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Gersonides' Commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry and Its chapter 1 “Composition, Not Commentary”: Gersonides’ Commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry and Its Afterlife Charles H. Manekin For over a thousand years, Porphyry’s Isagoge (Introduction) was every stu- dent’s first text in philosophy.1 Written in Greek by Porphyry of Tyre in the second half of the third century CE, it was subsequently translated into Syr- iac, Latin, Armenian, and Arabic. The text provides definitions of five terms or “predicables” central to Peripatetic philosophy: genus, species, difference, property, and accident. It then considers what all these terms have in common, followed by what each pair of terms share in common with each other, and wherein they differ. Porphyry famously declares at the outset that he will avoid deeper inquiries into what was later called the problem of universals; that is, the ontological status of genus and species, etc. Rather, he will show how the Peripatetics treated these terms from a logical point of view.2 This essay deals with the reception of Gersonides’ commentary on the doc- trines of the Isagoge presented in Averroes’s Middle Commentary, which was translated into Hebrew by Jacob Anatoli in 1231.3 From late antiquity, the Isa- goge stood at the head of the logical curriculum (the enlarged Organon); because students began their study of science and medicine with logic, it was a highly popular work.4 Steinschneider noted that Anatoli’s translations of Aristotle’s logical writings, in the versions of Averroes, were extant in more 1 Porphyry, Introduction; trans. with a commentary by Jonathan Barnes (Oxford, 2003), p. ix. 2 Ibid., §0 (p. 3). 3 Averroes, Ha-Beʾur ha-ʾemṣaʿi šel ʾIbn Rušd ʿal Sefer ha-Mavoʾ le-Porforiyus we-Sefer ha-Maʾa- marot le-ʾArisṭoṭeles, ed. Herbert A. Davidson (Cambridge, MA, 1969); Averroes, The Middle Commentary on Porphyry’s “Isagoge,” trans. Herbert A. Davidson (Cambridge, MA, 1969). 4 For the translation and transmission of the Isagoge from Greek to Syriac to Arabic, see: Cristina d’Ancona, “Porphyry, Arabic,” Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. Henrik Lagerlund (Dordrecht, 2010), 1057–1062; Henri Hugonnard-Roche, “Les traductions syriaques de l’Isagoge de Porphyre et la constitution du corpus syriaque de logique,” in La logique d’Aristote du grec au syriaque: Études sur la transmission des textes de l’Organon et leur inter- prétation philosophique. Textes et traditions (Paris, 2004), 89–97. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004425286_002 4 manekin manuscripts than any other work written by a non-Jew;5 this is especially true of the commentaries on the Isagoge and Categories. Similarly, Gersonides’ com- mentary on Averroes’s version of the Isagoge is extant in more manuscripts than any of his other works, with the exception of theWars of the Lord.Together with his commentaries on the Categories and De interpretatione, it was trans- lated into Latin and published in the 1554 Juntine edition of Aristotle with the commentaries of Averroes.6 As we shall see, his commentary on the Isagoge was itself the subject of commentaries, beginning with his contemporaries, Jedaiah ha-Penini and Samuel ben Judah of Marseilles, and continuing into the sixteenth century. There is evidence that Gersonides was aware of some of the criticisms of his contemporaries and that he responded, directly or indirectly, to them. He himself makes occasional reference to explanations by other com- mentators with which he disagrees.7 Gersonides often took bold and argumentative positions in his commen- taries, a point that was noted by subsequent commentators. In the introduction to his commentary on the books of logic, Gersonides informs his reader that he is not writing a commentary for its own sake, since, in his opinion, the contents of Aristotle’s logical works need no explanation. His intention is three- fold: to explain “Averroes’s abridgments (qiṣṣurei Ibn Rušd)8 in the books of logic, according to my abridgment (le-fi qiṣṣuri)”; to mention the places where his views differ from those of Aristotle “according to what Averroes under- stood from his words”; and to investigate matters not investigated by Aristotle, “according to what Averroes mentioned of his words.” Since the original works really need no explanation, he writes, composition (ḥibbur) and not commen- tary (beʾur) is his primary aim. At first glance that statement seems odd, since there is much commentary in the work. But what Gersonides appears to be say- ing is that the aim of his commentary is not so much to explain Averroes’s com- mentary on Aristotle—although there is some of that as well—but to provide 5 Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dol- metscher: Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters, meist nach handschriftlichen Quellen (Berlin, 1893), 59. 6 Aristoteles and Averroes, Aristotelis Omnia Quae Extant Opera, vol. 1 (Venice, 1554), fols. 1r– 22r (Isagoge), 22v–62v (Categories), and 68r–106v (De interpretatione). Gersonides’ comments are called “annotationes,” but this has no equivalent in the Hebrew. 7 Cf. Vatican, Urbinati, MS ebr. 35 [IMHM 674], fol. 3v: “And other(s) besides us explained this in ways that do not conform to the truth. But this explanation appears to us to be correct.” 8 The term qiṣṣur sometimes refers to Averroes’s epitomes, but it appears that here the refer- ence is to the abridgments Averroes makes of Aristotle in the Middle Commentary. For the Hebrew text see, Shalom Rosenberg, “Gersonides’ Commentary on ‘Ha-Mavo’,”Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah 22 (1989): 85–98, esp. 90 (Hebrew). Several manuscripts do not have the phrase ‘lefi qiṣṣurei Ibn Rušd’..
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