of completeness that these beings also are generated from another substance, e.g. the putrescent bodies), while accidents are not generated from other pre-existing accidents. For the white is not such as to be itself by itself, nor does it produce another white. White indeed is generated also out of not-white, for instance out of such a blending or such a motion. And the same holds true in the case of the other colours. 723 722
Aristotle, Metaph. Ζ 9, 1034b 16-19. Asclepius, In Metaph. 408.15-27: ταῦτα εἰρηκώς φησιν ἐφεξῆς ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐδείξαµεν ὅτι οὐ δυνατόν ἐστι τὸ εἶδος γίνεσθαι αὐτὸ καθ' αὐτό, οὕτω οὐδὲ τὸ ποσὸν οὐδὲ τὸ ποιὸν οὐδὲ ἄλλην τινὰ κατηγορίαν. ἐν γὰρ τῇ ὕλῃ τὸ εἶναι ἔχουσι· πλὴν διαφέρουσιν αἱ οὐσίαι τῶν συµβεβηκότων, ὅτι αἱ µὲν οὐσίαι ἐξ ἄλλων οὐσιῶν γίνονται προϋφεστηκυιῶν· ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ (ἀπορεῖ δὲ ὁ Ἀλέξανδρος, ὅτι ἐπὶ τῶν ἐκ σήψεως γινοµένων ποία οὐσία προϋφέστηκε; καὶ αἰτιᾶται τὴν τῶν οὐρανίων κίνησιν. ἡµεῖς δὲ λέγοµεν ἐπιβάλλοντες, ὅτι κἀκεῖνα ἐξ ἑτέρας οὐσίας γίνονται, οἷον τῶν 723
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Thus, according to Asclepius, this section is a continuation of the discussion in Ζ 8. The last sentences of this chapter are: “The complete result, such a kind of form in this flesh and bones, is Callias or Socrates. What makes them different is their matter, which is different; but they are the same in form, since their form is indivisible”.724 Then, inserted between the beginning of Z 9 and 1034b 7, we must assume the presence of a long parenthesis within an argument attempting to show that there is no determination (neither formal nor accidental) existing separately from matter. It will be objected that a colour must pre-exist another colour, in the same way as a substance must pre-exist a substance. But this is a mistake. For the pre-existing colour is not an efficient cause of the colour that will be generated. Of course a body with a certain colour can be transformed into another body with another colour. But it is not the first colour which produces the second one in the same way as the father produces the offspring. But what happens with substance? How should we interpret Aristotle’s example? If the ‘animal’ mentioned is just one instance among others of what could be the case; if, in other words, we could find some cases where the efficient cause of a substance is a substance but not a substance strictly synonymous with the first, which substance should we consider an efficient cause for the spontaneously generated living beings? At this point Asclepius expresses his disagreement with Alexander. He wants us to believe that Alexander suggested identifying this cause with a motion—namely, the motion of the celestial spheres. It is possible, however, according to Asclepius, to maintain for all cases the principle that a substance comes from a substance. We just have to consider the putrescent stuffs producing bees, scorpions and the like as substances. It seems very unlikely (to me at least) that Alexander adopted such a curious interpretation. How could he have explained a passage laying it down that every substance is generated out of another substance with the bare statement that some substances are not generated out of other substances, but from motions? This is all the more puzzling because “motion” and “blending” are precisely examples of how Asclepius could have explained the generation of accidental determinations—and nothing here suggests that Ammonius’ pupil is departing from what he reads in Alexander’s lost commentary.
σεσηπότων σωµάτων)· τὰ µέντοι γε συµβεβηκότα οὐ γίνεται ἐξ ἄλλων προϋφεστώτων συµβεβηκότων. οὐ γάρ ἐστι τὸ λευκὸν αὐτὸ καθ' αὑτὸ καὶ ποιεῖ ἄλλο λευκόν· γίνεται γὰρ λευκὸν καὶ ἐξ οὐ λευκοῦ, οἷον ὑπὸ τοιᾶσδε κράσεως καὶ κινήσεως· ὁµοίως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων χρωµάτων. 724 Metaph. Z 8, 1034a 5-8.
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Averroes’ discussion of spontaneous generation helps greatly with this puzzle. To cut a long story short, Averroes seems to attribute to Alexander two solutions to the puzzle of spontaneous generation. The first is more radical, since it seems to suppose that what we call spontaneous generations are in fact no generations at all: But concerning these, maybe he is not even saying that they are generated, according to what follows. For having spoken of things which are by nature and things which are by art, he goes on to say: “the other causes are privations of these”.725
Being nothing but ‘privations’, spontaneous generations do not threaten the overall validity of Aristotle’s opposition to Plato. By contrast, Alexander’s second solution accepts classifying spontaneous generations as generations, and with this assumption attempts a reinterpretation of the synonymy principle. Averroes describes his stance as follows: Then Alexander says: he devoted a great space to that question in book Zāy of this treatise; he explained what each thing is which is generated from synonyms and talked about things which are generated from putrescent matter in the Physics, saying that these things, although they are not generated from synonyms in the strict sense, are nevertheless generated from some action, because the heat existing in the substratum is the cause of the generation of the likes of these.726
The first thing to note in this text is that Alexander alludes to what Aristotle says in book Zeta but not to his own exegesis thereof—neither to say that we have already read Aristotle’s long development of this question, nor, a fortiori, to recall any element of his own exegesis. This silence is philologically telling. It suggests that Alexander actually never did comment on book Zeta. My own conviction—which must of course remain merely a hypothesis—is simply that Alexander did not comment on Aristotle’s Metaphysics beyond the end of book Delta. He made a single exception for book Lambda, given the importance of this treatise for the metaphysical project, both as a comprehensive synthesis and a crowning part of the whole discipline. That would explain the striking absence of cross references in the extant parts of Alexander’s commentary. 725
Ibn Rushd, Tafsīr Mā ba‘d al-Ṭabī‘at 1458.6-8 (I borrow the translation from Ch. Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics. A Translation with Introduction of Ibn Rushd’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Lām, Leiden, 1986, p. 91). 726 Ibn Rushd, Tafsīr Mā ba‘d al-Ṭabī‘at 1459.3-8 (transl. Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics, p. 91).
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My second remark concerns the reference to the Physics. As is well known, there is no discussion of spontaneous generation in the Physics. Yet, the Arabic text is explicit: al-Samā‘ al-Ṭabī‘ī (1459.6) is indeed the usual way to translate the Greek ἡ φυσικὴ ἀκρόασις. In a footnote, Charles Genequand says that “[w]hat Alexander is obviously referring to is the discussion of spontaneity in general in Phys. II, 4-6”.727 Given the precision and detail of Averroes’ report, that seems implausible to me. I would prefer to think that Alexander was alluding to Generation of Animals III 11. Since the present context was the Metaphysics, he must have designated the canonical discussion of spontaneous generation as belonging to the other, i.e. physical, science, writing ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς or ἐν τῇ φυσικῇ. The translator, either from Greek to Syriac, or Mattā b. Yūnus from Syriac to Arabic, must have introduced this slight mistake into the text. The content of this text confirms our hypothesis about the absence of any commentary by Alexander on Book Zeta. It seems obvious that Asclepius is drawing his material from the same source as Averroes. Both texts are not only doctrinally convergent: their textual source is the same, and it is Alexander’s commentary on Lambda. In this text, Alexander derived spontaneous generations from the ‘motions’ (κινήσεις) or ‘action’ (fi‘l) of the celestial beings. We thus have two difficulties to solve. Firstly, we ought to clarify Alexander’s solution: does he believe that spontaneous generations are, or are not generations? And, secondly, if they are generations, in what sense is this appeal to ‘motions’ or ‘action’ strong enough to satisfy the synonymy principle? With regard to the first difficulty, the ambiguity as to which position Alexander actually held seems best explained by reference to a couple of dialectical moves that Alexander regularly used in polemical contexts similar to the present one, i.e. when he views his task as answering an objection against one of the core doctrines of the Peripatetics. These two moves are ‘counterobjection’ (ἀντιπαράστασις) and ‘attack’ (ἔνστασις).728 The counterobjection consists in admitting the opponent’s thesis but denying that it leads to the objection that he claims to be its logical entailment. The attack destroys the opponent’s thesis. If we are right, Alexander is very likely to have made two such claims in the present context, namely: [i] ἔνστασις—it is not true that what is usually called spontaneous “generation” is a generation; it is nothing but a privation, resulting from chance; 727 728
Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics, p. 94, n. 68. See Rashed, “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Particulars”, pp. 160-164.
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[ii] ἀντιπαράστασις—even if we are to concede that spontaneous “generation” is generation, this does not entail that we should reject the synonymy principle. For the efficient cause of the bees will be the vital heat of the heavens, i.e. of the highest sublunary sphere.729 Last, Alexander must have added that this heat is brought about by the motion of the celestial beings. We are now in a better position to come to grips with the second difficulty. Asclepius, when he says that Alexander claimed that the celestial motions, as opposed to the celestial substances, are the cause of spontaneous generation, might have misunderstood the last remark of the ἀντιπαράστασις. For it is likely that Alexander was going a step further than described by Averroes. Alexander probably held that the actual heat responsible for the animation of the bees was produced by the actual heat of the highest sublunary sphere, and that this actual heat was in turn produced by the actual motions of the stars. At this point, Alexander is likely to have remarked that there is a principle of actuality, hence of form, hence of substance, running through and linking together the three elements forming this vertical chain: such vital heat is the actuality of the bee qua living being of such a type, such a heat is also the actuality of elemental fire, and, finally, such periods are the actuality of the celestial substances.730 What we have just seen explains why, on the second issue raised above,731 Alexander might have wished to replace the “Sun” of GC II 9-10 with the whole supralunary world. It is the heavens as a whole that are responsible for the heat of the sublunary world, even if the regular variations of this heat are produced by the variations of the ecliptic. That is not to say, however, that Alexander adopted astral determinism. Even in the Quaestiones devoted to the notion of providence (πρόνοια), Alexander never pretends that providence reaches the level of the individuals. Providence, in his system, only cares for the preservation of species.732 In this context, however, it was appealing to adopt an all-embracing theory, according to which the stars and their motions explain spontaneous 729
See Averroes, In GC 98.1-3 Eichner: “Alexander says that all this [i.e. GC II 3, 330b 25-30] applies only to fire here on earth. The fire, however, which is at the periphery [of the lunar sphere] is not that which is at the extreme of heat and of boiling, and is, therefore, more a cause of generation than the other elements”. On this issue, see above, p. 262. 730 On this, see Rashed, Commentaire perdu, pp. 126-140. 731 See p. 320. 732 This is well known. See the references above, p. 211, n. 408.
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generation as well as everything pertaining to the individual substances under the Moon, and human beings in particular. It is likely that as early as the first commentators on GC, there had been some attempts at finding a cosmological anticipation of an astrological model in this text. The discussion arises in the context of a passage in which Aristotle tries to explain the relative irregularities affecting the life spans of biological species, despite the fact that the celestial periods, which control them, are perfectly regular. He writes: There are things obvious even to perception which are in agreement with this reasoning of ours; for we see that while the sun is approaching there is generation, but while it is retreating, diminution, and each of these in equal time. For the times of corruption and generation which occur in nature are equal. Often, however, it happens that things perish in a shorter time on account of the mingling [other manuscript reading: collision] of things with one another. For, matter being irregular and not everywhere the same, the comings to be of things are also necessarily irregular, some faster, some slower. So it comes about as a result of the generation of these things that corruption of others occurs. But as we have said, generation and corruption will always be continuous and, owing to the cause we have mentioned, will never fail.733
Since Antiquity, the textual tradition has been divided with respect to the most important word of the passage.734 Should we identify the cause of irregularity as a ‘mingling’ (σύγκρασιν) of some sort, or as a ‘collision’ (σύγκρουσιν)? And, whichever variant we prefer, how should we interpret Aristotle’s argument? Let us have a look at the ancient tradition. Philoponus, our most ancient source, correctly summarizes Aristotle’s argument: This should be understood not in relation to the immediately preceding, but in relation to what was said earlier. For having said that life-spans and timeintervals are prescribed for each species, he says here that it often happens that things die in a shorter time-interval than prescribed. And his task now is to investigate the cause of this very fact, why it is that some individuals die prematurely without fulfilling their natural cycle. So, he says that this happens because of ‘mingling’ or ‘collision’ with one another; for it is written in two ways.735 733
Aristotle, GC II 10, 336b 15-26. I quote my apparatus for 336b 20-21: διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα σύγκρασιν ELJHF: διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα σύγκρουσιν VWM2 διὰ τὴν πρὸς ἄλληλα κρᾶσιν Μ1 utrumque agnouit Philoponus. 735 Philoponus, In GC 295.8-14. 734
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Philoponus, presumably elaborating on Alexander, then proposes three interpretations. Only the first one bears on the variant reading σύγκρασιν. He says: (i) If it were ‘mingling’ (σύγκρασιν), he would be blaming the lack of measure and bad mixture of the elements; for it is often the case that matter, because of its unsuitability or its inappropriateness, does not receive the orderly arrangement from above in a perfect manner, and as a result the animal gets dissolved quicker because of the weakness of its frame, since the material mixture is in many cases not durable enough to receive for long the life that is being dispensed.736
The two next interpretations presuppose that the text reads ‘collision’. They are both interesting for our purposes, because they adumbrate two possible interpretations of Aristotle’s text, the first of which is accepted by the author and the second rejected. On the first interpretation, the ‘collision’ designates the possible conflict between the material and the efficient cause. It is in this context that Philoponus draws the distinction, which we shall find again in our text, between proximate and remote efficient causes. Philoponus writes the following: (ii) But if it has ‘collision’ (σύγκρουσιν), he is illustrating the coincidence of causes with each other, i.e. of the material and the efficient cause, both proximate and first. For father is the proximate efficient cause and the heavenly bodies the remote and first cause. And matter, and such-and-such a choice, and way of life are a cause of such-and-such a frame of a body. If then there happens to be such-and-such a seed from the father, and such-andsuch a seed and blood from the mother (for they say that blood stands for matter, and seed for the efficient cause), and the mother’s way of life during gestation happens to be such or such, or the environment is in fact very poorly mixed, so that one of these factors prevents the movement of heavenly bodies from manifesting its most perfect activity over what is being born and from bestowing on it the appropriate orderly arrangement, then perishing follows before the prescribed time, because such-and-such matter and other causes get interwoven with such-and-such movement of heavenly bodies, where matter is the cause of irregularity, as has been said previously. It is as if something disorderly and inappropriate happened with a chair or drawing board because of the unsuitability of matter, through no fault of the craftsman.737
736 737
Philoponus, In GC 295.15-19. Philoponus, In GC 295.20-296.3.
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Such an interpretation allows for a non-deterministic interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine, according to which fortune, and even ‘what depends on us’ (τὸ ἐφ᾿ ἡµῖν) is ultimately grounded on the indeterminacy of sublunary matter.738 Because there is a ‘collision’ between the material and the efficient cause, i.e. because matter is recalcitrant in lending itself to total determination, there is some uncertainty as to the life spans of living creatures. The remote efficient cause—the celestial bodies—is nevertheless perfectly regular. But the proximate efficient cause—the father—is already itself a compound of matter and form, and so is his offspring. This situation prevents the sublunary creatures from being as predictable as the supralunary ones.739 The second interpretation of σύγκρουσιν constitutes, as it were, the exact opposite of the first one, since it explains sublunary variations in terms of astral determinism: (iii) But the reading ‘collision’ could also be taken as referring only to the heavenly bodies. For since not only the sun, but also other planets, and indeed the fixed stars (even if not to the same extent) do, at any rate, act upon the process of coming to be, he says that such-and-such concurrence of their aspects—which he calls ‘collision’—is a cause of differently fixed lengths of life for different beings. For frequently because of such-and-such combination of these [viz. heavenly bodies] with each other the body which gets shaped by them turns out to be easy to dissolve, and its lifetime short.740
The term ‘collision’, according to this interpretation, signifies the ‘concurrence’ (συνδροµή) and the ‘combination’ (συµπλοκή) of the heavenly bodies. The relative positions of the stars determine the fates of the earthly creatures. Therefore, the fact that one creature has a shorter lifetime than another is not due to the potential for indeterminacy of the sublunary matter, but to describable clusters of celestial influences. It would be naïve to try to compare these interpretations from the point of view of their historical probability. It is significant that the commentary tradition has constructed, out of an ambiguous reading in the text, a theoretical disjunction allowing two diametrically opposed interpretations. The single word σύγκρουσις allowed a biological interpretation according to which the celestial spheres are only the remote efficient cause of genera738
On this, see D. Lefebvre, “Alexandre d’Aphrodise, Supplément au traité de l’âme (extrait)”, in J. Laurent and C. Romano (eds), Le néant. Contribution à l’histoire du non-être dans la philosophie occidentale, Paris, 2006, pp. 103-117. 739 This interpretation has a Platonic flavour. It recalls Reason trying to overrule the recalcitrant Necessity by persuasion (Timaeus 48A). 740 Philoponus, In GC 296.3-10.
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tion—an interpretation much akin to Alexander’s—and, at the same time, an astrological interpretation according to which every difference in lifespans is brought about by the different positions of the planets and the stars. Now, it should perhaps be emphasized that an “astral” interpretation of spontaneous generation need not be associated with an astrological reading of our passage. This is because there are many ways to connect the stars with spontaneous generation. If, as was presumably Alexander’s position, the stars are its efficient cause because their motions regulate and moderate the heat of the outermost sublunary sphere, hence the vital heat present in some of the stuffs on earth, it would be natural to think that they are the proximate cause of generation for spontaneously generated beings, but the remote cause of generation for beings generated from a seed. That is exactly the author’s stance, as we have already observed. In the last part of this chapter, I would like to compare the author’s position as we have described it with another Arabic interpretation of the efficient cause of generation, namely that of al-Kindī. Around the middle of the 9th c. AD, al-Kindī wrote a treatise entitled On the Proximate Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption.741 On the face of it, al-Kindī’s aim is to establish that while God is the remote efficient cause of all sublunar processes, as proved in the lost part of his treatise On First Philosophy, it is the heavens and their motions which are their proximate efficient cause.742 AlKindī writes: The agent cause is either proximate or remote. The remote agent cause is like one who shoots an arrow at an animal, and kills it. The shooter of the arrow is the remote cause of the killing, and the arrow is its proximate cause. For the shooter propels the arrow, with the intent of killing what can be killed, 741
For the edition of this treatise, see M. ‘A. Abū Rīda, Rasā’il al-Kindī alFalsafiyya, vol. 1, Cairo, 1950, pp. 214-237; for an English translation, see P. Adamson and P. Pormann, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, Karachi, 2012, pp. 153-172. According to a Latin note in a medieval manuscript, al-Kindī is also the author of a commentary on GC, which influenced Alfred of Sareshel in his lost commentary on the same treatise. See Aristoteles Latinus IX 1. De generatione et corruptione (Translatio vetus), ed. J. Judycka, Leiden, 1986, pp. l-li: “Liber Aristotelis… correctus et per capitula distinctus a magistro Alvredo de Sare secundum commentum Alkindi super eundem librum”. Thus if, as we shall suggest, the author was refuting al-Kindī’s views on generation and corruption, he might also have read them in this commentary. 742 For the lost cosmological part of On First Philosophy, see the fragment quoted by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih in his ‘Iqd al-farīd in R. Rashed and J. Jolivet, Œuvres philosophiques et scientifiques d’al-Kindī, vol. 2, Métaphysique et cosmologie, Leiden / Boston / Köln, 1998, pp. 129-131.
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while the arrow causes the animal to be killed by wounding it, whereas the animal receives the effect from the arrow by means of contact. With regard to the remote agent cause of generation and corruption, and of every sensible and intelligible thing, we have shown in our book On First Philosophy that the first cause, namely God—great be His praise—creator and completer of the cosmos, is the cause of causes and the creator of every agent. So let us now treat of the proximate agent cause of everything generated and corrupted, so it may become clear to us how universal providence is brought about through prior, divine wisdom.743
At a deeper level of understanding, al-Kindī elaborates on Alexander’s doctrine of providence in order to show that this world is willed by God as being the best possible.744 This is said clearly at the outset of the text: This world is organised and ordered: some parts of it act on others, some are linked to others, and some are subjugated to others. It is perfectly arranged in the best possible manner in that everything which comes to be comes to be; everything which passes away passes away; everything which is stable remains stable; and everything which ceases to exist ceases to exist. All this is a great indication of perfect providence, providence requiring a provider, and of great wisdom, wisdom requiring someone wise, for these things are first terms of a genitive construction.745
At this stage, it might seem that we have an orthodox neo-Aristotelian view of providence, in the wake of Alexander, with the sole difference that alKindī allows for a ceasing to be of the world after a certain time, in virtue of his strict temporal finitism (“and everything which ceases to exist ceases to exist”).746 But as we shall shortly see, things are more intricate than this. For al-Kindī does not limit providence to the level of the species. He first introduces into Alexander’s model a racialist consideration of the different climes. Basically, men are divided between people living in southern and 743
Al-Kindī, Rasā’il, p. 219 (transl. Adamson & Pormann, p. 159). On al-Kindī’s knowledge and use of Alexander’s treatise On Providence, see A. Hasnawi, “Al-Kindī, al-Ibāna ‘an al-‘illa al-fā‘ila al-qarība li-al-kawn wa-al-fasād (Éclaircissement de la cause efficiente prochaine de la génération et de la corruption)”, in A. Jacob (ed.), L’Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, vol. III, Les Œuvres philosophiques, ed. J.-F. Mattéi, Paris, 1992, t. I, p. 656; Silvia Fazzo and Hillary Wiesner, “Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Kindī-Circle and in al-Kindī’s Cosmology”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, 1993, pp. 119-153. 745 Al-Kindī, Rasā’il, p. 215 (transl. Adamson & Pormann, p. 156). 746 On al-Kindī on time, see J. Jolivet, “Al-Kindī, vues sur le temps”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, 1993, pp. 55-75, especially pp. 68-69. 744
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northern regions. Nations living in the vicinity of the equator are physically and mentally affected by the excessive heat. Because an excess of heat and dryness affects these people, they fall prey to many vices. “Their physical appearance changes because wrath and desire dominate them”. Conversely, northern people “are strong thinkers, and many among them engage in theoretical research; their characters are moderate”.747 In the next lines, alKindī also allows for a cosmological determination of individuals as such: Likewise, we see that the body of every animal comes to have a character in accordance with its mixture. Therefore, insofar as these individuals [i.e., the stars] are close to us or far away, high or low, fast or slow, and assembled together or separated, characters vary accordingly, and according to the mixture of our bodies when the sperm is generated, and its position in the womb.748
These determinations are integral to al-Kindī’s doctrine of the best possible world: Since this is the case, then what prevents things subtler than this from existing because of the motion of the heavenly bodies, through the will of the Creator, great be His praise? For the most obvious thing is the closest thing which it [the heavenly motion] causes, it [the motion] being its [the effect’s] proximate cause. And are the remaining things anything other than the concomitants of this wonderful existence, I mean, the existence of natural and ensouled things? If we accept this, our thought will have reached its conclusions.749
In this passage, al-Kindī adumbrates the general organization of the best possible world. There is a remote efficient cause (the Creator), a proximate efficient cause (the stars and their motions), and an effect, the sublunar world. The sublunar world’s material conditions are responsible for the various temperaments of the human beings inhabiting it, and these temperaments are in turn responsible for the various characters of human souls.750 Finally, the individuals affect their immediate environment, in conformity with the characters of the souls they have been endowed with. 747
Al-Kindī, Rasā’il, pp. 225-226 (transl. Adamson & Pormann, pp. 163-164). Al-Kindī, Rasā’il, p. 226 (transl. Adamson & Pormann, p. 164). 749 Al-Kindī, Rasā’il, p. 226 (transl. Adamson & Pormann, p. 164). 750 That was notoriously Galen’s position, expounded in his treatise Quod animi mores, well-known in Arabic. See H. H. Biesterfeld, Galens Traktat “Dass die Kräfte der Seele den Mischungen des Körpers folgen” in arabischer Übersetzung, Stuttgart, 1973. 748
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In the third book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle addresses the question of human responsibility. If a man commits an offence because of his character, is he not only juridically guilty in the eyes of the law, but also responsible for his deeds, and morally blameworthy?751 Aristotle has an interesting answer to this much-debated question. The man, in this case, is responsible and blameworthy, not because of what he did, but because in the long period prior to that offence, at a time when it was possible for him to seek to improve himself, he did not engage in such a process of self education.752 Mutatis mutandis, al-Kindī adopts a similar strategy here. The world is entirely determined, and our acts depend on our character, which results from inborn features. Therefore, there is nothing in what we do that escapes God’s general design. That is not to say, however, that we are not free at the moment when we act in such or such a way. The only thing is that we are created such as we are, and that our free actions are determined by our specific nature.753 Al-Kindī’s solution allows him to solve an aporia deeply rooted in the system of the Mu‘tazilites, who assumed both human free-will and that the world is the best one possible. This may not be fortu751
Aristotle, Eth. Nic. III 5, 1113b 21-26. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. III 5, 1114a 3-10. 753 On al-Kindī’s doctrine of freedom, see P. Adamson, “Al-Kindī and the Mu‘tazila: Divine Attributes, Creation and Freedom”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13, 2003, pp. 45-77, pp. 66-75 for a description of al-Kindī’s ‘compatibilism’. I entirely agree with Adamson that al-Kindī was a compatibilist. The only issue on which we might perhaps slightly diverge is that of the extent to which a human action is caused by God at the instant when it happens. I take it that God is its remote cause only insofar as He is the producer, by means of the astral motions, of the mixture of the embryo out of which this human person will develop. Once this embryo is formed, there is, on my view, a more or less independent chain of causes leading, in virtue of Galen’s stance (clearly adopted by al-Kindī in the treatise On the proximate efficient cause), to a given moral character, which in turn explains the kind of choices its human bearer will indulge in (“more or less”, because the environment during a whole life has some influence on the present character—much lighter, however, than it has on the embryo). On Adamson’s interpretation, on the other hand (if I understand it correctly, cf. “AlKindī and the Mu‘tazila”, p. 74), it seems to be the case that the person is acted upon by God at the very moment when he “acts” in the metaphorical sense that he causes something. This solution is better than mine insofar as it takes al-Kindī’s extensive practice of astrology as a tacit approval of this discipline, but it makes the phenomenon of choice and consciousness, and its difference from a banal physical event, difficult to explain. Moreover, I must confess that I am rather sceptical about the claim that someone as intimately committed to the necessity of rationally justifying every statement he made, as al-Kindī obviously was, could have thought it possible to reach certainty on the odd topics dealt with in the Forty Chapters (see the chapter-headings in Ch. Burnett, “Al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology: The Forty Chapters”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, 1993, pp. 77-117, pp. 102-105). 752
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itous, since, as appears from the dedication, the treatise On the Proximate Agent Cause was addressed to the caliph al-Mu‘taṣim (r. 833-842)—unless it was to his son Aḥmad. For we know that al-Mu‘taṣim protected and encouraged the Mu‘tazilite trend in Baghdad.754 He may have been aware of the potential flaw at the heart of their system, and interested to learn alKindī’s solution. The author adopts another stance. Prima facie, he is an incompatibilist of the Mu‘tazilite sort, i.e. he seems to think that human generation is not determined by the astral periods, nor, a fortiori, by God.755 Yet, if he really is a Mu‘tazilite, the ‘a fortiori’ move must be resisted. For the author might have assumed that human generation, if not brought about by the stars, is nevertheless the product of God’s action, and of God’s action alone. That, at least, was the Baṣrian view. If however, as I tend to think, he stood closer to the Baghdadīs, he might have taken the ‘a fortiori’ move as valid: the sublunary generations are brought about by the ‘natures’ (ṭabā’i‘) and these might be relatively independent of the celestial realm.756 If this is the case, the author stands at one extreme of a range of positions allowing a correlation between events in the sky and on the earth. Let us dwell for a moment, at a high level of generality, on the possible range of doctrines on this question. At the other extreme of the range stands extreme determinism. Contrary to A. A. Long,757 I would characterize the orthodox Stoic view starting with Chrysippus, according to which the stars are signs, not causes, of what happens here below, as very hard astrology (VHA), as opposed to soft astrology.758 VHA is “extreme” because it is strong enough to dispense with the help of all branchs of physics (cosmology, meteorology and embryology) in order to vindicate its claims in matters of divination using only its own resources. Note that the meaning of VHA may change a lot depending on whether we are in a Greek or a Medieval context. In the former, the more natural interpretation is to hold that there is 754
On the miḥna, see van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. III, pp. 446-508. Theoretically speaking, there are two opposite ways of being an incompatibilist, i.e. to assume that determinism and freedom cannot be reconciled: one can claim either that there is no determinism (Mu‘tazilite stance) or that there is no freedom. 756 On this divergence between the two schools, see Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 133. 757 See A. A. Long, “Astrology: Arguments pro and contra”, in J. Barnes, J. Brunschwig & al. (eds), Science and Speculation. Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice, Cambridge / Paris, 1982, pp. 165-192. 758 On this aspect of their doctrine, see Long, “Astrology: Arguments pro and contra”, pp. 170-171, J.-B. Gourinat, “Prédiction du futur et action humaine dans le traité de Chrysippe Sur le destin”, in G. Romeyer Dherbey and J.-B. Gourinat, Les Stoïciens, Paris, 2005, pp. 247-273, pp. 258-260. 755
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some nexus of material causes hidden from us which explains the coincidence of the sign and the event. But in the latter, the sign can equally well be interpreted merely as a language through which God is accustomed to reveal to humans what has happened, is happening or will happen in the world.759 After VHA comes what I would dub hard astrology (HA). It consists in the view that heavenly motions directly determine everything on earth. HA claims that every event is, at the instant when it is brought about, the consequence of the celestial positions at the same instant. HA is “hard”, of course, because it claims that nothing in the world of generation and corruption escapes its astral fate. Yet, it is less hard than VHA because it explains everything, ultimately, in terms of physics. Astrology is no longer, at least in theory, an independent discipline; it is one branch of cosmology among others. In the third place we find what was probably the mainstream view among astrologers after Ptolemy, namely soft astrology (SA).760 SA is the doctrine according to which astral positions have a decisive influence on the sublunary flow of matter, hence on the formation of the embryo, hence on the psychological features of each human individual. What distinguishes SA from HA is its insistence on embryology. After all, an individual’s conception in his mother’s womb is a material event like any other. The upholders of SA underline its importance because they want to leave some space for free action to take place. In other words, the partisan of SA can easily be a compatibilist—for his position allows him to maintain that free-will and predetermination are compatible. On the other hand, in order to be a compatibilist, the partisan of HA will have to claim that if free-will exists, it is because we human beings are of such a nature that we cannot help making choices, and in particular these choices, in the conduct of our lives. We have just seen that al-Kindī, like Ptolemy before him, probably sided with SA.761 By insisting on the formation of the embryo, he manages to save human free-will from divine omnipotence. Still, al-Kindī’s doctrine represents a hard case of SA—something like a HSA—insofar as his SA is not entirely reducible to the realm of the physi759
The point is clearly made by the Šī‘ī mutakallim al-Šarīf al-Murtaḍā, Mas’alat fī al-radd ‘alā al-munaǧǧimīn, in Rasā’il, vol. 2, ed. S. A. al-Ḥusaynī and S. M. al-Raǧā’ī, Qum, 1405 h., pp. 301-312, pp. 301, 302, 304. 760 On Ptolemy’s doctrine in the Tetrabiblos, see Long, “Astrology: Arguments pro and contra”, pp. 178-183, especially p. 183: “It turns out that, in his view, the state of the heavens at birth is only the most powerful of a whole range of important contributory factors. These include genetics: a horse begets a horse, and a man begets a man, under the same celestial conditions. Geographical differences, nurture, and customs also contribute to the particular way of life”. 761 If we do not take his practice of astrology at face value. See above, p. 335, n. 753.
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cal world, but dictated by a theological principle of optimization. On alKindī’s interpretation, God determines the sublunary world and makes it the best possible by having recourse to the astral periods. Al-Kindī’s doctrine, as Fazzo and Wiesner have shown, is likely to have had some influence on the redaction of certain Greek texts translated around him.762 The whole project was to transform Aristotle’s natural cosmology into a system of divine “government”, or tadbīr, of the world. Ammonius had already dedicated a treatise to showing that Aristotle’s First Mover was not only a final, but also an efficient cause.763 This tendency of the late Alexandrian school was developed by al-Kindī, who seems to have seen the three last chapters of GC II, and Chapter 10 in particular, as the place Aristotle had expounded this crucial element of his theory. At any rate, in some translations from cosmological texts written by the commentator, the adaptor, who must have been closely related to al-Kindī, interpolated references to this alleged doctrine of GC which are absent, of course, from the treatise itself. Thus, Aristotle’s GC played an important role in the construction of Aristotle’s cosmology as a system of the best possible world governed by a wise agent. The next question is what access, if any, al-Kindī had to Aristotle’s GC. The sources make no mention of an ancient Arabic translation of GC prior to Isḥāq’s. Since, however, al-Kindī’s collaborator Usṭāṯ is said by alNadīm to have translated Olympiodorus’ commentary on this treatise, we may suppose that al-Kindī read at least this commentary and also, in all likelihood, Aristotle’s text in the form of lemmata also translated by Usṭāṯ.764 In his commentary on the De interpretatione, Olympiodorus is original, compared to the previous tradition, in that he draws arguments
762
See Fazzo and Wiesner, “Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Kindī-Circle”, p. 140 for a convenient graph of the relations. 763 See recently B. Gleede, “Creatio ex nihilo – A Genuinely Philosophical Insight Derived from Plato and Aristotle? Some Notes on the Treatise on the Harmony Between the Two Sages”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 22, 2012, pp. 91-117. 764 See al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p . 311: “and there is a commentary attributed to Olympiodorus in Usṭāṯ’s translation; Mattā Abū Bišr translated it and Abū Zakariyā’ improved it (I mean Mattā’s translation) when he looked at it”. This commentary was probably still available in the 13th century, when the doctor Ya‘qūb b. Isḥāq al-Isrā’īlī al-Maḥallī quotes it. See A. Dietrich, Medicinalia Arabica. Studien über arabische medizinische Handschriften in türkischen und syrischen Bibliotheken, Göttingen, 1966, p. 182 and Gannagé, Alexander of Aphrodisias, p. 128. I was mistaken to hold (“De generatione et corruptione—tradition arabe”, p. 312) that apart from al-Nadīm, “on n’a conservé aucune autre mention des commentaires d’Olympiodore et de Thémistius”. That is true for Themistius, but not for Olympiodorus.
Section 14: Generation and Destruction and the Celestial Bodies
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against astrology and determinism from the ninth chapter.765 He is very keen to alert his readers on this issue. For in his commentary on Plato’s Gorgias too, he comments on a rather innocuous passage in a way hostile to astrology. Under these circumstances, it would be extremely odd if, in his commentary on GC, when commenting on the double reading σύγκρασιν and σύγκρουσιν, he did not mention the astrological interpretation of the second term in order to rebut it. For as a rule, Olympiodorus had at his disposal Ammonius’ interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise such as recorded in Philoponus’ commentaries. The most likely story thus seems to be the following. When about to comment on the reading σύγκρουσιν, Olympiodorus mentioned its astrological interpretation as it had been recorded in the previous commentaries, and attacked it, saying we should not interpret the end of GC in deterministic terms. Quite the contrary: Aristotle highlighted, in this passage, the indeterminacy of sublunary processes. Some centuries later, Usṭāṯ translated Olympiodorus’ commentary, probably at al-Kindī’s request. Al-Kindī was struck by the rejected interpretation of GC II 10, and, contrary to Olympiodorus, adopted it as the correct meaning of the text. GC II 10 was read again as advocating the doctrine of the perfect regulation of the sublunary by the supralunary world. This Kindian interpretation of GC II 10 was in turn rejected by the author. The generations around the earth are not all dictated by astral motions. The sublunary world has its own rules, which are to some extent independent of the supralunary realm. Al-Kindī had developed, on the basis of GC, a compatibilist model in order to overthrow the incompatibilism of the Mu‘tazilites. Some time later, the author, probably a Mu‘tazilite himself, propounded an alternative interpretation of GC making it acceptable in incompatibilist terms. In conclusion, the author relies on a model which we could describe as a very soft astrology (VSA). It is a view according to which the stars are one cause among others for sublunary events. Since SA accepts the reality of human free-will, this feature is not enough to distinguish the two doctrines. The distinguishing characteristic of VSA is that it does not claim that the stars have a decisive influence on the formation of the human embryo. The real cause is the father, or both parents, or the lineage, but not the astral configuration at the instant of conception or birth. Since the supralunary world is the most important part of the universe, it cannot be deprived of all influence on what happens below. But this influence is only 765
On this, see Cristina Viano, “Aristote contre les astrologues (Olympiodore, sur le De interpretatione 9)”, in Suzanne Husson (ed.), Interpréter le De interpretatione, Paris, 2009, pp. 69-87.
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remote and partial. Other sublunary causes are present, and they are more decisive for an account of the sublunary world. To sum up, we can say that al-Kindī and the author adopt, respectively, SA (or HSA) and VSA. They both ground their position in Aristotle’s treatise. But while al-Kindī, against Olympiodorus, takes at face value the passage in which Aristotle connects generation and corruption with god’s (ὁ θεός) design,766 the author sides with those who assume that it is more or less a façon de parler, and that Aristotle is referring to nothing other than Nature’s internal paradigmatism. ‘Nature’ (ἡ φύσις) being mentioned two lines above in the same argument, both interpretations are prima facie tenable. Be that as it may, I believe that the shift made by the author with regard to al-Kindī’s position is deliberate. Against al-Kindī, who posits God as a remote cause and the stars as a proximate cause of generation and corruption, he re-situates the system’s centre of gravity closer to the sublunary world. God disappears from the picture and the celestial realm is severely downgraded, from a proximate to a remote cause of generation and corruption.
766
See Aristotle, GC II 10, 336b 26-34: “This happens with good reason; for we say that nature (τὴν φύσιν) in all cases desires what is better, and that being is better than not being […], and this cannot exist in all things since some are too far removed from the principle. Accordingly the god (ὁ θεός) has filled up the whole in the only way that remained by making generation perpetual. This was the way to connect being together as much as possible, since coming to be continually and generation are the nearest things there are to being”.
III. AL-ḤASAN IBN MŪSĀ AL-NAWBAḪTĪ
The author of the treatise: al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī Up to this point we have commented on the text while leaving aside the problem of its authorship. It is now time to address that issue. We shall proceed in two steps. First, in a pars destruens, we shall prove that the author cannot have been Avicenna. Then, in a pars construens, we shall suggest that he was Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī. 1. Pars destruens: the author is not Avicenna We can be relatively succinct in rejecting the attribution of the treatise to Avicenna. For the only evidence for this is its presence in the 20th century catalogues of his writings. The mistake starts with Ergin in 1937.1 Anawati, however, as we shall see shortly, is very explicit about the fact that the critical appraisal of each item in his list remains to be done. His list is to be understood as containing works which could have been written by Avicenna, nothing more. As for Mahdavi, he rightly expresses doubts about Avicenna being the author of our text: he underlines the fact that there is no correspondence between our text and what we find in the Naǧāt and the Šifā’, and draws attention to the fact that this treatise is absent from Avicenna’s ancient bibliographies; and finally remarks that Avicenna’s name does not appear in ms. G (= Gotha).2 These arguments are robust, and we shall add only a few others to them. Argument 1—the manuscript evidence We saw in the Introduction that Ergin and Anawati had attributed our text to Avicenna on the basis of ms. A (= Istanbul, Ahmet III, ms. n° 1584) alone.3 Still, it is crucial to remember that this treatise, unlike other texts contained in ms. A, bears no mention of Avicenna’s name. At the top of the page, we find a bare title, Talḫīṣ kitāb al-kawn wa-al-fasād, by the hand of the first scribe without any author’s name. Immediately after the usual invocation, the text starts in medias res. One should not blame Anawati for having been too quick to identify our text’s author as Avicenna, however. For, as he himself writes in the 1
See above, p. 3, n. 1. See Mahdavi, Fihrist, p. 266. 3 See above, pp. 3-4. 2
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introduction to his catalogue, “[p]our le reste de notre classification (la plus grande partie) nous l’acceptâmes, à titre provisoire, sur la foi des indications des catalogues et des manuscrits. Mais tout le travail critique reste à faire pour l’‘authentification’ de toutes ces œuvres.”4 We must, however, underline that in the present case, even the superficial evidence in favour of Avicenna’s authorship is minuscule in the extreme. In other words, our treatise does not belong to the vast corpus that can be considered “pseudoAvicennan”.5 Anawati’s sole (implicit) argument for taking Avicenna as the author is the overall content of ms. A, which is indeed mainly Avicennan. But one should immediately note that (i) the many treatises in ms. A are not all by Avicenna; (ii) when they are authentic, they bear Avicenna’s name; (iii) even if they were all by Avicenna, one could not exclude the possibility that at some point in time, perhaps very near to Avicenna, our text found itself placed within a body of Avicennan material without itself being a treatise composed by Avicenna.6 Things get even worse when we examine the textual evidence in ms. G. The scribe has not even written the title of the work and starts directly after a simple invocation. And ms. G also contains treatises not by Avicenna, preventing us from taking the codicological environment to suggest Avicenna’s authorship implicitly. Let us finally note that even though their “editorial” project is somewhat similar, consisting in both cases in collecting, inter alia, an important quantity of Avicenna’s minor treatises, there is absolutely no reason to consider the two manuscripts “twins”, since with only two exceptions (our text and only one other), they share no treatise in common. We cannot therefore postulate a source manuscript with a definite content, making it even more difficult to draw any inference from the content of these manuscripts taken as collections of texts. Thus, there is no explicit indication pointing to Avicenna’s authorship in our two witnesses of this text, and no implicit reason to assume that Avicenna was its author. 4
Anawati, Essai de bibliographie avicennienne, p. 16 (Anawati’s italics). For an attempt at drawing a typology for these texts, see D. C. Reisman, “The Pseudo-Avicennan Corpus, I: Methodological Considerations”, in J. McGinnis and D. C. Reisman, Interpreting Avicenna. Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam, Leiden / Boston, 2004, pp. 3-21. 6 By this, I mean that it may even have been copied by Avicenna—who in fact made use of it in the GC part of the Šifā’: see above, pp. 100 and 300—and then incorporated into his works by someone who had access to his Nachlass. The situation would be similar to the case of the Avicennan manucripts held by Avicenna’s third generation student, ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Ṣiġnāḫī in the 12th c. On this, see Gutas, “Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition”, p. 150. On the quality of Mu’ayyadzādeh’s Avicennan sources, see Reisman, The Making of the Avicennan Tradition, pp. 92-94. 5
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Argument 2—Avicenna’s bibliography We are relatively well informed on Avicenna’s writings by biobibliographies written in his disciples’ circles.7 None of them contains any mention of our treatise. Argument 3—Literary form and style The style of our treatise is very different from that of Avicenna’s authentic works. Clearly, the genre of the paraphrase has no parallel in the authentic Avicennan oeuvre. Neither in his extant corpus, nor in the ancient bibliographical lists do we find any evidence that Avicenna ever wrote such a work on an Aristotelian book.8 Argument 4—The issue of atomism We saw that the author of the treatise remains very discrete on the issue of atomism. Whereas he comments on every important theoretical issue present in GC, leaving aside only Aristotle’s doxographical discussions, he does not write a word of paraphrase corresponding to GC I 2, Aristotle’s major refutation of indivisible magnitudes. Avicenna, on the contrary, devotes an important part of the treatise On generation and corruption of the Šifā’ to this issue. In so doing, he is obviously aiming to show how Aristotle’s arguments can be recycled in the contemporary debates raised by the theologians’ stance. With very few exceptions, the Mu‘tazilites are atomists, although in a manner different from Democritus. To cut a long story short, statements by Arabic authors on the issue of infinitesimal quantities are heavily influenced by the dispute between Aristotelians and theologians on the constitution of the sensible world. Given these conditions, the author’s silence is certainly meaningful: he must have felt some sympathy for one or another form of atomism, and decided, for this reason, to skip Aristotle’s discussion. Argument 5—Mixture We have argued that the author’s views on mixture were more or less identical to Alexander’s.9 He claims that the forms of the ingredients sub7
See W. E. Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation, Albany, New York, 1974, pp. 147-152, for a convenient presentation of Avicenna’s hundred works quoted in the ancient lists. 8 For Avicenna’s presumed commentaries on Aristotle, see above, p. 3, n. 4. For his style (and views on his own style) in the Šifā’, see A. Bertolacci, The Reception of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifā’, Leiden / Boston, 2006, pp. 607612, appendix E: “The style of the Kitāb al-Šifā’.” 9 See above, p. 267.
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sist in a diminished state in the mixture. But this doctrine is explicitly criticized by Avicenna, who holds, on the contrary, that these forms subsist in a non-diminished state when the two ingredients become mixed. It is very unlikely that Avicenna adopted two different positions on this issue. For mixture is a crucial aspect of his ontology of the sensible world.10 In conclusion, there is no argument, either external or internal, either of form or content, which should prompt us to attribute the anonymous paraphrase to Avicenna. 2. Pars construens: the author is al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī If not Avicenna, who is the author of our treatise? I shall argue in the present section that it is Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī (d. between 300/912 and 310/922), the important Imāmī theologian of Baghdad, author of the celebrated “Book of opinions and religions”, Kitāb al-Ārā’ wa-al-Diyānāt. Before giving arguments in favour of this attribution, I shall present the few facts we have at our disposal concerning his intellectual profile and writings. Al-Nawbaḫtī was active during the last third of the 3rd/9th and the beginning of the 4th/10th century.11 He belonged to a well-known Persian family established in Baghdad, close to the heart of power, which included in its ranks famous astrologers at the service of the Caliphs since the foundation of the Abbassid capital.12 The Šī‘ī inclination of this family is well attested in the ancient sources. We know the titles of more than forty books written by al-Nawbaḫtī, only one of which is preserved, the “Book of the Šī‘ī Sects”, Kitāb Firaq al-Šī‘a.13 From his opus maximum (left unfinished), the Kitāb al-Ārā’ wa10
See Stone, “Avicenna’s Theory of Primary Mixture”, p. 100: “Avicenna’s innovation in this area depends upon his radical moves in others, especially on the relationship between substantial form and sensible quality.” 11 On the problem of his dates, see the extensive discussion in J. van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere. Beobachtungen an islamischen häresiographischen Texten, 2 vols, Berlin / New York, 2011, vol. i, pp. 220-224. 12 For bibliographical references on Nawbaḫt al-Fārisī, see van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, p. 220, n. 107. On this family in general, see ‘A. Iqbāl, Khānadān-i Nawbakhtī, Tehran, 1933, many reprints (this book has been translated into Arabic by ‘A. H. al-Asadī: see Āl Nawbakht, Mashhad, 1425). 13 For an edition of this treatise, see Kitāb Firaq al-Šī‘a, ta’līf Abī Muḥammad alḤasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī, ed. H. Ritter, Istanbul / Leipzig, 1931. On the treatise and Ritter’s edition, see van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, pp. 230-260.
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al-Diyānāt, numerous fragments are preserved in later sources, tending to show that it was still available in the 12th c. But no manuscript of this treatise seems to have survived until today. The forty titles or so constituting his bibliography provide us with some interesting facts about al-Nawbaḫtī’s interests. He wrote on many essential questions and ideas discussed by Muslim theologians around 900: determinism and human capacity (title n° 5: Al-Istiṭā‘a), the nature of man (title n° 7: Al-Insān), how to deal with information transmitted by a single witness (title n° 18: Kitāb fī ḫabar al-wāḥid wa-al-‘amal bi-hi), divine attributes and the status of the world as created (title n° 9: Al-Tawḥīd wa-ḥudūṯ al-‘ālam, n° 10: Al-Tawḥīd al-ṣaġīr, n° 11: Al-Tawḥīd al-kabīr), the semantics of specific and unspecific statements (title n° 19: Al-ḫuṣūṣ wa-al‘umūm), subsidiary questions raised by the general debate about determinism such as “means of subsistence, terms of life and prices” (title n° 4: Alarzāq wa-al-āǧāl wa-al-as‘ār).14 As one might expect, he wrote no less than two treatises defending his beliefs about the rightful leadership of the community (title n° 12: Al-Ğāmi‘ fī al-Imāma, title n° 17: Al-Ḥuǧaǧ fī alImāma, abridgment). Al-Nawbaḫtī was also interested in kalām physics. He wrote a book about how we see in a mirror (title n° 39: Kitāb fī almarāyā wa-ǧihati al-ru’yati fī-hā) and two treatises on the vexed question of the “indivisible part” (the designation for the atom in this context). The first of them (title n° 13: Kitāb kabīr fī al-ǧuz’ al-laḏī lā yataǧazza’) is said to have been long, and the second was an abridgment of it (title n° 38: Muḫtaṣar al-kalām fī al-ǧuz’). Most of his titles, however, explicitly refer to a “critic” (naqḍ) or a “reply” (radd). His adversaries can be broadly divided into two groups. The first group consists of people influenced by foreign, especially Greek 14
On the well-attested interest in economics of the Muslim theologians see D. Gimaret, “Les théologiens musulmans devant la hausse des prix”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 22, 1979, pp. 330-338, pp. 330-331: “La question générale d’al-qaḍā’ wa-l-qadar soulève trois problèmes particuliers, qui sont généralement traités à la suite l’un de l’autre: al-âǧâl, al-arzâq, al-as‘âr. Al-âǧâl, ce sont les “termes fixés à l’existence”, autrement dit, la durée de la vie pour chacun de nous: dépendent-ils entièrement de Dieu, ou dépendent-ils en partie de l’homme? Ainsi, un homme qui meurt de mort violente meurt-il au terme fixé par Dieu? Al-arzâq, ce sont les “subsistances”, c’est-à-dire la nourriture, et, en général, tout ce que nous possédons. Il est dit que Dieu donne à chacun sa subsistance: or, ce qu’un voleur dérobe fait-il partie de la subsistance que Dieu lui alloue? Al-as‘âr, enfin, ce sont les prix. Eux aussi dépendent-ils entièrement de Dieu, et faut-il donc se résigner quand ils sont trop hauts ou trop bas, ou dépendent-ils aussi de l’homme? Là encore, la réponse est facile à deviner: pour les Sunnites, le prix de chaque chose est entièrement déterminé par Dieu; pour les Mu‘tazilites, l’homme intervient dans cette détermination”.
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learning, such as the advocates of transmigration (title n° 22: Al-Radd ‘alā aṣḥāb al-tanāsuḫ), astrologers (title n° 32: Al-radd ‘alā al-munaǧǧimīn), Ṯābit b. Qurra (title n° 26: Al-Radd ‘alā Ṯābit b. Qurra), logicians (title n° 25: Al-Radd ‘alā ahl al-manṭiq), and thinkers who claimed that the stars are alive (title n° 16: Ḥuǧaǧ ṭabī‘iyya mustaḫraǧa min kutub Arisṭūṭālīs fī alradd ‘alā man ẓa‘ama anna al-falak ḥayyun nāṭiq). The second group, which is also more numerous, includes various Muslim theologians, especially Mu‘tazilites. Al-Nawbaḫtī mounted at least two attacks on the subject of the imamate, one against the murǧi’ite Yaḥyā b. al-Asfaḥ and the other against the mu‘tazilite Ğa‘far b. Ḥarb (title n° 34: Al-Radd ‘alā Yaḥyā b. al-Asfaḥ fī al-imāma; title n° 43: Al-Naqḍ ‘alā Ğa‘far b. Ḥarb fī al-imāma).15 Like many other theologians, he launched (see title n° 24) an attack against Al-Ġarīb al-Mašriqī, the scandalous book in which Abū ‘Īsā al-Warrāq had criticized the Prophet and various aspects of the Muslim creed under the (transparent) fiction of an author speaking of himself as “a Foreigner from the East” (a strategy also adopted some centuries later by Montesquieu in the Lettres Persanes). However, the bulk of his criticism was aimed at his fellow Mu‘tazilites. Apart from his general reply to the school on the question of the threat (title n° 23: Al-Radd ‘alā aṣḥāb al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn fī al-wa‘īd), we find recorded his reply to Abū ‘Alī al-Ğubbā’ī’s unsatisfactory reply to the astrologers (title n° 20: Al-Radd ‘alā Abī ‘Alī al-Ğubbā’ī fī raddi-hi ‘alā al-Munaǧǧimīn), his questions to the same on numerous issues (title n° 40: Masā’ilu-hu liAbī ‘Alī al-Ğubbā’ī fī masā’il šattā) and two refutations of Abū al-Huḏayl, the first about the latter’s famous doctrine of the temporal finitude of the sequence of motions of people in Paradise (title n° 21: Al-Radd ‘alā Abī alHuḏayl fī anna na‘īm ahl al-ǧanna munqaṭi‘) and the second about his equally famous doctrine of knowledge (title n° 42: Al-naqḍ ‘alā Abī alHuḏayl fī al-ma‘rifa). 15
On Yaḥyā b. al-Asfaḥ, see Gimaret, “Matériaux pour une bibliographie des Jubba’i: Note complémentaire”, in M. E. Marmura (ed.), Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of George F. Hourani, New York, 1984, pp. 31-38, p. 38. On Ğa‘far b. Ḥarb, see W. Madelung, “Frühe mu‘tazilitische Häresiographie: das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ğa‘far b. Ḥarb?”, Der Islam 57, 1980, pp. 220-236. On Ğa‘far’s stance with regard to the imamat in particular, see ibid., p. 228: “Seine eigene Meinung zur Imamatsfrage is offenbar in der Lehre der Mehrheit (ǧumhūr) der Bagdader Mu‘tazila wiedergegeben. Er besteht darauf, daß diese Mehrheit zwar, wie schon Bišr b. alMu‘tamir, die Zulässigkeit des Imamats des Übertroffenen (mafḍūl) lehrte, jedoch in Gegensatz zu diesem nicht die Überlegenheit ‘Alīs gegenüber Abū Bakr behauptete, sondern die Frage, wer der vorzüglichste der Prophetengenossen gewesen, als nicht mehr erforschbar offen ließ”. In his refutation, al-Nawbaḫtī no doubt criticized this neutrality and defended Alī’s positive superiority over Abū Bakr.
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But al-Nawbaḫtī’s discussions with other scholars were not necessarily polemical. We learn of two sets of ‘answers’ to Abū Ğa‘far b. Qiba (title n° 14: Ğawābātu-hu li-Abī Ğa‘far b. Qiba and n° 15: Ġawābāt uḫrā li-Abī Ğa‘far b. Qiba) and of his ‘discussion rounds’ with Abū ‘Abdallah b. Mumlak (title n° 35: Šarḥ maǧālisi-hi ma‘a Abī ‘Abdallah b. Mumlak). It is probably not accidental that both scholars were theologians reporded to have converted to Šī‘ism.16 It should be noted that this list does not say that al-Nawbaḫtī “replied to”, or “criticized” the head of the Mu‘tazilites of the Baghdad school Abū al-Qāsim al-Balḫī. Here again, the bibliographers have recorded “discussion rounds” held with him (title n° 37: Maǧālisu-hu ma‘a Abī al-Qāsim al-Balḫī). From this brief survey of the titles transmitted emerges the figure of a scholar deeply engaged in the theological debate of the second half of the 9th century. Something must be said here about his own position. It is often said that in his only work transmitted to us, the Kitāb firaq al-šī‘a, alNawbaḫtī was remarkably neutral and objective. That does not mean, however, that he was not working as an apologist in it. Van Ess is probably right to identify it with the item appearing in Naǧāšī’s list as a “Reply to the Šī‘a sects apart from the Imāmiyya” (see title n° 28: Al-radd ‘alā firaq al-šī‘a mā ḫalā al-Imāmiyya), which might well have been closer to the authentic title.17 The Radd ‘alā al-muǧassima (title n° 29) belongs to the same context. Al-Nawbaḫtī also devoted one work specifically to the refutation of the extremists of his party (title n° 27: Al-radd ‘alā al-ġulāt), of which a fragment is transmitted in Ibn al-Ğawzī.18 He also dedicated a treatise to the refutation of those who ended the lineage of the Prophet at the seventh Imam Mūsā al-Kāẓim, holding that he had never died (title n° 34: Al-radd ‘alā al-wāqifa) or, perhaps more likely, he wrote this treatise to refute their contemporary imitators. As to al-Nawbaḫtī’s position with regard to Mu‘tazilism, I believe that J. van Ess got it right to suggest that his numerous criticisms of leading personalities of the school should not conceal his general indebtedness to their learning and methods.19 There is no contradiction, from this point of view, between these many refutations and al-Nadīm’s claim, as we shall shortly see, that “the Mu‘tazila claimed 16
On Ibn Qiba, see H. Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shī‘ite Islam. Abū Ja‘far ibn Qiba al-Rāzī and His Contribution to Imāmite Shī‘ite Thought, Princeton, 1993, pp. 107 sqq. 17 See van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, vol. i, pp. 231-232. 18 See Ritter, Firaq, p. 27 of the introduction. 19 Van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, vol. i, p. 229: “Er [sc. al-Nawbaḫtī] nutzte jede Gelegenheit, durch Einwände gegen sie [sc. the traditional Mu‘tazilite doctrine] ein eigenes Profil zu bewahren; aber er ließ sich eben auch ganz auf ihren Stil und ihre Axiome ein”.
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him”. A Mu‘tazilite surely he was, but of an independent mind, and with his own theological agenda: adapting the dialectical refinement and methods of the Mu‘tazilite school to the project of a rational defense of Imamism. Now, can this scholar be the author of the anonymous paraphrase? Or, more to the point, what positive reasons do we have to believe that he could be the author? So far as I can see, there are eight arguments in favour of alNawbaḫtī being the author. Let us now examine them. Argument 1—Al-Nadīm’s bibliographical evidence Al-Nawbaḫtī is the only scholar recorded by the ancient bibliographers as having composed a summary of Aristotle’s treatise On generation and corruption in Arabic.20 It is reasonable, then, to start our inquiry about the author by asking ourselves whether he could be al-Nawbaḫtī. It is helpful to quote in full al-Nadīm’s notice about al-Nawbaḫtī: He was Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā, the son of the sister of Abū Sahl Ibn Nawbaḫt, a theologian and philosopher (mutakallim faylasūf). A group of translators of books about philosophy (kutub al-falsafa), such as Abū ‘Uṯmān al-Dimašqī, Isḥāq, Ṯābit, and others besides them, used to meet with him. Although the Mu‘tazila claimed him, the Šī‘a also claimed him and he inclined towards the Šī‘a, for the family of Nawbaḫt was openly known to support the rule of ‘Alī and his descendants, for whom be peace. Accordingly, we mention him in this place. The Collection of books which he transcribed in his own handwriting was very large. He also wrote compositions and made compilations about theology, philosophy (fī al-kalām wa-al-falsafa), and other subjects. He died —. Among his books were: Doctrines and religions, which he did not finish; Refutation of the Upholders of Transmigration; Oneness and the beginning of causes (Kitāb al-tawḥīd wa-ḥadath al-‘ilal); Refutation of the Book of Abū ‘Īsā about the Foreigner from the East; Abridgment of Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione 20
The summary is certainly not a translation from the Greek. The only possible candidate for its authorship, in Greek, would be Themistius, whose paraphrase of GC is now lost, but was still known to al-Nadīm (the only author known to us who mentions it; see al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p . 311). But apart from the style, which certainly is not that of a translation from Greek, Themistius would not have finished his introduction with an invocation of God’s support; he would not have omitted the entire content of GC I 2; he would not have suppressed every doxographical detail in the treatise. Moreover, the last section of the text, as we saw, looks like an implicit refutation of Al-Kindī’s treatise On the Proximate Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption, and that of course implies that it was written after ca 850.
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(Kitāb Iḫtiṣār al-kawn wa-al-fasād li-Arisṭūṭālīs); Refutation of ‘Umar ibn ‘Abbād and Annihilation of his Doctrine; The imamat, which he did not finish. 21
Thus, al-Nadīm mentions an “Abridgment” (iḫtiṣār) of Aristotle’s GC. There is little doubt that that is the literary genre of our treatise. It could scarcely be objected that in ms. A, the work is designated as a talḫīṣ and not as an iḫtiṣār, although it is true that each term refers to something slightly different. As G. Endress points out,22 we can distinguish among the subspecies of the genre, “die Paraphrase, welche den Wortlaut zitierend aufnimmt, dilatorisch umschreibt und interpretierend ergänzt (arab. talḫīṣ); und die zusammenfassende, die Doktrin der Grundschrift mit der Auslegung des Interpreten verquickende Epitome (arab. ǧawāmi‘ […] als strikte “Abkürzung” mūǧiz, muḫtaṣar)”. But this objection is easily overcome. First, such distinctions between generic terms are never perfectly strict. We cannot dismiss the possibility that things were not so clear-cut at the time when al-Nadīm wrote, so that scholars might have used both terms indifferently. Secondly and more decisively, it is far from certain that the “title” in ms. A is authentic, as it has no parallel in ms. G and is not accompanied in ms. A by an author’s name. As such, it looks more like a mere indication of content than a title. Our doubts are corroborated by the analysis of the content. If we admit that the distinction drawn by Endress was already valid for scholars in 9th c. Baghdad, the content of the text corresponds perfectly to the way Endress characterizes the muḫtaṣar, by contrast to the talḫīṣ. It is an abridgement of Aristotle’s main arguments which makes constant use of the commentators, rather than an exegetical expansion of the text. I believe, therefore, that the indication in ms. A is not genuine, and that the correct title should have contained the word iḫtiṣār (which I take of course to be synonymous to muḫtaṣar).23 It seems safe to 21
Al-Nadīm, Fihrist, pp. 225-226. Cf. Dodge’s translation, p. 441. G. Endress, “Die wissenschaftliche Literatur”, in Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, vol. 2, Wiesbaden, 1987, pp. 400-506, and vol. 3 (Supplement), Wiesbaden, 1992, pp. 3-152, vol. 2, p. 461. See also Gutas, “Aspects of Literary Form and Genre in Arabic Literature”, in Ch. Burnett (ed.), Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin Traditions, London, 1993, pp. 29-76, p. 35: “A muḫtaṣar is an abridgment, with all that the term implies; i.e., strictly speaking, a condensation which follows for the most part the wording of the original”. 23 Whether this title was Kitāb Iḫtiṣār al-kawn wa-al-fasād li-Arisṭūṭālīs, as alNadīm has it, is another question. It seems odd to speak of the “book of the abridgment of the generation and corruption by Aristotle”. I would rather tentatively suggest that the genuine title was Iḫtiṣār kitāb al-kawn wa-al-fasād li-Arisṭūṭālīs, “Abridgment of 22
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conclude, then, that the indication in al-Nadīm’s Fihrist matches the textual evidence rather well. Argument 2—The author is at home in Baghdadi kalām The first argument is strong but remains somewhat external to the text transmitted and, it could be objected, cannot help concluding e silentio.24 Even if it is true that the sole Arabic abridgement of GC recorded by the ancient biobibliographers was the work of al-Nawbaḫtī, one cannot conclude that no other such works existed, whose memory is now entirely lost. We thus need a stronger argument, more integral to the substance of the text transmitted. It is of course difficult to claim that an anonymous text cannot have been written by any other scholar than its presumed author. Yet, in the present case, we can come near to proof, for a very simple reason: at many points in his paraphrase, the author expresses thoughts foreign to the Aristotelian tradition, but closely reflecting ontological technicalities typical for the mutakallimūn, and especially for the Baghdadī school. Let us briefly list eight notable points. (i) When he addresses the question of matter receiving one form after another, the author introduces an idea found neither in Aristotle nor Alexander, namely that such a replacement must proceed step by step.25 As we have already remarked, this scheme is typical for the discrete ontology of the mutakallimūn, but not for Aristotelian philosophers. (ii) In the same context, the author seems eager to interpret Aristotelian privation as a “positive” attribute. Insofar as it has formal reality, the “negative” attribute is an entity endowed with as much positivity as its “positive” counterpart.26 Here again, the model is at home in kalām physics, but not in an orthodox Aristotelian framework. (iii) Later, the author admits the existence of change in each category, which blatantly contradicts what Aristotle claims in many passages in his own works, in which he restricts change to substance, quality, quantity and place.27 As previously noted, the mutakallimūn’s view of change (taġayyur or taġāyur) allowed them to indulge in this kind of abstract and formal reading of the Aristotelian µεταβολή.
the book of generation and corruption by Aristotle”. This title (together with the author’s name) must have disappeared at an early stage of the textual transmission. 24 In fact, the Latin tradition, as we saw above on p. 332, mentions a commentary on GC by al-Kindī himself. This information might be trustworthy. 25 See above, pp. 87-88. 26 See above, pp. 91-94. 27 See above, pp. 103-104.
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(iv) In GC I 4 Aristotle denies that from the point of view of natural change, we have a substance plus a quality, rather than a qualified substance. The author, on the other hand, writes as if both ways of speaking were equally valid, and reflected only a difference in point of view on the object.28 This analysis would be very odd for a full-blooded Aristotelian commentator, but is perfectly understandable in a mutakallim, according to whom a being is always a composite of substance and accidents. (v) The author draws a distinction between an accident belonging to the substratum at the latter’s coming-to-be and after this coming-to-be. This distinction is unattested (and would be pointless) for Aristotelians. However, as we have shown, it clearly echoes kalām discussions of the temporal inherence of the accident in the substance. Basrian followers of Abū Hāšim singled themselves out among the Mu‘tazilites by claiming that the substance can be deprived of its accident except one of the akwān “at the beginning” (ibtidā’an), but cannot be deprived of it once it has acquired it.29 The author was undoubtedly aware of these discussions which, to repeat, have no counterpart on the Aristotelian side. (vi) the author expresses some hesitation as to the sameness of the accident when it returns after a period of annihilation. While he is inclined to consider it another accident, different from the first, he leaves the question open. There is no reason to be so timid in an Aristotelian context. In a kalām context, however, things looked very different. We have translated a doxographical text by Abū Manṣūr al-Baġdādī showing that the members of the school were deeply divided on this very issue. While al-Qalānisī and al-Balḫī rejected the return of any kind of accident, al-Ğubbā’ī and his son were more cautious and distinguished between different types of accidents.30 The author’s doubts on this matter reflect this situation among mutakallimūn. Such doubts would be meaningless outside this context. (vii) When the author discusses the contact of a sphere with the place surrounding it, he adopts a terminology and way of thinking clearly influenced by geometrical atomism. In particular, he attributes individuality to its indivisible parts, since he views the contact of the sphere as occurring “per se” (ḏātiyyan), successively, at each of its “parts”.31 This understanding of rotation is unparalleled in the Aristotelian tradition, and in particular among the commentators on GC. It is usual, on the other hand, among the mutakallimūn of the classical period, to assimilate their “indivisible parts”
28
See above, pp. 104-105. See above, p. 112. 30 See above, p. 115. 31 See above, p. 125. 29
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to geometrical points. The author could hardly fail to have been influenced by this geometrical model, which was unheard of in Antiquity. (viii) The author defines contact in a way which would be pointless in an Aristotelian framework.32 For after having said, like Aristotle in the Physics, that two objects are in contact if their extremities are together, he adds the extra condition that there is between them nothing other than themselves. But this is odd and completely redundant. We have shown that this specification produces a good definition of contact according to the Baghdadī mutakallimūn, who did not allow for the existence of a vacuum, as opposed to the Basrian school, who were partisans of the vacuum. Neither Philoponus, nor Averroes, nor any Aristotelian one can imagine would ever have made such an addition to the canonical definition of contact. It must arise from an author strongly influenced by kalām debates. In conclusion, these eight considerations seem to prove that the author of the paraphrase had close connections with classical kalām physics, such as it was practiced in Irak around 900 AD. Al-Nawbaḫtī being both a mutakallim influenced by the Baghdadi school of al-Balḫī and a commentator of GC active in this period, he must be the author of our text. Argument 3—The author knows the Greek commentators well Our third argument is again drawn from al-Nadīm’s notice about alNawbaḫtī. For the Fihrist says that al-Nawbaḫtī entertained close relationships with the translators of his time: “A group of translators of books about philosophy (kutub al-falsafa), such as Abū ‘Uṯmān al-Dimašqī, Isḥāq, Ṯābit, and others besides them, used to meet with him”. This fact finds twofold support in what we have seen in commenting on the text. First, we remarked that the author seems very well informed about the ancient exegesis of GC. It is beyond any doubt that he used Alexander’s commentary on this work when paraphrasing the first book. The situation is less clear for the second book, where we have found no trace of such a use of Alexander. The commentary is less rich philosophically than that on the first book, even though the author had some Greek source at his disposal and made use of it in a couple of places. We have suggested that in these passages, he may have used Olympiodorus’ commentary on the second book, which is said by al-Nadīm to have been translated by Usṭāṯ, i.e. around the middle of the 9th c. This bibliographical information is confirmed by a passage from the doctor Ibn Isḥāq al-Isrā’īlī, which tends to show that this commentary was still extant in the 13th c.33 Thus, if we are 32 33
See above, p. 205. See above, p. 338, n. 764.
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not mistaken, our author had access to two Greek commentaries when writing his exegesis of Aristotle’s treatise. That would come as no surprise if he is al-Nawbaḫtī. Argument 4—The author was probably acquainted and coeval with the translator Qusṭā b. Lūqā There is more. Al-Nadīm informs us that Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, a translator active in the second half of the 9th c.,34 had translated the first book, i.e. the first book only, of Alexander’s commentary on GC. It was only some decades later that the whole commentary (first and second book) was translated by Abū Bišr Mattā b. Yūnus (ca 870-940). True, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā is not mentioned in the list of the translators who used to meet with alNawbaḫtī. But he might very well have been one of the “others besides them” who had contact with him. Moreover, the chronology matches the internal discrepancy of the commentary: it must have been written at a time when Qusṭā’s translation of Alexander’s commentary on the first book was already available, but before Mattā’s translation. If we suppose that Qusṭā translated Alexander’s work around 875, and Mattā after 900 or so, this interval of time is approximately when the commentary was composed. And this period exactly corresponds to the time when al-Nawbaḫtī was active. Argument 5—The author probably used Abū ‘Uṯmān al-Dimašqī’s translation of Aristotle’s GC The same source suggests a fifth argument. In one section of the second book (for which we believe Alexander’s text not to have been available to the author), it is possible to compare the terminology of the translation used by the author with Isḥāq’s translation, which was used by Averroes in his Middle Commentary, and with Mattā’s rendering of the same text as it appears in the lemmata of his translation of Alexander’s commentary.35 34
On Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s period of activity in Baghdad, see R. Rashed, Diophante: Les Arithmétiques, 2 vols, Paris, 1984, vol. iii, pp. xvi-xxii, p. xxii: “Jeunes sous le règne d’al-Mu‘taṣim [833-842], les protecteurs les plus prestigieux d’Ibn Lūqā étaient en pleine gloire sous al-Mutawakkil, et surtout sous al-Mu‘tamid [870-892]. Aussi peuton localiser la période de Bagdad d’Ibn Lūqā entre 860 et la dernière décennie du siècle, époque où il quitta la Capitale pour l’Arménie.” 35 Mattā’s translation is not directly transmitted, but is partially embedded in Ps.Ğābir’s Kitāb al-Taṣrīf. For a partial edition of the relevant passages, see G. Serra, “La traduzione araba del De generatione et corruptione di Aristotele citata nel Kitāb alTaṣrīf attribuito a Ğābir”, Medioevo, Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale 23, 1997, pp. 191-288. See the “glossario greco-arabo”, pp. 260-268 and the “glossario arabogreco”, pp. 268-286.
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The words translated are pairs of adjectives designating primary qualities pertaining to the sense of touch: µαλακόν-σκληρόν (soft-hard), γλίσχρονκραῦρον (viscous-brittle), λεῖον-τραχύ (smooth-rough), and λεπτόν-παχύ (fine-coarse). The first two pairs are translated in a similar manner by our three sources: µαλακόν becomes layyin and σκληρόν ṣulb, γλίσχρον laziǧ and κραῦρον qaḥal.36 The last two pairs, on the other hand, are different. The author of the paraphrase has raqīq for λεῖον and ḏā’ib for λεπτόν; for their contraries, he writes ġalīẓ for τραχύ and ǧāmid for παχύ. It is difficult to guess what the other Arabic sources had for λεῖον and τραχύ. For Ps.Ğābir does not quote Alexander there, and Averroes, in his list of the basic contrarieties at 92.10-11, after mentioning the other three pairs, only adds “and the like”. He does mention the “fine” and the “coarse” later in his commentary, calling them al-malāsa and al-ḫušūna; but he does so in a passage where he is mounting a criticism against Alexander’s explanation of the reason Aristotle did not discuss the rare and the dense or the smooth and the rough.37 We cannot decide, then, which reading was found in Isḥāq’s translation and which in Mattā’s translation of the lemmata belonging to Alexander’s commentary. There are three possibilities: either (i) Averroes is quoting only the latter here (since he is citing Alexander) or (ii) he is transposing Alexander’s idea into Isḥāq’s terminology, or (iii) both Isḥāq and Mattā translated λεῖον and τραχύ by the words almalāsa and al-ḫušūna. Consequently, we cannot gain any certainty as to how Isḥāq translated τραχὺ λεῖον. Fortunately, this does not prevent us from establishing that the translation the author used was not Isḥāq’s text. Indeed, his words for λεπτόν and παχύ are different from Isḥāq’s and Mattā’s rendering. In his Middle Commentary, Averroes oscillates between the simple translation by al-raqīq (or al-riqqa) and the double one by (al-
36
In the absence of quotations of this word in Ps.-Ğābir (see Serra, “La traduzione araba”, p. 213 and n. 4), we cannot know with certainty what Mattā’s translation for κραῦρον actually was. But the parallel with the other two pieces of evidence in the case of γλίσχρον makes it likely that it read qaḥal for κραῦρον. 37 See Averroes, In GC 94.7-9 Eichner: “Alexander says that Aristotle omitted to mention rarity and density either because they are subsumed under the heavy and the light or because they are subsumed under the hard and the soft. And he also omitted to mention the rough and the smooth because the rough falls under the dry while the smooth falls under the moist.” The two cases are different: the rare and the dense are not mentioned at all in this chapter, while the smooth and the rough are first listed and next forgotten, as it were, by Aristotle. Should we suggest that this pair of terms then absent in the manuscript(s) read by Alexander? It is present, however, in the entire direct and indirect tradition. It is more likely that Alexander meant only that after being mentioned, this fourth pair was skipped by Aristotle in the rest of his discussion.
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ašyā’) al-raqīqa al-laṭīfa or al-laṭāfa wa-al-riqqa.38 In his Epitome, on the other hand, he uses al-laṭāfa, siding thus with Ps.-Ğābir, who writes allaṭīf. Since, as we have already noted, the Epitome is much more influenced by Alexander than the Middle Commentary, the following explanation seems apt: Averroes found raqīq (or riqqa) in Isḥāq’s translation of GC, and laṭīf (or laṭāfa) in Mattā’s translation of Alexander; in his Middle Commentary, he combined both readings.39 Be that as it may, no source except the one used by the author—that is, neither Ishāq nor Mattā—chose the pair ḏā’ib ǧāmid as a translation of the Greek λεπτὸν παχύ. This first result is corroborated by what appears in the author’s list for λεῖον τραχύ. The translation he had access to presented, for this pair, the Arabic roots likely (if our analysis is correct) to have been chosen by Isḥāq for his rendering of λεπτὸν and παχύ: riqqa and ġilaẓ. We can summarize all the evidence in the following table: Greek term the from GC II 2, author, 329b 18-20 § 11.4 µαλακόν/ σκληρόν (soft/hard) γλίσχρον/ κραῦρον (viscous/brittle) λεῖον/ τραχύ (smooth/rough) λεπτόν/ παχύ (fine/coarse)
38
Arabic Mattā b. Isḥāq’s Yūnus ap. translation in Ps.-Ğābir Gerardus’ Latin translation layyin/ mollities/ ṣulb durities
laziǧ/ qaḥal
Averroes, Middle Commentary (and, if mentioned, Epitome 23.7-10) layyin (līn) (92.11, 93.6-7)/ ṣulb (ṣalāba) (92.11, 93.9) Epitome: id. laziǧ (luzūǧa) (92.11, 93.13)/ qaḥal (92.11, 93.3-4)
luzūǧa/ Ø
viscositas/ ariditas
raqīq/ ġalīẓ
malāsa (94.13-14)/ ḫušūna (94.13)
Ø/ Ø
lenitas/ asperitas
ḏā’ib/ ǧāmid
raqīq, riqqa, laṭīf, laṭāfa laṭīf/ (92.11-12, 92.15-16)/ ġilaẓ ġilāẓ (92.11, 92.17) Epitome: id.
layyin/ ṣulb
subtilitas/ crassitudo
See Averroes, In GC 92.12 and 16 Eichner. Both words, raqīq and laṭīf, are present in kalām discussions contemporary with the translation movement. Al-Aš‘arī makes no distinction between raqīq and laṭīf, using the two terms interchangeably, while the Bahshamīs tend to draw a distinction between them. According to them, “riqqa est ce qui caractérise, par exemple, les corps des anges et des djinns, pour signifier, sans doute, l’extrême finesse de leur ‘matière’, qui les fait être transparents ([…] cf. l’expression ṯawb raqīq pour désigner une étoffe très fine […]), alors que laṭāfa signifierait l’extrême petitesse et se dirait notamment de l’atome isolé, ou d’un petit nombre d’atomes […]” (Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash‘arī, pp. 7071, n. 36). 39
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It seems very unlikely that the author changed what he read in the translation he used. The divergences point rather to a specific translation, neither Isḥāq’s nor Mattā’s, which did not yet exist when the text was composed. Al-Nadīm knows of three Arabic translations of GC. Besides Isḥāq’s, he names a translation by Ibn Bakkūs and another one by Abū ‘Uṯmān alDimašqī, based on Ḥunayn’s Syriac translation. There are good reasons to believe that Ibn Bakkūs produced no more than a revision of a pre-existing translation of the first book.40 We are thus left with al-Dimašqī. It might be objected that this possibility is weak, since the existence of al-Dimašqī’s translation is shadowy in the extreme—the present divergence in the rendering of a couple of Greek terms would actually be our sole attestation. But in the context of the present discussion, this weakness is a strength: since, as we have just seen, al-Dimašqī was one of the translators who used to meet with al-Nawbaḫtī, the philological discrepancies between Isḥāq and the author become an argument in favour of al-Nawbaḫtī’s authorship. He must have made use of a “confidential” version of Aristotle’s text produced within his own circle of translators. Argument 6—The author was an atomist The next two arguments pertain to content. We have already tackled the first in this chapter. It elaborates on the issue of atomism. As we had occasion to recall, it is prima facie very odd not to find a section corresponding to GC I 2, the chapter devoted to the refutation of indivisible magnitudes, in the paraphrase. This absence is likely to be intentional. In an Islamic context, it points to the fact that the author was an atomist. Now, all the Aristotelians we are aware of in the Islamic world were in favour of the infinite divisibility of matter. This doctrine is essential to al-Fārābī, to Avicenna, to Ibn Bāǧǧa, and to Averroes. It could of course be said that the author was a faylasūf of a more Platonic blend, such as Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, who might have diverged from Aristotle on this controversial issue, like Proclus before him. Al-Rāzī himself would be a likely candidate, since he was al-Nawbaḫtī’s contemporary (active around 900), an atomist, and a doctor interested in natural philosophy. Fortunately, we are well informed about al-Rāzī’s production by the list of his writings composed by alBīrūnī.41 He is not recorded to have written a summary of Aristotle’s treatise. We would have to suppose, then, that the anonymous writer was some unknown contemporary Platonist. But in the absence of the slightest allu40
See Rashed, “De generatione et corruptione – tradition arabe”, p. 308. See al-Bīrūnī, Risāla fī Fihrist Kutub Muḥammad b. Zakariyyā’ al-Rāzī, ed. P. Kraus, Paris, 1936, pp. 15-16 for the list of his commentaries (section entitled Altafāsīr wa-al-talāḫīṣ wa-al-iḫtiṣārāt, containing al-Rāzī’s titles from n° 107 to n° 113). 41
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sion to any kind of Platonic allegiance, this suggestion is a mere petitio principii. Al-Nawbaḫtī is a much more likely candidate. Besides being recorded by al-Nadīm as the author of a summary of GC, he also composed, as we have just seen, two books on indivisible magnitudes. Neither title contains the word “reply”, “refutation”, etc. These treatises obviously aimed to prove the physical existence of indivisible magnitudes, probably by relying on the impossibility of an actual infinity, which was also admitted by their adversaries. Since Aristotle was replying to this very argument in GC I 2, it would have made the task of summarizing this chapter useless and arduous. That was a sufficient reason for al-Nawbaḫtī to skip this whole section by Aristotle. Argument 7—The author adopts a markedly anti-Kindian stance The second argument from content arises from the author’s rebuttal of an astral explanation for generation and corruption. As we saw, he maintained, against al-Kindī, that the heavenly bodies cannot be proximate causes for generation and corruption, except for beings spontaneously generated and meteorological phenomena. In the other cases, they are only remote causes of generation—more remote in some cases (human beings), less remote in others (species generated at the same time of the year). In the case of man, the proximate cause of generation is the father, not the positions of the stars at the instant of conception or birth. This drastic downgrading of the role of the stars sits well, of course, with a critical stance with respect to astrology. Here again, we find a feature consonant with alNawbaḫtī’s bibliography. He wrote, as already recalled, a Reply to the astrologers, and tackled the same issue in polemics against the greatest Mu‘tazilite of his time, Abū ‘Alī al-Ğubbā’ī. Moreover, in some newly discovered fragments, he mounted an attack against al-Kindī and his alleged doctrine—expounded in a treatise which does not seem to have survived— according to which the stars are alive and rational.42 Such coincidences are all the more striking in view of the fact that refutations of al-Kindī become few and far between after the beginning of the 10th c.43
42
See al-Malāḥimī, Kitāb al-Mu‘tamad, pp. 648-649, 669, 772; Madelung, “AlḤasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbahktī on the Views of Astronomers and Astrologers”, p. 274. 43 The exception which confirms the rule is Andalusian, which suggests that it might not be entirely an exception: Ibn Ḥazm, Al-Radd ‘alā al-Kindī al-Faylasūf, in Rasā’il Ibn Ḥazm al-Andalusī, 2 vols, ed. I. ‘Abbās, 2nd edition, Beirut, 2007, vol. 2, pp. 363-405.
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Argument 8—The style of the introduction is reminiscent of that of the introduction of the Kitāb firaq al-Šī‘a One last confirmation is based on the style of the introduction to the text, when compared to the introduction of Kitāb firaq al-Šī‘a, alNawbaḫtī’s only treatise preserved today. Let us quote again the first section of our text. After the traditional invocation, the author writes: Our aim in this book (qaṣdu-nā fī hāḏā al-kitāb) is to investigate absolute generation and destruction and to explain the difference between them and the other changes. We shall also facilitate the study of related topics, namely nutrition, growth, diminution, contact, mixture, action, passion. Similarly, we shall examine the things which are generated and destroyed, and how what is generated among them is generated. Similarly, we shall study the things which are efficient causes in an absolute way for all of them. As to the substratum proper to each generated and destroyed being, as well as its proper agent, they must be dealt with when this generated being, with its proper form and proper perfection, is addressed. The aim, here, is rather to deal with the general things belonging to all generated and destroyed beings, from the point of view of their generation and destruction. It is not the case that all of them have a general form, but they all have a general substratum, viz. the four elements. For each of these is generated out of the other, while the rest of the generated beings are generated out of them all simultaneously. similarly, they share a general agent in common, viz. the celestial beings, even if these beings are remote agents for some of them and proximate agents for others. Therefore, we must deal here, among the causes of absolute generation and destruction, with the material cause and the efficient cause. At this point, we shall have reached the completion of what we were aiming at. God, may He be exalted, is the Helper (wa-Allāhu ta‘ālā huwa almu‘īn).
Thus, after a sober indication of the aim of his book, the author succinctly mentions its main topics. He then closes his introduction with a brief invocation asking for God’s assistance. Let us now read al-Nawbaḫtī’s introduction to the Kitāb firaq al-Šī‘a. After the invocation, he writes: All of the Islamic sects—Šī‘a and others—held different positions about the imamate, in every era and about every imam—during his life and after his death. This has happened since the death of Muḥammad, peace be upon him, and his family. In this book, we have recorded (wa-qad ḏakarnā fī kitābinā hāḏā) what has been handed down to us about the sects and their doctrines and differences, in addition to what we recall about the causes of their differences and what we have learned from history regarding these matters. We
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seek support and help from God (wa-bi-Allāhi al-tawfīqu wa-min-hu al‘awn).44
Despite their obvious difference of content, the style and structure of the two introductions are extremely similar. Both provide a minimalist description of the issue at stake, without any mention of a dedicatee (be he the abstract reader or a real person to whom or at whose request the book would have been written) and neither has any sort of rhetorical adornment. In a couple of bare, impersonal sentences, the author announces the basic aim of his book, gives some minimal elements of context and closes his introduction with nearly identical formulae. In both works, God is described as providing help, and the Arabic root used is the same in both (mu‘īn in our treatise, ‘awn in the Firaq al-Šī‘a). It would be most natural, then, if both treatises should have the same author. In view of the eight arguments briefly discussed so far, I do not hesitate to attribute to al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī this abridgement of Aristotle’s GC. All elements converge to form a coherent picture of an author writing around 900, well-versed in Aristotelian matters, using al-Dimašqī’s translation of Aristotle, Ibn Lūqā’s translation of Alexander’s commentary on GC I, and Usṭāṯ’s translation of Olympiodorus’ commentary on GC II, hostile to al-Kindī, and, last but not least, heavily influenced by kalām physics. These features correspond strikingly to everything we know about al-Nawbaḫtī, to whom, to say it once more, an abridgement of GC is explicitly attributed by al-Nadīm.
44
Firaq al-Šī‘a, ed. Ritter, p. 2.
Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī as a philosopher It remains for us to put the anonymous commentary in its historical context. If it is really the work of the author to whom we attribute it—we will not return here to our arguments—what do we learn about the philosophy of his time? Let us return to the characterisation of al-Nawbaḫtī by alNadīm. He was, the bio-bibliographer tells us, “mutakallim faylasūf”.45 Here we must distinguish questions of translation and meaning. Of course it would be unobjectionable and easy to translate this expression as “theologian philosopher.” But the precise signification of these terms calls for an interpretation of al-Nawbaḫtī’s overall project. Writers of al-Nadīm’s time never confuse mutakallim and faylasūf. This is because the latter word has a narrower meaning than our word “philosopher”, which in my view would be suitable to designate the mutakallim as well. For a mutakallim is more than a rational theologian. It would only obscure our inquiry, on the other hand, if we were to call him a dialectician (διαλεκτικός) on the grounds that the root of the Arabic word kalām is related to the Greek λέγειν. For although it is possible that this is the etymology of the Arabic word,46 one cannot use this to mark the domain of activity of the kalām in the period we are concerned with. The same illusion of autonomy arises if we start from the side of the faylasūf. Here the etymology is transparent, since faylasūf and falsafa are transliterations, not hypothetical translations, of φιλόσοφος and φιλοσοφία.47 But in spite of appearances, the situation is more complicated than in the case of mutakallim. For the meanings of “falsafa” cannot be superimposed on those of our term “philosophy”, nor even on the Greek word “φιλοσοφία” in late antiquity. In its main usage, “φιλοσοφία” designates knowledge that is essentially pagan, characterised by a threefold opposition to Christianity.48 Its adherents cannot admit personal survival for 45
See above, p. 350. Cf. J. van Ess, Die Erkenntnislehre des ‘Aḍudaddīn al-Īcī, Wiesbaden, 1966, pp. 20 and 58-59. 47 That is, faylasūf and falsafa are transliterations, just as their cousins in the great majority of European languages are (Dutch wijsbegeerte apart). In view of this, it is always comical to see orientalist ideologues argue, based on the foreign origin of the word, that philosophy is foreign to the Islamic world. 48 See R. Chiaradonna and M. Rashed, “Before and after the Commentators: an Exercise in Periodization. A Discussion of Richard Sorabji, The Philosophy of the 46
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individuals, nor an eternal stretch of time before the beginning of the world, nor the unity of God. Of course not all who teach philosophy at the end of antiquity are pagans—some of the teachers in Alexandria are actually Christians. But this did not undermine the general perception one had of the profession.49 Moreover, the only great Christian philosopher of late antiquity, John Philoponus, moves quickly to a violent refutation of pagan Aristotelianism, while his later Christian colleagues are completely transparent. One might object to this that there are large swaths of patristic writings that are philosophical, insofar as they discuss subjects common to philosophy, and follow methods as argumentative as the philosophers. This is true. But the point here is that each tradition remains a stranger to the other. One hardly ever finds in antiquity a Christian thinker justifying his claims explicitly and in a principled way with appeals to the philosophical texts of Plato or Aristotle, to say nothing of the Stoics and Epicureans. Of course this does not mean that they never quote the pagan thinkers. But this is always done to confirm an intuition which has been developed in line with Christian doctrine. The Arabs inherit this situation. But with the development of thought in the Islamic world, there is an unheard-of double reversal, with enormous historical impact. At first the rational theologians, the mutakallimūn, discuss subjects that we—even today—consider properly philosophical, in ways much more intense than the Christian thinkers of antiquity: questions of physics, mechanics, psychology, physiology, ethics, logic. All these themes are gone into for themselves (even if in a theological context), and form the subjects of disputes and monographs: this is never the case with the Church Fathers and their followers. Then, for the first time in the Mediterranean Orient, a thinker who is a follower of an Abrahamic religion, alKindī, defers to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle as to a superior authority that is perfectly compatible with religion.50 For the first time, an Abrahamic thinker describes himself as a ‘philosopher’ (faylasūf) in the sense of full and complete loyalty to the rational paradigm borrowed from Commentators, 200–600 AD”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 38, 2010, pp. 251297, pp. 274-276. 49 Cf. L. G. Westerink, “The Alexandrian Commentators”, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, London, 1990, pp. 325-348, p. 336. 50 A comparison with the Latin West would be enlightening here. For interesting reflections on the idea of philosophy in the Middle Ages, see A. de Libera, “Faculté des arts ou faculté de philosophie? Sur l’idée de philosophie et l’idéal philosophique au XIIIe siècle”, in Olga Weijers and L. Holtz, L’Enseignement des disciplines à la Faculté des arts (Paris et Oxford, XIIIe-XIVe siècles), Turnhout, 1997, pp. 429-444.
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Aristotle and Plato. Al-Fārābī, just a century later, finishes this movement, subordinating revelation to reason by proposing, in the light of the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, the first philosophical analysis—in the modern sense—of Revelation. The period of activity of al-Nawbaḫtī falls between those of al-Kindī and al-Fārābī. So he is a contemporary of this secularisation of philosophy—if one may so call this movement in which the ties of φιλοσοφία with the religious system of the last pagans were, if not completely dissolved, at least slackened. Only this development makes it possible that an Islamic theologian, and an important Shī‘ite authority besides, could be defined by al-Nadīm as a “theologian philosopher”. The list of writings by al-Nawbaḫtī suggests that he was before all else a theologian defending his Shī‘ite beliefs. It is true that al-Nadīm attributes to him works “in kalām and in falsafa”.51 But only two—our treatise and another, the Physical proofs taken from books by Aristotle in response to him who has claimed that the heavens were alive and rational—can be considered relevant to the falsafa. Are these two works enough to justify alNadīm’s description? Maybe so, if, in the domain of the works in question, al-Nawbaḫtī recognised the authority of Aristotle. One might object that our argument is circular: since we do not know why al-Nawbaḫtī paraphrased On Generation and Corruption, it is imprudent to see in it a “philosophical” project. His interest in philosophy could be polemical (similar to al-Ġazālī’s strategy in the Maqāṣid al-Falāsifa), or merely doxographical.52 In a recent article, W. Madelung has, moreover, rejected the claim that al-Nawbaḫtī can be considered a philosopher (i.e. a faylasūf).53 Using a large number of fragments that have come down to us
51
See above, p. 350. Of course, doxographies are almost never “merely doxographical”. J. van Ess in particular has shown that the doxography of the Kitāb Firaq al-Šī‘a follows an apologetic strategy. See Der Eine und das Andere, p. 241: “Seine Imāmīya ist nicht mehr eine von vielen Gruppen, sondern repräsentiert den Endpunkt eines rationalen Prozesses; sie bietet den theologischen Ausweg aus einem selbstverschuldeten Chaos. Das ist nicht zu erreichen, ohne daß man einiges offenläßt; er will auf den Kern der Dinge kommen. Die vorhergehenden elf Gruppen sind damit für ihn nicht so sehr Zugen einer historischen Realität (wir wissen gar nich, ob es sie alle gegeben hat) als vielmehr theoretische Möglichkeiten, die innerhalb einer immer unüberschaubarer werdenden Diskussion durchgespielt wurden”. 53 W. Madelung, “Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbahktī on the Views of Astronomers and Astrologers”, in M. Cook, N. Haider et al., Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic Thought: Studies in Honor of Professor Hossein Modarressi, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 269-278. 52
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in the Kitāb al-Mu‘tamad fī uṣūl al-dīn by al-Malāḥimī (d. 1142),54 Madelung shows that al-Nawbaḫtī sets himself against the philosophers down to the smallest details. In particular, al-Nawbaḫtī subjects the claims of the philosophers concerning the heavens to rigorous criticism. He omits nothing: creation in time, the fifth substance, life and the soul, and finally the influence on things on the earth. Madelung concludes his study by writing, “[a]l-Nawbaḫtī, it is evident, was in outlook a Muslim kalām theologian, not a philosopher, despite his intense interest in and first-hand knowledge of the views and theories of the ancient and contemporary philosophers”.55 Although Madelung’s argument is convincing in its broad outlines,56 the details are more complicated than he allows. It is difficult to understand how a writer could compose a commentary on the treatise On Generation and Corruption that is as detailed and careful as the one we are examining, turning to Alexander of Aphrodisias to explicate difficult points and the import of the text, without in some measure giving credence to the claims in the book. We suggest that such credence is not necessarily contradicted by the new elements of the Kitāb al-Mu‘tamad, nor by the criticisms of logic reported by Ibn Taymiyya. In fact, no evidence has come to light against a view such as the following: al-Nawbaḫtī more or less accepted the Aristotelian theories of change and of the four elements, but nevertheless without taking on board Aristotle’s cosmology; for this, he substituted another system he found more acceptable, for reasons we shall see. This would explain precisely the sense in which al-Nadīm describes al-Nawbaḫtī as a “philosopher”. Unlike other theologians (such as Abū Hāšim alĞubbā’ī, who just a generation later would compose a refutation of On Generation and Corruption),57 al-Nawbaḫtī accepted the authority of Aristotle on the questions of what the elements are and how they are reciprocally transformed into one another. Before we return to al-Nawbaḫtī’s general views on celestial cosmology, let us offer some support for this last point, involving evidence for a 54
See Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad al-Malāḥimī, Kitāb al-Mu‘tamad fī Uṣūl al-dīn, revised and enlarged edition by W. Madelung, Tehran, 2012. 55 Madelung, “Al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbahktī on the Views of Astronomers and Astrologers”, p. 277. 56 Confirmed in another context by the sustained critique that al-Nawbaḫtī mounts on the Aristotelian theory of definition. See Ibn Taymiyya, Kitāb al-Radd ‘alā alManṭiqiyyīn, ed. M. Ḥ. Ismā‘īl, Beirut, 2003, p. 277. 57 Mentioned in al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p. 222: Kitāb al-Naqḍ ‘alā Arisṭālīs fī al-Kawn wa-al-Fasād (see D. Gimaret, “Matériaux pour une bibliographie des Ğubbā’ī”, Journal Asiatique 264, 1976, pp. 277-332, p. 331). The Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Ğabbār, Taṯbīt Dalā’il alNubuwwa, ed. ‘A. ‘Uṯmān, Beirut, 1966, p. 528, mentions his “refutation of the books (kutub, in the plural) of Aristotle”.
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general shift from the atomism of the kalām toward an ontology closer to that of Aristotle. We saw above that al-Nawbaḫtī had exchanges with the contemporary master of the Mu‘tazilites of Baghdad, Abū al-Qāsim alKa‘bī al-Balḫī.58 It would be pointless to ask which of the two theologians influenced the other. It is more likely that both held similar positions, which were made more precise at least partly through their discussions. This account reconciles the atomist view inherited from the theologians and the new admission of the notion of nature (ṭab‘), no doubt buttressed by the influence of Galenic and Aristotelian ideas. We find explicit confirmation of the agreement between al-Nawbaḫtī and al-Balḫī in a passage by the Šayḫ al-Mufīd (d. 1022), a partisan of the former. In his doxography of the Kitāb awā’il al-maqālāt, he writes: I say that natures are qualities (ma‘ānin) inhering in substances (ǧawāhir) by which they are susceptible of acting and being affected. Take the eye for example, and the natural disposition in it which makes it susceptible (yatahayya’u) to have sensation and perception inhere in it. And, for example, the ear, the healthy nose, and palates. And take, for example, the existence in fire of [a nature] by which it burns, and the existence of that in other things which makes them combustible. The case of these and similar examples is quite clear. […] And I say that what is generated by nature is the act of the one who caused it by acting upon the thing which has the nature. It is not really an act of the nature. This is the doctrine of Abū al-Qāsim al-Ka‘bī. It is against the doctrine of the Mu‘tazilites on natures, and against the atheist philosophers too in what they hold about acts of natures. Al-Ğubbā’ī has denied it too, along with his son, the ignorant traditionists, and the partisans of divinely created human acts and determinism.59
To understand the position al-Mufīd is defending here, we must pay attention to the idea of “preparation” (the verb tahayya’a). This word is also found in a parallel text by Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, showing that at this point we are dealing with the very same terminology found in al-Balḫī: Abū al-Qāsim said, when he was opposing his colleagues, that bodies appearing in the world are constituted from the four natures, even if God, may he be exalted, has the power to make them otherwise. And he said that 58
See above, p. 349. Šayḫ al-Mufīd, Kitāb awā’il al-maqālāt, p. 44. Transl. McDermott, The Theology of Shaykh al-Mufīd, p. 215. 59
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these bodies have natures in virtue of which they are susceptible (tatahayya’u) of being acted on, and on which living beings with power exert their force. And he said that there is a power in wheat and that it is not possible that barley grow from it, so long as its own nature and properties are in it; he also said that from the seed of man God cannot produce some other animal. And he claimed, in his book of Important Questions, that man, as well as all bodies that are dissolved and corrupted, is created from the four natures, and that this is the reason that they are transformed into one another.60
The thesis common to al-Balḫī and to Šayḫ al-Mufīd therefore seems to be that only substance, understood as the location in which a thing’s nature (or properties) is found, acts. Substance acts by means of this nature. Strictly, nature does not act, but permits the substance in which it is found to act. This doctrine of natures was opposed at length by al-Nīsābūrī, who certainly used, as he himself tells us, earlier materials.61 The first lines of his refutation illustrate this: The doctrine of our masters is that this ‘nature’ is unintelligible, and that God, may He be exalted, has the power to cause barley to grow from wheat, even while the wheat remains what it is, and to create from the seed of man any animal that He pleases. We do not say that He creates man from the four natures, nor from any principle other than these.62
In the following pages, using arguments that anticipate modern criticisms of substantial forms, Al-Nīsābūrī attacks the ontological consistency of this unknown something that is the nature of a substance, without being either the substance itself or any of its sensible properties. This criticism is addressed also to the alleged ‘natures’ of the four simple bodies of Aristotle and Galen, and to every other substantial form, especially those in biology. The Basrians, of course, refuse to introduce substantial forms alongside the substrate and its accidental properties. Here is al-Mufīd on the subject of the four primary bodies (this section is titled “On the composition of bodies from the natures and their dissolution into the principles and elements”): Many of the believers in God’s Unity have held that all bodies are composed of the four natures, which are heat, cold, wetness, and dryness. Their argu60
Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 133. Abū Hāšim wrote a refutation of the “natures” (ṭabā’i‘). See the references to this treatise in Gimaret, “Matériaux”, pp. 327-328. 62 Abū Rašīd al-Nīsābūrī, Masā’il, p. 133. 61
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ment for this is the decomposition of every body into them and also the transformations they observe, such as the change of water into steam and back, the inanimate into living and back, and the presence of fieriness, wateriness, airiness and earthiness in every body without exception. Its contrary cannot be understood. Nor do they decompose into anything but this. This is clear and evident. I do not find any reliable argument against it, nor do I see it as detrimental to anything in the doctrines of Unity, Justice, the Promise and the Threat, prophecy, or legal matters so as to make me reject it. Rather it supports religion and shores up the proofs for God in his Lordship, wisdom, and justice. Among the leaders of the Mu‘tazila who have held it is al-Naẓẓām. Al-Balḫī also held it, and his followers too.63
Al-Mufīd does not mention the Basrians here. Of course, they are not fierce opponents of the four elements as existing bodies—they recognise the presence of fire, air, water, and earth around us. Nevertheless, they do not consider these the elements of other bodies. We have noted the case of the late Basrians in the short quotation from Nīsābūrī. But it is imprecise to take al-Naẓẓām as a defender of the doctrine of natures: his position is more complex and nuanced.64 Said another way, the statement by Šayḫ alMufīd reveals either his lack of comprehension of the terms of the debate, or, more probably, embarrassment caused by the fact that he knows, but does not wish to admit, that the doctrine of the natures has always been opposed by the theologians. In fact, the theologians fought the doctrine of natures until the time of al-Balḫī and al-Nawbaḫtī. It is difficult to know precisely who supported it, or why. It is often associated with the mysterious ‘eternalists’, the dahriyyūn.65 Two arguments show that it may have been first developed in medical circles. First, in spite of van Ess’s prudent suggestions, we know of no philosopher (faylasūf) who supported it.66 Further, this doctrine of the principles is related only to Hippocrates, and so to the Galenic tradition, by 63
See pp. 44-45. Cf. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. II, p. 39. 65 The dahriyya remains a complex and mysterious phenomenon, which deserves further study. See Gimaret’s note in Shahrastani, Livre des religions et des sectes, traduction avec introduction et notes par D. Gimaret et G. Monnot, Paris, 1986, 2 vols, vol. I, pp. 208-209, n. 42, D. Gimaret, “Dahrī, ii: The Islamic Period”, Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. E. Yarshater, vol. VI, Costa Mesa, 1993, pp. 588-590, and Patricia Crone, “The Dahrīs according to al-Jāḥiẓ”, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 63, 20102011, pp. 63-82 (ead., The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism, Cambridge, 2012, pp. 247-249, does not add anything new). 66 Cf. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. II, pp. 39-40. 64
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the doxographers of physics in antiquity.67 This literature was known by erudite Syrians and Arabs, so they needed do nothing more than follow the tradition. This tradition was no doubt reactivated by a line of materialist medical theoreticians (so they were also eternalists), who reduced substances to the four elementary physical realities, and who intended to explain everything by the transformations and combinations of their primary qualities. This integrated materialism was the natural target of the theologians. The four elements attributed to Hippocrates by the doxographic tradition are the four qualities: hot, cold, dry, and wet. But it goes without saying that under the influence of On Generation and Corruption in particular, one tended to move quickly from the four elementary qualities to Aristotle’s four bodies (even if some problems arise when one tries to pair them). So in interpreting the adoption of this theory by Islamic theologians, one must notice its daring and complexity. Daring, because, once again, this was the most atheistic theory one could conceive of; complex, because it was not adopted as it already existed, but amended to make it fit the Islamic doctrine of Creation. How did the Baghdadī theologians manage this? They appear to have built on the nearness of the primitive medical theory to the elementary schema of On Generation and Corruption, in order to rescue it from the teleology of Aristotle’s biology. In the ancient doxographies, the doctrine of the four elementary qualities was not put in parallel with that of the four elementary bodies of Aristotle, but instead with the triad from the first book of the Physics: form, matter, and privation. So the doxographers were concerned with the highest level of generality. One could bring the medical principles slightly more down to earth by interpreting them as simply the primitive ingredients of bodies, in the manner of Aristotle. Like Aristotle, one could be satisfied to see in them the elementary material of sensible things, that which constitutes everything, but not the superior principles on which the entire ontology depends. For having posited the four elements as constitutive of bodies, one has not yet said anything about the primary causes of their transformations—and in particular, about form and matter as such. This rereading of the medical materialists’ “atheist” theory in the light of Aristotle is, if not justified, nevertheless at least extended and made systematic by al-Nawbaḫtī, when he takes systematic recourse to the exegesis of Alexander of Aphrodisias. We have seen how he interpreted the 67
Cf. Rashed, Überlieferungsgeschichte, pp. 44-47, with the edition of a new Greek witness, tracing back to Alexander’s lost commentary on the Physics, transmitted in MS Parisinus graecus 1853.
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Aristotelian doctrine of augmentation and of the mixture, emphasising the determining role of the form (εἶδος), which remained latent in the treatise itself. The Aristotelianism reconstituted by this process is, of all possible interpretations, the least compatible with materialism. For not everything is reducible, on one hand, to the primitive reactions of the four elements,68 nor, one the other hand, to vertical determinism induced by the stars. The consistency of the sublunary forms allows, on the contrary, the ontological autonomy of hylomorphic substances. The sensible world is shot through with a dynamism marked by teleology, just as it is in Aristotle as reread by Alexander. We can now return to the three descriptions tradition has given alNawbaḫtī: philosopher, theologian, and Shī‘ite. W. Madelung has insisted on his work as a theologian; J. van Ess has shown how, in spite of all his borrowing from Mu‘tazilism, as much in methodology as in doctrinal themes, he remained a Shī‘ite. The reason for this is his refusal, seen clearly in the Kitāb firaq al-Šī‘a, to suppress any reference to the Imam in discussing our access to the truth, in favour of reason alone.69 Van Ess’s argument is largely implicit and forced by the structure of the treatise. Nevertheless, al-Nawbaḫtī never explicitly gives his reasons in favour of Imamism. The most instructive text in this direction does not appear to have yet been noticed. This is a passage transmitted to us twice by Faḫr alDīn al-Rāzī: anonymously—and because of this unnoticed as such—in the Kitāb al-muḥaṣṣal, and more explicitly in the recently edited treatise Alriyāḍ al-mu’niqa fī ārā’ ahl al-‘ilm.70 Let us begin with the Muḥaṣṣal.71 One of the chapters is devoted to the value of speculation in attaining knowledge: is it possible to combine immediate, primary data in such a way that what was unknown becomes known? The majority of people have agreed that this is possible. Rāzī presents a series of objections to this position. One sub-group among the responses to the first objection is itself composed of two arguments, attributed to anonymous authors who had denied speculation any place in theology. They had asserted, first, that we do not know how to represent the theological subjects that we construct arguments about, and second, that 68
See above, pp. 339-340. Cf. van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, p. 236. 70 The following comments reproduce part of an article published in French: “Lumières Abbassides”, in Universalità della Ragione, Pluralità delle Filosofie nel Medioevo, XII Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia Medievale, vol. I, a cura di A. Musco, indici di P. Palmieri, Palermo, 2012, pp. 273-289. See also, on this new text of al-Rāzī, J. van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, vol. II, pp. 1067-1075. 71 See the new edition: Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-muḥaṣṣal, ed. Ḥ. Ātāy, Qom, 1999, p. 121. 69
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since we do not even know what the ‘I’ is—the definition of which is the object of the greatest disputes among the learned—it is a fortiori impossible that we should be any good at grappling with the truths of theology.72 Another objection begins from the following question: can one attain knowledge of God without the help of a master, or is a master a necessary condition, as the atheists (malāḥida) say?73 Neither in the Muḥaṣṣal nor in al-Īǧī, who follows it closely,74 are these people clearly identified. J. van Ess assimilates them to the relatively late movement of the Bāṭinites on the grounds that the Shī‘ites in general, and the Bāṭinites in particular, insist on the necessity of turning to figures of dogmatic authority. However, he notes that one finds the most extreme examples at the dawn of Shī‘ism, and for this reason relates them to certain notes in Nawbaḫtī.75 However this may be, this is a common tenet of Shī‘ism.76 However, this is not spelled out in black and white in the text of the great Sunnī Rāzī.77 Surprisingly, Īǧī claims that all the ‘geometers’ as a group denigrate theological speculation. But in this area he limits himself to a general statement, which we find in a more nuanced form in Razī, who does not refer to the geometers as a group (ǧam‘ min al-muhandisīn).78 But even in this form, the information is strange: if one understands this as, possibly, a group of theologians or philosophers, it seems all the stranger to refer to them in this context as a group of geometers. A recently edited text by al-Rāzī, Al-riyāḍ al-mu’niqa fī ārā’ ahl al‘ilm, solves our difficulties.79 In view of its historical importance and the 72
Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Muḥaṣṣal, pp. 124-125. Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Muḥaṣṣal, pp. 126-127. 74 Cf. van Ess, Erkenntnislehre, pp. 274 sqq. 75 On his personal interest in this question, see below, p. 379. 76 Van Ess, Erkenntnislehre, pp. 278-279. 77 Cf. van Ess, Erkenntnislehre, pp. 274-275. As the author remarks, the two criticisms presented here are not found in al-Ğāḥiẓ’s list of possible objections against kalām. They seem, however, nearly identical to the theses that al-Tawḥīdī attributes to a group of “positivist” scholars, among whom is the mathematician al-Qūhī, who includes psychology and metaphysics in the same refutation. See Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, Kitāb al-imtā‘ wa-al-mu’ānasa, ed. A. Amīn and A. al-Zayn, Cairo, s. d., 3 vols, vol. I, p. 38. Cf. R. Rashed, “Al-Qūhī vs. Aristotle: On Motion”, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 9, 1999, pp. 7-24, p. 9. 78 Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Muḥaṣṣal, p. 122. 79 Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Al-Riyāḍ al-mūniqa fī ārā’ ahl al-‘ilm, ed. A. Ğum‘a, Qayrawān, 2004. On the correct spelling of the title (Al-Riyāḍ al-mu’niqa fī ārā’ ahl al‘ilm), see M. Rashed, “Nouveaux fragments anti-procliens de Philopon et le problème des origines de la théorie de l’‘instauration’ (ḥudūṯ)”, Les Études philosophiques, 2013, pp. 261-292, p. 263, n. 6; cf. van Ess, Der Eine und dans Andere, p. 1067, n. 434. 73
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fact that it has gone largely unnoticed by specialists until now, let us begin with a complete translation:80 On the question whether speculation produces knowledge or does not § 0. There are divergent opinions on the question whether one can go from knowledge of necessary things to speculative knowledge, or not. § 1. (a) Some have denied this, namely the Samanites; (b) the great majority of people of all nations have affirmed it absolutely; (c) some have introduced distinctions. The latter group say that speculation in arithmetic and many similar things produces knowledge, while speculation about religious matters never does. This last group can be divided into two subgroups. § 2. The first subgroup consists of those who have denied the success of knowledge in divine matters. Al-Niṣībī81 has reported that Aristotle says, “The ultimate goal in divine matters is to grasp what is most probable and reasonable; there is no method that would allow one to form absolutely firm views”. § 3. The second subgroup consists of those who say that it is possible to know about divine things with the aid not of speculation but of the faultless Imām. § 4. These two groups agree in saying that reason cannot reach knowledge of divine things with its own resources; each differs from the other in formulating the details of its own position. Their common ground is the claim that certainty consists in the fact of affirming some view absolutely, without there being the slightest possibility of contradiction. And since this is the case, in matters of certainty a difference of opinion is impossible. Further, anyone who has a desire for knowledge and has worked more than a little at problems in geometry and arithmetic, and again at problems in theology, knows that the sense in which one can be sure of one’s views differs between the two cases. This is the reason that it is rare for experts in arithmetic and 80
Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Al-Riyāḍ al-mu’niqa, pp. 21-28. The numbering of the paragraphs is mine. 81 The manuscript is faulty here: according to the editor, one reads al-n-ṣ-y-y, which he corrects to al-Niṣībī. The latter seems to have shown skeptical tendencies; cf. Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, Kitāb al-muqābasāt, ed. T. Ḥusayn, Baghdad, 1970, p. 194; cf. van Ess, Erkenntnislehre, p. 225. Nevertheless, one might find it strange that he feels the need to enlist Aristotle on his side. Either the text is faulty and one should rather read al-Nawbaḫtī (this would be a slight paleographic error)—since Rāzī is clearly using Nawbaḫtī in this treatise to reconstruct the doctrines of various philosophers (see below, p. 379, n. 86)—or our passage shows a rapprochement with Aristotle, initiated by the master of al-Niṣībī, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, author of the Arabic “edition” of the Physics still preserved in a single manuscript in Leiden, Or. 583. Cf. ‘A. Badawī, Arisṭūṭālīs: al-Ṭabī‘a, 2 vols, Cairo, 1964-1965, vol. 1, p. 25.
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geometry to disagree in matters pertaining to their research; and if this does happen, it is exceptional, and the truth comes out quickly. It is rare, by contrast, that we find two theologians maintaining the same view. And we rarely find the same theologian maintaining the same opinion throughout his life. In fact, one familiar with the conditions of the premises in theology, and with the ways they are combined, knows how rare it is to bring together these two aspects in theological research. The result is that speculation does not bring knowledge in theological inquiries, or if it does, it is only in exceptional cases. This is their common ground. § 5. Those today who do not acknowledge the faultless Imām are a group of philosophers and a group of the rational theologians of Islam. § 6. The philosophers are those who are not convinced by what is likely. § 7. As for the Muslims, they are those who have reviled this and who have separated themselves from all other religions and schools in theological matters, and who agree with one another in their research. Those who have held this position are: ‘Umar b. Ziyād al-Baṣrī, known by the name of Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād after he returned from the religion of the Prophets; Abū Sa‘īd al-Ḥasan b. ‘Alī al-Baṣrī, known by the name of al-Ḥuṣrī; ‘Abdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Nāšī. They argued for their views by saying that people take more than they ought to from speculation and proof.82 As far as recourse to the Prophet and the Imām, he goes wrong in two ways. First, knowledge of the fact that the Prophet is truthful depends on knowledge of God—may He be exalted—in His essence and His attributes; the result is that if we acquire this knowledge from them,83 a vicious circle arises. The second is the following, reported by al-Nawbaḫtī concerning them: “We have found that religions are constructed on corrupt foundations. We have found, among the Magi, an error that would not be possible for a man equipped with reason, namely their doctrine of the two Eternals and of the war between God, may He be exalted, and Satan, until there was a truce agreed to for a fixed time; also the thesis of some among them that Satan was created from the thought of God. And what to say about the laws that Zoroaster gave them, if one is to believe them, to sleep with one’s mother, to purify oneself with urine, purification brought by their Mōbaḏ to the one who was giving birth, and all their stories?” “We have found, among the disciples of Mani, worse than this: the existence of two principles, both alive, powerful, sentient, all-seeing, and opposed, the one good, the other evil; their abominable error on the subjects of marriage and salvation; their insanities about the arrangement of the world and the fact
82 83
I read ‘alā akṯar after hāṣilūna. Sc. the Prophets and the Imāms.
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that God, may He be exalted, created the mountains from the skins of the demons, and fire from their blood.” “We have found, among the Jews, the equivalent of this, when they claim that God, may He be exalted, created Adam in his image; and in some of the books of their prophets, ‘I saw God the ancient of days, with white head and beard’; and that God, may He be exalted, said, ‘I am the fire that burns and the coals that glow, I am He who punishes the children for the sins of their fathers’; and what is said in the Torah about the daughters of Loth who caused him to drink to make him drunk so that he would commit adultery with them, then were pregnant by him and gave birth; and what is said about Moses, who twice refused to perform the task that God gave him, until God’s anger rose up to his place; and that Aaron made a calf which the children of Israel worshipped; and that when Moses, may peace be upon him, did miracles before Pharaoh, the magicians did others just like them; and that Jacob fought with God, threw Him to the ground and seized Him by the thigh, that God wished to escape from Jacob but could not, until He said to Jacob ‘I am your Lord’ and that then he finally allowed God to go, in order to be called Israel; and their obstinacy at forbidding sorcery; and what their prophets fabricated in order to allow repeated murder and the sack of cities. Whoever reads their books, attends to their stories and sees their errors, knows that they are the most error-ridden of all nations.” “We have found among the Christians worse than this, in the stories of the Evangelists concerning what the Jews did with their God; also their claim that one is three and that three is one; and their error in their commentary on the way in which the hypostases are united; it is so bad that if we did not know that they who have put forward these doctrines are a great nation, we would wonder how such ideas can come into the heads of people who have the ability to reason.” “We have found among the Muslims things of the same sort, with the great importance they attach to the Stone which neither harms nor helps; with their slaughter of animals in order to approach God; with their considerable disagreements about the essence of God, may He be exalted, about His attributes and His acts, and also concerning the Commandment and Destiny; with their abominable disagreements over the question of the Imamat, while their encouragements to transmit faithfully what they have of the Imamat surpass in quantity their encouragements to transmit material on every other issue— for if on this point we do not have a solidly grounded transmission, what can we expect for the claims in the other cases? And their disagreements about the principles used by the law; and their way of reporting facts that contradict one another.” “As for the philosophers, in spite of their grand pretension to have penetrated the realm of intelligible things, in theological questions we do not see them offer anything but words that obscure and expressions designed to terrify;
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but when one goes in search of the truths which lie behind their words, one discovers their emptiness.” They said: “When we see the people and nations in this situation, and we know for certain that the ability of a single man is not greater than that of all those who have gone before him, even taking into account differences in temperament, we know that there is no method for reaching certainty in anything to do with this kind of research.” § 8. As for those who say that religion is benefited by the faultless Imām, they have said, “we do not say that the word of the Imām by itself secures knowledge, nor that there is no need of reason, speculation, or proofs; we say rather that the speculations of reason, by themselves, do not suffice, but that the faultless Imām is indispensable to make us attentive to the proofs and to false appearances; reason by itself cannot do this because of its deficiency. If one finds a truthful teacher, he guides the student toward the truth, and the student responds to a false appearance. At that moment, the student grasps with his reason the truth of that which is true and the corruption of what is false. And no one can tell us, “the distinction between a true teacher and a deficient teacher can only be drawn by speculation, which forces us to recognize a role for it”. For we say, “we do not seek to quarrel with you over the fact that reason is indispensable, but we say that speculation by itself is not enough and that humans by themselves cannot tell truth from falsehood. It is only when we find the faultless Imām that he guides us toward the proofs by showing us the superiority of what is faultless over that which is not. At that moment the student can distinguish between what is truthful and what is deceptive.” They add, “If the discourse of the master were enough by itself, the creation of reason would have been useless, and revelation sent to people without reason would be equivalent to revelation sent to people with reason. And if reason were enough by itself, the Revelation would have been a waste of time, since we know that the supreme goal of of the Revelation of the Prophets is the knowledge of God, may He be exalted, of His essence and of His attributes. For otherwise, what use would there be in helping us to know these pious legal practices, since they do no good to anyone?” § 9. Finally, learn that if we adopt this kind of view, the result is that we actually return to where we started. For from the fact that they need the Imām, and from the fact that one does not see the shadow of this Imām of whom they speak, they have actually founded religion on a condition that is not satisfied; and anything founded on a condition is destroyed when what it is conditioned on is destroyed. Surely, then, in reality they double back from all this to the negation of the laws and of religion, to the thesis that it is evil to believe in all the doctrines and in all the confessions.
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This text makes a threefold division in responses to the question whether speculative knowledge is possible. The Samanite sceptics have denied it,84 the majority of people of all nations have plainly affirmed it, and one group has introduced a distinction (§ 1). Speculative knowledge, according to the last group, is possible in mathematics, impossible in theology (ibid.). The underlying epistemological reasons are developed in § 4. This shows that the thesis has not been advanced casually, but forms a central point of contention in the debate. Among those who hold this position, a faction of philosophers and a faction of theologians are in agreement in thinking that divine knowledge is absolutely impossible. That is to say, Revelation in any form cannot remedy our inability to speculate on theological questions (§ 2). The Imamites, however, with their theory of the faultless and omniscient Imam, think that we can have access to theological truths that are inaccessible without this aid (§ 3). The argument of § 5 presents a problem. Indeed, it seems to combine two different questions, especially with regard to the developments that follow: the question of the usefulness of the Revelation in theology—which in effect only “factions” of philosophers and theologians could deny—and that of the Shī‘ite dogma of the omniscient Imām, which other Muslims would not accept in this form. In the following passages, only the second question will be discussed. Therefore, if we are being careful we cannot speak here of “factions” of extremists and dissidents—and especially not when the author himself is as much a Sunnī as our Iranian philosopher. I therefore suspect that the difficulty with the argument comes from the fact that Rāzī integrates in what follows a long quotation drawn from a heretical discussion of the Imamat, and for this reason is not able to adapt it completely to a chapter whose theme is epistemological. The slight contradiction between § 6 and the end of § 7 can be explained in the same way. § 6 excludes a group of philosophers from among those who adhere to the Imamat in extremely vague terms: they refuse what is likely. No doubt this involves a clumsy appropriation of the thesis borrowed from Aristotle in § 2.85 One would need to postulate an implicit division of philosophers (that is, a division in addition to the ones mentioned in the text) between those who, like Aristotle, admit a certain amount of what is likely in theology (or, in more modern terms, those who say that research into metaphysical principles cannot do without a certain reliance on dialectic), and those who refuse it. But in spite of everything we find ourselves in an awkward position, since the “Aristotelian” question of what is likely in theology has nothing to do with the question of the Imamat, nor even with the Prophecy. It is therefore probable that Rāzī has 84 85
On this group, see the discussion by van Ess, Erkenntnislehre, pp. 256-265. This argument speaks in favor of an intervention in the text: see p. 373, n. 81.
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excerpted a piece of a more developed text by Nawbaḫtī, in which the latter had in view two different but related problems, one after the other: first, that of the possibility of purely speculative knowledge in theology, then the question of the prophecy and of the Imamat. It is al-Nawbaḫtī, himself an Imamite, who must have intentionally confused the question of the prophecy and that of the Imamat as he sought to support his own cause, and constructed his opposition as fundamentally factional. Thus “Nawbaḫtised”, Rāzī’s text becomes clear and coherent: having assimilated most of his adversaries to an unsatisfying probabilism (a position he perhaps even attributed to Aristotle), Nawbaḫtī must have concluded that only the Imamat allows one to escape from the aporia of the Meno. He must have then continued by criticising the two factions for their outrageous scepticism, refusing both the probabilism of Aristotle (certainly unsatisfying, but far from completely absurd) and the prophetic Imamat. Rāzī’s dichotomising and doxographic style evidently could not completely adapt the meanderings of this strategy to his own ends. One sees at the same time that the differences between the two treatises of Rāzī is their different levels of fidelity to Nawbaḫtī. We can represent the two doxographies schematically thus: ¥ Al-Riyāḍ al-Mu’niqa: Does speculation lead to knowledge?
yes (the majority of all people)
theological knowledge is accessible through the mediation of the faultless Imām
yes in mathematics, no no in theology (the Samanites)
theological knowledge is inaccessible “positivist” philosophers
“dissident” theologians
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¥ Al-Muḥaṣṣal: Does speculation lead to knowledge?
yes (the majority of all people)
not without a master (heretics)
no
in theology absolutely (some geometers) (Samanites) Apart from the variation in the place of mathematics (we are concerned with a position held by philosophers and theologians regarding the kinds of knowledge they produce, and not with a thesis endorsed by mathematicians), how the division is made depends on the opposition between Imamism and its adversaries as it sees them itself: a faction of philosophers, and a faction of dissident theologians. The names mentioned by al-Rāzī at the point where he describes the positions between Yes and No are particularly interesting. They allow us to demonstrate that the main outline of Rāzī’s chapter was fixed by the year 900 at the latest. On this point, al-Riyāḍ al-Mu’niqa constitutes the key to the Muḥaṣṣal. The author quoted, ‘al-Nawbaḫtī’, is none other, of course, than our alḤasan ibn Mūsā. Another quotation from him, a little later in the treatise, gives us a glimpse of the diffusion of Book VI of the Contra Proclum of Philoponus in its Arabic version.86 If we imagine that the two fragments come from the same work, we must suppose that Rāzī still had access to the opus maximum of al-Nawbaḫtī, the great unfinished work Of Opinions and of Religions (Kitāb al-ārā’ wa-al-diyānāt). It is in just such a work that one can see, side by side, remarks on the dispute over the world’s eternity among the philosophers, as well as the Islamic discussions of the possibility of theological knowledge. We can still go a bit farther. The three sceptical theologians mentioned by Rāzī are authors contemporary with al-Nawbaḫtī, or just slightly older than him, about whom very little is known. At first glance, one might think that the first, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād, is an Ismā‘īlī Shī‘ite. We learn from other sources that he attacked the Prophet, as well as Abū Bakr and ‘Umar. So he held an extreme view, which does not by itself show that he rejected 86
Rāzī, Al-Riyāḍ al-mu’niqa, pp. 81-82. Cf. M. Rashed, “Nouveaux fragments anti-procliens”, pp. 263 sqq.
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prophecy: prophecy might have been understood in this environment as simply the educator of humankind.87 Our text nevertheless suggests a “turn” in the career of this man, who appears to have changed his opinion on the nature of prophecy.88 Perhaps al-Nawbaḫtī was aware of a yet more radical phase in al-Ḥaddād’s career, which included his purely sceptical period, when he composed the Book of the Torrent (Kitāb al-Ğārūf). It is likely that in this book he aimed to overthrow all our reasons for belief in one religion rather than another. It is thus precisely their common scepticism which united this author and the second quoted by Nawbaḫtī, alḤuṣrī.89 In addition to suspending his judgement in theological matters, he was a heretical writer used by Nawbaḫtī. Thanks to al-Nawbaḫtī, the Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Ğabbār in particular makes use of information about the Manichaeans whose source is ultimately al-Ḥuṣrī.90 The long heretical development of our passage, evoking Manichaean doctrine in precise terms, may therefore very well have him as its source. The combination of two aspects of his personality speaks volumes about his theological originality—well noted moreover by al-Tawḥīdī a century later, calling him “one of the most subtle theologians of Baghdad” (min ḥuḏḏāq al-mutakallimīn bi-Baġdād).91 A deep acquaintance with “matters of religion” must have fed his scepticism on dogmatic questions. Al-Nawbaḫtī associates with him two thinkers who gravitated to his circle. His association with al-Ḥaddād was natural, and one finds it also elsewhere in our sources.92 Al-Nāšī al-Akbar would not be counted as a skeptic, strictly speaking; we know only that he drastically reduced the possibilities for drawing inferences from the world to God.93 But one must note that he is mentioned in the company of al-Ḥuṣrī, and significantly, of Ibn al-Rāwandī and of the heretic writer Ibn alWarrāq, by al-Isfarā’inī quoted by al-Sakūnī.94 No doubt Nawbaḫtī was better informed of ties between al-Nāshī and the hard-core sceptical
87
See van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. IV, pp. 89-91. The text is very informative: we learn from it that al-Ḥaddād was from Baṣra. I would not rule out the possibility of a “renunciation” of Shī‘ism, especially in its surface form, by the author, which Nawbaḫtī fails to describe as such except in indirect language. 89 Cf. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. IV, pp. 91-93. 90 Cf. Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Ğabbār, Kitāb al-Muġnī, vol. V, p. 18 and van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. IV, p. 92. 91 Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī, Kitāb al-imtā‘ wa-al-mu’ānasa, vol. III, p. 192. 92 As van Ess remarks, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. IV, p. 91. 93 See van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. IV, pp. 141-146, esp. p. 144. 94 See Abū ‘Alī ‘Umar al-Sakūnī, ‘Uyūn al-munāẓarāt, ed. S. Ghurab, Tunis, 1976, p. 234. All the authors mentioned gravitated to the side of Shi‘ism. 88
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movement, ties which we can no longer verify elsewhere. In any case, these were all his contemporaries. Which group of Imamites should we see now as fitting the description given here? Very likely, those whom the Šayḫ al-Mufīd would describe a few decades later as the Banū Nawbaḫt, that is, al-Nawbaḫtī himself.95 As al-Nawbaḫtī is both a core representative of Imamite Shī‘ism, as well as being original, there can be little doubt that he is concealing himself behind the ‘we’ of § 8. We have, then, al-Nawbaḫtī’s defence of his credo in theology, as well as the method by which he hoped to escape the theological version of the aporia of the Meno.96 The text we have just commented on is therefore a witness to the lively debates taking place at that time. We see how al-Nawbaḫtī, occupying a position of compromise, tends to present the Imām in the somewhat vulgar guise of a teacher without equal. This thesis lies somewhere between Imamism and mu‘tazilism, and corresponds to what we can make out of his general theological views thanks to the doxographies and polemicists. W. Madelung has already surmised his membership in a group identified and targeted by al-Ḫayyāṭ, a group of thinkers halfway between Shī‘ism et mu‘tazilism, who ended being criticised by both sides.97 Al-Nawbaḫtī himself has just confirmed this hypothesis in this new text. It remains to understand the role played by the philosopher (faylasūf) in this system. In other words, why did al-Nawbaḫtī go farther than the Baghdadī Mu‘tazilites in the direction of Aristotle? It is always difficult to answer questions of this type. But in this case one might, with all the necessary prudence, suggest a historical hypothesis. Al-Nawbaḫtī is a two-fold 95
See al-Šayḫ al-Mufīd, Kitāb Awā’il al-maqālāt. The treatise gives us the position of the Banū Nawbaḫt in a series of rather general theological points. 96 This new text is not dissimilar in character to the famous fragment from Abū Sahl al-Nawbaḫtī’s Kitāb al-Tanbīh transmitted by al-Ṣaḍūq Ibn Bābūya, Kamāl al-dīn wa-tamām al-ni‘ma fī iṯbāt al-ġayba wa-kašf al-ḥayra, ed. A. A. Ġaffārī, Tehran, 1970, pp. 88 sqq. See in particular Ibn Bābūya, Kamāl al-dīn, p. 92: “The matter of religion in its entirety is known through reasoning. We know God through rational proofs and do not see Him. Nor does anyone who has seen Him report to us. We know the Prophet and his existence in the world through reports, and we know his prophethood and truth through reasoning” (I borrow the present translation from S. A. Arjomand, “The Crisis of the Imamate and the Institution of Occultation in Twelver Shi‘ism: A sociohistorical Perspective”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 28, 1996, pp. 491-515, p. 505. For similar ideas in the contemporaneous work of Ibn Qiba, see Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation, p. 135 (Arabic text) and 139 (English translation). 97 Cf. W. Madelung, “Imamism and Mu‘tazilite Theology”, in T. Fahd (ed.), Le Shi‘isme imâmite, Paris, 1979, pp. 13-29 [reprinted in Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam, Variorum reprints, study VII], pp. 13-15.
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dissident, in relation to his religious sect and his family. He is in fact a Shī‘ite who, as W. Madelung has emphasised, participates in a difficult reform movement of his credo in the direction of Mu‘tazilism. Further, his family is connected to astrology—including one member who drew up the horoscope for the Abbassid capital—and he never tires of refuting this practice.98 Therefore we suggest that in order to accomplish his goal of overcoming his origins in both senses, al-Nawbaḫtī drew on all available resources, including philosophical resources (in the “secularised” sense of the time). Only the most compelling reasons severed his ties to his family and religious beliefs. We are thus led back to the larger historical context. Al-Nawbaḫtī’s literary production takes place during the first years of the Occultation: in 874, the date of the death of the last known direct descendant of the Prophet, al-Ḥasan al-‘Askarī, al-Nawbaḫtī was about 25 years old, the same age as Plato at the death of Socrates. After this traumatic event, he likewise needed to save what was possible by rebuilding the doctrinal basis of his sect. We suggest that it was this task that explains the double shift of al-Nawbaḫtī. Let us begin with astrology in the theological context of the Occultation. If one saw this art as a definite science of prediction, one might—or even ought to—try to use it to determine the chronology of the Imamat, that is, to gain certain knowledge of the chiliastic eschatology that was unfolding. It is even probable that there were some in al-Nawbaḫtī’s entourage who were trying to do just this.99 One might also interpret events in Islamic history deterministically, and see each event as moving temporally away from the optimum. This possibility was a danger for Shī‘ite history, and especially if applied to recent events. In effect, it was more than ever necessary to turn Shī‘ism away from radical determinism. This is no doubt the explanation for al-Nawbaḫtī’s break with the practices of those close to him. This necessity became all the more pressing in view of a dangerous alliance between philosophy and Sunnism on the question of determinism. 98
G. Endress, “al-Nawbakhtī”, in Julie S. Meisami and P. Starkey (eds), Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, London, 1998, p. 585, is obviously mistaken to claim that al-Nawbaḫtī was “a defender of astrology”. 99 One can compare the categorical rejection of chiliastic expectations in the last rescript issued from the holy seat. See S. A. Arjomand, “Imam Absconditus and the Beginnings of a Theology of Occultation: Imami Shi‘ism Circa 280-90 A.H./900 A.D.”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 117, 1997, pp. 1-12. At some point (§ 4 Arjomand), the text of the rescript says: “The parousia (ẓuhūr) is a deliverance; its annoucement is with God alone; those who appoint a time (for it) are lying” (translation by Arjomand, “Imam Absconditus”, p. 3). Cf. van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, p. 241, n. 265.
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The basic commitments of Avicenna’s system of the world were already detectable in what we are able to reconstruct of al-Kindī’s thought. Philosophies of emanation offered a theoretical basis for astrology; for this reason it became necessary to carry the theological debate right into the philosophical camp. This is the reason, we suggest, that while al-Nawbaḫtī denied the eternity of the world and Aristotelian logic, he accepted On Generation and Corruption. His interpretation of this work was the reverse of that of al-Kindī. While the latter saw the work as the place where Aristotle describes the modalities of divine efficacy on the sublunary world through the intermediary of the heavenly bodies, al-Nawbaḫtī refuses to accept God as an agential cause of generation. He confines this kind of causation to the stars, while limiting its absolute character. Our first conclusion is that al-Nawbaḫtī pursued philosophy because he wanted to prove that an attack on him, mounted by the Kindians, was without foundation from their own point of view. The Kindian theory of generation, which permits thoroughgoing determinism, is mistaken from the Aristotelian point of view. Historically speaking, this is perfectly true—the Nawbaḫtian interpretation of GC is more faithful to Aristotle than the Kindian one. This is not to deny, of course, that al-Kindī has his own philosophical program which is not Aristotelian. In virtue of his own agenda, therefore, al-Nawbaḫtī returns to a more orthodox Aristotelian physics, in the tradition of Alexander of Aphrodisias. He prefers a combination of anti-determinism and Aristotelian physics rather than the alliance, sketched by al-Kindī and affirmed by Avicenna, of determinism and Neoplatonic emanation. The sublunary world is not determined by God. So the cause of generation should not be shifted “upward”, from the stars to God, but even the stars do not determine how things go in the case of human generation. This physics allows one, therefore, to absolve divine providence from responsibility for succession within a lineage; obviously, one is thinking about the lineage of the Prophet. A properly human space opens up, which is not the direct or transparent reflection of a divine plan. The Occultation, according to al-Nawbaḫtī, is perhaps prior to all of this: it may be the translation of a more general opacity of the world in terms of messianic history. Henceforth the world would not allow itself to be read through simplistic eschatologies. In his analysis of al-Nawbaḫtī’s Imamism, J. van Ess noted the prudence with which he treats the question of the Occultation in the Kitāb Firaq al-Šī‘a.100 The word itself, ġayba, seems to occur only once in the
100
Van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, pp. 240-241.
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book.101 Al-Nawbaḫtī seems very much aware that he is living during a disappearance of the Imam—and given his family ties, he knows what to hold onto concerning the succession—and he does not wish to import too much clarity to the events in question, so that they would acquire an unequivocal meaning, thus rigidifying an uncomfortable situation more than necessary. He is expansive on the necessity for an Imam to remain hidden and not to allow those close to him to give away his name. Al-Nawbaḫtī is careful not to violate the rule he is describing: he says nothing about the identity of the Imam of his own times, nor about the disputes taking place over his name. Writing a few years after the beginning of what would later become the Minor Occultation, it is as if he wished to leave open certain possible hermeneutic interpretations. From the point of view of philosophy proper, he did this by conducting a mine-clearing operation in the domain of determinist eschatology, and thus by means of a rereading of GC, in the light of Alexander of Aphrodisias and against al-Kindī. This purely defensive interpretation of al-Nawbaḫtī’s falsafa, even if it is found convincing, needs to be filled out. Why, one might object, did alNawbaḫtī not help himself to the standard mu‘tazilite arguments against determinism? Why engage in a fight against Kindian cosmology on its own ground? The answer is to be found, it appears, in the fact that al-Nawbaḫtī gives a properly philosophical redefinition of the relation between God and the world. This is prompted by his refusal to posit mechanical causality from one to the other. This innovation by al-Nawbaḫtī is expressed in his views on the nature of man, to which he devoted an entire monograph. Unfortunately, we know too little about the book to understand its ideas in detail. Nevertheless, its outlines are clear. The most important witness known at present appears in the Masā’il al-Sarawiyya, by Šayḫ al-Mufīd.102 Here is what he writes in response to a question about the essence of man (māhiyyat al-insān): What does he say—may God almighty sustain his strength—about man? Is he this visible, perceptible individual, according to what Abū Hāšim’s fol101
Van Ess, Der Eine und das Andere, p. 240, says that the author “spricht nicht einmal von ġaiba” and argues that in Firaq 90.9, ġayba transmitted in the two manuscripts used by H. Ritter is to be changed, according to Ritter’s suggestion in his apparatus, into ‘aqib. Salimeh Maghsoudlou draws my attention however to Firaq 85.1, where the word occurs in the plural to describe the ‘Occultations” of Muḥammad, the presumed son of al-Ḥasan al-‘Askarī, in the course of al-Nawbaḫtī’s discussion of the sixth sect. 102 See McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, pp. 222-228.
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lowers say? Or is he an atom inhering in the heart, sentient and perceptive, as what is reported about Abū Bakr b. al-Iḫšīd? Answer: Man is as the Nawbaḫtīs have said—and the same is related of Hišām b. alḤakam as well. The traditions from our masters indicate what our doctrine is: he is self-subsistent, without bulk or extension; neither is composition possible in him, nor movement or rest, nor juncture or separation. He is the thing (al-šay’) which the wise ancients have called ‘simple substance’ (ǧawhar basīṭ) and similarly every living produced agent is a simple substance. Contrarily to what al-Ğubbā’ī, his son and their followers said, he is not a composite aggregate. Nor is he, as Ibn al-Iḫšīd said, a body interspersed in the manifest aggregate. Nor is he, as Ibn al-Rāwandī said, an indivisible part. What I say about him is what Mu‘ammar, among the Mu‘tazila, says, as well as the Banū Nawbaḫt among the Šī‘a, according to what I have previously mentioned. He is a thing (šay’) bearing knowledge, power, life, will, hate, disdain, love, subsistent by itself, needing an instrument for his acts, namely the bodily frame. Describing him as having life amounts to saying that he is knowing and powerful. But his description as having life is not equivalent to the description of the bodily frames as having life, according to what we have already presented. It is possible to call him a ‘spirit’ (rūḥ). In this sense traditions have come down that spirit, when it is separated from the bodily frame, is given ease and tortured. What is meant is that the man, who is the simple substance, is named ‘spirit’: upon him is the reward and the punishment; to him are directed the command and the prohibition, the Promise and the Threat. The Qur’ān has already indicated this by saying: ‘O man, what has made thee careless of thy Lord, the Bountiful, who created, then fashioned, then proportioned thee? Into whatever form He wills he casts thee’ [82.6-8]. God almighty informed by this that the man is different from the form and that he is composed within it.103
Šayḫ al-Mufīd quotes the Banū Nawbaḫt explicitly. The whole text can therefore be considered to go back to their views on man. The doxographical context is very instructive. The argument is at least partly against the 103
Al-Šayḫ al-Mufīd, Al-Masā’il al-Sarawiyya, ed. Ṣ. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd, s. l., 1413, pp. 57-60.
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definition of man proposed by Ibn al-Rāwandī.104 We are relatively wellinformed about this view as it is expressed in his Kitāb al-Insān, since it was the object of much criticism by the Mu‘tazilites and by the Banū Nawbaḫt themselves: Abū Sahl al-Nawabḫtī devoted a monograph to its refutation, the Kitāb al-Insān wa-al-radd ‘alā Ibn al-Rāwandī, and it is also no doubt the main target of the Kitāb al-Yāqūt, by Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Nawbaḫt.105 Finally, it seems probable that the Kitāb al-Nukat ‘alā Ibn alRāwandī, by al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī, also attacked the theologian’s claims about man. Ibn Mūsā must have also, in his own Kitāb al-Insān, refuted competing doctrines, and chief among these would have been that of Ibn al-Rāwandī. Why such insistence on refuting Ibn al-Rāwandī’s thesis about man? Very probably because he was not so far from the view of the Banū Nawbaḫt themselves. Ibn al-Rāwandī claimed that man is, strictly speaking, an atom of the heart,106 to which the members of the body are subordinate. The members are suffused with ‘living breaths’ (arwāḥ ḥayya), which explains the fact that they have perception and awareness of pain. But by contrast with the atomic man, they do not have the capacity to act. The atomic man is therefore the only subject of human action. The doctrine of the Banū Nawbaḫt as reported by al-Mufīd conceives of man as essentially the subject of action, as does that of Ibn al-Rāwandī. A similar ontological reduction allows them to exclude the standard mu‘tazilite thesis, according to which man is the whole of his body, ‘the compounded aggregate’. Further analogies were used to characterise the body. If the Šayḫ al-Mufīd is equally faithful to the Banū Nawbaḫt in his treatment of ‘breath’ (al-rūḥ)—which is very likely since it appears in the same context—we must recognize their agreement: for all these thinkers, the body is not properly speaking the man, even if it is also alive. This means that we must distinguish two senses of the word ‘life’, depending on whether the word is applied to the man or to the human body. Šayḫ alMufīd makes a parallel distinction, in another Mas’ala, between two senses of the term rūḥ.107 He recognises a medical sense corresponding to the πνεῦµα of the Greek physiologists, and a Qur’ānic sense, which according to him is the same as the proper notion of the man as postulated by the 104
The correction of the name suggested by McDermott, The Theology of alShaykh al-Mufīd, p. 223, n. 3, is nearly certain, considering the parallel doxography. 105 Cf. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. VI, pp. 434, 440 and 447. 106 Cf. Theologie und Gesellschaft, vol. VI, p. 446, Text XXX 13 = Qāḍī ‘Abd alĞabbār, Muġnī XI, 311.8 sqq. 107 Cf. Al-Masā’il al-Sarawiyya, pp. 55-56, for the question of the essence of the spirit.
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Banū Nawbaḫt. The latter usage, however, is a possible label,108 since the word rūḥ, ‘spirit’ is used figuratively as a replacement for the word insān, ‘man’. To summarise, the dispute we have just sketched takes us directly to the most fundamental questions. The only difference between the two theories is the following: Ibn al-Rāwandī makes man a material part of the human body, namely an atom of the heart, while the Banū Nawbaḫt see man as a simple thing. This nuance was important enough for the latter group to think themselves justified in launching attacks against Ibn alRāwandī. For them it was an essential point of doctrine that the class of souls be kept distinct from that of bodies. What is this ‘thing’ that man is? Much has been written about this theory’s dualism and its presumed Iranian sources.109 It is likely that the Šayḫ al-Mufīd was an acute observer, and that there is some historical foundation for his associating al-Nawbaḫtī and Hišām b. al-Ḥakam. But this should not obscure the great historical distance between them, characterised particularly by the massive appropriation of Greek learning, to which al-Nawbaḫtī was an important witness. His use of the terminology of the ancients, “simple substance” (ǧawhar basīṭ) shows this. For the Mu‘tazilites, a ‘substance’, ǧawhar, is a material part of a body, an atom. So the recourse to this term, in a sense intentionally different from that of the Mu‘tazilites, constitutes a double break with the ontology of the kalām, and a double move toward the falsafa. Put simply, there can be no doubt that al-Nawbaḫtī is referring here to a philosophical use of the term. In the philosophical tradition, it clearly refers to the soul. The idea is only implicit in Aristotle’s De anima, no doubt out of resistance to Plato’s psychology. In fact, Aristotle does not mention ‘simple substance’, οὐσία ἁπλῆ, except in the Platonising context of his theology;110 it is in the same context that Alexander takes up the term.111 The term’s usage slips in the last centuries of antiquity, with the Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotle. Iamblichus, as quoted by Stobaeus, after mentioning the Platonic theory of the powers of the soul, writes, “Likewise, after Aristotle has said that the substance of the soul is a simple substance, incorporeal, director of the form, he does not make the powers of the soul like those in composite things”.112 Aristides 108
Al-Masā’il al-Sarawiyya, p. 60: wa-qad yu‘abbaru ‘an-hu bi-al-rūḥ. Cf. McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, p. 225. 110 Cf. Metaph. Λ 7, 1072a 31 sqq. The question whether God is a ‘simple substance’ returns very often in Patristic contexts, in particular in Gregory of Nyssa. 111 Alexander, Quaestiones 3. 26. 112 Stobaeus, Ecl. I 49, 33, 5-8 Wachsmuth: Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ ὡσαύτως ἁπλῆν οὐσίαν, ἀσώµατον, εἴδους τελεσιουργὸν τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ὑποθέµενος, οὐ ποιεῖ τὰς 109
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Quintilianus, in his De musica, follows this line closely: the soul is a ‘simple and monadic’ substance.113 In Gregorius Thaumaturgus’ epistle Ad Tatianum, On the Soul, the simplicity of the substance of the soul is affirmed and used to prove her immortality.114 With Ammonius the claim becomes scholastic: the soul is a simple substance insofar as it is a form, and form is a simple substance, a part of a composite substance. This argument appears in the commentaries on the Categories by Ammonius, by Philoponus, and by Olympiodorus,115 and likewise in the commentary of Philoponus on De anima.116 In Greek this development concludes in the Umayyad period, with the synthesis of John of Damascus, who writes: The soul is therefore a living simple substance, incorporeal, invisible to corporeal eyes in virtue of its own nature, rational and intellectual, without extension, making use of the body as of an instrument, and serving as its cause of life, as well as of belief, sensation and generation, not possessing intellect as another thing outside itself, but as part of itself, the purest (in fact just as the eye is in the body, in the same way is the intellect in the soul), possessed of freedom of the will, of will and action, capable of guidance— that is, of voluntary guidance—because it is also created; having received all these things naturally by the grace of Him who fashioned it, grace from which the soul has its being and the fact that it is thus by nature.117 δυνάµεις ὡς ἐν συνθέτῳ τινὶ τῇ ψυχῇ παρούσας. See also, on mathematical objects, Iamblichus, De comm. math. Scientia, § 14, ll. 80-86 Klein. 113 Aristides Quintilianus, De musica III 11, ll. 23-24 Winnington-Ingram: ψυχικὴν οὐσίαν […] µοναδικήν τε οὖσαν καὶ ἁπλῆν. The date of Aristides Quintilianus is difficult to settle. He could theoretically have lived at any time between the first century AD (since he quotes Cicero) and the end of Antiquity. Winnington-Ingram, Praefatio, p. xxiii, says: “variis argumentis adducor ut non ante secundi post Christum natum saeculi partem inferiorem vixisse eum credam, fortasse posterioris aliquanto aetatis fuisse”. But E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Berlin, 1882, vol. III, part 2, p. 678, n. 1, is probably right to identify him as a member of “Porphyr’s oder vielleicht auch Jamblich’s Schule” (contra, but with some hesitation, A. J. Festugière, “L’âme et la musique, d’après Aristide Quintilien”, Études de Philosophie Grecque, Paris, 1971, pp. 463-486, p. 479). See also F. Duysinx, Aristide Quintilien. La Musique, traduction et commentaire, Liège / Genève, 1999, p. 6. 114 See Gregorius Thaumaturgus, Ad Tatianum, PG 10, 1140.4 and 1141.51-56. This text was translated into Arabic: see the edition and the commentary in H. Gätje, Studien zur Überlieferung der aristotelischen Psychologie im Islam, Heidelberg, 1971. 115 Cf. Ammonius, In Cat. 34.5; Philoponus, In Cat. 49.23 et 67.8; Olympiodorus, In Cat. 57.36. 116 Philoponus, In De anima 207.34 sqq. 117 John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei § 26, ll. 44-52 Kotter: Ψυχὴ τοίνυν ἐστὶν οὐσία ζῶσα ἁπλῆ, ἀσώµατος, σωµατικοῖς ὀφθαλµοῖς κατ' οἰκείαν φύσιν ἀόρατος, λογική τε καὶ νοερά, ἀσχηµάτιστος, ὀργανικῷ κεχρηµένη σώµατι καὶ τούτῳ ζωῆς
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The attribution to the ‘ancients’ of the theory of ‘simple substance’ is found in this context, where the late commentary tradition is mixed up with Umayyad patristics. Of course it is very improbable that Šayḫ al-Mufīd consulted these writings himself. But we must not forget that the whole text probably comes from a treatise of the Banū Nawbaḫt, or even from the monograph Fī al-insān of Ibn Mūsā. Faced with a heresiographical writer of such erudition in matters concerning Greek texts, well acquainted with Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn and his colleagues, we cannot exclude any possible reading a priori. Furthermore, the late-antique or early Byzantine doctrine of the soul as ‘simple substance’ was echoed in and around al-Kindī. The latter describes the soul as ‘simple’ and ‘simple substance’ (using the same expression, ǧawhar basīṭ) at the beginning of his Discourse on the Soul (Al-qawl fī alnafs) and of his Concise Statement about the Soul (Kalām […] muḫtaṣar waǧīz): I (sc. al-Kindī) say that the soul is simple (inna al-nafsa basīṭatun) and has nobility, perfection, and great status. Its substance originates from the substance of the Creator, the exalted One, just as the light of the sun originates from the sun.118 Al-Kindī said: Aristotle says about the soul that it is a simple substance (inna-hā ǧawharun basītun) which makes its acts manifest through bodies.119
The idea recurs in a paraphrase of De Anima, which was no doubt produced in his entourage,120 and is also found in the Theology of Aristotle, another work connected to al-Kindī’s circle.121 The evidence indicates that
αὐξήσεώς τε καὶ αἰσθήσεως καὶ γεννήσεως παρεκτική, οὐχ ἕτερον ἔχουσα παρ' ἑαυτὴν τὸν νοῦν, ἀλλὰ µέρος αὐτῆς τὸ καθαρώτατον (ὥσπερ γὰρ ὀφθαλµὸς ἐν σώµατι, οὕτως ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦς), αὐτεξούσιος, θελητική τε καὶ ἐνεργητική, τρεπτὴ ἤτοι ἐθελότρεπτος, ὅτι καὶ κτιστή, πάντα ταῦτα κατὰ φύσιν ἐκ τῆς τοῦ δηµιουργήσαντος αὐτὴν χάριτος εἰληφυῖα, ἐξ ἧς καὶ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ φύσει οὕτως εἶναι εἴληφεν. 118 Al-Kindī, On the Doctrine of the Soul, Epitomised from the Book of Aristotle and Plato, and the other Philosophers, ed. M. Abū Rīda, Rasā’il, vol. I, p. 273 (translation in Adamson and Pormann, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, p. 113). 119 Al-Kindī, A Concise Statement About the Soul, ed. M. Abū Rīda, Rasā’il, vol. I, p. 281 (translation in Adamson and Pormann, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, p. 120). 120 See Fī al-Nafs 197.5-6 and 213.10 Arnzen and the comments on both passages, Aristoteles’ De anima, pp. 363 and 374-375. 121 See P. Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus. A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle, London, 2002, pp. 65-66.
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this must have been an important thesis for al-Kindī.122 So a few decades later, the contemporaries of the Banū Nawbaḫt found these texts, especially the last two, explicitly attributing the idea that the soul is a ‘simple substance’ to Aristotle and to the Šayḫ al-Yūnānī. Nothing more than this was needed to see this as a doctrine of the ‘ancient sages’ (al-ḥukamā’ alawā’il). These observations allow us to understand how well-informed contemporaries of Ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī could see him as a faylasūf. If his theoretical program is motivated by his Shī‘ism, while his methods are those of a mu‘tazilite, his doctrine of man is philosophical—in the sense of Kindian falsafa.123 He drew on the late Neoplatonic treatment that the soul is a simple substance to develop his own characterization of man. At the same time, we must be sensitive to the radical side of the theory he developed. First, it is not insignificant that he mentions the man rather than the soul, even if, in the final analysis, philosophers in the Platonic tradition would 122
See already Arnzen, Aristoteles’ De anima, p. 363: “Eine wesentlich weitreichendere Interpretation finden wir dagegen in al-Kindīs Ris. Fī al-qawl fī al-nafs (ed. M. Abū Rīda, Rasā’il I, 270-280), wo die einfache Substanz (ǧawhar basīṭ) der Seele mit der Substanz Gottes verglichen wird (ka-ǧawhari l-bāri’, p. 275.9) und damit einer theologischen Interpretation des vorliegenden Theorems den Weg ebnet”; and Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus, p. 66: “…this rather Neoplatonized conception of the soul as a simple substance seems to have carried considerable weight in al-Kindī’s circle as an interpretation of the De anima. Thus al-Kindī’s Discourse on the Soul begins by asserting that soul ‘is a simple substance’ and another work by al-Kindī summarizes Aristotle’s doctrine on the soul by saying that soul ‘is a simple substance whose acts manifest from the bodies’”. 123 We can add that Mu‘ammar’s doctrine of man, which anticipates that of the Banū Nawbaḫt (as al-Mufīd remarks explicitly), won for him the reputation of having been inspired by the “philosophers”. See al-Šahrastānī, K. al-Milal wa-al-Niḥal, ed. W. Cureton, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1923, p. 47: “Man, according to him, is a ma‘nā or substance, not a body. He is knowing, powerful, choosing, provident. He does not move, nor is he at rest; not colored, not located, not seen or touched; not sensed or examined, nor does he inhere in a particular subject. Place does not encompass him, nor does time embrace him. But he is the director of the body, and his connection with the body is the connection of governance and direction. He adopted this thesis from the philosophers who assert the existence of the human soul as a certain thing, as a selfsubsistent substance, not extended or located. And they asserted intelligent beings of that kind like the separated intelligences. Then since Mu‘ammar had inclined to the doctrine of the philosophers, he distinguished between acts of the soul, which he called ‘man’ and the outer form (qālab) which is his body. He said the act of the soul is the will-act and calculation, and the soul is man. So the act of man is willing. And the corresponding movements, cessations of movement, and impulses are acts of the body” (translation taken from McDermott, The Theology of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, p. 226, n. 1). This is objective confirmation of our analysis.
As a philosopher
391
have been prepared to recognize that every man is his soul. No Neoplatonic philosopher would ever have said that the soul undergoes “neither movement nor rest”. Of course, this phrase is weaker than it would have been if the author had mentioned only movement, for the dichotomy it introduces clearly refers to sensible, not intelligible, movement. Nothing prevents one denying that the soul moves, if one is speaking of sensible movement; such a statement would deny the Aristotelian reading, on which the soul moves accidentally, since it is located within the body which it causes to move.124 In other words, this view conceives of the soul from its universal, rational side (as does John of Damascus in the passage quoted above) rather than from the side of its physiological particularity. Here again we should appreciate al-Nawbaḫtī’s theory for its strength in breaking with the materialism of the mu‘tazilites (with the exception of Mu‘ammar). Alexander’s commentary on GC I played an important role in this system. Like the Greek Neoplatonic thinkers before him, al-Nawbaḫtī saw that Alexander’s version of the ontology of the sensible allowed him to construct (at the cost of a somewhat rudimentary hermeneutic approach) a twolevel cosmology, consisting of a sensible world governed by the hylomorphic form, and a higher world inhabited, among other entities, by our rational souls. It was in his lost commentary on GC that Alexander worked out to the smallest details, partly preserved for us by al-Nawbaḫtī, the operations of the hylomorphic form, the εἶδος understood as power (δύναµις) giving form to matter. Read through this Neoplatonic prism, Alexander’s version of the εἶδος anticipates the distinction between man and his form in the three Qur’ānic verses quoted by al-Mufīd (82.6-8). Alexander’s reading of GC becomes the extended commentary on the ‘form’, ṣūra, of verse 82.8. It therefore seems likely that al-Nawbaḫtī turned to philosophy with the primary goal of developing, in the light of the Neoplatonic theories of the soul, a coherent system of the world, thus providing a solid philosophical basis for the dogma to be developed.125 The commentary on GC must be 124
Cf. Phys. VIII 6. I thereby extend to Ibn Mūsā al-Nawbaḫtī and philosophy the interesting remarks about Abū Sahl and theology made by Arjomand, “The Crisis of the Imamate”, p. 504: “The strategy chosen by Abu Sahl al-Nawbakhti and the former Mu‘tazilites was to find a theological solution to the problems of imamate and occultation, using rational argumentation rather than adducing traditions. The rationale of any theological argument would tend to conjoin the occurrence of occultation and the nature of the imamate, thereby establishing the necessity of occultation. Nawbakhti’s political orientation and hierocratic interests required that the idea of occultation be detached from its chiliastic matrix. His intellectual interests and Mu‘tazilite sympathies suggested 125
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interpreted in this context. Al-Nawbaḫtī no doubt wished above all to guarantee the autonomy of the spiritual sphere by restricting physics to the theory of elements and separating it from the divine plan. God’s relation to the world is not one in which He physically determines a series of events in order to produce something optimal, as in the Neoplatonic tradition that inspired al-Kindī, and continued via Avicenna down to Leibniz;126 rather, it is a relation essentially played out at the level of rational souls—and therefore of men properly speaking. Souls belong to another order, ‘simple substances’ provided with freedom of will, which are the objects of divine judgment. Al-Nawbaḫtī’s choice of this path explains the fact that souls can be punished, on the day of judgment, by being assigned by God to a different body—something impossible in orthodox mu‘tazilism, where the man is identical to his body. Finally, we may return to the way in which al-Nawbaḫtī’s philosophical project is organized, and the reorientation of Shī‘ism toward Twelver Imamism after the death of al-Ḥasan al-‘Askarī. From the beginnings of Shī‘ite theology, a central concern was to define the location of truth in the world. The philosophical doctrine of the Banū Nawbaḫt tried urgently to redefine this place at the end of the third century. Of course the relation between the Imam and the community of believers is the central concern. But the necessity of abstracting the Imam from his material particularity displaced the system’s center of gravity. Rather than the Imam openly addressing his words to the community of men, the focus of the truth moved to each individual man, enlightened by light that was from now on diffracted and subdued, coming from an Imam now hidden. On the surface nothing had changed. But we suggest that this subtle speculative shift introduced by the Banū Nawbaḫt changed the course of the further history of Shī‘ism as a theological doctrine.
that the idea could be de-apocalypticized only with the help of a theology of occultation”. 126 See Rashed, “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Particulars”.
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INDEX OF ARABIC WORDS
— ’BD — abadan, 11.3, 51.13, 57.14: always, perpetually — ’ṮR — aṯar, 25.6: character āṯār al-ǧaww, 63.15, 63.17: the impressions in the atmosphere aṯṯara fī, 39.13, 59.7: to have an effect ta’ṯīr, 33.15, 37.17, 39.22, 41.4, 43.8, passim: effect al-ta’ṯīrāt al-samāwiyya, 63.21: celestial influences mu’aṯṯir, 49.5: to have some effect — ’ḪḎ — aḫaḏa, 11.21: to grasp aḫaḏa fī, 13.6, 21.8: to start — ’RḌ — ’arḍ, 9.5, 27.7, 53.18, passim: earth ‘alā al-arḍ wa-fī al-arḍ, 61.4: on and inside earth ardī, 61.5, 61.10: earthy — ’Z’ — bi-izā’i-hi, 33.7: symmetrical to it — ’SṬQSS (στοιχεῖον) — usṭuqussāt, 7.11, 31.7, 51.6, 51.11, 63.2, passim: elements
— ’WL — al-hayūlā al-ūlā, 51.12-13: prime matter al-kayfiyyāt al-uwal, 53.15: primary qualities al-aǧsām al-uwal, 57.10: primary bodies awwalan fa-awwalan, 27.12, 31.13, 35.20, 49.4: little by little — ’NS — insān, 9.5, 15.14: man — ’YN — ayna, 19.11, 19.23: location — BD’ — ibtidā’, 13.9: beginning — BDL — badal, 29.4: substitute badala, 13.12, 27.17: in substitution tabaddala, 19.9: to change — BDN — badan, 33.5-6, 39.14, 41.4, 49.6: body — BRD — abrada, 39.14: to make colder burūda, 17.1, 51.19, passim: coldness bārid, 35.20, 43.8, 51.15, passim: cold
— ’FQ — ufuq, 53.20: periphery
— BSṬ — basīṭ, 41.19, 47.21-22: simple basā’iṭ, 47.11-12, 59.14: elements
— ’LH — Allāh, 7.15: God
— BṬ’ — buṭ’, 55.16: slowness
— ’MR — al-umūr al-ṭabī‘iyya, 63.12: natural beings
— BṬL — baṭala, 11.13, 19.19: to cease to, to be suppressed
— ’WF — āfa, 31.19, 33.3: deficiency
— B‘D — ba‘īd, 7.13, 63.19: remote
410
Index of Arabic words
bu‘d, 23.19, 29.8: dimension — BQY — baqiya, 9.22: to remain baqā’, 31.20: remaining — BLĠ — balaġa, 31.3, 31.9, 57.14: reach tablīġ, 31.9: reaching ablaġ, 35.13: more efficiently — BYḌ — bayāḍ, 15.15, 47.4, 51.20: whiteness abyaḍ, 15.15: white — BYN — bayyana, 7.3, passim: to explain mutabāyin, 11.5: different — TB‘ — tabi‘a, 53.7, 63.16: to follow from — TRB — turāb, 47.17: dust — TMM — tamma, 23.7, 51.8: to be completed tamām, 13.9, 39.23, 51.2: completion tāmm, 31.9-10: complete — ṮBT — ṯabata, 19.10, 21.7: to be stable, to remain stable — ṮQB — ṯuqba, 35.2: hole — ṮQL — ṯaqīl, 21.6: heavy — TLW — tālin, 53.11: next — ĞRY — maǧran, 35.2-5: duct — ĞḎB — ǧaḏb, 27.19: attraction
al-quwwa al-ǧāḏiba, 27.19: the attractive power — ĞRD — muǧarrad, 23.19, 25.1: pure muǧarrad ‘an, 13.5: to lack — ĞRM — ǧirm, 39.4: body al-aǧrām al-samāwiyya, 61.17: celestial bodies — ĞZ’ — ǧuz’, 19.14, 27.18: part aǧzā’ ṣiġār, 47.16: small parts aǧzā’ ṣaġīra, 47.18: small parts mutašābih al-aǧzā’, 27.2, 47.20, 51.1, 59.20: homoeomerous muḫtalif al-aǧzā’, 27.1: anhomoeomerous — ĞSM — ǧism, 17.5, 19.13, 21.18, 23.2, 27.16, 35.5, 49.13, passim: body al-aǧsām al-ta‘līmiyya, 37.20: mathematical bodies al-aǧsām al-uwal, 57.10: primary bodies ǧismiyya, 25.1, 35.19, 37.1: corporeality — Ğ‘L — ǧa‘ala, 23.11: make — ĞMD — ǧamād, 21.9: inert ǧāmid, 53.4: coarse — ĞM‘ — ǧamī‘an, 17.1: both aǧma‘a, 53.6: to aggregate iǧtama‘a, 41.8, 53.7: to be joined together iǧtimā‘, 41.19, 61.23: conjunction — ĞML — ǧumla, 13.15, 15.16, 27.18: whole ǧumla al-‘ālam, 57.20: the world’s whole
Index of Arabic words
411
ǧumlatan, 15.16: as a whole
taḥarraka, 19.15: to be moved
— ĞNS — ǧins, 11.4, 43.5, 47.3: genus mutaǧānis, 53.6, 53.9: of the same kind
— ḤZN — ḥazina, 39.19: to get sad ḥuzn, 39.20: sadness
— ĞWW — ǧaww, 63.15, 63.17: atmosphere
— ḤSB — bi-ḥasab, 19.19: with respect to
— ĞWR — muǧāwara, 59.17, 61.7: being adjacent
— ḤSS — ḥiss, 47.21, 51.1, 61.10: perception maḥsūs, 15.10 , 21.19, 51.21: sensible
— ĞWZ — ‘alā al-maǧāz, 39.13: metaphorically taǧāwaza, 61.3: to overstep — ĞWF — taǧwīf, 27.19, 35.6-7: cavity — ĞWHR — ǧawhar, 7.18, 25.18, 35.16, 45.16, passim: substance — ḤĞM — ḥaǧm, 21.4, 21.13: mass — ḤDṮ — ḥadaṯa, 17.20: to appear uḥdiṯa, 13.4: to be produced ḥudūṯ, 25.10, 25.11, 37.14: occurring, creation, production — ḤDD — ḥadda, 53.6, 53.9: define maḥdūd, 59.22: limited ḥadd, 31.10, 33.2, 53.10: limit ilā ḥaddin mā, 61.2: up to a certain limit miqdār maḥdūd bi-al-ṭab‘, 31.3: magnitude determined by nature ḥadīd, 17.6, 61.1: iron — ḤRR — ḥarāra, 9.5, 17.1, 43.4, 51.19, passim: heat, warmth ḥārr, 9.6, 43.8, 51.15, passim: hot — ḤRK — ḥaraka, 15.11, 19.13: motion
— ḤŠW — ḥašw, 29.6: stuffing — ḤṢR — inḥaṣara taḥta, 53.13-14: to be ranged under inḥiṣār, 53.10: bounding — ḤṢL — ḥaṣala, 9.21: to come into huṣūl, 13.8, 31.18: appearance, achievement muḥaṣṣal, 59.22: definite — ḤṬB — ḥaṭab, 49.3-4: wood — ḤFẒ — ḥafaẓa, 25.18, 31.10, 35.16, 45.14, 47.7, passim: to preserve ḥifẓ, 31.2: preservation — ḤQQ — ḥaqqaqa, 7.3: to investigate ḥaqīqa, 61.3: essence bi-al-ḥaqīqa, 9.2, 39.1-2: in reality ḥaqīqī, 37.18, 37.22: real ‘alā al-taḥqīq, 39.23: in a proper way — ḤLL (1) — ḥalla, 19.17: to occupy — ḤLL (2) — ḥalla, 53.8: to produce the dissolution of
412
Index of Arabic words
taḥallala, 27.17, 29.8: to get dissolved taḥallul, 29.15: destruction inḥalla, 51.6: to dissolve — ḤLW — ḥalāwa, 43.4, 47.4, 51.20: sweetness — ḤML — ḥamala, 9.5: to bear ḥāmil, 17.8: bearer iḥtamala, 61.2: to tolerate muḥtamil, 57.17: to be endowed with the capacity of — ḤWL — ḥāla, 13.13, 41.5, 63.14-15: state bi-ḥāli-hi, 11.10: as it is istaḥāla, 17.5: to be altered istiḥāla, 15.10, 19.3, passim: alteration — ḤYṮ — min ḥayṯu, 11.19: qua — ḤYY — ḥayy, 21.10: alive ḥayawān, 27.7, 61.5, 61.11, 63.13-20: animal — ḪRĞ — ḫaraǧa ‘an, 19.17, 61.3: to leave, to loose min ḫāriǧ, 23.8, 27.12: from without — ḪRQ — inḫaraqa, 29.22: to be torn apart — ḪŠB — ḫašab, 33.17: wood — ḪṢB — ḫiṣb, 33.6: fatness — ḪṢṢ — ḫāṣṣ, 7.7, passim: proper maḫṣūṣ, 21.6: proper ḫuṣūṣiyya, 27.8: peculiar feature
— ḪFF — ḫafīf, 21.6: light — ḪFY — ḫafiy, 49.20: evanescent — ḪLḪL — taḫalḫala, 29.8: to be subject to dilation taḫalḫul, 23.5: dilation — ḪLṬ — ḫālaṭa, 35.18, 45.14: to be mixed with muḫālaṭa, 61.14: mixture iḫtalaṭa, 35.15, 45.11, passim: to be mixed iḫtilāṭ, 7.5, 45.12, 59.17, passim: mixture — ḪL‘ — ḫala‘a, 11.17, 35.19: release ḫal‘, 11.18: releasing — ḪLF — bi-ḫilāf, 17.21: different ḫālafa, 41.4: to be different from muḫālif, 11.4, 25.12: different, opposed to muḫālafa, 41.20: difference muḫtalif, 11.23: different — ḪLL — iḫlāl, 13.17: intermission taḫallala, 35.15: pervade — ḪLW — ḫalā min, 13.3: to be deprived of ḫalā’, 25.10, 35.7: void — DḪL — daḫala, 27.15: to enter dāḫala, 27.16: to penetrate mudāḫala, 27.17: interpenetration dawāḫil, 35.3: most interior parts — DRĞ — bi-al-tadrīǧ, 31.4: gradually
Index of Arabic words — DRK — lā yudrak, 49.20: to be imperceptible — DQQ — duqqiqa (al-naẓaru fī), 17.12: to consider … more attentively daqīq, 47.17: flour — DWM — dāma, 31.8: to remain dā’iman, 13.18: everlastingly — DWR — dāra, 57.13: to return in a cycle bi-al-dawr, 57.29: in a circle tadwīr, 9.5, 47.4: circularity mudawwar, 9.6: circular mustadīr, 19.13: circular ‘alā istidāra, 19.17, 57.11: in a circle — DWY — dawā’, 45.6, 49.7: drug — ḎBL — ḏubūl, 33.7: consumption — ḎKR — ḏakara, 53.13: to mention — ḎW — bi-ḏāti-hi, 9.4, passim: by oneself, per se bi-al-ḏāt, 17.9: by essence, per se ḏātiyyan, 19.18: essentially — ḎWB — ḏā’ib, 53.5: fine — R’S — ra’s, 27.2: head
413
murattab fī al-waḍ‘, 55.17, cf. 57.19-20: to be spatially disposed al-mustawī al-tartīb, 57.12: along a regular path — RĞ‘ — raǧa‘a ilā, 53.3: to be reduced to — RDD — radd, 31.9: opposition — RṬB — raṭb, 37.9, 53.5: moist, wet ruṭūba, 51.23: wetness — RQQ — raqīq, 19.20, 37.8, 49.11, 53.5: fine, smooth — RQY — irtaqā ilā, 39.8: to go up — RKB — tarkīb, 41.18, 47.17, 51.1, 53.17, 59.17, 59.21, 63.5, 63.11: composition, combination murakkab, 13.10, 27.1, 59.19: composed tarakkaba, 45.16, 51.6: to be combined — RKZ — markaz, 53.21: centre — ZWĞ — izdiwāǧ, 53.16: pairing — ZWRQ — zawraq min al-mā’, 49.20: bucket of water
— RBṬ — marbūṭ bi, 63.15: tied to
— ZWL — zāla, 13.14, 17.17: to cease to be zawāl, 13.8: disappearance
— RTB — ‘alā rutba wāḥida, 43.6: on the same footing
— ZYD — ziyāda, 21.15, 27.19, 59.21: growing, augmentation, excess
414
Index of Arabic words
izdāda, 23.19: to be subject to augmentation izdiyād, 23.2: increase — SBB — sabab, 7.6, 31.20, 35.12, passim: cause al-sabab al-hayūlānī, 63.1: material cause al-sabab al-fā‘il, 63.18: the agent cause sabbaba, 41.11: to be the cause of — SḪN — asḫana, 33.17, 39.14: to heat — SR‘ — sur‘a, 55.16: speed asra‘, 35.12: faster — SRY — sarā fī, 35.5, 35.16: to pervade — SṬḤ — saṭḥ, 35.4, 35.7: surface — SFL — fī ġāyat al-sufl, 53.21: the lowest place — SMK — sumk, 33.7: stoutness — SMW (1) — samā’, 39.6-7, 41.2: heavens samāwiyyāt, 7.13, 39.5, 39.8-10, 41.2, 61.19, 63.14: celestial beings, celestial bodies al-ta’ṯīrāt al-samāwiyya, 63.21: celestial influences — SMW (2) — summiya, 15.9, 39.13: to be called, to be named ism, 15.11, 39.17: name — SNW — sana, 63.17: year — SHL — sahula, 53.10: to be easy
suhūla, 55.16: ease ashal, 55.18: easier — SWD — sawād, 9.5, 15.15, 47.4, 51.20: blackness aswad, 9.6: black — SWY — tasāwā, 59.6: to be equal bi-al-tasāwī, 51.16: indifferently al-mustawī al-tartīb, 57.12: along a regular path — SYL — sāla, 29.4, 49.11: to flow out, to seep sayyāl, 37.8, 37.10, 49.11: liquid, seeping — Š’N — min ša’ni-hi an, 41.21, 49.8: endowed with the capacity of, whose nature consists in — ŠBH — šabīh, 11.4, 17.15: similar šabbaha, 25.21, 27.10: to make similar mušābaha, 27.10: similarity mutašābih, 11.5: similar qarīb al-šibh, 27.13: closely similar mutašabbih, 27.9: similar — ŠḪṢ — šaḫṣ, 7.18, passim: individual — ŠRB — šarāb, 35.17, 49.20: wine — ŠRṬ — šarṭ, 23.15: condition — ŠRK — šāraka fī, 11.6: to have the same … as … ištirāk, 55.17-18: sharing in common muštarik, 11.21: common
Index of Arabic words — ŠĠL — šaġala, 19.12: to occupy — ŠFF — išfāf, 17.1: transparency mušaff, 17.5: transparent — ŠKK — šakk, 53.12: doubt — ṢBB — ṣabbaba, 23.3: pour
taḍādd, 31.7, 39.11, 31.21, passim: contrariety mutaḍādd, 51.8, passim: contrary al-aǧsām al-mutaḍādda, 29.10: the opposed bodies — ḌRR — ḍarr, 39.18: offense bi-al-ḍarūra, 19.7: by necessity min ǧihat al-ḍarūra, 31.19: by necessity
— ṢḤḤ — ṣiḥḥa, 45.3: health
— Ḍ‘F — ḍa‘ufa, 31.11: to weaken ḍi‘f, 33.3: weakness aḍ‘af, 59.2: weaker
— Ṣ‘B — ṣa‘b, 57.8: hard
— ḌMR — ḍumr, 27.19: atrophy
— ṢĠR — aṣġar, 21.4: smaller aǧzā’ ṣiġār, 47.16: small parts aǧzā’ ṣaġīra, 47.18: small parts
— ḌMM — inḍimām, 25.16: coalescence
— ṢLB — ṣulb, 37.6-7, 37.10, 53.4: rough, hard
— ṬBB — ṭibb, 45.3, 43.6, 49.5 (see app. cr.): medical skill ṭabīb, 49.5: physician
— ṢLḤ — ṣalaḥa li, 11.21, 61.19: to be suitable to — ṢN‘ — ṣinā‘a, 45.5: craft ṣinf, 9.1: class
— ṢNF —
— ṢWB — aṣāba, 21.14: to affect — ṢWR ṣūra, 7.9, 13.3, 15.21, 21.13, 23.20, 29.3, 29.18, 43.10, 49.10, 49.14, 59.10, 61.18-22, 63.10, 63.12, passim: form — ḌDD — ḍidd, 43.8: contrary
415
— ḌYF — iḍāfa, 9.18, 15.13, 43.17: relation
— ṬB‘ — ṭab‘, 31.3: nature bi-al-ṭab‘, 21.6: by nature ṭabī‘a, 11.21, 21.8, 33.1, 43.18, 47.7, 59.22, passim: nature ṭabī‘ī, 15.9, 31.15, 37.15-16, 45.4: natural — ṬBQ — ṭābaqa, 13.11: to coincide — ṬRF — ṭaraf, 49.9, 57.14: limit — Ṭ‘M — ṭa‘m, 35.17: taste
416
Index of Arabic words
— ṬLQ — muṭlaq, 7.3, passim: absolute ‘alā al-iṭlāq, 7.7, passim: in an absolute way — ẒLM — ẓulm, 39.18: injustice — ẒNN — ẓanna, 17: to think — ẒHR — ẓahara, 17.12, 61.9: to appear ẓāhir, 61.10: manifest ẓāhir, 27.18: surface
‘usr, 55.16: difficulty a‘sar, 55.19: more difficult — ‘ṢB — ‘aṣab, 27.3: sinew — ‘ḌW — ‘uḍuw, 27.1, 29.9, 29.13: part — ‘ẒM (1) — ‘aẓm, 27.3, 61.1: bone — ‘ẒM (2) — a‘ẓam, 23.3: larger
— ‘BR — u‘tubira, 11.19: to be considered
— ‘QB — ‘alā al-ta‘āqub, 13.2, 43.2-3, 61.20, 61.23: successively
— ‘ĞZ — min ǧihat al-‘aǧz, 31.19: by force
— ‘QL — ‘aql, 11.21: intellect
— ‘DD — musta‘idd li, 31.4, 31.8: having the disposition to, suitably disposed
— ‘KS — ‘aks, 21.2: contrary mun‘akisan, 57.15: in the opposite direction
— ‘DL — mu‘tadil, 43.21: well-balanced ta‘ādul, 59.4-5: being well-balanced muta‘ādil, 57.18, 59.2-3: well-balanced — ‘DM — ‘adima, 13.20: to be subject to privation ‘adam, 9.21, passim: privation — ‘DN — ma‘dan, 61.10: metal
— ‘LM — ma‘lūm, 49.21: definite ‘ālam, 13.20, 57.20: world ta‘līmī, 37.20, 39.1-2: mathematical al-ta‘limiyyāt, 39.21, 41.1: mathematical entities — ‘LW — ‘ulw, 53.20: height — ‘ML — ista‘mala, 29.19: to use al-musta‘mal, 29.20: what is used
— ‘RḌ — ‘arḍ, 33.5, 33.7, 61.2: width, latitude ‘araḍa, 21.18: to occur accidentally ‘araḍ, 9.1, 15.8, 41.5, passim: accident bi-al-‘araḍ, 29.2, 37.7, passim: by accident ‘aradī, 21.19: accidental
— ‘MM — ‘āmm, 7.11: general ‘āmmī, 7.9: general ya‘ummu-hā, 19.4: they share
— ‘SR — ‘asura, 53.10: to be difficult
— ‘NṢR — ‘unṣur, 51.15: element
Index of Arabic words — ‘NY — ‘anā, 11.21: to mean ma‘nā, 9.7, 29.13, 37.19, 41.20, 47.7 passim: entity, being, notion bi-ma‘nā, 19.2: namely — ‘WD — ‘āda ilā, 27.19: to return al-‘āda, 39.17: custom — ‘WḌ — ‘awḍ, 31.11: compensation — ‘WN — mu‘īn, 7.15, 37.13: Helper, helpful mu‘āwana, 63.13: collaboration — ‘YN — ‘iyanān, 61.4: obvious — ĠḎY — ġiḏā’, 23.10, 25.15, 45.6: nutriment ġaḏā, 29.17: to feed iġtiḏā’, 7.4, passim: nutrition al-muġtaḏī, 25.15: what is nourished (al-quwwa) al-ġāḏiyya, 31.4, 31.20: the nutritive (faculty) — ĠḌB — ġaḍiba, 39.19: to get angry ġaḍab, 39.20: anger — ĠLB — ġalaba ‘alā: to defeat — ĠLẒ — ġilaẓ, 33.5: thickness ġalīẓ, 53.4: rough — ĠNY — mustaġnī ‘an, 11.9: to be in need of — ĠYR — ġayyara, 25.21: to produce the change al-quwwa al-muġayyira, 27.9: the power responsible for the change taġayyur, 7.4 passim: change mutaġāyir, 39.23: subject to change
417
— ĠYY — bi-ġāyat mā umkina, 53.12: as much as possible ġāyat al-‘ulw, 53.20: the highest border ġāyat al-sufl, 53.21: the lowest place al-ġāyāt, 63.12: the ends — FḤṢ — faḥaṣa ‘an, 7.5: to examine — FRD — infarada, 51.13: to be separated ‘alā al-infirād, 11.2-3 : separately munfarid min, 23.20: deprived of munfaridan, 9.4: separately — FRḌ — furiḍa, 47.18: to be supposed — FRQ — farq, 7.3, 33.15, passim: difference farraqa, 53.7: to segregate mufāraq, 25.7: separate — FSD — fasada, 7.6 passim: to be destroyed, corrupted fāsid, 39.5, 51.17, passim: subject to destruction, corruption fasād, 7.3, 51.23, passim: destruction, corruption afsada, 49.2: to destroy — FṢL — faṣl, 37.14, 53.11: differentia, section (of a book) fuṣūl al-sana, 63.17: seasons of the year — F‘L — fa‘ala, 51.23: to be active fi‘l, 7.5, 19.2, 21.13, 33.10, 61.23, passim: action, actuality bi-al-fi‘l, 11.22: in actuality infa‘ala, 53.1: to be passive infi‘āl, 7.5, 33.10, passim: passion fā‘il, 7.7,41.9, passim: agent, efficient al-sabab al-fā‘il, 63.18: the agent cause munfa‘il, 41.9, passim: patient
418
Index of Arabic words
al-quwwa al-fā‘ila, 33.19: the active power — FHM — fahima, 45.15: to grasp — FYD — afāda, 43.11: to provide — QBL — qabila, 11.17, 13.2, 35.19: receive qubūl, 11.18: reception muqābil, 35.20, 61.21: opposite mutaqābil, 11.17, 13.2, 61.20: opposed — QḤL — qaḥal, 53.4: brittle — QDR — qadara ‘alā, 37.17: to be endowed with the capacity of miqdār, 21.15, 23.2, 25.3, 29.11, 29.18, 33.12, 59.4-8, passim: magnitude bi-miqdār mā, 13.7: proportionally to — QRB — qarīb, 7.13, 63.18: proximate qarraba, 27.12: to bring closer — QRN — iqtarana, 53.19: to form a conjunction — QSR — qāsir, 21.11: by force qasrī, 21.20: violent — QSM — inqasama, 35.14, 47.15: to be cut into parts — QṢD — qaṣada ilā: to aim at qaṣd, 7.3, 7.9, 31.2: aim maqṣūd, 31.9: aimed at — QḌY — iqtaḍā, 49.16: bring about
— QṬR — qaṭra, 49.20: drop quṭr, 21.1, 33.2, 33.5: dimension — QṬ‘ — inqaṭa‘a, 20.22, 57.13: to be dismantled, to be interrupted — QWL — qāla, 45.17-18: say qawl, 45.13; claim maqūla, 9.3, 15.11: category — QWM — qāma bi-ḏāti-hi, 9.3: to exist by oneself qiwām, 11.23, 25.1: subsistence ‘alā (al-)istiqāma, 19.17, 39.9, 57.1011, 57.20: in a straight line al-qāma, 33.6, 33.8: tallness — QWY — quwwa, 19.2, 23.10, 25.21, 31.8, 49.15, 59.5, passim: potentiality, power bayna al-quwwa wa-al-fi‘l, 47.14: between potentiality and actuality bi-al-quwwa, 11.21, 37.17, passim: potentially, in potentiality qawiyy, 31.8: powerful aqwā, 35.12, 43.19, 59.2: stronger — KBR — akbar, 21.4: larger — KṮR — kaṯra, 31.21: amount — KTB — kitāb, 7.3: book — KSB — iktasaba, 33.19-20: to acquire — KSR — munkasir inkisāran, 43.22: broken — KFY — kafā, 35.1: to be sufficient
Index of Arabic words — KLL — bi-kulli-hi, 27.21: as a whole kulliyya, 27.16, 59.17-18: totality bi-kulliyyati-hi, 19.11: as a whole kullī, 63.8-9: total — KML — kamāl, 7.9, 43.2, 43.4, 43.20, 47.7, 51.10, 61.23: perfection — KMM — kammiyya, 19.4, 29.17: quantity — KWN — kāna, passim: to be generated kā’in, 39.4, 51.17, passim: subject to generation kawn, 7.3, 19.3, 51.23, passim: generation takawwana, 7.6, 49.4, passim: to be generated takawwun, 21.4, 25.11, passim: generation makān, 15.10, 19.7, 37.23: place makānu-hā al-ṭabī‘ī al-mulā’im la-hā, 39.7: the place natural and appropriate to it makānī, 21.1: local — KYF — kayfiyya, 15.10, 19.4, 21.19, 25.5, 29.8, 33.11, 35.20, passim: quality al-kayfiyyāt al-uwal, 53.15: the primary qualities mukayyaf, 25.4: qualified — KYL — mikyāl, 29.4: measure — LḤM — laḥm, 27.3, 29.16, 61.1: flesh — LḪṢ — laḫḫaṣa, 53.12: to summarize talḫīṣ, 7.1: summary — LZĞ — laziǧ, 53.5: viscous
419
— LZM — lazima, 17.13: belong to talāzama, 13.21, 13.22: to follow one another — LṬF — laṭṭafa, 7.4: to facilitate — LQY — lāqā, 27.13, 33.17: to come into contact with talāqā, 37.8: to meet together mulāqāt, 33.20: meeting — LMS — kayfiyyāt malmūsa, 51.7, 51.19, 53.3: sensible qualities — LWM — mulā’im, 33.4: suitable — LWN — lawn, 35.17: colour — LYN — layyin, 37.6-7: smooth, soft — MṮL — miṯl, 17.17: similar miṯāl, 15.23: example maṯalan, 17.6: for example — MDD — tamaddada, 19.11, 19.21: to become more extended tamaddud, 19.22: extension mādda, 31.8: matter — MRR — marāra, 51.20: bitterness — MZĞ — mumtaziǧ, 59.16: mixture — MSS — māssa, 27.16: to touch tamāssa, 37.8: to come into contact tamāss, 37.14: contact
420
Index of Arabic words
mumāssa, 7.5, 19.14, 33.18, passim: contact — M‘ — ma‘an, 7.12, 37.15, 37.21, 43.2: simultaneously, together — MKN — imkān, 19.8: possibility — MWT — mayyit, 21.11: dead — MWH — mā’, 9.5, 17.4, 27.7, 53.17, passim: water mā’ī, 61.5, 61.11: watery — MYZ — tamayyuz, 51.3: separation mutamayyiz, 21.6: distinguished — NBT — nabāt, 27.6, 61.5, 61.11, 63.5, 63.13-20: plants — NḤW — ‘alā naḥwin wāḥid, 29.1: in a single way — NZ‘ — tanāza‘a, 43.22: to be at variance with one another — NSB — nusiba ilā, 15.12: to be related to nisba ilā, 37.23: relation to qalīl al-nisba, 49.19: not proportionate ‘alā nisba ma‘lūma, 49.21: in a definite proportion ‘alā nisba wāḥida, 57.17: according to the same relation al-nisba al-ṭabī‘iyya, 31.2: the natural proportion munāsaba, 27.8: affinity munāsib li, 37.19: analogous to
— NŠ’ — nušū’, 31.4: development naša’a, 31.5: to develop oneself — NẒM — manẓūm, 57.18: ordered — NẒR — naẓar, 7.4, 53.12: study, scrutiny naẓara fī, 7.6: to study — NFR — tanāfara, 45.1: to be divergent from one another — NFS — nafs, 39.13, 39.16, 41.4-5: soul al-a‘rāḍ al-nafsāniyya, 39.14: the soul’s accidents al-nafsāniyyāt, 39.22: what is connected to the soul — NQṢ — nuqiṣa, 27.18: to lack nuqṣān, 7.4, 15.10, 29.15, 33.7, 59.22, passim: diminution, defect muntaqiṣ, 21.2: the diminishing thing — NQL — intaqala, 19.17: to be transported — NMW — numuww, 7.4, 15.9, 23.2, passim: growth al-nāmī, 19.13, 25.21: the growing thing namā, 21.16, 25.17, 29.7: to grow, to increase nammā, 29.17: to make grow, to increase — NHY — nihāya, 37.15, 37.21-22, 39.4: limit bi-lā nihāya, 59.21: endless
Index of Arabic words — NWR — nār, 33.16, 39.5, 41.2, 49.3, 53.17 passim: fire nārī, 61.11: fiery — NW‘ — naw‘, 11.4, 43.5, 53.14: species — HYWLY (ὕλη) — hayūlā, 11.16, 13.2, 23.18, 29.3, 63.2, passim: matter al-hayūlā al-ūlā, 51.12-13: prime matter hayūlānī, 7.14 , 63.1: material — HWY — hawā’, 15.23, 53.18: air — WĞD — wuǧūd, 7.17, 51.12, passim: existence waǧada, 9.4: to exist mawǧūd, 9.2,25.10 passim: existent — WĞH — min ǧiha, 7.10, passim: from the point of view of — WĞB — waǧiba li, 21.1: to belong to — WḤD — wāḥid, 11.17: one waḥda-hu, waḥda-hā, 11.19: alone ittaḥada, 45.15, 49.13: to become unified ittiḥād, 59.17, 61.7: unification — WRD — warada ‘alā, 23.8: to come to — WSṬ — wasaṭ, 19.23, 53.21: centre, middle bi-tawassuṭ, 33.15: by the intermediary of mutawassiṭ, 33.16, 49.13-14, 49.23: intermediary, intermediate — WS‘ — awsa‘, 19.11: wider
421
ittasa‘a, 19.11 , 19.21, passim: to become wider ittisā‘, 19.22: elongation — WṢF — ṣifa, 9.4, passim: attribute — WṢL — waṣala ilā, 27.16: to reach wuṣūl, 35.2: way of reaching waṣṣala, 25.21, 31.4: to couple ittiṣāl, 23.3, 35.19, 49.9: conjunction, continuity muttaṣil, 49.13: continuous — WḌ‘ — waḍ‘, 15.13, 37.23, 39.2, 57.14: position murattab fī al-waḍ‘, 55.17: to be spatially disposed mawḍū‘, 7.7, 15.11, 49.6, 61.19-21, passim: substratum, conventional mawḍi‘, 21.6, 27.21, 39.7, 53.8, 53.12: place — WFQ — uttufiqa, 17.20 : to be agreed, to happen bi-ayyi šayy’in uttufiqa, 27.8: from everything whatsoever wāfaqa, 31.12: cooperate ittifāq, 27.10: coincidence muttafiq, 43.5, 43.7: concordant — WQT — awqāt ma‘lūma, 63.20: knowable periods — WQF — waqafa, 31.10: to stop — WLD — tawālada, 63.13-14, 63.21: to reproduce oneself tawālud, 63.18, 63.20: reproduction tawallada, 63.13: to be born — WLY — awlā min, 61.21: having precedence
422 — WHM — tawahhum, 37.20: conceiving tawahhama, 37.21: to conceive
Index of Arabic words — YBS — yubūsa, 51.23: dryness yābis, 53.4: dry — YD — yad, 27.2: hand
INDEX NOMINUM
‘Abd al-Ğabbār b. Aḥmad (al-Qāḍī): 113, 115, 366, 380, 386 ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd, ‘A. ‘A.: 111 ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd, Ṣ.: 385 ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Ṣiġnāḫī: 344 Abū ‘Abdallah b. Mumlak: 349 Abū Bakr: 348, 379 Abū Bakr b. al-Iḫšīd: 385 Abū Ğa‘far b. Qiba: 349, 381 Abū Ḥafṣ al-Ḥaddād: 374, 379-380 Abū Hāšim al-Ğubbā’ī: 88, 112-113, 115-116, 125-126, 131-132, 151, 353, 366, 368, 384-385 Abū al-Huḏayl: 97, 115 348 Abū ‘Īsā al-Warrāq: 348, 350, 380 Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Nawbaḫt: 386 Abū Rīda, ‘A.: 88, 97, 332, 389-390 Abū Sahl b. Nawbaḫt: 350, 381, 386, 391 Accatino, P.: 250 Adamson, P.: 97, 308, 332-335, 389390 Aegidius Romanus: 251 al-‘Alawī, Ğ.: 70 Alexander of Aphrodisias: v-vii, 67, 6971, 76-77, 84-85, 87, 89-90, 92, 100-102, 105-110, 116, 117, 122124, 128, 130, 132-133, 135, 137139, 141-144, 149-151, 153-158, 161-163, 165-169 171-184, 186, 188-189, 194-197, 201-206, 208, 210-215, 217, 219, 221, 223-228, 230, 232-234, 240, 243-244, 249271, 275, 281, 285-286, 296-301, 303, 308-309, 312, 321-328, 330333, 338, 345, 354-357, 370, 383, 387, 391-392 Alfred of Sareshel: 332 Algra, K.: 105, 149 ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib: 348, 350 al-Āmidī, Sayf al-Dīn: 4, 209 Amīn, A.: 372
al-‘Āmirī: 179 Ammonius: 90, 202, 265, 267, 310, 321, 325, 339, 388 Anawati, G. C.: 3, 343-344 Anaxagoras: 245 Aristotle: 3, 5, passim Aristides Quintilianus: 387 Arjomand, S. A.: 381-382, 391 Arnzen, R.: 208, 259, 389-390 al-Asadī, ‘A. H.: 346 al-A‘sam, ‘A.: 209 al-Aš‘arī, Abū al-Ḥasan: 112, 115, 131, 357 Asclepius: 321-325, 328 Ātay, Ḥ.: 94, 371 Averroes (Ibn Rušd): vi, 69-71, 74-75, 90-91, 127-130, 142, 145-147, 150, 158, 161, 163, 165-169, 174-176, 178-179, 181-184, 194-197, 200, 204-205, 213, 221, 226, 230-234, 240, 244, 249-251, 260, 267-268, 270, 274-275, 293, 296-298, 302305, 321, 326-328, 354, 356-358 Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā): 3, 67, 84, 99-100, 117, 125, 128, 142-144, 195-196, 228, 251, 267, 298-301, 316, 343346, 358, 383, 392 ‘Awn, F. B.: 112 Badawī, ‘A.: 103, 373 al-Baġdādī, ‘Abd al-Laṭīf: 209 al-Baġdādī, ‘Abd al-Qāhir: 115, 353 Bailey, C.: 74 Balaudé, J.-F.: 114 Balme, D.: 320-321 Banū Nawbaḫt: vii, 381, 385-387, 389392 Barnes, J.: 149, 336 al-Baṣrī, Abū al-Ḥusayn: 373 al-Baṣrī, ‘Umar b. Ziyād: 374 Bénatouïl, Th.: 175 Berryman, S.: 68, 187
424
Index nominum
Bertolacci, A.: 345 Biard, J.: 101, 166, 316 Bīdārfar, M.: 125 Biesterfled, H. H.: 334 al-Bīrūnī, Abū Rīḥān: 84, 358 Bišr b. al-Mu‘tamir: 348 Boethus of Sidon: 89, 101-102, 176, 179 Bonazzi, M.: 232 Bonitz, H.: 184, 223, 284 Bostock, D.: 321 Boudon, V.: 231 Braakhuis, H. A. G.: 251 Brague, R.: 82, 321 Brittain, Ch.: 149 Brunschwig, J.: 336 Burgundio of Pisa: 229-230 Burkert, W.: 186 Burnett, Ch.: 335, 351 Celia, F.: 259 Cerami, C.: 67, 69, 90, 166, 267-268, 275 Chiaradonna, R.: 232, 363 Cicero: 388 Code, A.: 121 Cook, M.: 365 Cordonier, V.: 225, 232, 249 Crone, P.: 369 Cureton, W.: 390 D’Ancona Costa, C.: 254 al-Dawānī, Ğalāl al-Dīn: 4 Debru, A.: 170, 172 De Libera, A.: 364 Democritus: 73, 93, 171, 219, 245 Dhanani, A.: 88, 125-126, 151 Diano, C.: 81 Dieterici, F.: 230 Dietrich, A.: 338 al-Dimašqī, Abū ‘Uṯmān: 96, 350, 354355, 358, 361 Diogenes Laertius: 149 Diogenes of Apollonia: 171 Dodge, B.: 351 Donini, P.: 250 Duns Scotus: 251 Duysinx, F.: 388
Eichner, H.: 157, 167-169, 176, 179, 196, 229-230, 233, 297 Elias: 90 Empedocles: 73, 171, 275-276, 292 Endress, G.: 351, 382 Erasistratus: vi, 170, 172-173, 188-189 Ergin, O.: 3, 343 Euclid: 125-126 Eudoxus: 101 Fahd, T.: 381 Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī: 125, 371-373, 377379 al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr: v, 230, 358, 365 al-Fārisī, Kamāl al-Dīn: 126 Fazzo, S.: 90, 333, 338 Federici Vescovini, G.: 249 Festugière, A. J.: 388 Fichant, M.: 317 Föllinger, S.: 172 Fotinis, A. P.: 250 Frank, R. M.: 88, 205 Frede, D.: 149 Frede, M.: 149 Friedländer, M.: 94 von Fritz, K.: 126 Furley, D.: 74 Ps.-Ğābir b. Ḥayyān: 252, 254-259, 261-264, 268, 279, 315, 355-357 Ğa‘far b. Ḥarb: 348 Ġaffārī, A. A.: 381 al-Ğāḥiẓ: 369, 372 Gaiser, K.: 260 Galen: v-vi, 169-175, 184, 187-189, 230-234, 266, 298, 301, 315, 334335, 367, 369 Galluzzo, G.: 232 Gannagé, E.: 252, 254-255, 258, 262, 271, 338 Gätje, H.: 388 Gaye, R. K.: 137 al-Ġazālī: 365 Genequand, Ch.: 326-327 Georr, Kh.: 157 Gerardus of Cremona: 81-82, 117-119, 274, 302 Ghurab, S.: 380
Index nominum Gimaret, D.: 93-94, 103, 112, 131, 151, 236, 347, 357, 366, 368, 369 Gleede, B.: 338 Gohlman, W. E.: 345 Golitsis, P.: 202 Gotthelf, A.: 186-188, 320 Gourinat, J.-B.: 336 Gregorius Thaumaturgus: 388 Gregory of Nyssa: 387 Groisard, J.: 194, 201 al-Ğubbā’ī, Abū ‘Alī: 112-113, 115116, 131-132, 348, 359, 367, 385 Ğum‘a, A.: 372 Gutas, D.: 3, 344, 351 al-Ğuwaynī, Imām al-Ḥaramayn: 111113 Haider, N.: 365 al-Ḥalabī: 316-317 al-Ḫalīl b. Aḥmad: 315 de Haas, F.: 105, 121, 229, 250-251, 265-266 Hankinson, R. J.: 170-171, 188 Hardie, R. P.: 137 al-Hasan, A. Y.: 318 al-Ḥasan al-‘Askarī: vii, 382, 384, 392 Hasnawi, A.: 249, 333 al-Ḫayyāṭ: 381 Helmig, C.: 232 Hippocrates: 369-370 Hišām b. al-Ḥakam: 385, 387 Holtz, H.: 364 Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq: 81, 119 Ḥusayn, T.: 373 al-Ḥusaynī, S. A.: 337 al-Ḥuṣrī, Abū Sa‘īd: 374, 380 Husson, S.: 339 Iamblichus: 387-388 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih: 332 Ibn Bāǧǧa: 358 Ibn Bābūya, al-Ṣaḍūq: 381 Ibn Bakkūs, Ibrāhīm: 117, 358 Ibn Fūrak: 131 Ibn al-Ğawzī: 349 Ibn al-Haytham, al-Ḥasan: 209, 315 Ibn Ḥazm: 359
425
Ibn Mattawayh, 103, 105, 112-113, 125-126, 132, 151, 194, 205 Ibn al-Mu’ayyad: see Mu’ayyadzāde Ibn al-Rāwandī: 112, 380, 385-386 Ibn Suwār, al-Ḥasan: 157 Ibn Taymiyya: 366 al-Īǧī, ‘Aḍud al-Dīn: 372 Inwood, B.: 149 Iqbāl, ‘A.: 346 al-Isfarā’inī: 380 Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn: 81-82, 95-96, 103, 117, 119-120, 274, 301, 350, 354, 356-358, 389 Ismā‘īl, M. Ḥ.: 366 Jacob, A.: 333 Janssens, J. L.: 3 Joachim, H. H.: 252 John of Damascus: 388, 391 Jolivet, J.: 332 Judycka, J.: 332 al-Ka‘bī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Balḫī: vi-vii, 112-113, 115-116, 125-126, 131132, 349, 353-354, 367-369 Karatay, F.E.: 4 Kepler, J.: 101 al-Kindī, Ya‘qūb b. Isḥāq: v, 97, 208, 332-340, 350, 352, 359, 361, 364365, 383-384, 389-390, 392 King, H. R.: 310 Koetschet, P.: vii Kraus, P.: 315, 358 Kullmann, W.: 172 Kupreeva, I.: 68, 179 Kurland, S.: 184, 305 Laurent, J.: 331 Lautner, P.: 100 Lear, J.: 122 Lefebvre, D.: 331 Leibniz, G. W.: 151, 316-317, 392 Lennox, J.: 320-321 Lewis, E.: 312 Long, A. A.: 336-337 Ludovicus Buccaferreus: 251
426
Index nominum
Madelung, W.: 348, 359, 365-366, 371, 381-382 Maffi, E.: 175 Maghsoudlou, S.: vii, 150, 384 Mahdavi, Y.: 3, 343 Mahdi, M.: 230 Maier, A.: 229 Maimonides (Mūsā b. Maymūn): 94 al-Malāḥimī, Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad: 359, 366 Mani: 374 Mānkdīm Šešdīv: 113 Mansfeld, J.: 105, 121, 149 Marmura, M. E.: 348 Mattā b. Yūnus: 85, 169, 327, 338, 355358 McDermott, M. J.: 97, 131, 367, 384, 386-387, 390 McGinnis, J.: 344 Marsilius of Inghen: 251 Mattéi, J.-F.: 333 Meisami, J. S.: 382 Menn, S.: vii Metrodorus: 172 Meyer, S. S.: 188 Michot, Y.: 4 Modarressi, H.: 349, 381 Mohaghegh, M.: 97 Monnot, G.: 369 Montesquieu, Ch.: 348: Morel, P.-M.: 175 Morison, B.: 103, 114 Morrison, D.: 153 Mu‘ammar: 385, 390-391 Mu’ayyadzāde [Ibn al-Mu’ayyad], Abd al-Raḥmān Efendi: 4, 344 Mueller, I.: 122 al-Mufīd (Šayḫ al-): vi, 97, 367-369, 381, 384, 386-387, 389-391 Muḫtār, S. M.: 112 Mūsā al-Kāẓim: 349 Mūsā, M. Y.: 111 Musco, A.: 371 al-Mu‘tamid: 355 al-Mu‘taṣim: 336, 355 al-Mutawakkil: 355
al-Nadīm, Muḥammad b. Isḥāq 77, 8485, 169, 301, 338, 350-352, 354355, 358-359, 361, 363, 365-366 al-Naǧāšī: 349 al-Naǧǧār, ‘A.: 115 al-Naǧǧār, M. ‘A.: 115 Naššār, ‘A. S.: 112 al-Nāšī, ‘Abdallāh b. Muḥammad: 374, 380 Nawbaḫt al-Fārisī: 346 al-Nawbaḫtī, al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā (the author): passim al-Naẓẓām, 369 Nicolaus of Damascus: 184 al-Nīsābūrī, Abū Rašīd: 88, 94, 113, 131-132, 151, 194, 336, 367-369 al-Niṣībī: 373 O’Brien, D.: 73 Oehler, K.: 320 Olympiodorus: 108, 301, 303, 309, 311312, 338-340, 354, 361, 388 Owen, G. E. L.: 147 Pabst, B.: 74 Palmieri, P.: 371 Perfetti, S.: 232 Pertsch, W.: 4 Philoponus: vi, 68-71, 76-77, 79, 83-84, 91, 107-109, 118, 121-122, 127130, 140, 142, 145 147-150, 154155, 157, 160-163, 168-169, 173174, 177-178, 181-184, 194-195, 197-198, 200-205, 208, 210-213, 216-217, 221, 228-230, 234, 244, 251-253, 255-256, 259-260, 262, 265-267, 269-270, 274-275, 282286, 293, 296-297, 299, 301-305, 317-318, 329-331, 339 Pines, S.: 88 Plato: 97, 120, 154, 225, 253, 257-262, 271, 276, 310, 320-321, 326, 331, 338-339, 358-359, 364-365, 387 Plotinus (al-Šayḫ al-Yūnānī): 390 Pormann, P.: 97, 332-334, 389 Porphyry: 388 Pourjavady, R.: 4 Pretzl, O.: 88
Index nominum Prince, B. D.: vii Proclus: 358, 379 Ptolemy: 337 Pythias: : 172 al-Qalānisī: 353 Qāsim, M.: 142 al-Qūhī: 372 Qusṭā b. Lūqā: 85, 169, 355, 361 al-Raǧā’ī, S. M.: 337 Rashed, M.: vi, 73, 75, 77, 85, 89-90, 99, 102, 110, 117, 142, 151, 153, 156, 177, 188, 194, 218, 229, 245, 254, 268, 285-286, 316, 327-328, 358, 363, 370, 372, 379, 392 Rashed, R.: 101, 126, 209, 315-316, 332, 355, 372 al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr: 358 Reisman, D. C. 4, 344 Ritter, H.: vi, 346, 349, 384 Romano, C.: 331 Romeyer Dherbey, G.: 336 Rommevaux, S.: 166 Ross, W. D.: 103 al-Šahrastānī: 390 al-Sakūnī, Abū ‘Alī: 380 al-Ṣāliḥī, Abū al-Ḥusayn: 112, 114 al-Saqqā, A. Ḥ.: 125 al-Šarīf al-Murtaḍā: 337 al-Sayyid, R.: 94 Schofield, M.: 102, 149 Seetzen, U. J.: 4 Serra, G.: 81-82, 117, 254, 355-356 Sharples, R. W.: 109, 172, 211, 263 Simplicius: 84, 100, 123-124, 132-133, 136-137, 142, 149, 152, 254, 260, 308 Socrates: 258 Sorabji, R.: 68, 122, 155, 187, 217, 296, 298, 363-364 Starkey, P.: 382 Stavrianeas, S.: 320 Stobaeus: 387 Stone, A.: 300-301, 346 Sylla, E. D.: 296
427
Ṯābit b. Qurra: 348, 350, 354 al-Tawḥīdī, Abū Ḥayyān: 372-373, 380 Tessier, A.: 82, 119 Themistius: 76-77, 301, 321, 338, 350 Theophrastus: 173, 263, 320 Thijssen, J. M. M. H.: 251 Thomas Aquinas: 251 Todd, R. B.: 163, 168-169, 174, 229, 240 Torstrik, A.: 82 Towey, A.: 225 Trabattoni, F.: 175 Tsouyopoulos, N.: 229 Ulacco, A.: 259 ‘Umar b. al-Ḫaṭṭāb: 379 Urmson, J. O.: 100, 123 Usṭāṯ: 301, 338-339, 354, 361 ‘Uṯmān, ‘A.: 113, 366 van Ess, J.: 97, 336, 346, 349, 363, 365, 369, 371-373, 377, 380, 382-384, 386 Verde, F.: 194 Viano, C.: 303, 310-311, 339 von Arnim, H.: : 193 von Staden, H.: 172-173 Vuillemin, J.: 101 Vuillemin-Diem, G.: 229 Weijers, O.: 364 Westerink, L. G.: 364 Wild, S.: 315 Wiesner, H.: 333, 338 Williams, C. J. F.: 68, 148, 153, 285, 311 Winnington-Ingram, R. P.: 388 Wisnovsky, R.: 117, 308 Wolff, F.: 114 Yaḥyā b. ‘Adī: 308, 338 Yaḥyā b. al-Asfaḥ: 348 Ya‘qūb b. Isḥāq al-Isrā’īlī: 338, 354 Yarshater, E.: 369 Zabarella, J.: 229, 251, 267 Zayid, S.: 67 al-Zayn, A.: 372
428 Zeller, E.: 388 Ziyāda, M.: 94
Index nominum Zoroaster: 374
INDEX LOCORUM
Abū Manṣūr ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Baġdādī Uṣūl al-Dīn 233.15-234.14: 115 Abū Rīḥān al-Bīrūnī wa-Ibn Sīnā al-As’ila wa-al-aǧwiba 13: 84 Abū Rīḥān al-Bīrūnī Fihrist Kutub Muḥammad b. Zakariyyā’ al-Rāzī (ed. Kraus) 15-16: 358 Alexander of Aphrodisias On the Soul 4.10: 85 5.4-9: 89 6.2-6: 107 6.17-18: 85 8.13-25: 250 20.24-26: 275 De mixtione XV, 231.22-29: 269 XVI, 228.36-37: 204 XVI, 228.37-229.3: 240 XVI, 233.14-234.15: 158 XVI, 234.24a-27: 142 XVI, 238.10-17: 163 Mantissa 122.16-125.4: 109 Quæstiones I 5, 13.17-20: 178 I 8: 89 I 17: 89 I 26: 89 II 17, 61.32-62.1: 263 II 23, 72.10-73.25: 171 II 23, 74.10-14: 172 II 23, 74.14-17: 172
II 23, 74.23-26: 171 III 4, 87.3-7: 92 III 26: 387 Commentary on ‘Topics’ 49.7-50.7: 179 49.19-22: 180 300.28-31: 179 300.30: 180 450.23-28: 179 465.24-29: 138 Scholia on ‘Physics’ 19: 152 25: 261 32: 124 40: 149 41: 149 110: 142-143 415: 122 590: 133 591: 136 594: 137 705: 141 Commentary on ‘Meteorologica’ 224.12-16: 312 Commentary on ‘De sensu’ 73.18-30: 224 87.11-12: 184 Commentary on ‘Metaphysics’ 147.26-27: 263 169.17-19: 309 201.4-11: 156 al-Āmidī al-Mubīn fī šarḥ alfāẓ al-ḥukamā’ waal-mutakallimīn (ed. al-A‘sam) 349: 209 376: 209
Index locorum
430 Ammonius Commentary on ‘Categories’ 34.5: 388 Anonymous Fī al-nafs (ed. Arnzen) 197.5-6: 389 213.10: 389 Aristides Quintilianus On Music III 11, 23-24: 388 Aristotle Categories 2, 1a 24-25: 123 5, 3b 24-32: 89 5, 3b 24-25: 254 6, 6a 17 sqq.: 284 14, 15a 29-31: 141 On Interpretation 14, 23b 22 sqq.: 284 Posterior Analytics I 14, 73a 34-b 24: 107 II 12, 95a 16-17: 258 II 18: 71 Topics
I 5, 102b 4-7: 106 VI 8, 146b 13-19: 138
Physics I 7, 190a 31-b 1: 103 II 2, 194b 13: 320 II 9, 200a 14-15: 318 III 1, 201a 17: 117 IV 3, 210a 34-b 1: 123 IV 6, 213a 12-22: 237 IV 6, 214b 1-3: 141 IV 11, 219a 19-21: 82, 84 IV 11, 219b 10-11: 82 V 2, 225b 10-16: 100 V 2, 225b 11-13: 99 V 3, 226b 23: 204 V 3, 226b 34-227a 1: 204 V 3, 227a 6: 204
VI 6, 236b 19-23: 114 VI 10, 240b 8-12: 122 VIII 4, 255a 28-30: 132 VIII 4, 255b 8-11: 136 VIII 6: 391 VIII 7, 260a 29: 141 VIII 8, 262a 12-b 8 On the Heavens I 9, 279a 21: 207 III 8, 306b 34: 245 Generation and Corruption I 1, 314a 1-3: 68 I 2, 316b 21: 117 I 2, 316b 24: 117 I 2, 317a 27-30: 196 I 3, 317a 32-318a 27: 75 I 3, 317b 17: 117 I 3, 317b 18-35: 79 I 3, 317b 24: 117 I 3, 317b 26: 117 I 3, 318a 1-27: 87, 90 I 3, 318a 9-10: 95 I 3, 318a 23-25: 91 I 3, 318a 27-b 33: 94 I 3, 318a 6-8: 67 I 3, 318a 27-b 33: 75 I 3, 318b 33-319a 17: 73, 75 I 3, 319a 14-17: 75 I 3, 319a 17-b 5: 75 I 3, 319a 20-22: 91 I 3, 319a 22-b 4: 311 I 3, 319a 29-b 5: 80 I 4, 319b 24-31: 104 I 4, 319b 32-320a 2: 99 I 4, 320a 2-5: 311 I 5, 320a 8-15: 99 I 5, 320a 12-16: 117 I 5, 320a 13: 117 I 5, 320a 8-27: 117 I 5, 320a 15: 117 I 5, 320a 17-19: 118 I 5, 320a 18-22: 127 I 5, 320a 19-25: 120 I 5, 320a 29-31: 152 I 5, 320b 1: 153 I 5, 320b 2: 153
Index locorum I 5, 320b 8-10: 153 I 5, 320b 10-12: 153 I 5, 320b 11: 117 I 5, 320b 12-14: 153, 311 I 5, 320b 14-17: 153 I 5, 320b 21: 117 I 5, 320b 26: 117 I 5, 320b 33: 117 I 5, 320b 34-321a 5: 147 I 5, 321a 17-22: 145-146 I 5, 321a 29-b 10: 150, 159 I 5, 321b 10-22: 159 I 5, 321b 12-16: 159 I 5, 321b 17-22: 159 I 5, 321b 22-34: 175 I 5, 321b 22-25: 175 I 5, 321b 24: 177 I 5, 321b 35-322a 4: 159-160 I 5, 322a 6: 117 I 5, 322a 13: 117 I 5, 322a 16-33: 180 I 5, 322a 19-24: 180 I 6, 322b 1-26: 191 I 6, 322b 1-11: 199 I 6, 322b 8: 200 I 6, 322b 11-21: 311 I 6, 322b 21-26: 199 I 6, 323a 3-4: 210 I 6, 323a 6-9: 209 I 6, 323a 8-9: 210 I 6, 323a 9-12: 211 I 6, 323a 32-33: 215 I 7, 323b 1-15: 219 I 7, 323b 21-25: 191 I 7, 323b 29-324a 5: 220 I 7, 324a 5-8: 220 I 7, 324a 8-9: 306 I 7, 324a 32-b 2: 234 I 8, 326b 21-28: 193 I 8, 326b 31: 117 I 9, 327a 1-6: 192 I 10, 327a 32-b 6: 237 I 10, 327a 35: 238 I 10, 327b 6-10: 238 I 10, 327b 10-19: 239 I 10, 327b 22-27: 240 I 10, 327b 23: 241 I 10, 327b 25: 241
431 I 10, 327b 27-31: 241 I 10, 327b 27-29: 269 I 10, 327b 31-328a 17: 201 I 10, 328a 5-6: 245 I 10, 328a 19-22: 311 I 10, 328a 33-b 5: 204 I 10, 328a 33-35 II 1, 328b 26-32: 273 II 1, 328b 31: 273 II 1, 328b 33-329a 24: 275 II 1, 329a 3: 276 II 1, 329a 5-24: 276 II 1, 329a 24-35: 311 II 1, 329a 24-26: 276, 286 II 1, 329a 30-31: 276 II 1, 329a 32-35: 276 II 2, 329b 7-11: 277 II 2, 329b 11-13: 277 II 2, 329b 16-24: 277 II 2, 329b 18-20: 357 II 2, 329b 32-330a 24: 281 II 2, 330a 24-29: 281 II 3, 330a 30-b 1: 252 II 3, 330b 1-7: 252 II 3, 330b 16: 259 II 3, 330b 21-25: 252, 255 II 3, 330b 25-26: 255, 257 II 3, 330b 25-30: 256, 328 II 3, 330b 26: 257 II 3, 331a 3-6: 252 II 3, 331a 4-6: 281 II 4, 331a 7-12: 283 II 4, 331a 12-b 26: 283 II 4, 331a 12-b 11: 283 II 4, 331a 15-16: 284 II 4, 331b 11-332a 2: 283-284 II 4, 331a 16-18: 283 II 4, 331a 18-20: 283 II 4, 331b 32: 284 II 4, 331b 34: 284 II 5, 332a 3-b 5: 286 II 5, 332a 17-20: 311 II 5, 332a 35-b 1: 311 II 5, 332b 5: 286 II 5, 332b 6-14: 287 II 5, 332b 14-333a 15: 287 II 6, 333a 16-34: 291 II 6, 333a 21-22: 291
Index locorum
432 II 6, 334a 15-25: 311 II 6, 333a 24-25: 291 II 7, 334b 2-7: 311 II 7, 334b 4-7: 295 II 7, 334b 8-20: 295 II 7, 334b 9: 117 II 7, 334b 13: 117, 229 ΙΙ 7, 334b 25: 229 II 7, 334b 27-28: 296 II 8, 334b 31-34: 301 II 8, 334b 34-335a 3: 305 II 8, 335a 3-9: 304 II 8, 335a 3-6: 90 II 8, 335a 4-5: 304 II 8, 335a 6-7: 304 II 9, 335a 32-b 6: 311 II 9, 335b 4-7: 317 II 9, 335b 7-16: 320 II 10, 336b 10-26: 320 II 10, 336b 15-26: 329 II 10, 336b 20-21: 329 II 10, 336b 26-34: 72, 340 II 10, 337a 20: 207 II 11, 338b 5-19: 109 Meteorologica IV 1: 233, 279 IV 4, 381b 23-382a 8: 233 IV 5, 382b 4-5: 279 IV 9, 385b 7: 258 IV 10, 388b 11: 258 On the Soul II 4, 415b 26-28: 142 On Sleep 1, 454b 1-2: 284 1, 454b 2-3: 284 On the Parts of Animals II 3, 649b 11-12: 258 On Generation of Animals III 11: 320 Metaphysics α 3, 995a 17: 309 B 2, 997b 35-998a 6: 125
Γ 6, 1011b 17-18: 223 Δ 4, 1014b 16-17: 185 Δ 6, 1016b 31-1017a 3: 207 Δ 10, 1018α 27-28 Δ 30, 1025a 30-34: 106 Z 8, 1034a 5-8: 325 Z 9, 1034a 21-b 7: 321 Z 9, 1034b 4-7: 321 Z9, 1034b 7-19: 321, 323 Z 9, 1034b 16-19: 324 H 3, 1043a 9-10: 258 Λ 5, 1071a 20-24: 320 Λ 7, 1072a 31 sqq.: 387 M 3: 122 Nicomachean Ethics II 8, 1108b 33 sqq.: 284 III 5, 1113b 21-26: 335 III 5, 1114a 3-10: 335 V 6, 1131a 31-32: 292 De plantis [sp.] 817a 23-25: 184 Asclepius Commentary on ‘Metaphysics’ 407.32-408.4: 322 408.4-7: 322 408.7-15: 323 408.15-27: 324 Averroes Commentary on the ‘Physics’ 215F-G: 90, 254 216A: 90 Epitome On de generatione et corruptione (ed. Taftazānī-Zāyid) 11.15-12.3: 145-146 13.20-22: 179 14.6-9: 184 14.15-16: 204 14.18: 208 14.18-15.4: 213 15.15-16: 226 16.18-19: 194 17.1-6: 195 17.14-17: 244
Index locorum 17.17-20: 270 21.6: 274 21.7-8: 274 23.7-10: 357 25.7-9: 302 25.11-12: 305 25.13-14: 305 29.17-30.2: 70 35.10: 70 Middle Commentary On de generatione et corruptione (ed. Eichner) 2.3-4: 69 34.3-9: 127 43.5-9: 161 43.9-16: 165 43.10: 175 44.1-6: 166 44.10: 175 46.15-18: 176 47.9-11: 166 47.11-16: 166 47.16-48.10: 167 48.1: 167 48.7: 167 48.8: 167 50.17-20: 181 54.13-14: 204 56.15-57.6: 178 60.8-9: 221 80.9-10: 270 86.8: 274 88.13: 275 88.14: 275 89.2: 275 89.6: 275 89.7: 275 89.15: 275 92.12-16: 357 94.7-9: 356 96.11-12: 260 98.1-3: 328 123.2-10: 231 123.3-9: 297 123.9-11: 297 123.10-14: 231 124.10-11: 305 124.12-18: 305
433 126.10-127.3: 70
Tafsīr Mā ba‘d al-Ṭabī‘at 1458.6-8: 326 1459.3-8: 326 Avicenna Šifā’, al-samā‘ al-ṭabī‘ī (ed. Zāyid) 21-25: 67 Šifā’, al-kawn wa-al-fasād (ed. Qāsim) 126.8-11: 196 133.8-11: 299 140.4-13: 142 190.10-16: 298 191.5-7: 298 Mubāḥaṯāt (ed. Bīdārfar) 363: 125 Elias Commentary on the ‘Categories’ 179.34-180.3: 90 Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī Al-Maṭālib al-‘āliyya (ed. al-Saqqā) VI, 48-59: 125 Muḥaṣṣal (ed. Ātāy) 121: 371 122: 372 124-125: 372 126-127: 372 al-Riyāḍ al-mūniqa fī ārā’ ahl al-‘ilm (ed. Ğum‘a) 21-28: 373 81-82: 379 al-Fārābī Falsafat Arisṭūṭālīs (ed. Mahdi) 105.12: 230 Mabādī ārā’ ahl al-madīnat al-fāḍila (ed. Dieterici) 31.9-10: 230
434
Index locorum
Galen On natural faculties 120.2-6: 170 122.9-16: 170 162.11-24: 171-172 Quod animi mores 37.16-24: 232 On Temperaments I, 1.12: 266 I, 1.17: 266 I, 1.18: 266 I, 8.1: 266 II, 63.3-22: 298 Gregorius Thaumaturgus Ad Tatianum (ed. PG) 1140.4: 388 114151-56: 388 al-Ğuwaynī Iršād (ed. Mūsā – ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd) 17-18: 111 22-25: 112 23: 113 Šāmil (ed. Naššār) 535: 112 Iamblichus De communi mathematica scientia (ed. Klein) § 14, 80-86: 388 Ibn Bābūya Kamāl al-dīn wa-tamām al-ni‘ma (ed. Ġaffārī) 88 sqq.: 381 92: 381 Ibn Fūrak Muǧarrad maqālāt al-Šayḫ Abī alḤasan al-Aš‘arī (ed. Gimaret) 272.3-10: 131 276.1-4: 131
Ibn Mattawayh al-Taḏkirat fī aḥkām al-ǧawāhir wa-ala‘rāḍ (ed. Gimaret) 9: 151 47-51: 194 47: 205 52.9: 112-113 69-73: 105 75: 126 86: 151 141: 103 314: 132 320: 132 337: 205 John of Damascus Expositio Fidei (ed. Kotter) § 26, 44-52: 388 al-Kindī Rasā’il falsafiyya (ed. Abū Rīda) 215: 333 219-220: 97 219: 333 225-226: 334 226: 334 273: 389 281: 389 al-Malāḥimī Kitāb al-Mu‘tamad (ed. Madelung) 648-649: 359 669: 359 772: 359 Mānkdīm Šešdīv [ol. Qāḍī ‘Abd-alĞabbār] Šarḥ al-Uṣūl al-ḫamsa (ed. ‘Uṯmān) 111: 113 al-Mufīd (Šayḫ al-) Awā’il al-Maqālāt (ed. Mohaghegh) 42: 97 44: 367 al-Masā’il al-Sarawiyya (ed. ‘Abd alḤamīd) 55-56: 386
Index locorum 57-60: 385 60: 387 Mūsā Ibn Maymūn (Maimonides) Dalālat al-ḥā’irīn (ed. Ḥ. Ātāy) 196: 94 204-206: 94 al-Nadīm Kitāb al-Fihrist (ed. Taǧaddud) 222: 366 225-226: 351 311: 84-85, 301, 338 al-Nawbaḫtī (the author) Talḫīṣ Kitāb al-kawn wa-al-fasād 7.10-12: 311 11.3-4: 79 11.10-12: 79 11.19-23: 83 13.6-11: 87 13.8: 88 13.17-21: 96 15.7-13: 99 15.20-23: 106 17.6-7: 106 17.7-9: 107 17.12-16: 108 17.18-19: 110 17.20-21: 111 19.1-5: 117 19.6-7: 118 19.12-14: 121 21.3-11: 130 23.7-12: 144 27.1-4: 159 27.4-9: 161 27.9-13: 162 27.14-17: 164 27.17-29.2: 164 29.3-5: 176 29.5-7: 177 29.7-11: 177 29.13-17: 180 29.18: 181 29.18-31.1: 182 29.22-31.5: 183 33.1-4: 188
435 33.4-7: 189 33.10-12: 191 33.12-14: 192 33.14-21: 192 35.1-10: 193 35.10-13: 194 35.14-18: 198 35.18-37.2: 198 37.3-11: 203 37.14-15: 204 37.15-18: 206 37.19-22: 207 39.4-9: 210 39.10-11: 214 39.13-16: 215 39.16-18: 215 41.20-21: 221 43.1-4: 221 43.4-7: 222 43.7-9: 222 43.16-18: 227 45.1-2: 227 43.18-45.1: 228 45.3-7: 235 445.7-9: 235 45.11-20: 238 45.20-47.2: 239 47.3-9: 239 47.10-14: 243 47.15-17: 246 47.17-19: 246 47.20-22: 247 47.22-49.7: 248 49.7-10: 248 49.11-18: 248 49.19-51.4: 268 51.6-10: 274 51.11-18: 276 51.19-53.2: 278 53.3-6: 279 53.12-15: 281 57.10-20: 288 59.2-5: 292 59.5-8: 292 59.14-16: 294 59.16-20: 294 59.21-61.3: 296 61.2-3: 300
Index locorum
436 61.4-5: 302 61.17-63.1: 307 63.2-3: 310 63.2: 312 63.2-5: 313 63.5-9: 313 59.16-61.1: 314 63.10-11: 315 63.13-22: 319 Firaq al-Šī‘a 2: 361 al-Nīsābūrī, Abū Rašīd Fī al-tawḥīd (ed. Abū Rīda) 567.7-9: 88
al-Masā’il fī al-ḫilāf bayna al-Baṣriyyīn wa-al-Baġdādiyyīn (ed. Ziyāda – alSayyid) 47-55: 194 57-58: 132 58: 151 61: 151 62: 113 100-101: 131 130-133: 94 133: 131, 336, 368 144: 132 Olympiodorus Commentary on ‘Categories’ 57.36: 388 Commentary on ‘Meteorologica’ 168.27-31: 311 272.5-11: 309 Philoponus Commentary on ‘Categories’ 49.23: 388 67.8: 388 Commentary on ‘Physics’ 48.8-18: 91 51.20-24: 91 539.18-540.2: 148 720.26-721.13: 84
Commentary on ‘De generatione et corruptione’ 7.18-26: 68 8.2-4: 69 48.17-49.5: 79 52.17-21: 76 54.19-21: 76 59.8-14: 77 63.14-19: 84 65.22-32: 108 65.32-66.6: 109 68.16-18: 108 70.26-29: 118 71.6-15: 140 71.18-20: 127 71.25-31: 129 71.31-72.2: 121 75.19-23: 173 81.17-22: 154 81.22-31: 154 82.22-26: 154, 157 83.1: 155 88.17-28: 148 107.3-14: 178 107.27-108.9: 168 109.21-111.13: 179 113.13: 177 115.5-13: 160 115.16-30: 161 119.6-14: 174 120.26-29: 181 121.8-12: 182 125.19-31: 200 125.24: 200 130.19-27: 216 131.11-19: 208 133.27-134.1: 210 135.2-7: 211 135.8-11: 211 137.27: 213 138.2-6: 213 138.6-9: 213 138.24-139.2: 217 144.13: 221 187.23-25: 201 188.15-23: 244 188.25: 230 191.26-28: 269
Index locorum 191.32-192.4: 270 192.12: 230 197.9-16: 202 198.27: 230 202.22: 230 203.13: 230 205.23-25: 275 206.2-4: 274 226.25-30: 260 227.26-228.1: 253 228.2-7: 253 228.8-19: 253 228.28-229.4: 256 228.28: 262 229.3: 262 233.4-7: 283 233. 19-25: 283 233.21-28: 285 234.19-24: 285 234.33-235.1: 285 245.3: 230 271.6-7: 230 271.25-35: 265 274.29: 229 277.17-19: 296 277.17: 229 278.10-16: 303 279.9-15: 304 285.2-7: 318 295.8-14: 329 295.15-19: 330 295.20-296.3: 330 296.3-10: 331 Commentary on ‘On the soul’ 207.34: 388 Plato Politeia IV, 436D-E: 120 Sophist
246B: 225 248C: 225
Timaeus 41A-B: 97 48A: 331
437 53C-55C: 258 59D-E: 259 59E: 259
Qāḍī ‘Abd al-Ğabbār Muġnī V, 18: 380 XI, 311.8 sqq.: 386 XI, 459.13-15: 115 Taṯbīt Dalā’il al-Nubuwwa (ed. ‘Uṯmān) 528: 366 al-Šahrastānī al-Milal wa-al-Niḥal (ed. Cureton) 47: 390 al-Sakūnī ‘Uyūn al-munāẓarāt (ed. Ghurab) 234: 380 al-Šarīf al-Murtaḍā Mas’alat fī al-radd ‘alā al-munaǧǧimīn (ed. Ḥusaynī – Raǧā’ī) 301-304: 337 Simplicius Commentary on ‘Categories’ 168.15-169.2: 254 Commentary on ‘Physics’ 454.34-35: 260 537.32-538.14: 152 554.16-18: 123 554.18-21: 124 712.24-713.16: 84 834.22-835.11: 100 1213.3-6: 133 1213.6-10: 136 1215.24-32: 137 Stobaeus Eclogae I 49, 33, 5-8: 387 Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (ed. von Arnim) II, 463-481: 193
438
Index locorum
al-Tawḥīdī al-Imtā‘ wa-al-mu’ānasa (ed. Amīn – al-Zayn) I, 38: 372 III, 192: 380
Theophrastus On Fire (ed. Coutant) 4.1-9: 263