PHILO and POST-ARISTOTELIAN PERIPATETICS Robert W. Sharples Discussion of the Influence on Philo of Peripatetics After Aristotle

PHILO AND POST-ARISTOTELIAN PERIPATETICS

Robert W. S harples

Discussion of the inﬂuence on Philo of Peripatetics after Aristotle himself necessarily falls into two parts: consideration of the treatise On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate mundi), and consideration of the rest of Philo’s works. For it is in On the Eternity of the World that use of Peripatetic material is most strikingly apparent.1

I. On the Eternity of the World

At the start of his treatise Philo sets out (§7) three possible views; that the present world-order had a beginning and will have an end;2 that it has neither beginning nor end; that it had a beginning but will have no end. The ﬁrst, as he indicates, was the view of the Stoics,3 and also, in a diﬀerent way, of the Atomists, including the Epicureans;4 the

1 According to the TLG (which includes only texts preserved in Greek) Aristotle himself is named in Philo only in De aeternitate mundi (10, 12, 16, 18) and Peripatetics only in the same work, at 55 in connection with Critolaus. The same is true of Theophrastus (see the index fontium to FHS&G = W.W. Fortenbaugh–P.M. Huby–R.W. Sharples– D. Gutas (eds.), Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, Leiden 1992). Wehrli’s only entries for Philo in the index fontium to Die Schule des Aristoteles (Basel 19692), are Critolaus frr. 12 and 13, both from De aeternitate. A further reference to ‘Aristotle and the Peripatetics’ is added by QG 3.16, preserved only in Armenian; below, section II. 2 Or, to translate more literally, was generated and will be destroyed. The Greek terms γενητ ς and "αρτ ς are (as are Greek verbal nouns in -τ ς generally) ambiguous from an English point of view; γενητ ς can mean either “generated” or “capable of being generated”, γενητ ς either “capable of perishing” or “that will perish”. But it is odd to say of a world that now exists that it is “capable of being generated”. That the world “will have no end” or “will not perish” means, for Aristotle, that in its own nature it cannot do so; for Plato and for Philo (below, n. 6) that it could do but will not. 3 Or most of them. Philo does not mention the exceptions here, but later in the treatise (76–77) notes that Diogenes of Babylon came to doubt the orthodox Stoic doctrine of the periodic destruction of the world by fire, and that Boethus of Sidon and Panaetius rejected it. See below, section I.4. 4 For the Atomists our world is but one of an infinite number, an infinite subset of which exists contemporaneously with it, while for the Stoics only one world exists at any one time. 56 robert w. sharples second that of Aristotle and his followers;5 the third that of Plato in the Timaeus.6 In himself endorsing the third view7 Philo is, as always, led by his own scriptural and theological concerns; but he is also entering into a debate, prompted above all by the Timaeus, which continued throughout antiquity. Like others later,8 he cites Plat. Tim. 41a for the view that the world could perish but through divine benevolence will not do so (13); here as elsewhere in Philo it is in this sense that the claim that the world will have no end should be understood.9 In the text of the treatise as we have it, after the introductory section, Philo sets out arguments for the view that the world has neither beginning nor end.10 At the end he says that he will go on to give the counter-arguments;11 but this part of the treatise is missing.12

5 Philo at this point (10–11, Aristotle fr. 18 Rose3, 18 Ross) names only Aristotle himself. See further below, section I.5. 6 Philo explicitly endorses the reading of the Timaeus as indicating a literal beginning for the world (14–16), explicitly arguing inter alia that Aristotle, who interpreted Plato in this way, is a reliable source for the views of his predecessors (16), an issue on which modern scholarship would at any rate be more cautious. Cf. D.T. Runia, “Philo’s De aeternitate mundi: the Problem of its Interpretation”, Vigiliae Christianae 35 (1981), 134, and Id., “Plato’s Timaeus, First Principle(s), and Creation”, in G.J. Reydams-Schils (ed.), Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon (Notre Dame 2003), 137–139 against attribution of a doctrine of ‘eternal creation’ to Philo. 7 He attributes it to Moses (19). 8 The view was later defended by Plutarch, Atticus and Severus (Procl. In Tim. 3.212.8; cf. Atticus, fr. 4.8–17, p. 52.43–54.109 des Places) and attacked in turn by Alexander of Aphrodisias (Quaest. 1.18, and ap. Simpl. In Cael. 358.27–360.3). Cf. M. Bal- tes, Die Weltentstehung des platonischen Timaios nach den antiken Interpreten, Teil 1 (Leiden 1976), 50, 61, 76–81, 104; J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 80B.C. to A.D. 220 (London 1977, 19962), 262. M. Baltes, Die Weltentstehung des platonischen Timaios, cit., 70 also ﬁnds the doctrine in D.L. 3.72, but this depends on reading =ν for ε9ς. 9 Cf., with F.H. Colson, Philo (London–Cambridge, Mass. 1967), vol. 9, 173 n.(b), De- cal. 58; M. Baltes, Die Weltentstehung des platonischen Timaios, cit., 32–38, and D.T. Runia, “Philo’s De aeternitate mundi: the Problem of its Interpretation”, cit., 132 and n. 116, 135. 10 Cf. 20. 11 There has been debate about what these were. F.H. Colson, Philo, cit., 177 n.(a) notes that πρτ0ρυς in 20 suggests that only two views were considered, and proposes that these were the Peripatetic and Stoic views, so that Philo will ﬁrst have argued for the Peripatetic view that the world has neither beginning nor end, and then for the Stoic view that it has both. One might rather expect arguments for the Platonic view that the world had a beginning but will have no end; and that this was indeed the content of the missing section is persuasively argued by D.T. Runia, “Philo’s De aeternitate mundi: the Problem of its Interpretation”, cit.; he suggests (136–138) that in the missing part Philo argued against the Peripatetic view that the world is imperishable by its own nature, and that Philo might have used the argument refuted by Theophrastus at 143–144 (below, I.1) once more against the Aristotelians. 12 Against the view that it was never written see D.T. Runia, “Philo’s De aeternitate mundi: the Problem of its Interpretation”, cit., 134–135.