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Syrianus on the Platonic Tradition of the Separate Existence of Numbers

100%

Mouzala M. G.

Peitho. Examina Antiqua

2015

vol. 6

issue 1

167-194

This paper analyzes and explains certain parts of Syrianus’s Commentary on book M of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which details Syrianus’s response to Aristotle’s attack against the Platonic position of the separate existence of numbers. Syrianus defends the separate existence not only of eidetic but also of mathematical numbers, following a line of argumentation which involves a hylomorphic approach to the latter. He proceeds with an analysis of the mathematical number into matter and form, but his interpretation entails that form is the constituent of number, which has the status and role of a Platonic Form. This solution allows him not only to explain and justify the unity of number, but also to apply the Platonic thesis of the separate existence of numbers, to the mathematical or monadic numbers themselves. It also betrays its tendency to combine theses of the Platonic Ontology with fundamental Aristotelian doctrines.

On Aristotelian Category of Substance. Exegetic Variations from Plotinus to Ammonius

84%

Cardullo R. L.

Peitho. Examina Antiqua

2014

vol. 5

issue 1

59-90

One of the main difficulties that Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle face is the different treatment that the Categories and the Metaphysics offer to the question of the substance. After describing briefly the status quaestionis ousiae in Aristotle, and after tracing the main Neoplatonic interpretations of this doctrine (from Plotinus’ negative one to Porphyry’s positive and “conciliatory” one), this article attempts to demonstrate that the Neoplatonists of Athens and Alexandria, Syrianus and Ammonius, inaugurate a new interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine. With regard to the category of substance in general and to the question of substantiality of “immanent form” in particular, this new interpretation goes beyond the positions of Plotinus and Porphyry and returns the ontological value to the Aristotelian substances. Unlike Plotinus, who recognized as ousia only that one intelligible, that is five genres of the Platonic Sophist, and unlike Porphyry, who defused the anti–Platonic fuse of the Categories, giving to this treaty a mainly semantic skopos, these philosophers, through their original study of the theory of the three states of katholou, already shed in the Porphyrian Eisagôgê, fit the immanent forms of Aristotle, recognized as substances and as a reflection of the transcendental universal, into the late antique Neoplatonic metaphysical triadic structure.

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2 Peitho. Examina Antiqua

1 2015

1 2014

1 Cardullo R. L.

1 Mouzala M. G.

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Syrianus on the Platonic Tradition of the Separate Existence of Numbers

On Aristotelian Category of Substance. Exegetic Variations from Plotinus to Ammonius