Dexippus (philosopher)

Dexippos ( Greek  Δέξιππος Déxippos , Latin Dexippus ) was a late antique philosopher of the Neoplatonic direction. He lived in the 4th century and wrote a commentary on the categories of Aristotle .

Life

Very little is known about the life of Dexippus. He was a student of the famous Neo-Platonist Iamblichus of Chalkis , who taught in Syria , probably in Apamea on the Orontes . Iamblichus wrote him a letter about dialectics , a fragment of which has been preserved in Johannes Stobaios . What is certain is that Dexippus was active as a philosophy teacher.

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The only known work by Dexippus is his commentary on the categories of Aristotle. It is written in the form of a dialogue between the author and his young student Seleucus, with the student raising the problems and the teacher solving them. The first two books are completely preserved, the third only partially. The first book contains 40 chapters each dedicated to a problem, the second 42. Of the 40 chapters of the third book, the first ten have survived in full, of the remaining thirty only the headings are available (which are probably not authentic). If the work dealt with the entire category theory, its scope must originally have been a multiple of the text received.

At the beginning, Dexippos points out that he does not want to break into new philosophical territory with his own knowledge and compete with the earlier commentators. Rather, he is content to clarify a number of controversially discussed questions. In his answers he relies heavily on the category comments by Porphyrios and Iamblichus, all of which have been lost except for fragments. With the loss of these commentaries, Dexippus' work, despite its lack of originality, has a relatively high value as a historical source of philosophy. It is not a mere introductory text explaining the wording of the categories and eliminating ambiguity, but Dexippos discusses difficult problems. Of particular interest to him is the central question from the Neoplatonic point of view of the ontological status of the categories. He represents the common position of the Neo-Platonists, according to which the classification of categories is not suitable for capturing the things that are, but is an adequate means of classifying the phenomena that can be perceived by the senses.

In the second and third books, Dexippus deals with Plotin's objections to Aristotle's theory of categories. In doing so, he not only deals with arguments that can be found in Plotin's Enneades , but also with considerations that Porphyrios, as a pupil of Plotinus, probably knew from his oral lessons and used them in his lost commentary. Dexippos also takes into account stoic criticism of the theory of categories.

In his comment, Dexippus wanted to show that Platonic and Aristotelian ideas can be reconciled. Porphyry had in his large, non-preserved categories defends the theory of categories to Plotinus objections -Comment, and Dexippos' teacher Iamblichos was strongly advocated it. Dexippus shared this view, which prevailed in late ancient Neo-Platonism. While Iamblichus sought to refute Plotin's arguments against the theory of categories, Dexippus tried to make plausible his view that in reality the positions of Plotinus and Aristotle are not as far apart as Plotin's anti-Aristotelian argumentation suggests.

reception

In the early 6th century the work of Dexippus was still known in the Neoplatonic school of philosophy in Athens; It was available to the philosopher Simplikios who worked there. Simplikios probably had access to a manuscript that contained the full text. However, he paid little attention to this source; presumably he did not use them at all, for he was of the opinion that Dexippus had hardly added anything new to the older category comments from Porphyrios and Iamblichos .

Dexippus was unknown to the Latin scholarly world of the Middle Ages. His lost work was not rediscovered until the Renaissance . The humanist Giovanni Bernardo Feliciano (Johannes Bernardus Felicianus), who translated a number of ancient Greek writings into Latin in the first half of the 16th century, made a Latin translation of Dexippus' Commentary on Categories , which was in Venice in 1546 and in Paris in 1549 has been printed. Leonhard Spengel published the first edition of the Greek text in 1859.

Text editions and translations

• Adolf Busse (Ed.): Dexippi in Aristotelis categorias commentarium (= Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca Vol. 4 Part 2). Georg Reimer, Berlin 1888 (critical edition)
• Johannes Bernardus Felicianus: Dexippus: In defensionem praedicamentorum Aristotelis adversus Plotinum . Introduction by Anja Heilmann and Charles Lohr. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2008, ISBN 978-3-7728-1234-7 (reprint of the Paris 1549 edition of Felicianus' Latin translation)
• John M. Dillon : Dexippus, On Aristotle Categories . Duckworth, London 1990, ISBN 0-7156-2242-0 (English translation)

literature

• Georges Leroux: Dexippe . In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Vol. 2, CNRS Éditions, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-271-05195-9 , pp. 748-749
• Jan Opsomer, Bettina Bohle, Christoph Horn : Iamblichos and his school. In: Christoph Riedweg et al. (Ed.): Philosophy of the Imperial Era and Late Antiquity (= Outline of the history of philosophy . The philosophy of antiquity. Volume 5/2). Schwabe, Basel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7965-3699-1 , pp. 1349–1395, 1434–1452, here: 1393–1395, 1451 f.

Remarks

1. ↑ Of the two categories of comments by Porphyry, the only fragmentary “large” one (dedicated to Gedalios) was the one on which Dexippus relied.
2. ↑ See also Pierre Hadot : The harmony of Plotinus and Aristotle according to Porphyry . In: Richard Sorabji (Ed.): Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence , 2nd, revised edition, London 2016, pp. 133–149 (see pp. XXI – XXIII).
3. ↑ Paul Henry: Trois apories oral de Plotinus sur les Catégories d'Aristote . In: Zetesis , Antwerp 1973, pp. 234-265; Paul Henry: Apories orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote . In: Jürgen Wiesner (Ed.): Aristoteles - work and effect , Vol. 2, Berlin 1987, pp. 120–156; John M. Dillon: Dexippus, On Aristotle Categories , London 1990, p. 9 and note 5, pp. 12-14.
4. ^ Pierre Aubenque: Plotin et Dexippe, exégètes des Catégories d'Aristote . In: Aristotelica. Mélanges offerts à Marcel de Corte , Bruxelles / Liège 1985, pp. 7–40, here: 28–40.
5. ↑ That Simplikios did not use Dexippus' commentary at all, think John M. Dillon: Dexippus, On Aristotle Categories , London 1990, p. 11 and Paul Henry: Apories orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote . In: Jürgen Wiesner (Ed.): Aristoteles - work and effect , Vol. 2, Berlin 1987, pp. 120–156, here: 122.