FORM AS A QUALITY OF MATTER

The Translation of ἕξις in Michael Scot’s Version of Aristotle’s Physics and its Influence on Giordano Bruno’s Figuratio Aristotelici Physici auditus

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the influence of the translation of ἕξις as ‘forma’ in Michael Scot’s Arabic-Latin version of Aristotle’s Physics on a passage of Giordano Bruno’s Figuratio Aristotelici Physici auditus. I take my cues from a passage where Bruno uses the term ‘formae’ to refer to Aristotle’s expression ἕξεις καὶ διαθέσεις (Phys. II 1.193a25-26). I then examine all the 16^th-century editions of the Physics Latin translations to trace the use of ‘formae’ as a translation of this Aristotelian passage. I focus on the 1562 Giunta edition of Aristotle’s opera omnia with Averroes’ commentary, which includes the Arabic translation attributed to Michael Scot, the only one to translate ἕξις as ‘forma’. All occurrences of the translation of ἕξις in the Latin and Arabic translations are also documented. Finally, after a brief accounting of the meaning of ἕξις in Aristotle and in the Arabic version of the Physics, I discuss Bruno Nardi’s interpretation of Albert the Great’s inchoatio formae, to show how Bruno’s use of the translatio Scoti places him in the tradition of ancient and medieval philosophers who have read the form as a quality of the matter.