Publication Details
| Introduction to the Translation of the Commentary by Michael Psellos to the Book I of the Physics of Aristotle | |
| Title in the language of publication: | Предисловие к переводу комментария Михаила Пселла на I книгу «Физики» Аристотеля |
| Author: |
Maria Varlamova
PhD in Philosophy, research fellow at the Research and Education Center for Religion, Philosophy, and Culture Studies at St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, associate research fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Address: 67 Bolshaya Morskaia str., Saint-Petersburg, 190000, Russia.
E-mail: boat.mary@gmail.com
|
| Issue: |
P. 373–383.
|
| Language: | Russian |
| Document type: | Research Article (introdaction) |
| Acknowledgments: | The present study is a part of the project № 17-03-00329, “Nature and movement in the ‘Commentary on the Physics of Aristotle’ by Michael Psellos. Study of the influence of the late antique tradition, of the correlation between physics and the Orthodox theology, and of the reception in the later Peripatetic physics”, implemented with a financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. |
Abstract
This is an introductory article to the Russian translation of a part of the Commentary by Michael Psellos to the Book One of the Physics of Aristotle. It deals with the context where this commentary appeared and other philosophical interests of Psellos. Beside his political and scholarly activity, Psellos was “a hypatos of philosophers” — the head of the philosophical department in the university of Constantinople. Most probably, his commentaries to the Physics and the Organon were composed for the needs of education. Influenced by the Neoplatonical tradition, Psellos, on the one hand, was interested in Aristotle’s logic and Naturphilosophie, but, on the other hand, addressed his texts through the antique commentaries and writings of Church Fathers. The structure of the Book One of the Physics is the following: the principles of physics and ways to know them (ch. 1), the opinions of the forerunners of Aristotle on the same subject (ch. 2 to 6), and, finally, Aristotle’s own doctrine on these principles (ch. 7 to 9). The present Russian translation includes the commentaries on the chapters 1 and 7 to 9 — dedicated to the physical being and the scholarly study of this kind of being. These chapters are representing the proper opinion of Aristotle being the most important for understanding his doctrine on the physical principles, and have had the maximal influence on the further history of science. The translation — by Timur A. Shchukin with the commentaries by Maria N. Varlamova — is presented according to the edition: Michael Psellos. Kommentar zur Physik des Aristoteles. Einleitung, text, indices von Linos G. Benakis. Athenis: Akademia Atheniensis, 2008 (Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, Commentaria in Aristotelem Byzantina. Vol. 5).
Keywords
Michael Psell, Physic, Aristotle, The Imperial University of Constantinople, Byzantium, Commentaries on Aristotle, matter, form, privation.
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© Maria Varlamova, 2017
