Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Physics 5, translated by J.O. Urmson, notes by Peter Lautner.

The
Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pp.
199. ISBN 0-8014-3407-6.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review [bmr-l@brynmawr.edu], BMCR 98.3.19 Sat, 28 Mar 1998.

Reviewed by Wayne J. Hankey, Department of Classics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.,

Canada

This welcome volume is yet another in the important series, The Ancient Commentators on

numbered). As in all the volumes, Sorabji’s General Introduction is reprinted as an Appendix

Aristotle. Edited by Richard Sorabji, about 30 volumes have now been published (they are not

(pp. 151-60) Uniformly with the series, there are, as well as the translation, here in 110
pages, a short introduction, here in two parts: one by Peter Lautner, who did the notes, and the
other by J.O. Urmson, who translated the text, a list of textual emendations, extensive notes,
(305, in fact, compensating for the shortness of the introduction), an English-Greek glossary, a
Greek-English index, and indices of names and of subjects.

publications from the Cornell University Press: Sorabji’s Time, Creation and the Continuum
Other compensations for the regrettable shortness of the introduction are the affiliated

(1983), his Matter, Space and Motion (1988), and the collections of articles Sorabji has edited:
Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (1987), Aristotle Transformed: The
Lautner’s notes. Also useful on the Aristotelian tradition, and the place of Simplicius in it, is a
Ancient Commentators and Their Influence (1990). These are indispensable for negotiating
new collection of articles edited by Sorabji but published by the Institute of Classical Studies of
the University of London in 1997: Aristotle and After.

Understanding the character and significance of what Simplicius is doing here, especially of
his very consequential modifications of Aristotle, requires consultation with excellent, but
inconvenient, endnotes and with their references to this and other, less accessible, literature.
As a result, In Physics 5 and its mates are volumes for well formed scholars with first class
university libraries at their disposal.

With this volume, we near the completion within this series of the translation of Simplicius’

Time, On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1-2.4, and On Aristotle’s Physics 2, 4, 6, 7; all of which have
enormous commentary on the Physics. It joins, of Simplicius, the Corollaries On Place and

appeared since 1989. They manifest in the English speaking world a renewed scholarly and
philosophical interest in Simplicius which has produced translations, editions, and research by
American, Belgian, English, French, German, and Italian scholars. Their work and projects
were collected in Simplicius sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie, (1987), edited by Ilseraut Hadot.1
Indeed, a contributor to that collection, Leonardo Tarán, promises us a new edition of the
Greek text of the commentary on the Physics as well as another translation of it. Another
contributor, Philippe Hoffmann, is reediting the commentary on the De Caelo.

first place to find this is in Sorabji’s General Introduction which, beyond indicating the
The renewed labor on the commentaries is given justification by those who undertake it. The

influence of the Neoplatonic commentaries, calls them “incomparable guides to Aristotle”(p.

1 Simplicius sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie. Actes du colloque international de Paris (28 Sept.-1er Oct. 1985), édités
par Ilseraut Hadot, Peripatoi 15 (Berlin & London: de Gruyter, 1987).
 2

159). A claim he supports by reference to the “minutely detailed knowledge of the entire
Aristotelian corpus” possessed and conveyed by the commentators. 2

In his article for the French colloque, Tarán maintained that Simplicius’ on the Physics remains
the best commentary on that work “even today” (p. 247). Since her Le Problème du
Néoplatonisme Alexandrin Hiéroclès et Simplicius, (1978), 3 Ilseraut Hadot has defended
Simplicius and the commentators of the Athenian Neoplatonic school from denigrating

wrong in supposing the Alexandrian commentaries to have been more devoted to the “vrai
comparison with the production of the Alexandrines. She demonstrates that Praechter was

sens” of Aristotle in contrast to their own Neoplatonic philosophical projects. In fact, the

required by the essential role Aristotle’s writings played in teaching. The value of the
commentaries of both schools were produced within a tradition initiated by Porphyry and were

the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, but Hadot’s demonstrations elevate Simplicius by
commentary may be diminished by the service given to such Neoplatonic scholastic projects as

diminishing the preeminence given to Alexandrines. In a review in this journal (BMCR

97.9.24), Richard Todd produced good reasons for choosing, as the place to begin among the
older scholarship on Aristotle, the Renaissance commentaries of Jacobus Zabarella or Julius
Pacius, but still he would have these Renaissance humanists bring readers back to Simplicius.
By the Renaissance, his commentaries lost to the Latins until the 13th century were well known
and highly respected.

So none deny the enormous importance of Simplicius’ commentary. Beyond its illumination of
Aristotle, its application and defense of the Neoplatonic interpretative framework is skillful and
creative. Moreover, it is the great treasury for our knowledge of previous Greek physics from
the PreSocratics onward and of the commentaries before his own. Both of these he preserves
by quotation, often at greater length than his argument requires, as if Simplicius, like Boethius,
saw himself preserving a disappearing heritage in a darkening age. Much of In Physics 5, is a
dialogue with Alexander of Aphrodisias and enormous passages of his commentary are
reproduced. They remind us of one of the essential tasks of scholarship only begun which will
be assisted by this translation. Since so much of what we know about the natural philosophy
before Simplicius is dependent on him, we need to deepen our understanding of his thinking in
order to consider how his selection and reproduction shape our knowledge of ancient
philosophy.

His conservative labor was successful; evidently the commentary of Simplicius survived and
carried his past with it. In consequence, another reason for the great importance of this work
is its influence. His understanding of Aristotle constituted an essential element in the thinking

to the Latin west in their treatises and in their own commentaries on Aristotle’s texts, as well as
of the Arabic Neoplatonists and, from the 13th century on, his comments were communicated

through direct translations from the Greek by Latins like William of Moerbeke. Thus he
reached the scholastics of the medieval west.4 The conscientious continuation by Simplicius of

2 R. Sorabji, “The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle,” in R. Sorabji, ed., Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient
Commentators and Their Influence, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990), 15. The list of CAG texts
is reproduced here, pp. 27-29.
3 Ilseraut Hadot, Le Problème du Néoplatonisme Alexandrin Hiéroclès et Simplicius, (Paris: Études
augustiniennes: 1978).
4 See R. Sorabji, Matter, Space and Motion. Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press, 1988), 249-85; Fernand Bossier, “Traductions latines et influences du Commentaire In de Caelo
 3

the great Neoplatonic enterprise of reconciling Plato and Aristotle helped determine the Latin
understanding of Aristotle. Moreover, ideas of his own, developed in that context, became
fruitful again as the Aristotelian physics was transformed in the construction of modern
natural philosophies.5

Simplicius was with Damascius and the other pagan philosophers who headed east after
Justinian closed the Academy in Athens. He probably composed this, and his other Aristotelian
commentaries, in the remote city of Harrân (Carrhae). Whatever the activity of the

contemporaries, like Philoponus the Christian, Simplicius’ commentaries no longer show

philosophers gathered there, in distinction from his predecessors, like Themistius, or

characteristics which mark them as having been developed as lectures. Evidence points to
composition after 538, and Peter Lautner shows that at least part of the commentary on the
Physics was written before the commentary on the Categories.6

with Sorabji, we will call this project “perfectly crazy” (p. 156), we will agree it stimulates
Simplicius assiduously carries forward the reconciliation of Aristotle with Plato. Whether,

Simplicius to his greatest creativity. Here the philosophic commentator is moved by his
religion. Since Porphyry, and fervently with Iamblichus, Proclus, and their successors, piety in
respect to the old gods demanded that the unity of that by which they revealed themselves and
their cosmos be exhibited. Further, defending the Hellenic spiritual tradition against its critics
and effectively marshaling its forces against the Christian enemy required this unification.
Like the philosophical Christians and the Jews, those who held fast to Hellenic religion had also
to show that what was revealed to the ancients, barbarian and Greek, could be harmonized
with philosophy. The Platonic tradition which effected this must itself be made consistent.7

as ‘transformation’, and kinêsis, here translated as ‘change’ or ‘motion’, the greatest problem
Within book five of the Physics, concerned as it is with the relation of metabolê, here translated

for Simplicius’ pious reconciling work is that Aristotle subordinates kinêsis to metabolê as
species to genus.

proposes that the difference is “merely verbal” (p.29: 821,22; p.30: 822,29). In fact, the
In the Laws, Plato does the opposite, making transformation a species of change. Simplicius

reconciliation requires that change be elevated into intellect where Aristotle refuses to allow it.

“intellect changes by a change that is without transformation and timeless” (p.31: 824,2-3).
There kinêsis becomes Neoplatonic spiritual proödos (p.29: 821,26; p.32: 824,14ff.). So

This is the motionless motion the character and place of which in Proclus Stephen Gersh

en Occident (XIIIe-XIVe s.),” Simplicius sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie, 289-325; and Barbara Obrist’s review of
David Furley (trans), Place Void, and Eternity, BMCR 03.06.06.
5 See, for example, R. Sorabji, “Simplicius: Prime Matter as extension,” Simplicius sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie,
148-65.
6 See R. Sorabji and I. Hadot in Sorabji ed., Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and their influence,
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990), 18 and 278ff. and Lautner’s introduction to the in Physics 5,
4.
7 See Philippe Hoffmann, “Simplicius’ Polemics,” R. Sorabji, (ed.) Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian
Science, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987), 57-8; Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: the

Saffrey, “Les débuts de la théologie comme science (IIIe-VIe),” Rev. sc. phil. theo., 80, # 2 (Avril, 1996), 213ff.,
Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 1996), 1ff.; H.-D.

translation by W.J. Hankey, “Theology as science (3rd-6th centuries),” Studia Patristica, vol. XXIX, edited by
Elizabeth A. Livingstone, (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 332ff.
 4

described. Subsequently, Gersh gave us some indications of its later history.8 This “different
kind of motion”, the “act of the perfect”, Aquinas learns about from the Arab Neoplatonists.

him to work out how intellectual life can be ascribed to God. Aristotle’s intellectual activity,
Thomas employs it when he follows Averroes in a conciliation of Plato and Aristotle enabling

which, in De Anima III,7 (431a6) is different from motion, has become a different kind of
motion, the comparative genitive is now partitive.9 Hans-Georg Gadamer has indicated how

and becoming and of intellect and being, so “Plotinus’ concept of the soul ... has completely
intellect understood in this Neoplatonic way enables the unification simultaneously of being

transformed the concept of being into the concept of a self-related power, a dynamis which

ontological questions. He stands at the threshold of a new age.”10

thinks itself. With this he has for the first time given priority to reflection in the field of

Yet this is not all that those attentive to how the Neoplatonists were “doing philosophy .. by
writing commentaries” (Sorabji, p.151) will discover of importance in this volume. There are
also a distinction between active and passive transformations (note 9 and p.30: 822,18-22), a

cosmos (note 11 and pp.50-1: 846,3ff.), an assimilation of Aristotle’s prime matter to

defence of infinite regress so as to avoid the Christian notion of a temporal beginning of the

extension, reconsiderations of the relation of quality and quantity (p.66: 864,15ff.) and of the
mathematical as abstraction (p.80: 880,1ff.). Simplicius is one of those who build the world on
the other side of the Plotinian threshold.

Simplicius helps work through completely what the Neoplatonic reconciliations and
unifications require. He assists with its momentous move from substance to subjectivity. For
what it furthers and transmits in this greatest of western transformations his commentary is
philosophically important. Those who have made it more accessible are to be thanked.

March 3, 1998

8 See Stephen Gersh, KINESIS AKINATOS: A Study of Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of Proclus, (Leiden: Brill,
1973); idem, From Iamblichus to Eriugena. An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-
Dionysian Tradition, Studien zur Problemgeschichte der Antiken und Mittelalterlichen Philosophie VIII (Leiden:
Brill, 1978), 67ff., 243ff.
9 See W.J. Hankey, God in Himself, Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae , Oxford
Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 103-5.
10 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Plato’s Parmenides and its Influence,” Dionysius 7 (1983), 16.