Simplicius

Neoplatonist commentator, pupil of Ammonius and Damascius, whose long commentary on Aristotle’s Categories was known in Arabic to the Baghdad logician Ibn Suwār.

Life

Simplicius was born in Cilicia, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, around 480. He was educated by Ammonius son of Hermeias at Alexandria and by Damascius at Athens. After the emperor Justinian’s edict of 529 against the teaching of philosophy and astronomy, he went with Damascius and six other Neoplatonists to the court of the Persian king Khusraw I (Chosroes) at Ctesiphon; a peace treaty of 532 allowed them to leave Persia safely. He died around 560.

His commentary on the Categories survives in Greek (ed. Kalbfleisch, CAG 8, 1907). Its introduction sets out the preliminary points (kephalaia) that the Neoplatonic schools discussed before reading the Categories, the first Aristotelian text in their course, and it holds that a good commentator should look past the wording to the underlying harmony between Plato and Aristotle. He also wrote commentaries on other works of Aristotle, among them On the Soul.

His Categories commentary is mentioned in the Arabic bio-bibliographical sources and was known to Ibn Suwār, the ‘editor’ of the so-called Organon of Baghdad (D’Ancona). The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that his commentaries on the Categories and On the Soul seem to have been read mainly by scholars in Arabic and Syriac, and that Arabic philosophers, like Latin ones, used Simplicius to defend the harmony of Plato and Aristotle.

Works

• Commentary on the Categories — üzerine AristotelesSurvives in Greek; known in Arabic to Ibn Suwār. English translation of chapters 1–4 by Michael Chase (2003).şerh

Reception

Helmut Gätje’s study ‘Simplikios in der arabischen Überlieferung’ (1982) surveys his Arabic reception (cited in SEP).

There is some evidence for a lost commentary of his on the first book of Euclid’s Elements, possibly an expanded version of Proclus’ commentary (SEP).