Simplicius: On Aristotle's Categories 1-4

where the majority of their teaching and writing activity took place. There was, it was said, a "School of Alexandria," comprising such philosophers as Ammonius, Philoponus, and Olympiodorus, and a "School of Athens," of which the most outstanding members were Proclus and Damascius. The "Alexandrian school," it was claimed, confined their interest almost exclusively to Aristotle, whom they explained in a sober, rational way, whereas the Athenians commented primarily upon Plato and constructed elaborate, multi-tiered, hierarchical ontological systems. Simplicius, it was thought, was something of a hybrid: having begun his studies under the sober Alexandrian Ammonius, he took from that school the rational and critical approach to the explanation of Aristotle which he usually displays in his commentaries, while the fact that he had spent some time in Athens explained some of the more awkwardly prolix and complex metaphysical passages in his works.

Some scholars still hold this view, or a variant thereof; but as the Neoplatonic commentaries and treatises are re-edited and subjected to closer comparative analysis, a new view of things has begun to arise. This new approach, championed by I. Hadot, holds that the differences between the so-called "Athenian" and "Alexandrian" schools are to be explained not by any major philosophical or methodological divergences, but by the texts which each individual Neoplatonist set out to explain. Owing partly to historical accidents of textual transmission and partly to the political circumstances under which they were composed, the commentaries which have reached us from authors based in Alexandria are indeed largely devoted to Aristotle. However, where "Athenian" and "Alexandrian" commentaries on the same text can be compared—Athenian Syrianus and Alexandrian Ammonius on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, for instance, or Alexandrian Olympiodorus and Athenian Damascius on Plato’s Phaedo—we note that there is not much difference at all between the philosophical doctrines and exegetical techniques of the representatives of the two alleged "schools."

This discovery has a number of important implications. First, it implies that the doctrines expressed in the Neoplatonist commentaries are not comprehensible when taken out of context. If we do not find complex metaphysical doctrines in, say, Ammonius’ commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, then we can no longer explain this by stating that Ammonius was an Alexandrian, and therefore did not hold such doctrines. On the contrary, we must first look toward the work being commented upon for an explanation of the kind of commentary given: since the Categories was the first work read by beginning students in the Neoplatonic curriculum, a commentary on it will necessarily lack lengthy and complex expositions on topics which such students could not understand. A commentary on Aristotle’s Physics or De Anima, by contrast, can be expected to contain more expositions of metaphysical