Plato and Aristotle in Disagreement: the Case of Eustratius of Nicaea I'll go straight to the point: in his commentaries on books

I and VI of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and on book II of the Posterior Analytics Eustratius of Nicaea emphasizes on the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle. This is quite interesting for two reason: 1) according to scholars such as Lloyd, Eustratius more or less supports the agreement between Plato and Aristotle on relevant points such as the doctrine of universals; 2) the tradition of the Antique and Late-Antique commentators insisted on the sumfonia between these two philosophers. Even in Michael Psellos and John Italos, who were Eustratius' immediate predecessors, one can fnd similar statements, often supported with long quotations from Simplicius and Philoponos' commentaries on Aristotle's physical works. Sometimes Psellos remarks on the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle, but he never delves into their disagreement the way Eustratius does in his scholarship on Aristotle's text. In the present paper I shall provides three case studies from Eustratius' commentaries on Aristotle in order to show how this Byzantine commentator elaborates on the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle and what are his main sources. The frst case study is Eustratius famous defense of the Platonic ideal Good against Aristotle's criticism of this same principle present in book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. I deliberately used the word famous, because Eustratius counter-attack against Aristotle was well known to the Mediaeval readers of the Eustratius's commentaries in the West thanks to Robert Grosseteste's mid13th c. Latin translation, which became soon very consequential. Thus, if one thinks at the modern interpretations of Eustratius' view on the Plato-Aristotle controversy, such as the afore-mentioned view by Lloyd, he will not be wrong in stating that Eustratius Mediaeval readers were somewhat smarter than the modern ones. In his criticism of Aristotle's interpretation of the Platonic ideal Good, Eustratius accepts Aristotle's defnition of the good as that which all thing desire found at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics and attributed in boom X of the same work to Speusippus. Yet, he maintains that this implies that the good as object of desire must be the transcendent cause of all thing. Interstingly, he introduces a doxography concerning the way the Platonists interpret the lemma tagathon present in Aristotelian defnition of the good. According to this interpretation, the lemma tagathon refers to the most common and universal good. Who are the Platonists referred to by Eustratius? As you can see from the handout, the commentator here refers to Proclus. Writes Eustratius if everything desires it, that is to say the Good, then the Good is by necessity above all things. The argument is taken from Proclus' Elements of Theology, prop. 8, literally. In his commentaries on Aristotle when Eustratius refers to the positions of the Platonists he means Proclus. In this, he is closer to his predecessors Psellos and Italos, who adopts this very same strategy in their collections of philosophical treatises. Another case study is Eustratius' doxography on Plato's and Aristotle's view on concept formation in his commentary on book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. Here Eustratius discusses Aristotle's view on mathematical object as derived by abstraction, afairesis, from the sensibile particulars. But, claims Eustratius, the Platonists who speculated on this point did not like this solution, that is to say Aristotle's view on mathematical objects as derived by abstraction, for abstracted concepts are worse than sense-perception data and the physical realities, in so far as they derive from the latters and are later born. Once again Eustratius is quoting from Proclus, this time from Proclus' commentary on the Parmenides, where you can fnd the very same argument as that elaborated by Eustratius. According to Proclus, later born concepts, which correspond to Aristotelian abstracted concepts, are less noble and valuable than the innate concepts in our soul. Unsurprisingly, then, in his philosophical commentaries Eustratius himself admits the existence of innate concepts in our soul. This demonstrates that Eustratius does not merely describes the Platonic and Aristotelian positions on this or that issue; more than this, he takes position for the Platonic side. That this is the case, it is clear from the very same structure of his doxography: he devotes only few words to the Aristotelian views, and goes on in describing the Platonic/Proklean standpoint so longly that at a certain point it is no more clrar wether Eustratius is simply describing someone else's view or wether he is actually endorsing the same view. The third passage I am going to present suggest that this is actually the case.

Here Eustratius frst describes the Platonic view on knowledge as the recollection of the inate contents in the soul, then he introduces Aristotle's position of knowledge as passage from potency into act, and fnally promises his own solution. According to this, Aristotle's position is wrong in stating that we derive concepts from the sensible particulars, whereas Plato is wrong in admitting the transmigration of the souls. Yet, Eustratius would side with the platonists in stating that there exist innate concepts in our soul, which nevertheless were put by the Creator in the soul whence it was enbodied. But what is more interesting is that Eustratius casts his solution within a Proclean framework, which as you can see cribs from Proclus' Elements of Theology and the idea that the soul derives directly or more closely from the intellect. So, even when the commentator insist with providing the reader with an autonomous position, he refers to Proclus as his main source. Some conclusions: the topic of the dissensio philosophorum has been one of the most succesfull argument used by Latin and Greek Church Fathers in order to stress on the unreliability of philosophy if compared with the Christian Truths. But what Eustratius does is something different: he stresses on the difference between Plato and Aristotle in order to get rid of the latter in favor of the frst. More than this, he identifes the Platonic positions on this or that topic with that of Proclus, as if the latter exemplifes authentic Platonism. In this, Eustratius' attitude is closer to that of Psellos and Italos. According to Eustratius, Aristotles is a deceiving sophist who played with Plato's words and could not grasp their true meaning. Now, almost 40 years after Eustratius' death, Nicholas of Methone will compose his Refutabile of Proclus' Elements of Theology. Here Nicholas adopts a strategy opposite to that by Eustratius: according to Nicholas, Proclus is a bold young guy who not only endorsed pagan views, but did not understand Aristotle properly. The difference between these two approaches is a striking one. But what happend in these 40 years, from Eustratius' death and Nicholas' Refutabile of Proclus' Elements of Theology, this is a story yet to be written.