TRIBUTE TO BOB SHARPLES

BICS-55-1 – 2012

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© 2012 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

TRIBUTE TO BOB SHARPLES

RICHARD SORABJI This article is based on a personal and informal tribute that I had the opportunity of paying to Bob Sharples in his presence after 37 years of work together. Bob came and joined me in London in 1973, he being in University College and I in King’s. At that time, he was already working on his first book, Alexander of Aphrodisias: ‘On fate’.1 Alexander was the greatest expositor and defender of Aristotle, bringing his philosophy up to date 500 years after Aristotle’s death, in answer to rivals, especially to the Stoic school. In discussing fate, Alexander addressed the question whether the same circumstances inevitably have the same outcome, as his Stoic rivals supposed, and what that would mean for our moral responsibility. Very reasonably, Bob’s professor asked me to urge him to work on subjects that were on the student syllabus for Ancient Greek Philosophy, which then stopped in most universities with Aristotle. He could not have foreseen that the syllabus would change in London and elsewhere, as people like Bob opened up the later centuries for study. He became the leading scholar in the English-speaking world on Alexander, and one of the few leading scholars anywhere on the ancient Aristotelian school. This did not stop him writing also on Plato, and a great deal on Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics and Platonists. In 1978, the London University philosophers and classicists agreed to new under-graduate courses on the next 900 years of Philosophy after Aristotle. Bob and I started teaching the new course together, and separated only when we found that his Classics and my Philosophy students wanted different emphases. From 1978 until 2000, he was also my central support when the research seminars on later Greek Philosophy ran at the Institute of Classical Studies in London. Bob and I had the reputation of providing the largest handouts of texts, translations and bibliography to students and participants in seminars, but his were beautifully presented. I keep a collection of his seminar handouts, and some of his undergraduate handouts were informative booklets prepared for the beginning of term and supplied with illustrations. I have one whose cover shows gowned or naked hellenised figures in various states of puzzle-ment confronting mathematical or logical theorems or experimenting with falling weights. Immediately after a seminar or lecture, on hundreds of occasions, Bob, with characteristic generosity, would send off to the speaker, with copies to others directly involved in the conversation, a short note supplying texts and references clarifying or confirming an interpretation that had emerged in discussion. I keep a collection of these too. In our first 10 years together, up to 1983, we were working on very much the same themes in ancient thought about the physical universe: determinism and time. Bob wrote

1 For this and all references to works by R. W. Sharples please see the bibliography at the end of this section.

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about necessity, possibility, fate, providence, and divination in a wide range of authors: Aristotle, Alexander, the Stoics, Bishop Nemesius, Cicero, Boethius and Manilius. His path-breaking work on Alexander On fate must surely have helped to pave the way for others to provide new insights, for example Susanne Bobzien in her clarifying book on determinism and freedom in Stoicism,2 which acknowledges Bob’s comments. As regards time, Bob published the first ever English translation of Alexander’s work On time, lost in Greek, but partially preserved in a late Arabic manuscript, and in a twelth century Latin translation from the Arabic, which has some claim to be more authoritative. Variants in the Arabic version were translated in footnotes by Fritz Zimmermann. The treatise may have been directed against Galen, and it declares that our divisions of time, unlike space, exist only in the mind. Conceivably this might have been used to solve Aristotle’s problem that time is unreal, because it is divided without remainder into a past that has gone and a future that has not yet arrived. I shall try to explain what was involved in Bob’s becoming one of the world’s leading scholars of the Aristotelian school. After Aristotle (384-322 BCE), we might distinguish three periods of the school’s history in Athens. Aristotle’s immediate successor was his pupil, Theophrastus, best known in literary circles for the personality descriptions in his Characters, but actually a polymathic writer on many subjects. Of two other prolific pupils of Aristotle, Eudemus and Dicaearchus, we have only fragments. Theophrastus’s own prolific pupil, Demetrius of Phalerum, went as adviser to the first of the Ptolemy kings in Alexandria, some time after Theophrastus himself declined to go. The next heads of the school after Theophrastus were Strato, Lycon and Aristo of Ceos. In the first century BC Cicero and Arius Didymus, probably the Stoic, recorded some of the school’s views. A second phase began in the first century BCE, when Andronicus organized Aristotle’s available writings, and assessed their authenticity, and his pupil Boethus, inaugurated the idea of word by word commentaries on Aristotle. There are surviving commentaries from the second century CE by Aspasius and probably Adrastus, and some of the views of Alexander’s teachers are known. Alexander raised commentary on Aristotle to a new level, and even though subsequent commentators on Aristotle were not Aristotelians, but Neoplatonists, they thought of him as the commentator par excellence, and he might therefore be thought of as introducing a third phase. Some works of Theophrastus survive intact. But previous attempts to collect together the fragments of his other works never succeeded, because the task proved too long for one lifetime. By 1979, William Fortenbaugh began to assemble a team, in the hope that four people might be able to complete the task, and also embarked on a series of regular conferences on Theophrastus and on later Aristotelians from the first phase. The team, consisting of William Fortenbaugh, Pamela Huby, Bob Sharples and Dimitri Gutas, succeeded in the task with an edition and translation of the fragments in two volumes by 1992, in which Bob took special responsibility for physics and biology. This was followed by an on-going series of commentaries, in which Bob published the volumes for physics and biology in 1995 and 1998. He also edited and translated Theophrastus’s short treatises On fish in 1992 and On dizziness in 2003. He contributed a chapter to the proceedings of the first conference on Arius Didymus, which was published in 1983, and subsequently

2 S. Bobzien, Determinism and freedom in Stoic philosophy, (Oxford 1998).

RICHARD SORABJI: TRIBUTE TO BOB SHARPLES 7


wrote articles on Eudemus, Dicaearchus and Aristo of Ceos, and eleven centred on Theophrastus. In 1988, he co-edited with Fortenbaugh a book of essays on Theophrastus, including one of his own, while in 2011, a few months after his death, there was published his edition, translation and discussion of the fragments of Strato of Lampsacus. As regards the second phase of Aristotelianism, Bob raised an important new question in one article (‘Habent sua fata libelli’): why Aristotle’s Categories should have then become the favourite subject of attention. He co-edited with Antonina Alberti the proceedings of a conference, concerning a commentary on a different text: Aspasius: The earliest extant commentary on Aristotle’s ethics. A paper of his on Aspasius’s account of happiness was included. He wrote with Jan Opsomer a new interpretation, arising out of his seminar, of an apparent claim made by Alexander, ‘I heard things I preserved about the intellect-from-without from Aristotle’. Did Alexander hear these things from Aristotle, the Stagirite, who died 500 years earlier? To avoid this conclusion, some scholars had suggested the reference must be to one of Alexander’s direct teachers, either Aristocles of Messene, or Aristotle of Mytilene, rather than of Stagira. Others again had suggested that Alexander meant he had heard Aristotle being read aloud. But Sharples and Opsomer produced the ingenious solution that ‘from Aristotle’ was meant to go not with ‘I heard’, but with ‘intellect-from-without’. The sense would be: ‘I heard things which I preserved about the intellect-from-without handed down from (para) Aristotle’. As regards Alexander himself at the start of the third phase, a magisterial overview of Alexander appeared in 1987 in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt. Bob then built on his earlier translation of On fate by publishing between 1990 and 2004 no fewer than 4 volumes of annotated translation of Alexander, for my series on ancient commentators on Aristotle. Two of these volumes were about diverse questions, Quaestiones, a third was about questions in ethics, and the fourth was Alexander’s supplement to his book On the soul, the latter of which had to a large extent paralleled Aristotle’s work of the same title, despite some differences brought out by its translator, Victor Caston. The supplement consists of essays of various dates. Both Alexander’s On the soul and his Supplement distinguish three intellects within us, the immortal productive intellect-from-without, the material intellect and the dispositional intellect. Alexander takes the immortal productive intellect not to be part of our soul, but to be God entering from without, so that its immortality gives no immortality to us. As to how much the material intellect can achieve without the presence of the productive intellect, Alexander’s two texts seem to differ, the Supplement saying that the material intellect cannot separate forms from matter in thought without the help of the productive intellect. Bob’s translation of the Supplement was based on his new edition of the Greek, which was published by de Gruyter in 2008. In the introduction to his 2004 translation and in an earlier 1990 article, ‘The school of Alexander?’, Bob argued that the discussions in all four volumes emerged from Alexander’s lively classroom interchanges, very different in spirit from the guidance through a strict syllabus reflected in the commentaries of Alexander’s Neoplatonist successors. It was however significant, he pointed out, that although Alexander tells us much that he learnt from his teachers, there is no mention of any pupils. The Neoplatonist era was soon to absorb the learning of the other philosophy schools and pass it on under its own gloss.

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After Angelos Chaniotis gave us a preview at the Institute of Classical Studies of his identification of Alexander’s dedicatory inscription celebrating his father in his own home town, Bob was able to publish in 2005 an assessment of the inscription including its autobiographical element which confirmed that Alexander did indeed hold the Chair of Philosophy in Athens. Altogether, Bob published 30 articles centred on Alexander or pseudo-Alexander, and, with Sophia Kapetanaki in 2008, a new edition with introduction and annotated translation of Pseudo-Alexander Supplementa Problematorum. He found this collection of roughly physiological questions identifiable neither with the Pseudo-Aristotle Problems nor with Alexander’s Quaestiones, but still composed within an Aristotelian framework. Bob’s activities were by no means exhausted by his research and university teaching. He was very devoted to his teaching of Open University students, which lasted from 1991 to 2003, and I accompanied him more than once to the Open University Centre in the Finchley Road. He arranged publication of the Keeling Memorial Lectures and Colloquia in Ancient Philosophy held at University College, London, and edited them himself, moving publication for the lectures from University College to Ashgate. He himself had a big hand in the choice of colloquia themes. He was editor of Phronesis from 1993 to 1997, one of the two main British journals in Ancient Philosophy, and he wrote many of the ‘Book Notes’ for it. He also wrote so many book reviews for other journals that I have a collection of 17 that he did not even include on his website bibliography. He was one of three editors of the series Peripatoi, founded in 1971 for publishing works on Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, with De Gruyter in Berlin as publisher. He became a professor in 1994 and head of the University College Department of Greek and Latin from 1997 to 2001. Bob was asked to convene a research group in a programme that had started at the British Academy in 2006 for deciphering what proved to be a lost ancient commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. The text had been deliberately erased, to provide a palimpsest, a re-used surface on which new material could be written – in this case thirteenth century Christian prayers. One end of the manuscript contained under the superimposed writing three visible texts in Greek by the ancient mathematician Archimedes, his Floating bodies, his Method and his Stomachion. These had already been excitingly deciphered, as described by William Noel and Reviel Netz in The Archimedes codex.3 There was writing also underneath the prayers at the other end of the codex, but so faint that the owner of the codex at the start of the twentieth century, J. L. Heiberg, the scholar of ancient mathematics, had not seen that there was any writing at all. Two teams were organized by William Noel at the British Academy to scrutinize the texts, which were electronically transmitted onto large screens with experimentally varied combinations of light. One team succeeded fairly rapidly in deciphering a rhetorical text of Hyperides from the middle of the palimpsest. The hardest text to decipher was at the other end. It was as if the thirteenth century process of erasure had started energetically at that end of the codex, and become less efficient, as exhaustion set in towards the Archimedes end. It took the most expert specialists ten minutes to identify a single letter. I myself managed only to recognise well

3 W. Noel, R. Netz, The Archimedes codex: Revealing the secrets of the world’s greatest palimpsest (London 2007).



known names when they were pointed out, such as ‘Aristotle’ and the name of one of Alexander’s teachers. With Bob as convener, the research group made astonishing progress. Findings since that time are indicated in David Sedley’s contribution to the present volume. In 1997, Bob agreed to my suggestion that, once a sourcebook was completed on the commentators on Aristotle of the period 200 to 600 CE, the two of us should prepare something together on the philosophy covering 300 years from the first century BCE up to the time of Alexander’s teachers shortly before 200 CE. Our idea was that this period was the one that would then be in most need of attention. We held a week-long conference on the period at the Institute of Classical Studies in 2002, and in 2007 the Institute published the resulting collection of papers in two volumes, Greek and Roman philosophy, 100 BC-200 AD. A further part of the idea was that sourcebooks should be commissioned on the four main schools of the period, Platonist, Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean, fitting in Cicero and Galen somewhere. We were pleased to learn that George Boys-Stones and Charles Brittain had already undertaken to prepare a sourcebook on the Platonism of the period,4 and we benefited from their help in organizing the Platonist part of the conference. Bob’s sourcebook, Peripatetic philosophy from 200 BC to 200 AD: An intro-duction and collection of sources in translation (Cambridge 2010), was published in the year of his death. In this period, Bob’s courage, and his dedication to work, whatever the pressures, became more apparent than ever before. His wife, Grace, died very prematurely the month before our conference, but he still managed to spend a whole day at the conference and delivered papers of his own. When the volumes were being completed, he suffered his own first serious illness, and the finishing touches would no doubt have been better implemented, if he had been free to attend to them, as he had planned. Nonetheless, in hospital, supported by his daughter Lizzie, he continued to work almost as hard as ever, supplying new thoughts, among other things, on the palimpsest. By September 2009, he had contracted an even more serious illness, and yet he was able in hospital to discuss ancient philosophy in his old style for two hours, only a day or two after undergoing the most severe treatment. In March 2010, he managed to attend the conference arranged by Peter Adamson in his honour at the Institute of Classical Studies, which has resulted in the present book. In paying him a tribute on that occasion, I concluded by suggesting some questions, because thinking about his subject was one of his consolations in adversity. I will record one of the questions, because I think Bob would have liked a tribute to finish with an issue close to the heart of his interests. One of Alexander’s major contributions concerned the nature of universals. Bob adverted to that in a review in Liverpool Classical Monthly 7, 1982 of A. C. Lloyd’s Form and universal in Aristotle, in his overview of Alexander in 1987, and again in his article of 1990, ‘The school of Alexander?’. But in 2005 he devoted a new substantial article to the subject, modestly entitled, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisas on universals: Two problematic texts’. Aristotle had taken Plato’s Forms to be universals, and himself downgraded them. Alexander seems to downgrade them further, although I think he distinguishes Aristotelian enmattered forms from universals. I take him to say that the human enmattered form or nature – mortal, rational animal in Quaestio 1.3 – exists as so many

4 G. Boys-Stones, C. Brittain, The Platonist revival: An introduction and collection of sources in translation (Cambridge 2008).

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particular human forms or natures. He then seems to treat universality as an attribute merely accidental to a form or nature, viz. the attribute of existing in two or more specimens. Aristotle had required less of a universal, only that it should be capable of existing in more than one instance. Alexander also seems to downgrade universals still further by treating them as existing only in the mind. That may seem hard to square with the idea that they exist in specimens. But I have compared the idea that latitudes and longitudes exist at different places on the globe, but also are constructed as existing there only by our minds. But I need to say more because Bob’s article of 2005 focuses on two passages of Alexander that cause difficulties to both of us and to everyone else. I have no solution for one of the embarrassing passages. But I shall take up Alexander On the soul 90,2-8, which says that something is merely in our thought, and indeed actually is merely our thought. Bob takes it to say that the existence of forms depends on our intellect. I think instead that it can be taken to say only that the existence of universals (or of forms treated artificially as universals) depends on our intellect. The first, as Bob points out, would be very surprising, because forms are meant to play a causal role, and because God’s providence is said to be concerned with preserving forms. One would not expect either to be true of something that was merely dependent on, or indeed identical with, our thought. Bob’s solution is that what depends on our thought is not something universal, but only being recognized as universal. But I wonder whether instead the passage could be translated differently. Bob translates it as follows:

(1) In the case of enmattered forms, as I said, when such forms are not being thought none of them is intellect, if their being intelligibles has its being (hupostasis) in their being thought. (2) For the things that are universal and common (3) have their being (huparxis) in the enmattered particulars, (4) but when they are thought apart from matter they come to be common and universal, and they are intellect just when they are thought. (5) If they are not thought, they are no longer. (6) So when they are separated from the intellect that thinks them, they perish, if their being is in being thought.

I wonder whether instead the passage intends to contrast enmattered forms themselves, that is, independently of whether they are being thought, with forms thought of separately from their differentiating material circumstances, which, so conceived, become common, universal and all alike. Even when so conceived, however, the forms themselves have their basis in enmattered particulars. This interpretation could be expressed by the following paraphrase of the first 4 numbered sections. (1) Enmattered forms (e.g mortal, rational animal), when not being thought, are not identical with our thought. (2) For (4) even when they are thought separately from their differentiating material circumstances, and, so conceived, become common, universal (and as Quaestio 1.3 says, all alike), even so (3) the forms themselves, despite having thus been made universal, have their basis (huparxis) in enmattered particulars (such as Socrates and Callias in Quaestio 1.3). But (4) qua so conceived, they are identical with our thought, and (1) their being intelligibles has its being (hupostasis) in their being thought. Such an interpretation would keep forms themselves independent of our thought. What depends on our thought is only a universal, or a form treated as a universal. But that treatment (though useful for some purposes such as definition) is not true to reality, because the differentiating matter is ignored.



I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have had Bob as a close colleague for 37 years, always helpful, always devoted to scholarship, always going the extra mile to make a new suggestion, and take the subject forward in innumerable ways. Since his death at the age of 61, I have repeatedly missed him, and often thought that he would be the one who could have answered a new question right away. He has left an indelible mark in the field of ancient philosophy in that time, as his astonishing bibliography shows. As his friends, we must learn to be content with the time we have had together.5 The Publications of R. W. Sharples (Note: this list includes only publications already appeared; some are still forthcoming.) Books

R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias: ‘On fate’ (London 1983)

——, Plato: ‘Meno’ (Warminster 1985)

——, Alexander of Aphrodisias: ‘Ethical problems’, Ancient commentators on Aristotle (London 1990)

——, Cicero: ‘On fate’ and Boethius: ‘Consolation of philosophy’ IV.5-7 and V (Warminster 1991)

——, Alexander of Aphrodisias: ‘Quaestiones’ 1.1-2.15 (London 1992)

Theophrastus of Eresus. sources for his life, writings, thought and influence, ed., trans. W. W. Fortenbaugh, P. M. Huby, R. W. Sharples, D. Gutas, 2 vols (Leiden 1992)

R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias: ‘Quaestiones’ 2.15-3.16 (London 1994)

——, Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his life, writings, thought and influence, Commentary volume 5: Sources on biology (Leiden 1995)

——, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (London 1996) (repr. (Thessaloniki 2002), trans. as Stoikoi Epikoureioi kai Skeptikoi; repr. (Mexico City 2009), trans. as Estoicos, epiucureos y escepticos)

——, Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his life, writings, thought and influence, Commentary volume 3.1: Sources on physics (Leiden 1998)

——, Alexander of Aphrodisias: Supplement to ‘On the soul’ (London 2004)

S. Kapetanaki, R. W. Sharples, Pseudo-Aristoteles (Pseudo-Alexander), Supplementa Problematorum, Peripatoi 20 (Berlin 2006)

R. W. Sharples, Alexander Aphrodisiensis: ‘De anima libri mantissa’, Peripatoi 21 (Berlin; New York 2008)

——, P. van der Eijk, Nemesius: ‘On the nature of man’, Translated Texts for Historians 49 (Liverpool 2008)

——, Peripatetic philosophy from 200 BC to 200 AD: An introduction and collection of sources in translation (Cambridge 2010)

5 For other tributes, see W. Fortenbaugh in Carl A. Hufman, ed., Aristoxenus of Tarentum (New Brunswick 2012), xiii-xviii, and Victor Caston, preface to volume 1 of his Alexander of Aphrodisias ‘On the soul’ (London 2012).

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/12514/

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/12514/

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Books edited

Theophrastean studies: On natural science, physics and metaphysics, ethics, religion and rhetoric, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 3, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, R. W. Sharples (New Brunswick 1988)

Modern thinkers and ancient thinkers: The Stanley Victor Keeling memorial lectures 1981-91, ed. R. W. Sharples (London 1993)

Aspasius: The earliest extant commentary on Aristotle’s ethics, Peripatoi 17, ed. A. Alberti, R. W. Sharples (Berlin 1999)

Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?, Proceedings of the second Keeling colloquium, ed. R. W. Sharples (Aldershot 2001)

Ancient approaches to Plato’s ‘Timaeus’, BICS Supplement 78, ed. R. W. Sharples, A. D. R. Sheppard (London 2003)

Perspectives on Greek philosophy: S. V. Keeling memorial lectures in ancient philosophy 1992-2002, ed. R. W. Sharples (Aldershot 2003)

Philosophy and the sciences in antiquity, Proceedings of the fifth Keeling colloquium, ed. R. W. Sharples (Aldershot 2005)

Greek and Roman philosophy 100 BC to 200 AD, BICS Supplement 94, ed. R. W. Sharples, R. R. K. Sorabji, 2 vols (London 2007)

Particulars in Greek philosophy, Proceedings of the seventh Keeling colloquium, ed. R. W. Sharples (Leiden 2009)

Articles, chapters in books, etc. (Note: this list includes only publications already appeared; some are still forthcoming. Reviews of individual books are not cited, but the article-length “Book Notes” from the journal Phronesis are included.)

R. W. Sharples, ‘Responsibility, chance and not-being (Alexander of Aphrodisias: Mantissa 169-72)’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 22 (1975) 37-64

——, ‘Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of necessity in the De fato of Alexander of Aphrodisias’, Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 20 (1975) 247-68

——, ‘Responsibility and the possibility of more than one course of action: A note on Aristotle, De caelo 2.12’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 23 (1976) 69-72

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias De fato: Some parallels’, The Classical Quarterly 28 (1978) 243-66

——, ‘Temporally qualified necessity and possibility’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 3 (1978) 89-91

——, ‘If what is earlier, then of necessity what is later? Some ancient discussions of Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione 2.11’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 26 (1979) 27-44

——, ‘Dr John Fell — editor of Alexander of Aphrodisias?’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 4 (1979) 9-11

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/GrandLat/research/research-projects/keeling/pastkeelingcolloquia#fifth

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/GrandLat/research/research-projects/keeling/pastkeelingcolloquia#fifth

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/GrandLat/research/research-projects/keeling/pastkeelingcolloquia#seventh

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/GrandLat/research/research-projects/keeling/pastkeelingcolloquia#seventh

http://www.tlg.uci.edu/help/BetaManual/online/Q.html




——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias’ second treatment of fate? De anima libri mantissa, pp.179-86 Bruns’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 27 (1980) 76-94

——, ‘Form in Aristotle — individual or universal?’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 5 (1980) 223-29

——, ‘Lucretius’ account of the composition of the soul (3.231ff.)’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 5 (1980) 117-20

——, ‘Necessity in the Stoic doctrine of fate’, Symbolae Osloenses 55 (1980) 81-97

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on divine providence: Two problems’, The Classical Quarterly 32 (1982) 198-211

——, ‘An ancient dialogue on possibility: Alexander of Aphrodisias Quaestio 1.4’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 64 (1982) 23-38

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: On time’, Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 27 (1982) 58-81

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on the compounding of probabilities’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 7 (1982) 74-75

——, ‘The place of ancient philosophy in a classics degree’, Council of University Classical Departments Bulletin 11 (1982) 14-15

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestiones on possibility, I’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 29 (1982) 91- 108

——, ‘The unmoved mover and the motion of the heavens in Alexander of Aphrodisias’, Apeiron 17 (1983) 62-66

——, ‘But why has my spirit spoken with me thus? Homeric decision-making’, Greece and Rome 30 (1983) 1-7 (repr. in Homer, ed. I. McAuslan, P. Walcot (Oxford 1998) 164-70)

——, ‘Knowledge and courage in Thucydides and Plato’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 8 (1983) 139-40

——, ‘Nemesius of Emesa and some theories of divine providence’, Vigiliae Christianae 37 (1983) 141-56

——, ‘The Peripatetic classification of goods’, in On Stoic and Peripatetic ethics: the work of Arius Didymus, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 1, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh (New Brunswick 1983) 139-59

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestiones on possibility, II’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 30 (1983) 99- 110

——, D. W. Minter, ‘Theophrastus on fungi: Some passages in Athenaeus’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 103 (1983) 154-56

——, ‘On fire in Heraclitus and in Zeno of Citium’, The Classical Quarterly 24 (1984) 231-33

——, ‘Aristotle and necessity: A clarification’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 31 (1984) 197-98

——, ‘Some medieval and Renaissance citations of Theophrastus’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 47 (1984) 186-90

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——, ‘Theophrastus on tastes and smells’, in Theophrastus of Eresus: on his life and work, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 2, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, A. A. Long, P. M. Huby (New Brunswick 1985) 183-204

——, ‘Theophrastus on the heavens’, in Aristoteles, Werk und Wirkung; Paul Moraux gewidmet, ed. J. Wiesner (Berlin 1985) 577-93

——, ‘Ambiguity and opposition; Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ethical Problem 11’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 32 (1985) 109-16

——, ‘Cybele and loyalty to parents’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 10 (1985) 133-34

——, ‘Plato’s Phaedrus-argument for immortality and Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 10 (1985), 66-67

——, ‘Species, form and inheritance: Aristotle and after’, in Aristotle on nature and living things: Philosophical studies presented to David M. Balme, ed. A. Gotthelf (Pittsburgh 1986) 117-28

——, ‘Soft determinism and freedom in early Stoicism’, Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 31 (1986) 266-79

——, ‘Cicero’s Republic and Greek political theory’, Polis 5.2 (1986) 30-50

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and innovation’, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.36.2 (ANRW), ed. H. Temporini, W. Haase (Berlin 1987) 1176-1243

——, ‘Could Alexander (follower of Aristotle) have done better? A response to Professor Frede and others’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 5 (1987) 197-216

——, ‘Aspects of the secondary tradition of Theophrastus’ opuscula’, in Theophrastean studies, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 3, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, R. W. Sharples (New Brunswick 1988) 41-64

——, ‘Condemned out of his own mouth: Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 13 (1988) 115-16

——, ‘Snow blindness and underground fish-migration: Two more notes on Theophrastus’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988) 181-84

——, ‘The criterion of truth in Philo Judaeus, Albinus and Alexander of Aphrodisias’, in The criterion of truth: essays in honour of George Kerferd, ed. P. M. Huby, G. C. Neal (Liverpool 1989) 231-56

——, ‘More on Plato, Meno 82c2-3’, Phronesis 34 (1989) 220-26

——, ‘The school of Alexander?’, in Aristotle transformed, ed. R. R. K. Sorabji (London 1990) 83-111 (rev. repr. Diánoia 53 (2008) 3-46, trans. as ¿La escuela de Alejandro de Afrodisia?, available on-line at <http://dianoia.filosoficas.unam.mx/info/2008/d61-Sharples.pdf>

——, ‘On Chrysippus, Sophocles, and dead people who aren’t here any more’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 16 (1991) 91-92

——, ‘Theophrastus: On fish (text, translation, commentary)’, in Theophrastus: His psychological, doxographical, and scientific writings, Rutgers University Studies in



Classical Humanities 5, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, D. Gutas (New Brunswick 1992) 347-85

——, ‘On Socratic reasoning and practical activity’, in Tria Lustra: Festschrift for Dr John Pinsent, Liverpool Classical Papers 3, ed. H. D. Jocelyn, H. M. Hurt (Liverpool 1993) 35-44

——, ‘Mostly Aristotle’, Phronesis 38.2 (1993) 222-26

——, ‘Aristotle and Hellenistic philosophy’, Phronesis 38.3 (1993) 345-50

——, ‘Epicurus, Carneades and the atomic swerve’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 38 (1991-93) 174-90

——, ‘Plato on democracy and expertise’, Greece and Rome 41 (1994) 49-56 (repr. Kettering Review, Spring (1995) 32-37; repr. Fronesis 29-30 (2009) 45-53, trans. as ‘Platon om demokrati och expertkunskap’)

——, ‘Plato, Plotinus and evil’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 39 (1994) 171-81

——, ‘On body, soul and generation in Alexander of Aphrodisias’, Apeiron 27 (1994) 163-70

——, ‘Causes and necessary conditions in the Topica and De fato’, in Cicero the philosopher, ed. J. G. F. Powell (Oxford 1995) 247-71

——, ‘Counting Plato’s principles’, in The passionate intellect, essays on the transformation of classical traditions presented to Professor I. G. Kidd, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 7, ed. L. Ayres (New Brunswick 1995) 67-82

——, ‘Aristotle and others’, Phronesis 40.2 (1995) 230-38

——, ‘Aristotle: Hellenistic philosophy’, Phronesis 40.3 (1995) 342-49

——, ‘Aristotélisme’, in Le Savoir Grec, ed. J. Brunschwig, G. E. R. Lloyd (Paris 1996) 884-905 (repr. in Greek thought: A guide to classical knowledge, ed. J. Brunschwig and G. E. R. Lloyd (Cambridge, MA 2000) 822-42, trans. as ‘Aristotelianism’; repr. in A guide to Greek thought: Major figures and trends, ed. J. Brunschwig and G. E. R. Lloyd (Cambridge, MA 2003) 300-20, trans. as ‘Aristotelianism’)

——, ‘Hustere archaiotes: enas khoros anthiseos ton klasikon spoudon’, Indiktos 7 (1997) 191-203

——, ‘Mostly Aristotle’, Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy 42.2 (1997) 236-45

——, ‘Aristotle, and some Roman philosophy’, Phronesis 42.3 (1997) 350-55

——, ‘Alexander and pseudo-Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scripta minima. Questions and Problems, makeweights and prospects’, in Gattungen wissenschaftlicher Literatur in der Antike, ScriptOralia 95, ed. W. Kullmann, J. Althoff, M. Asper (Tübingen 1998) 383-408

——, ‘Theophrastus as philosopher and Aristotelian’, in Theophrastus: Reappraising the sources, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 8, ed. J. M. van Ophuijsen, M. van Raalte (New Brunswick 1998) 267-80

——, ‘Hellenistic and Roman philosophy’, Phronesis 43.2 (1998) 207-10

16 BICS-55-1 – 2012


——, ‘Aspasius on Eudaimonia’, in Aspasius: The earliest extant commentary on Aristotle’s ethics, Peripatoi 17, ed. A. Alberti, R. W. Sharples (Berlin 1999) 85-95

——, ‘The Peripatetic school’, in From Aristotle to Augustine, Routledge History of Philosophy 2, ed. D. J. Furley (London 1999) 147-87

——, ‘More on anamnesis in the Meno’, Phronesis 44 (1999) 353-57

——, ‘On being a tode ti in Aristotle and Alexander’, Methéxis 12 (1999) 77-87

——, ‘Science, philosophy and human life in the ancient world’, in The proper ambition of science, ed. J. Wolff, M. Stone (London 2000) 7-27

J. Opsomer, R. W. Sharples, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias, De intellectu 110.4: ‘I heard this from Aristotle’. A modest proposal’, The Classical Quarterly 50 (2000) 252-56

R. W. Sharples, ‘The sufficiency of virtue for happiness: Not so easily overturned?’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 46 (2000) 121-39

——, ‘The unity of the virtues in Aristotle, in Alexander of Aphrodisias, and in the Byzantine commentators’, Etica e Politica 2.2 (2000) <http://www.units.it/~etica/2000_2/index.html>

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias Quaestio 2.21: A question of authenticity’, Elenchos 21 (2000) 361-79

S. Kapetanaki, R. W. Sharples, ‘A glossary attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 44 (2000) 103-43

R. W. Sharples, ‘Schriften und Problemkomplexe zur Ethik’, in P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias III: Alexander von Aphrodisias, ed. J. G. Wiesner (Berlin 2001) 513-616

——, ‘Dicaearchus on the soul and on divination’, in Dicaearchus of Messana, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 10, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, E. Schutrumpf (New Brunswick 2001) 143-73

——, ‘Aristotelian theology after Aristotle’, in Traditions of theology, ed. D. Frede, A. Laks (Leiden 2002) 1-40

——, ‘Eudemus’ Physics: Change, place and time’, in Eudemus of Rhodes, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 11, ed. I. Bodnar, W. W. Fortenbaugh (New Brunswick 2002) 107-26

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias and the end of Aristotelian theology’, in Metaphysik und Religion: zur Signatur des spätantiken Denkens, ed. T. Kobusch, M. Erler (Munich 2002) 1-21

——, ‘Some problems in the theory of vision in De Rerum Natura 4’, Leeds International Classical Studies 1.2, (2002) <http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2002/200202.pdf>

——, ‘Theophrastus: On dizziness’, in W. W. Fortenbaugh, R. W. Sharples, M. Sollenberger, Theophrastus on sweat, dizziness and fatigue (Leiden 2003) 169-249

——, ‘Threefold providence: The history and background of a doctrine’, in Ancient approaches to Plato’s ‘Timaeus’, BICS Supplement 78, ed. R. W. Sharples, A. D. R. Sheppard (London 2003) 107-27



——, ‘Pseudo-Alexander on Aristotle Metaphysics Lambda’, in Alessandro di Afrodisia e la “Metafisica” di Aristotele, ed. G. Movia (Milan 2003) 187-218 (Italian trans., 219-53)

——, ‘Evidence for Theophrastus On hair, on secretion, on wine and olive-oil?’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 47 (2004) 141-51

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: What is a mantissa?’, in Philosophy, science & exegesis: In Greek, Arabic & Latin commentaries, BICS Supplement 83.1, ed. P. Adamson, H. Baltussen, M. W. F. Stone, (London 2004) 51-69

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on the nature and location of vision’, in Metaphysics, soul, and ethics: Themes from the work of Richard Sorabji, ed. R. Salles (Oxford 2005) 345-62

——, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on universals: Two problematic texts’, Phronesis 50 (2005) 43-55

——, ‘An Aristotelian commentator on the naturalness of justice’, in Virtue, norms and objectivity: Issues in ancient and modern ethics, ed. C. J. Gill (Oxford 2005) 279-93

——, ‘Some thoughts on Aristotelian form: With special reference to Metaphysics Z 8’, Science in Context 18 (2005) 93-109

——, ‘Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt’, in La Catena delle cause, Determinismo e antideterminismo nel pensiero antico e in quello contemporaneo, ed. C. Natali, S. Maso (Amsterdam 2005) 197-214

——, ‘Implications of the new Alexander of Aphrodisias inscription’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 48 (2005) 47-56

——, ‘Theophrastus on discoveries (texts 728-36)’, in Biodiversity and natural heritage in the Aegean: Proceedings of the conference ‘Theophrastus 2000’ (Eressos — Sigri, Lesbos, 6-8 July 2000), ed. A. J. Karamanos, C. A. Thanos (Athens 2005)

——, ‘Common to body and soul: Peripatetic approaches after Aristotle’, in Common to body and soul, ed. R. A. H. King (Berlin 2006) 165-86

——, ‘Philosophy for life’, in The Cambridge companion to the Hellenistic world, ed. G. R. Bugh (New York 2006) 223-40

——, ‘Natural philosophy in the Peripatos after Strato’, in Aristo of Ceos, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 13, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, S. A. White (New Brunswick 2006) 307-27

——, ‘The problem of sources’, in A companion to ancient philosophy, ed. M. L. Gill, P. Pellegrin (Malden 2006) 430-47

——, ‘Pseudo-Alexander or pseudo-Aristotle, Medical puzzles and physical problems’, in Aristotle’s ‘Problemata’ in different times and tongues, ed. P. de Leemans, M. Goyens (Leuven 2006) 21-31

——, ‘Aristotle’s exoteric and esoteric works: Summaries and commentaries’, in Greek and Roman philosophy 100 BC to 200 AD, BICS Supplement 94, vol 2, ed. R. W. Sharples, R. R. K. Sorabji (London 2007) 505-12



18 BICS-55-1 – 2012


——, ‘Peripatetics on fate and providence’, in Greek and Roman philosophy 100 BC to 200 AD, BICS Supplement 94, vol 2, ed. R. W. Sharples, R. R. K. Sorabji (London 2007) 595-605

——, ‘Peripatetics on soul and intellect’, in Greek and Roman philosophy 100 BC to 200 AD, BICS Supplement 94, vol 2, ed. R. W. Sharples, R. R. K. Sorabji (London 2007) 607-20

——, ‘Peripatetics on happiness’, in Greek and Roman philosophy 100 BC to 200 AD, BICS Supplement 94, vol 2, ed. R. W. Sharples, R. R. K. Sorabji (London 2007) 627-37

——, ‘The Stoic background to the Middle Platonist discussion of fate’, in Platonic Stoicism — Stoic Platonism: The dialogue between Platonism and Stoicism in antiquity, ed. M. Bonazzi, C. Helmig (Leuven 2007) 169-88

——, ‘“Sed haec hactenus: alia videamus” (De fato 20)’, in the proceedings of a conference on Cicero, ‘De fato’, ed. S. Maso, Lexis 25 (2007) 53-68

——, ‘Philo and post-Aristotelian Paripatetics’, in Philo of Alexandria and post-Aristotelian philosophy, ed. F. Alesse (Leiden 2008) 55-73

——, ‘L’accident du déterminisme: Alexandre d’Aphrodise dans son contexte historique’, Les Études philosophiques 86 (2008) 285-303

——, ‘Habent sua fata libelli: Aristotle’s Categories in the first century BC’, Acta Antiqua 48 (2008) 273-87

——, ‘Fate, prescience and freewill’, in The Cambridge companion to Boethius, ed. J. Marenbon (Cambridge 2009) 207-27

——, ‘“Unjointed Masses”: A note on Heraclides’ physical theory’, in Heraclides of Pontus — Discussion, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 15, ed. W. W. Fortenbaugh, E. Pender (New Brunswick 2009) 139-54

——, ‘The Hellenistic period: What happened to Hylomorphism?’, in Ancient perspectives on Aristotle’s’ ‘De anima’, ed. G. van Riel, P. Destrée (Leuven 2010) 155-66

——, ‘Peripatetics’, in The Cambridge history of philosophy in late antiquity, ed. L. P. Gerson (Cambridge 2010) 140-60

M. Bonazzi, R. W. Sharples, ‘Introduction’, in Commentary and tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and post-Hellenistic philosophy, ed. P. Donini, (Berlin 2011) 7-12

R. W. Sharples, ‘Strato of Lampascus: The Sources, texts, and translations’, in Strato of Lampascus: Texts, translation and discussion, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities 16, ed. M.-L. Desclos, W. W. Fortenbaugh (New Brunswick 2011) 5-230

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