An inquiry drawing on the presence of Hellenistic philosophy in Philo provides a better knowledge of the diffusion of Hellenistic philosophy since the late ...

The problem of Philo's ambivalence about the physical world -- The context for Philo's ambivalence toward the physical world -- Philo's negative terminology for the physical world : [ousia, hylē, genesis, genētos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [kosmos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 1 -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 2 -- Higher and lower approaches to God -- The ambiguity of the physical world : (...) a multiperspectival approach -- Conclusions. (shrink)

Surveys philosophy from the neo-Platonists to St. Anselm, showing how Greek philosophy took the form in which it was known to its cultural inheritors and how ...

The topic tackled in this book is Philo's account of the complex, double-sided nature of God's acting - the two-sided coin of God as transcendent yet immanent, ...

The essays collected in Italian Studies on Philo of Alexandria give an overview of the main trends of current Italian research on Philo of Alexandria, making ...

This is the first full discussion of Philoponus' account of matter.

In this engrossing book, Maria Dzielska searches behind the legend to bring us the real story of Hypatia's life and death, and new insight into her colorful ...

Seeing and hearing God in the Old Testament -- Seeing and hearing God in the New Testament -- Word and image in classical Greek philosophy -- Philosophers and sophists of the early Roman era -- Image, text and incarnation in the second century -- Image, text and incarnation in the third century -- Neoplatonism and the arts -- Image, text and incarnation in the fourth century -- Myth and text in proclus -- Christianity of Christian Platonism.

In his major work, the Periphyseon, the ninth century Latin philosopher John Scottus Eriugena gives, with the help of what he calls "dialectic", a rational analysis of reality. According to him, dialectic is a science which pertains both to language and reality. Eriugena grounds this position in a realist ontological exegesis of the Aristotelian categories, which are conceived as categories of being. His interpretation tends to transform logical patterns, such as Porphyry's Tree or the doctrine of the categories, into a (...) structure which is both ontological and logical, and to use them as tools for the analysis of the sensible world. The combination of dialectic interpreted as a science of being, capable of expressing truths about the sensible world as well as about discourse, with an ontological interpretation of logical concepts allows Eriugena to develop his metaphysical theory, a strong realism. Eriugena not only supports a theological realism (of divine ideas), but also, and principally, an ontological realism, the assertion of the immanent existence of forms. Eriugena claims that genera and species really subsist in the individuals: they are completely and simultaneously present in each of the entities which belong to them. (shrink)

Mireille Hadas-Lebel shines a spotlight on the complex life and works of Philo, the illustrious Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, offering a fascinating insight into a seminal religious thinker at the crossroads of Judaism and Hellenism.

Apparently alone among medieval Christians, Eriugena argues that all life is immortal. He relies on Plato’s Timaeus as his primary source for this claim, but he modifies the argument of the Timaeus considerably. He turns Plato’s cosmic soul into the genus of life, thereby taking a treatise that originally dealt with cosmology and using it to explore the ontological significance of definition. All species that fall under the genus of life must be immortal, because a mortal species would contradict the (...) genus. No later medieval author would take up Eriugena’s arguments explicitly, although Aquinas comes close. The two thirteenth-century thinkers to address universal immortality seriously—Aquinas and Bonaventure—argue against it, but they are more faithful than Eriugena himself to a literal reading of the Timaeus. (shrink)

This handbook presents, in an unassuming format, an account of Philo's achievements.

The Aristotelian categories are a fundamental element in Eriugena’s philosophical system on account of his realist view of dialectic. He received his texts concerning the categories from Boethius and the De decem catagoriis, but key ideas in his treatment of them—namely, the metaphysical importance of dialectic, the unknowability of essence, and the origin of being in place and time, ideas fundamentally rooted in Byzantine developments of the Christology of Chalcedon—are taken from Maximus the Confessor. Eriugena’s work on the categories represents (...) an attempt, much misunderstood, to assimilate the richness of the Eastern tradition to Western philosophical and theological method. This paper examines the synthesis of Maximus’s ideas with Ciceronian and Boethian elements in Eriugena’s striking treatment of the Aristotelian Categories. (shrink)

In this volume Loader examines three substantial and historically important sets of documents the writings of Philo of Alexandria, the histories of Josephus, ...

Introduction 1. Alexander in Modern Scholarship; The Present Translation The anti-Manichaean treatise of Alexander of Lycopolis has for a long time been ...

This book deals with the reception of the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle in the first centuries CE, and is a major contribution to our knowledge of the ...

This book studies the influence of Hellenism and Greco-Roman philosophy on Philo of Alexandria's view of the Mosaic law.

The author examines the intriguing link between magic and Gnosticism.

uando Augusto consolidaba el Imperio romano, en su centro cultural, Alejandría, nace Filón. Filósofo, exégeta y maestro en su comunidad judía, Filón es testigo de la convivencia del judaísmo de lengua griega con una sociedad helenizada que en Egipto parecía acercarse al ideal de la pax romana. Pero también es el principal informante sobre el primer pogrom contra su comunidad en el año 38. Sus escritos constituyen la más importante expresión del judaísmo de lengua griega que encontró su ocaso en (...) la época de la destrucción del Templo de Jerusalén. Este volumen primero de las Obras completas de Filón de Alejandría se abre con una introducción general a la edición y traduce dos de los tratados más significativos de la obra filoniana: De opificio mundi y Legum allegoriae 1-3. La creación del mundo es el tratado fundamental de Filón, donde interpreta la doble narración de la producción del mundo según el Génesis, desde perspectivas eclécticas basadas en el Timeo y en tradiciones pitagóricas, aristotélicas y estoicas. Moisés se convierte en el verdadero filósofo para todos los hombres inteligentes de la ecúmene alejandrina, el que enseña la creación y la discriminación de un mundo inteligible y otro sensible. Alegorías de las Leyes es el inicio del Comentario Alegórico, donde los elementos narrativos de la producción artesanal de Adán y de la derivada producción de Eva por la costilla, considerados de forma mítica, dan paso a una interpretación —digna de Dios— de la producción del Intelecto y de la Sensibilidad, primero arquetípicos, después histórico-mundanos. (shrink)

A contemporary of Jesus Christ, Philo of Alexandria ranks among the greatest of Jewish and Greek thinkers.

The first author in which the traditions of Judaic thought and Greek philosophy flow together in a significant way is Philo of Alexandria.This study presents a ...

Athenagoras : philosopher and theologian -- Athenagoras' Corpus -- Athenagoras and contemporary theological and philosophical conversations -- How do we know about God? : epistemology -- What do we know about God? : first principles -- Subordinate topics -- Influences on Athenagoras -- Conclusions.

This volume is a continuation of "Philo of Alexandria: an Annotated Bibliography 1937-1986, published by Roberto Radice and David Runia in 1988 (second edition ...

The extensive writings of the Jewish philosopher and exegete Philo of Alexandria (15 BCE to 50 CE) were preserved through the efforts of early Christians, who ...

An extremely important Jewish writer and thinker of the first century AD, Philo of Alexandria exercised through his ideas and language a lasting influence on the development and growth of Christianity in the New Testament period and later. This book provides an introduction to the major themes and ideas in the religious and philosophical thinking of Philo and outlines the importance of his thought by means of introductory treatments and sections of freshly translated text and commentary. Dr Williamson illustrates in (...) his work the place and significance of Philo within Judaism and as part of the background to Christianity, and so provides a valuable resource for scholars and students in this area of study. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, analytical philosophers of religion have confronted the problem of evil in the guise of the atheistic argument from evil against the existence of God. Many have met it from the posture of defense, constructing logically possible morally sufficient reasons for divine permission of evils from the materials of religion-neutral value-theory. At best, such defenses vindicate divine goodness along the dimension “producer of global goods,” while neglecting the religiously more relevant dimension of His goodness to individual (...) suffering creatures. My methodological recommendation is that we Christian philosophers shift away from defense and concentrate on formulating what we really believe about the goodness of God and how He is solving the problem of evil. If successful, our accounts would not only exhibit how divine permission of evils is logically consistent with His goodness to creatures, but also advertise Him as a character worthy of worship. Failures would pinpoint more precisely where and how evil is a problem for us. I illustrate this method by examining Duns Scotus’ many-faceted conception of divine goodness and measure its power to explain the compossibility of God and evil. (shrink)

The paper first presents the necessary background to appreciate al-Fârâbî’s views and his originality. It explains the issues Anicent philosophers faced: the natural vs. the conventional origin of language, the problem of ambiguous words, and the difficulty to express Greek thought into Latin. It then sketches andcontrasts the views of Christianity and Islam on the origin of language and the diversity of idioms. It argues that al-Fârâbî follows the philosophical tradition butdevelops it in sophisticated and original manner by telling the (...) story of the origin and development of language and giving little place to the Islamic tradition. Foral-Fârâbî language emerges naturally but develops by convention in three phases: (1) The constitution of utterances and crafts to ensure basic necessities; (2) The development of rhetoric, poetry, memorizing, writing, and the language arts; (3) the development of dialectic, sophistical reasoning and demonstration that leads to philosophy reaching its perfection with with Aristotle. Religion for him is posterior to philosophy and derives form it. As for al-Fârâbî philosophy in Islamic lands was imported from Greece, he includes rules to translate technical philosophical terms from one language into another. (shrink)

PREFACE HE purpose of this book is to present, in as brief and systematic a way, the whole philosophy of Alfarabi and the influence it exerted on Medieval ...