Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition A series of handbooks and reference works on the intellectual and religious life of Europe, 500–1700 VOLUME 10 Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories Edited by Lloyd A. Newton LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 Cover illustration: Avicenna, Opera, Venice, 1508, folio 2 verso. Printed edition. Photograph by Megan Bickford. With kind permission of Ed Macierowski. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Medieval commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories / edited by Lloyd A. Newton. p. cm. — (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition, 1871–6377 ; v. 10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16752-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Aristotle. Categoriae. 2. Categories (Philosophy). I. Newton, Lloyd A. II. Title. III. Series. B438.M43 2008 160—dc22 2008014809 ISSN 1871-6377 ISBN 978 90 04 16752 0 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishers, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands CONTENTS Preface ......................................................................................... vii The Importance of Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories ................................................................................... 1 Lloyd A. Newton The Medieval Posterity of Simplicius ’ Commentary on the Categories: Thomas Aquinas and al-Fārābī ............................. 9 Michael Chase Avicenna The Commentator ...................................................... 31 Allan Bäck Albertus Magnus On the Subject of Aristotle’s Categories ......... 73 Bruno Tremblay Interconnected Literal Commentaries on the Categories in the Middle Ages ............................................................................ 99 Robert Andrews Thomas Aquinas on Establishing the Identity of Aristotle’s Categories ............................................................................... 119 Paul Symington Reading Aristotle’s Categories as an Introduction to Logic: Later Medieval Discussions about Its Place in the Aristotelian Corpus ................................................................... 145 Giorgio Pini Simon of Faversham on Aristotle’s Categories and The Scientia Praedicamentorum ....................................................................... 183 Martin Pickavé Duns Scotus’s Account of a Propter Quid Science of the Categories ............................................................................... 221 Lloyd A. Newton vi contents Fine-tuning Pini ’s Reading of Scotus ’s Categories Commentary ........................................................................... 259 Todd Bates How Is Scotus’s Logic Related to His Metaphysics? A Reply to Todd Bates ........................................................... 277 Giorgio Pini John Buridan : On Aristotle’s Categories ....................................... 295 Alexander W. Hall A Realist Interpretation of the Categories in the Fourteenth Century: The Litteralis sententia super Praedicamenta Aristotelis of Robert Alyngton ................................................................ 317 Alessandro D. Conti Thomas Maulevelt’s Denial of Substance ................................. 347 Thomas Maulevelt: Quaestiones super Praedicamenta: Quaestio 16 ............................................................................... 358 Robert Andrews Categories and Universals in the Later Middle Ages ................ 369 Alessandro D. Conti Bibliography ................................................................................ 411 List of Contributors .................................................................... 429 Index ........................................................................................... 433 PREFACE St. Augustine ’s account of the ease with which he understood Aristotle’s Categories is, as he himself admits, an anomaly. Unfortunately, the rest of us, like Augustine’s contemporaries, struggle to understand what was for centuries, and still is, a fundamental text. On the surface, Aristotle’s Categories is a markedly anti-platonic text: things are equivo- cal, not univocal; individual substances are primary, whereas universals are secondary; and Aristotle lists ten highest genera or categories of things, not fi ve, as Plato does.1 From its earliest reception, though, many commentators such as Porphyry and Boethius go to great lengths to reconcile it with Platonism , with the predictable result that many other commentators—Ockham comes immediately to mind—go to equally great lengths to purge it of any remaining traces of Platonism. Such attempts often hinge on what one takes to be the subject of the book: is the Categories about words, concepts, or things? Or is it somehow about all three: words, concepts and things? Regardless of how one answers this question, the philosophically more important question remains: to what extent do words, concepts and things parallel or mirror one another? Of course, these are not the only questions pertaining to Aristotle’s brief text. Given its wide range of topics, from the nature of equivocity to the different kinds of motion, coupled with its terse and introduc- tory remarks on a number of issues, Aristotle’s Categories generated a disproportionate number of commentaries since its fi rst appearance in antiquity. These commentaries, though, are often far from being simple, literal expositions of the text. More often than not, they are occasions to 1 As far as possible, I have endeavored to distinquish between ‘Categories’, which refers to the name of the work by that title, and the ten ‘categories’, which, when not italicized, refer to the subject matter of that work, namely, to the ten principal genera of being discussed by Aristotle. Unfortunately, though, the distinction is not always clear, especially since Aristotle’s Categories is essentially about the ten categories. This confusion is particularly evident in subsequent discussions about the subject of the Categories, which discussions I presume to be about the subject of the book, but which are also closely related to discussions about the way in which the ten categories are the subject of a science (which discussions are not about the subject of the book but about the ten genera). viii preface explore philosophical problems, or opportunities to attack a particular philosopher’s thesis, or the chance to defend one’s own thesis. Bearing in mind, then, that commentary writing was traditionally a way of doing philosophy, it is not surprising that hundreds of extant commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories exist, and that these commentaries often contradict one another, explore different topics of concern, and are philosophically rich, as the ensuing articles amply demonstrate. While the vast majority of the extant commentaries on Categories are still not translated and largely inaccessible, things are beginning to change. The “Ancient Commentaries on Aristotle” series, published by Cornell Press, has recently made a number of early commentaries on the Categories available in English. Likewise, several medieval commentaries have recently been published and others are, I hope, soon to follow. Correspondingly, there has recently been an increasing interest in medieval logic in general, and in categories in particular, with a number of conferences, articles and books devoted to the subject. When Julian Deahl fi rst suggested the subject of this book in 2002 to Jorge J. E. Gracia at a medieval conference, Gracia remarked that, at the time, he did not think that more than half a dozen people in the fi eld were qualifi ed or interested in the subject. Fortunately, Gracia recom- mended that I be one of the contributors should the project ever get off the ground. While doing my own research on Scotus ’s commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, I realized that more scholars were interested in the subject and approached Julian with the current project. To my surprise, Julian liked the project and asked if I would be interested in editing it. Consequently, I wish to thank Jorge J. E. Gracia for introduc- ing and recommending me to Julian, to Julian Deahl for having the confi dence in me to edit this work; and to Marcella Mulder and Gera van Bedaf of Brill, without whose assistance, this book would not be possible. Most of all, though, I am grateful to my wife, Lori, and to our three children for their support. LLOYD A. NEWTON INTRODUCTION THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDIEVAL COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE’S CATEGORIES Lloyd A. Newton Aristotle’s Categories is the subject of an extensive number of commentaries and of an unusual amount of debate, and for good reasons.1 To begin with, in spite of its relatively short length, it can be a rather dif- fi cult text to understand, even for the trained philosopher, to say nothing of those who are just beginning their

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