This book describes the doctrine and impact of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the second-century commentator on Aristotle, through the centuries and up to his sixteenth-century role as the clandestine prompter of a new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death, Alexander first served the Neo-Platonic schools as their authority on Aristotle, and in the Arabic centuries subsequently served as Averroes’ exemplary exponent of the doctrine of the mortality of the soul. For this reason, the Latin Scholastics deemed his work unworthy of being translated. This changed only in the late Middle Ages, when Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to Averroes. When in 1495 his account of Aristotle’s psychology was translated and published, his principles of a natural philosophy, which were exempt from metaphysics and based on sense perception, eventually became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander’s teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century. Originally published as Volume XVI, No. 1 (2011) of Brill's journal Early Science and Medicine.

Around 200 AD, the greatest defender and interpreter of Aristotle within his school, Alexander of Aphrodisias, composed his own book On the Soul, partly following the pattern of Aristotle's. In the first half, translated in this volume, he discusses the soul as the form of the body, and the idea of parts or powers that constitute the soul of living things, including the two lowest powers: nutrition and perception. In the second half, translated in Part II, he discusses perception, representation, desire, understanding and - a notion emphasised by the Stoics - the governing part of the soul. He takes the soul to consist of these powers, which supervene on the mixture of the body's elemental ingredients, just as inanimate powers like buoyancy or lightness can supervene on other qualities. They are new, emergent causal powers of the living thing, which do not belong to the constituent ingredients of the body in themselves. Through his notion of emergence, he seeks to steer between the Platonic dualism of soul and body and the extreme materialism of his Stoic rivals. This volume contains the first English translation of the work, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography.

The Supplement transmitted as the second book of On the Soul by Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. 200 AD) is a collection of short texts on a wide range of topics from psychology, including the general hylomorphic account of soul and its faculties, and the theory of vision; questions in ethics (natural instincts, the unity of the virtues, the naturalness of justice and the insufficiency of virtue for happiness); and issues relating to responsibility, chance and fate. One of the texts in the collection, On Intellect, had a major influence on medieval Arabic and Western thought, greater than that of Alexander's On the Soul itself. The treatises may all be by Alexander himself; certainly the majority of them are closely connected with his other works. Many of them, however, consist of collections of arguments on particular issues, collections which probably incorporate material from earlier in the history of the Peripatetic school. This translation is from a new edition of the Greek text based on a collation of all known manuscripts and comparison with medieval Arabic and Latin translations.

Around 200 AD, the greatest defender and interpreter of Aristotle within his school, Alexander of Aphrodisias, composed his own book On the Soul, partly following the pattern of Aristotle's. In the first half, translated in Part I, he discusses the soul as the form of the body, and the idea of parts or powers that constitute the soul of living things, including the two lowest powers: nutrition and perception. In the second half, to be translated in Part II, he discusses perception, representation, desire, understanding and - a notion emphasised by the Stoics - the governing part of the soul. He takes the soul to consist of these powers, which supervene on the mixture of the body's elemental ingredients, just as inanimate powers like buoyancy or lightness can supervene on other qualities. They are new, emergent causal powers of the living thing, which do not belong to the constituent ingredients of the body in themselves. Through his notion of emergence, he seeks to steer between the Platonic dualism of soul and body and the extreme materialism of his Stoic rivals.

"The Supplement transmitted as the second book of On the Soul by Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. 200 AD) is a collection of short texts on a wide range of topics from psychology, including the general hylomorphic account of soul and its faculties, and the theory of vision; questions in ethics (natural instincts, the unity of the virtues, the naturalness of justice and the insufficiency of virtue for happiness); and issues relating to responsibility, chance and fate. One of the texts in the collection, On Intellect, had a major influence on medieval Arabic and Western thought, greater than that of Alexander's On the Soul itself. The treatises may all be by Alexander himself; certainly the majority of them are closely connected with his other works. Many of them, however, consist of collections of arguments on particular issues, collections which probably incorporate material from earlier in the history of the Peripatetic school. This translation is from a new edition of the Greek text based on a collation of all known manuscripts and comparison with medieval Arabic and Latin translations."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The commentary attributed to Simplicius on Aristotle's On the Soul appears in this series in three volumes, of which this is the first. The translation provides the first opportunity for a wider readership to assess the disputed question of authorship. Is the work by Simplicius, or by his colleague Priscian, or by another commentator? In the second volume, Priscian's Paraphrase of Theophrastus on Sense Perception, which covers the same subject, will also be translated for comparison. Whatever its authorship, the commentary is a major source for late Neoplatonist theories of thought and sense perception and provides considerable insight into this important area of Aristotle's thought. In this first volume, the Neoplatonist commentator covers the first half of Aristotle's On the Soul, comprising Aristotle's survey of his predecessors and his own rival account of the nature of the soul.

This volume sheds new light on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth as an intelligent and carefully crafted rebuttal of Stoic blending, which Alexander regarded as the closest rival of his own brand of hylomorphism. The authors explore Alexander’s dialectical method and determine the precise character of the Stoic theory he attacks. The problematic notions of mutual co-extension and infinite division appear in their proper context, while the successive stages of the process of blending are carefully distinguished from the resulting state of the blend. In this perspective the discussion of growth that closes Alexander’s work finds its natural place.

This volume provides a set of in-depth case studies about the role of questions and answers (Q&A) in ancient Greek medical writing from its Hippocratic beginnings up to, and including, Late Antiquity.

For more than 1800 years it has been supposed that Aristotle viewed the soul as the entelechy of the visible body which is 'equipped with organs'. This book argues that in actual fact he saw the soul as the entelechy of a natural body 'that serves as its instrument'. This correction puts paid to W. Jaeger's hypothesis of a three-phase development in Aristotle. The author of this book defends the unity of Aristotle's philosophy of living nature in De anima, in the biological treatises, and in the lost dialogues. Aristotle should therefore be regarded as the author of the notion of the 'vehicle of the soul' and of a 'non-Platonic' dualism. The current understanding of his influence on Hellenistic philosophy needs to change accordingly.

Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times attempts to blaze a trail for the cross-disciplinary humanistic study of pain and pleasure, with literature scholars, historians and philosophers all setting out to understand how the Greeks and Romans experienced, managed and reasoned about the sensations and experiences they felt as painful or pleasurable. The book is intended to provoke discussion of a wide range of problems in the cultural history of antiquity. It addresses both the physicality of erôs and illness, and physiological and philosophical doctrines, especially hedonism and anti-hedonism in their various forms. Fine points of terminology (Greek is predictably rich in this area) receive careful attention. Authors in question run from Homer to (among others) the Hippocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Seneca, Plutarch, Galen and the Aristotle-commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias.