Hermias: On Plato Phaedrus 227A–245E (Ancient Commentators on Aristotle)

About the Author
Dirk Baltzly is Professor of Philosophy and Head of Discipline for Philosophy & Gender Studies at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He is co-editor (with Harold Tarrant) of Pleasure and Power, Virtues and Vices: essays in ancient moral philosophy (2001).
Michael Share is Honorary Research Fellow at the School of History & Classics, University of Tasmania, Australia.
Michael Griffin is Associate Professor of Classics and Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is co-editor of the series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle and translator of two of its volumes: Olympiodorus: Life of Plato and On Plato First Alcibiades 1–9 (Bloomsbury 2014) and Olympiodorus: On Plato First Alcibiades 10–28 (Bloomsbury 2015).
Richard Sorabji is Research Professor of Philosophy at King's College London and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, UK. He is the author of many books, including Necessity, Clause and Blame, Matter, Space and Motion, and Time, Creation and the Continuum, all published by Bloomsbury, and general editor of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series.
This commentary records, through notes taken by Hermias, Syrianus' seminar on Plato's Phaedrus, one of the world's most influential celebrations of erotic beauty and love. It is the only Neoplatonic commentary on Plato's Phaedrus to have survived in its entirety. Further interest comes from the recorded interventions by Syrianus' pupils - including those by Proclus, his eventual successor as head of the Athenian school, who went on to teach Hermias' father, Ammonius.
The first of two volumes of Hermias' commentary, the chapters translated here discuss the argument that the soul can be proved immortal as being the self-moving source of eternal motion. Aristotle explicitly disagreed with Plato on this treatment of the soul and Syrianus, having previously (in a commentary on the Metaphysics) criticised Aristotle severely when he disagreed with Plato, feels obliged here, too, to address the apparent disagreement. This new translation is thus vital for understanding Syrianus' attitude to Aristotle.