commentaries after 532 (it is disputed where, but provided with a sizeable library, given the
range of writers he uses). He preserves important material from early sources on astronomy
and mathematics (E, E), and meteorology (P from G’
summary), and enhances our understanding of work in ancient physics by Aristotle and
others.
With P, the focus of Platonists became otherworldly, but without fully reject-
ing nature. While the physical world is of secondary importance, their analysis of physics
is anything but irrelevant. Their perspective is religious as well as philosophical: a deeper
understanding of, and concomitant respect for, the creation was a form of worshipping
God, and an aid to achieving their ultimate goal, the “return” to God.
In explicating Aristotle’s philosophy, Neo-Platonists use commentaries as a vehicle
for philosophical and scientific thought, and studying Aristotle prepared students in the
Neo-Platonist curriculum for studying the work of P. Simplicius paraphrases and
clarifies Aristotle’s dense prose, and further develops problems and themes from his own
Neo-Platonic perspective, harmonizing Plato and Aristotle when possible. His claim that
he adds little is partly a topos, partly a matter of respect and acknowledgement of belonging
to a tradition: it does not exclude originality.
On scientific issues Simplicius does think that advances are being made (e.g. Physics com-
mentary, Corollary on Place: CAG 9 [1882] 625.2, cf. 795.33–35). He himself significantly
alters the cosmological account of Aristotle with full use of post-Aristotelian reactions inside
and outside the Peripatos. The rotation of the sphere of fire is called “supernatural.”
Starting from criticisms by the Peripatetic X and a suggestion by Origen (the
3rd c. Platonizing Christian) he makes the fifth element (aithe ̄r) influence the motion of
fire, while Aristotle considered fire to rotate according to the natural inclination of the fifth
element. He also refers to an objection, found in A A, that their
rotation on transparent spheres could not explain the occasional closeness of some planets.
Like his teacher Ammo ̄nios he made Aristotle’s thinking-god into a creator-god (Plato
Timaeus). He famously polemicizes against P about the eternity of the world.
His most original contribution is on time and place. On place, a two-dimensional surface
for Aristotle, Simplicius follows the criticism of T who wants a dynamic
instead of static concept, and with Damaskios he gives place the power to arrange the parts
of the world (which is viewed as an “organism” with “members”). I already had
postulated that place holds things together, giving each thing a unique place which moves
with it. Simplicius and Damaskios hold that the power to arrange members of an organism
is assigned to a place (e.g. Corollary on Place, pp. 636.8–13, 637.25–30), but Simplicius dis-
agrees with Damaskios’ idea that measure – a kind of mould (tupos) “into which the organ-
ism should fit” (ibid.) – gives things size and arrangement. Each thing has a unique place
(idios topos) which moves along with it (Corollary on Place p. 629.8–12).
A second excursus (to Book 4 of the Physics commentary: CAG 9, pp. 773–800), on time,
responds to Aristotle’s plain rejection of the paradoxes on whether time exists at all (accord-
ing to Aristotle its parts do not, so time itself cannot), and whether an instance can cease
to exist. The Neo-Platonists posit higher and lower time, the former being “above
change” (Iamblikhos): the higher kind is immune to paradox, while the lower kind is a
stretch of time between two instants. Simplicius reports Damaskios’ solution, but merely
agrees that time exists as something which continuously comes into being, divisible in
thought only. In the discussion on the continuum (Phys. 6) he adds his own solution that time
is infinite (without beginning or end), if viewed as a cycle.
SIMPLICIUS OF KILIKIA