Pseudo-Aristotle

İslâmî dönem tercüme faaliyetleri (9. ve 10. asır) kapsamında Aristoteles'e atfedilen siyasete dâir ilk eser Sırru'l-Esrâr'dır. Bu eserin Ortaçağlarda Doğu'da ve Batı'da sıkça başvurulan ve bilinen bir eser olma hüviyetine sahip olmasında Aristoteles'e atfedilmesi ve İskender'e hitaben yazılması önemli bir rol oynamıştır. Ortaçağdaki yaygın kullanımına ve bilinilirliğine rağmen bu kitabın menşei üzerine sorunlar günümüze kadar gelmiştir. Her ne kadar bir sözde-Aristo metni olduğu kesinse de eserin girişindeki diğer iddialar da sorgulanmaya muhtaçtır. Söz konusu kitabın elimizdeki en eski nüshası Arapçadır ve bu nüshada tercümenin Batrîk oğlu Yuhanna tarafından yapıldığı bilgisi bulunur. Eser, Arapçadan sonra Latinceye ve birçok Avrupa lisanına tercüme edilmiş; birçok sultanın ve kralın, Doğu'nun ve Batı'nın devlet idaresi konusunda başucu kitaplarından biri olmuştur. Sırru'l-Esrâr ilgi alanı yalnızca devlet yönetimi olmayan bir siyasetnâmedir. Ele aldığı konular başta devlet yönetimi olmak üzere sırasıyla, ahlâk, devlet memurlarının tayini ve idaresi, savaş taktikleri, tıp, fizyoloji (ilm-i kıyâfet), kimya, astroloji, taşlar ve bitkiler… olmak üzere oldukça geniş bir muhtevaya sahiptir.

The Cracow Version of Pseudo-Aristotelian De proprietatibus elementorum as an Academic Textbook

Among the works attributed to Aristotle in Middle Ages concerning the natural philosophy there is a treatise on geology called De proprietatibus elementorum. From the moment it was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century, it become an important source for medieval refection on the world. However, despite its relatively small size, in the late Middle Ages it could not avoid the fate of many other Aristotelian texts – it was sometimes shortened in order to adapt it to the academic use.

One of these shortened versions of De proprietatibus elementorum is now held in Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellonska under the signature BJ 736 (ff. 230rb–323ra). Basing on prepared simple edition of this text, I will present its content, focusing mainly on the problems that its author paid close attention to. Furthermore, there will be some considerations about the text’s modified structure as well as its scientific and didactic purpose.

The ‘Sirr al-Asrār’, ‘Secret of Secrets’, is a compilation of advice on politics, medicine and hermetic arts from the tenth century that was attributed to the philosopher Aristotle, who offers his counsel to Alexander the Great. In the ‘Sirr al-Asrār’ Aristotle describes different methods to gain political harmony. The first is the Circle of Justice. This describes an equilibrium between royal power, the army, subjects and justice, which should bind these different groups. In 1232, the long version of this text was translated into Latin in the Holy Land by Philip of Tripoli, under the title ‘Secretum secretorum’. This translation was very successful in Western Europe and was frequentlyeditedandcommentedon.Thischapterdiscussesthetransmissionoftheidea of power mediated by the ‘Secretum secretorum’ between East and West, with particular reference to the concept of the Circle of Justice, and how it was adapted to new political circumstances. In doing so, it argues the case for expanding transcultural historical research, but also provides some caveats in undertaking this task.

Abstract: The pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de pomo (Book of the Apple) is part of the genre of pseudopigrapha which have enriched the Aristotelian corpus at the price of distorting Aristotle’s real teaching. The present article seeks to reevaluate the protreptic dimension of the opuscule and its connection to the tradition of philosophical exhortations, such as Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. From this perspective, we aim at reconsidering Manfred’s intention of translating the Book of the Apple by taking into account the very nature of a philosophical protreptic as manifested within both the text itself and the Prologue that Manfred attached to the Latin translation. Such an approach is motivated by our identification of a new source in Manfred’s prologue and our reattribution of the first proposition (allegedly from Liber de pomo) gathered in the Auctoritates Aristotelis.

Submitted to the conference “Die Blüte der arabischen Philosophie und ihre Früchte in Europa. Festkolloquium zum 75. Geburtstag von Gerhard Endreß” organized by Jörn Thielmann and Cleophea Ferrari in Bochum, November 26-27, 2014, this paper deals with Plotinus’ arguments against total blending (κρᾶσις δι’ ὅλων) and their reception in the formative period of Arabic philosophy. Actual dissection of a body by a body to infinity proves to be impossible: hence, only an incorporeal reality – the soul – can be omnipresent in the body. This Plotinian topic, reminiscent of the interschool polemics of the Imperial age, was transmitted to the Arabic-speaking philosophers through the adapted version of Ennead IV 7[2].

In the 9th century Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq translated from Greek into Arabic ‘The Book on the Properties of Simple Drugs’ by Galen. The IX Book contains the discussion and the description of earths, precious stones, and metals, together with biographical notes on Galen’s research. Although the quotations from this book in later medical works are quite scanty, the manuscript tradition places it in the center of the scholarly attention in 11th-10th century al-Andalus. In the same century, the ‘Book On Stones’ was composed in Arabic and attributed to Aristotle, therefore presented as a translation from Greek. This not only contains the description of many more stones and minerals in comparison to Galen, but it has also a more compilative and literary character. Some selected passages will show how these works are representative of two different streams of tradition in the Mediaeval Arabic mineralogy. This paper is intended to link up with Matteo Martelli’s—on the pharmacological properties of Galen in Greek—in a comparative approach, to show how the Arabic tradition interpreted the Greek one, in parallel with its original contributions.

Il saggio analizza la funzione di Aristotele e di alcune opere del corpus aristotelico nei capitoli veronesi e nel Rifacimento dell’Inamoramento de Orlando di Francesco Berni. In questi testi Berni dimostra familiarità con il metodo aristotelico oltre che una piena conoscenza della raccolta di questioni Problémata dello Pseudo-Aristotele. Mentre nei capitoli il procedimento sillogistico dialoga con i modi stranianti tipici del burlesco di Berni, negli esordi della riscrittura il narratore sembra ricorrere all’auctorictas del filosofo per esprimere una serie di considerazioni morali sulla base del modello ariostesco.

The doctrine of great conjunctions, first theorized by the Arab astrologer Albumasar in the De magnis coniunctionibus (Book of Religions and Dynasties), is a form of general astrology characterized by the attempt to explain events affecting the Earth as a whole or in part (e.g. cataclysms – floods of water and fire, plagues, famine, etc. – the succession of civilizations, new empires, religions and prophets) as a consequence of the mean conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter.
The paper deals with Albert the Great’s remarkable contribution to the medieval debate on great conjunctions by focusing on a few passages from his De causis proprietatum elementorum and his Politica commentary (II 6 and V 9). The potential and risks posed by this all-embracing explanation of natural phenomena and the human domain did not es- cape Albert the Great. He grasped the subversive character of the universal determinism underlying the great conjunctions, as well as their scientific value.
The first selection of his texts, mainly taken from the De causis proprietatum elementorum, establishes the scientific nature of conjunctionist theory. They elucidate its complex and sophisticated notions, describe the effects of planetary conjunctions on the sublunary world, and oppose this theory to pseudoscientific explanations of natural processes. Albert also discusses the epistemological status of conjunctionist theory, clarifying its relation- ship to other branches of astrology.
By contrast, the texts from the Politica commentary relate the great conjunctions to human history and political processes, exploring the conflict between astral determinism and human responsibility.
Astrology; Great Conjunctions; Astral Determinism; Politi- cal Astrology; Deluge; Natural Catastrophes.

Rien n’évoque moins aujourd’hui la Grèce classique que l’économie.
Les grands thèmes auxquels nous associons d’ordinaire ce lieu et cette période sont bien plutôt la cité, la politique, la démocratie et l’éducation.
Qui songerait donc à se tourner vers les rares textes philosophiques
portant sur l’oikonomia ou l’administration domestique pour comprendre
la modernité économique et, plus encore, ce qu’est l’économie ? C’est
pourtant un tel défi qui fait l’objet de ce livre : et si les philosophes Grecs
pouvaient nous éclairer aussi dans ce domaine ? Et s’ils nous donnaient une autre idée de l’économie ?
https://classiques-garnier.com/oikonomia-philosophie-grecque-de-l-economie.html

John Lydus’ De ostentis 53 preserves an interesting section dedicated to seismic phaenomena. While dealing with the explanation of the causes of earthquakes, the author appears to be following the Pneumatic school of thought, and even though there is abundance of evidence suggesting that Lydus derives much information from Pseudo-Aristotle’s Περὶ κόσμου and Apuleius’ De mundo, this paper aims at focusing on specific traits (i.e. the author’s use of particular words, as ἐξαραίωσις [«rarefaction»]) which point towards the direction of original reinterpretation of multiple sources by John Lydus.

This article presents an overview of the interpretative issues raised by three passages in the ancient naturalist literature: Theophrastus, Ign. 17; Pseudo-Aristotle, Mir. ausc. 50; Plutarch, Frig. 11 949C. These loci have already been connected by various interpreters due to their similarities and possibility of a common tradition. They all inform on an anomalous kind of lead or tin liquefaction that was allegedly observed to occur in very cold climates, possibly with the involvement of water; a phenomenon which is regarded, now as then, to be chemically implausible or at least surprising. After a re-examination of the parallels between the three passages and a discussion of the already proposed interpretations – with a focus on those which refer to “tin pest” and to the ancient lexical overlap, present in multiple languages, between tin and lead –, a new interpretative track is here proposed. This gives more relevance to water’s role in the phenomenon, which is central in the crucial parallel passage in Plutarch, QConv. VI 5 690F-691B.

Questo articolo offre una panoramica dei problemi interpretativi sollevati da tre brani della letteratura naturalistica antica: Teofrasto, Ign. 17; Pseudo-Aristotele, Mir. ausc. 50; Plutarco, Frig. 11 949C. Questi luoghi, già accostati da diversi interpreti per le loro somiglianze e la possibilità di una tradizione comune, informano su una forma di liquefazione anomala di piombo o stagno che sarebbe stata osservata in climi molto freddi, forse con il concorso dell’acqua: un fenomeno che oggi, come già allora, appare chimicamente inverosimile. Riesaminati i parallelismi fra i tre brani e discusse le interpretazioni finora proposte – con particolare riguardo per quelle che fanno riferimento alla ‘peste dello stagno’ e all’antica sovrapposizione lessicale in diverse lingue tra piombo e stagno – si suggerisce una nuova strada interpretativa per valorizzare maggiormente il ruolo dell’acqua nel fenomeno, centrale nell’importante luogo parallelo in Plutarco, Qconv. VI 5 690F-691B.

The study aims to offer new insights into the context of the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 1822. Keith Busby has recently ascribed this miscellany of Old French moral texts (sole witness of Jofroi de Waterford’s translations) to the Irish city of Waterford. The paper discusses this hypothesis, focusing on the codicological and historical aspects of the manuscripts. Moreover, the article presents my research on the (probably Anglo-Norman) redaction of the Livre de Moralitez transmitted by the codex.

In his treatise On the eternity of the world , 4-47 Philo of Alexandria sets forth a doxography of opinions of Greek philosophers on the eternity of the cosmos contrasting  the theory of its periodical generation/destruction held by Democritus, Epicurus and the Stoics (generated and destructible) with that of Aristotle (ungenerated and indestructible) and Plato’s mediating position (generated and indestructible) which has been long ago anticipated by Moses in the Book of Genesis. In chapter 39 Philo turns to what he calls the "most demonstrative and irrefutable" argument allegedly used by myriads of philosophers. “Myriad" is a rhetorical exaggeration for “well known” or used by many, Philo’s main source is Aristotle’s lost work “On philosophy” (fr.916 Gigon). This argument is based on a trichotomic division with a subsequent refutation of all three possible assumptions: if the god destroys the present world in order to create a new one, the latter can only be worse, exactly the same or better than the former.  It cannot be worse, since as the two anonymous hexameters have it, “even a woman is not deficient in sound mind to such extent as to prefer what is worse when there is something better”. The new world cannot be the same since in this case the god would behave like a small child playing on a sea shore, erecting and destroying sand hills. The whole passage reveals a striking parallelism with the arguments in favor of the immutability of god ascribed to Xenophanes in De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia, chapter 3, as well as verbal echoes of extant authentic fragments of Xenophanes. We therefore argue that not only the two hexameters, but also the whole trichotomic argument in its archaic form (including the reminiscence of the famous Homeric simile) quoted by Philo derives from the lost monotheistic poem of Xenophanes. On p. 389 we propose a hexametric reconstruction of the original verses. An important outcome of this attribution is that the Xenophanes section of MXG,ch.3-4 is indeed based on Xenophanes’ verses, although the author of MXG omits colorful similes of Xenophanes and paraphrases them in a colorless fourth century B.C. language. The naïve and somewhat sophistic character of argumentation (the god cannot behave like a woman or a child) explains why Aristotle characterized Xenophanes a “somewhat crude” thinker (ἀγροικότερος) in comparison with the strict logic of Parmenides. Another important outcome is that Xenophanes used rationalistic dialectical argument in his monotheistic theology that resemble to some extent the Eleatic style of philosophising. Burnet’s radical separation of Xenophanes from the Eleatic school and from his second home city Elea, contradicted by all extant ancient evidence, was a serious mistake. Xenophanes can be adequately characterized as a Proto-Eleatic thinker.

Marsilio Ficino and the Anti-­Averroist Debate on Providence. This article
aims to reconstruct Aristotle’s influence on Marsilio Ficino’s Theologia Platonica, focusing especially on the theme of providence. First, it highlights the “platonization” that Aristotelianism underwent during the 15th century, not least at the hands of Ficino himself. Despite Averroes’ misguided interpretation of various Aristotelian treatises, Ficino nonetheless countenanced the possibility of philosophical harmony between Plato and Aristotle, although the latter had a propaedeutic function with respect to the study of the former. Second, this article focuses on the notion of providence, at least as it was understood by Ficino. Therefore, the research considers how in explicit reference to the pseudo-­Aristotelian treatise De mundo, Ficino credited Aristotle with a
providentialist theory, accepting a thesis which during the Renaissance was believed to be Aristotelian. Ficino’s acceptance and reinterpretation of this position is here investigated in detail.

The present study proposes the edition of the Venetian translation, previously unpublished, of the "Epistola ad alexandrum de dieta servanda" recorded in the manuscripts Krakow, Jagiellonian Library, Ital. Quart. 62, and Naples, National Library, G VIII 67. After a brief introduction, the text is compared with the Latin and Tuscan traditions, and analysed from a linguistic point of view. The edition is based on the Krakow manuscript with the concurrent lessons of the Naples manuscript in note.

The pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Peri kosmou or De mundo is not a text of great philosophical interest, but it was very important for French Renaissance culture, in a time when none of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy was available in French. This short pedagogical text was translated into Latin by Guillaume Budé in 1526, and into French for the first time as early as 1541 by the French grammarian Louis Meigret (Le Livre du monde faict par Aristote et envoyé à Alexandre le Grand). In spite of this first French translation, the Calvinist theologian Lambert Daneau translated it once more (Traitté du monde et des plus nobles et principales parties d’icelui) and published it in a book entitled La physique françoise (1581), along with Basil of Cæsarea’s Homilies and fragments of John of Damascus. This article focuses on Daneau’s translation, which raises several questions: Why publish the translation in a book called Physique françoise? What were the issues of such a translation, made in order to restore a pious, Mosaic, natural philosophy? Did the context shape the way Daneau translated the text? What are the differences and similarities both with Meigret’s translation and with the humanistic Latin paraphrases by Budé?

By looking at the representation of Aristotle in the Secret of Secrets, this article shows how the shared cultural inheritance of Classical civilization made the exchange of ideas between Islam and Latin Christendom possible. This sharing also allowed some aspects of pre-Islamic, Sasanian political thought, such as the circle of justice, to be diffused in the Latin west.

Este libro presenta una visión de conjunto sobre la transmisión de la filosofía neoplatónica griega a la filosofía musulmana y a la escolástica cristiana medievales, desde la figura de Aristóteles y del Pseudo Aristóteles; para ello se ha hecho una comparación terminológica y filosófica de los textos y conceptos en lengua griega de las Enéadas de Plotino y los Elementos de Teología de Proclo con los textos árabes y latinos del Liber de causis, el comentario latino de Tomás de Aquino a este último, y con múltiples textos árabes de pensadores musulmanes medievales como Al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, al-Gazalī, Ibn Sīnā e Ibn Rushd y los judíos Juan Ibn Dawud y Maimónides, algunos de los cuales han sido no traducidos al español. Ésta es una investigación histórica y filológica comparativa de los conceptos filosóficos de unidad y emanación desde la cosmología, la henología y la filosofía

Encuéntralo en https://www.amazon.com/-/es/dp/B0948GH59N

De terrae motuum indice secundum Ioannis Lydi testimonium hic disputatur,
utrum terrae motuum genera in De ostentis servata Posidonio tribuenda sint, ut Theiler
proposuit, an magis composito rationis doctrinaeque processu (e.g. Pseudaristotelis Περὶ
κόσμου et Apuleii De mundo libris collatis) Lydo ascribenda, quod probabilius argumentis
permultis demonstratur, ex quibus medici verborum usus praecipue illustrari libet.

A középkori magyar királyok könyvtáráról és az általuk megrendelt könyvekről Mátyás király Biblioteca Corviniájától eltekintve viszonylag kevés ismeretekkel rendelkezünk. A korábbi kutatások alapján az Anjou időszakból Nagy Lajos királynak két bizonyosan számára elkészített kódexünk maradt fent: a jól ismert Képes Krónika és az oxfordi Bodleian Libraryben őrzött pszeudo-arisztotelészi S ecretum Secretorum (MS Hertford College 2 jelzeten) vagyis Titkok titka. Oxfordi kutatóútjaim során lehetőségem volt tanulmányozni a Nagy Lajos képmását is tartalmazó kéziratot, így előadásomban bemutatom a kódexről az eddigi kutatástörténeti ismereteinket és a X.. századi arab eredetű királytükör tartalmi pontjait. Mivel ismert, hogy Küküllei János felhasználta krónikájához a Secretum Secretorum egy példányát, és a korábbi kutatásokból hiányzott a kódex margináliáinak vizsgálata, így bemutatom a kódexben rejtőző kommentárokat (későbbi korok bejegyzéseit is), köztük Küküllei széljegyzeteivel. A másik, korábban csupán Friedrich Wurms által vizsgált terület, az oxfordi kódex kéziratcsoportja. Wurms összegyűjtötte disszertációjában a középkori Secretum secretorum kéziratokat, és az oxfordi kódexet az ún. „átrendezett kéziratok” csoportban helyezte el, amely ezzel együtt összesen négy kódexből áll. A kategórián belül az első egy XIV. század második felében készült itáliai kódex, egy bejegyzés titulatúrája szerint Bölcs Róbert apjáé, II. (Sánta) Károly (1285–1309) nápolyi királyé lehetett. A második kézirat Párizsban, a Bibliothèque national de France-ban található és Jean Juvénal des Ursins, reimsi érseké lehetett. A harmadik egy XV. századi müncheni kódexben van és noha illuminált kézirat, kronológiailag ez áll a legtávolabbi kapcsolatban a Lajos-féle változattal. Ezek vizsgálata közelebb vihet ahhoz a kérdéshez, hogy Lajos kódexét, amely a Képes Krónika műhelyében készült, valójában milyen kéziratról másolhatták és a fennmaradt Secretum secretorum példányok történetében, hogyan helyezhető el?