The reception of Aristotle’s On the heavens in late ancient Alexandrian Platonism, with the editio princeps of the newly discovered anonymous scholia of the ff. 180-211 from the Laurentianus 87.20

Neoplatonic philosophers felt that the unity of Aristotle’s De caelo was a strategic issue, which constrained their different exegetical approaches to Aristotle’s text and criticisms of Plato, but also had a direct impact on their views on the unity and cohesion of the physical system of the world. Conflicting interpretations appear to have reached a climax in late Neoplatonism, with Philoponus’ and Simplicius’ controversy on the nature of the ethereal body. Yet this pivotal moment of the reception of De caelo is only known to us from Simplicius’ perspective, whose commentary is the only one that is extant. I intend to throw a new light on the philosophical implications of the Neoplatonic debates on De caelo by using a new source: an unpublished corpus of around 300 Byzantine scholia based on a non-extant commentary on the treatise, written in Alexandria in the 6th century. An important step of the project will be the edition and translation of the scholia. The research hypothesis is that the unknown commentary was written by the Christian philosopher Philoponus (based on his notes from Ammonius’ lectures). Though it is not certain that enough evidence will be gathered to confirm this hypothesis, there is no doubt that the scholia will allow me to clarify the exegetical method and philosophical background of the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria and to reassess the influence of De caelo on the emergence of specific philosophical controversies and scientific issues.