Biographical Note on Aristotle with a Table of his Works

in Kaldellis/Siniossoglou, The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium (forthcoming), 2017

In the prologue to his paraphrase of Aristotle's De anima, the thirteenth-century monk and scholar Sophonias famously draws a clear-cut distinction between commentaries proper and paraphrases. 1 Paraphrases differ from commentaries in that 1) the latter are longer; 2) whereas commentaries discuss each lemma of Aristotle in sections, paraphrases rephrase the text in a continuous manner; 3) they involve different authorial practices: whereas commentators distance themselves from the text, paraphrasts impersonate Aristotle himself; and 4) though both aim to elucidate Aristotle's text, the former do so by interpreting it, while the latter dismantle and then reassemble Aristotle's words. Sophonias furthers this distinction by referring to Themistios, the most famous late-antique paraphrast of Aristotle, and by promising to follow in the footsteps of Michael Psellos. 2 Sophonias' distinction rests on Simplikios' prologue to his commentary on Aristotle's Categories. 3 According to Simplikios, 1) the ideal commentator must show a vast and deep knowledge of Aristotle's work; 2) he must be impartial, neither presenting certain statements of Aristotle's as unsatisfactory, nor defending them as though he were one of Aristotle's disciples; and 3) with respect to Plato and Aristotle's allegedly different views, he must go beyond the letter (lexis) towards the real meaning (nous) of these philosophers' views in order to uncover their harmony. 4 Aristotle was read endlessly in Byzantium and received the attention of erudite scholars who more or less matched Simplikios' first requirement. However, with respect to impartiality, when facing difficult passages and regarding the differences between Plato and Aristotle, the agenda of many Byzantine Aristotelian scholars was at odds with that of Simplikios. In spite of the autonomy of the commentators' agenda, it is undeniable that the Byzantines read and interpreted Aristotle through the prism of late-antique interpreters: the Church Fathers on the one hand and the lateantique commentators on the other. 5

ELECTRYONE, 2017

In Classical antiquity, education had been formed in proportion with the social and political system of each city-state, as Aristotle briefly formulates in his work Politics (1310). Social education is the core of its political and pedagogical philosophy, aiming at shaping the worthy citizen and underlying a clear distinction between the individual (=idiotis) and the citizen (=politis), since "the whole must necessarily precede the party" (Politica 1253a19-24). His pedagogical approach focuses on an all-round psychosomatic balance and development. The system of his pedagogical philosophy is based on Ethics (Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics). The pedagogical approach presupposes experience and teaching, since virtue has two natures: the intellectual and the moral one, through which wisdom and intellect can only be achieved. The philosopher laid the principles of formal logic as the basis of the scientific research, however, Rhetoric and Poetry keep an important position, the reason being human mankind is “mimetic”. The present article starts with Aristotle’s work as a student at Plato Academy and ends with his pedagogical work on the exemplary teacher-student relationship Aristotle - Alexander. The pedagogical philosophy of Aristotle is proven as primarily practical.

Nº.:" Res Publica Litterarum". Documentos de trabajo …, 2008

The Clarendon Aristotle Series is releasing a new volume containing a translation, commentary and notes on the De Anima by Christopher Shields. This new volume offers several novelties in comparison with its predecessor in the same collection, namely, the classic work of 1968 on the De Anima by D. W. Hamlyn. The first of the items I want to mention is, evidently, an improvement: Shields' translation takes into account the whole treatise, something that Hamlyn's did not offer. For the latter skips from chapter 2 to 5 of the first book (he actually just took into account a few passages of Book I), because he thinks of it as a mere review of past opinions. In Shields' work, a complete translation is accompanied by the presentation of a commentary on those formerly missing chapters, which not only contributes to the discussion in Aristotelian scholarship (maybe in Presocratic scholarship too), but also could be useful for providing an explanation of the presence of the doxographical accounts in Aristotelian treatises. The volume, then, is divided in two main parts: the translation and the commentary. It has also an introduction to the text, focusing on the main problems that arise from the treatise; a discursive outline, which can serve as a map; a list of notes on the Greek text (mainly pointing out where the reading has changed, but rarely the reasons why); a discursive glossary on Aristotelian terminology; and the bibliography.