Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 1.4-9

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Aristotle's Physics 1.4-9 explores a range of questions about the basic structure of reality, the nature of prime matter, the principles of change, the relation between form and matter, and the issue of whether things can come into being out of nothing, and if so, in what sense that is true. Philoponus' commentaries do not merely report and explain Aristotle and the other thinkers whom Aristotle is discussing. They are also the philosophical work of an independent thinker in the Neoplatonic tradition. Philoponus has his own, occasionally idiosyncratic, views on a number of important issues, and he sometimes disagrees with other teachers whose views he has encountered perhaps in written texts and in oral delivery. A number of distinctive passages of philosophical importance occur in this part of Book 1, in which we see Philoponus at work on issues in physics and cosmology, as well as logic and metaphysics. This volume contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, commentary notes and a bibliography.

Author Bio

Catherine Osborne is Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, UK. As Catherine Osborne, she is the translator of Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 1.1-3 and 1.4-9, in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, both available from Bloomsbury (2006, 2009); author of Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers: Humanity and the Human and Literatue in Ancient Philosophy (2007) and Presocratic Philosophy: a very Short Introduction (2004).