Against Proclus' "On the Eternity of the World 1-5" (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 0801442141
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This is a post-Aristotelian Greek philosophical text, written at a crucial moment in the defeat of paganism by Christianity, AD 529, when the Emporor Justinian closed the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. Philoponus in Alexandria was a brilliant Christian philosopher, steeped in Neoplatanism, who turned the pagans' ideas against them. Here he attacks the most devout of the earlier Athenian pagan philosophers, Proclus, defending the distinctively Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' eighteen arguments to the contrary, which are discussed in eighteen chapters. Chapters 1-5 are translated in this volume.
fact that, given a single absurdity, a myriad of absurdities necessarily follows. It will be best to begin by setting out the philosopher’s syllogisms themselves and then proceed to the refutation of the false premiss, that is, the minor premiss; for once this has been refuted, the fraud perpetrated at the expense of the truth by the great Proclus is undone. The first syllogism goes like this. That, he says, which passes from not producing to producing will undergo a change, and everything that
survive, inhere in things independently and without relation [to anything else]. Even at the bottom of the sea a shell has the principle of colour in its entirety, even though it does not come under observation.284 And if these things are so in the case of corporeal things, how can someone who does not even concede as much to the creative cause of existing things and does not want its essential powers to be independent of external relations be other than truly blasphemous and egregiously impious?
‘the pseudo-science astrology’, or something similar, or perhaps he just lost the thread, but I would not rule out the possibility that something has gone wrong with the text. 144. Literally ‘the children of the Hellenes’, but the phrase is merely periphrastic for ‘the Hellenes’, or ‘the pagans’. (For the usage, see LSJ pais I.3). 145. According to LSJ, katarkhê was a technical astrological term for a forecast concerning an undertaking or voyage. However, the literal meaning of the word is
descendant of Aristotle’s unmoved mover, it is tempting to opt for ‘unmoved’, but ‘unmoving’ seems to work best as the argument unfolds and God and the universe are introduced. Second, kinêsis, which I normally translate ‘movement’, and related words such as akinêtos cover a wide range of ‘movements’, many of which are more naturally described as ‘changes’ in English and a good case could be made for translating akinêtos ‘unchanging’ and both kinêsis and the associated verb kineisthai, which
actuality Forms (Platonic) Aristotle’s criticism of, 26,24-32,18, directed at Plato’s own theory, 29,2-32,13 substances, not relatives, 33,6-35,12 not their essence to be patterns, 36,3-35,12 as creative principles, see creative principles God power(s): one, simple and infinite, 1,14-5,16; inconceivable, 8,17; ineffable, 37,19; not parcelled out among created things or completed by them, 6,22; 102,22; or circumscribed by nature of creation, 8,22 wrong to predicate weakness of God, 13,20; 14,2