On Aristotle on the Intellect. Ancient Commentators on Aristotle.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Very good and clean. - Sehr gut und sauber. - This is a special volume. In 1989, William Charlton completed a very skilful translation which made the best possible sense of Latin that was often unintelligible. He equipped it with an introduction which brought out the unique views of Philoponus on sense perception, imagination and thinking and revealed how far Philoponus diverged from Aristotle. He also offered an up to date verdict on vexed questions of authenticity. That was already a notable achievement. At that point Fernand Bossier spotted that there was something wrong with the Latin. The Greek original of Philoponus is lost. What survives is the Latin translation made in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. Where the Latin translation reads, unintelligibly and ungrammatically, �if not� (si non), William of Moerbeke must have had before his eyes a Greek text that read �if not� (ei me). That is equally unintelligible and ungrammatical. But it can easily be explained as a corruption of the Greek word eide - the Platonic Forms - which makes perfect sense. Bossier�s detective work pierces through the unintelligible Latin to the original Greek. On the basis of such conjectures and others that take account, for example, of William of Moerbeke�s own idiosyncratic habits of abbreviation, Bossier suggested a new text at many points. Charlton had sometimes anticipated, sometimes accepted and sometimes dissented from the suggestions. The resulting agreed emendations are listed at the end and explanations are incorporated into the footnotes. The emended passages are retranslated by Charlton, and the indexes include Greek-Latin equivalences. The result is much more than a translation of one of the most interesting ancient commentaries on Aristotle. In addition, we see a medieval translator at work and we have the basis of a new text, so that we may often know for the first time what Philoponus originally said. Finally, Charlton�s philosophically sensitive introduction reveals the theories that Philoponus developed in Philosophy of Mind and how foreign they appear when attributed, as they are by Philoponus, to Aristotle. The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding from the following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, an independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci; Liverpool University. I should like to thank the following for their very helpful comments on the translation: Charles Burnett, Bernard Dod, Jill Kraye, Lars Mortensen, Vivian Nutton and Koenraad Verrycken. ISBN 9780715622452