Syrianus

I don't want to repeat everything I've already said in the review of the first volume of Syrianus' commentary; background info on Syrianus can be found there. I will say that the commentary on these chapters is even more substantive in terms of it's defense of Plato and in it's criticisms of Aristotle. It also provides more details in regards to Syrianus' own Neo-Platonist system. I noted parallels between Proclus and Syrianus while I was reading this work and Proclus' commentary on the Parmenides.

It's in these chapters of the Metaphysics (i.e. 13 and 14) where Aristotle is at his most polemical towards Platonism. It's here where he attacks the idea of number-forms. Most of Syrianus' defenses of Plato here are pretty easily summed up: Aristotle consistently tries to conflate the super-essential numbers of Pythagoreanism/Platonism with numbers relating to quantity and magnitude. The monad and the dyad are not to be confused as relating to this mundane use of numbers except in a very tangential way. Once one has this in mind, most of Aristotle's criticisms are null and void.

In the previous commentary, Syrianus accused Aristotle of having no unifying element to his catagories; the most brutal of Syrianus' criticisms of Aristotle here is where he not only uses Aristotle to refute Aristotle (i.e. showing contradictions in his philosophical system), but when he accuses Aristotle of having a system devoid of mind (nous). He's basically accusing Aristotle of being un-philosophical--OUCH! Obviously, having Platonist sympathies myself, I certainly find myself alligned far more with Syrianus than with Aristotle.

As I said in my review to the first volume of this commentary, for anyone who wants to acquaint themselves with how Neo-Platonists dealt with Aristotle's anti-Platonic views, this is pretty much the essential source for that. Recommended.… (meer)

Not all of this work is equally as interesting, but the parts that are, make it worthy of a good review and make it worth recommending.

Syrianus was a later Neo-Platonist and was the teacher of both Proclus and Hermeias. Many of his works have disappeared and a lot of his Neo-Platonist thought most likely survives in the one commentary we have of Hermeias and the numerous extant works of Proclus. What we do have of Syrianus is his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics.

For anyone that is curious to know how the later Neo-Platonists dealt with Aristotle, this commentary is a primary source. It shouldn't be surprising that the Neo-Platonists disagreed with Aristotle on a number of topics, but they also utilized him where they felt his philosophy was compatible with Plato. They seemingly accepted his categories, but also used them in contrasting ways. Here, I thought it was quite interesting that Syrianus pointed out that it is difficult to find any unifying subtance (or principle) in Aristotle's categories: as one ascends to genera, the categories become more abstract, even if more general and, seemingly, more codifying; and when one descends into species, one finds plurality and division with no apparent unifying principle. Aristotle rejected the Platonic doctrine of forms, but he was not able to show exactly what brought his categories into cohesion. Syrianus' criticism is incredibly poignant and interesting. Aristotle's genera are abstract and his species are manifold. There really seems to be no way for Aristotle to advocate cohesion of the categories without appealing to some abstract principle such as Plato's forms.

There may not be a lot here directly relevant to Syrianus' own Neo-Platonist system, but he covers a lot of ground in discussing the relationship between Aristotle and Plato (or, I should say, the Neo-Platonist interpretation of Plato). For those who are interested in how Neo-Platonists responded to Aristotelian criticisms, this book is essential reading.… (meer)