Alexander of Aphrodisias

Peripatetic philosopher and commentator on Aristotle, active around 200 CE, whose works were widely translated into Arabic; al-Fārābī had logical writings of his in translation, and his essay On the Conversion of Propositions survives only in Arabic.

Life

Alexander came from Aphrodisias in Caria, in south-western Asia Minor; an inscription published in 2001 calls him ‘one of the heads of the philosophical schools in Athens’. He was active in the late second and early third century CE. His treatise On Fate is dedicated to the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla in thanks for his appointment to an endowed chair, which places it within their joint reign (198–209). No dates of birth or death are known.

Of his commentaries on Aristotle’s logic, those on the first book of the Prior Analytics and on the Topics survive in Greek; those on the Categories, On Interpretation and the Posterior Analytics are lost. The Stanford Encyclopedia describes him as a defender rather than an innovator in logic: he presents Aristotle’s logic as the correct one, treats the Stoic approach as mistaken, and tries to smooth over apparent inconsistencies in Aristotle’s syllogistic. A short essay of his on the conversion of predicative propositions survives only in a damaged Arabic translation; its 2024 editors note that it contains otherwise unknown information on the early history of Aristotle’s logic.

A large part of his work reached Arabic. Several treatises lost in Greek survive only in Arabic, among them On the Principles of the All, On Providence and Against Galen on Motion, and his commentaries ‘formed a central part of the Arabic tradition’ (SEP). Translators of his works included Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq, Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn, Abū Bishr Mattā and Abū ʿUthmān al-Dimashqī, though most of what can be traced concerns natural philosophy, the soul and metaphysics rather than logic. In logic, the Stanford Encyclopedia notes that al-Fārābī had translations of ‘some logical writers from the Roman Empire, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius’, and Ibn Sīnā names him among the Greek authorities in his logical works.

Works

• Commentary on the Prior Analytics, book I — op AristotelesSurvives in Greek.commentaar
• Commentary on the Topics — op AristotelesSurvives in Greek.commentaar
• Commentaries on the Categories, On Interpretation and the Posterior Analytics — op AristotelesLost.commentaar
• On the Conversion of PropositionsSurvives only in a mutilated Arabic translation; edited with the first modern translation and a commentary by Thomas Auffret, Jonathan Barnes and Marwan Rashed (De Gruyter, 2024).werk

Reception

Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist, at the place where it lists Ammonius’ commentary on the Topics, reports that Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn translated ‘what Ammonius and Alexander have commented upon’ and that Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī made an Arabic version of that Syriac translation (D’Ancona, SEP, notes 49 and 59).

Abū ʿUthmān al-Dimashqī translated many works by or attributed to Alexander (TDV).

The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi notes that Ibn Rushd cites him 52 times in his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics and that the Islamic Peripatetics in general were influenced by him.