The enquiry of physis lies in the very roots of ancient Greek thought. It spreads in divergent philosophical explorations from the Presocratic tradition to the philosophy of Late Antiquity. Despite the importance of Platonism in the history of philosophy, limited attention has been paid to the significance of the philosophy of nature in Neoplatonism. This book aims to fill this gap through a collection of essays written by eminent scholars. Part 1, ‘The General Metaphysics of Nature’, offers a general view of Neoplatonic theories on the philosophy of nature, while Part 2, ‘Platonic Approaches to Individual Sciences’, highlights the importance of these theories in individual sciences, such as physics and biology.
L. Gerson focusses on the ontological value of logos in the Enneads. Plotinus describes physis as the logos of the soul. Nature is conceived as the offspring of the world soul that produces individual souls and its logoi in the perceptible bodies. Gerson relies on key Enneadic passages in which a lower principle is a logos of a higher principle. He supports the view that when ‘y is the logos of x’, this should not be necessarily conceived as ‘y is potentially x’ but rather as ‘y is virtually x’ or ‘x is virtually y’. Virtuality signifies the ontological relation between the three hypostases and explains the hierarchical causal structure of being in Plotinus: from the dunamis of the One to the logoi of Nature.
A. Smith offers an enlightening account of the significance of physics in Porphyry with special reference to the question of body and matter. Smith initially highlights the role of physics in Porphyry's commentary on Aristotle's Physics and Plato's Timaeus. A systematic account is provided on the origins of matter, its role in the formation of the cosmos and the nature of time as the life of the soul. Smith compares Porphyry's account on hyle and physis, particularly found in the Sentences and Porphyry's fragments. He stresses Porphyry's aim to avoid dualism through the neutralisation of matter; a monistic view is maintained with the intent to emphasise the Platonic unity of being at all levels of reality.
S. Menn stresses the tension of later Neoplatonists in their attempt to harmonise Plato and Aristotle on the question of the soul. The commonly held view of the high-minded or otherworldly Plato looking up to heaven and the low-minded or this-worldly Aristotle looking down to earth is brilliantly challenged. Menn bases his analysis on Arabic terminology. In the description of divine things, for Arabic Neoplatonists, Plato without Aristotle is tashbîh (= assimilation), while Aristotle without Plato is ta‘tîl (= nullification). A middle way should be found in tanzîh (= purification) between the extremes of tashbîh and ta‘tîl. Menn underlines the reconciliation between Plato and Aristotle in later Neoplatonists, such as Hermias and Proclus, and the question of the self-moving soul found in the Phaedrus. The problem of the soul's self-subsistence is also approached through Neoplatonic interpretations of the rational soul as self-reflective, an idea which is found in Thomas Aquinas and other scholastics.
A. Lernould focusses on the notion of Nature in Proclus, with special reference to the problem of reconciliation between immanence and transcendence: i.e. how to allow Nature to function as an immanent principle of being in the bodies without loss of non-separateness. Lernould initiates the discussion by an apparent contradiction in Plato and Aristotle. While for Plato nature is described as the divisible essence that becomes in bodies (Timaeus 35a2–3), for Aristotle nature is an immanent principle of motion and rest in the natural objects (Physics 2.1). Lernould successfully recognises the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle in Proclus’ conception of Nature. After some preliminary remarks on the place of nature in the Proclean hierarchy of the hypostases, Lernould deals with the question of nature in Proclus through two interrelated approaches. Whereas nature is an intermediate hypostasis between the soul and the perceptible bodies, it is also an instrument of the gods immanent to the production, preservation and order of corporeal beings.
C. Mercer emphasises the crucial role of Platonism in the development of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Special attention is given to the cases of G.W. Leibniz and A.F. Conway. Mercer initially observes the roots of early modern natural philosophy in medieval and Renaissance Platonism and eclecticism. Platonic doctrines such as those of the Supreme Being, emanation and hierarchy, cosmic unity, harmonised plentitude and enhancement, the divine power and vitality of the souls are considered significant for many seventeenth-century thinkers. Mercer observes that Leibniz and Conway used some of these Platonic doctrines in order to replace the scholastic explanatory model of nature with the mechanical one. She concludes that both philosophers agree that the innate powers of substantial forms should be replaced with some form of extension and motion as the new explanatory tools for the understanding of the cosmos and the natural phenomena.
Mercer's contribution links the two parts of the book. I. Muller opens Part 2 with a careful exposition of Simplicius' responses to Aristotle's fifteen objections (Book 3 of De Caelo 306a1–307b18) of Plato's geometrical analysis of the four elements (earth, water, air and fire) found in the Timaeus. Muller stresses Simplicius' intention to bring Plato and Aristotle into agreement, Plato through the use of Proclus' responses to Aristotle's criticism, and Aristotle through the use of Alexander of Aphrodisias' commentary on De Caelo. Muller's intention is to highlight later Platonic trends in order to understand Plato's theory of elements through a post-Aristotelian perspective. Muller focusses on Simplicius' commentary on De Caelo, and observes in detail the cases where Simplicius agrees or disagrees with Proclus' criticism of Aristotle's objections.
J. Opsomer's essay works in the same context and offers a sophisticated analysis of Plato's geometric atomism in the Timaeus. In De Caelo, Aristotle criticised the mathematical approach of the elements on the ground that the qualities of the bodies cannot be generated by mere geometric properties. Later Neoplatonists such as Proclus and Simplicius aimed to defend Plato's geometric atomism, in response or sometimes in agreement with Aristotle. Opsomer interestingly underlines the Pythagorean approach of Proclus and Simplicius in interpreting geometric elemental atomism in qualitative terms.
C. Steel turns his attention to Plato's geography of the Phaedo myth. The only preserved Neoplatonic commentaries of the Phaedo are from Olympiodorus and his teacher Damascius. The latter seems to reflect Proclus' lost commentary on the Phaedo. Damascius' interpretation of the myth highlights not only its ethical message but also its cosmology found in the non-mythical part of the narrative and particularly the problems of earth's position, shape, stability and size. Steel concludes that Damascius' and Proclus' commentaries integrate some elements of the cosmology of Aristotle in order to demonstrate Plato's superiority.
W. offers a fascinating essay on the role of ‘spontaneous’ generation in Neoplatonic metaphysics of nature. The problem of spontaneous generation is related to abiogenesis, i.e. the phenomenon of living things coming to being from non-living things. W.'s discussion traces the origins of abiogenesis in the Hippocratic texts with Aristotle's subsequent teleological agency of nature offering a more complete and systematic account of the problem. Aristotle's approach seems to be influential on late Neoplatonic authors who attempted to bring Peripatetic physics of spontaneous generation into harmony with Plato's metaphysics of intelligible principles. W. underlines a synthetic reconstruction of the Neoplatonic theory of abiogenesis based on a seminal theory of abiogenesis in which the actual form-principles of all natural species of living things exist in matter.
H. ends the second part with some aspects of Plotinus' philosophy of biology. This essay highlights the relevance of Neoplatonic metaphysics to modern enquiries of the question of organic life. H. particularly deals with the question of life and living organisms in the Enneads, Plotinus' ontological relationship between the intelligible and the perceptible realm, and his alleged anti-naturalism in biology. H. argues against some contradictory tensions in Plotinus' account of life: his view of organic life combines Plato and Aristotle as it harmonises the Platonic top-down causality with the Aristotelian inner-outer activity and proposes the interpretation of biological phenomena in terms of psycho-physical interaction.
The book is a significant contribution to Neoplatonic scholarship. It offers a well-balanced and systematic exploration of the question of physis in Neoplatonism with an excellent use of primary sources and secondary literature. The commonly held view that Neoplatonists were solely concerned with otherworldly metaphysics is excellently challenged by their philosophical insights on physis. It is noteworthy that the agreement between Plato and Aristotle in late-antique Platonism has been appropriately highlighted. This triggers the question for further investigation of the significance of pre-Platonic natural philosophy in the Neoplatonic tradition, and justifies the need for a further study of the significance of Neoplatonism both in the history of philosophy and in the philosophy of science.
