Description

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - Book Six of Aristotle's Physics, which concerns the continuum, shows Aristotle at his best. It contains his attack on atomism, which forced subsequent Greek and Islamic atomists to reshape their views entirely. It also elaborates Zeno�s famous paradoxes of motion and of stopping and starting. -- David Konstan�s translation is the first into any modern language of Simplicius� commentary on Book Six of the Physics. Simplicius, the greatest ancient authority on Aristotle�s Physics whose works have survived to the present, lived in the sixth century A. D. in Athens and taught at the Academy founded by Plato until the emperor Justinian�s decree barred pagan philosophers from posts in schools of higher learning. Simplicius produced detailed commentaries on several of Aristotle�s works. Those on the Physics alone come to over 1300 pages in the original Greek. They preserve not only a centuries-old tradition of ancient scholarship and thinking concerning Aristotle but also fragments of lost works by other thinkers, including both the presocratic philosophers and Aristotle�s successors such as Eudemus and Theophrastus. Simplicius was of a Neoplatonic persuasion himself, and he reveals Neoplatonist views on the soul�s need for embodiment and on the possibility of bodies passing through each other. His brilliant close reading of the lectures of Aristotle on the nature of the physical world has been the basis of all subsequent understanding of Aristotle�s thought. -- Konstan translates Simplicius literally, but supplements the text with explanatory words and phrases, and with notes on obscure passages. In numerous places, readings slightly different from those of the Greek edition have been adopted, and these are noted and defended in a separate index. Extensive Greek-English and English-Greek indices, as well as a subject index and an index of sources cited in the text, increase the usefulness of this volume. Konstan�s summaries of Aristotle�s argument, which Simplicius merely presupposes, make the translation a more self-contained work than the original. -- The Physics contains some of Aristotle�s best and most enduring work, and Simplicius� commentaries are essential to an understanding of it. This volume makes the commentaries accessible at last to all scholars, whether or not they know classical Greek. It will be indispensable for students of classical philosophy, and especially of Aristotle, as well as for those interested in the philosophical thought of late antiquity. It will also be welcomed by students of the history of ideas and philosophers interested in problems of mathematics and motion. ISBN 9780801422386