John Philoponus was a sixth-century commentator on Aristotle who lived between 490-570 CE. ‘‘John’’ was his Christian name, while ‘‘Philoponus’’ was a nickname given to him by various philosophers, which literally means ‘‘lover of work.’’ According to Sorabji (1987:5), this was the name given to groups of Christian lay workers who were known to have lived together in a guild called a philoponeion. Philoponus had referred to himself as ‘‘the Grammarian,’’ for he held no Philosophy Chair though some speculate that he may have held a Chair in grammar and taught grammar to the Coptic community in Alexandria (Sorabji 1987:5-6). (He had also written two books on grammar, neither of which contained any philosophically relevant material.) As far as his philosophical stripes go, Philoponus was a Neoplatonist who flourished in the sixth century. There were two major schools of Neoplatonism, the pagan school in Athens, which was eventually closed by the Emperor Justinian in 529, and the more successful Alexandrian school in Alexandria, which had survived only by capitulating to Christianity. Philoponus was a student in the Alexandrian school, headed by Ammonius. Ammonius had taught all of the influential Neoplatonists, from both the Alexandrian and Athenian schools, including Philoponus, Asclepius, Simplicius (a pagan), and Olympiodorus. (The exception is Damascius, who fled Alexandria after the violent persecution of the Neoplatonists by the Christians in 488-489.) So both Philoponus and his archrival Simplicius would have been students sitting around Ammonius’ lecture throne (thronos) listening to his seminars on Aristotle (see Sorabji 2008).
In some ways, Philoponus was a bad commentator. According to Simplicius, the duty of a commentator was to harmonize the thought of Plato and Aristotle, which was something Philoponus did rather poorly. Yet, philosophically, he was perhaps the most brilliant of all the commentators, developing some of the most stinging criticisms of Aristotelianism in history. He disagreed with Aristotle on such important matters as dynamics, optics, the existence of void, and the need for a fifth element (on the latter see Wildberg 1988). These criticisms in turn gave rise to a series of innovative ideas, placing Philoponus among the important scientific thinkers of Late antiquity. In the latter part of his life, Philoponus turned away from philosophy and took up theology. His religious beliefs were no less radical and controversial. For example, he held that Christ had only one nature, not two (one human and one divine), and applied Porphyry’s conception of three gods (rather than three persons) to the Holy Trinity, a doctrine that eventually led him to be condemned posthumously in 680 CE by the Third Council of Constantinople (Sorabji 2005a:20).
There are seven extant commentaries on Aristotle from Philoponus, four of which (in De generatione et corruptione, in De anima, in Analytica priora, and in Analytica posteriora) claim to be ‘‘from the lectures of Ammonius son of Hermeias’’ (ek ton sunousion Ammoniou tou Hermeiou). However, as Sorabji (1987:4-5) notes, comparison with Ammonius’ own commentaries shows Philoponus’ relative independence and even dissent from Ammonius. The three remaining commentaries (in Physica, in Categorias, and in Meteorologica) were not professed to be lectures from Ammonius but Philoponus’ own contributions. And yet none of his commentaries were merely comments on Aristotle. Many (untraditional) ‘‘commentaries’’ express Philoponus’ own disagreement with Aristotle and offer fresh ideas. Writing a detailed exegesis on the works of Plato and Aristotle interspersed with critical analysis was simply the way of doing philosophy at the time. Finally, Philoponus wrote two independent treatises, Contra Aristotelem, which contains a systematic attack on the Aristotelian world view (including the fifth element), and De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum. The latter presents a series of refutations on behalf of Christianity directed against the pagan belief that the universe - specifically matter - had a beginning. (Philoponus also refers to a commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, at in An Post. 215,5, which is now lost. There are also several medical writings in Arabic translation attributed to Philoponus. For a complete list of Philoponus’ writings, see Sorabji 1987:231-235.)
World History
