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THEMISTIUS AGAINST PORPHYRY (?) ON ‘WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2021

Robert Roreitner
Robert Roreitner*
Affiliation:
Charles University in Prague
*
robert.roreitner@ff.cuni.cz
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Abstract

This article sheds new light on Themistius’ argument in what is philosophically the most original (and historically the most influential) section of his extant work, namely On Aristotle's On the Soul 100.16–109.3: here, Themistius offers a systematic interpretation of Aristotle's ‘agent’ intellect and its ‘potential’ and ‘passive’ counterparts. A solution to two textual difficulties at 101.36–102.2 is proposed, supported by the Arabic translation. This allows us to see that Themistius engages at length with a Platonizing reading of the enigmatic final lines of De anima III.5, where Aristotle explains ‘why we do not remember’ (without specifying when and what). This Platonizing reading (probably inspired by Aristotle's early dialogue Eudemus) can be safely identified with the one developed in a fragmentary text extant only in Arabic under the title Porphyry's treatise On the soul. While Themistius rejects this reading, he turns out to be heavily influenced by the author's interpretation of the ‘agent’, ‘potential’ and ‘passive’ intellect. These findings offer us a new glimpse into Themistius’ philosophical programme: he is searching for an alternative to both the austere (and, by Themistius’ lights, distorted) Aristotelianism of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the all too Platonizing reading of Aristotle adopted by thinkers such as Porphyry.

Keywords

ThemistiusAristotelianismPlatonismDe animaintellectimmortality
Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , May 2021 , pp. 379 - 385
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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Footnotes

Many thanks to the participants of the workshop ‘Theophrastus on νοῦς’ at HU Berlin in June 2019, where the main ideas of this paper were presented and discussed for the first time. I would like to thank, above all, Stephen Menn, who organized this workshop and served, so to speak, as the midwife of this paper. Thanks also to Nicholas Aubin, who helped me with understanding the intricate structure of the Arabic translation of Themistius at In De an. 101.36–102.2, as well as to the anonymous referee of CQ for valuable comments. This work has been supported by Charles University Research Centre programme No. 204053.

References

1 There are other passages where Themistius is offering an original and insightful discussion of Aristotle's thought (see below, n. 18), but none comes even close to the intricacy and audacity of In De an. 100.16–109.3.

2 This can be further fleshed out either in a Platonist or in an anti-Platonist way, that is, either as asking why we first do not remember and need to recollect or as asking why recollection is impossible. The former will play an important role below. For the latter, see Menn, S., ‘From De Anima III 4 to De Anima III 5’, in Guyomarc'h, G., Louguet, C. and Murgier, C. (edd.), Aristote et l’âme humaine: Lectures de ‘De anima’ III offertes à Michel Crubellier (Leuven, 2019), 95–155, at 140–1Google Scholar.

3 Alexander of Aphrodisias, De an. 90.14–16; cf. 90.23–91.5.

4 Heinze, R., Themistii In libros Aristotelis de anima paraphrasis (Berlin, 1899)Google Scholar, ad loc.

5 He seems to have the following text in mind: ὥστε παρηνέχθησαν ἅπαντες τῶν δοκούντων τῷ φιλοσόφῳ, ὅσοι μὴ περὶ τοῦ ποιητικοῦ νοῦ ἀπορεῖν αὐτὸν καὶ διαλύειν ᾠήθησαν.

6 Moraux, P., ‘Le De Anima dans la tradition grecque: quelques aspects de l'interpretation du traité, de Théophraste à Thémistius’, in Lloyd, G.E.R. and Owen, G.E.L. (edd.), Aristotle on Mind and the Senses: The Proceedings of the 7th Symposium Aristotelicum (Cambridge, 1978), 281–324, at 324 n. 137Google Scholar.

7 Schroeder, F.M. and Todd, R.B., Two Greek Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect (Toronto, 1990)Google Scholar; and Themistius, On Aristotle's On the Soul, transl. R.B. Todd (Ithaca, NY, 1996).

8 M.C. Lyons, An Arabic Translation of Themistius, Commentary on Aristoteles, De Anima (Oriental Studies 2) (Thetford, 1973). See already Lyons, M.C., ‘An Arabic translation of the commentary of Themistius’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17 (1955), 426–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Browne, G.M., ‘Ad Themistium Arabum’, ICS 11 (1986), 223–45Google Scholar.

10 Ballériaux, O., Thémistius. Son interpretation de la noétique aristotélicienne (Liege, 1941)Google Scholar, 183 n. 1.

11 Ballériaux, O., ‘Thémistius et l'exégèse de la noétique aristotélicienne’, Revue de Philosophie ancienne 7 (1989), 228–9Google Scholar; Ballériaux, O., ‘Thémistius et le néoplatonisme. Le ΝΟΥΣ ΠΑΘΗΤΙΚΟΣ et l'imortalité de l’âme’, Revue de Philosophie ancienne 12 (1994), 171–200, at 178–9 n. 23Google Scholar.

12 From the extant writings of Alexander, it is not possible to say for sure what his understanding of Aristotle's question at De an. III.5 430a23–5 was. It may well be that he thought the question is about forgetting knowledge that we once had and so making errors in a field in which we were once experts, i.e. (i). This seems to have been Theophrastus’ understanding: see Themistius, In De an. 108.18–28, that is, fr. XII (B), according to E. Barbotin, La théorie aristotélicienne de l'intellect d'après Théophraste (Louvain, 1954); or fr. 320A (part), according to W. Fortenbaugh, P. Huby, R. Sharples and D. Gutas (edd.), Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1992).

13 Kutsch, W., ‘Ein Arabisches Bruchstück aus Porphyrios (?), ΠΕΡΙ ΨΥΧΗΣ, und die Frage des Verfassers der “Theologie des Aristoteles”’, Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph 31 (1954), 265–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 I refer to pages and lines in the article quoted in n. 13 (lines are not marked by Kutsch himself).

15 If, as seems to be the case, Themistius is exploiting this Porphyrean (?) thought in his In De anima, he introduces at least one important innovation: he does not identify φαντασία with the passive intellect itself but rather with its proximate matter (see 100.30; for a potential indirect Porphyrean [?] inspiration behind this move, see [c] below). The identification of the passive intellect with φαντασία is common in Proclus, who is here probably drawing on Porphyry: see e.g. Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic [In Remp.] II 52.4–8 and 107.14–108.16, or his Commentary on the Timaeus I 244.11–22 and III 158.5–11.

16 Plotinus, Enn. IV.3.4.18–21.

17 What should we make of the plural ἅπαντες … ὅσοι at In De an. 101.36–7 (a question raised by CQ's referee)? Such a plural is not uncommon in Themistius when criticizing some view, even though this view can quite safely be traced back to a concrete individual (this individual may have had followers and the plural may also serve the function of making Themistius’ attack less personal). At In De an. III.5 102.36–103.19, for instance, Themistius introduces his attack on the reading of De an. III.5 that seems to go back to Alexander of Aphrodisias by referring to οἱ τὸν πρῶτον θεὸν λέγεσθαι παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ τὸν ποιητικὸν νοῦν ὑπολαμβάνοντες (102.36–7). In his polemic with ‘a critic of Aristotle’, i.e. probably Porphyry (see n. 18 below), at In De an. I.3 16.19–18.37 Themistius also occasionally switches from the singular to the plural; see especially 18.30–7 (cf. 17.12–16). For a similar switch, see also In De an. I.4 25.33–6; the doctrine of ensoulment here can probably be traced back to Porphyry as well, as suggested by the fragment of Contra Boethum in Euseb. Praep. evang. XV.11.2–3 (cf. Moraux [n. 6], 322 n. 114).

18 Another instance of the same strategy is Themistius’ account of knowledge acquisition (and especially concept formation) in On Aristotle's Posterior Analytics I.1 and II.19 (see R. Roreitner, ‘Themistius on concept formation’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 [forthcoming]). One more example would be Themistius’ polemic concerning the nature of perception at In De an. I.3 16.19–18.37 (reflected at In De an. I.4 27.8–29.21) with a ‘critic of Aristotle’, who is probably to be identified with Porphyry, too (so already a marginal note in Laurentianus 87,25; for more on this, see Moraux [n. 6], 320 nn. 102 and 103). It can be argued that Themistius is looking for an alternative to both Alexander's understanding of the perceptive soul as strictly impassive and a Neoplatonist account of perception as a kind of self-motion of the soul.

19 To explain this apparent asymmetry, Aristotle is reported to have used an analogy with health and illness: if incarnation is like an illness for the soul, we can perhaps better understand its forgetfulness during the embodied life and its alleged ability to remember this life after death, i.e. recovery.

20 That Themistius approached the Eudemus with a certain reservation is also suggested by In De an. III.5 107.3–4 (see n. 21 below).

21 The way in which Themistius approaches Plato's proofs of immortality is also typical of his moderate Aristotelianism. He maintains, in a conciliatory tone, that Plato's proofs work but not for the soul as intended: they only apply to the νοῦς (In De an. III.5 106.29–107.3). The same manoeuvre is undertaken with respect to the proofs presented in Aristotle's Eudemus (107.3–4).

22 I explain elsewhere why Themistius’ interpretation of Aristotle is most probably mistaken and why, none the less, he has a point in resisting Alexander's approach: ‘The νοῦς-body relationship in Aristotle's De anima’, in Fink, J.L. and Gregorić, P. (edd.), Encounters with Aristotle's Philosophy of Mind (Abingdon – New York, 2021), 247–78Google Scholar.