Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators

This volume presents collected essays – some brand new, some republished, and others newly translated – on the ancient commentators on Aristotle and showcases the leading research of the last three decades. Through the work and scholarship inspired by Richard Sorabji in his series of translations of the commentators started in the 1980s, these ancient texts have become a key field within ancient philosophy. Building on the strength of the series, which has been hailed as 'a scholarly marvel', 'a truly breath-taking achievement' and 'one of the great scholarly achievements of our time' and on the widely praised edited volume brought out in 1990 (Aristotle Transformed) this new book brings together critical new scholarship that is a must-read for any scholar in the field. With a wide range of contributors from across the globe, the articles look at the commentators themselves, discussing problems of analysis and interpretation that have arisen through close study of the texts. Richard Sorabji introduces the volume and himself contributes two new papers. A key recent area of research has been into the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew versions of texts, and several important essays look in depth at these. With all text translated and transliterated, the volume is accessible to readers without specialist knowledge of Greek or other languages, and should reach a wide audience across the disciplines of Philosophy, Classics and the study of ancient texts.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction: Seven Hundred Years of Commentary and the Sixth Century Diffusion to other Cultures Richard Sorabji 1. The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BCE: Andronicus' Canon Myrto Hatzimichali 2. Boethus' Aristotelian Ontology Marwan Rashed 3. The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free Will Problem and the Role of Alexander Susanne Bobzien 4. Alexander of Aphrodisias on Particulars and the Stoic Criterion of Identity Marwan Rashed 5. Themistius and the Problem of Spontaneous Generation Devin Henry 6. Spontaneous Generation and its Metaphysics in Themistius' Paraphrase of Aristotle's Metaphysics 12 Yoav Meyrav 7. The Neoplatonic Commentators on 'Spontaneous' Generation James Wildberding 8. A Rediscovered Categories Commentary: Porphyry? with Fragments of Boethus Riccardo Chiaradonna, Marwan Rashed, and David Sedley 9. The Purpose of Porphyry's Rational Animals: A Dialectical Attack on the Stoics in On Abstinence from Animal Food G. Fay Edwards 10. Universals Transformed in the Commentators on Aristotle Richard Sorabji 11. Iamblichus' Noera Theôria of Aristotle's Categories John Dillon 12. Proclus' Defence of the Timaeus against Aristotle: A Reconstruction of a Lost Polemical Treatise Carlos Steel 13. Smoothing over the Differences: Proclus and Ammonius on Plato's Cratylus and Aristotle's De Interpretatione R. M. van den Berg 14. Dating of Philoponus' Commentaries on Aristotle and of his Divergence from his Teacher Ammonius Richard Sorabji 15. John Philoponus' Commentary on the Third Book of Aristotle's De Anima, Wrongly Attributed to Stephanus Pantelis Golitsis 16. Mixture in Philoponus: An Encounter with a Third Kind of Potentiality Frans A. J. de Haas 17. Gnôstikôs and/or hulikôs: Philoponus' Accountof the Material Aspects of Sense-Perception Peter Lautner 18. The Last Philosophers of Late Antiquity in the Arabic Tradition Peter Adamson 19. Alexander of Aphrodisias versus John Philoponus in Arabic: A Case of Mistaken Identity Ahmad Hasnawi 20. New Arabic Fragments of Philoponus and their Reinterpretation: Does the World Lack a Beginning in Time or Take no Time to Begin? Marwan Rashed 21. Simplicius' Corollary on Place: Method of Philosophising and Doctrines Philippe Hoffmann and Pantelis Golitsis 22. A Philosophical Portrait of Stephanus the Philosopher Mossman Roueché 23. Who Were the Real Authors of the Metaphysics Commentary Ascribed to Alexander and Ps.-Alexander? Pantelis Golitsis The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Translations Bibliography Index Locorum General Index

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

Review :
Building on the extraordinary achievements of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project, [Aristotle Re-Interpreted] is a valuable collection of groundbreaking studies, which, together with [Aristotle Transformed], constitutes a must-read for any scholar and student of philosophy and Classics as well as an indispensable acquisition of any library in these fields. In terms of the amount covered [this book is] certainly good value, and in my view anyone working in this subject area would be strongly advised to buy and read both [this and Aristotle Transformed.] Classicists and philosophers are devoting increased attention to ancient commentaries on Aristotle. Much of this work began in earnest in the 1980s with the Duckworth/Bloomsbury "Ancient Commentators on Aristotle" series and the present volume's companion collection of scholarly essays, Aristotle Transformed (1990; 2nd ed., 2016), also edited by Sorabji. Aristotle Re-Interpreted updates earlier work in the wake of roughly three decades of research, discoveries, and advancements. Known for his leadership in founding this fascinating field of research, Sorabji (emer., King's College London, UK) brings together 23 essays-some original, some republished, some newly translated-by a host of esteemed scholars and philosophers from across the globe. The resulting volume is physically massive and massively significant for those whose research and teaching interests focus on ancient Aristotelian and Neoplatonist philosophical schools. In addition to the essays, Sorabji provides a lengthy, detailed introduction, which offers a nice survey of the philosophical figures and topics of interest within the field. Classicists, medievalists, and philosophers-really anyone interested in Aristotle, Neoplatonism, or the development of ideas from the classical age to the Middle Ages and Renaissance-will appreciate this scrupulously researched, intellectually breathtaking book. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. This volume is very interesting for many reasons: it provides new findings and fragments on ancient philosophy, it contains essays that deal with poorly studied philosophers and commentaries, and it is a great tool for scholars who want to deepen their understanding of the main themes of ancient philosophy and to know how the works of the greatest ancient philosophers circulated around the world. At the end of the volume readers can also find an extensive bibliography, an Index Locorum, and an index of names and arguments. The volume is an excellent product that makes a considerable contribution to the study of the acceptance of Aristotelian thought through its commentators. (Bloomsbury Translation)