THE ARABIC PLOTINUS: A STUDY OF THE "THEOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE"
AND RELATED TEXTS
Peter S. Adamson
UMI Co. Dissertation # 9971880
DEDICATION
This dissenation is dedicated to my grandparents,
Anhur and Florence Adamson.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A NOTE ON ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
INTR0 D UCTI0 N " _ _ .
CHAPTER I: THE ARABIC PLOTINUS TEXTS AND THEIR ORIGIN 91.1 The Arabic Plotinus corpus 9
1.1.1 Th.A 91.1.2 DS 111.1.3 GS _ II1.1.4 The common Arabic Plotinus source 121.1.5 The nature of the paraphrase 141.1.6 The order of Th.A and its place in *AP 19
1.2 The origins of AP 391.2.1 The identity of the Adaptor 401.2.2 The role of Porphyry 42
1.3 Other texts related to AP .471.3.1 Early works related to AP _ 471.3.2 The later influence of AP 50
CHAPTER 2: THE PROLOGUE AND THE "HEADINGS" 582.1 The Prologue 58
2.1.1 Sources of the Prologue: the Metaphysics and AP ..__ mm.612.1.2 AI-KindT as the author of the Prologue 692.1.3 The conception of philosophy in the Prologue 76
2.2 The ..Headings_ 792.2.1 The textual basis of the headings 802.2.2 The purpose of the headings 822.2.3 Philosophical views in the headings 85
CHAPTER 3: SOUL 873.1 Aristotelian influence on the Adaptor's theory of soul 87
3.1.1 Mfmar III and the question of enlelechia 883.1.2 Soul's relationship to body 943.1.3 AP and the Arabic paraphrase of the De Anima 105
3.2 Ethical Views in AP 1133.2.1 Virtue and the cosmos 114
iii
3.2.2 Desire__. .._ _._ _. .__ _._._. __ __ 1223.2.3 Memory and the fall of the soul_ .._._ _ ._._ -.--_.. 128
CHAPTER 4: INTELLECT__ _ _._ _._._._ _.._._ .._ _._ __.__ __ .1394.1 Learned ignorance .._ . _. __ _._ _._._. _ _..__. . 139
4.1.1 The doctrine of mfmar [I..._._ __ _._. .._._. _._ ...._..._. __._.1404.1.2 A potency higher than act._. _ _. __.. ._._ 1474.1.3 Porphyry and learned ignorance in AP .__ __ _._..__ __.157
CHAPTER 5: THE FIRST PRlNCIPLE _ _. __ .._ ._.. _.. ._1645.1 Oivine predication .. _._ _ _ ._._ . .__._.._164
5.1.1 Negative theology in AP ._.__.._._ _ _ _ _. _ 1655.1.2 Positive theology in AP __ _ _._. ._._._. ._ _ . J705.1.3 Predication by way of causality and eminence __ ._ _.._ _ 1735.1.4 Is the First Principle "complete"?.._._._ ._ _ __ ..__ _.177
5.2 God and being..__.. ._.. _ _ _ _. . ._. ._ __.._ __ 1865.2.1 The terminology of existence.._ _.._ _ _. .._.._.. __ ._.1875.2.2 God as the First Being and only being_._ __ __ 1935.2.3 God as pure actuality and Cause of being _.. _._ _.1995.2.4 The background of the doctrine of attributes and God
as anniyya faqa[ in AP .._ _.._. _._. __ ._._ _ __._.2055.3 Creation __....-..... .....__ .._._..._..._..... _._ _._.._._. .__. _ _ _.._.218
5.3.1 Mediated creation vs. unmediated creation _._ __ ._.2195.3.2 Creation and time _.._. __._ _ _ _ _ _.._._. __ .__ .. __2255.3.3 Creation and necessity.._.._ _._. ._.__ ..__ ._..__ ..2305.3.4 God and thinking __ __ ._ __ ._._ ._._ _ 236
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION ._ _ _. __ . _._. __ 2446.1 The coherence of the Adaptor' s thought ._ _ _ _ _..2456.2 What sources influenced the Adaptor?_ _ _.._._ __.._ _.._..__ ..__2506.3 Who was the Adaptor? ._. __ ._._ _ _. 256
APPENDlX A: AL-KINDI AND THE ARABlC PLOTlNUS.._ _.260A.l God and being._ ._.. __ .__ ._._._. ._ _ _ _ _ __.267A.2 The emanative hierarchy__ _ _._ _..__ _ _. _ 272A.3 Theory of the intellect _. .. ._ _ _ _._279A.4 The soul and recollection _._. _ _ _..__.__ 285A.5 Astrology _ _ __ _ _.._.,.._ _'._ _. _ 291
APPENDlX B: IBN SINA AND THE '''THEOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE~ _.._.303B.I The treatment of soul in Ibn Slnffs commentary ._ __ 307B.2 Mystical knowledge in Ibn Srn~rs commentary _ _ _312B.3 Creation and emanation in Ibn SIna~s commentary 319
IV
APPENDIX C: TRANSLATION OF IBN SINA~S NOTES ON THE"THEOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE" _._._ __ ._ _ _._323C.I Notes on MTmar 1 _._ _._._ _.._._._ _ __.__ ._ _323C.2 Notes on MTmar If._.._ _ _ _ _ _ _ __.._ _333C.3 Notes on MTmar IV. _.._ _ _. ._._._.._ _ 340C.4 Notes on Mimar V _ _._ __.._ _ _._._ _..344C.5 Notes on MTmar VII._ __.._ _. __ ._._ __ _ _._._._._ _ _ __.350C.6 Notes on MTmar VIIf _._._ _._ _. .__ _ _.._.355C.7 Notes on MTmar fX 358
BIBLIOGRAPHY
v
361
A NOTE ON ABBREVIATIONS
AND TRANSLATIONS
The following abbreviations have been commonly used in this dissertation:
B: References to the Anlbic text in Badawl. A. (ed.), AI-Aflatfinivva al-Muhdatha"inda 31-' Arab, (Cairo: 1955).
Lewis: References to the English translation in P. Henry & H.-R. Schwyzer (eds.), PlotiniOpera. Tomus II: Enneades IV-V: Plotiniana Arabica ad codicum fidem anglice vertit G.
Lewis (Paris & Brussels: 1959).
Th.A: The '-Theology of Aristotle," Arabic text in B.
GS: The "Sayings of the Greek Sage," Arabic text in B.
DS: The '"Letter on Divine Science," Arabic text in B.
All quotations from the Arabic Plotinus texts use section numbers from Lewis, with the
page number from B given in brackets (e.g. Th.A IVA [B 44]).
Enn: References to the Greek text in Plotinus, Enneads, translated by A.H. Armstrong,
7 volumes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966-1988).
All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Arabic and Greek terms are
transliterated, with aspirated consonants in Arabic cnderlined (where the consonantwould normally have been underlined, e.g. in the title of a book, I have not underlined the
aspirated letters).
vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
[ would like to gratefully acknowledge the following people for their generous
support of this project. First my advisors, David Burrell and Stephen Gersh, for their
comments on the work and their enthusiasm for the project. I am equally grateful to my
two unofficial" advisors: Richard Taylor of Marquette University, who first suggested
the project. and Cristina 0'Ancona Costa of the Universities of Padua and Pisa. Both
were extraordinarily supportive of the dissertation; indeed it would be difficult to imagine
two distinguished scholars who would be more giving of their energy and time for the
work of younger researchers like myself. [would also like to thank the Philosophy
Department of Notre Dame in general, and Paul Weithman, David O'Connor, Michael
Loux, Ken Sayre in particular for their advice during my graduate career.
My biggest debt of thanks is, however, to my family. I dedicate this dissertation
to my grandparents Arthur and Florence, in thanks for their support and encouragement
before and during my studies. Likewise my parents Joyce and David could not have been
more supportive, and I am thankful to them for more than I can say here. Above aU I
would like to thank my wife Ursula, for her love and for her endurance and patience,
without which I never could have completed this project or my degree.
vii
INTRODUCTION
Open any book on Islamic intellectual history, and you are liable to find a
sentence or two on the so-called ""Theology of Aristotle."I The importance of this text in
the classical era of Arabic philosophy can scarcely be exaggerated. The '"Theology" was
a translation or paraphrase of the writings of Plotinus, yet it was mistaken for a work of
Aristotle. To imagine the importance that was attached to this text, one need only
consider the situation of the earliest Muslim thinkers who described themselves explicitly
as philosophers. They regarded Aristotle as the greatest representative of Greek wisdom,
yet Aristotle's works fell far short of providing answers to some rather pressing
questions. What did Greek philosophy have to say about the nature of God or creation,
for instance? Philosophers from John Philoponus onwards sensed the inadequacy of the
genuine Aristotelian corpus for answering these questions: thus Aquinas, for example,
articulated how Christian revelation was needed to flesh out Aristotle's notion of God as
a cause of motion. But in the "Theology of Aristotle:" the Arabic world found a text that
ex pounded such topics at length. It is unclear when this text of Plotinus was first
mistaken for one by Aristotle, and how long the misconception persisted. But whether or
J A representative example can be found in Alben Hourani. A History of the Arab Peoples(Warner Books: New York. 1991). 172-173: "The line of philosophers which culminated in Ibn Sina foundthe answer to questions [about God) in the Neo-Platonic version of Greek philosophy, made moreacceptable by the fact that a major work of the school. a kind of paraphrase of pan of Plotinus' Enneads.was generally regarded as being a work of Aristotle (the so-called 'Theology of Aristotle'):' CompareMajid Fakhry. A History of Islamic Philosophy (Columbia U. Press: New York. 1970). 19-26.
not the first readers of the ""Theology" thought it was a genuine work from the
Aristotelian corpus is beside the point, for as we shall see, at this period there was a
tendency to see all of Greek philosophy as one harmonious piece. Thus Plotinus was
used to extend and even complete the Aristotelian philosophical heritage.
This is the standard picture of the historical relevance of the ""Theology," and it is
correct as far as it goes. It is an understanding that underlies almost all of the work done
on the 'Theology" beginning in the late 19th century and continuing through the late 20th
century. In general this work has focused on broadly philological issues relevant to the
"Theology": who wrote it, when was it written, on what sources did it draw, and what did
the original text look like? These are of course important issues, but for a long time they
overshadowed another aspect of the text, namely the substantive philosophical changes
that were introduced into Plotinus' thought by whoever translated it into Arabic. It is
only within the last decade that these changes have been given serious study. At the risk
of engaging in polemic, let me suggest a reason for this. Generally speaking, there is a
tendency on the part of Western scholars to study Arabic philosophy from one of two
points of view. Either it is seen as setting the stage for 12th and 13th century European
philosophy, and particularly Aquinas, or it is seen as carrying on Greek philosophical
ideas on as they became unavailable in Europe. It is the latter point of view which
dominated studies of the Theology": the text was primarily seen as important because it
conveyed Plotinus to the Arabic world, not as a work in its own right with original
philosophical importance. To say that Muslim thinkers drew on the '"Theology" is, on
this view, just to say that they drew on Plotinus.
2
This way of approaching the ""Theology" has been challenged implicitly by recent
studies of the text, especially by Cristina D'Ancona Costa and Richard Taylor. This
dissertation is an attempt to carry the challenge further by providing a systematic study of
what is philosophically new and interesting in the Arabic version of Plotinus. Before
undertaking this task, it may be useful to give some background which would explain
how a work that is, after all, just a translation could be of such philosophical significance
in its own right.
As we will see below, the Arabic Plotinus was produced in the translation circle
of the first Muslim to think of himself as a i"'philosopher~'~ ai-KindT (died shortly after 276
A.H./870 A.D.). What I have said above about studies of the ""Theology" could also be
applied to studies ofal-KindT"s circle: it is only recently that scholars have provided
satisfactory studies of the context in which this group of translators operated. Their
devotion to Greek philosophy and its transmission is beyond question. But, in the words
ofone Muslim scholar~ the translation movement led by ai-KindT "was by no means an
'innocent' operation or 'neutral' educational endeavor naturally flowing from the
intellectual evolution of the time. Instead, it was part of a broader strategy used by the
newly established Abbassid dynasty to confront hostile forces, namely the Persian
aristocracy.":! This suggestion is fleshed out at much greater length in a superb recent
work by Dmitri Gutas.3 Gutas argues that the'Abbasid caliphate supported Greek
philosophy as a rival intellectual tradition which could challenge the Zorastrian tradition
:! Mohammed 'Abd al-labri. Arab-Islamic Philosophv: a Contemporary Critique. translated by AzizAbbassi (Center for Middle Eastern SlUdies at U. Texas at Austin: Austin. 1999).49. See also GerhardEndress. "The Circle ofai-KindT:' in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism. edited byG. Endress and R. Kirk (Research School CNWS: Leiden. (997).45.
.l Dmitri Gutas. Greek Thought. Arabic Culture (Routledge: London. 1998).
3
in their seat in Persia. Without going into the intricacies of his argument~ let us note the
importance of the idea that there was a political or ideological motivation behind the
translation movement in the time of theAbbasids.
One effect of this motivation was a desire on the part of al-Kindf and others to
present Greek philosophy as a unified whole. Given that their purpose was to set Greek
philosophy over against other rival intellectual currents,4 it would have been
counterproductive for them to acknowledge the tensions and debates within Greek
philosophy that tend to occupy the modern historian of philosophy. In addition~ the
translation movement was at least in part an attempt to provide answers to the pressing
questions and problems of the historical context in which the translations were made~ i.e.
9th century Islam. Again. this means that al-Kindf and his translators were keen to
present Greek philosophy as answering such questions and as giving one coherent answer
when possible. Gerhard Endress has captured this situation in saying that "The growing
insistence on the essential unity of philosophical truth~ on the harmony between Plato's
and Aristotle's doctrine... is indicative of an attitude of compromise which made
philosophy fit to serve as a scientific interpretation of monotheistic and creationist
religion.,,5
These pressures had the consequence that translators who rendered philosophical
texts from Syriac and Greek into Arabic did not aspire to present "objective" or simply
"correct" translations. Instead, they felt free to change the text at will and even to
.: In addition to the intellectual threat posed by the Persian tradition. it is likely that al-Kindi wasopposing anti-rationalist movements within Islamic theology. Thus he was to some extent sympathetic withthe rationalist Mutazilites, whether or not he fully espoused their doctrines. The ideological struggle infavor of Greek philosophy was, then. being waged by ai-KindT and his circle on at least two fronts.
5 Endress ( 1997), 52.
4
introduce completely original passages amplifying or interpreting the views of the
original author. We find an extreme example of this in the Arabic Plotinus. but the case
is not unique: another well-known example is the Book on the Pure Good. a paraphrase of
Produs' Elements of Theology which would be known in the Latin west as the Liber de
Causis. (Indeed. this text departs even more from its source than does the Arabic
Plotinus, containing very little in the way of direct translation from the Greek source.) In
accordance with the motivations described above. the changes are generally of two types:
(a) [n order to present Greek philosophy as a unified whole, translators did not hesitate to
alter their sources to bring them into line with other, authoritative Greek texts. Many
examples of this strategy are provided in this dissertation, such as the alteration of
Plotinus' theory of soul to make it accord with Aristotle's De Anima.
(b) In order to answer problems from their own intellectual milieu. translators went so far
as to construct original philosophical arguments and views that they introduced into the
body of the paraphrase. Many of the mest interesting changes to be studied below. such
as the theory of learned ignorance. the use of divine attributes. and the characterization of
God as pure Being. fall into this category. This is not to say that the translators did not
depend partially on other Greek sources such as Aristotle. Rather. it is to highlight the
original way in which they took ideas from several Greek texts (as weB as their own
ideas) and wove them into new and original positions relevant to the contemporary
situation.6
6 In a similar vein. Dmitri Gutas has described the translation activiry as ""a creative process": "Thechanges and additions that we frequently see in the translated text vis-a-vis the Greek original were eitheramplificatory and explanatory. or systematic and tendentious. This means that some of the translations weredeliberately not literal because they were made for a specific purpose and to serve certain theoreticalpositions already held" (Gutas (1998), 146).
5
The texts that resulted from this process -- and there is perhaps no better example
than the Arabic Plotinus -- are thus important and interesting in two ways. First, the
original arguments themselves are often quite sophisticated and should be taken seriously
as positions on important topics in theology, philosophy of religion, metaphysics and so
on. Second, in many cases the version of the text produced by the translator is of
immense historical importance. For one thing the text shows that Greek philosophy was
already being interpreted and developed upon its first entry into the Arabic speaking
world. Also, these translations and the Arabic Plotinus in particular were the source for
Neoplatonism in Islamic philosophy. So we cannot properly understand the way that
figures like ai-KindT, al-FambL Ibn STniL and the Persian Illuminationists drew on Greek
philosophy unless we acknowledge that their engagement with these translations was /lot
equivalent to a confrontation with the original writings of Plotinus and others. I have
attempted to show how our understanding of these later figures might be enhanced by a
study of the Arabic Plotinus in appendices included here, on ai-KindT and Ibn STna.
So much, then, for the reasons why it is worthwhile to study the Arabic Plotinus
and take it seriously as a work of philosophy in its own right. I close this introduction
with a brief overview of the dissertation:
In Chapter I, I explain some of the vexed philological issues surrounding the text. This
is a necessary preliminary to understanding the philosophical aspects of the Arabic
Plotinus. However, I also try to engage these issues in such a way as to make plausible
my interpretation of the Arabic Plotinus as an original, well-thought out adaptation of the
Enneads (it has often previously been thought of as the work of a sort of translator hack
or dilettante).
6
In Chapter 2. I deal with two parts of the Arabic Plotinus materials that demand a
separate treatment from the paraphrase proper: the Prologue to the "'Theology" and a set
of "headings" which preface the "'Theology." Among other things, I argue that the former
may have been the work of ai-Kindt.
The rest of the dissertation is arranged according to the ascending levels of the Plotinian
hierarchy: Soul, Intellect, and the First Principle. In Chapter 3 on soul I examine how the
Arabic Plotinus is affected by the authors familiarity with Aristotle's De Anima. and also
deal with a cluster of issues in the paraphrase relevant for ethics.
Chapter 4 is devoted to the study of one important theme in the Arabic Plotinus: the
concept of an '"ignorance higher than knowledge." I suggest that this notion may have
come to the author from a Greek source, but that his understanding of such ""learned
ignorance" is an original one ba~ed again on Aristotle.
Chapter 5 deals with the treatment of God in the Arabic Plotinus. In particular, I show
that the author has original and systematic views on divine attributes and the metaphysics
of God and creation, and that these views respond to contemporary debates in Islam.
After a briefconclusion. three appendices are devoted to (a) al-Kindrs use of the
Arabic Plotinus. (b) a study of Ibn STna's commentary on the ....Theology."' and (c) a
translation of Ibn SIna's commentary.
7
CHAPTER I
THE ARABIC PLOTINUS TEXTS AND THEIR ORIGIN
The main purpose of this study is the examination of the philosophical doctrines
presented in the Arabic Plotinus texts. This analysis requires, however, a discussion of
the nature of these texts and of the complicated question of their origins. Indeed. it would
be fair to say that the present study is only now possible because of decades of research
into these issues. I do not hope to settle here most of the significant philological
questions surrounding the Arabic Plotinus. and in fact I will argue in this chapter that
several of these questions cannot be answered with certainty. at least in the absence of
textual evidence that may yet be discovered. Still, as will shortly become clear. a
profitable discussion of the philosophy in the Arabic Plotinus requires frequent reference
to the history of the texts. With this in mind, in this chapter I wilJ first give a detailed
description of the Arabic Plotinus corpus, and then go on to discuss some of the more
important issues surrounding the origins of that corpus. The latter section may at the
same time serve as a survey of much of the previous scholarship on these texts. since the
bulk of research on the Arabic Plotinus has centered on these textual and historical issues.
Finally. I will briefly address the later influence of the Arabic Plotinus in Islamic
philosophy by mentioning some of the later sources that bear directly on these texts.
8
1.1 The Arabic Plotinus corpus
The Arabic Plotinus materials have come down to us in the form of three texts. The first,
the most well-known and by far the longest of the three is the so-called Theology of
Aristotle (hereafter Th.A). The second, and shortest, is the Letter on Oivine Science
(hereafter DS). The third and final ""text" actually consists of a number of fragments
attributed to ""the Greek Sage (aJ-shaykh al-yfiniinf)," which are collectively referred to as
the Savin2s of the Greek Sage (hereafter GS). These collected texts represent the Arabic
Plotinus corpus (hereafter AP). An Arabic edition of almost all this material was
published in 1955 by "Abdurrahman BadaWf, and this is the Arabic text which I use here. I
The scholar Geoffrey Lewis, having completed an improved critical edition of the Arabic
as his dissertation at Oxford, has provided us with an English translation of all three texts,
which is available in the second volume of the Henry and Schwyzer edition of Plotinus'
works.:! [will cite all three texts by the section numbers in Lewis' translation, though aU
translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
1.1.1 Th.A
The existence of a '"Theology of Aristotle" was first made well-known last century with
the publication of an Arabic text and subsequent German translation by F. Oieterici,
though it was not at that time clear that the text was in fact a paraphrase of Plotinus'
I Badawr. A. (ed.), AI-Atlatfiniyya al-muhdatha 'inda al-Arab. (Cairo: 1955). For the Greek textof [he Enneads I have used volumes IV, V and VI of Plotinus. Enneads. translated by A.H. Armstrong. 7volumes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1966-1988).
9
Enneads. Dieterici's version~ though it was based on manuscripts fewer than and inferior
to those used by Badawf and Lewis. has the same fonn as the text ofTh.A we have now:
it is divided into ten so-called mayiimir, mfmar being a Syriac word meaning "chapter:~
The mayiimir vary in length, and cover parts, but not all~ of Enneads IV-VI. As in all three
parts of AP, the text takes the form of a translation-cum-paraphrase of Plotinus: most
sentences are at least in part direct translations of the Greek~ but also contain original
material. There are also complete departures from the Greek ranging in length from one
sentence to entire paragraphs~ though the latter are relatively rare. The text includes the
occasional "title," sometimes based on a title of one of Plotinus' treatises, both at the
beginning of some mayiimir and also, more unusually, in the middle of a mfmar. The ten
mayiimir collectively make up the paraphrase" portion ofTh.A. There are two
additional parts of the text: the first is a Prologue bearing an inscription attributing the
text to Aristotle, and mentioning the names of the commentator, translator, and editor of
the text. After this inscription. the Prologue gives a short explanation of the task to be
undertaken in Th.A and finally a list of topics to be covered in the text. Between this
Prologue and the paraphrase is a list of ru 'iis -- headings, or heads, or chief points" --
which present themselves as an itinerary of issues to be raised in the text. However, the
r1l "iis are in fact a series of short paraphrases. more or less in the style of the main
paraphrase, paralleling Enn IVA. 1-34.
[n terms of content, Th.A raises, in the course of covering parts of eight treatises
by Plotinus, many of the major issues familiar to readers of the Enneads, including
Z P. Henry & H.-R. Schwyzer (eds.), Plotini Opera. Tomus II: Enneades V-V: Plotiniana Arabicaad codicum fidem anglice venit G. Lewis (Paris & Brussels: 1959). Parts of the translation ofGS in thisvolume are by Rosenthal.
10
detailed discussions of the First Cause (Plotinus' One) and Intellect. The soul is,
however, the level of Plotinus' cosmos which is treated at greatest length: of the ten
maylimir, six have soul has their main focus, and the remaining four each have significant
sections devoted to soul. Below I address the question of whether this focus on soul is
accidental or by design.
1.1.2 OS
Though its title suggests that DS should be some kind of epistle, the text is in fact simply
another continuous paraphrase of Plotinus, this time of Enn V.9, V.3, VA, and V.5 (in
that order, with a concluding fragment from V.9). It contains two "titles" like those
found in Th.A, corresponding to the titles ofEnn V.3 and VA (OS 47, (56). Unlike
Th.A. OS has little to say about soul and concentrates on the Intellect and the First Cause.
Its total length is about that of one of the longest of Th.As mayiimir. The text was
originally misattributed to al-Farab.. but was sho\\ll by Paul Kraus to belong to AP.3
1.1.3 GS
The final surviving portion of AP is a set of fragmentary "sayings" culled from three
sources, and generally exhibiting the paraphrastic style of Th.A and DS. Almost all of the
sayings are taken from a manuscript discovered at Oxford. published and translated by
Franz Rosentha1.4 Further fragments from the Oxford MS were found and made available
., Kraus. P.. "Plorin chez les Arabes: Remarques sur un nouveau fragment de la paraphrase arabedes El1Ileades:' Bulletin de rJnstitul dEgvple. 23 (1941).263-95 .
.s Rosenthal. F.. 'Ash-Shaykh al-Yl1nani and the Arabic Plolinus Source: Orientalia 21 (1952),461-92: 22 (1953).370-400: 24 (1955).42-66.
II
(in the translation mentioned above) by Lewis.s The remaining fragments (translated in
Lewis' GS IX) are culled from the Muntakhab siwiin al-hikma and al-Shahrastanf's Kiliib
ai-mila! ,va a!-niha!, each of which quote a body of sayings attributed to a "Greek sage,"
presumably drawing on the same source, the Siwiin a/-lzikJlla.6 Unsurprisingly, the two
sets of quotes overlap to some extent. A number of passages in GS 1-vm also overlap
with passages from Th.A, sometimes adding material to what has been preserved in Th.A.
Neither of these two texts overlap with OS, however.
I. 1.4 The common Arabic Plotinus source
It is clear from the style and paraphrastic nature of these three texts that they all represent
an original Arabic Plotinus source, which we may call *AP.7 It is equally clear that our
AP may lack a good deal of the material originally contained in *AP. Perhaps this
material included the entirety of Enn IV-VI, though the extent of the paraphrase must of
course remain a matter of conjecture. The consistency of style in what is left to us of the
paraphrase, on the other hand, makes it virtually certain that one person composed the
paraphrase in *AP, whether or not it was actually based directly on the Greek text of the
Enneads. Much of the scholarship on AP has been devoted to speculation as to the
identity of this author. The philosophical study of the text to be undertaken here will
provide us with important evidence towards answering this question. For now, I will
5 See Henry & Schwyzer ( 1959). xxxiii.6 The Mlmtakhab was originally attributed to al-Sijistani. which is why Rosenthal's translation
marks one set of sayings as al-Sijistanrs. See F.W. Zimmerman. ''The Origins of the So Called Theology ofAristotle:' in Kraye et al. (1986).208-9.
7 I follow Zimmermann in marking non-extant texts with an asterisk. For the stylistic unity of theArabic Plotinus text'i. see G. Endress. Proclus Arabus: Zwanzig Abschnitte aus der InstilUlio Theologica in
12
refer to the person who composed *AP as "the Adaptor.n It is worth noting that whatever
the Adaptor had in front of him while writing the paraphrase, we can be certain that his
source was ultimately based on Porphyry's edition of the Enneads. The restriction of AP
to the latter three Enneads suggests this, since these treatises were taken out of
chronologicaJ order and placed together by Porphyry. In addition, sometimes the
paraphrase passes immediately from one treatise to another preserving Porphyry's order.
For example, Th.A 1.20 parallels the ending of Enn IV.7 (Plotinus' 2nd treatise,
chronologically), and Th.A 1.21 parallels the first sentence of Enn IV.S (6th
chronologically). Even more convincingly, the beginning of Th.A II parallels the
beginning of Enn 1V.4 and thus preserves a sentence break introduced by Porphyry.8
What else can be said with certainty about *AP? [n short, not very much. On the
basis of stylistic similarities, Gerhard Endress has shown that the AP texts belong to the
body of translations and adaptations made by al-Kindi~s circle in Baghdad in the 9th
century.9 This includes the well-known adaptation of Proclus' Elements of Theology, the
Book on the Pure Good, known later in the West as the Liber de Causis. Since the
Prologue of Th.A infonns us that aI-KindT '''corrected (a~la!laf' the paraphrase, this
evidence confirms the testimony of the text itself. [t is tempting to think. on this basis,
that the Prologue may actually have prefaced *AP in its entirety, and not just Th.A.
Further evidence for this is provided by doctrinal and terminological parallels between the
Prologue and AP. indicating that it was written by the Adaptor or one of his collaborators
Arabischer Obersctzung (Beirut & Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag. 1973). 186. For the unity of DS and Th.A.see Kraus ( 1941). 292-294. For the unity of GS and Th.A. see Rosenthal (1952).465-468.
8 See Zimmermann (1986).228 fn.23. and H.-R. Schwyzer. "Die pseudoaristotelische Theologieund die PJotin-Ausgabe des Porphyrios:' Rheinisches Museum f"tir Philoloeie. 90 (1941),223.
13
(ai-KindY being one intriguing possibility). For example. the Prologue uses the
characteristic phrase "'Cause of causes" (ProI.14), and as we will see in chapter 2,
generally fits the philosophical profile of the Adaptor. One might then further speculate
that the attribution of Th.A to Aristotle would have been applied to the entirety of *AP.
In fact, though, there is reason to think that this misattribution only occurred later. lo At
any rate, we can proceed on the assumption that all the elements belonging to AP
mentioned above were originally united as a single work based either on Porphyrys
edition of the Enneads, or some later modification of that text. Further, the Arabic text
*AP \vas produced by al-KindTs circle~ though so far it is unclear whether this group was
also responsible for the original changes from the Greek text: the Arabic text could
simply be a translation of a paraphrase done in Syriac or Greek.
I. 1.5 The nature of the paraphrase
The paraphrastic nature of AP has been elegantly expressed with a device used in Lewis'
translation. Those parts of the text which are based directly on the Greek text of the
Enneads, as we have it today. are written in italics, and the rest in roman lettering.
Merely by skimming through Lewis' translation, one can thus get a sense of how closely
the Adaptor is sticking to Plotinus. own words: it is rare that he strays far from the task of
translating, but even more rare that he restricts himself to translation. As helpful as
Lewis' practice of italicizing direct quotation may be, it should also be said that the
italic/roman distinction can be quite misleading. Even in the case of "direct" translation,
of course. we might expect a fair amount of divergence between AP and the Enneads
simply because of the dissimilarity of Arabic and Greek. But comparison of Lewis'
translation to the original Arabic and Greek texts reveals that the italicized portions are
often only tangentially related to what Plotinus himself wrote. Take. for example. a
section of AP (OS 18) paralleling the first sentence of Enn V.9.6: Lewis translates "The
mind is all things and contains all t/zings: it does not, however, contain them as a
substrate to them. but as their maker, and it is to them as cause." with the entire sentence
in italics. [n the Greek we find ....Intellect is the beings (fa onta) and it has them all in it
not as in a place. but as having itself and being one with them." At the very least. the
passage in AP must be considered an "interpretation" of Plotinus. for example by
substituting the notion of "substrate (mawdit)" for "place (topOS):11 And in fact the
'translation" adds two ideas which are not in this passage of Plotinus at all. though
Plotinus might agree to them: the characterizations of intellect as maker and cause of all
things. This is far from an isolated example. Indeed one is hard pressed to find
significant portions of italic text that could be considered "neutral" translation.
At the same time. the roman passages in Lewis can often be seen as in fact related
to the Greek, even if they are not strict translation. For instance. consider this passage
from GS. The translation is mine. but [ retain Lewis' italics:
GS 1.32-36 [B 188]: The Greek Sage said: the first originated intellect does nothave a form. When it connects to the First Originator. it comes to have a form,because it is limited. For it is molded and comes to have a shape and a form. Asfor the First Originator. He has no form. because there is not something else aboveHim which He would wish to limit Him. and there is nothing below Him whichHe would want to limit Him. For He is without limit in every way. Therefore He
II A better word to translate topos would be maw!i.i", which has the same root -- perhaps thissuggested the "interpretation" to the Adaptor.
15
comes to not have a shape or a fomz. If the First Originator were[onn, theintellect u-,ould be some logos (kalima). And the intellect is not a logos, and thereis no logos in it, because it was originated without its Originator having anattribute or a fonn, so that he would have put that form and logos in it. For theintellect is not a logos nor is there a logos in it, but rather it makes the logos in thethings, because it has an attribute and a shape. For when it makes the thing, itimpresses the thing with some of its attributes. This impression is the active logosin the thing. It is necessary that the First [not] be multiple in any way. Othenvisethe multiplicity in Him would be attached to another One before Him. Rather, itis necessary that He is one, and pure good, and that He is the originator of onegood thing which has a form of goodness: either it is the impression from the FirstOriginator, or it is the impression of its impression.
Now consider the parallel Greek text:
Enn VI.7.17: Thus intellect is also a trace of that, but since intellect is fonn and inextension and multiplicity, that [i.e. the One] is shapeless and formless; for thus itmakes fonns. But if that were form, intellect would be logos. But the first mustnot be multiple in any way, for the multiplicity of it would depend on anotherbefore it.
Clearly Lewis is right that very little of the Arabic directly parallels Plotinus' Greek. But
it is just as clear that the views presented in the Arabic are directly inspired by the Greek
text, even as they are being modified. The use of the word kalima throughout the passage
is perhaps the most obvious indicator of this. Again, it is not unusual that non-italic
passages "parallel" the Greek in this looser sense. 12 Since both the italics and non-italics
in Lewis' translation can be misleading in this way, we will be well served by closely
comparing ail Arabic texts to the Greek of Plotinus. This is the procedure I will normally
follow in the following chapters.
We have seen, then, that the Adaptor is responsible for a great deal of material
"original" to AP, in other words not found directly in parallel passages of the Enneads.
16
This is true not only of the longer independent passages scattered through APt but also on
a sen tence-by-sentence basis throughout the paraphrastic translation. What. then, is the
relationship between the original parts of AP and the parts which are taken directly from
Plotinus? Or. to put the same problem another way, what was the Adaptor's attitude
towards the text of Plotinus he had before him, given that he saw fit to introduce non-
original elements into the text? There are four possible answers to this question:
(a) The simplest possibility is that the Adaptor is just trying to comment on Plotinus in
order to explain Plotinus' own meaning more clearly, or to bring out the structure of
Plotinus' often rather compressed arguments. On this view the paraphrase would be
chiefly an attempt at explication. The Adaptor is clearly engaged in this task at some
points in AP: he often explicitly states what he takes to be the premises of Plotinus'
arguments (as at Th.A ill.7). or formulates more clearly the position Plotinus is attacking
(as at Th.A IX. 14).
(b) Again. the Adaptor may see himself as a faithful expositor of Plotinus. but one who is
actually giving an interpretation of Plotinus -- a commentator of sorts. Commentary is of
course difficult to distinguish from mere explication, but also seems to fall within the
Adaptor's intent. At Th.A X.14. for instance, he tries to explain why Plotinus calls the
activity of soul an "image." Of course, even in cases where the Adaptor seems to be
making a good faith effort to explore Plotinus' thought more deeply. we may find that the
"commentary" actually diverges from the views supported in the Enneads.
12 To give only one other ex.ample. Th.A V.38-42 is, as Lewis indicates, verbally a digression fromits Greek source. Yet it is also based on that source. as an extension of Plotinus' discussion of the fact thatthe "why" of intellect is in intellect itself.
17
(c) The Adaptor may also introduce material that is extraneous to Plotinus, yet only
tenuously engaged with the ideas in the parallel text. Occasionally, for instance, we find
physical theories thrown into AP almost as an afterthought (such as the assertion at Th.A
VrII.IO that flesh is solidified blood), as well as more significant passages introducing
non-Plotinian philosophical doctrines.
(d) Finally. the Adaptor may actually take it upon himself to "correct" the doctrines
presented in the Enneads. While it seems true that, as EW. Zimmermann has remarked,
the Adaptor "endeavors, above all. to give a fair and sympathetic account of Plotinus," it
has not been sufficiently noticed that the Adaptor makes a number of intentional and
sometimes philosophically sophisticated changes in the paraphrase that can only be
described as corrective. There are passages where the Adaptor makes a point which is the
reverse of what Plotinus holds in the parallel Greek text. A banal example is Th.A
Vlli.25. which asserts that the "'last motion" of mind is like a line or homogeneous body,
which in fact is precisely what Plotinus denies (Enn VI.7.13). More commonly. additions
in the paraphrase make subtle but crucial modifications to the position Plotinus holds.
Many of the passages we will examine in the course of the coming chapters faIl into this
category. One of the most striking examples parallels the famous beginning of Enn V.2,
itself drawn from Plato' s Parmenides: '~heOne is all things and not one of them." In
Arabic we find: "The Pure One is the cause of all things, and is not like any of the things"
(Th.A X.I). This "translation" obviously does not differ from its source because the
Adaptor misread the Greek. Rather, the Adaptor has deliberately chosen a different
locution.
18
Such corrections raise the possibility that the Adaptor has set out to provide not
only access to Plotinus' philosophy, but also a philosophy of his own which both depends
on Plotinus and goes beyond it in various ways. Certainly, the paraphrase exhibits all
four of the above relationships to its source text; it is only after a thorough philosophical
analysis that we will be able to confidently say whether the Adaptor saw himself chiefly
as an expositor. a commentator, or a corrector of Plotinus. But these brief remarks on the
relationship between the paraphrase and the Greek original should already suggest that
the Adaptor was not merely. as has been suggested by some, a translator of questionable
erudition, given to fanciful enlargements on his source. On the contrary, as I hope the
following chapters will show. the Adaptor was a philosopher in his own right.
1.1.6 The order of Th.A and its place in *AP
One of the most obvious textual problems confronting a reader of AP is that the
paraphrase does not follow the order of the Enneads. A section from Enn VI may be
followed by one from IV, and so on. We might expect this in the case ofGS. The
"sayings" are. after all, clearly fragments left over from *AP, and it is not therefore
surprising that they might be out of order. One might extend this argument: since in fact
all three parts of AP are only portions of the original *AP, all three may well have lost
their original ordering while undergoing the vicissitudes of text transmission. This is in
fact the opinion of Zimmennann. the author of the most detailed discussion of the origins
of the Arabic Plotinus. 13 He remarks that "there is no rational plan behind the choice and
order of passages in" Th.A. and that the text follows a chaotic path back and forth
13 Zimmermann (1986). For more on his views. see section 1.2.1 below.
19
without rhyme or reason."lol In Zimmermann~s view, this is the result of a textual
catastrophe which resulted in the dispersion of loose fragments of the original *AP, two
of these sets of fragments being represented by GS and DS. A remaining set, which
Zimmermann describes as essentially a pile of loose leaves from *AP or a copy thereof,
were stitched together by a later editor and have come down to us as Th.A. Thus the
order of Th.A tells us nothing about the original order of *AP, and indeed it should be
presumed that *AP simply followed the order of the Enneads. 15 Now, I think
Zimmermann is right that some measure of textual disorder has befallen the text which
we now have as Th.A. This is particularly evident in mfmar vm, as we will see below.
However, [ would argue that the text of Th.A is not nearly as chaotic as Zimmermann
thinks. A reader predisposed to see some ordering principle in Th.A will, [suggest, find
the traces of such a principle, as well as traces of its disturbance.
[ can show this only with a specific discussion of the themes central to each of the
maylimir, which happily can serve at the same time as a survey of the issues addressed in
the text. This will also be of some use in laying the background for the following
chapters on the philosophical doctrines of AP. Two preliminary points are in order.
First. we should bear in mind that if the Adaptor was in fact trying to re-order the
I.tZimmermann(1986). 119. 125.15 His full views on the matter can be found in "Appendix IX: Codex *Kappa/*kappa and the
Editor of K:' Zimmermann (1986).152-162. Brietly. he argues as follows: if the manuscript confonting theeditor of the Th.A was just the "tattered remains" (152) of *AP. we should expect a number ofjarringbreaks in the text. Zimmermann explores the hypothesis that this editor set out to smooth over such breaks.adding a'i little as possible but enough to finish incomplete sentences, etc. Major breaks. some of them atleast. were bridged by adding the mfmur headings. This hypothesis. argues Zimmermann. is borne out by astudy of the bridging passages between "breaks." Without going into a detailed discussion ofZimmermann's arguments. it is wonh pointing out here that whatever was thus contributed by the editor ofthe Th.A could just as easily have been contributed by the Adaptor. That is. if the Adaptor produced a textwhich was out of order with the Enneads, he may have written his own "bridging" passages - I give anexample of this in what follows.
20
Enneads according to some plan, the possibilities open to him were restricted by what he
found in Plotinus (perhaps only Enneads IV-VI, and indeed not even necessarily all of
these treatises. since some have no parallel in AP). That is, he would be trying to impose
an order by selecting passages of the Enneads with given themes, which would give rise
to a rather loosely ordered compilation in any event. Second, it may help my argument to
provide an example in which the Adaptor has unquestionably not followed the text of the
Enneads. This example is the transition from DS 63 to DS 64. The text reads as follows:
DS 63 [B 171-172]: This is the first intelligible. And the first intellect is thatexisting in act. because it is not the intellect in potency, but rather it is in act. so itsintelligible is also in act.64: We direct our discourse to the intellect which is intellect, and it is that aboutwhich we said that it and the intelligibles are one thing, and it is the true intellect,and its intelligibles are true intelligibles...
The fonner passage parallels Enn V.3.5.40-42. the latter parallels V.3.6.28ff.. so that
there is a gap of 36 lines of Greek between the two. If AP followed the order of the
Enneads throughout. this gap would originally have been filled by further paraphrase.
which we no longer have. But if we direct our attention to the Greek paralleling 64, we
find the following: ..Let [the soul] therefore transpose (meta/heto) the image to the true
intellect..... The Adaptor has intentionally mistranslated metarhero. rendering the phrase
as "Let us direct our discourse..:' Thus he changes the sense of the verb to refer to the
shifting of the argument in his own paraphrase. This change allows him to write a
bridging passage between 63 and 64. so it could only have been written by the Adaptor
(since he was the one with access to the original Greek). Then it was the Adaptor who
smoothed the transition over this gap in the paraphrase, not a later editor. 16
16 Other examples in DS where the Adaptor is a more likely source for bridging passages are 93-4.97-8. and J49-150.
21
If this is right~ then the Adaptor was apparently selective in choosing which
passages he would paraphrase. This suggests that he may also have been willing to adjust
the order of the text as part of that same selectivity. Why would the Adaptor do this? We
can only speculate. but one obvious motive would be greater interest in some passages as
opposed to others. This kind of motivation seems to explain another skipped portion of
Greek between Th.A X.8l and 82. Having paraphrased up to Enn VI.7.6.19 or so (the
paraphrase is fairly loose). the Adaptor skips a stretch of Greek containing reference to
pagan demons and gods. and then picks up at Enn VI.7.7.l8. leaving out 35 lines of
Greek. Perhaps the Adaptor was embarrassed or simply uninterested in the references
Plotinus makes to daimolles; we cannot tell. What is quite suggestive. though. is the fact
that he resumes his paraphrase immediately following an admission by Plotinus that the
intervening passages were a digression from the main problem at hand: "in following
from one thing to another we have arrived at this. But our argument (logos) was in what
way sensation is of man and how those [i.e. noetic things] do not look towards birth:'
Taking note of Plotinus' cue, the Adaptor skipped those passages not germane to the
main line of the argument. This reinforces our sense of the Adaptor as a selective and
critical translator. and suggests that he may have been capable of imposing his own order
on Plotinus' text. Granting that this is a possibility. what order can be discerned in the
apparent confusion of Th.A?
!vlimar I: One of the simplest pieces of evidence for the Adaptor's role in altering the
order of his source text is the use of the word mfmar itself. The word is Syriac, which
22
suggests that a Syrian played some role in the formation of Th.A. 17 If this was the case.
two explanations are possible: first. that *AP was based on a Syriac version of the
Enneads; perhaps the paraphrase was already to be found in this version. Second. it was
used by the Syrian translator Ibn Na"ima al-Him~i.who has been identified as a likely
author for the paraphrase. The second possibility. it should be added. is rather more
persuasive than the first: Why would a translator charged with translating the entirety of
*AP from Syriac into Arabic hesitate to also translate the word mimar? At any rate. if
either of these is the correct explanation. then the division of *AP into the mayiimir took
place very early in the history of *AP, indeed at the point of its translation into Arabic at
the latest. 18 And the re-ordering of the text cannot. of course. have happened any later
than the addition of the mayiimir titles.
Consideration of the content of this first mimar provides. I think. a striking piece
of evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the order of Th.A is at least partially
intentional. After an introductory section describing the status of soul in the Plotinian
cosmos (Th.A 1.1-16), the paraphrase begins to introduce the views of "the Ancients" in
favor of the eternity and fall of soul. This is accomplished in three sections. 1.17-20 is
17 Although it does not prove this. because the word was used by non-Syrians occasionally in the9th century. See Zimmermann (1986). 151-2.
[~ Zimmermann (1986) argues (151 ) that the beginning of Th.A II shows that the use of the wordmlmar is a later addition to the text. It reads as follows: '"The first of the questions (masa'il) of the secondpart (maqiila) of the Book of Theology." Zimmermann thinks this derives from the title of the parallelGreek text. Enn IVA: "On Problems of the Soul. the Second (deuteron):' The later editor ofTh.A wouldthen have mistaken this for an announcement that the second chapter ofTh.A itself was now beginning. andaccordingly supplied the additional heading "al-mimar al-lhiinl:' and also the words "of the Book ofTheology" in the first sentence. The scenario Zimmermann describes is possible. but not necessary -- !:!im~fmay have used the word maqiila to refer to Plotinus' treatise. and reserved the word mimar for the chaptersof his own paraphrase. Nor is there any reason to think that the beginning of IVA could not have beendeliberately taken as the paraJleltext for the beginning ofTh.A II. Zimmermann's interpretation would befar more convincing if the phrase he attributes to !:!im~f looked like a title or heading. but "The first of thequestions..:' looks more like the beginning of the text itself. Then it may well have been Him~i. or whoeverthe Adaptor was. who added the mimar title.
23
based on Plotinus' argument that common religious practices confirm that the belief in
the immortality of the soul is widespread (the parallel Greek text is the end of Enn IV.7).
Th.A 1.21-43 continues on into Enn IV.8, and includes Plotinus' quotation of various
ancient philosophers (Heraclitus, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato), also arguing for the
sours higher status and fall into this world. Finally, a section independent of the Greek
text (1.44-58) concludes the first mlmar, attributing to Plato many of the basic
cosmological principles that will be defended in AP. The paraphrase draws heavily on
the doctrines of the Enneads in this section, even though it does not parallel any specific
text.
What. then, unites the content of Th.A I? In short, the mfmar presents a
doxography of the soul. Indeed, if one were looking for a long passage in the Enneads
which cites the opinions of others as to the nature of soul, one could hardly do better than
to choose the passages running from the end of 1V.7 until IV.8.1. And there is a good
reason why the Adaptor would do this: as we know from the Prologue to Th.A, the
Adaptor sees the paraphrase as either fitting into the Aristotelian corpus or actually
representing a work by Aristotle. But all the most important works of Aristotle begin
with a survey of the views of previous philosophers. The fact that mfmar I also offers a
doxography fits perfectly into the Prologue's presentation ofTh.A as an Aristotelian work
or a work in the spirit of Aristotle. It might be objected that, if this were the case, the first
milnar would surely cover more of Enn IV.8, which is throughout an explicit presentation
of the views of Plato. This objection is sharpened by the fact that much of this
presentation has been preserved in AP, as GS 1.47-91. This suggests that the fragment in
GS was originally attached to what is now the conclusion of mfmar J. This is certainly
24
possible, and in fact does not present a serious challenge to the hypothesis that his first
mTmar is intended as a doxography: the fragment in GS explicitly draws on Plato (1.47)
and returns, as does Plotinus, to mention Empedocles and Heraclitus (1.88-89). However,
I think it is more likely that mimar I did in fact have the form it does now. This is
suggested, first of all, by the fact that mfmar [ ends with a lengthy independent passage
which is clearly intended to replace the discussion of Plato's views in Enn IV.8 with a
summary of those views. Secondly, the fragment in GS seems to be designed as an
independent piece of text. It is introduced by the addition "Plato says..:' at GS 1.47,
which the Adaptor must have written (since it would require reference to the Greek to
know that Plato' s views are being presented). And it concludes with a passage that both
caps the argument of the section and depends on the Greek (which, again, means the
Adaptor wrote this conclusion). This strongly suggests that the GS fragment was
originally separated from mimar I, perhaps because it dealt with a more specific problem
than was appropriate for the introductory part of Th.A, or because it seemed to have
intellect and not soul as its primary theme. 19
Another objection against the idea that the first mimar is intended as the
beginning of a reorganized text is provided by Zimmermann. The first sentence of the
mima,. reads: "Now to our topic (amma ba'du): as it has been made clear and proven that
the soul is not bodily, and that it does not die, does not corrupt, and does not perish, but is
permanent and eternal, we wish to investigate about it also how it separates itself from the
1'1 As we will see below, the beginning of Th.A VII also seems to be originally written by theAdaptor as the start of the mfmar: this part of the paraphrase follows what is preserved in GS 47-91. TheAdaptor's procedure here. then. was to paraphrase the first part ofEnn IV.S as the end of his doxography. toIhen paraphrase most of the middle of IV.S as the free-standing fragment ofGS, and finally to take theconclusion of rv.s as a summary of Plotinus' own views to begin mimllr VII of Th.A.
25
intellectual world and descends to this sensible~ corporeal world and comes into this
gross, transient body falling under genesis and corruption." Zimmermann remarks:
'lhat's no way to begin an account. however unsystematic. of God. Mind~ Soul and
Nature,..:!O Yet there are other explanations for the fact that this opening seems to take
some tasks as already accomplished. Perhaps the Adaptor is referring to other works of
Aristotle or, indeed~ of the Ancients in general, in other words taking it to be a well-
known fact that the soul is incorporeal and immortal. And Zimmermann himself argues
that *AP was only part of a larger work (which he calls the *Theology) containing
paraphrases of other ancient philosophers~ like Alexander and Proclus. If this is the case,
then the reference could go back to earlier sections of this larger group of texts. Thus the
sentence does not disprove our current hypothesis. The worst that this passage actually
proves that the Adaptor is tolerant of redundancy, since he later paraphrases further
arguments for the soul's immortality.
Afimar U: If the first mlmar is designed to introduce the main topic of Th.A, that suggests
that the paraphrase will be concerned above all with soul. We have already mentioned
above that Th.A does in fact spend most of its time on the subject of soul. but does it do
so in an organized fashion? A possible clue is given at the outset of mlmar ill: "'As we
have established what introductory discussion was necessary about the intellect, the
universal soul, the rational soul. the brute soul and the growing and natural soul, and have
arranged the discussion of it in a natural order, following the course of nature, we now
discuss the explanation of the quiddity (miihiyya) of the substance of the soul.'~ The
~o Zimmermann (1986), 125.
26
question, then, is whether the first two mayiimir could be construed as giving such an
introductory discussion of the soul.
As we have already seen, mfmar I gave a doxography of the soul. The second
mJmar falls into two parts. The first, IT. I-56, raises the question of the soul's status while
joined to the intellectual world. Specifically, what does the soul remember of this lower
world when it is in the higher world? While this is the putative point of the section, in
fact 1-56 presents a comprehensive discussion of the relationship between soul and
intellect: the contrast between soul's thought and intellect's thought forms a basis for a
general contrast between the two hypostases. The section ends with a long independent
passage which concludes quite emphatically, asserting among other things that "the
quality (kaY.f(vya) of the soul and its state after its arrival in the intellectual world and its
return to if' has been described (IT.55). The second section, IT.57-99, discusses the way in
which soul comes to be in the body, and how it is related to the body and yet distinct from
it. The section ends with an equally explicit conclusion, also original in the paraphrase:
So it has been made clear and proven that the soul is not in the body according to any of
the ways which we have mentioned and made clear" (U.99). While the function of this
mJmar is not, perhaps, as obvious as that of the first, these two sections do seem to offer
an "introduction" to the question of soul by summarizing sours relation to the two worlds
between which soul resides. The discussion of sours bodily faculties also may provide
the basis for the claim in ill. I that the various "kinds" of soul have already been
discussed. 21
21 See Th.A 11.19-20.60.63-82.
27
J'vfimar Ill: This mfmar is devoted to refuting mistaken theories of soul. It falls into three
parts: a refutation of simple materialism ( I-53), of the Pythagorean theory that soul is the
harmony of the body (54-66), and of the Peripatetic theory that soul is the elltelechia of
body (67-76). The three parts are united, however, by the fact that the Adaptor (and to
some extent, Plotinus as well) sees the latter two possibilities as somewhat more
sophisticated varieties of materialism.:!2 Thus the entire mfmar follows naturally from the
concluding passage of mfmar n, cited above. Since Th.A ill falls entirely within Enn
IV.7 there is also little difficulty in assuming that it was a continuous part of *AP. The
only problem with its internal order is the passage m.27-33, which returns to paraphrase a
section of Greek text immediately before that paralleled by the beginning of ill. Even
stranger, ill.33 and IDA repeat the paraphrase of the same sentence of Greek. This latter
fact, I think, suggests that it was again the Adaptor who was responsible for this particular
bit of re-ordering, since a later editor would not have known to transfer the same passage
from UI.33 to IlIA. Only the person with the Greek text in front of him would have
known that this same passage both preceded the text paralleled in li.5 and followed that
paralleled in IlI.32. Why the Adaptor returned to paraphrase the passages from before his
own beginning is less clear, except that the parallel text for the beginning of In
(paralleling rOA-5) sounds more like the beginning of an argument: HThat the bodies can
do what they can by bodiless powers is clear from the following points (ek ronde delon):'
i'vfimar IV: The title of the fourth mfmar suggests that it will depart from the theme of
soul and begin to discuss the intellect: "On the Nobility of the World of Intellect and its
~l In chapter 3. we will see that the Adaptor is even willing to accept the doctrine of eme/echia aslong as it does not collapse into a form of materialism.
28
Beauty:' This parallels the title of Enn V.8 (Peri tOll noetou kallous), however, so it is
not necessarily the Adaptor's own notion of what will be the dominant topic of the
mT!nar. 23 And in fact, the portion of Enn IV.8 paralleled in Th.A IV deals not chiefly
with intellect, but with the beauty of the sensible world: the argument is chiefly
concerned to show that this sensible beauty has its source in a higher reality. Thus we are
in a sense still dealing with the rejection of materialism. One might also consider the
focus of Th.A IV to be the relationship of soul to intellect, since Plotinus' point is of
course to urge the soul to direct its attention towards the higher realities, and not the
sense-world (see, for instance, 1V.45). If this is the case, IV (soul's relationship to
intellect) makes a reasonable bridge between the discussion of materialism in ill (soul's
relationship with matter) and V (soul's relationship with the First Cause, as we shall see
shortly). Some evidence for this interpretation is provided by the fact that the last passage
paralleled in Th.A IV is the beginning of Enn V.8.4, after which Plotinus begins a
discussion of nOlls proper, which has little bearing on soul. The abrupt ending of IV,
however, may well indicate some kind of corruption in the text, even though the closing
section (IV.59) continues the trend of ending the mayiimir with a passage original in the..,~paraphrase.-
:!J The Adaptor routinely translated the titles he found in his source text - these titles sometimescome in the middle of a mfmar. Zimmermann takes the latter fact to argue against the idea that the Adaptoris responsible for the mayiimir headings. The point does not seem decisive. At most. it shows that theAdaptor translated what was in front of him unless he had a reason not to.
:!-t Furthermore. in the case ofTh.A JV.57 and Th.A X.137 we have another Greek passage whichis paralleled twice: ...and they see everything (ta pallta)... and themselves in others:' (V.8.4.3-4). Sincethe Greek is paralleled further after IV.57, it cannot be that this part of X was simply detatched from the endof IV. Rather it suggests that the Adaptor. having perhaps lost interest in Enn V.8 for the purposes of thefourth mimar. returned to the same point in the text later. re-paraphrased the same sentence. and continued\\lith the text which is preserved in the tenth mimal". This seems especially likely in light of the fact that thetwo paraphrases of this same Greek passage are somewhat different: only the Adaptor could have producedtwo different translations of the same Greek sentence.
29
Afimar V: It has already been suggested that Th.A IV-V constitutes an ascent up the
Plotinian hierarchy with reference to soul. The title itself bears out this hypothesis:
although it is based on the Greek title of Enn V1.7, it adds references to the Creator:
"Regarding the Creator (a/-barf) and the origination of what He originates, and the state
of things with Him." (In Greek: "How the Multiplicity of Fonns was Generated and on
the Good.") The parallel text surely inspired the Adaptor's characterization of the topic
under discussion: it begins by referring to '"the God (ho rheos)" sending souls into the
lower world. 25 The text continues by discussing whether origination entails discursive
thought. Again, we have the contrast between soul and the higher principles. In a brief
independent section the Adaptor indicates that he is still chiefly interested in soul: "If this
is the case, then we revert and say that the souls, when they were in their world before
descending into generation. were sensitive; except that their sense was an intellectual
sense'~ (Th.A V.I5). Five more lines of Arabic text on the soul intervene before the
Adaptor returns to his source text. Eventually the mimar turns to Plotinus' own topic,
which is actually the intellect, but shortly thereafter the text concludes with another,
apparently conclusory, independent passage (V.52). Certainly nothing in this mimar
forces us to see it as fitting into the order suggested so far. But neither is it an obvious
product of a chaotic manuscript, and V. I 5-16 suggests that it belongs in the Th.As
general plan of concentrating on the soul, however tangentially.
AlTmar VI: Perhaps the most puzzling mfmar for anyone trying to reconstruct a rational
order to Th.A is the sixth. Paralleling Enn [VA, it deals with the relation of stars to
25 Though. typicaJly. the Adaptor gives the paraphrase a much more monotheistic cast. changing"tht: God or some god (ho theos e l/zeos lis)" to "the First Creator."
30
things in the rest of the sense world, and with the question of how magic works. But VI
is not obviously out of place in the order suggested thus far: it is drawn from one of the
treatises on "Problems of the Soul,n and in fact the issues of the stars and magic are
relevant to the Th.As conception of soul. It may be that the Adaptor, having first given
an introduction to the soul. then a discussion of its nature. and then treatments of its
relation to intellect and God. is now ready to deal with more specific problems relating to
soul. But just as likely, the mimar is an indication of the some textual corruption. As we
will see, some amount of corruption must be allowed to explain the present state of Th.A.
This is of course compatible with the thesis of intentional ordering defended thus far: the
presence of some textual disruption does not mean that all departures from the order of
the Enneads are fortuitous.
}vfimar VII: As the title (original in the paraphrase) announces. the seventh mfmar returns
to the topic of sours nature. The Greek text covered by this mimar is the end of Enn
IV.8: the same treatise which was the source for much of the doxography in mfmar I. The
fact that the ending of mimor VII parallels the end of IV.8 suggests an original break in
the text. and the beginning of VII is also suggestive. It starts just at the point where
Plotinus is turning from his discussion of Plato's theory of soul to his own concluding
comments: "Then [the soul], despite being divine and from a place above, comes inside
the body and, [despite] being the lowest god. descends on its own (alilexolls;o) and
because of its power and thus puts in order what is after this." If it is true that the
Adaptor left the middle parts of Enn IV.8 out of his doxography. he may have returned to
finish the last part of the text in this separate mfmar as a summary of Plotinus' own views
31
on the same subject.26 It is less clear, however, why this mfmar would come so late in
Th.A. Given that this section of the Enneads is concerned mostly with the fall of soul
into body and what causes that fall, the Adaptor could have considered it as addressing a
more sped fie point. On the basis of mfmar VI. we have already hypothesized that these
later mayamir are devoted to particular problems dealing with soul. This part of the
paraphrase, then, may bear out that hypothesis. We will see shortly that mimar IX does
so as well.
l\timar VII/: The eighth mfmar, among the longest in Th.A, is clearly marked by textual
corruption. As Zimmermann has remarked. the beginning seems to have followed X.136
in the original paraphrase, so that the heading would be the work of a later editor.27 The
topic in the first part of vm (I-52), furthermore, does not seem to fit weB with a set of
texts on the soul. Rather, the comparison pursued here (paralleling Enn VI.7) is between
the sensible and intellectual worlds.28 After the first part of vrn, the textual chaos
becomes even more obvious: Vrn.53 is prefaced by the note: ""This section (bab) had no
heading (ra's) in the copy,',29 This means that Vrn.53ff. need not have originally
folIowed Vm.I-52, and indeed probably did not. The second part of VIII, at any rate,
begins with a very long independent passage discussing the soul's potentiality (52-66),
~6 See fn.18 above.'17 Zimmermann (1986). 160-1.'1S It may be relevant that the paraphrase breaks offjust before Enn VI.7.15. where Plotinus turns
from discussing !lOllS proper to the relationship between flotlS and the One. I will argue below that Th.A isthe result of an attempt on the part of the Adaptor to present a group of texts concentrating on soul. and thatother remains of *AP come from sections devoted to intellect and God. The break after VIII.52 is evidence.though slight evidence. that the Adaptor also separated texts dealing with llOUS from texts dealing with theFirst Principle. A very similar break occurs after VIII. 143. which parallels EnnV.I.6. Again. in whatfollows Plotinus shifts his focus to the One. leaving the topic of flOIlS behind. Here the division is not soclear. however: some of the discussion bearing on the One (in particular. how it is able to generate nOils) isretained before the paraphra'ie breaks off.
32
and then resumes the paraphrase of the treatise (Enn IV.4) dealt with in the first part of
mimar II. If it is true that Th.A was a collection of texts on the soul. this may well have
been part of it. Given considerations that I will note below (section 4.1.2), it seems
possible (as Zimmermann would also have to maintain) that this section originally
followed Th.A II.56. Against this interpretation, one might point out the emphatic
concluding tone of II.56, which does not seem a natural segue into the continued
arguments of Vrn.52ff, though of course this final sentence could have been written by a
later editor. At any rate, it seems safe enough to conclude that Vm.53-97 represents a
fragment from the paraphrase dealing with soul, which was corrupted and mixed with
other texts to form mimar VID. (The end of this section. Vm.97, is sufficiently abrupt
that it seems unlikely to have been the original conclusion for this part of the paraphrase.)
What follows in VIII tends to support this hypothesis. It is a long section (98-143) on the
One and intellect that overlaps with parts of GS. The same (with the exception of overlap
with GS) is true of the remainder of vm (144-189). This last section could have
belonged to a part of AP devoted to intellect since, as pointed out in the concluding
passage (VIn. J89), it concentrates on the beauty of the noetic world.
Allmar IX: After the chaos of vm, the ninth mimar seems to constitute a return to the
familiar concerns of Th.A. Again. the mima,. falls into two parts: the first (1-63) is drawn
from Enn IV.7 and argues for the immortality of the soul. This section seems to be
designed as a self-contained chapter ofTh.A: it begins with the first sentence of IV.7 and
ends with an original conclusion of the kind familiar from previous mayiimir.30 The
19 See p. 99. fn.9 in Badawi"(1955)..~O And again. lhere is a shift in the argument immediately following in Plotinus.
33
placement of mfmar lX sorts well with the exploration of specific problems related to
soul in VI and VII (and perhaps Vill.53-97). Having shown early in Th.A that the soul is
not a body, the Adaptor here proves on the basis of this that the soul is immortal.
The second part (64-90), paralleling Enn V.1, is another matter. It begins with the
heading "Some odd points," and the evidence of the text does not seem to speak strongly
for or against including it in an original mfmar IX. The section does begin with a one
sentence introduction, but this can easily be taken as a later addition. The closing
sentence does not have the emphatic finality of some we have seen, but it parallels the
end of V.I and so probably does preserve an original break in the text. This latter fact is
the most persuasive reason to think the second part of IX belongs where it is, attached to
the first part. A reference to materialism added by the Adaptor in 1X.78 also helps to
unite the two parts. Still, it may well be that the second part of IX was only attached to
the first part later, as the heading seems to suggest.31
Afimar X: The final mlmar of Th.A, according to its title, deals with "The First Cause and
the Things that Originate From It." This is based on the title of Enn V.2 C'On the Genesis
and Order of Those After the First"), though the Arabic title puts more emphasis on the
First itself as the topic. In fact, turning to the text we find that the first section of X (1-
33) deals largely with intellect and soul, and their relation to the higher principles,
especially the One. In other words, as one might suspect, the Greek title represents the
content of the section more accurately. The section paraIIels the entirety of the short
.'1 The other possible interpretation of the heading is that the Adaptor wrote it to indicate that hewas changing topic between 63 and 64. and that the lalter portion simply covers points that did not fit easilyinto any other pan of *Th.A.
34
treatise V.2, and ends with an original concluding passage of the sort now familiar to us
(31-33).
In section two of mfmar X (34-136), drawn from Enn VI.7, the text focuses on the
status of things as Forms in the intellect, and in particular on the nature of man in the
noetic realm. Or, as it is put at X.78ff., the chief question is the relationship between "the
man of soul" and "the man of intellect." Shortly thereafter comes the gap (X.81-2) which
we suggested above is a sure sign of selective paraphrase on the part of the Adaptor. The
ending of this second section is quite abrupt, and no wonder: for this is the missing
paraphrase from before the first section of mfmar VID. The clear implication is that
X.34-136 preceded VID.I-5 I in the text. If it is the case, as we argued above, that vm.l-
51 was not part of the original order of Th.A, then neither was X.34-136. The same
argument would hold for the third and final section of X (137-194), which also focuses on
the intellectual realm. All this raises the question of how much, if any, of the last mfmar
could have fit into an intentionally ordered text whose purpose was to present a doctrine
of the soul. Certainly, everything following X.34 is the product of textual corruption. It
is possible that the first section of the mfmar, however, was designed as a concluding
discussion of the soul's relation to the upper principles, or perhaps even as a bridge
between the part of *AP dealing with soul and that dealing with intellect and the One.
But given the title of mfmar X, I am inclined to think that the entirety of X must be
excluded from a work chiefly dealing with soul.
Before drawing any further conclusions, let us summarize the themes of the
mayiimir:
35
I: A doxography on the topic of soul.
II: I-56 discusses relation of soul to intellect; 57-99 the relation of soul to body.
III: Refutation of materialism regarding soul.
IV: Continuation of rejection of materialism; the relation of soul to intellect.
V: The First Principle, with a possible focus on sours relation to that Principle.
VI: The stars and magic. The first of a series of specific problems regarding soul?
VII: Fall of the soul.
VIII: Obviously corrupt. The second section (53-97) is germane to soul.
IX: Immortality of the soul. The second section (64-90) was probably not originally
attached.
X: Obviously corrupt. The first section (1-33) could be a conclusion to the paraphrase on
soul.
Far from the obvious chaos Zimmermann finds in Th.A, we have here the traces
of a possible organization for the text. The most striking features of this are the
apparently doxographic function of mimar I, the focus throughout almost the entire text
on soul, and the progression of the text from the nature of soul to its relation to the other
hypostases of the Plotinian cosmos, followed perhaps by sections dealing with more
specific problems regarding soul. It is also worth noting that the mayiimir most difficult
to reconcile with this scheme are vm and X, which are certainly corrupt and therefore no
reliable indicator of the original state of Th.A.32 Against Zimmermann's hypothesis that
Th .A was pieced together from a pile of loose parts of *AP, then, I would suggest the
~2 It may also be significant that these two mayiimir differ strikingly in length from the other eight.being roughly twice as long as most of the others. This alone suggests that they may have been altered bythe addition of extraneous material from elsewhere in *AP.
36
following as a possible history of the text. Confronted with a text of the Enneads or, very
likely, the second half thereof (Enn IV-VI), the Adaptor set out to reorganize the text
according to the Plotinian hierarchy. The entire resulting text was the original *AP, and
since it included the Prologue the title of .heology" probably applied to this complete
text. One part of *AP. which we can call *Th.A, was intended to deal with soul. and
most of the current Th.A consists of parts of this text. Given the likelihood that the word
'mtmar' dates from very early in the fonnative history ofTh,A, we may hypothesize that
*Th.A was divided by the Adaptor into sections that he called mayiimir. Other portions
of *AP were devoted to the intellect and the First Principle (it is unclear whether intellect
was dealt with separately from the One). Given the focus of OS on these higher
principles, it derives from these other portions. This, incidentally, provides us with an
excellent explanation for why Th.A and OS do not overlap. As for GS, it is difficult to
say more than that it represents fragments from various parts of *AP.33 The entire text
*AP did undergo a process of serious corruption, as Zimmermann argues, yet this
corruption was not as complete as he supposes. It was, however, disruptive enough to
split up the corpus into three different texts. A later editor in the possession of *Th.A (or
parts of it) and other fragments from *AP affixed the fragments to *Th.A, perhaps using
the Adaptors word mfmar when re-titling the confused results (namely Th.A vrn and X).
It is of course a matter of speculation to try to separate the re-orderings of the Adaptor
33 Two things are worth noting in passing about GS. despite its obviously fragmentary nature. Thefirst is that these fragments may also preserve some intentional re-ordering by the Adaptor. For example.the section GS 1I.59ff, which is drawn from Enn IV.4. deals with the universal soul. and follows a section(GS 11.45-58) which has the same theme. but is taken from Enn IV.9. The two sections also resonate withone another through their use of the signet-ring metaphor (GS 11.53 and 61 ). Another example is thetransition from GS 72-3: the parallel passages are separated by over 100 lines of Greek. but the two parts ofthe paraphrase are united by their use of the same example of light's presence in air. The second is that
37
from those of the editor of Th.A, but cenainly the more jarring and nonsensical junctures
(which are mostly in the later parts of Th.A) are the work of this editor. In most cases, it
seems, the editor ofTh.A did far less editing than even Zimmermann supposed, which is
why some breaks in the text are completely abrupt or marked by admissions of textual
confusion.
All this tends to cast doubt on, or at least force us to examine more critically, the
views of Zimmermann on the origins of Th.A. Yet there are also a variety of points to be
raised against our revised history. Why, for instance, do the mfmar labels preface the
corrupt parts ofTh.A, and why don't they appear at all in other parts of AP? The former
could be ascribed to the editor of Th.A, as just suggested, and the latter could be a
combination of bad luck (the titles have been lost) or the fact that the Adaptor only used
the word in his section on the soul. Still, the fact is awkward. Further, if the ordering
principle is as we have described, then why doesn't the Adaptor make it more explicit?
The only explicit suggestion of a master plan for the text is at the end of the Prologue, and
its support for our thesis is to some extent ambiguous.34 Surely, if the Adaptor had gone
to the trouble to rearrange pans of the Enneads into Th.A, he would have drawn attention
to the fact more conspicuously. Another hypothesis, taking these last points into account,
would be that the Adaptor was not the person who rearranged *AP into a section on soul.
That is, there could be three levels of "adaptation": (I) the Adaptor himself, who wrote a
paraphrase of the last three Enneads, (2) a first editor who separated the texts according to
there are fragments in GS which deal with soul: given the corruption in the later parts of Th.A. it is possiblethat these fragments were originally in the pan of *AP dealing with soul. that is, in *Th.A.
:4 If the Prologue does support my interpretation. then it suggests that the pans of *AP dealingwith the intellect and the One were originally before *Th.A. not after it. But the opposite is suggested by
38
topic. (3) a final editor responsible for our Th.A, who patched up a corrupted copy of the
work of editor (2). But given that the re-ordering in the paraphrase can sometimes be
attributed with confidence to the Adaptor. as I have argued above, I think this hypothesis
is exceedingly unlikely. If there was an intentional re-ordering of the text, it was almost
certainly the Adaptor who did it.
This brings us back to what is, for the purposes of this study, the most important
lesson of our discussion of the order of AP. The Adaptor mayor may not have been the
one who seriously changed the sequence of the Plotinian texts in the paraphrase. But
several pieces of evidence adduced above make it clear that he was to some extent
selective in choosing what to paraphrase: we saw at least two places where he was almost
certainly responsible for a "gap" in what was paraphrased.35 This has important
implications for our analysis of the philosophy of AP, because it shows that the Adaptor
was a critical reader of Plotinus. We will see many examples in the following chapters
that show his philosophically critical attitude. The evidence thus far demonstrates the
extent to which this attitude governed the entire project of rendering Plotinus into Arabic.
1.2 The origins of AP
As remarked above. the bulk of research on the Arabic Plotinus is devoted to determining
the origins of AP, and the possible sources on which the Adaptor drew in composing it.
Below I discuss some of the most important contributions and outstanding questions
regarding AP's history and the influences that may be detected in it. Foremost among
the fact that it is the latter parts of Th.A which are seriously corrupted. On the other hand. perhaps the orderof topics in the Prologue simply reflects the importance of the topics. not their order in the text.
3