Alexander of Aphrodisias' commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics revisited: a new edition of the Greek text on the basis of a complete collation of unknown sources.

• Applicant: Dr. Pantelis Golitsis
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology ; History of Philosophy
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 255046400

The project aims at producing a new critical edition of Alexander of Aphrodisias' (fl. AD 200) commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, one of the texts that most shaped the understanding of the Philosopher for centuries. This text has been edited twice up to date (1847 by Hermann Bonitz; 1891 by Michael Hayduck) but in a very unsatisfactory manner, mainly for three reasons: 1) Both editions rely on an inadequate heuristic work on the manuscript tradition of the commentary. 2) Both editors based their text mainly on a collation of just two manuscripts without having previously undertaken any stemmatic investigation of them. 3) Both editors misleadingly combined manuscripts that contain an anonymous commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics from the 6th/7th cent. with manuscripts that transmit Alexander's genuine commentary, thus leading to numerous false 'corrections'. The aim of the present project is to produce a reliable edition of Alexander's commentary on the Metaphysics, based on a complete collation of the textually independent Greek manuscripts as well as of the Latin translation by Juan Ginès Sepúlveda (1527), and conform to modern standards of philology and text science.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: France, Italy
• Participating Institution: Università degli studi di Milano ; Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia ; Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità ; Sezione di Filologia Classica; Sapienza Università di Roma ; Facoltà di lettere e filosofia ; Dipartimento di Storia, Culture, Religioni ; Sezione di Storia Medievale e Paleografia; Université de Paris IV ¿ Sorbonne - ; UFR de philosophie
• Hosts: Dr. Daniele Bianconi; Dr. Stefano Martinelli Tempesta; Professor Dr. Marwan Rashed