Jan Filopon

Dzieła

• ok. 517Komentarz do „Fizyki” Arystotelesa

  Oparty na wykładach Ammoniosa, lecz krytyczny wobec Arystotelesa: rzucony kamień porusza się dalej dzięki nadanej mu sile, a nie dzięki powietrzu za nim, a ruch w próżni jest możliwy.

• ok. 529Przeciw Proklosowi o wieczności świata

  Osiemnaście argumentów Proklosa za wiecznym światem, rozpatrzonych po kolei: między innymi nieskończonej przeszłości nigdy nie dałoby się przebyć.

Stanowisko

Philoponus began as an editor of Ammonius and became the sharpest critic of Aristotle in antiquity. His commentary on the Physics, which contains a date corresponding to 517, rejects Aristotle’s explanation of projectile motion. A thrown stone is not pushed on by the air behind it; it keeps moving because the thrower has given it an incorporeal motive force, which gradually runs out. Against Aristotle he also argued that motion through a void is possible and would take a finite time. In Against Proclus (529) he answered eighteen arguments for an eternal world, and in Against Aristotle he attacked the aether, the special fifth element of the heavens, and the eternity of motion. One of his arguments runs: if the world had no beginning, an infinite number of years would already have passed, but an actual infinite can neither be traversed nor increased. His fellow pupil Simplicius answered him in sharp terms and denied his competence. Through Arabic translations his arguments for creation reached al-Kindi’s metaphysics, Saadia Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions and the kalam proofs of creation; Herbert Davidson traced these paths in 1969, though in part they ran through intermediaries. His idea of an impressed force has parallels in Avicenna and in the impetus theory of the Paris masters, and Galileo cited him in his early writings on motion.

Życie i kontekst

John, called Philoponus (“lover of work”), was born around 490 CE, probably in Alexandria, and worked there all his life. A Christian, he studied with the Neoplatonist Ammonius, son of Hermias, who taught Plato and Aristotle in the city’s philosophical school, and several of his commentaries are based on Ammonius’ lectures. He called himself “the grammarian”, and Arabic authors knew him as Yahya al-Nahwi, John the Grammarian. In 529, the year in which Emperor Justinian put an end to pagan philosophical teaching in Athens, he published his refutation of Proclus’ arguments for the eternity of the world; a work against Aristotle on the same question followed in the early 530s. From the 550s he wrote mainly theology, on the Miaphysite side of the disputes over the nature of Christ. His account of the Trinity was attacked as “tritheism”, and in 680–81 the Third Council of Constantinople condemned him posthumously as a heretic. He died around 570.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (517)
• Commentaries on the Categories, Prior and Posterior Analytics, On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption
• Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World (529)
• Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World (early 530s, fragments)
• On the Use and Construction of the Astrolabe
• On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi)
• The Arbiter (Diaitētēs, theology, c. 552)