On Aristotle's World

ON ARISTOTLE’S WORLD

TANELI KUKKONEN

. Introduction

S C opens his monumental commentary onAristotle’s On the Heavens, the only full commentary extant fromantiquity, with the words: ‘Alexander [of Aphrodisias] says that thesubject matter [skopos] of Aristotle’s treatise On the Heavens has todo with the world [peri kosmou].’ The statement is surprising for acouple of reasons. First and most importantly, the term kosmos doesnot appear anywhere in the first chapter of Aristotle’s work, whichto the late antique commentator will have been the first place to lookwhen it came to discerning Aristotle’s intentions. In De caelo . Aristotle speaks of ‘the all’ (to pan), of everything (ta panta), and ofthat which is complete and in that sense perfect (to teleion); in thethird chapter the uppermost region (to anōtaton) and the outermostheaven (ho eschatos ouranos) are added to the mix, signalling thatthe immediate discussion has to do with the celestial region. Theword kosmos occurs for the first time only in the eighth chapter; it isevoked in conjunction with the universe’s uniqueness (. –) andits ungenerated nature (. , a). Overall, despite the tendencyon the part of modern commentators to side with Alexander and tocall Aristotle’s On the Heavens his cosmology, the term kosmos does

© Taneli Kukkonen

I thank audiences at the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia,the University of Western Ontario, the University of Dayton, and New York Uni-versity for comments and feedback, as well as an anonymous reviewer subsequentlyrevealed to be Peter Adamson. The research for this article was supported by Euro-pean Research Council project No. , SSALT.

In De caelo . – Heiberg; cf. . ff. All references to the Greek commen-tators on Aristotle are to the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (editors’ namesare given at first occurrence). For clarity’s sake, in this article kosmos is always trans-lated as ‘world’, while to pan is rendered as ‘the All’, to holon as ‘the whole’, andouranos variably as ‘heaven’ or ‘the heavens’ according to context. This leaves ‘theuniverse’ as a neutral descriptor for miscellaneous purposes. In this article I havesometimes made use of existing English translations from the Ancient Commenta-tors on Aristotle series; if so, the technical terminology has been rendered uniformwhere necessary without separate notice.

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not appear to have any special significance in Aristotle’s expositionin this particular treatise.

Nor does the term kosmos figure in the summary of natural philo-sophy given at the outset of Aristotle’s Meteorology, a fact to whichSimplicius draws the reader’s attention (In De caelo . –. ; .–). This matters, because theMeteorology’s opening account ofthe parts of natural philosophy—a list Simplicius supplements withzoology, for reasons that will be made clear—could be, and oftenwas, taken as a guide to what Aristotle’s intentions were in framingthe study of nature the way he did. So for Aristotle to have tackledthe kosmos in On the Heavens, one would expect to see the term ap-pear there, rather than the mere mention of the orderly character ofthe astral motions (phoran diakekosmēmenōn astrōn). But such is notthe case.

Nor again is there any evidence that the original Greek title ofAristotle’s On the Heavens would have included the term kosmos.

The compound Latin title De caelo et mundo, which became com-monplace in medieval Latin scholasticism and which thence foundits way into conventional listings of Aristotle’s works, evidentlywas either an Arabic innovation or else based on an earlier Syr-iac model. It is worth noting in this connection how in the Arabictranslations of Aristotle ʿālam, or ‘world’, is substituted a few timeswhere the Greek original has ouranos, which means that the NearEastern translators very probably introduced the two-part title inpleonastic imitation of the way ouranos and kosmos are equated inDe caelo . , b–.

Yet a further reason to regard Simplicius’ report of Alexander asodd is that a separate work, bearing the very title On the World (Perikosmou), did circulate under Aristotle’s name: Alexander of Aph-

Or indeed anywhere else: see H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, nd edn. (Berlin,), s.v. kosmos, and see sect. below.

See e.g. Olymp. In Meteor. . –. Stüve. Indeed, the title Peri ouranou is of later provenance: see D. J. Allan, ‘On the

Manuscripts of the De caelo of Aristotle’, Classical Quarterly, (), –; P.Moraux, Aristote: Du ciel (Paris, ), ; D. J. Allan, Aristotelis De coelo libri quat-tuor (Oxford, ), p. iii.

See Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-fihrist, ed. G. Flügel, vols. (Leipzig, ), –; further G. Endress, Die arabischen Übersetzungen von Aristoteles’ Schrift De caelo[Übersetzungen] (diss. Ph.D., Frankfurt a.M., ), –, –. (Alexander’s lostcommentary is, however, according to Ibn al-Nadīm’s testimony, supposed to havebeen simply on Aristotle’s treatise ‘On the Heavens’ [Fī al-samāʾ].)

This follows the example set by Plato, Tim. ; cf. also De caelo . , a.


On Aristotle’s World

rodisias was probably familiar with it and may have used it as an(uncredited) aide in constructing his own treatise On the Principlesof the All, now lost in the original Greek but extant in an Arabictranslation. Any desire on Alexander’s part to frame On the Hea-vens as a work on the kosmos thus seems to put the two works indirect contention.

But the most puzzling aspect in all of this is that Simplicius seesfit to open with a citation from Alexander’s lost commentary (forthat is certainly what we must take the reference to be) in the firstplace. Notwithstanding Alexander’s high standing among the com-mentators in Simplicius’ eyes, the former is brought up in this in-stance only in order to be refuted. Following a detailed rundownof the previous positions that had been taken with respect to thescope of Aristotle’s study, Simplicius concludes that On the Hea-vens, far from harbouring cosmological ambitions, instead func-tions merely as an account of the simple bodies—first aether or firstbody, then the four sublunary elements. The suggestion seemsplausible enough on the face of it. Yet precisely because of this, itis unclear why Alexander’s conflicting opinion would assume suchprominence at the outset. The detail is all the more puzzling sinceSimplicius’ problematization of the skopos of On the Heavens wasnot the norm even in his own time. From among Simplicius’ fellowtrainees under Ammonius, John Philoponus in his introduction toAristotle’s natural philosophy casually refers to On the Heavens asthe treatise in which correlates to eternal things (idia tois aidiois) arediscussed, while Olympiodorus, commenting on Aristotle’s insis-

See Alexander of Aphrodisias, On the Cosmos [Mabādīʾ], ed. C. Genequand(Leiden, ), and –; regarding Alexander’s supposed use of De mundo, I.Kupreeva sounds a cautionary note in her review of Genequand, in Ancient Philo-sophy, (), – at –.

See the discussion in A. Rescigno, Alessandro di Afrodisia: Commentario al Decaelo di Aristotele. Frammenti del primo libro (Amsterdam, ), –.

H. Baltussen, Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of a Com-mentator [Philosophy and Exegesis] (London, ), –, raises the question ofwhy Alexander is so prominent in this passage, but does not give an answer beyondthe trust Simplicius regularly puts in Alexander when it comes to setting the scenefor any given investigation—which in this case is no explanation at all, given thatSimplicius’ attitude towards Alexander in the present context is expressly critical. In De caelo . –, . –, . –. , . ff., . –. Simplicius’ basic position is accepted explicitly, although on the basis of Jae-

gerian arguments, by A. P. Bos, On the Elements: Aristotle’s Early Cosmology (As-sen, ); it is adopted silently by e.g. F. Solmsen, Aristotle’s System of the PhysicalWorld (Ithaca, NY, ), . Philop. In Phys. . – Vitelli. The contrast is with On Coming-to-Be and


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tence on the overall immutability of even the sublunary order inthe Meteorology (. , a ff.), happily takes on Alexander’s de-scription of De caelo as concerning the kosmos (In Meteor. . – Hayduck).

I do not have a ready answer as to why Alexander would haveclaimed that Aristotle’s On the Heavens takes the world as its sub-ject matter. The claim is puzzling from a Peripatetic standpoint, forreasons that will become clear presently. But I think a thing or twocan be said about why Simplicius held the statement up to scrutinyand why he rejected its implications. The discussion neatly high-lights certain developments that pertain to the demands made of anaccount (logos) concerning the kosmos in later Greek philosophy, atthe same time that it reveals the pressures faced by Peripatetic phi-losophy in meeting these expectations.

. The (well-)hidden unity of On the Heavens

We may begin from an observation that is largely uncontroversialfrom a modern standpoint but would surely have offended Simpli-cius (and perhaps Alexander). This is that the overall impressiongiven by On the Heavens is one of a range of loosely related discus-sions collected under one banner—‘something of a rag-bag’, as R. J.Hankinson puts it. As is the case with many of the Aristotelianworks presented to us as integral treatises, On the Heavens appearsto have originated as a set of separate studies strung together due toa certain family resemblance. Tensions between certain aspects ofthe treatise—above all, the question of whether the heavens shouldbe regarded as animate or not, and the related issue of whether a se-parate immaterial mover is responsible for the celestial rotations—have moreover led some contemporary scholars to believe that Decaelo is a patchwork effort, with elements stemming from differentpoints in Aristotle’s career, and that the treatise’s internal consis-tency and coherence are questionable at best.

Passing-Away, which according to Philoponus treats of things proper to generableand perishable substances; still, Philoponus’ characterization of De caelo’s remitwould be difficult to square with that given by Simplicius.

Note that kosmologia appears to be a neologism. Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Heavens . –, trans. R. J. Hankinson (Lon-

don and Ithaca, NY, ), . See W. K. C. Guthrie, Aristotle: On the Heavens (Cambridge, Mass., ),



All this would have been utterly unacceptable to the late antiquecommentator. Not only was the ‘lesser harmony’ of Aristotle withhimself an unquestioned postulate in Simplicius’ act of comment-ing on his works—across Aristotle’s various treatises as well as, ofcourse, within—and not only was all this merely preliminary todemonstrating the ‘greater harmony’ between Plato and Aristotle.

What was also inadmissible was the very notion that a work derivingfrom one of the revered philosophers would have been composedwith anything less than perfect authorial control. The assumptionwas that not only maximal internal coherence but also singularityof intent underlay the writings of the sages: in the notion of skopos,unity of aim matches perfectly the choice of topic, so that nothingis rendered hostage to fortune and no loose ends are left dangling.Accordingly, Simplicius, when introducing the question of whatAristotle’s On the Heavens might be about, baldly posits that ‘eachtreatise demands a single subject [skopos] dealing with one thing,in relation to which it weaves together its individual parts’ (In Decaelo . –, trans. Hankinson). The implication is that this iswhat Aristotle would have aspired to as well, and attained.

Armed with this assumption, Simplicius can develop his ownpreferred interpretation, according to which On the Heavens treatsthe simple bodies, these being the ‘parts of the All’ (merē tou pantos)which it is appropriate to examine immediately after the Physics’study of the principles of nature is complete. Simplicius in factintimates that an appeal to the simple bodies would have formedthe second half of Alexander’s original characterization. Accord-ing to this second formulation of Alexander’s position, Aristotle’s

pp. xv–xxv; L. Elders, Aristotle’s Cosmology: A Commentary on the De caelo (Assen,), posits that De caelo exhibits signs of at least four layers of additions and (im-perfectly executed) editorial harmonization, which seems excessive.

For the former point see Baltussen, Philosophy and Exegesis, n. ; for thelatter see e.g. the useful set of translations in R. Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Com-mentators – , vols. (Ithaca, NY, ), i. –, and chs. and in R.Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence(London, ). I adopt the terms ‘lesser harmony’ and ‘greater harmony’ fromRobWisnovsky.

Compare Proclus on Plato’s Parmenides, In Parm. Cousin; for other ex-amples in Proclus see J. Mansfeld, Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled before theStudy of an Author or a Text (Leiden, ), –; for an anonymous Platonist ac-count on how best to identify the skopos of a work see L. G. Westerink, AnonymousProlegomena to Platonic Philosophy, IX, nd edn. (Dilton Marsh, ), –.

In De caelo . –.


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intention was to treat the world and the simple bodies (In De caelo. –; . –).

But if this is so, then we should find all the more curious Simpli-cius’ decision to pick themore controversial first half of Alexander’sformulation for inspection and refutation, rather than focusing onthat aspect of it which was common ground. Simplicius’ moveeffectively creates a controversy where one could easily have beensuppressed. In the event, Simplicius seems vaguely apologeticabout the whole business, insisting that if Alexander had onlystuck to talk about the simple bodies and not brought the worldinto it, then there would have been no cause for quarrel (In Decaelo . –). It would also have been all right if Alexander hadspoken of the world in the sense of that term covering all the simplebodies in the world (kath’ hoson peri tōn haplōn pantōn tōn en tōikosmōi, In De caelo . ). Such an interpretation can be teased outof Iamblichus, if we are to believe Simplicius, and in essence it iswhat a number of later Peripatetics ended up saying (see below).Alas, Alexander can only be taken as having meant that Aristotletreated of the world (as world) first, the simple bodies second. It isthe conjunctive kai that Simplicius objects to.

. The Platonic kosmos

The puzzle can be put in yet more pointed terms. Why should anaccount of the simple bodies alone not constitute a cosmology? Inother words, why would Alexander’s second characterization (‘thesimple bodies’) not be equivalent to the first (‘the world’), giventhat the two end up being one and the same, extensionally speak-ing?Why is an elemental physics not equivalent to a cosmology? Allthat the sensible world contains, after all, is composed of the simplebodies, meaning that in at least one sense, when one has accountedfor the elements, nothing has been left out when it comes to describ-ing the physical world. This seems to be the implication, innocenton the face of it, of the way that Alexander handles Aristotle’s intro-duction to the Meteorology. According to Alexander, On the Hea-vens treats the five simple bodies, since these are the elements ofthe kosmos (tauta gar stoicheia tou kosmou, In Meteor. . –. ).Aquinas hits upon much the same formulation when he attempts toreconstruct an acceptable interpretation of Alexander on the basis



of what he reads in Simplicius’ account (this is based on Williamof Moerbeke’s translation of Simplicius): On the Heavens looks atthe simple bodies, but it does so through the filter of seeing theseas the most elemental constituent parts of the universe, on the basisof which a fuller scientific account of the more complex embodiedsubstances can be constructed.

To answer the question why this will not do, a brief look at thegeneral connotations of the word kosmos may prove helpful. Ashas been noted many times, the Greek term originally appears tohavemeant any beautiful and purposefully arranged whole. Thus,Homer famously uses kosmos to describe a sleeping regiment whosearms are so arranged that they are ready for battle at a moment’snotice (Il. . ); by contrast, a chaotic retreat is called ‘acos-mic’ (. ). The assembly of clothes, jewellery, scents, and sandalsworn by the goddess Hera likewise constitutes a kosmos (. ),indicating that the aesthetic connotations of the word were fore-grounded early on.

In the philosophical tradition Pythagoras is said to have been thefirst to call ‘that which contains the whole’ the kosmos on account ofthe order which is in it (ek tēs en autōi taxeōs, Aët. Plac. . . ). Ifwe are to believe the doxographers, the Pythagorean philosopherPhilolaus, moreover, explicated the unity of the kosmos in termsof all of its different parts exactly mirroring one another, with acommon centre and origin at the middle, which is to say the sun(B DK). Philolaus appears to have been engaged in an attemptto apply mathematical reasoning to his peculiar brand of cosmo-logical speculation, something for which Aristotle chides him—soit appears, at any rate, although the criticism is anonymous—inOn the Heavens (. , a–b). On the opposite side, a late

‘de simplicibus corporibus determinatur in hoc libro secundum quod sunt par-tes universi constitutivae’ (Aquinas, In De caelo, prooemium).

M. R. Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (London, ), –; W. Kranz, ‘Kos-mos’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, (), – and –.

Text and translation in J. Mansfeld and D. T. Runia, Aëtiana: The Methodand Intellectual Context of a Doxographer, ii/ (Leiden, ). For further ma-terials see e.g. J. Kerchensteiner, Kosmos: Quellenkritische Untersuchungen zu denVorsokratikern (Munich, ); for an interpretation critical of the notion that thePresocratic kosmos would designate anything like the world see A. Finkelberg, ‘TheHistory of the Greek Kosmos’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, (),–.

See D. W. Graham (trans. and ed.), The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: TheComplete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, vols. (Cam-


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materialist monist of the likes of Diogenes of Apollonia could besaid to ‘construct the world’ (kosmopoiei) in terms of air condens-ing here while becoming rarefied there (A DK), this leading toinfinite kosmoi forming in a boundless void (A ): and the principletying all this together, we are told by Aristotle and others, is thateverything is in some sense composed of the same stuff, given thatotherwise things within each world would be unable to affect oneanother. While such lines of speculation can prove hard to graspwith any precision, they serve to illustrate how even in early Greekphilosophy, questions regarding the kosmos addressed not only thebuilding blocks of the physical universe, so to speak (what the uni-verse is made out of), but also what would tie them together andmake them a single whole. In other words, the question was howto advance from the observation of all things (ta panta) to an under-standing of the All (to pan).

But if this is the aim, then it is immediately clear how Aristotle’swork On the Heavens fails to accomplish much of anything. A com-parison with Plato’s Timaeus will prove particularly unflattering.To cite Simplicius, Aristotle

clearly does not explain the world in this treatise as Plato did in the Ti-maeus, where he treated both of the principles of natural objects, matterand form, motion and time, and of the general composition of the world[koinēn sustasin tou kosmou], and gave a particular account both of the hea-venly bodies and of those below the moon, in the latter case occupyinghimself both with atmospheric phenomena and with the minerals, plants,and animals on the earth up to and including the composition of man andof his parts. Here, however, very little is said about the world as a whole[tou kosmou pantos], and only such things as it has in common with the hea-ven, i.e. that it is eternal, limited in size, and single, and that it has thesefeatures because the heaven is eternal, limited in size, and single. (In Decaelo . –, trans. Hankinson)

bridge, ), i. ff.; Simpl. In De caelo . –. connects Aristotle’s expo-sition here with his lost treatise on Pythagoreanism.

A DK=GC . , b–; the term kosmos is explicitly evoked in the famousparallel passage B DK.

D. W. Graham, Explaining the Cosmos (Princeton, ), calls the earliest at-tempts at philosophical speculation instances of the Generating Substance Theory,as opposed to material monism, in order to emphasize how they represent attemptsto provide ‘Theories of Everything’ in both the elemental and the generative sensesof the word. On Aristotle’s terms, Graham’s hypothesis would mean that, contraryto Aristotle’s exposition (Metaph. Α , a–), already the earliest Milesianswould have been investigating the moving cause as well as the material one.



The underlying note of protest sounded by Simplicius is that theworld as a whole does not figure as an object of investigation in Aris-totle’s account: but this can be taken in a number of ways. Thefirst and more mundane understanding is that Aristotle does nottruly take into account all kinds of physical beings. At most, Sim-plicius ventures, he examines what the all-encompassing celestialbody must be like and then extends the analysis of features that per-tain to it to fit the rest. (In De caelo . –) This is indeed broadlyconsistent with Aristotle’s practice in the work On the Heavens andwith his third and last definition of ‘heaven’ as everything encom-passed by the outermost sphere.

Even assuming such a lowly goal, Simplicius says, Aristotlefalls well short of Plato, who in a single elegant treatise—theTimaeus, a towering achievement in the eyes of the late antiquecommentators—manages to recount the entire composition of theworld, from the heavens through the meteorological phenomenaand from the constitution of the mineral world all the way toplants, animals, and human beings. Drawing an analogy that musthave seemed obvious to the late Platonist observer, Simpliciussuggests that those who would wish to inspect Aristotle’s theoryof the world should therefore turn to all of Aristotle’s works onnature put together, because all in all they cover roughly the sameground the Timaeus does (see In De caelo . –. ). This, itnow turns out, is why Simplicius earlier saw fit to include thezoological treatises in an account that otherwise was based on theMeteorology: the purpose is to make the analogy with the Timaeusmore complete. Simplicius even evokes as a witness the AugustanPeripatetic Nicolaus of Damascus, who—so Simplicius says—hadproduced a work entitled On the All in which he proceeded to writeon everything in the world species by species (peri pantōn tōn en tōikosmōi kat’ eidē: In De caelo . –).

However, this only serves to uncover a more fundamental flawin the Aristotelian approach to the kosmos. An account—anyaccount—that proceeds as Nicolaus is said to have done, merelycounting off species one by one, by definition fails to treat the world

De caelo . , b–; see similarly Alex. Aphr. In Metaph. . – Hay-duck (commenting on Metaph. Β , b–); and cf. Averroes’ gloss on Aristotle,Metaph. Λ , a–, which points to a similar elision between heaven in the sin-gular and the world as all physical reality: In Metaph. Λ, comm. =Abū l-WalīdIbn Rushd, Tafsīr mā baʿd al-t.abīʿa [Tafsīr], ed. M. Bouyges, vols. (Beirut, –), iii. . –.


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as an entity in its own right, as the world. A catalogue of naturalkinds, in other words, whether on the level of genera or species,is not going to be enough to determine what the overall shape ofthe sensible world is and what accounts for its unity—not for thePlatonist, at any rate. Alexander’s claim to have found in Aristotle’sOn the Heavens a treatment of the world as a whole (peri tou pantoskosmou) is what really irks Simplicius: this is evident from his desireto restate Alexander’s position several times and from his need toreiterate his disapproval as well (see In De caelo . ; . –).

The comparison, once again, is with the Timaeus. It will haveseemed sufficiently obvious to Simplicius for him to leave the mat-ter implicit, given how forcefully wholeness and unity figure inProclus’ famous commentary on Plato’s work. In discussing theDemiurge’s third gift to the world, which is its perfect unicity, Pro-clus explains that the All is properly (kuriōs) said to be a whole: thisis because ‘the All is wholly a whole, seeing as it is a whole madeout of wholes’. This sets up the way in which the Platonic modeof exposition in describing the world is superior to all others. Pro-clus claims that Timaeus (as well as the Timaeus) proceeds meth-odically from wholes to parts and that, moreover, this top-downmodel of explanation replicates the direction in which the kosmositself unfolds. Such a mereological understanding of the act of ko-smopoiēsis may appear odd, but it accords well with the top-down,deductive, and demonstrative method that Proclus claims for thePlatonic school. The world, and the very nature of nature itself, willnaturally appear as unitary objects of attention when the adoptedviewpoint is that of the supernal creative principles and their neces-sary outcomes and the metaphysics of participation. One is still notdoing theology as such—that would be confusing the remits of theTimaeus and the Parmenides, and Proclus’ focus is still on nature,phusis, even if in a roundabout manner—but assuredly, the lar-

In Tim. i. . –. Diehl puts the matter succinctly: Plato, according to Pro-clus, speaks both about encosmic things and the world in its entirety (peri enkosmiōndialeksetai pragmatōn kai peri kosmou tou sumpantos). The immediate contrast is withany strictly theological account that would take the higher principles as its primaryobject of study.

to men pan holon holikōs estin, hōs holon ex holōn, In Tim. ii. . –; cf. Plato,Tim. .

See D. Baltzly’s notes to his translation volume: Proclus: Commentary on Plato’sTimaeus, iii. Book , Part : Proclus on the World’s Body (Cambridge, ), ff.

SeeMarijeMartijn’s comments against Lernould’s theologizing interpretation:M. Martijn, Proclus on Nature (Leiden, ), –.



ger degree of unicity thought to prevail in transcendent reality isallowed to guide the Platonist in the direction of viewing physicalreality, too, as a unity whose very parts can be shown to be groun-ded in greater wholes.

When Simplicius cites the failure of On the Heavens to addressthe principles of natural objects (tas archas tōn phusikōn), this againis in comparison with Plato, who had elegantly folded a discussionof matter, form,motion, and time into the kosmopoiēsis described byTimaeus. These would be topics covered by the treatises of thePhy-sics, of course: but then, the Platonist follow-upwould be to say thatthe immanent explanations offered by Aristotle still amount only toancillary causes (sunaitia) and never show how worldly events relyon transcendent principles. Proclus’ judgement is characteristic-ally harsh. According to Proclus, Aristotle, for all that he drew outhis discussion of nature over several treatises (itself a misguidedattempt at outshining Plato), only ever really attended to lowly ma-terial explanations and rarely gained so much as a formal under-standing of things, to say nothing of the higher causes (In Tim. i.. –. ). Whereas Aristotle along with the Presocratic phusikoispeaks at best about the material and (immanent) formal causes,Plato invokes the higher principles of productive, paradigmatic, andfinal causation (In Tim. i. . –), thus invoking a comprehensivelist of origins or archai.

On Plato’s own authority, the Timaeus was read as a treatise thataddresses the nature of the All (peri phuseōs tou pantos, Tim. ).This kind of phusiologia appears to have been framed from at leastthe days of Atticus as an exercise in working out the operations ofthe divine within sensible reality. Such an interpretation effectivelyfused the providentialist and physicalist perspectives when it cameto establishing the purpose of the dialogue. All of this is in evi-dence in Proclus’ Timaeus commentary, in a form, moreover, thatneatly highlights the significance of the terminology of kosmopoiēsis

See Proclus, In Tim. i. . –. C. Steel, ‘Why Should We Prefer Plato’s Timaeus to Aristotle’s Physics? Pro-

clus’ Critique of Aristotle’s Causal Explanation of the Physical World’, in R. W.Sharples and A. Sheppard (eds.), Ancient Approaches to Plato’s Timaeus [AncientApproaches] (London, ), –.

In Tim. i. . –; see i. . –. , where the instrumental, i.e. the im-manent moving cause, is added to the list of sunaitia.

See L. Siorvanes, ‘Perceptions of the Timaeus: Thematization and Truth in theExegetical Tradition’, in Sharples and Sheppard (eds.), Ancient Approaches, –at – and esp. nn. –.


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to the Neoplatonic philosopher. For Proclus, the Platonic phusiolo-giawhen taken comprehensively is a study of the nature of theAll; atthe same time, the nature of the universe just is nature as such. Initself this is something immanent, but a full account of it will lead toa consideration of two transcendent causes, the Demiurge and thegoddess Rhea or Hecate. Accordingly, the Timaeus offers a theoryof the whole stretching from the origin all the way to the ultimateend (ex archēs eis telos, In Tim. i. . ). By this Proclus presumablymeans to say that not only the prohodos but also the epistrophē is ac-counted for. And, in line with this, we discover that the very names‘world’ and ‘heaven’ carry a concealed import, referring as they doto the different perspectives from which one may approach what isessentially a single outcome (i.e. the sensible universe). Proclus putsit to the reader that the Demiurge’s creation is called the kosmos onaccount of its place in the order of procession, the way it receives thegifts of the higher realm; it receives the name ouranos for the wayit reverts back to its source; and a third, ineffable name is evokedby Plato in honour of its remaining (monē) in the Father (In Tim. i.. –. ). Timaeus’ supposed evocation of all three namesshows how his aim is to account for all three of the visible universe’srelations to what lies beyond it and what grounds it.

All of this positions the world at a very precise juncture withinthe order of reality, which in turn leads to a very peculiar defini-tion for the kosmos as a whole. For the school of Athens, what isconstitutive of the kosmos is its mixed ontological stature, one thatcombines change and immutability: as Proclus puts it concisely,‘the very being of the kosmos connotes becoming’. Simplicius con-firms the same preoccupation in a lengthy meditation on Melissus’views on change and being (In Phys. . –. Diels) and in

See M. Martijn, ‘Theology, Naturally: Proclus on Science of Nature as Theo-logy and the Aristotelian Principle of Metabasis’, inM. Perkams and R.-M. Piccione(eds.), Proklos: Methode, Seelenlehre, Metaphysik (Leiden, ), –.

Martijn, Proclus on Nature, –. Cf. In Tim. i. . –. . The difference between the Timaeus and the Parmeni-

des, meanwhile, is that the former relates things in the visible world to the Demiurgewhile the latter relates all things equally to the Good: Proclus, In Parm. – (cf.also In Tim. i. . –. ); and the physical nature of the investigation is underlinedby the fact that the immanent form or logos and the material subject or hupokeimenonare also given consideration (In Tim. i. . –).

Proclus further specifies that the everlastingness of the kosmos is grantedthrough infinite temporality: hē ousia tou kosmou genesin echei kai to aidion autēs katatēn apeirian esti tēn chronikēn (In Tim. i. . –. ).



a comment on Aristotle’s On the Heavens, where he says that ‘thevery being of the kosmos lies in some things remaining for ever andthroughout, while the generated and corruptible things change intoone another’ (In De caelo . –). Simplicius draws from hisdefinition the conclusion that sublunary existents should not pro-perly speaking be called parts of the kosmos but instead its products,as it were (hoion apotelesmata, In De caelo . ). Minimally, thisreinforces the view that the Platonic kosmos has a being separatefrom its constituent parts, at least the sublunary ones.

Instructive, meanwhile, as regards the perceived gap in ambitionbetween Plato and Aristotle is a passage in the Timaeus com-mentary where Proclus reprimands Theophrastus for the latter’sreluctance to pursue explanations past the postulation of a moverof the outermost sphere. Theophrastus, along with ‘all the Peripa-tetics’, had simply stopped there, denying that this level of realitywould admit of explanation any longer. By comparison, Plato hadrecognized how even the movers of the All, ‘whether these be calledsouls or intellects’, being something participated, ‘have an orderfar removed from that of the principles’ (pollostēn echei taxin apotōn archōn), such principles being those more exalted things whichare truly divine. Xenarchus of Seleucia, a Peripatetic of the firstcentury , went even further according to the emperor Julian:Xenarchus berated both Aristotle and Theophrastus for havingbotheredwith incorporeal or intelligible substance (ousian asōmatonnoēton) in the first place, seeing as the whole notion is vapid andunhelpful in the light of the fact that the celestial rotations canbe explained solely by referring to natural principles. Thoughthe targets differ (Proclus takes aim at Theophrastus, Julian atXenarchus), we may notice that the overall point made by bothhostile Platonic witnesses is essentially the same. Symptomatic ofthe Peripatetic style of investigation is to stop far short of the trueprinciples of being and those perspectives that would lead one toa catholic understanding of reality.

See in this connection Philop. Aet. . – Rabe on why the world is not a god,which includes mereological materials similar to what one finds in Simplicius; and– on Theseus’s ship in particular.

In Tim. ii. . –. =Theophr. fr. FHS&G; cf. Theophr. Metaph. ,b ff.

Julian, Or. (). , . –. Rochefort =Theophr. fr. FHS&G; seethe careful analysis in A. Falcon, Aristotelianism in the First Century : Xenarchusof Seleucia (Cambridge, ), –.


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. Aristotle’s universe

In one sense, this is enough to situate Simplicius’ comments onAlexander. A comprehensive account of the kosmos as an ‘intelligentand ensouled god’, as per Proclus’ formulation, was available inthe Timaeus, but for its pre-eminence to emerge with clarity, Alex-ander’s claims towards having uncovered an analogous Aristoteliancosmology in On the Heavens had to be shown for the misguidedexaggerations they were. And this is what Simplicius sets out to do.

Simplicius’ verdict, taken in conjunction with Proclus’ put-downs, hardly seems fair. There is no reason why Aristotle shouldhave aspired to meet the criteria set down by the Academy post-Syrianus, or to think that Alexander ever set out to prove that hedid. It is more likely that Alexander’s use of the phrase peri kosmouin his commentary on De caelo reflects Stoic vocabulary. But evenif Simplicius misunderstood Alexander’s intentions when it comesto positioning the treatise On the Heavens, it is still worth inves-tigating whether there is anything in the Aristotelian corpus thatcould contribute to the construction of something cosmopoieticin the late antique sense of the word. Several candidates presentthemselves; their relative standing tells us something about thepressures faced by the Peripatetic school at various points in itshistory.

First let it be stated that none of the preserved school treatisestreat the kosmos in any sustained fashion, nor do we know of any losttreatise that would have carried that title. But an examination of iso-lated mentions of the word kosmos in the school corpus reveals evenmore, and this is a task best executed through a simple tally. I countforty-eight references to kosmos in the authentic corpus in Bonitz’sIndex, one to kosmika panta as referring to the universe, plus fiveto kosmopoiein. Out of these instances, seven (all in a single passage

In Tim. i. . –. , fusing Tim. – with the description of the kosmos as a‘god-in-becoming’ at Tim. .

See J. Mansfeld, ‘Peri kosmou: A Note on the History of a Title’ [‘Peri kosmou’],Vigiliae Christianae, (), –.

It bears noting that when a late antique philosopher of the likes of Proclus ap-proaches the way in which a Presocratic thinker ‘makes the world’, he sees in it theway in which that thinker sees the rational ordering of the universe as being laid out.The implicit corrective applied here is that even what appear to be genuinely geneticaccounts of the world’s genesis in early Greek philosophy are in fact to be taken ashistoriai in the more timeless sense of that term.



in the Politics: . , b–b) in fact refer to the Cretanmagistrates (kosmoi) and can thus be dismissed out of hand, whilea further thirteen have nothing to do with the universe but insteadrefer to some particular instance of positive ordering in theHomericsense. Fourteen further instances derive from citations of Preso-cratic or Platonic usage (this also takes care of every example ofkosmopoiein and the kosmika panta), while eight in the Meteorologyrefer to some part of the physical universe, either the ‘lower world’or the ‘upper world’ but never ‘the world’ as a whole. Similar an-omalous uses are encountered also in Metaphysics Κ (a) andin the Nicomachean Ethics (. , b), once each.

This leaves only four instances in the entire corpus where Aris-totle of his own initiative uses the term kosmos in anything like thesense of the universe. Four! But there is more: none of these four in-stances amounts to anything much at all in the philosophical sense.In the Politics (. , b) Aristotle says that the gods and theworld have no external actions, only internal activities, which be-cause of the parallelism and the political context can be taken to bemere metaphor (see Section ). In De caelo . , b, Aristotleavers that the kosmos is spherical, while at . , b, he speaksoffhandedly about what is meant by transversing the kosmos (i.e. thephysical universe), neither a particularly pregnant statement. Thisleaves only the principle stated at De caelo . , a, that ‘theorder of the world is eternal’ (tou kosmou taxis aidios estin). Thisis certainly a deeply felt Aristotelian sentiment, and one that findsample corroboration elsewhere. But standing on its own, strandedin a less-appreciated chapter of a less-appreciated treatise (De caelo. treats the position of the earth within the universe), it does notyet amount to anything at all. Strictly in the terminological sense,any impetus the Peripatetics may have had for talking about the ko-smos they must have received from sources other than Aristotle.

I have excluded from the above tally the pseudepigraphic Eco-nomics (which at a says nothing of significance) and the Demundo (on which more below). But a word should be said about thelost dialogue On Philosophy. In this exoteric work Aristotle, if weare to believe reports, mademore liberal use of the term kosmos. Thetreatise appears to have included among its strands of argumenta-tion an appeal to the essential goodness as well as imperishability ofthe current world order. Given how the dialogue by all accounts

The principal testimony is found in Philo, Aet. – ff.; see B. Effe, Studien zur


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adopted a more popular tone and how it presented a more or lessunified front with the Platonic tradition, the evocation of the termkosmos is perhaps not that surprising. However, as has been notedby David Runia, when it comes to just these points, the vocabu-lary we find in Philo’s testimony in particular may have undergonesubstantial revision. Consequently, Philo’s work On the Indestruc-tibility of the World forms a less than trustworthy guide to the pre-cise preoccupations of Aristotle’s original treatise. To say that OnPhilosophy would have provided a substantial account of the kosmossuch as was missing from De caelo and the rest of the school trea-tises, or even that it made copious reference to the concept, musttherefore remain an unsubstantiated conjecture.

Next comes the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On the World (Perikosmou). This work, which most likely stems from the early im-perial period—that is, more or less concurrently with Philo’sauthorship—announces its concern with the kosmos in its verytitle. And it is noticeable how the author everywhere seeks totease out, establish, and underscore the theological and ethicalimplications of the Peripatetic philosophical school’s natural phi-losophy. There is talk here of harmonia (a, a ff.), oftheologizing (theologizein, b), and of course of kosmos as op-posed to akosmia (a–). The world is even defined explicitlyin terms of the ranking and ordering of the whole, by and throughgod. It is plain that all this is said in competition with both thePlatonists and the Stoics, in an attempt to pre-empt any criticismconcerning a reputed insufficient piety in the Aristotelian world-view. Still, the work provides no hint of its author perceivingthere to be any sort of gap when it comes to explaining () howan immaterial Prime Mover is supposed to instigate motion in the

Kosmologie und Theologie der Aristotelischen Schrift ‘Über die Philosophie’ (Munich,).

D. T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden, ),–.

Well attested in the manuscripts with minor variations: see W. L. Lorimer, Ari-stotelis De mundo (Paris, ), , n. Titulus.

tōn holōn taxis te kai diakosmēsis, hupo theou te kai dia theon, b–. Of notehere is that another, more mundane definition of kosmos as consisting of the heavenand the earth put together, along with the natures they contain (b–), lookslike a good candidate for a predecessor and possible inspiration to the Arabic cus-tom of calling Peri ouranou by the compound name Fī al-samāʾ wa-l-ʿālam (see n. above)—presuming that ʿālam there is to be construed in an equally mundane senseas designating, roughly, ‘earth’.



outermost sphere; () how exactly this single motion translatesinto multiple motions throughout the kosmos; and, most crucially,() how it is that themanymotions arising in the universe as a wholeamount to an ordered totality. On the World also gives us little togo on when it comes to unifying the efficient model of causality inPhysics with the final causality of Metaphysics Λ; moreover, itsauthor sees no problem in asserting that the Ruler of the All residesin resplendent solitude, ignorant of much of what lies beneath itsdignity, and that perhaps individual events in the sublunary worlddo not touch upon the divine majesty at all. On the World, in otherwords, presumes much and promises more, but its flowing rhetoricis not matched by corresponding explanatory power.

Moving past the Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian materials,the next proper port of call is Alexander of Aphrodisias. Alexan-der’s contributions form the focus of the next section. But beforethis, it is worth taking a moment to consider just why the kosmosdoes not figure more largely in Aristotle’s esoteric corpus—why itis relegated to themargins and the pseudepigrapha.Why do cosmo-logical perspectives provide such an ill fit for the overall Aristotelianpattern of explanation and understanding?

(a) The first and most fundamental stumbling block, I submit, isthat for Aristotle there simply is no world, conceived of as a singleobject, such as would admit of a unified investigation. The phy-sical universe just is not a single being; rather, it is a collectionof beings—a collection, moreover, that is divided into two highlydissimilar groups, sublunary and celestial entities. While Aristotlenever defines kosmos anywhere—he would not, since he has scarcelyany need for the concept—themore conscientious Peripatetic philo-sophers beginning with Alexander agree on this point, and many ofthem address it directly. As Averroes records Alexander’s authori-tative statement on the matter, Aristotle never believed that ‘theAll’ (al-kull) would form a single continuous totality (jumla wāh. idamuttas. ila), nor—so the implication goes—should the faithful Aris-totelian. The comment is made all the more revealing by emanat-

If anything, R. W. Sharples, Peripatetic Philosophy to : AnIntroduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (Cambridge, ), –,shows the paucity of reliable or truly informative materials beyond those relating toeither Aristotle, pseudo-Aristotle, or Alexander.

If we take the Arabic title of Alexander’s Fī mabādīʾ al-kull to reflect a Greekoriginal of the likes of Peri tōn archōn tou pantos, then Alexander will have beenmindful of the fact that kosmos is less of an Aristotelian term than is to pan.


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ing from Alexander’s prooemium to Metaphysics Λ, the treatise inwhich according to Alexander’s estimation Aristotle’s account ofthe ultimate structure of reality culminates (see the next section).Interpreting Averroes’ testimony is complicated somewhat by thefact that whereas Aristotle in the Greek talks about a hypotheticaltreatment of the All as a whole (ei hōs holon ti to pan, Metaph. Λ ,a), Averroes’ Arabic for the same Metaphysics passage has‘the All as a totality’, al-kull ka-l-jumla, which is not quite the samething. But whichever term one prefers, the fundamentally compo-site nature of the All comes through with clarity.

Later Peripatetics largely follow Alexander. For example, AbūNas.r al-Fārābī, a tenth-century Baghdādī philosopher, explainsin his Principles of Beings that the world (al-ʿālam) is a collectionmade up of six kinds of bodies in total (al-jumlat al-mujtamaʿatmin hādhihi l-ajnās al-sittat min al-ajsām): these are, in descendingorder of nobility, () the celestial spheres, () the rational and() irrational orders of animals, () plants, () minerals, and—onthe simplest level—() the four sublunary elements. In a piece ofpolemic directed against John Philoponus, al-Fārābī furthermoreclaims that in his treatise On the Heavens Aristotle ‘intended toexplain that the world is made up of bodies that possess differentsubstances and that the world is not a homogeneous thing’. Thecomment is occasioned by al-Fārābī’s desire to reiterate againstPhiloponus how the celestial region follows a different set of rulesfrom the sublunary domain—by now, a familiar point—but thebroader lesson stands: the world is not any one thing, nor can itbe treated as such. Finally, in the Philosophy of Aristotle al-Fārābīstraightforwardly states that what is meant by the world is thetotality of bodies. This last formulation is the same we find in IbnSīnā’s (the Latin Avicenna, –) Book of Definitions.

In Metaph. Λ, comm. =Tafsīr, iii. . –. Averroes’ testimony intimatesthat Aristotelian categorical theory plays into the discussion of why all reality is notof a piece: what is underlined is the primacy of substance, as befits an introductionto Metaph. Λ .

Abū Nas.r al-Fārābī, Al-siyāsat al-madaniyyat al-mulaqqab bi-mabādīʾ al-mawjūdāt, ed. F. Najjār, nd edn. (Beirut, ), . –.

Arabic original in M. Mahdi, ‘The Arabic Text of Alfarabi’s Against John theGrammarian’, in S. A. Hanna (ed.), Medieval and Early Modern Studies in Honorof Aziz Suryal Atiya (Leiden, ), – at –; English translation in M.Mahdi, ‘Alfarabi against Philoponus’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, (),– at .

Al-Fārābī, Falsafat Arist.ūt.ālis, ed. M. Mahdi (Beirut, ), , §§ –; Abū



This usage is further echoed by Averroes in his Commentary onthe De caelo. Although Averroes’ take on Aristotle differs some-what from the other commentators—for him, De caelo treats ex-tended body—he is clear on the point that there is no real sensein which the world could be taken to be a single being. Extendedbody as such is as if the genus (ka-l-jins) under which the simplebodies fall: but after a preliminary treatment of some of the com-mon features of such extension, one can only proceed to treat each ofthem separately, since the nature of heavenly and sublunary body isradically different. The very structure ofOn theHeavens, then—theway it opens with several chapters charged with the task of estab-lishing once and for all the utter dissimilarity of the celestial andsubcelestial regions—works against any desire to treat the universeas a single whole.

Centuries later, the Parisian Art master Jean Buridan (d. )still makes much the same observation as al-Fārābī does. In hisQuestions on De caelo Buridan states several times that wheneverthe term ‘the world’ (mundus) is evoked, it in fact supposits for anaggregate of beings (aggregatum ex entibus). Abstracting from thenominalist vocabulary, Buridan’s point is fairly simple: ‘the world’is not a name for a single being, rather, it stands for some deter-minate set of entities, either all beings universally (universitas om-nium entium) or else everything physical, excepting from the pictureGod and the separate substances. And this verdict seems correctwhen it comes to Aristotle: even on the rare occasion when Aristotle

ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā, Kitāb al-h. udūd, in Tisʿ rasāʾil (Constantinople, ), . Avicennainterestingly adds that one speaks also about ‘the world of nature’, ‘the world of soul’,and ‘the world of intellect’ in the sense that these are ‘whole totalities’. The expla-nation underlines how in this second sense of ‘world’, a fundamental homogeneityis assumed regarding the things that make up a particular world.

See Ibn Rushd, In De caelo , comms. – [–], in Averrois Commentariamagna in Aristotelem: De celo et mundo [Commentarium magnum], ed. F. J. Carmody, vols. (Leuven, ). The Arabic original for these comments is missing: see IbnRushd, Commentary on Aristotle’s Book on the Heaven and the Universe. Sharh. kitābal-Samāʾ wa-l-ʿālam, facsimile of the manuscript produced by G. Endress (Frank-furt a.M., ), .

Ibn Rushd, Commentarium magnum, comms. –; Talkhīs. al-samāʾ wa-l-ʿālam,ed. J. al-Dīn al-ʿAlawī (Fez, ), –.

This, of course, is the standard complaint against Aristotelian cosmology inentry-level textbooks on the history of science to this day, although there the com-parison is with early modern science.

Jean Buridan, Quaestiones super libris quattuor De caelo et mundo, ed. E. A.Moody (Cambridge, Mass., ), bk. , qq. , , and .


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speaks, for example, of the nature of the whole (tou holou phusis,Metaph. Λ , a) or the being of the All (tou pantos ousia,a), this is quickly brought back to the level of beings in theplural (ta onta, a).

In saying that Aristotle in this sense has no concept of a world—that is, no robust belief in the physical universe as a single entity—Iam deliberately going against an argument made recently by Mo-han Matthen and Jim Hankinson that aims to show how Aristotletreats the whole physical universe precisely as a hylomorphiccompound. Matthen and Hankinson base their claim on a subtleinterpretation of Aristotle’s argument for the universe’s complete-ness in De caelo . and on the explanatory role played by naturalplaces in the motions of the four elements. This points in thedirection of a limited universal teleology which, however, Matthenin a follow-up piece is careful to denude of any providential oranimist connotations. Matthen cautions against treating Aristotle’sworld as anything akin to a single living being even as he advocatesrecognition of certain holistic presuppositions in Aristotle’s cos-mology, as the title of his latter essay has it.

Space does not permit a complete analysis of Matthen andHankinson’s thesis, nor is it the purpose of this article to provide arefutation. In the present context, let it just be said that I shareTheophrastus’ scepticism—which, it should be said, is conscien-tiously recorded by Matthen and Hankinson—when it comes towhether even a weak teleological conception of a universal ordercan be decoupled from the organicist metaphor, as Matthen wantsto do. Theophrastus in his Metaphysics picks out precisely thedoctrine of natural places for critical investigation when it comesto probing the outer limits of teleological explanation within anAristotelian framework. According to Theophrastus, the reason itmakes sense to talk about natural places in the context of animalorgans and limbs is that each of these is conducive to the continued

M. Matthen and R. J. Hankinson, ‘Aristotle’s Universe: Its Matter and Form’,Synthese, (), –.

M. Matthen, ‘The Holistic Presuppositions of Aristotle’s Cosmology’ [‘Hol-istic Presuppositions’], Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, (), –.

Minimally, I should say that I find some of Matthen and Hankinson’s textualevidence unconvincing. The sunholon ouranon at De caelo . , a, for example,seems to me a collective term, based both on the formulation itself and on the argu-mentative context.

Matthen and Hankinson, ‘Aristotle’s Universe’, –. See Matthen, ‘Holistic Presuppositions’, –.



life and well-being of the overall organism. In the case of animals,it is also easy to see how the whole plays a determining, indeeddefinitive, role with regard to the parts (see Arist. Metaph. Ζ ,b–; PA . ; etc.). However, in the case of the movementsof the elements it is more difficult to see how these would in anyway promote the ‘being of all things taken together’ (tou sumpantosousia). The overall impression is that there is no easy way even todetermine what the whole is whose life or flourishing the parts aresupposed to serve (Theophr. Metaph. a–). Despite Simplicius’efforts to portray Theophrastus’ ruminations in the light of aNeoplatonic emanative hierarchy, and notwithstanding modernsuggestions of a reading of Theophrastus that would include anorganicist and indeed holistic cosmology, the staunchly aporeticway in which he approaches the doctrine of natural places suffi-ciently shows to my mind what the Peripatetic problem is withany attempt to view the universe as a whole. Without a notion ofthe universe being for the sake of something, it is hard to see howthe constituents that make up its set could ever be seen to form aunity.

(b) This ties in with my second, much less controversial thesis,which is that the universe for Aristotle does not form a single te-leologically oriented and ordered whole. Unlike Plato, who in theTimaeus as well as in the Statesman ( –) is happy to make useof the image of the world as a single animal or organism—one witha single soul and a shared life—Aristotle resists mightily the no-tion that everything in the world would serve a single purpose. Thedifference, famously, is reflected even in the Politics, where Aris-totle roundly mocks the Republic’s postulation of maximal unity asa good for the state (Pol. . –). But then, this is revealing also from

Simpl. In Phys. . –. Diels; M. van Raalte, ‘The Idea of the Cos-mos as an Organic Whole in Theophrastus’ Metaphysics’, in W. W. Fortenbaughand R. W. Sharples (eds.), Theophrastean Studies on Natural Science, Physics andMetaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric [Theophrastean Studies] (New Brunswick,), –.

See R. Sorabji, ‘Is Theophrastus a Significant Philosopher?’, in J. M. vanOphuijsen and M. van Raalte (eds.), Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources (NewBrunswick and London, ), – at –.

See further J. G. Lennox, ‘Theophrastus on the Limits of Teleology’, in W. W.Fortenbaugh, P. M. Huby, and A. A. Long (eds.), Theophrastus of Eresus: On his Lifeand Work (New Brunswick, ), –, repr. in Lennox, Aristotle’s Philosophy ofBiology (Cambridge, ), –; J. Ellis, ‘The Aporematic Character of Theo-phrastus’ Metaphysics’, in Fortenbaugh and Sharples (eds.), Theophrastean Studies,–.


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a cosmological standpoint: underlying the Platonic ideal of the Re-public is the notion of a form of the Good, and for the systemat-izing Platonist this is what the Demiurge of the Timaeus also ack-nowledges as a regulating principle when fashioning the visible uni-verse. Aristotle, by contrast, takes it as axiomatic that each naturalkind—really, each individual representative of each natural kind—has its own good to pursue, which makes the term ‘the good’ asmultivalent as the term ‘being’.

The impasse itself hints at one last path left open for the Aristo-telian to explore. Perhaps in Aristotle, the very notion of being—more specifically, being as actuality, and in some sense fullness ofbeing—could be explanatory somehow of the very shape and con-tents of the universe? Matthen has put forward a version of thisargument, albeit in elliptical form. That it is such is not to mymind coincidental: for while there are certainly hints to the effectof such a belief lurking in the background of Aristotle’s work, theseare so few and so loosely joined that one must bring a whole host ofoutside assumptions to the school texts in order to make the con-ception work.

Most famous in this regard is probably the chapter in OnComing-to-Be and Passing-Away (. ) in which Aristotle positsthat perennial coming-to-be is the next best thing to true immor-tality and that this is why the generation of the elements from oneanother is organized the way that it is. What appeals about thisnotion is that it joins an account of themake-up of the universe withthe notion of metaphysics as first philosophy. However, the assign-ment of this arrangement—the interchange of the elements beingguided by the heavens and specifically by the sphere of the sun—to‘the god’ (ho theos, b) is problematic to say the least, as thereis little indication as to which god could possibly be meant thereby.

NE . , a–. On the limits of Aristotelian teleology overall see M. R.Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford, ); on the issues surrounding universalteleology in particular, ibid. –.

Matthen, ‘Holistic Presuppositions’, –. The first book of the Meteorology can be viewed as a technical account of how

this might be thought to happen on the mechanical level (as per Solmsen), althoughmany of the details remain unclear. A few passages in Aristotle’s biology argue ana-logously to GC . that the perpetuation of the species is the next best thing toindividual immortality: but in none of these does Aristotle discuss any implicationson the level of the kosmos; rather, the point seems to be simply that living beings seekto extend the continuation of their own existence through procreation. See e.g. DA. , a–b; GA . , b–a.



The Prime Mover hardly acts intentionally and craftsman-like inthis manner, and no other candidates readily present themselves.The majority of modern commentators have consequently passedover the question with evident embarrassment. Even RichardBodéüs, who takes an otherwise robust view of Aristotle’s remarksconcerning the gods, ultimately explains away the reference todivine world-fashioning in On Coming-to-Be and Passing-Awayin terms of a metaphorical transference, with ‘god’ standing infor ‘nature’. As I hope will have become clear by now, I am notsatisfied that the move represents anything more than an evasivemanœuvre. Phusis in Aristotle stands for the nature of an indi-vidual thing, and unless we simply assume that the universe asan individual—as kosmos—has its own phusis, then it is hard tosay what the nature is that is supposed to fashion one part of theuniverse (the heavenly motions) in the light of the needs of another(the sublunary existents). On the other side, to assume such a cos-mic nature would beg the question, in addition to which we wouldbe forced to regard Aristotle’s world as itself a divine entity genera-tive of—more being? If such an inspirational view really were inAristotle’s sights, one would rather expect him to spell it out.

Christopher Colmo in an otherwise often confounding study ofal-Fārābī has some intriguing observations on the history of theproblem. He notes that al-Fārābī, in a book entitled The Philo-sophy of Aristotle, seems to advocate a pursuit of knowledge con-cerning the purpose of the world as a whole, where reflection onthe whole would somehow disclose the purpose of the parts. Sucha universal teleology would certainly make of the universe a singlebeing (the word used by al-Fārābī is al-kull, the All, which trans-lates to pan), yet al-Fārābī’s treatment ends up looking vague andfar from conclusive. The Philosophy of Aristotle traces the line ofdiscussion about parts in service of the whole until we reach meta-physics, which as the divine science would disclose the ‘purpose ofthe totality of the world’: but Aristotle’s Metaphysics makes only atentative start towards this, which is the reason al-Fārābī famouslyconcludes The Philosophy of Aristotle on a despondent note, admit-

So both Joachim and Williams. See R. Bodéüs, Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals (Albany, NY,

), – and . C. A. Colmo, Breaking with Athens: Alfarabi as Founder (Lanham, Md., ),

–.


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ting that ‘we do not possess metaphysics’. But Colmo also pointsto how Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed (. ) appears toput forward one possible answer: Maimonides says that the world’sultimate purpose is the actualization of all that is possible, and thatconsequently the being and perfection of each [type of] existent isconstitutive of the world’s perfection as a totality. These are boldproclamations to make on the basis of Aristotle, and Colmo ex-presses doubt that they are made entirely in earnest, or at least onpredominantly philosophical grounds. But the least we can say isthat this is at once a notion towards which an Aristotelian mightfeel drawn, and at the same time one for which wholly insufficientexplicit evidence exists in the set of school texts we have.

None of this is very new, of course. The whole line of thoughtis already present in Theophrastus’ Metaphysics, where Theo-phrastus first hints that the issue of the Prime Mover mightconnect somehow with how the parts of the universe cohere in onewhole (Metaph. a–), then hastens to add that the mechanicsby which this happens remain wholly unclear—this despite thetopic’s evident centrality to the whole project of establishing firstprinciples (a–). We may conclude that it is the hinted-at yetnever substantiated links between sublunary, superlunary, andimmaterial existence that are decisive of whether ‘the world’ in theend is a coherent concept to use in the context of Aristotle, andhence the demonstrability of such links that either makes or breaksthe prospects of a true Aristotelian cosmology. As we shall see fromthe example of Alexander, the matter can prove hard to decide.

. The principles of the All

As has already been mentioned, Alexander’s most comprehensivetreatment of the questions surrounding the cosmic order is foundin his treatises On the Principles of the All, extant only in an Arabic

See al-Fārābī, Falsafat Arist.ūt.ālis, §§ , , ; on al-Fārābī and Aristotlesee further T.-A. Druart, ‘Al-Fārābī, Emanationism, and Metaphysics’, in P.Morewedge (ed.), Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought (Albany, NY, ), –.

Colmo, Breaking with Athens, . A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., ), provides

ample further testimony to the powerful draw of this idea, of course, and aptly pointsout that the true philosophical engine driving its adoption by monotheist intellectu-als is Platonic (Tim. – ) rather than Aristotelian.



translation as Fī mabādīʾ al-kull. In addition to this, several minorself-standing works address different aspects of the same proble-matic, enough so that we may say that the God–world relationshipforms a running theme in Alexander’s independent authorship. Intwo interlocking articles, Bob Sharples has provided a comprehen-sive overview of Alexander’s efforts to craft an effective Peripateticcounterpart to the theologies of the Stoics and the Platonists. Inthe present context, I shall content myself with remarks that have abearing on the notion of kosmos in these discussions.

To establish first what Alexander was up against, consider, forexample, the treatise on astronomical matters (either meteōra orkuklikē theōria) by the Stoic Cleomedes, written around the timeAlexander took on the mantle of diadochos. Cleomedes in his intro-ductionmaintains that the term kosmos is used inmany senses; how-ever, its most apposite meaning has to do with the orderly distribu-tion (diakosmēsis) of the universe’s constituent parts. This could yetbe meant in a fairly mundane sense, but it becomes clear that Cleo-medes has something grander inmindwhen in what follows he citesthe administering of order by Nature, adducing as evidence

the ordering of the parts within it; the orderly succession of what comes intoexistence; the sympathy of the parts in it for one another; the fact that allindividual entities are created in relation to something else; and, finally, thefact that everything in the cosmos renders very beneficial services. (Cael.. – Todd; trans. Bowen and Todd)

This designates Nature as a providential force and universal teleo-logy as an ordering that benefits humanity most of all. Both arecrucial Stoic tenets, both illustrate the way in which the Helle-nistic schools sought to exalt the visible cosmic order: both graspwith both hands ideas for which at best meagre hints can be foundin Aristotle. Cleomedes’ presentation closely echoes the way in

R. W. Sharples, ‘Aristotelian Theology after Aristotle’, in D. Frede and A.Laks (eds.), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Backgroundand Aftermath (Leiden, ), –; id., ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias and the End ofAristotelian Theology’, in T. Kobusch and M. Erler (eds.), Metaphysik und Reli-gion: Zur Signatur des spätantiken Denkens (Leipzig, ), –.

See R. B. Todd, ‘The Title of Cleomedes’ Treatise’, Philologus, (),–.

For the notion that nature always goes for the optimum seeDe caelo . , a–; . , a–; . , a–b; . , b; but in each of these cases the moreplausible interpretation is that the nature referenced is simply the nature of eachthing, seeking its peculiar perfection. Only De caelo . , a–, appears to inti-


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which Diogenes Laertius discusses Stoic definitions of the kosmos(. –), together with the reasonableness and providential carethat it manifests (. –). Telling, I think, is the way Diogenesclaims the Stoics’ first referent for kosmos to be god himself, or thepower permeating the universe, whence everything derives and intowhich everything periodically reverts. This makes it relatively easyto see what Calcidius (In Tim. ch. ) might mean when he saysthat the Stoics regarded the body of the world (corpus mundi) asnot only one and whole, but also a substance. To borrow Aristote-lian terminology, the unity of the Stoic world issues from both thematerial and the formal aspects of its being. A Stoic might evengo so far as to say that the world’s parts only have their being asparts of the whole. And even if Proclus would probably remainunimpressed, such a Stoic perspective on the world could even bereconciled with the Platonic: Marsilio Ficino says that the propersubject matter of the Timaeus is that ‘universal nature’ which actsas the seminal vivifying power of the whole world, subdued by theworld soul but presiding over matter. Seen in the light of the lateantique demand to have a single subject matter for a single treatiseFicino’s suggestion is rather ingenious: if there is a single kind ofthing that ties together themundane and the supercosmic, then sucha logos, precisely as phusis, would bewhat theTimaeus investigates.

But for an Aristotelian, none of this would work, since the pro-ximate species and their natures are many and incommensurable,

mate that nature could have ordained the properties of higher things (the heavens)for the sake of the lower (the stability of sublunary existence), but Aristotle’s choiceof words is telling: it is as if (hōsper) nature had foreseen this, which when read closerappears to be a counterfactual. For anthropocentrism in Aristotle the evidence iseven scantier, but see Pol. . , b–, and for a spirited defence, D. Sedley, ‘IsAristotle’s Teleology Anthropocentric?’, Phronesis, (), –.

In Tim. ch. . For the Stoic view see P. Scade, ‘Stoic Cosmological Limitsand their Platonic Background’, in V. Harte, M. M. McCabe, R. W. Sharples, andA. Sheppard (eds.), Aristotle and the Stoics Reading Plato (London, ), –.

to tou kosmou merē tō pros to holon pōs echein kai mē kath’ hauta einai: Chry-sippus, as reported by Plut. Stoic. repugn. –; for comments see R. Sorabji,Matter, Space and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and their Sequel (London, ),–.

Proclus, In Tim. i. . –. , points out that from a Platonic point of viewthe Stoic philosopher—here, Chrysippus—fatally fails to distinguish between tran-scendent and immanent causes and therefore remains unable to cover adequately allthe phenomena that an account of the kosmos must, from the world’s intelligibilityto the workings of divine providence within it.

Ficino, Opera (Basel, ), intro, ch. , ed. P. O. Kristeller, vols. (Turin,), ii. .



as Aristotle’s remarks against Melissus illustrate. The bottom linefor the student of nature, and indeed for the student of being, arethe many and disparate substances that inhabit the universe, of thelikes of horses and human beings, and these are not united in hav-ing a single substantial form (Phys. . , a–). Nor will anappeal to prime matter do when it comes to defining an overall sub-ject that would unite natural philosophy, as Simplicius notes in hiscomments ad loc. against the Eleatics (In Phys. . –. ).Also, contrary to what On the World would like to suggest, Aris-totle’s manifest repudiation of a world soul (DA . , a–) de-prives the conscientious Peripatetic of any straightforward way ofpresenting all worldly phenomena as issuing from a preordainedharmony such as was available either to the Platonist interpreter ofthe Timaeus or to the Stoic philosopher endowed with the notion ofan all-pervasive logos. A Peripatetic of the likes of Critolaus willnot have helped the school’s reputation with his argument that theworld is eternal due to it being the cause of its own existence. Sowhat was a Peripatetic philosopher to do when attempting to fleshout an Aristotelian account of the kosmos?

Alexander’s response in the Principles is instructive on severallevels.

(a) First of all, Alexander lays down as axiomatic that an Aris-totelian investigation into first principles will proceed from effectsto causes, since demonstrative knowledge regarding the first prin-ciples is unattainable (Mabādīʾ, § ). The methodological principleof course is of fundamental importance to Aristotelian science; incommenting on Aristotle’s second and third aporiai in Metaphy-sics Β, Alexander elaborates on its significance for the foundationsof metaphysics. But whatever the details of Alexander’s concep-

See T. K. Johansen, ‘From Plato’s Timaeus to Aristotle’s De caelo: The Case ofthe Missing World-Soul’, in A. C. Bowen and C. Wildberg (eds.), New Perspectiveson Aristotle’s De caelo (Leiden, ), –.

Philo,Aet. =Critolaus, fr. Wehrli. Critolaus’ seeming equation of god withboth intellect and aether, meanwhile, brushes up uncomfortably close to Stoicism:see Sharples, ‘Aristotelian Theology after Aristotle’, . For the tangled interpre-tation of Cicero’s De natura deorum . . , which similarly questions whetherAristotle’s god is intellect, the world, or the heaven, see A. P. Bos, Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle’s Lost Dialogues (Leiden, ), ff.

Alex. Aphr. In Metaph. . ff. In his comments on the first chapter ofthe Metaphysics Alexander concludes that metaphysics aims at a non-demonstrativeknowledge of the first principles of everything, with the ultimate first principle be-ing the good that is the final cause: In Metaph. . –. .


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tion, his basic contention runs directly counter to the school ofAthens’s approach and Proclus especially, to whom the deductiveand demonstrative mode of philosophizing provided by Plato anda presumed Pythagorean tradition formed a point of pride. Thefamous tradition according to which Aristotle tended to broachquestions in theology from the direction of nature (or metaphy-sics from the direction of physics), whereas Plato talked even ofnature in a theological register (phusiologein theologikōs), can in factbe seen as a half-defensive way of acknowledging this methodo-logical contrast. According to the more generous interpretation,Plato preferred the top-downmode of examination because it betterconcurred with the underlying structure of reality, while Aristotle’sbottom-up way of proceeding could be justified as being part andparcel of the natural philosopher’s normal viewpoint (and perhapssomething to which Aristotle had become unduly but none the lessexcusably accustomed). Yet such an attempt at harmonization dis-regards the bluntness of Alexander’s testimony.

According to Alexander, apodeixis simply is not available forfirst principles and, there being no higher method of enquiry forthe committed Peripatetic (Platonic dialectic manifestly does notcount), a bottom-up methodology by consequence really is thebest that any conscientious philosopher can hope for. It is in thelight of things better known to us that we move on to things betterknown by nature, and only in so far as the explanation of physicalphenomena warrants that we postulate the existence of immaterialentities. This already separates the Peripatetic approach to theo-logy from the Platonist one in one important respect: Aristotelianphilosophy ventures onto theological terrain only where mundaneexplanations are found to be insufficient, while the line of expla-nation in the Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus mayadvance freely from the direction of the intelligible and the supra-intelligible principles towards the sensible. The implications ofthis for cosmology are immediately apparent in the correspondingdearth of references to the kosmos in the Peripatetic vocabulary.

Though of course this higher form of proof will be called Platonic dialectic: seeMartijn’s comments in Proclus on Nature as well as D. J. O’Meara, Pythagoras Re-vived (Oxford, ), –.

The apologetic tone in Philop. In Phys. . – is quite evident. Simpl. InCat. . – Kalbfleisch talks about how for Plato, natural things participate in thethings above, while Aristotle by contrast considers even higher things with an eyetowards their relation to nature.



Lacking a god’s-eye point of view, the Aristotelian philosopher willonly rarely, if at all, have occasion to view the world as a unitaryobject of study.

(b) Second, it is significant that Alexander, when it comes toproviding an Aristotelian account of the ordered universe to rivalthat of the Stoics and the Platonists, reaches not forOn the Heavens,nor to the Physics, but to the Metaphysics, specifically the latter halfof book Lambda. It is as an object of desire and—an important Al-exandrian innovation—imitation that the pure actuality of the FirstMover can provide a measure of order, actuality, and perfection toall things. Accordingly, it is in Metaphysics Λ that Aristotle in Alex-ander’s and many subsequent Peripatetics’ view establishes the waythe principles of the universe are reflected on every level of reality,and in Λ that the underlying unity of everything is put forward.Tellingly, Alexander’s use of the term ʿālam (Arabic for kosmos),which is largely absent from the first two-thirds of the treatise Onthe Principles of the All, really picks up in a climactic finale that es-sentially recasts Λ in a conspicuously theological mould. Thereis providence aplenty in the Aristotelian universe, albeit that thegood world order is eternal and everlasting in its universal aspects:

For the make-up of this universe [s.anʿa hādhā l-kull] and the naturalbounty which the creator [al-khāliq] put into it, and the mutual agree-ment, harmony, and conformity of its parts with one another accordingto their relation with the whole, evince such an order and harmony that,

This of course applies only in so far as one writes solely as an Aristotelian philo-sopher: the enduring popularity of the De aeternitate mundi literature in the MiddleAges testifies to how outside concerns might still lead ostensible Peripatetics to ad-opt the extra-Aristotelian practice of treating the world as if it were a unified objectof God’s actions. But then this is part of my point: from the point of view of howAristotle constructs his philosophy, such questions would never really enter the pic-ture, and the concept of kosmos would accordingly also be redundant, or nearly so.

Mabādīʾ, §§ ff.; see the Glossary, s.v. ʿ -L-M. The only other instances ofʿālam occur where Alexander defends the natural indestructibility of the presentworld order, on the lines of what we find in On the Heavens . – and On Philo-sophy: seeMabādīʾ, §§ , –. The equivalence is so close that I take it Alexanderis consciously following Aristotle and his essentially polemical use of the term kos-mos in these passages.

Genequand ad loc. remarks that this theological designator may derive from Demundo, where genetōr is used at b and a; or it may represent a conflationin the Arabic translation process with the Platonic Demiurge; or again it may be amonotheist incursion. At any rate, given Alexander’s insistence on the First Causeonly being a final cause (and certainly not a Neoplatonic aition poiētikon), the locu-tion sticks out somewhat.


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if you should assume one of them to be abolished by hypothesis, noneof the remaining things could possibly remain in its state. (Mabādīʾ, § ,trans. Genequand)

Comparing the tone here with Cleomedes above is sufficient, Ithink, to establish that the Principles was written in an expliciteffort to provide a Peripatetic counterpart to the Peri (tou) kosmouliterary genre established by the Stoics.

(c) Alexander has a fairly sophisticated account of how the vari-ous celestial rotations recognized by Λ play into all this. Essen-tially, the purpose of the celestial mechanics is to put some dis-tance between the First Mover and sublunary occurrences throughpostulating a series of mediating mechanisms that allow for dif-ferentiation in the make-up of the sublunary domain. Alexanderfamously holds that the ultimate expression of divine providencelies in the perpetuation of the sublunary species, which happensthrough sublunary motions being regulated by the uniform celes-tial rotations. It is in this connection also that On the Heavens isallowed to make a minor contribution, since Aristotle argues in Decaelo . —in a fashion that is explicitly flagged up as uncertainand tentative—for the view that some variation in the celestial mo-tions is needed for there to be an interchange of sublunary elements.This, indeed, is one of the few places where the extant fragments ofAlexander’s lost commentary speak of the kosmos in a setting wherethe corresponding vocabulary is missing in Aristotle (see Simpl. InDe caelo . –). Simplicius commends Alexander for hismanli-ness in admitting the need to argue for a degree of divine governanceand ordering in this instance, instead of being content merely withnatural or material necessity, as was presumably usually the case.

az. h. ar-ta bi-bāli-ka: this is an unusual translation choice for hupotithenai—wahama bi-l-fard. and cognate expressions were much more common—butGenequand’s English is undoubtedly correct none the less. On Simplicius’differences with Alexander when it comes to reasoning per impossibile in this fashionsee Simplicius’ testimony, In De caelo . –. ; further on the topic, see T.Kukkonen, ‘Alternatives to Alternatives: Approaches to Aristotle’s Arguments perimpossibile’, Vivarium, (), –.

See I. M. Bodnár, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on Celestial Motions’, Phronesis, (), –; S. Fazzo and H. Wiesner, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias in theKindī-Circle and in al-Kindī’s Cosmology’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, (), –.

Mabādīʾ, § ; see further the texts collected in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Laprovvidenza. Questioni sulla provvidenza, ed. and trans. S. Fazzo and M. Zonta(Milan, ).

andrizomenos . . . kata tina theian dioikēsin te kai diataxin apologizesthai, In De



Mueller in his translation of the passage takes Simplicius’ tone tobe sarcastic, but if I am right, then this is a notably gentle formof sarcasm: it amounts to a compliment that may be slightly back-handed, but is none the less genuine enough. The fact that, as faras I can tell, both Simplicius and Alexander misread Aristotle’s ori-ginal argument in the same way only serves to underscore how bothare essentially in agreement here.

(d) For all this, we may take account of how limited is the unityachieved by the Aristotelian world on Alexander’s telling. This is allthe more remarkable given how, on the face of it, Alexander grantsthe Stoic party rathermore than seems necessary. He calls the singleworld (ʿālam wāh. id) a single body (jism wāh. id), for instance, at thesame time that he underlines how it envelops and encompasses thetotality of things (jamīʿ al-ashyāʾ). Alexander even describes the di-vine potency that unites the world in distinctly Stoicizing terms, asa spiritual power spread throughout all its parts (quwwa rūh. āniyyatasrī fī jamīʿ ajzāʾi-hi:Mabādīʾ, § ). But the first characterizationimmediately appears much less robust if we understand Alexanderin this context to use kosmos in the same sense in which Aristotleevokes ouranos in De caelo . , b–, as the outermost heaven,as indeed the argument seems to require: the outermost heaven asone perfectly uniform (and uniformly active) body bears the sameregulatory function to the rest of the universe as the single rulerbears to the city. The second point, meanwhile, upon closer in-spectionmerely acknowledges that all of physical reality as Aristotlesees it is infused with potentiality striving towards actualization.

According to Alexander, it is because the divine power is diffused

caelo . –; cf. similarly In De caelo . –, commenting on De caelo . ,a– (on which see above, n. ).

Simplicius, On Aristotle’s On the Heavens . –, trans. I. Mueller (Londonand Ithaca, NY, ), n. .

As I read the passage, De caelo . makes no reference to providence; instead, ittreats both the existence of earth at the centre of the universe and the interchange ofthe elements as brute facts and then proceeds to postulate a variation in the celestialmotions as the simplest explanation for these two phenomena. Alexander apparentlytelescoped the change in the elements to the emergence of more complex forms ofactuality, pointedly including living beings, in his commentary, thus transformingAristotle’s argument to one that conveys a belief in providence (understood in theAlexandrian manner: see Simpl. In De caelo . –): but this is projection onAlexander’s part.

Genequand translates tasrī as ‘penetrates’: this is possible, but seems to meneedlessly Stoicizing, as the Arabic does not necessary imply any active agency onthe part of the spiritual power evoked, which is why I prefer ‘spread across’ or ‘dis-


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throughout all the world’s parts that they follow, turn towards,and otherwise imitate the most noble of beings; what is more, ‘allthings which share in it do so according to the state and position ofeach one of them in relation to it’ (Mabādīʾ, § ). All this meansis that each thing, or else each natural kind, enjoys a unique rela-tionship to the First Cause, and this because each approaches it inits own way.

The point about directionality is in fact crucial to Alexander. TheFirst Cause does not reach out to physical things in order to be incontact with them; rather,

what is common to all things in the world and to the things which are ma-nifestly distinct from one another is to aim at being in contact with this firstsubstance according to what is proper to each one of them in the nature ap-propriate to it. This is the cause of their duration and permanence, andof their remaining in the place proper to them. (Mabādīʾ, § , trans.Genequand)

In other words, the things in the world reach out to the First Cause,not the First Cause to them: their desire is for it (or its perfection,or—to be yet more precise—that exact form of perfection which isappropriate to a thing’s nature), not its for them. But this alsomeansthat there simply is no one world such that it would have a direct re-lationship with the First Cause: rather, the god–world relationship,such as it is (both terms should be used advisedly in an Aristoteliancontext), consists of a series of one-on-one relations between indivi-dual beings striving for whatever share they can have of perfectionper se, which is actuality as such, and the being which best exem-plifies that perfection. To reiterate, then, the First Cause does not

persed throughout’. It is the term ‘spiritual’ itself (rūh. ānī) which appearsmuchmoreirretractably Stoic, as rūh. often stands for pneuma in the Graeco-Arabic vocabulary.

Genequand in the introduction to his translation (Mabādīʾ, ) suggests thatrūh. ānī is merely an alternative translation of theios, which is certainly possible, givenhow theios becomes rūh. ānī in the Arabic translations of On the Heavens. However,the analogy is incomplete, since in the translations of De caelo what needed to besuppressed was the notion that the heavenly body would be divine (see G. Endress,‘Averroes’ De caelo: Ibn Rushd’s Cosmology in his Commentaries on Aristotle’s Onthe Heavens’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, (), – at –; likewise En-dress, Übersetzungen, –), whereas the translator of the Principles will have hadno reason to downplay the divine nature of the providential force reaching all partsof the universe.

The expression tanh. ū nah. w afd. al al-mawjūdāt is remarkably polyvalent:Genequand in his translation has both ‘follow’ and ‘turn towards’, but nah. ā alsoadmits of ‘imitate’ as a translation, which certainly fits the context.



relate to the world in any way—indeed, there is no world to whichit could relate in this manner; rather, each of the universe’s entitiesrelate to it, and out of this somehow a world (a kosmos, as an orderedwhole whose parts are mutually supportive) emerges.

Consequently, whatever bounty, harmony, and mutual agreementone can discern in the orderly arrangement of the universe’s parts,to pick up on Alexander’s vocabulary, the explication of these interms of the congruence of the heavenly motions is not immedi-ately transparent. For one thing, one still needs to explain whatmakes the various unmoved movers give rise to precisely that setof celestial motions which results in an orderly and beneficial sub-lunary system. What makes this puzzling is that in the whole cos-mic system, all entities without exception look only upwards, as itwere, in their quest for individual perfection, and never down (thatis, nothing exercises providence intentionally and primarily). Thechallenge is already laid down in Rose’s purported fragment ofOnPhilosophy, which appears, if nothing else, at least to adopt quiteeffectively the open-ended and quizzical tone of many front-linePeripatetics. (This observation should not be regarded as an en-dorsement of the fragment as authentically Aristotelian.) The frag-ment sets up a series of disjuncts that take Metaph. Λ as theirstarting point, but incorporate principles from the Physics as well.A multiplicity of disordered principles would result not in a world(mundus) but in chaos; but this cannot be, since plainly things [hereon the sublunary plane] do happen according to nature, either al-ways or for the most part, rather than against it; therefore even theassumption of multiple principles will implicitly include a presup-position regarding their ordering; which in turn presupposes a firstprinciple, either among the ones just mentioned or outside their re-cognized set. The end result is the recognition, wholly in line withthe closing words of Metaphysics Λ, that there should be one ruler:but the issue of what could account for the way its supreme stateis transferred onto the sensible plane is left wholly unanswered, asindeed it remains in Alexander (and Aristotle).

Of the later Peripatetics, Averroes appears to have gone the fur-thest in attempting to answer this question and to construct a viableAristotelian cosmology in the process. Averroes very clearly buildsonAlexander; but even here, a fair amount of work is needed to con-nect the dots. In brief, it appears that Averroes’ answer hinges onthe notion that each of the unmovedmovers has an incomplete share


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in the intelligible content of the First and that this share translatesinto a kind of kinetic code which is passed on to the celestial spheres,making the comprehensive actuality of the First Cause into the (in-direct) cause of everything coming to cohere that results from thecelestial motions inspired by the separate intelligences. But evenif we were to accept that in this fashion all the mechanical aspectsof the story can successfully be accounted for, one may still recallAëtius’ complaint (. . ) that in Aristotle’s view the sublunarydomain is well ordered only by accident, not primarily (kata sum-bebēkos ou proēgoumenōs), and that consequently the world for Aris-totle is neither ensouled, nor rational, nor intellective through andthrough (holon di holōn). To this criticism, which is essentially Pla-tonist in character, I do not think that an Aristotelian would havea ready answer.

(e) Coming back to Alexander, it is worth noting, finally, justhow deliberately Alexander positions his treatise in relation to theforegone Peripatetic tradition. On the one hand, Alexander unhesi-tatingly proclaims that the Principles constitutes a disclosure of hisown view (kashf raʾyī); on the other, he insists that everything heputs forward is in accordance with Aristotle’s outlook (bi-h. asb raʾyArist.ūt.ālis: Mabādīʾ, § ). Alexander claims to have taken what hetook from the ‘divine Aristotle’—an eyebrow-raising epithet, to besure—by way of principle and summary. This way of framing thePrinciples signals that Alexander is well aware of a lacuna on thesubject of cosmic order in Aristotle’s extant works, one that extendsroughly from an exposition of the nature of the First Cause (al-ʿillatal-ūlā) to the effects it has on the sublunary domain. Moreover,Alexander is careful to preface his exposition with some importantepistemic qualifiers. The Principles is an exercise in speculation, inthat it means to spell out what he (that is, Alexander) believes canbe said on these topics in accordance with Aristotle’s stated views.(Mabādīʾ, § )

Furthermore, even if we assume with Moraux, Genequand, andothers that Alexander was acquainted with On the World when he

See T. Kukkonen, ‘Averroes and the Teleological Argument’, Religious Stu-dies, (), –; R. C. Taylor, ‘Averroes on Psychology and the Principles ofMetaphysics’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, (), –; for the physi-cal side of things, see D. B. Twetten, ‘Averroes’ Prime Mover Argument’, in J.-B.Brenet (ed.), Averroès et les averroïsmes juif et latin (Turnhout, ), –.

akhadhnā-hū ʿan al-ilāhiyy Arist.ūt.ālis ʿalā t.arīq al-mabdaʾ wa-l-ikhtis.ār:Mabādīʾ, § .



crafted On the Principles of the All and that he made use of aspectsof that treatise when he fashioned his own Aristotelian response tothe theological and cosmological challenge issued by the PlatonistandStoic parties—both suggestionswhich I find plausible—the factthat Alexander never once refers to On the World testifies to his atleast entertaining doubts when it comes to the authenticity of thattreatise. We know from Proclus’ testimony (In Tim. iii. . –) that concerns about De mundo’s provenance were raised early on,and we may assume the same conclusion negatively from the scantuse made of the treatise in antiquity (as compared to its popularityin the Arabic and Latin Middle Ages). When Jaap Mansfeld drilyremarks regarding On the World that ‘Alexander and his late Neo-platonist fellow commentators, with Philoponus and David as ex-ceptions of very minor importance, apparently preferred to say aslittle as possible about it, or even nothing at all’, this seems aboutright.

. Conclusion

In this article I have made the case that the concept of kosmos asit was understood in Greek philosophy from Plato onwards ill fitsAristotle’s principal philosophical commitments and that it accord-ingly occupies only a marginal place in his writings. But how muchdoes this matter, ultimately? Certainly I do not expect contempor-ary scholars to cease talking about Aristotle’s cosmology in a casualway, nor is it my purpose to denigrate the efforts of later Aris-totelians in coming up with a more satisfactory presentation (fromtheir point of view) of the Aristotelian kosmos as a whole or to rankthem according to some presumed scale of purity or orthodoxy. All

Based on Alexander’s Quaestio . , Sharples accepts Moraux’s earlier hypo-thesis that Alexander regarded De mundo as genuine: see Alexander of Aphrodisias,Quaestiones . –. , trans. R. W. Sharples (London and Ithaca, NY, ), n. ; but see the reference to Kupreeva in n. above.

Mansfeld, ‘Peri kosmou’, . The very minor exceptions mentioned by Mans-feld are Philop. Aet. ( and Rabe) and David, In Cat. . – Busse, bothof which refer to On the World in incidental fashion: neither author postulates anoverarching Aristotelian cosmology on the basis of De mundo.

I mean here something like Tamar Rudavsky’s characterization of cosmologyas ‘that enterprise which describes what the universe looks like’ (reported by Y. T.Langermann in ‘Arabic Cosmology’, Early Science and Medicine, (), –at ).


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I have wanted to demonstrate is that from a certain point of timeonwards—perhaps as early as pseudo-Aristotle’s and Alexander’sencounters with the Stoics, certainly by the heyday of the schools ofAthens andAlexandria—themore robustly theological and ‘cosmic’portrayals of the unity of physical reality that were put forward bythe Platonic and Stoic schools began tomake it seem as though therewas something missing from the Aristotelian picture. The effortsof various Peripatetics to meet this challenge are reflected in part intheir increased appeals to the concept of kosmos, just as the short-comings of the source materials are reflected in their struggles to in-corporate the notion into a framework that scarcely has a need for it.

There can be no doubt that the term kosmos possesses a signifi-cance in Plato, and especially in the Timaeus, that far outstrips any-thing found in Aristotle. The way in which the sensible universeis a product, something generated by technē, coupled with the uni-formity of what is aimed at in the act of creation, accounts for the‘Demiurge’s monomania’, to borrow James Lennox’s phrase: thatis, it accounts for the way in which the Timaeus portrays the worldas a single creation. For Plato even the forms constitute a kosmos(Rep. ), which means that they must be studied as members ofa unified whole.

Aristotle’s use of kosmos, by comparison, is essentially dialecticaland opportunist. He is willing to evoke the concept, but he does somainly in contexts where this can serve as a useful reminder of theconceptual commitments to which earlier thinkers are beholden, asin a reference to those who hold spontaneity to be the cause of bothour heaven and ‘all the worlds’. In such a context, an appeal to thekosmos can help to point out how the presupposition of a beneficentordering pervades the thinking of even those thinkers supposedlywilling to entertain that there is no ordering on the macro (astrono-mical) level at all. An intriguing citation in Philoponus from Alex-ander’s lost commentary on De caelo (Philop. Aet. , . –. Rabe) should be read in the same light, I think. According to

See G. Vlastos, Plato’s Universe (Oxford, ). See J. G. Lennox, ‘Plato’s Unnatural Teleology’, in Aristotle’s Philosophy of

Biology, – at . For a history of the expression see D. T. Runia, ‘A Brief History of the Term

kosmos noétos from Plato to Plotinus’, in J. J. Cleary (ed.), Traditions of Platonism:Essays in Honour of John Dillon (Aldershot, ), –.

tines hoi kai touranou toude kai tōn kosmōn pantōn aitiōntai to automaton, Phys.. , a–.



Philoponus’ testimony, Alexander frames Aristotle’s investigationof the world (peri tou kosmou), specifically its imperishable and un-generated nature, by saying that Aristotle begins from the views ofhis predecessors (tas doxas tas tōn pro hautou), so that it is the Pla-tonic and Presocratic usage of kosmos that is allowed to guide Aris-totle’s choice of terminology. Yet another example comes from thePolitics, in which Aristotle points to the parallel cases of the intern-ally organized activities of city, world, God, and virtuous personin order to establish that it is not always necessary to have an out-side partner in order to lead a full and eudaimonic life (Pol. . ,b–). There can be no doubt that kosmos is here used as asynonym for to pan: it is in fact the only way for the argument tomake sense (the world does not look outside itself for something torelate to, just because there is nothing outside). Still, apart from thesimple act of setting side by side individual, societal, universal, anddivine activity, there is no suggestion that these different-scale or-derings would enjoy any sort of causal relation, on the lines of thoseportrayed in the Republic and the Timaeus. All in all, one wouldhave to say that Aristotle appears reluctant even to evoke the termkosmos, let alone to endow it with any real systematic import.

Even so, concepts are one thing, while conceptions are another.What are we to say about Aristotle’s cosmology at the end of theday, understood now in the broader sense? I believe that Simpliciushas it fundamentally right. If by cosmology we mean simply an ac-counting of all the kinds of things there are in the physical world,and perhaps their positioning relative to one another, then this isto be found in all of Aristotle’s works on nature put together. Andif by such physical things are meant primarily the simplest kindsof bodies into which embodied entities may break down, the unitswhose relative positioningmoreover gives us an approximate layoutof the physical universe, then we have arrived at what is essentiallyAquinas’ take on On the Heavens. But if by cosmology is meant

Compare how Ficino in the preface to his synopsis of the Timaeus says thatthe justification for ascending from the natural to the divine in this Pythagorizingmanner is found in the way that all natural things are, after all, effects and imagesof divine things. It is because of this that the Timaeus treats of the world triply, as itwere: the divine, celestial, and human aspects are all considered as the nature of theuniverse is related to the higher causes (Opera, ii. –).

The Index Aristotelicus lists only four instances of kosmopoiein and cognate ex-pressions, all of which are related to reports of Presocratic cosmogonies.

On Aquinas see further J. A. Weisheipl, Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages(Washington, ), –.


Taneli Kukkonen

the more demanding enterprise of showing how all things in theworld—or all things equally—rely on higher causes, how certainfundamental forces govern all of embodied reality, and what grantsthe world a unity such that it becomes possible to speak of it as ‘theworld’, then it is hard to see what in the Aristotelian corpus wouldsatisfy this requirement.Metaphysics Λ is probably the closest Aris-totle comes to providing this kind of unified theory of everything:but the account is sketchy in the extreme and requires considerableextrapolation on the basis of other materials in order to functionas a full-blown cosmology. I am, then, basically in sympathy withHelen Lang’s assessment that Metaphysics Λ aims at showing howa discussion of substance will at the same time provide the best ac-count of ‘the All’, as shown by Metaph. Λ , a–; but I donot share in her optimistic view that the treatise operates with ‘re-markable efficiency’, nor would I say that it ‘may be offered as aperfect example of an investigation of substance’. The strenu-ous efforts of the later commentators (including a borderline hos-tile Theophrastus) testify to the seams that show and the lacunaethat remain in Aristotle’s expressed views, and to the unavoidableneed for creative extrapolation. It is in these creative acts that thetrue history of Aristotelian cosmology is told.

University of Otago

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