A proposito di Giovanni Filopono cristiano e gli studi di Étienne Évrard

Abstract

Abstract The studies of É. Évrard, recently published by M.-A. Gavray (2020), are high quality works which allow to immerse oneself in the context of the Platonic-Aristotelian school of Alexandria in Egypt throughout the sixth century AD. They mostly focus on the figure and work of Joannes Philoponus, with specific attention to the compositional technique of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics and of On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle. Despite being strongly critical of the Stagirite on some points, also due to his Christian faith (as with regard to the eternity of the world, which he denies), Philoponus deeply assimilated Aristotelian methods, lexicon and concepts. He therefore uses this legacy in his commentary on the first chapter of the biblical text of the book of Genesis on the creation of the universe, of living species and of the human being (better known with the Latin title De opificio mundi). This work by Philoponus provides a first example of Christian Aristotelianism before the well-known one of the medieval Scholasticism.