Hellenistic and Later Ancient Philosophy

This volume sheds new light on Alexander of Aphrodisias' On Mixture and Growth as an intelligent and carefully crafted rebuttal of Stoic blending, which Alexander regarded as the closest rival of his own brand of hylomorphism. The authors explore Alexander's dialectical method and determine the precise character of the Stoic theory he attacks. The problematic notions of mutual co-extension and infinite division appear in their proper context, while the successive stages of the process of blending are carefully distinguished from the (...) resulting state of the blend. In this perspective the discussion of growth that closes Alexander's work finds its natural place. (shrink)

Dada la necesidad de formalizar un espacio de reflexión y discusión sobre los problemas y autores correspondientes al período de la antigüedad grecorromana, desde la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira ingeniaron y materializaron el desarrollo de un foro académico. Con miras a la difusión y acrecentamiento de los estudios sobre el pensamiento grecolatino, se piensa para la región cafetera colombiana un avance importante en cuanto a la propuesta de proyectos y de actividades de talante dialógico a ejemplo de los países latinoamericanos (...) y europeos en que esos estudios poseen mayor alcance. De aquí que, para efectos del fortalecimiento de lo clásico en la academia colombiana, se convoca bianualmente al nominado Foro Internacional de Filosofía Antigua en la ciudad de Pereira. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to develop a thesis about the potential of phenomenology as a method for analyzing classical ancient texts. The article outlines the key issues of the doctrine of the time of Augustine and raises the question of the principles of phenomenological interpretation. Proceeding from the presentism approach, parallels are drawn between the philosophy of Augustine and the phenomenology of E. Husserl, the issue of duration and structure of the present is especially considered. The philosophy of (...) Augustine includes both theological and epistemological conclusions. (shrink)

1. Pereḳ Yetsiʼot ha-Shabat u-fereḳ Kirah.

Interpretation of devotion based on wayang stories and the Bible.

This volume of 18 essays shows how leading philosophers address the problems of ancient metaphysics: one and the many, the potential and the actual, the material and immaterial, the divine and the world itself. Includes three original and previously unpublished translations of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Aubenque and Barbara Cassin.

There is not just a desire but a profound human need for enhancement - the irrepressible yearning to become better than ourselves. Today, enhancement is often conceived of in terms of biotechnical intervention: genetic modification, prostheses, implants, drug therapy - even mind uploading. The theme of this book is an ancient form of enhancement: a physical upgrade that involves ethical practices of self-realization. It has been called 'angelification' - a transformation by which people become angels. The parallel process is 'daimonification', (...) or becoming daimones. Ranging in time from Hesiod and Empedocles through Plato and Origen to Plotinus and Christian gnostics, this book explores not only how these two forms of posthuman transformation are related, but also how they connect and chasten modern visions of transhumanist enhancement which generally lack a robust account of moral improvement. (shrink)

The peculiar emphases of Gregory of Nyssa’s thought earned him all kinds of charges, in his own lifetime and onwards: among others, that he falls into Tritheism, Modalism, Synergism, Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism. The purpose of this paper is to interpret one of these theoretical audacities. It can be found in a passage from his late treatise De vita Moysis (II 86), where he refers to the evils suffered by the Egyptians in the book of Exodus, and he attributes their cause (...) to human decision (proaíresis). He affirms there that Divine Justice itself ‘is consequent’ or ‘follows’ (epakolouthoûsa) human decisions according to their merit. Although at this point Gregory follows closely Origen’s exegesis – which tried to rebut the determinism of certain Gnostic schools by affirming the true self-government of the soul, even regarding salvation or damnation, he goes beyond his Alexandrian predecessor and his Greek sources concerning the real autonomy of human actions, in interpersonal correspondence between the human and the divine. (shrink)

In this essay, we consider the formal and ontological implications of one specific and intensely contested dialectical context from which Deleuze’s thinking about structural ideal genesis visibly arises. This is the formal/ontological dualism between the principles, ἀρχαί, of the One (ἕν) and the Indefinite/Unlimited Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς), which is arguably the culminating achievement of the later Plato’s development of a mathematical dialectic.3 Following commentators including Lautman, Oskar Becker, and Kenneth M. Sayre, we argue that the duality of the One and (...) the Indefinite Dyad provides, in the later Plato, a unitary theoretical formalism accounting, by means of an iterated mixing without synthesis, for the structural origin and genesis of both supersensible Ideas and the sensible particulars which participate in them. As these commentators also argue, this duality furthermore provides a maximally general answer to the problem of temporal becoming that runs through Plato’s corpus: that of the relationship of the flux of sensory experiences to the fixity and order of what is thinkable in itself. Additionally, it provides a basis for understanding some of the famously puzzling claims about forms, numbers, and the principled genesis of both attributed to Plato by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, and plausibly underlies the late Plato’s deep considerations of the structural paradoxes of temporal change and becoming in the Parmenides, the Sophist, and the Philebus. After extracting this structure of duality and developing some of its formal, ontological, and metalogical features, we consider some of its specific implications for a thinking of time and ideality that follows Deleuze in a formally unitary genetic understanding of structural difference. These implications of Plato’s duality include not only those of the constitution of specific theoretical domains and problematics, but also implicate the reflexive problematic of the ideal determinants of the form of a unitary theory as such. We argue that the consequences of the underlying duality on the level of content are ultimately such as to raise, on the level of form, the broader reflexive problem of the basis for its own formal or meta-theoretical employment. We conclude by arguing for the decisive and substantive presence of a proper “Platonism” of the Idea in Deleuze, and weighing the potential for a substantive recuperation of Plato’s duality in the context of a dialectical affirmation of what Deleuze recognizes as the “only” ontological proposition that has ever been uttered. This is the proposition of the univocity of Being, whereby “being is said in the same sense, everywhere and always,” but is said (both problematically and decisively) of difference itself. (shrink)