Sulla teoria aristotelica della sostanza. Variazioni esegetiche da Plotino ad Ammonio

R. LOREDANA CARDULLO OnAristotelianCategoryofSubstance.ExegeticVariationsfrom / Catania / Plotinus to Ammonius One of the main difficulties that Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle face is the different treatment that the Categories and the Metaphysics offer to the question of the substance. After describing briefly the status quaestionis ousiae in Aristotle, and after tracing the main Neoplatonic interpretations otf this doctrine (from Plotinus’ negative one to Porphy- ry’s positive and “conciliatory” one), this article attempts to demon- strate that the Neoplatonists of Athens and Alexandria, Syrianus and Ammonius, inaugurate a new interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine. With regard to the category of substance in general and to the question of substantiality of “immanent form” in particular, this new interpreta- tion goes beyond the positions of Plotinus and Porphyry and returns the ontological value to the Aristotelian substances. Unlike Plotinus, who recognized as ousia only that one intelligible, that is five genres of the Platonic Sophist, and unlike Porphyry, who defused the anti–Platonic fuse of the Categories, giving to this treaty a mainly semantic skopos, these philosophers, through their original study of the theory of the three states of katholou, already shed in the Porphyrian Eisagôgê, fit the immanent forms of Aristotle, recognized as substances and as a reflec- tion of the transcendental universal, into the late antique Neoplatonic metaphysical triadic structure.