The essay explores the systematic relationship in the work of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) between his monadology, his metaphysics as presented in works such as De la causa, principio et uno, the mythopoeic cosmology of Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, and practical works like De vinculis in genere. Bruno subverts the conceptual regime of the Aristotelian substantial forms and its accompanying cosmology with a metaphysics of individuality that privileges individual unity (singularity) over formal unity and particulars over substantial forms without (...) sacrificing a metaphysical perspective on the cosmos. The particular is individuated as a unique site of desire, continually transforming but able to entrain itself and others through phantasmatic ‘bonding’, the new source of regularity in Bruno’s polycentric universe. Bruno thus tries to do justice to the demands of intelligibility as well as transformative eros. The essay concludes with a note on Bruno’s geometry as it relates to his general conception of form. (shrink)

Plotinus’ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plotinus’ Gnostics ‘contract’ divinity into a single (...) God, they not only devalue the cosmos for its multiplicity and diversity, but also multiply intelligible principles unreasonably. This is because they have foreclosed the distinction, which is to become increasingly explicit in the later antique Platonists, between the intelligible and that which is given existentially, the domain belonging to Plotinus’ indeterminate multiplicity of ‘intelligible Gods’, as opposed to the dialectically determinate number of intelligible principles. Plotinus is prescient in recognizing that incipient monotheism threatens to erase the distinction between philosophy and theology, and between both of these and psychology, the final outcome of which can only be solipsism or nihilism. The defense of polytheism is seen in this fashion to be essential to the preservation of the space for philosophical discourse. (shrink)

In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather submits it to (...) elenchus, and that Euthyphro does not embrace the ‘solution’ of theological voluntarism when Socrates explicitly offers it. Since the goal of this inquiry is neither to eliminate the noetic content of the holy, nor to eliminate the Gods’ agency, the purpose of the elenchus becomes the effort to articulate the results of this productive tension between the Gods and the intelligible on the several planes of Being implied by each conception of the holy which is successively taken up and dialectically overturned to yield the conception appropriate to the next higher plane, a style of interpretation characteristic of the ancient Neoplatonists. (shrink)

Continuing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proclus' Platonic Theology begun in "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (Methexis 21, 2008, pp. 131-143), the present article treats of the basic characteristics of intelligible-intellective (or noetico-noeric) multiplicity and its roots in henadic individuality. Intelligible-intellective multiplicity (the hypostasis of Life) is at once a universal organization of Being in its own right, and also transitional between the polycentric henadic manifold, in which each individual is immediately productive of absolute Being, and (...) the formal intellective organization, which is monocentrically and diacritically disposed. Intelligible-intellective multiplicity is generated from the dyadic relationship of henads to their power(s), the phase of henadic individuality expressed in the second intelligible triad, and is mediated, unlike the polycentric manifold, but not by identity and difference, like the intellective organization. Instead, the hypostasis of Life is constituted by ideal motility and spatiality, figural dispositions, and the intersubjective relations depicted in the divine symposium of Plato's Phaedrus. (shrink)

Completing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proclus' Platonic Theology begun in "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (Méthexis 21, 2008, pp. 131-143) and "The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective Gods" (Methexis 23, 2010, pp. 137-157), the present article concerns the conditions of the emergence of fully mediated, diacritical multiplicity out of the polycentric henadic manifold. The product of the activity of the intellective Gods (that is, the product of the intellective activity of Gods as such), in (...) resolving the contradiction between existential uniqueness and universalizable potencies in the divine natures, also grounds the human exercise of phi- losophical cognition in the founding self-analysis of divine individuals. (shrink)

The comparison drawn by the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus between the Stoic doctrine of the reciprocal implication of the virtues and the Neoplatonic doctrine of the presence of all the gods in each helps to elucidate the latter. In particular, the idea of primary and secondary “perspectives” in each virtue, when applied to Neoplatonic theology, can clarify certain theoretical statements made by Proclus in his Cratylus commentary concerning specific patterns of inherence of deities in one another. More broadly, the “polycentric” nature of (...) Neoplatonic theology provides a theoretical articulation for henotheistic practices within polytheism without invoking evolutionist notions of “monotheistic tendencies.” The Neoplatonic distinction between the modes of unity exhibited by divine individuals (“henads”) and ontic units (“monads”), which is integral to the polycentric theology, also provides a theoretical basis for the non reductive crosscultural comparison between deities. The polycentric theology thus offers a promising foundation for a polytheistic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The paradigm according to which the cosmos is ordered by the demiurge is characterized in the Timaeus as ‘Animal Itself,’ while παράδειγμα in the vision of Er from the Republic denotes the patterns of lives chosen by individual humans and other animals. The essay seeks to grasp the animality of the paradigm, as well as the paradigmatic nature of animality, by means of the homology discernible between these usages. This inquiry affirms the value within a Platonic doctrine of principles of (...) persons over reified forms, of modes of unity over substantial natures, and of agency over structure. (shrink)

These essays lay the groundwork for a practice of philosophical inquiry adequate to polytheistic or "Pagan" religious traditions, including in particular the non-reductive hermeneutics of myth and the theory of the polycentric divine manifold. Includes the previously published articles "The Theological Interpretation of Myth" and "Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of Religion", as well as the previously unpublished essays "Neoplatonism and Polytheism" and "A Theological Exegesis of the Iliad, Book One".

In henadological Platonism, the significance of “the One” is understood to lie, not in an eminent singular entity, but in the modes of unity and the ways of being a unit. The science of units qua units is a systematic ground and counterweight to substance-based ontology, and manifests an organic bond with theology as the science of relation to supra-essential individuals or Gods. Because of the basic nature of unity relative to being, doctrines respecting unity tend to situate themselves as (...) critiques of ontology; they exhibit both an analytical and a soteriological value. For its part, bhakti is not a mere sectarian movement but rather an inquiry at once speculative and practical into the nature of the relationship between the human and the divine. It bridges the diverse genres of ancient Indian thought (including the theophanic/cultic, the epic, along with diverse philosophical perspectives) and displays key commonalities with henadological Platonism. This paper begins the process of identifying these common themes with particular reference to the Bhagavadgītā. Chief among its themes is the distinction between structuring cause and structured mixture, which runs through Platonism from the Phaedo to the doctrine of principles, and which parallels the account of action in the Gītā as freedom independent of result, insofar as the latter pertains to the solidarity of worldly causality heteronomous to the agency of the ātman. (shrink)

The Platonist Proclus (c. 412-485 CE) identifies the procession of the angels, daimons, and heroes as operating three universal temporal potencies through which we experience time in the forms of past, present, and future, respectively. This essay explicates the Proclean doctrine of the three forms of time in its context within his system and its wider implications, with particular reference to the form of temporality associated with the heroes. Proclus’ schematic account of heroic temporality offers a systematic metaphysical framework for (...) key themes in the Hellenic literature and cultus of heroes, in particular the dialectic of untimeliness and seasonality in the hero as discussed by Nagy. The heroes are seen to embody a universal relationship of mortal beings to time. In an excursus, the relationship of heroes to time is compared to that of cinema as image of time. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to demonstrate that Proclus articulates a metaphysics not merely compatible with his polytheism, but to which in fact polytheism is integral. For Proclus the One Itself, which according to the First Hypothesis of the Parmenides neither is, nor is one, is instead as each henad, that is, as each God. The henads or Gods thus form a multiplicity unlike any other. Ontic multiplicities always exhibit mediation, in accord with a logic subordinating the many to the one. Correlatively, (...) ontic unity is formal unity, structured by a logic of wholes and parts. These are the dominant characteristics of the realm of Being. The huperousios, or "supra-essential" domain of the Gods, by contrast, is that of a multiplicity of absolute individuals with no totalizing principle over them and no reciprocal relations between them, insofar as either of these would diminish that quality which they pre-eminently possess, namely unity. The supreme form of unity in Proclus' universe, therefore, is the individuality possessed by each absolutely unique God. Chapters 1--4 are concerned with elucidating the nature of the Gods as such. ;The last three chapters provide a close reading of the third, fourth and fifth books of Proclus' Platonic Theology, which I read as an account of the emergence of ontic unity out of henadic unity through the Gods' progressive self-diremption by which a space of mediation is constituted through which they come ultimately to be conceivable as a multiplicity like any other. The key stages in this process are the ontic hypostases of Being, Life and Intellect. The first represents the analysis of the "elements" of each God as such; the second represents the positing of the Gods in co-emergent groupings or pantheons; the third the emergence of fully reciprocal relations in the actions of mythic narrative. At the end of this cosmogonic process, the basic intellectual structures have been constituted which allow the formulation of the philosophical system. The relationship between the Gods and Being is thus embodied in that between myth and dialectic, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

This article seeks in the Platonic philosophers of late antiquity insights applicable to a new discipline, the philosophy of Pagan religion. An impor¬tant element of any such discipline would be a method of mythological hermeneutics that could be applied cross-culturally. The article draws par¬ticular elements of this method from Sallust and Olympiodorus. Sallust’s five modes of the interpretation of myth (theological, physical, psychical, material and mixed) are discussed, with one of them, the theological, singled out for its applicability to all (...) myths and because it interprets myth in reference exclusively to the nature of the Gods and their relationship to a model of the cosmos in its totality. The other modes of interpretation, while useful in particular contexts, are not uniformly applicable to all myths, interpret the myths as concerning things other than the Gods themselves, and interpret the myths with reference to particular sectors of the cosmos. Accordingly, it is from Sallust’s theological mode of interpre¬tation that the new method draws its inspiration. From Olympiodorus the method derives strategies for interpreting basic narrative attributes that myths share with all stories. Thus temporal sequence is interpreted as an ascent, from our perspective, from less perfect to more perfect manifestations of the powers of the Gods. Passivity, conflict, and transitive relations in general between the Gods are interpreted as expressing attributes of the cosmos to the constitution of which the Gods dedicate their energies, rather than as placing constraint upon the Gods themselves. The article concludes with a series of broad principles meant to guide the new method. (shrink)

In a famous quote reported by his biographer Marinus, Proclus says that a philosopher should be like a “priest of the whole world in common”. This essay examines what this universality of the philosopher’s religious practice entails, first with reference to Marinus’ testimony concerning Proclus’ own devotional life, and then with respect to the systematic Platonic understanding of divine ‘locality’. The result is, first, that the philosopher’s ‘universality’ is at once more humble than it sounds, and more far-reaching; and second, (...) that the meaning of locality in the Platonic metaphysics is more flexible and dynamic than we might have expected. Particular attention is given to the relations of ‘universality’ and ‘particularity’ as they exist among the Gods, and to the account in Proclus’ Timaeus commentary concerning the places sacred to the Gods as immaterial intervals (diastêmata) not identical to physical places, and the consequences of this for understanding changes in the religious life of places and in the localization of cults. (shrink)

The latest entry in the long-running series of Companions will hopefully raise the profile of Stoicism in philosophical curricula—hope, however, being a sentiment condemned by the Stoics. There is not a single area of philosophical reflection that could not be advanced by an intensive reexamination of Stoic positions and polemics. The school’s long duration in diverse habitats, molded by a succession of powerful intellects with differing facilities and preoccupations, and represented by a panoply of sources, none of which, however, constitutes (...) an adequate presentation of the Stoic project, has the curious effect of bringing into the foreground the ideas which united the school. As a result, it is the systematicity of Stoic thought that strikes one every time it is presented, despite the diversity of projects to which the appropriation of Stoic thought has lent itself, and despite the fact that it is, for us, a philosophy in fragments. (shrink)

Freedom and the Rule of Law takes a critical look at the historical beginnings of law in the United States, and how that history has influenced current trends regarding law and freedom. Anthony Peacock has compiled articles that examine the relationship between freedom and the rule of law in America. The rule of law is fundamental to all liberal constitutional regimes whose political orders recognize the equal natural rights of all.

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of (...) ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics. (shrink)

Butler refused to be satisfied with just one leading principle, or rational basis for human action, but in the end settled for three: self-love, to provide for our ‘own private good’; benevolence, to consider ‘the good of our fellow creatures’ ; and conscience, ‘to preside and govern’ over our lives as a whole. By so doing he hoped to ensure a completeness to our ethical scheme, so that nothing would be omitted from our moral deliberations. Yet by so doing (...) he also exposed himself to severe criticism. For any such appeal to a plurality of principles, as Green remarked, is ‘repugnant both to the philosophic craving for unity, and to that ideal of “singleness of heart” which we have been accustomed to associate with the highest virtue’. More specifically, by appealing to a plurality of principles Butler faced the charges of circularity, where the principles come to define and defend each other; inconsistency, where the principles ‘take turns’ at being primary and hence render each other superfluous; and incompleteness, where the ‘primary principle’ is itself undefined or undefended. As the tale has been told Butler stands accused of all three of these errors. (shrink)

Revisiting Edward Said's late proposals for a one-state solution, Butler has come to a startling suggestion: Jewish ethics not only demand a critique of Zionism, but must transcend its exclusive Jewishness in order to realize the ethical ...

Judith Butler follows Edward Said's late suggestion that through a consideration of Palestinian dispossession in relation to Jewish diasporic traditions a new ethos can be forged for a one-state solution. Butler engages Jewish philosophical positions to articulate a critique of political Zionism and its practices of illegitimate state violence, nationalism, and state-sponsored racism. At the same time, she moves beyond communitarian frameworks, including Jewish ones, that fail to arrive at a radical democratic notion of political cohabitation. (...) class='Hi'>Butler engages thinkers such as Edward Said, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, and Mahmoud Darwish as she articulates a new political ethic. In her view, it is as important to dispute Israel's claim to represent the Jewish people as it is to show that a narrowly Jewish framework cannot suffice as a basis for an ultimate critique of Zionism. She promotes an ethical position in which the obligations of cohabitation do not derive from cultural sameness but from the unchosen character of social plurality. Recovering the arguments of Jewish thinkers who offered criticisms of Zionism or whose work could be used for such a purpose, Butler disputes the specific charge of anti-Semitic self-hatred often leveled against Jewish critiques of Israel. Her political ethic relies on a vision of cohabitation that thinks anew about binationalism and exposes the limits of a communitarian framework to overcome the colonial legacy of Zionism. Her own engagements with Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish form an important point of departure and conclusion for her engagement with some key forms of thought derived in part from Jewish resources, but always in relation to the non-Jew. Butler considers the rights of the dispossessed, the necessity of plural cohabitation, and the dangers of arbitrary state violence, showing how they can be extended to a critique of Zionism, even when that is not their explicit aim. She revisits and affirms Edward Said's late proposals for a one-state solution within the ethos of binationalism. Butler's startling suggestion: Jewish ethics not only demand a critique of Zionism, but must transcend its exclusive Jewishness in order to realize the ethical and political ideals of living together in radical democracy. (shrink)

Eamonn Butler’s Ayn Rand: An Introduction is a short, well-organized, and easy-to-read guide to Ayn Rand’s key ideas. This primer focuses on the essentials, avoids academic details, and is structured around the major elements of her philosophy of Objectivism. Butler’s book is a fine, brief introduction to Rand’s thought.

"Pioneers of Evolution" is a 1896 treatise by English Edward Clodd within which he explores the early proponents of evolution and the scientific answers to the origin of humankind. Looking at the world of such notable figures as Charles Darwin and Gerbert Spencer, this fascinating volume is not to be missed by those with an interest in evolution and the history of related ideas. Contents include: "Pioneers of Evolution From Thales to Lucretius," "The Arrest of Enquiry," "From the Early (...) Christian Period to the Time of Augustine," "From Augustine to Bacon," "The Renascence of Science," "Modern Evolution," "Darwinism and Wallace," "Herbert Spencer," "Thomas Henry Huxley," etc. Edward Clodd (1840 - 1930) was an English writer, banker, and anthropologist famous for his various and notable literary and scientific friends, including the likes of Edward Fitzgerald, Samuel Butler, Andrew Lang, and others. Other notable works by author include: "The Childhood of the World" (1872), "Jesus of Nazareth" (1880), and "Nature Studies" (1882). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author. (shrink)

This is a two page handout specifying approaches, or methods, used in interpreting Judith Butler. The methods of various analytic philosophers are identified.

Butler refused to be satisfied with just one leading principle, or rational basis for human action, but in the end settled for three: self-love, to provide for our ‘own private good’; benevolence, to consider ‘the good of our fellow creatures’ ; and conscience, ‘to preside and govern’ over our lives as a whole. By so doing he hoped to ensure a completeness to our ethical scheme, so that nothing would be omitted from our moral deliberations. Yet by so doing (...) he also exposed himself to severe criticism. For any such appeal to a plurality of principles, as Green remarked, is ‘repugnant both to the philosophic craving for unity, and to that ideal of “singleness of heart” which we have been accustomed to associate with the highest virtue’. More specifically, by appealing to a plurality of principles Butler faced the charges of circularity, where the principles come to define and defend each other; inconsistency, where the principles ‘take turns’ at being primary and hence render each other superfluous; and incompleteness, where the ‘primary principle’ is itself undefined or undefended. As the tale has been told Butler stands accused of all three of these errors. (shrink)

How do the arts give us pleasure? Covering a very wide range of artistic works, from Auden to David Lynch, Rembrandt to Edward Weston, and Richard Strauss to Keith Jarrett, Pleasure and the Arts offers us an explanation of our enjoyable emotional engagements with literature, music, and painting. The arts direct us to intimate and particularized relationships, with the people represented in the works, or with those we imagine produced them. When we listen to music, look at a purely (...) abstract painting, or drink a glass of wine, can we enjoy the experience without verbalizing our response? Do our interpretative assumptions, our awareness of technique, and our attitudes to fantasy, get in the way of our appreciation of art, or enhance it? Examining these questions and more, we discover how curiosity drives us to enjoy narratives, ordinary jokes, metaphors, and modernist epiphanies, and how narrative in all the arts can order and provoke intense enjoyment. Pleasurable in its own right, Pleasure and the Arts presents a sparkling explanation of the enduring interest of artistic expression. (shrink)

In this chapter Alessandro Capone’s claim as the intimate relationship between legal reasoning and indirect reports is investigated through looking at legal citation practices, use of case law, and statutory and constitutional interpretation. Capone’s thought is informed in the chapter through a reference to the work of Ronald Dworkin and Edward H. Levi. The conclusion of the chapter is that Capone is correct that use of indirect reporting in law is ubiquitous and therefore warrants careful study. Further, and opposite (...) of Dworkin’s hope for a univocal use of indirect reports, Levi’s analysis emphasizes the bottom-up, conversational and polyvocal aspects of legal reasoning as is noted by Capone. This in turn requires eliminating the hope for finding or imposing a determinate and univocal meaning on legal citation, case law, and statutory and constitutional interpretation. Instead, continuing dialogue is required. Indeed, legal process should try to include as many voices in the construction of meaning as possible. (shrink)

The usual version of the genetic argument for panpsychism is not difficult to refute. The version is based on the principle of biological continuity according to which the various species differ in degree rather than in kind. It is then asserted that if there is some point in the evolution of life out of inanimate matter, or of higher out of lower life, such that before this point minds did not exist while thereafter they do exist, then the principle of (...) continuity is violated. The argument, as Paul Edwards points out, is based on the Scholastic principle that a cause must contain its effect in actuality, since otherwise it could not communicate the effect and thus could not operate as its cause. Just as what causes a body to heat up must itself be hot, so what causes human minds to come into existence must already possess mentality. Ultimately, the inanimate world of, say, six billion years ago caused human minds to come into existence. Therefore, the constituents of even the so-called “inanimate world” are psychic. Yet Edwards’ refutation of this particular argument is unassailable. The argument fails, first, because the Scholastic principle on which it is based is highly dubious. But it fails even granting this principle. The emergence of high-level minds from low-level minds would create just as great a problem as an original emergence of the mental from the nonmental. There would still be the problem of how an entity with given capacities and characteristics could be caused by entities without those capacities and characteristics. And, finally, if we grant the emergence of high-level from low-level minds, it is not clear why the mental itself may not emerge from the nonmental. (shrink)