A “NEW” TEXT OF ALEXANDER ON THE SOUL’S MOTION(*

MARWAN RASHED

Animula blandula, vagula . . . INTRODUCTION If, neglecting for a while the literary achievement of Hadrian’s most famous poem, some scrupulous scholar of the second century AD had turned to examine it from an Aristotelian point of view, he would probably have come, at the end of a somewhat heavy-handed analysis, to the conclusion that its third and fourth verses were dangerously misleading. For, on the verge of dying, Hadrian unequivocally claims to foresee the impending translocation of his soul

in loca I pallidula, rigida, nudula.

But in doing so, and despite his well-known and commendable interest in Greek philosophy, the Emperor contradicted an important passage of the Physics (vi, 4, 234b 10-20), where it was proved that something without parts could not be changing, nor a

fortiori moving. We leave out of consideration Alexander of Aphrodisias’ degree of acquaintance with

Hellenistic poetry. What we do know, however, is that he wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, now lost, and when commenting on the problematic passage, he actually denied local motion to the soul on the grounds that it was not composed of parts: fresh textual evidence allows us to grasp a digression in Simplicius which, in its actual form, could hardly be, and, as a matter of fact, never was, properly understood. Two manuscripts, both housed in Paris, have in effect transmitted fragments deriving directly from this lost commentary on the Physics (books iv-viii).’ One of them, however, the Parisinus gr. 1859, contains only a very small number of fragments and presents nothing original with regard to the other. By far the most important is thus the Parisinus suppl. gr. 643, from which comes the passage of Alexander’s commentary on Physics vi, 4 which I shall shortly try to examine.

*I would like to thank Professor Richard Sorabji who invited me to present this research at the Institute of Classical Studies and to whom this paper owes many decisive improvements. I am also grateful to others present, in particular Professor R. W. Sharples, for their remarks and criticisms.

See M. Rashed, ‘Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la “Magna Quaestio:. RBle et independance des scholies dans la tradition byzantine du corpus aristotelicien’, Les Efudes classiques 63 (1995) 295-351 and D. Harlfinger and M. Rashed, ‘Survie byzantine du commentaire d’ Alexandre d’Aphrodise B la Physique d’Aristote. Vers me edition des scholies du Paris. sup. gr. 643 et du Paris. gr. 1859’, forthcoming in Philologus (1997). I am preparing an edition with commentary of the preserved fragments.

ARISTOTLE AND AFTER 181

182 ARISTOTLE AND AFTER

As in the three previous chapters of book vi, Aristotle is primarily concerned with an anonymous atomistic theory.* After criticising its views on place and time, Aristotle comes to examine its conception of motion. I shall be concerned only with the first short paragraph3 of the fourth chapter, where Aristotle proves that every changing thing is necessarily divisible and, consequently, that an atom cannot be changing - pace an anonymous Atomist. Since it is this passage that all further discussion takes as its starting point, it deserves to be quoted at length:

Aristotle, Physics VI, 234b 10-20

Every changing thing must be divisible. For since every change occurs from something to something and since when it is in that to which it was to change, it is no longer changing and when it is in that from which it had to change, both itself and all its parts, it is not yet changing (for what remains identical, itself and all its parts, is not changing), it is necessary then that one part of the changing thing should be in one of them, and the other in the other. For it cannot be either in both or in neither. I mean by ‘that to which it is changing’ the first in the change: for example, from white, grey, not black. For it is not necessary for the changing thing to be in one or other of the extremes.

A. Alexander’s digression in the light of the rediscovered fragment

These ten Bekker lines aroused an interesting discussion, which, as we shall shortly see, began probably before Alexander. Elsewhere I hope to show how Alexander’s application to the soul of Aristotle’s principles of bodily motion was taken up by Hellenistic and Byzantine Neoplatonism. The purely physical theory was always considered, even by convinced Platonists, to be satisfactory and one of the most important theorems of physical science. We know for example that Proclus repeats Aristotle’s demonstration without criticism4 in his Elementatio physica (Stoicheidsis Physiki?):

* See now D. Bostock, ‘Aristotle on Continuity in Physics VI’, in L. Judson (ed.), Aristotle’s Physics, A Collection of Essays (Oxford 1991) 179-212, in particular p. 21 1 .

Physics, 234b 10-20. See H. Boese (ed.), Procli Diadochi Elementatio Physica (Berlin 1958) 40-41.

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW’ TEXT OF ALEXANDER 183

Proclus Elementatio Physica, Prop. 19

Let something be moving from A to B. Therefore, it is either only in A, or only in B, or in both, or in neither, or one of its parts is in A and the other in B. But if it is only in A, it is not yet moving; if it is only in B, it is no longer moving; if it is in both, it is both not yet and no longer moving; if it is in neither, motion will not be from A to B nor between the two. Therefore, it is necessary that one of its parts should be in A, and the other in B. Therefore, the moving thing is divisible.

It would have been somewhat perilous for any Neoplatonist to criticise this bad demonstration5 since we find it nearly identically expressed in a passage of Plato’s Parmenides (138D-E) of which Proclus, as well as every member of the Athenian school, was undoubtedly perfectly aware.6 Simplicius, who may to some extent be considered a late successor of Proclus, comments upon the passage incorporated in Proclus’ Elementatio and after agreeing with the main physical idea of the text (‘something without parts cannot be moving’), makes a very interesting digression, where he angrily recalls what he holds to be Alexander’s interpretation. On the next two pages for comparison I shall edit and translate in a parallel column on the right the scholium of the Parisinus which has preserved traces of Alexander’s commentary.

See Bostock, ‘Aristotle on Continuity’, 204. 6 ‘But since it changes its place, (the One) comes-to-be at different times at different places, and

thus is moving? - If it changes its place, it is necessary. - But to be in something, that appeared to be impossible for it? - Yes. - Is it not more impossible for it to come-to-be? - I don’t understand why. - If something comes-to-be in something, is it not necessary that the former should be neither yet in the latter if it is still in a process of coming-to-be, nor still absolutely out of it, if the process of coming-to-be has already begun? - It is necessary. - And therefore whatever comes-to-be in another must have parts, and then one part may be already inside, whilst another is still outside; but that which has no parts can never be at one and the same time neither wholly within nor wholly without anything. - True.’ On this passage, see D. Bostock, ‘Plato on Change and Time in the Parmenides’, Phronesis 23 (1978), 229-242.

I84 ARISTOTLE AND AFTER

Parisinus suppl. gr. 643, lOlr

Ath zoOzo h k a t 6 hdy05 b Tilv d v q a v &vatphv 6th zb Elvat zb mvozipEvov 4 Ev zQ 6 fi dv zQ $6 06. K a i kozt Ev 066~~zE)pcp. q p ~ p ~ i yap zdze ~ a i O ~ K Eozat mvo6pEvov.

k6Eix6q yhp 8 n dv 06S~zE)pcp tihov dozi.

ante 4 p ~ p ~ i lacunam quamdam suspicor (Ev TE yhp zp $5 06 Bv oiixo mv~iza t , K a i dv zp E i S 6 Bv o6&n mvEiza1). n a6qj Eixqpa: locus fenestratus in cod., e Simp. supplevi

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW’ TEXT OF ALEXANDER 185

Simplicius, I n Phys. (Diels 964,9-23,965,21-30)

With this argument one can resolve the proof which suppresses motion on the ground that the moving thing is either in that from which motion occurs or in that to which it occurs although neither is possible. When it is in that from which, it is not yet moving, and when it is in that to which, it is no longer moving, but it is stationary. For it has been proved that it is in neither as a whole, but one of its parts is in the first and the other in the second. In these lines, Alexander tries to draw everything towards‘ his own theory of the soul, namely that the soul cannot become separated from the body. He says that from what has been established so far, this point is clear, if (1) soul is incorporeal and without parts, (2) what is without parts does not move (since one part of the moving thing is necessarily in that from which motion occurs and the other in that to which it occurs) and (3) what does not move cannot be separated. He says: ‘some people, in order to avoid this absurdity, attach a body as a vehicle to the soul; but they do not notice that inasmuch as they do that, either they say that body can go through body, if the soul is distributed thoughout the whole body and is itself with body, or they separate the soul from this body too and make it move on its own in its distribution into bodies’. [...I But against the other argument, the one based on the vehicle, we must say (phamen) that we don’t attach this vehicle to the soul in order for it to be separated from the body. For when the soul is in the body, it is separate from it by virtue of body’s own substance. For if soul has some activities separate from body, it has a fortiori its substance separate, as Aristotle sets out in the De anima. But the soul is not described as being in this body in a spatial sense, as in a vessel, but by way of a relation. Therefore, it does not need another body with a spatial movement in order to become separate from the first. For body’s unsuitability to receive the soul’s irradiation is sufficient. That is the way the soul becomes separated.

Parisinus suppl. gr. 643, lOlr

By this means is resolved the proof which suppresses motion on the ground that the moving thing is either in that to which or in that from which, and that it is in neither because it is at rest at those times and will not be moving.

For it was proved that it is in neither as a whole.

It is clear from the present points that it is not possible for soul to be separated from body, if it is incorporeal and without parts, at any rate if separation is due to motion.

Wishing (boulomenoi) to avoid this absurdity they attach a body (as a vehicle to it); but they do not notice that inasmuch as they do that, either they say that body can go through body, if the soul is distributed throughout the whole body and is itself with body, or they separate the soul from this body too and make it move on its own in its distribution into bodies.

186 ARISTOTLE AND AFTER

The passage of Simplicius sounds quite strange, for it takes Alexander to hold an absurdity which he is very unlikely to have pronounced, even in a polemical context. For Alexander of course knew that the soul is not in a body ‘as in a vessel’. According to Simplicius’ quotation however, Alexander would be trying to make two points here: that (i) the soul cannot become separated from the body7 and (ii) the ochErna-solution, although desperate, makes things no better.* Finally, and amusingly enough, Simplicius reacts as if Alexander had attacked his own theory: pharnen. It is in fact perfectly clear that throughout this whole passage, Simplicius defends the late Neoplatonic soul-vehicle theory, which could of course scarcely be that criticised by Alexander in his commentary, even if it has some obvious relations with it.9 We must confess that in offering a defence, Simplicius is not entirely honest. For if we turn to Alexander on the right, we note some important discrepancies, which allow us to understand the strategy used by Simplicius and what may actually be called his ‘art of misquotation’.1°

First (and we should always bear this fact in mind when dealing with Simplicius’ quotations of Alexander), the two occurrences of ‘he says’ (qqdv) do not necessarily introduce Alexander’s very words, but mean only that we are in a general quotation context. The scholium reveals, and it will be our first point, that the quotation of Alexander begins much earlier than usually believed.

Secondly, and more importantly, Simplicius makes Alexander say what the latter in fact precisely denies: from Alexander’s sentence, Simplicius has removed only six words, but they are nonetheless crucial: ei g e to charizesthai dia kingseas (if at any rate separation occurs through motion). Once these words have been reintroduced into the argument, what Alexander means runs as follows: ‘if you, Platonist or whoever else, hold that the soul’s separation occurs through motion, you might be compelled to say that the soul has parts and is divisible; but this is absurd’. What we have, far from being a criticism against “separationists” by means of a premise (‘separation occurs through motion’) originating in Alexander’s own conceptions of separation - which is what Simplicius’ ‘quotation’ implies - is rather an argument against a kind of ‘popular separationism’ which actually holds that separation occurs through motion.

AchGriston einai tou sdmatos te n psych&, which is, according to Simplicius, Alexander’s ‘own theory of the soul’:

We may remark in passing that we have here one of the first testimonies of the ‘constituted stage’ of this important theory (cf. E. R. Dodds, Proclus, The Elements ofTheology, Oxford 1933, 313-321, pp. 316-317 in particular, who mentions also Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, p. 643 f. Muller). The identification of Alexander’s opponent (on this, see below, p. 189) may thus be of some interest.

On this theory, see H. J. Blumenthal, ‘Soul vehicles in Simplicius’, in S. Gersh and C. Kannengiesser (eds.), Platonism in Late Antiquity (Indiana 1992) 173-188 (repr. in H. J. Blumenthal, Soul and Intellect, Studies in Plotinus and Later Neoplatonism, 1993, study XVII).

lo On this point in general, see J. Whittaker, ‘The Value of Indirect Tradition in the Establishment of Greek Philosophical Texts or the Art of Misquotation’, Editing Greek and Latin Texts (New York 1989) 63-95. For some clear examples in Simplicius’ commentary on the Physics, see M. Rashed, ‘Alexandre d’ Aphrodise et la “Magna Quaestio”, p. 338ff.

l 1 Namely at 964,9 (which corresponds to Simplicius’ sentence ‘EK & Z O ~ Z O V ZOO d r n ~ ~ ~ p ~ p x z o ~ ...’, although quotation marks are put by Diels only at 964,19. It is clear, despite minor corruptions in the manuscript, that all this passage of Simplicius comes in fact directly from Alexander’s commentary. I think it has been sufficiently shown elsewhere (cf. in particular Harlfinger and Rashed ‘Survie byzantine’ (forthcoming) and my ‘Alexandre et la “Magna Quaestio”’, p. 332ff.) that on both philological and doctrinal grounds, the scholia found in the Parisinus cannot be an adaptation from Simplician material.

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW’ TEXT OF ALEXANDER 187

B. The evidence of the De intellectu

That is the reason why Simplicius’ criticisms, at the end of our quotation (965.21-30), are so unfair. All the more, since we find them, ?i propos the intellect this time, in a part of the collection called by its editor Mantissa, namely the De intellectu, a work either of Alexander himself or of a member of his school:12

[Alexander] De Zntellectu (= De anima libri mantissa, 113.18-24)

What comes to be in something by a process of being thought does not change place. Even the forms of perceivable objects, when we perceive them, come to be in our sense organ not as if that was a place for them. But the intellect from without is said to be separate and is separated from us, not by, as it were, going away somewhere and changing place, but while separate in the sense that it is independent and not accompanied by matter, it is separated from us by not being thought, not by going away elsewhere [ ~ w p t c d y ~ v o ~ 6~ fipbv zQ pfi vo~Tio6at, 04 zQ yez6p~~o6a t l . For that is how it came to be in us too.

The author of these lines unequivocally adheres to the view that the intellect’s separation, far from consisting in a local motion, is rather to be understood as the cessation of the act of intellection. It would thus be very unlikely that Alexander, if he has anything to do with the author of this text, could have ever thought to make use of the argument attributed to him by Simplicius.

If we are to examine more precisely the problem of the De intellectu, we must first take note of its structure. For this I follow R. W. Sharples:’3 ‘The De intellectu falls into three parts. In the first (A, 106.19-1 10.3) the author expounds his theory of intellect in propria persona. In the second (B, 110.4-112.5) he gives an account of the explanation that he heard from Aristoteles of Mytilene of the motives that led Aristotle (i.e. the Stagirite) to introduce the doctrine of v o 6 ~ 6 d p a 6 ~ v [intellect from without]. This is followed by an account of one, pantheistic, attempt to answer the objection that, if intellect comes “from outside”, it must move spatially though immaterial (Cl, 112.5-1 13.12) and the author’s objections to this and advancing of his own alternative solution (C2, 113.12-24).’ The pantheism of C1 is expressed as follows:

[Alexander] De intellectu (= De anima libri mantissa 112.31-113.2)

It is not that it is somewhere else and moves; rather, by being everywhere it stays out, even in the body which is being dissolved by the process of separation. What is then being destroyed is its instrument, just as the craftsman is active even after throwing away his instruments, though his activity is not material nor based on instruments.

I quote from Schroeder’s translation; see F. M. Schroeder and R. B. Todd, Two Greek

See R. W. Sharples’ survey in ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and Innovation’, Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect (Toronto 1990) 58.

ANRWII, 36,l (Berlin 1987) 1176-1243, p. 1211ff.

188 ARISTOTLE AND AFTER

Let us now remark a simple fact: from the beginning up to 112.5, the De intellectu is possibly not a work of Alexander himself. At 112.5, which I shall now quote, it was often taken for granted that there was a break in the text, and that with boulomenos (wishing), which has no direct subject, might begin a new unity, whose protagonist was probably named in an earlier and more complete version of the text:14.

[Alexander] De intellectu (= De anima libri mantissa 112.5-9)

Wishing (boulomenos) to show that the intellect was immortal and to escape the problems that they raise for the intellect from without, viz. that it must change place and cannot, if it is indeed incorporeal, either be in place or change place and be in different places at different times, according to his own reflection, he said the following concerning the intellect that is said to exist in the whole of the mortal body. l 5

The question, however, remained open, whether the lacuna occurred after this last part was joined to the first part of the actual text, or whether the section of text we have was as such incorporated as it stands. More importantly: it has never really been decided whether this last part of the De intellectu was written by Alexander himself or by a member of his school. Some similarities between the scholium found in the Parisinus and this last development may thus provide new concrete evidence which could help us to find a solution to this difficult problem.

Let us once more compare our parallel columns. Simplicius’ ‘he says: “some people ...”’, with the text of Alexander found in the manuscript. Without the latter as intermediary, it would have been quite difficult to make any lexical connection between Simplicius’ text and our third text, the De intellectu. We note immediately how interesting the discrepancies are between the two parallel passages. For (i) the true beginning of the text occurs, as already noticed, a little earlier and (ii), more significantly, we notice two differences of formulation: Simplicius has omitted the boulomenoi (wishing) attested by the scholium and added the tines (some people). The true text of Alexander is thus far closer to De intellectu than is its adaptation by the hand of Simplicius. One could even say that Simplicius has removed, in all likelihood unconsciously, the only two lexical elements of parallelism which made [Alexanderl’s two texts so strikingly similar.

The explanation of Simplicius’ method of citing is easy to grasp. Simplicius probably felt the very same difficulties when facing Alexander’s commentary on the Physics as those endured by modern scholars when they had to comment on the De intellectu. That is surely the reason why he has added the tines, since this addition gave him the opportunity to neglect a point which was not his point: Simplicius is here concerned with a sort of atemporal theory of och2ma - a theory which, in the doctrinal framework of Simplicius, in addition to every essential feature of Athenian Platonism, was, is and always will be trueI6 -, and not with the explanation of Alexander’s polemical (and very

l 4 Cf. in particular P. Moraux, Alexandre d’Aphrodise ExkgPte de la Noe‘tique d’Aristote (Libge 1942) 148-149 and 163: on all this difficult problem, see Schroeder and Todd,(n. 12) 22-31. 15 f % o u M p ~ v o ~ 6k zbv V O ~ V &6&vazov 8Eiwi)vai ~ a i ncpdy~iv z t q &nopia5 &5 Enncpdpouav zQ

66pa tkv v+ &v&ymlv Exovzt zdnov &hA.&r~tv. 06 Guvapdvvy 66, E‘i y i koziv &oGpazo~, OOTE dv zdnq ~ l v a t OOTE p&zaf%aivEtv ~Ci l &hhoz~ kv &Uvy $veoQat, KCXZ ’ i6iav ddvoiav Eky~ zoiaOza n ~ p i ZOO voo dv navd dva i Ifi About this feature of Simplicius’ work, see the useful and interesting warnings of H. J.

Blumenthal, ‘Neoplatonic Elements in the De Anirna Commentaries’, Phronesis 21 (1976) 64-87,

6vqzQ kyopdvou ohpazi . . .

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW’ TEXT OF ALEXANDER 189

probably anti-Platonic17) allusions to earlier vehicle-theory. Simplicius wanted to avoid the bad impression which could be produced, if the reader thought the vehicle-theory was only provoked by the technical and prosaic problem of the soul’s locomotion.

But let us now compare the two texts possibly attributed to Alexander, namely the “true” text of his commentary and the passage of the De intellectu. It may be interesting to note that even if they try to resolve the same difficulty, namely the one which occurs if we hold any local motion of the soul or the intellect, their response to it has little in common apart from the acknowledgment in the Physics commentary that separation may not be due to motion. In his commentary, Alexander describes and rejects a theory which invents a soul’s vehicle in order to perform motion; in the De intellectu, two different accounts of separation without motion are presented. In C1, the idea is that to avoid the motion of the intellect, that is of something incorporeal, it may be better to conceive intellect as something which is present everywhere in the universe. There is no motion of the intellect in the proper sense, but activation of such or such part of the general all- permeating intellect of the universe. In C2, intellect is present or not according to whether it is made the object of thought.

Scholars, so far as I know, seem to have always neglected the similarities of Simplicius and the De intellectu. Even if it is true that the mediating scholium of the Parisinus was unknown, they never paid sufficient attention to Simplicius’ adaptation. It was nonetheless an important piece of evidence in any attempt to discuss the authenticity of the last part of the De intellectu. Secondly (but correlatively), they did not discuss the relation, if any, between the general argument of the Physics (“something without parts cannot be moving”) in the constitution of the last part of the De intellectu. Since Moraux’s first grand scale study, emphasis may have been too uniformly laid on the problem of an incorporeal being somewhere; l8 but this approach represents in my opinion a misunderstanding of what the point really is, namely the impossibility of the intellect’s motion. That the text cannot primarily deal with intellect being in some place is clearly suggested by the structure of the first sentence. If the problem really ,was the intellect’s existence in some place, and not the intellect’s motion, it is very unlikely that the sentence would first mention topon allattein (changing its place), instead of something like en top& einai (being in place). This expression comes only a little later, and does not really belong to the argument.

C. The Anonymous Vehicle-Theorist A word in Alexander’s quotation of the anonymous vehicle-theory deserves special attention: it is the verb eiskrinetui. When he speds of the total blending of the Stoics, Alexander never uses this form~la t ion .~~ It is however by no means accidental in the context, since we find it repeated one line later by the substantive eiskrisis. This repetition seems to indicate a technical term proper to the opponent’s terminology. The solution, with regard to the polemical anti-Platonic context, is not very hard to find. I am aware of but one relevant parallel, namely, the well-known psychological fragment of Atticus,

p. 64 ff. in particular, repr. in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, and D. O’Brien, ‘Empedocles Revisited’, Ancient Philosophy 15 (1995) 403-470, pp. 407-412 in particular. l7 On this problem, see next section. l8 Moraux ([n. 141 151) characteristically shifts from the (technical) problem of something

incorporeal, i.e. deprived ofparts, moving according to place to the (metaphysical) problem of an incorporeal being somewhere.

l9 See below, p.194.

190 AIUSTOTLE AND AFTER

whose views we know furthermore to have been frequently attacked by Alexander.*O In. this long fragment preserved by Eudemus, Atticus violently criticises a kind of widespread deviation among the Platonic schools of the time, which tried to conciliate Plato’s and Aristotle’s psychological theories. Anticipating some aspects of Philoponus’ rhetoric. Atticus writes:

Atticus, Against those who think it possible to interpret Plat0 through Aristotle (= Fr. 7 413 Des Places [from Eusebiu~])~~)

Now, what are essence and nature of intellect, from where does it come, how is it distributed epeiskrinomenos into man, to where does it go on leaving again? Aristotle would perhaps know that, if he really understands what he says about intellect and, without circumventing the difficulty of the thing with the obscurity of his expression, he does not avoid refutation, just as cuttlefishes are difficult to catch because of their dark ink.

Using the term epeiskrinomenos, Atticus seems to refer to his own theory, which allows him to explain what remained problematical in Aristotle. If indeed he is criticising Aristotle’s theory of the intellect from without for leaving unexplained the intellect’s distribution into bodies, is it not natural to think that he has at his disposal, for the soul, some solution he holds to be satisfactory? And, in accordance with our fragment, is it not likely that this solution should be that of the vehicle? This conjecture seems at first sight plainly confirmed by a passage of Proclus, where he attributes to Atticus, Albinus and other such Platonists the thesis that the vehicle (och2ma) is required by the soul’s inclination towards generation (kata t2n eis genesin rhop2n). We thus have more or less the same explanation as that found in Alexander’s commentary on the Physics, the only difference being the point of view of the two authors: whereas Alexander is mainly concerned with the concrete translocation of the soul into the body, Proclus considers, more generally, the conditions of the soul as descended, i.e. its temporal existence in the realm of generation. Alexander would consequently give us a very coherent description - and until now unnoticed as such - of Atticus’ theory of the soul’s immortality and separability.

But this may be too simple. For it was denied by both Dodds and Festugibre that Atticus actually had a theory of the soul’s vehicle: both authors hold that Proclus inappropriately introduced some elements of late Neoplatonism into his interpretation of much earlier doctrines. If however we examine Dodds’ and Festugibre’s doubts more carefully, we may already remark that they are expressed very cautiously by both authors.22 The reason is, of course, that we possess no text where Atticus even quotes the

2o See in particular P. L. Donini, Tre Studi sull’Aristotelismo nel I1 Secolo d. C. (Turin 1974) 50: ‘Se si confronta la teoria alessandrista dell’intelletto con I’esposizione delle obiezioni di Attico, non k difficile di vedere come essa sia costruita in mod0 da rispondere adeguamente a tutte le difficolta sollevate. La distinzione dell’intelletto materiale umano dall’intelletto attivo divino taglia infatti addirittura alla radice ogni obiezione: natura ed essenza dell’uno e dell’altro intelletto sono perfettamente chiare, il problema di un’eventuale separabilita dell’intelletto materiale dall’anima non si pone nemmeno, anima ed intelletto essendo parimenti mortali; e nemmeno sorge, quindi, il problema della “provenienza” e della “destinazione” dell’intelletto separato, che non entra nell’anima nel senso concreto assunto dall ’obiezione di Attico (cf. epeiskrinomenos)’ .

21 Eusebius, Pr. ev., XV, 9, 1-14; p. 808d-811a Viger; 11, p. 369.5-371.24 Mras. 22 Cf. A. J . Festugikre, La re‘ve‘lation d’Hermks Trismkgiste I11 (Paris 1950) 237, n. 2: ‘Sans doute

Proclus in Tim., 111, 234. 8. ss. [...I attribue h Atticus et Albinus la doctrine que, h la mort, l’fime irrationnelle et le vChicule sont dktruits, mais, comme l’observe Dodds ([n. 81 306, n. 3), il est possible (probable m&me) que Proclus introduise ici de son chef la mention de l’bxqpa.’

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW’ TEXT OF ALEXANDER 191

word o c h h a , although we have a long passage - the fragment preserved by Eusebius - where he deals with the soul-body problem.

We are thus naturally led to a second possible objection, that the Atticus texts preserved by Eusebius (fr. 7) and by Proclus appear to contradict each other. For the sake of clarity, I give a translation of the passage of Proclus:

Proclus, In Timaeum III, 234.9-18 (= Atticus Fr. 15 Des Places)

Some of them, allowing only rational soul to be immortal, let perish the whole irrational life and the soul’s pneumatic vehicle (t2n te alogon zSCn sumpasan kai to pneumatikon o c h h a t2s psych&), since they give them existence in so far as soul strives towards generation; they preserve intellect only as immortal, because, they say, it alone abides, is similar to the gods and does not perish. Such is the opinion of the earlier people, and they say that they respect the letter of the text, according to which Plato makes the irrational soul perishable, since he calls it mortal -the earlier, that is to say Atticus, Albinus and such people.

The apparent contradiction is that the beginning of fr. 7 from Eusebius speaks at 9.1 and 9.3 of the immortality of the whole soul. Atticus, however, in the fragment quoted from Proclus, allows the irrational soul to be mortal.

One may confess that Atticus’ position would have been much easier to defend, if Plato had never written the Timaeus. There are indeed very significant discrepancies between the unitary soul’s immortality in the Phaedo and the extreme difficulty of the tripartite soul in the Timaeus. It has long been noticed that the proofs of the soul’s immortality presented in the Phaedo are to the highest degree contradicted by the distinction of the Timaeus between two types of soul. Furthermore, it is beyond any doubt that what Proclus alludes to in this text is Atticus’ own commentary on the Timaeus, since he is himself at the moment dealing with a particular point of the text, namely the question of how we must understand the “partial” immortality of the soul which seems to represent Plato’s theory in the Timaeus.

Now, I see no impossibility if we admit that in the Against those who think it possible to interpret Plato through Aristotle, the text from which come all the fragments transmitted by Eusebius, Atticus was much closer to the unitary soul of Plato’s Phaedo than in his commentary on the Timaeus. It seems to me perfectly normal that when commenting on the Timaeus, Atticus should have tried to explain the very lexis of the text - however difficult and unsatisfactory it may have been - whereas in his characterization of Plato’s philosophy in general, he follows the simpler and perhaps more attractive doctrine of the Phaedo. It goes without saying that this doctrine fits in perfectly well with the assumption of the soul’s vehicle. One can without contradicting oneself follow the Phaedo with regard to the soul’s separability and immortality and postulate vehicles with regard to its embodiment.

It seems thus very probable, pace Dodds and Festugikre, that Atticus had a theory of the soul’s vehicle whose purpose was chiefly, as is implied by his criticisms against Aristotle and as Alexander rightly understood, to allow soul’s eiskrisis into body.

192 ARISTOTLE AND AFIER

D. The author of the last part of the De intellectu Let us now return to the problem of the authenticity of the De intellectu. The last section, with which we are concerned, 112.5ff. (C1 and C2 in Sharples) begins with a boulomenos which has no direct subject. As we said,23 scholars have, roughly speaking, adopted two solutions: either they have suspected a lacuna before ClZ4 or they have taken for granted that the subject of C1 (112.5-113.12) was in fact Aristoteles of M~t i l ene ,~5 who was alluded to two pages earlier. But if we are to admit that it is in fact Aristoteles of Mytilene who is the subject of C1, we have eo ips0 to explain the discrepancies between the two theories. According to R. W. Sharples,26 ‘they are probably to be explained on the grounds that in C1 Aristoteles is presenting his own solution to a particular problem, while in B he is presenting the general doctrine of his school’.

Let us then look at the overall structure of the last part of the De intellectu Cl-C2. The quotations above on pp. 187-88 show that the whole development is introduced by setting out the problem of the motion of the ‘Aristotelian’ intellect from without, and that this problem is once more emphasized in the conclusion. It seems indisputable then that the subject-matter of the whole text consists in this question.27 However, one should be very careful not to confuse the doctrinal unity of a passage with its textual independence of what precedes it. The fact that the last part of the De intellectu constitutes, from a doctrinal point of view, a kind of structured whole does not necessarily mean that this text was written independently from the second part of the De intellectu; all the less so, since both parts share an important common feature: we find in both cases an author who uses the first person singular, a procedure extremely rare in Greek commentaries.28 In order to resolve the vexed question of the authorship of the last part of the text (i.e. the identity of C2), we may then have to consider the historical implications of the whole discussion in the light of what has just been said on Atticus and Alexander’s criticisms against his conception of the soul’s motion. We can reasonably assume five different historical phases:

23 See note 13. 24 See above, p. 188. 25 The manuscripts read ’Aptozozdhou<, which was corrected to ’ A ~ ~ O Z O K ~ ~ O U S by Zeller (Die

Philosophie der Griechen 111, 1, p. 815, n. 3), before modem scholarship tentatively identified this AptozozdhqS as being not Aristotle (the Stagirite) but Aristoteles of Mytilene, the possible teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias (see however Shroeder and Todd [n. 121 27-28, on this prosopographical problem). This thesis is favoured by P. Moraux in ‘Aristoteles, der Lehrer Alexanders von Aphrodisias’, Archivfu’r Geschichte der Philosophie (1967), 169-182 und R. W. Sharples (n. 13) 1211-1214. 26 [N. 131 1212. 27 R. W. Sharples (n. 13) 1212, rightly notes that the last part consists in ‘an account of one,

pantheistic, attempt to answer the objection that, if intellect comes “from outside”, it must move spatially though immaterial . . . ’. 28 I must confess that I do not understand Schroeder and Todd’s argument ([n.12] 30) when they

write that ‘this peculiarity [the first person singular] would in itself be a strong argument for regarding the material from 110.4 to 112.5 (assuming a lacuna at 112.5) as an independent work’. We find precisely this peculiarity also after 112.5 (namely, at 113.12: ‘ k 8 6 ~ ~ t pot ...’, which, even considered as an “impersonal” - which it is not in the present context -, is nonetheless far from being common): the argument can thus be turned back against their very claim and would on the contrary suggest that B and C belong to the same textual unity.

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW TEXT OF ALEXANDER 193

1. “Aristotelian” theory of the intellect from without; 2. Atticus attacks the intellect because of its inability to move; 3. C1 (whether about Aristoteles or not) defends the intellect from without by claiming

its ubiquity; 4. Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus’ vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not

resolve the question of the soul’s motion at all and alludes to the possibility of another solution.

5. C2 (whether Alexander or not) criticises C1’ s solution to Atticus’ criticisms and gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes.

The first thing to be noted is that it seems most improbable that Atticus himself had presented his vehicle-theory as an attempt to escape from the problem suggested (but only suggested) by Aristotle’s Physics: the rhetorical form of Atticus’ criticisms as preserved by Eudemus betrays rather a somewhat vague argument, much closer to Moraux’s interpretation of the De intellectuZ9 as concerned with incorporeals. It does not reflect the elaborate form found in Alexander’s commentary on the Physics which turns on the impossibility of a partless entity shifting position part by part. In other words, Atticus is certainly far more concerned with the general and obvious problem of the motion of an incorporeal than of something without parts. Atticus’ vehicle allowed the motion of an incorporeal above all, not of an entity-deprived-of-parts.

It is now of paramount importance that Cl’s reply to this vague attack is itself fairly loose. We do not find the slightest allusion to the argument of Aristotle’s Physics, although it could have been mentioned equally well in the introductory lines or in the conclusion. In C1 too, the only question is that of an incorporeal’s motion tout court.

It is very probable then that Alexander’s commentary on the Physics constituted the first “scientific” approach to the question. When facing the physical argument of book vi, Alexander has very probably then realized that it allowed him to turn back Atticus’ criticisms against Atticus himself. Only then did the problem become a really physical one. It stands to reason that Alexander’s Physics commentary should have implicitly admitted a non-spatial separation of the intellect from without (that he was perfectly aware of the problem is clearly shown by his Cautious remark, suppressed by Simplicius: ei ge to chbrizesthai dia kinzsebs). Alexander no longer considered the general and dialectical problem of an incorporeal moving or being in place, but rather the scientific and physical one of something without parts (the soul) spatially moving.

If ‘we now compare these improvements introduced into the discussion by Alexander with the theories of C2, we are necessarily struck by the latter’s unayareness of the scientific issues to do with partlessness raised by Alexander’s Physics ~ommenta ry .~~ Far more significantly, C2, as we have seen, seems to confuse the two totally different problems of something moving with respect to place and something being in place. Is it not very unlikely that Alexander would have been so unaware of what the point, according to his own commentary on the Physics, really was?

29 Cf. n. 18. 30 One could of course try to explain this discrepancy by saying that C2 is here only concerned

with expounding the thesis of C1 and consequently does not need to introduce his own views on the problem; but it could be replied to this objection that in his commentary on the Physics, Alexander had projected his scientific re-elaboration of Atticus’ mediocre problematic onto this problematic itself the problem was expressed as if Atticus himself had wanted to escape from the argument of Physics vi, 4, which is very improbable, to say the least.

194 ARISTOTLE AND AFTER

Therefore, since the authenticity of Alexander’s commentary on the Physics remains beyond any doubt, it seems scarcely possible that Alexander and C2 be the same intellectual person; two solutions may then be envisaged: the last part of the De intellectu either belongs to Alexander’sjuvenalia, or is the work of someone else, in all likelihood a member of his school.

With regard to this problem, the lexical parallelism must be taken into account. In the commentary on the Physics, the digression on the soul’s motion began with a ho ato-von pheugein boulomenoi, and C1 with boulomenos de ton noun athanaton deiknunai kai pheugein tas aporias has evipherousin. This resemblance, of course, would as such be far from decisive, but we ought nonetheless to bear in mind that the problem (atopon or tas aporias) considered is in both cases absolutely identical. And that, of course, makes the terminological echo far more striking.

Let us first suppose that Alexander is not the author of the last part of the De intellectu. In that case, the sequence would have started with Alexander criticising Atticus, in his commentary on the Physics. Probably for polemical reasons, he did not name his opponents and actually wrote the plain boulomenoi. Later, a member of his school wrote C1 and C2 of the De intellectu, expounding and attacking the author3‘ of the view that the intellect from without enters us by means of local motion, and modelling his reply to some extent on Alexander’s attack on Atticus. But it is impossible that such an associate could have overlooked the fact that Alexander’s discussion concerns the partlessness, not the mere incorporeality, Qf the soul. Moreover, the hypothesis of an associate does not fit well with the assumption that the subject of C1 is in fact Aristoteles of Mytilene probably alluded to two pages earlier. For we should have to suppose that the associate mixed what he heard from Aristoteles with Alexander’s discussion of Atticus in the Physics commentary.

If, on the other hand, Alexander is to be identified with C2, we then obtain a fairly plausible solution. First in C2 Alexander answers Atticus with an alternative account of separation in terms of thought processes, not local motion. Later in his Physics commentary, while alluding indirectly to this answer, he attacks Atticus’ vehicle theory as no solution at all. Alexander’s neglect in C2 of partlessness, his silence on vehicles and his attention to being in place as opposed to moving, is probably to be explained both by his sticking to the context of the exposition provided by his teacher Aristoteles, and by the fact that he has not yet realized the polemical use that can be made of the text of the Physics.

A last argument: when Alexander describes the doctrine through which Aristoteles hoped to escape from Atticus’ criticisms, he writes, B propos the intellect: ‘and it is separated out (ekkrinetai) in the same way as it is introduced (ei~krinetai)’ .~~. Thus, the only two occurrences in Alexander of the verb eiskrinesthai are deeply connected with Atticus’ theory, either directly or through Aristoteles’ reply. It seems therefore very probable that Alexander himself was aware of the significance of this technical term, and that he mentioned it twice. To conclude, then, the historical evolution of the polemics may be summarised as follows:

3’ Hence the singular, which is of course much harsher than the plural in Alexander. The plural could always have, in Greek, an ‘indefinite’ connotation which made it very useful in the case of polemical allusions. It goes without saying that at the time when Alexander wrote his commentary on the Physics, the anonymous opponent (whom we claim to be Atticus) was easily recognisable to everybody.

32 112.31.

MARWAN RASHED: A “NEW TEXT OF ALEXANDER 195

1. ‘Aristotelian’ claim of the intellect from without; 2. Atticus attacks the intellect from without because of its inability to move; 3. Aristoteles of Mytilene (as reported by Alexander in Cl) defends the intellect from

without by claiming its ubiquity; 4. Alexander (De intell., C2) criticises Aristoteles’ solution to Atticus’ criticisms and

gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes;

5. Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus’ vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not resolve the question at all and alludes indirectly to his previous solution.

Thus, we may conclude that the De intellectu is an authentic work of Alexander, but an earlier one than the commentary on the Physics.

Graduiertenkolleg “Textiiberlieferung”, Hamburg kcole nomuzle supirieure, Paris