Carlos Steel - Böcker

The volumes of the 'Symposium Aristotelicum' have become the obligatory reference works for all studies on Aristotle. In this eighteenth volume a distinguished group of scholars offers a chapter-by-chapter study of the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Aristotle presents here his philosophical project as a search for wisdom, which is found in the knowledge of the first principles allowing us to explain whatever exists. As he shows, the earlier philosophers had been seeking such a wisdom, though they had divergent views on what these first principles were. Before Aristotle sets out his own views, he offers a critical examination of his predecessors' views, ending up with a lengthy discussion of Plato's doctrine of the Forms. Book Alpha is not just a fundamental text for reconstructing the early history of Greek philosophy; it sets the agenda for Aristotle's own project of wisdom after what he had learned from his predecessors. The volume comprises eleven chapters, each dealing with a different section of the text, and a new edition of the Greek text of Metaphysics Alpha by Oliver Primavesi, based on an exhaustive examination of the complex manuscript and indirect tradition. The introduction to the edition offers new insights into the question which has haunted editors of the Metaphysics since Bekker, namely the relation between the two divergent traditions of the text.

The Commentary on Plato's Parmenides by Proclus (AD 412-85) is the most important extant document on the interpretation of this enigmatic dialogue, and has had a crucial influence on all subsequent readings. In Proclus' Commentary, the Parmenides provides the argumentative and conceptual framework for a scientific theology wherein all mythological discourse about the gods can be integrated. Its exposition was therefore the culmination of the curriculum of the Platonic school. This theological reading of the Parmenides persisted, through the medium of Ficino, until the nineteenth century. Previously this important text was only accessible in the edition of V. Cousin (Paris, 1864). This new critical edition is based on an exhaustive study of both the Greek tradition and the medieval Latin translation. This volume contains Books IV and V.

The Commentary on Plato's Parmenides by Proclus (AD 412-85) is the most important extant document on the interpretation of this enigmatic dialogue, and has had a crucial influence on all subsequent readings. In Proclus' Commentary, the Parmenides provides the argumentative and conceptual framework for a scientific theology wherein all mythological discourse about the gods can be integrated. Its exposition was therefore the culmination of the curriculum of the Platonic school. This theological reading of the Parmenides persisted, through the medium of Ficino, until the nineteenth century. Previously this important text was only accessible in the edition of V. Cousin (Paris, 1864). This new critical edition is based on an exhaustive study of both the Greek tradition and the medieval Latin translation. This volume, the third and final one, contains Books VI and VII, and a complete set of indexes.

The volumes of the 'Symposium Aristotelicum' have become obligatory reference works for Aristotle studies. In this eighteenth volume a distinguished group of scholars offers a chapter-by-chapter study of the first book of the Metaphysics. Aristotle presents here his philosophical project as a search for wisdom, which is found in the knowledge of the first principles allowing us to explain whatever exists. As he shows, earlier philosophers had been seeking such a wisdom, though they had divergent views on what these first principles were. Before Aristotle sets out his own views, he offers a critical examination of his predecessors' views, ending up with a lengthy discussion of Plato's doctrine of Forms. Book Alpha is not just a fundamental text for reconstructing the early history of Greek philosophy; it sets the agenda for Aristotle's own project of wisdom on the basis of what he had learned from his predecessors. The volume comprises eleven chapters, each dealing with a different section of the text, and a new edition of the Greek text of Metaphysics Alpha by Oliver Primavesi, based on an exhaustive examination of the complex manuscript and indirect tradition. The introduction to the edition offers new insights into the question which has haunted editors of the Metaphysics since Bekker, namely the relation between the two divergent traditions of the text.

Proclus' "On the Existence of Evils" is not a commentary, but helps to compensate for the dearth of Neoplatonist ethical commentaries. The central question addressed in the work is: how can there be evil in a providential world? Neoplatonists agree that it cannot be caused by higher and worthier beings. Plotinus had said that evil is matter, which, unlike Aristotle, he collapsed into mere privation or lack, thus reducing its reality. He also protected higher causes from responsibility by saying that evil may result from a combination of goods. Proclus objects: evil is real, and not a privation. Rather, it is a parasite feeding off good. Parasites have no proper cause, and higher beings are thus vindicated as being the causes only of the good off which evil feeds.

In this treatise Proclus discusses ten problems on providence and fate, foreknowledge of the future, human responsibility, evil and punishment (or seemingly absence of punishment), social and individual responsibility for evil, and the unequal fate of different animals. These problems, he admits, had been discussed a thousand times in and outside philosophical schools. Yet, as he put it: we too have to discuss them, not because we imagine that the philosophers before us have said anything valuable, but because our soul desires 'to speak and hear about these problems and wants to turn to itself and to discuss as it were with itself and is not willing to take arguments about these issues only from authorities outside'. Proclus exhorts his readers: we are to use his treatise as an opportunity to investigate these problems for ourselves 'in the secret recess of our soul' and 'exercise ourselves in the solutions of problems'. In fact, it makes no difference whether what we discuss has been said before by philosophers, so long as we express what corresponds to our own views. This exhortation may be the best presentation of the translation of this wonderful treatise from late antiquity.

Proclus' On the Existence of Evils is not a commentary, but helps to compensate for the dearth of Neoplatonist ethical commentaries. The central question addressed in the work is: how can there be evil in a providential world? Neoplatonists agree that it cannot be caused by higher and worthier beings. Plotinus had said that evil is matter, which, unlike Aristotle, he collapsed into mere privation or lack, thus reducing its reality. He also protected higher causes from responsibility by saying that evil may result from a combination of goods. Proclus objects: evil is real, and not a privation. Rather, it is a parasite feeding off good. Parasites have no proper cause, and higher beings are thus vindicated as being the causes only of the good off which evil feeds.

‘The universe is, as it were, one machine, wherein the celestial spheres are analogous to the interlocking wheels and the particular beings are like the things moved by the wheels, and all events are determined by an inescapable necessity. To speak of free choice or self determination is only an illusion we human beings cherish.’ Thus writes Theodore the engineer to his old friend Proclus, one of the last major Classical philosophers. Proclus’ reply is one of the most remarkable discussions on fate, providence and free choice in Late Antiquity. It continues a long debate that had started with the first polemics of the Platonists against the Stoic doctrine of determinism. How can there be a place for free choice and moral responsibility in a world governed by an unalterable fate? Proclus discusses ten problems on providence and fate, foreknowledge of the future, human responsibility, evil and punishment (or seemingly absence of punishment), social and individual responsibility for evil, and the unequal fate of different animals. Until now, despite its great interest, Proclus’ treatise has not received the attention it deserves, probably because its text is not very accessible to the modern reader. It has survived only in a Latin medieval translation and in some extensive Byzantine Greek extracts. This first English translation, based on a retro-conversion that works out what the original Greek must have been, brings the arguments he formulates again to the fore.

This is the fourth and last volume of the translation in this series of the commentary on Aristotle On the Soul, wrongly attributed to Simplicius. Its real author, most probably Priscian of Lydia, proves in this work to be an original philosopher who deserves to be studied, not only because of his detailed explanation of an often difficult Aristotelian text, but also because of his own psychological doctrines. In chapter six the author discusses the objects of the intellect. In chapters seven to eight he sees Aristotle as moving towards practical intellect, thus preparing the way for discussing what initiates movement in chapters nine to 11. His interpretation offers a brilliant investigation of practical reasoning and of the interaction between desire and cognition from the level of perception to the intellect. In the commentator's view, Aristotle in the last chapters (12-13) investigates the different type of organic bodies corresponding to the different forms of life (vegetative and sensory, from the most basic, touch, to the most complex).

This is the fourth and last volume of the translation in this series of the commentary on Aristotle On the Soul, wrongly attributed to Simplicius. Its real author, most probably Priscian of Lydia, proves in this work to be an original philosopher who deserves to be studied, not only because of his detailed explanation of an often difficult Aristotelian text, but also because of his own psychological doctrines. In chapter six the author discusses the objects of the intellect. In chapters seven to eight he sees Aristotle as moving towards practical intellect, thus preparing the way for discussing what initiates movement in chapters nine to 11. His interpretation offers a brilliant investigation of practical reasoning and of the interaction between desire and cognition from the level of perception to the intellect. In the commentator's view, Aristotle in the last chapters (12-13) investigates the different type of organic bodies corresponding to the different forms of life (vegetative and sensory, from the most basic, touch, to the most complex).

In his Platonic Theology, Proclus offers a systematic exposition of the theology of Plato. Integrating within the 'scienti-fic' framework of the Parmenides all the theological doctrines which are scattered throughout the Plato's dialogues, Proclus develops the Platonic doctrines on the One, the gods and the hierarchical procession of reality.The present volume, which celebrates the completion of the critical edition of Proclus' Platonic Theology by H.-D. Saffrey and L.G. Westerink (+), contains thirty-one contributions by leading scholars in the field of Neoplatonic studies. They present their views on the organisation and principles of Proclus' theology, on the hermeneutics of Platonic dialogues, on the antecedents of this theological synthesis, and on its posterity, from Proclus' immediate successors through the Byzantine, Arabic and Latin Middle Ages.This monumental volume, which is the result of three decades of dedicated scholarly research on the philosophy of Proclus, will stand for many years as an indispensable guide for all those interested in Neoplatonic studies.

In the history of medieval philosophy and theology, Henry of Ghent († 1293) occupies a prominent place. On the one hand, he is a critical reader of Thomas Aquinas, whose Aristotelianism he attempts to adjust by means of his so-called Augustinian Avicennianism; on the other hand, Henry can be considered a precursor of fourteenth-century thinkers, such as Duns Scotus and Ockham. The papers collected in the volume Henry of Ghent and the Transformation of Scholastic Thought throw light on the particular renewal of the theological and philosophical tradition which Henry brought about and elucidate various aspects of his metaphysics and epistemology (e.g., truth, divine ideas, relation, certitude and wisdom), ethics (e.g., prudence, freedom, the role of the clergy), and theology (e.g., Trinity, creation, absolute and ordained power). The volume is completed with a comprehensive bibliography on Henry.

The particular focus of this volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance. In each period, the Timaeus was read in a different context and from different perspectives. During the Middle Ages, scholars were mostly interested in reconciling the rational cosmology of the Timaeus with the Christian understanding of creation. In Late Antiquity, the concordance of Plato with Aristotle was considered the most important issue, whereas in early modern times, the confrontation with the new mathematical physics offered possibilities for a fresh assessment of Plato's explanation of the cosmos. The present volume has three sections corresponding to these three periods of interpreting the Timaeus, each sectionis introduced by a synthesis of the main issues at discussion. This 'epochal' approach gives this volume its particular character.

Interdisciplinary study of pagan culture from late antiquity to the emergent Renaissance In this volume the persistence, resurgence, threat, fascination, and repression of various forms of pagan culture are studied in an interdisciplinary perspective from late antiquity to the emergent Renaissance. Contributions deal with the survival of pagan beliefs and practices, as well as with the Christianization of pagan rural populations or with the different strategies of oppression of pagan beliefs. The authors examine problems raised by the encounter with pagan cultures outside the Muslim world and show how philosophers contrived to ‘save' the great philosophers and poets from ancient culture notwithstanding their paganism. The contributors also study the fascination of classic ‘pagan' culture among friars during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the imitation of pagan models of virtue and mythology in Renaissance poetry. Contributors Carlos Steel (University of Leuven), John Marenbon (Trinity College, Cambridge), Ludo Milis (University of Ghent), Marc-André Wagner † (Paris, Ministère de la Culture), Brigitte Meijns (University of Leuven), Rob Meens (University of Utrecht), Edina Bozoky (Université de Poitiers), Henryk Anzulewicz (Albertus-Magnus Institut, Bonn), Robrecht Lievens (University of Leuven), Stefano Pittaluga (Università di Genova), Anna Akasoy (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

First ever edition of the Latin translation of Ptolemy’s masterwork. This is the first edition ever of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of Ptolemy’s celebrated astrological handbook, known under the title Tetrabiblos or Quadripartitum (opus). Ptolemy’s treatise (composed after 141 AD) offers a systematic overview of astrological science and had, together with his Almagest, an enormous influence up until the 17th century. In the Latin Middle Ages the work was mostly known through translations from the Arabic. William of Moerbeke’s translation was made directly from the Greek and it is a major scholarly achievement manifesting not only Moerbeke’s genius as a translator, but also as a scientist. The edition is accompanied by extensive Greek-Latin indices, which give evidence of Moerbeke’s astonishing enrichment of the Latin vocabulary, which he needed both to translate the technical scientific vocabulary and to cope with the many new terms Ptolemy created. The introduction examines Moerbeke’s translation method and situates the Latin translation within the tradition of the Greek text. This edition makes possible a better assessment of the great medieval translator and also contributes to a better understanding of the Greek text of Ptolemy’s masterwork.

In the month of June, 1995, the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies held its ninth International Colloquium at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve. The Colloquium was devoted to Eriugena's hermeneutics and his interpretation of the Bible.The feature of Biblical hermeneutics is of main interest for a thinker like Eriugena. For him the source and the end of all truth is the understanding of Sacred Scripture. To unravel this inconcussa auctoritas diuinae Scripturae all hermeneutical skills have to be brought into play, in order to give rise to a true spiritual understanding of the Bible.This volume contains the contributions presented at the Colloquium, which shed light on numerous aspects of Eriugena's hermeneutics of Scripture. Without imposing too rigid a classification, the contributions to this book can be listed under four headings. The first two studies present large-scale tableaux, establishing the context within which Eriugena undertook his biblical studies. In a second group of articles, attention is paid more directly to the specifically Eriugenian method of understanding Sacred Scripture. The theoretical aspects of Eriugena's exegesis, as established in the second part, are adapted in the third, in which Eriugena's interpretation of particular Biblical texts is investigated. The fourth and last heading, then, would contain studies in the range and method of Eriugena's exegesis, with particular attention to manuscript sources, and to new texts to be included into the opera of John Scottus.A bibliographical survey is added to the volume. It is intended to complement the work of M. BRENNAN, A Guide to Eriugenian Studies. A Survey of Publications 1930-1987 / Guide des études érigéniennes. Bibliographie commentée des publications 1930-1987 (Vestigia, 5), Fribourg (Éditions Universitaires)/Paris (Éditions du Cerf), 1989. Given the ever-increasing interest in the study of Eriugena and the corresponding growth in the number of publications dedicated to Eriugena's life, work, and influence, the editors believed it would be beneficial to provide a bibliographical survey for the period from 1987 onwards. The large number of references from this relatively brief period can be considered as amply justifying this enterprise.