Simplicius: On Aristotle's Categories 1-4

their disappointing Persian adventure. Up until recently, scholars had supposed that they returned either to Athens or to Alexandria. In a series of recent publications, however, Michel Tardieu has suggested—on the grounds of evidence too complex to discuss here—that they instead retired to the Mesopotamian city of Harran (ancient Carrhae), where they established a philosophical school that survived at least until 1081, some four centuries after the Arab conquest of the Persian Empire. Should this controversial hypothesis be correct, then our seven Neoplatonists—among them Simplicius and his master Damascius—acquire even greater historical importance, as they would have been well situated to provide a major conduit for the transfer of Greek science and philosophy to the Arab world. We know nothing of the date or place of Simplicius’ death.

We can evaluate Simplicius’ life in a variety of ways. He can be seen as a pathetic reactionary, vainly attempting to keep a dying paganism alive as he is chased around—and out of—the Byzantine Empire by an inexorably triumphant Christianity. On the other hand, there is a sense in which he and his Neoplatonist colleagues were victorious in their defeat by virtue of the influence their ideas had on posterity. Whether or not Tardieu’s hypothesis is correct, there is no doubt that Simplicius’ works, in particular his Commentary on the Categories of Aristotle, were known in translation to the Arab world, where Simplicius had the reputation of an astronomer and mathematician with numerous disciples who named themselves after him. His influence on the Byzantine world was immense, and the scholars of eleventh- to thirteenth-century Constantinople possessed and studied more of Simplicius’ work than is possible for us today. The conflict between paganism and Christianity, as reflected in Simplicius’ polemic with his younger Christian contemporary John Philoponus, was a dominant factor in Simplicius’ life.

2. Works

By the time of Simplicius, philosophy had long since ceased to be what it had been at its inception: the investigation of Being and the world, initiated by an individual of genius (the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, etc.) and transmitted to an intimate circle of disciples. Since at least the time of Plotinus (died c. AD 270), and probably well before, philosophy had taken on the form of exegesis: critical explanation or interpretation of a text. Henceforth, it was held that all truth had been discovered long ago by a handful of men sent by the gods—Orpheus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, but above all Plato—and that the task of philosophy was the correct interpretation of the writings of these divine men. This tendency became so systematized that by the time of Proclus (died c. AD 485), a complete reading