De generatione et corruptione, Commentaries on Aristotle's

Abstract

According to Andronicus of Rhodi’s edition of Aristotle’s works in the second half of the first century BCE, the two books of De generatione et corruptione follow De caelo and antecede Metereologica. The three kinds of changes in addition to motion (dealt with in Physica and De caelo) are the main topics of De generatione as well as the attribution either to the four elements (material cause) or to the motion of the sun in the ecliptic (efficient cause) of the origin of such changes. They are: (a) generation and corruption when only the primary matter persists, while substantial form changes; (b) alteration, when substance persists and only qualitative properties change; (c) growth and diminution when change is limited to quantitative properties. Other very important physical notions such as action and passion, mixture and the role of simple bodies in mixed ones are as well discussed. This work reached the Latin middle age through the two main channels through which Aristotle’s work spread in the Latin West, the Greek, and the Arabic. From the latter the medieval commentators borrowed a very useful instrument to get a better acquaintance with the topics discussed in Aristotle’s work: Averroes’ middle commentary, which contains also some hints to Greek commentators. In thirteenth-century Latin commentaries, the need to get to the heart of the text prevails, while in the fourteenth century the discussions of the more urgent philosophical topics overcome the literal explanation.