John Philoponus (Greek: Ἰωάννης ὁ Φιλόπονος; AD. 490–AD. 570), also known as John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria, was a Christian and Aristotelian commentator and the author of a considerable number of philosophical treatises and theological works. A rigorous, sometimes polemical writer and an original thinker who was controversial in his own time, John Philoponus broke from the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, questioning methodology and eventually leading to empiricism in the natural sciences.
He was posthumously condemned as a heretic by the Orthodox Church in 680-81 because of his tritheistic interpretation of the Trinity.
His works were widely printed in Latin translations in Europe from the 15th century onwards. His critique of Aristotle in the Physics commentary was a major influence on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Galileo Galilei, who cited Philoponus substantially in his works.[1]
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Possibly born into a Christian family, nothing is known of his early life. Philoponus studied at the school of Alexandria and began publishing from about 510. He was a pupil and sometime amanuensis to the Neoplatonic philosopher Ammonius, who had studied at Athens under Proclus.
Philoponus’ early writings are based on lectures given by Ammonius, but gradually he established his own independent thinking in his commentaries and critiques of Aristotle’s On the Soul and Physics. In the latter work Philoponus became one of the earliest thinkers to reject Aristotle’s dynamics and propose the ‘theory of impetus’: i.e. an object moves and continues to move because of an energy imparted in it by the mover, and ceases movement when that energy is exhausted. In this erroneous but insightful theory can be found the first step towards the concept of inertia in modern physics, although Philoponus’ theory was largely ignored at the time because he was too radical in his rejection of Aristotle.
In 529 Philoponus wrote his critique Against Proclus in which he systematically defeats every argument put forward for the eternity of the world, a theory which formed the basis of pagan attack of the Christian doctrine of Creation. The intellectual battle against eternalism became one of Philoponus’ major preoccupations and dominated several of his publications (some now lost) over the following decade.
The style of his commentaries and his conclusions made Philoponus unpopular with his colleagues and fellow philosophers, and he appears to have ceased his study of philosophy around 530, devoting himself to theology instead. Around 550 he wrote a theological work On the Creation of the World as a commentary on the Bible’s story of creation using the insights of Greek philosophers and Basil the Great. In this work he transfers his theory of impetus to the motion of the planets, whereas Aristotle had proposed different explanations for the motion of heavenly bodies and for earthly projectiles. Thus Philoponus’ theological work is recognized in the history of science as the first attempt at a unified theory of dynamics. Another of his is major theological concerns was to argue that all material objects were brought into being by God (Arbiter, 52A-B). Around 553 Philoponus made some theological contributions to the Council of Constantinople concerning Christology. His doctrine on Christ’s duality, according to which in Christ remain two united substances, united but divided, is analogous to the union of the soul and body in human beings and coincides with the miaphysite school of thought. He also produced writings on the Trinity around this time.
After his death, John Philoponus was declared to have held heretical views of the Trinity and was made anathema in 680-1. This limited the spread of his ideas in the following centuries, but in his own time and afterwards he was translated into Syriac and Arabic and many of his works continued to persevere and be studied by the Arabs. Some of his works continued to circulate in Europe in Greek or Latin versions, and influenced Bonaventure. The theory of impetus was taken up by Buridan in the 14th century.
John Philoponus wrote at least 40 works on a wide array of subjects including grammar, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and theology.
The commentaries of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages aimed to teach audience. In that regard, the repetitive nature of Philoponus’ commentaries demonstrates his pedagogical awareness. Although in the abstract manner, Philoponus is chiefly focused on the concept in question.
Most of Philoponus’ early philosophical works strive to define the distinction between matter, extension, place and various kinds of change. For example, the commentary Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World represents a standardized description of Aristotelian natural philosophy[24]. Both Aristotle and Philoponus argue that in kinds of change there are differences, in their form and matter.
In Physics, Aristotle operates with the idea of places, but dismisses the existence of space. The idea that came from Plato and was developed by Aristotle has been evolved by Philoponus. Philoponus attempts to combine the idea of homogeneous space with the Aristotelian system[25]. The argument made by Philoponus is that substances by themselves require some determinate quantity for their being. Similarly to Aristotle, who rejected the immaterial things,and in contrast to Plato whose metaphysics accepted immaterial substances, Philoponus’ concept of substance refers to the material objects.
Concerning the discussion on the space, Philoponus’ claim that from every point in space is possible to draw identical figures, made him to be perceived as an innovative thinker who influenced later Renaissance scholars, for instance, Gianfranceso Pico della Mirandola and Galileo Galilei. Thus, Philoponus' idea of perspective signifies the concept of space as immaterial three-dimensional medium in which objects are located[25].
In the third book of De Anima, entitled De Intellectu, Philoponus analyzes the doctrine of the intellect. The author (Philoponus or Pseudo-Philoponus?) sets the theory on the role and functioning of the active intellect [26]. On one hand, there is the active intellect, and on the other, the idea of perception awareness or how we are aware that we are perceiving. In other words, in this reflective philosophy, there is a rationalist conclusion which emphasizes a relation between self and truth which leads to the discussion of the nature of knowledge. According to this view, the knowledge is identical to its object, since the self-awareness of perception is divorced from the irrational soul.Therefore, the understanding arises through the identification of the intellect and its object. More specifically, perception deals only with material things[27].
Philoponus has raised the central question of the scientific and philosophical Aristotle’s work on chemistry. The work called On Generation and Corruption examines the question of how is the mixture (chemical combination) possible? Philoponus’ contribution to the topic is in his new definition of potential, the third of the seven elements criteria. There are various interpretations of the theory of mixture, but it seems that Philoponus is rather refining Aristotle’s approach than rejecting it. One of interpreters of Philophonus’ work on the theory of mixture, De Haas, implies that “no element can possess a quality essential to it except to a superlative extent” [28][29].
Philoponus’ major Christological work is Arbiter. The work was written shortly before the Second Council of Constantinople of 553 [30]. It became famous in regard to its doctrine on resurrection. Similarly to ideas presented in Physics, Philoponus in the work titled Arbiter states that our corrupted bodies (material things) will be eventually brought into being (matter and form) by God [31].
Relation to Contemporaries
John Philoponus’ Christological “opus magnum” stands in the line with St. Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch [31]. Philoponus asserted the understanding of Christ as a divine and a human, in opposition to Chalcedonian authors who strove to reach a middle ground.
Influence on Later History Writing
Philoponus’ view of space as homogeneity is influenced by the Hellenic teaching of Aristotle. However, Philoponus and his contemporaries, Simplicius of Cilicia and Strato developed this concept further [25]. This concept guided the Renaissance theory of perspective, particularly the one highlighted by Leon Battista Alberti, and other architectural masters.
Editions and Translations
On words with different meanings in virtue of a difference of accent (De vocabulis quae diversum significatum exhibent secundum differentiam accentus), ed. L.W. Daly, American Philosophical Society Memoirs 151, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘On Generation and Corruption’, ed. H. Vitelli, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (henceforward CAG) XIV 2, Berlin: Reimer, 1897.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘De Anima’ ed. M. Hayduck, CAG XV, Berlin: Reimer, 1897.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘Categories’, ed. A. Busse, CAG XIII 1, Berlin: Reimer, 1898.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘Prior Analytics’, ed. M. Wallies, CAG XIII 2, Berlin: Reimer, 1905.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘Posterior Analytics’, ed. M. Wallies, CAG XIII 3, Berlin: Reimer, 1909.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘Physics’, ed. H. Vitelli, CAG XVI-XVII, Berlin: Reimer, 1887?88.
Trans. A.R. Lacey, Philoponus, On Aristotle's Physics 2, London: Duckworth, 1993.
M. Edwards, Philoponus, On Aristotle's Physics 3, London: Duckworth, 1994.
D. Furley, Philoponus, Corollaries on Place and Void, London: Duckworth, 1991.
On the Eternity of the World against Proclus (De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum), ed. H. Rabe, Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1899; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1984.
On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle (De aeternitate mundi contra Aristotelem), not extant; fragments reconstr. and trans. C. Wildberg
Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World, London: Duckworth, 1987.
Commentary on Aristotle's ‘Meteorology’, ed. M. Hayduck, CAG XIV 1, Berlin: Reimer, 1901.
Commentary on Nicomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic, ed. R. Hoche, Part I/II Wesel: A. Bagel, 1864/65, Part III Berlin: Calvary, 1867.
On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi), ed. W. Reichardt, Leipzig: Teubner, 1897.
Arbiter (Diaitêtês text with Latin trans. A. Sanda, Opuscula monophysitica Ioannis Philoponi, Beirut: Typographia Catholica PP.Soc.Jesu., 1930.
"Philoponus, Joannes". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.JOANNES PHILOPONUS (JOHN THE GRAMMARIAN), Greek philosopher of Alexandria, lived in the later part of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century of our era. The surname Grammaticus he assumed in virtue of his lectures on language and literature; that of Philoponus owing to the large number of treatises he composed. He was a pupil of Ammonius Hermiae, and is supposed to have written the life of Aristotle sometimes attributed to his master. To Philoponus are attributed a large number of works on theology and philosophy. It is said that, though he was a pupil of Ammonius, he was at first a Christian, and he has been credited with the authorship of a commentary on the Mosaic Cosmogony in eight books, dedicated to Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, and edited by Balthasar Corderius in 1630. Other authorities maintain that this, as well as the Disputatio de paschale, was the work of another author, John the Tritheist. It was perhaps this Philoponus who tried to save the Alexandrian library from the caliph Omar after Amu's victory in 639.
The more certain writings of Philoponus consist of commentaries on Aristotle. These include works on the Physica, the Prior and the Posterior Analytics, the Meteorologica, the De anima, the De generatione animalium, the De generatione et interitu and the Metaphysica. These have been frequently edited and are interesting in connexion with the adoption of Aristotelianism by the Christian Church. They seem to have embodied the lectures of Ammonius with additions by Philoponus, and are remarkable rather for elaborate care than for originality and insight. He wrote also an attack on Proclus (De aeternitate mundi). Two treatises on mathematics are ascribed to him: A Commentary on the Mathematics of Nicomachus, edited by Hoche (1864 and 1867), and a Treatise on the Use of the Astrolabe, published by Hase. The latter is the most ancient work on this instrument, and its authenticity is rendered almost certain by its reference to Ammonius as the master of the author.
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