In Categories chapters 7 and 8 Aristotle considers his third and fourth categories - those of Relative and Quality. Critics of Aristotle had suggested for each of the non-substance categories that they could really be reduced to relatives, so it is important how the category of Relative is defined. Aristotle offers two definitions, and the second, stricter, one is often cited by his defenders in order to rule out objections. The second definition of relative involves the idea of something changing its relationship through a change undergone by its correlate, not by itself. There were...

' Simplicius'] moral interpretation of Epictetus is preserved in the library of nations, as a classic book, most excellently adapted to direct the will, to purify the heart, and to confirm the understanding, by a just confidence in the nature both of God and man.'
Edward Gibbon

'This book, written by a ""pagan"" philosopher, makes the most Christian impression conceivable. The betrayal of all reality through morality is here present in its fullest splendour - pitiful psychology, the philosopher is reduced to a country parson. And Plato is to blame for all of...

Is there such a thing as three-dimensional space? Is space inert or dynamic? Is the division of time into past, present and future real? Does the whole of time exist all at once? Does it progress smoothly or by discontinuous leaps?
Simplicius surveys ideas about place and time from the preceding thousand years of Greek Philosophy and reveals the extraordinary ingenuity of the late Neoplatonist theories, which he regards as marking a substantial advance on all previous ideas.

Chapters 5 and 6 of Aristotle's "Categories" describe his first two categories, Substance and Quantity. It is usually taken that Plotinus attacked Aristotle's "Categories", but that Porphyry and Iamblichus restored it to the curriculum once and for all. Nonetheless, the introduction to this text stresses how much of the defence of Aristotle Porphyry was able to draw out of Plotinus' critical discussion. Simplicius' commentary is our most comprehensive account of the debate on the validity of Aristotle's "Categories". One subject discussed by Simplicius in these chapters is where the...