Alexander of Aphrodisias

ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS. - Peripatetic philosopher from Caria and celebrated commentator on Aristotle. He lived at the end of the 2nd century AD and the beginning of the 3rd, under the empire of Septimius Severus. A disciple of Aristotle of Messina, he was the last great representative of the Aristotelian school in Athens.

The following works of securely attributed authorship have come down to us from him: 1) the commentary on books I-V of the Metaphysics (since the part concerning books VI-XIV is by another, later author, perhaps Michael of Ephesus); 2) the extensive exposition of book I of the Prior Analytics; 3) the commentary on the Topics (the one attributed to him on the Sophistical Refutations appears to be by Michael of Ephesus); 4) the commentary on the De sensu; 5) the exposition of the books on the Meteorologica; 6) a treatise in two books De anima; 7) a treatise De fato dedicated to the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla (written therefore between 198 and 211); 8) a treatise De mixtione et augmento. The commentaries on the Categories, on the De interpretatione, on book II of the Prior Analytics, on the Posterior Analytics, on the Physics, on the De caelo and on the De generatione et corruptione have been lost, some of which were certainly known to the Arab Peripatetics. The aim pursued by A. is to expound the doctrine of the philosopher of Stagira and to defend it from the objections of adversaries, especially the Stoics. For this he deserved to be called by the other Greek expositors "the commentator" par excellence, and was regarded as a "second Aristotle". The influence he exercised on the other commentators, both Greek and Arab, is very notable, so much so that Averroes himself, who often combats him, does not deny that he "was one of the good expositors" of Aristotelian thought, and informs us that his contemporaries did not consider a philosopher perfect "nisi qui est Alexandreus" (Averroes, De anima, III; comm. 14).

Insisting on the criticism that Aristotle had made of Plato's separate ideas, A. affirms that universal concepts would be nothing if they were not thought. This has led some to see in him a nominalist. He does not, however, repudiate the Aristotelian theory of abstraction. This, according to him, is accomplished through the action of the agent intellect, which is a separate substance in which are the ideas and forms of all things; indeed he calls it outright "the first cause", that is, God. As he had heard from Aristotle of Messina, this intellect penetrates into them according to the mode and properties of each. Before being in matter, the forms are in the agent intellect. Through abstraction, the human intellect contemplates the pure forms, liberated from matter, by the light of the agent intellect which unites itself to it. But what is the human intellect? With Aristotle he distinguishes a threefold intellect: the intellect that is a pure potency or disposition to understand, and this he calls the natural intellect (φυσικός) or material (ὁλικός), because of the similarity with matter which is in potency to becoming all things; the acquired intellect, already actualized by the idea and ready to understand and reason; the agent intellect, which is the active cause thanks to which the material intellect passes from potency to act. While the natural or material intellect is a disposition or aptitude of the soul, which is the form of the body, to understand, and therefore is in us, just as the acquired intellect is likewise in us, the agent intellect is instead outside us, and enters into us and operates from outside. But since the soul, of which the material intellect is a capacity, is a form of the body and inseparable from it, it follows that with the corruption of the body, its form is also corrupted, and nothing remains of the material intellect and of the acquired intellect, that is, of that which corresponds to individual consciousness. Only the agent intellect is immortal and eternal. This interpretation of Aristotle's thought was combated by Themistius, by Averroes and by St. Thomas, from quite different points of view. It was accepted instead by those who called themselves precisely Alexandrists. It should be remembered, however, that G. Pico della Mirandola, in the first of the eight Conclusiones secundum Alexandrum Aphrodisium, and Agostino Steuco of Gubbio (Perenn. Philos., Basel 1542, bk. IX, coll. 21-22), attempted to vindicate the Aphrodisian from the accusation of having denied the immortality of the soul.

All the writings that still remain of the Aphrodisian, already printed in Venice in Greek and in Latin translations, at the end of the 15th century and in the first half of the 16th, have been printed in critical editions in Berlin in the Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, I-III (the commentaries), and in the Supplementum aristotelicum (the minor writings and special dissertations), II.

Bruno Nardi