Description

As most of the Neoplatonic commentators, Elias admits that description does not signify the nature, but only what comes upon it.⁷⁶ Thus, the description is taken from the accidents that may be separated from the subject without its destruction: like Socrates may exist (ὑποστῆναι) apart from being Athenian, bald, having a protruded belly, snub-nosed and black.⁷⁷ It means that all the attributes are contingent for Socrates, even the inseparable ones, like Athenian or the son of Sophroniscos.⁷⁸

It was a customary commonplace among the commentators to call the description a sketch, or a colorless draft, as opposed to the definition, which represents the whole picture in its

72 Elias, in Cat. 177, 30–31.

73 David in Isag., 167, 22.

74 David, in Isag., 167, 25–26.

75 It was Michael Chase who took into account the role of description.Chase, 2011.

76 Elias, in Isag., 4, 13–14; 4, 24–25.

77 Elias, in Isag., 4, 21–23; David, in Isag., 12, 20–26; 13, 31–32: For David, description is taken from essential and accidental elements as well, being a „mixed definition.”

78 Elias, in Isag., 80, 15–16.

25 entirety.⁷⁹ Thus, it is clear that the description cannot signify the essence of Socrates. As Ammonius puts it,

the description signifies the substance by the bunch of accidents, to which [the substance] underlies; it brings us to the notion of the substance, to which the accidents adhere.⁸⁰

In Ammonius’ words, the description only reminds of the substance. In other words, it helps to identify the given particular substance, even if it does not signify its particular nature.

Simplicius instead, highlights that the description gives the proper character of the substance.⁸¹ This identifying role turns up also in Elias’ account: not only descriptions but definitions have an identifying role, insofar as their parts, the terms they consist of, excludes their opposites.

Thus, if I say that Socrates is Athenian, it excludes the strangers, the son of Sophroniscus excludes the other citizens, the philosopher excludes the pupils, and so on.⁸² In other words, the enumerated elements narrow the scope of description, until it becomes narrow enough to single out its object. That is to say, commentators, like Ammonius and Elias, tacitly attribute to description an identifying role, rather than a defining role.

2.2.3 “Bundle of properties”

Anachronistically speaking, the Porphyrian “bundle theory” is not only problematic in its intention, whether it may be understood in an ontological or epistemic sense, but the sentence itself is a bit ambiguous as well. It states that the bundle of proper characteristics may never be the same in anything else. Modern scholars have already observed the difficulty that will be explicitly reformulated by Avicenna as well: what is the criterion that the bundle of characteristics cannot be shared? In other words, what is the reason why an individual is unshareable, in such a way that it is not incidentally so?⁸³

In the secondary literature, Riccardo Chiaradonna also highlighted that two bundles might be identical theoretically. If we explain the difference of the two bundles by their inherence in their substances respectively, we are at the opposite side, because the bundle of characteristics is meant to individuate the individual, of which they consist. Michael Chase insists that to identify an individual, one does not need to enumerate all the properties, because a certain percentage of it would do as well.⁸⁴ Since description has an epistemic role too, according to the

79 Elias, in Isag., 4, 25–27; Ammonius, in Isag., 55, 2–7.

80 Ammonius, in Isag., 56, 15–17.

81 Simplicius, in Cat., 29, 18–19. Quoted by Chase, 2011, 20.

82 Elias, in Isag., 22–24. The whole discussion runs in the context of the description of genus in the Eisagoge.

83 Sorabji, 2005, 166; Chiaradonna, 2000, 311; Chase, 2011, 30–31.

84 Chase, 2011, 30.

26 commentators, it is the necessary precondition of definition in the imagination as a stage in the process of abstraction. If we start from sense perception and the data gathered in our memory, some characteristics indeed seem sufficient to identify an individual.

Now, let us see what the commentators have to say about the question: Ammonius follows Porphyry, not questioning the unshareability of the bundle reading.⁸⁵ He adds the category of time to the typical characteristics, which appear in the commentator tradition, too: Socrates is bald, philosopher, snub-nosed, has a protruded belly, and he is generated in that time – this collection of characteristics falls only upon him.⁸⁶

However, it was Elias, the successor of Olympiodorus in Alexandria, who challenged this view:

As for the proper characteristics of Socrates, like the Athenian, the son of Sophroniscus, the philosopher, the protruded-belly, the snub-nosed and bald, they cannot be together in anything else. However, if you say that they can be in another as well, why would that be impossible? Perhaps they will not stand at the same place;

because one among the accidents cannot be in Socrates and another so that two would stand at the same place at the same time, so as not to penetrate one body the other.⁸⁷

Elias, examining the “bundle-view,” draws attention to two properties, time and place that must be unique for an individual. The author himself refers to the theory about the impossibility of interpenetration that two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time. Besides that it seems an a priori evidence, it is an Aristotelian doctrine, elaborated upon later by Themistius, who emphasized the dimensions and extension as its criterion.

David rejects Elias’ position. His critic sounds as follows:

Some say that form among the accidents the place completes (συμπληροῖ) most the individual. Since all the others are common, the baldness, the well-grown, and sound-minded, only the place is peculiar to the individual; since two cannot stand at the same place, because a body would interpenetrate the other body; thus, the place completes Socrates. These people say it wrong: which place do they mean, the universal or the particular? If the universal, their statement seems false (because Socrates does not differ from Alkibiades, due to his being in place; since the universal place is common). If they mean the particular, their statement similarly will be false. Because the place in the Lyceum is not of Socrates only, because Plato may stand at that place since the place in the theater always belongs to those who arrive there earlier. Thus, this [place] is not proper for Socrates. Thus, the place does not complete Socrates more than the other accidents.⁸⁸

85 Ammonius, in Isag., 90, 2–3.

86 Ammonius, in Isag., 90, 6–23.

87 Elias, in Isag., 76, 4–11.

88 David, in Isag., 168, 1–15.

27 David refutes Elias position, but in his reasoning, he relies on an argument that Olympiodorus seems to take from Themistius: The former, in his commentary on the Categories, in the context of “to be in the subject” talks about the different readings of “to be in something.” Among those, we find the “to be in place,” and its different senses. Themistius, via Olympiodorus, refutes that Socrates would be in place as in an accident in a similar way: both the universal and particular place would not fit into this theory.⁸⁹ The aporia, whether Socrates is an accident in place since he is in place without being its part, may be traced back to as early as Porphyry’s time.⁹⁰ However, David uses a diaireisis that if it is place, it is either universal or particular, and both options lead to impossible consequences. However, he does not take into account the reference to time, as Elias did. Thus, his target is not a spatio-temporal, but only a spatial reading. Second, his wording implies that he takes his adversaries saying that place would complete (συμπληροῖ) Socrates, implying that place would be an essential part of him (συμπληρωτικὸν).⁹¹ This is not what Elias has said.

That the universal place is not essential for Socrates, is obvious. David highlights that even the particular place would not play this role, because he understands it as a particular place, delimited by the material world, not the Aristotelian, well-known formula, that place is the surrounding surface of the body. David simply misses mentioning the temporal relation, too, which makes this position highly offendable.

Thus, David’s objections do not really fit Elias’ position. Elsewhere, Elias seems to faithful to the Aristotelian tradition regarding substantial and accidental elements. What is more, what we read in the Commentary on the Categories attributed to him, is very telling: he comments upon the very same passage:

For this, we say: how do you understand place? If the individual [place], Socrates may be separated from it, if the universal, it is not entirely in him. If they say retreating that we say neither the individually defined, nor the universally [taken place], but the particular, indefinite place, Socrates is wholly in a certain place, we say that the last difference of the description does not fit that he cannot subsist without it [the place]. Because Socrates, being a substance, does not owe its existence in place to an accident, but the place has its existence in the substance.⁹²

89 Olympiodorus, in Cat., 48, 13–19.

90 Sorabji, 2012, 109–110.

91 Benevich, 2017, 244.

92 Elias, in Cat., 8–13.

28 In short, Elias simply denies that place would be essential for Socrates; however, this discussion is in a different context: whether Socrates is an accident. Since to be an accident means that it cannot subsist apart from the substance, and it is not part of it; the first statement does not stand on firm grounds. If Socrates would be an accident, he could not exist apart from place; although it happens to be so in the material world, place has not an explanatory role in its particular existence, in his being Socrates: Socrates in place is not like baldness in Socrates. It is the other way around.

In other words, if this commentary is written by Elias, we may say that he did not think that place and time were essential for Socrates in the sense that they would explain his being Socrates. The only possibility left is to take Elias as implying that the “bundle” meant to differentiate Socrates from other individuals; as such, the spatio-temporal reading seems to fulfill this goal.