Philoponus: On Aristotle Categories 15 with Philoponus: A Treatise Concerning the Whole and the Parts [Paperback]

Philoponus'On Aristotle Categories 1-5discusses the nature of universals, preserving the views of Philoponus' teacher Ammonius, as well as presenting a Neoplatonist interpretation of Aristotle'sCategories. Philoponus treats universals as concepts in the human mind produced by abstracting a form or nature from the material individual in which it has its being.

The work is important for its own philosophical discussion and for the insight it sheds on its sources. For considerable portions,On Aristotle Categories 1-5resembles the wording of an earlier commentary which declares itself to be an anonymous record taken from the seminars of Ammonius. Unlike much of Philoponus' later writing, this commentary does not disagree with either Aristotle or Ammonius, and suggests the possibility that Philoponus either had access to this earlier record or wrote it himself.

This edition explores these questions of provenance, alongside the context, meaning and implications of Philoponus' work. The English translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. The latest volume in theAncient Commentators on Aristotleseries, the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership.

Philoponus was a Christian writing in Greek in 6th century CE Alexandria, where some students of philosophy were bilingual in Syriac as well as Greek. In this Greek treatise translated from the surviving Syriac version, Philoponus discusses the logic of parts and wholes, and he illustrates the spread of the pagan and Christian philosophy of 6th century CE Greeks to other cultures, in this case to Syria.

Philoponus, an expert on Aristotle's philosophy, had turned to theology and was applying his knowledge of Aristotle to disputes over the human and divine nature of Christ. Were there two natures and were they parts of a whole, as the Emperor