Le sujet de cette étude est la manière dont Plotin, dans une perspective qui reste essentiellement platonicienne, interprète la notion de noeîn dans Parménide, surtout à la lumière du bien connu Fr. 3 DK, sur l’identité de l’être et de la pensée, dont Plotin, avec Clément d'Alexandrie, est notre source. Cette interprétation est essentielle pour comprendre la nature et la fonction ontologique-métaphysique de l’hypostase plotinienne du Noûs. La conception parménidienne de noeîn est profondément remaniée par Plotin et intégrée dans une (...) perspective compatible avec l’ontologie platonicienne et la métaphysique néoplatonicienne. (shrink)

Le sujet de cette étude est la manière dont Plotin, dans une perspective qui reste essentiellement platonicienne, interprète la notion de noeîn dans Parménide, surtout à la lumière du bien connu Fr. 3 DK, sur l’identité de l’être et de la pensée, dont Plotin, avec Clément d'Alexandrie, est notre source. Cette interprétation est essentielle pour comprendre la nature et la fonction ontologique-métaphysique de l’hypostase plotinienne du Noûs. La conception parménidienne de noeîn est profondément remaniée par Plotin et intégrée dans une (...) perspective compatible avec l’ontologie platonicienne et la métaphysique néoplatonicienne. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plotinus and the Parmenz'des B. DARRELL JACKSON IN 1928 E. R. DODDSARGUED that the first two hypotheses of Plato's Parmenides are the primary source of Plotinus' doctrines of the One and of Nous. I Dodds' main evidence was a list of parallels between the Parmenides and the Enneads? He argued further that the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenides as positive metaphysics was neo-Pythagorean in origin. Several Plotinus scholars have (...) accepted and extended Dodds' view of the importance of the Parmenides for Plotinus. This group includes ]~mile Br6hier, ~ A. H. Armstrong, 4 Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, 5 and Paul Henry. n But Dodds' position is by no means universally accepted. Elmer O'Brien has recently argued that the Plotinian One was derived ultimately from Philo and mediated to Plotinus through Albinus and Numenius. 7 He says that Dodds' case, though good, is not convincing. It. A. Wolfson has been the great advocate of the Philonic origin of Plotinus' views. According to Wolfson, the doctrines attributed by Plotinus to Plato are not Plato's but mainly Philo's. 8 Others see Plotinus in varying degrees of dependence upon Plato. Philip Merlan holds that Plotinus is more in debt to the immediate successors of Plato and to Aristotle's interpretation of Plato than to the Platonic writings themselves. 9 C. J. de Vogel sees Plotinus as dependent upon Plato for a hierarchy of being which was accepted and elaborated by various middle Platonists and Gnostics. 1~According to de Vogel, the Parmenides wus not importan% in this hierarchy tradition, n In this article I shall re-examine Dodds' position. I believe the case for Plotinus' dependence upon the Parmenides can be strengthened. I shall try to do this by examining the systematic relation of Plotinus' thought to the Parmenides. Dodds x"The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic 'One'," The Classical Quarterly, XXII (1928), 129-142. 2Ibid., 132 f. *In the introductions to Enneads V.3 (esp. pp. 43 f., 46 f.), V.5 (pp. 87 ft.), VI.4-5 (pp. 161163,165-168),and VI.7 (pp. 49, 60) in his Bud~ edition and translation of the Enneads (Paris, 1931-38). 4The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge, at the University Press: 1940), pp. 14-28. In his article "Plotinos", Vol. 21, pt. 1 of Paulys Real-Encyclopgdie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 1951, cols. 552-554. eIntroduction to the second edition of Stephen MacKenna's translation of the Ennead.~ (New York: Pantheon Books Inc., n. d.), pp. xli-xliv. Elmer O'Brien (ed. and trans.), The Essential Plotinus (New York: Mentor, 1964),p. 15. 8"Albinus and Plotinus on Divine Attributes," Harvard Theological Review, XXXXV (1952), 115. 9From Platonism to Neoplatonism (2n ed. rev.; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960). 10"On the Neoplatonic Character of Platonism and the Platonic Character of Neoplatonism," Mind, LXIII (1953), 43-64. 11Ibid., 58. [3]5] 316 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY considered only parallel terminology. I shall in addition look at parallel argumentation and conclusions. Furthermore, since Dodds accounts only for Plotinus' first two hypostases, I shall consider the relation of the third hypostasis (soul) to the Parmenides. My primary interest is not the source of Plotinus' interpretation of the Parmenides but the way he carries that interpretation out. TM The former issue has often been focal in the literature on this subject. ~8It is certain thay many of the ideas used by Plotinus were already in circulation. But it is equally certain that in his combination of these ideas of a hierarchy, of transcendence, etc., Plotinus is original. I shall argue that this originality of combination is largely determined by an interpretation of the Parmenides. I should add that I am not concerned with whether Plotinus' interpretation is correct. ~4 In the following pages I shall attempt to show three things: (1) how Plotinus explicitly interprets the Parmenides, (2) to what extent he draws upon the language of the Parmenides, and (3) to what extent Plotinus' system may be understood by its relation to the Parmenides. I. Plotinus' Interpretation of the Parmenides The obvious place to begin an analysis of Plotinus' relation to the Parmenides is Enneads V... (shrink)

The last phase of Greek philosophy has until recently been less intelligently studied than any other, and in our understanding of its development there are still lamentable lacunae. Three errors in particular have in the past prevented a proper appreciation of Plotinus' place in the history of philosophy. The first was the failure to distinguish Neoplatonism from Platonism: this vitiates the work of many early exponents from Ficinus down to Kirchner. The second was the belief that the Neoplatonists, being ‘mystics,’ (...) were necessarily incomprehensible to the plain man or even to the plain philosopher. To have encouraged the persistence of this superstition in the nineteenth century is the least pardonable of Creuzer's many sins. The third was the chronological confusion involved in the ascription to Saint Paul's contemporary of the works of the pretended Dionysius Areopagita, which contain a fully-developed Neoplatonic theology. Though the fraud had been exposed by Scaliger, these writings continued down to the beginning of the nineteenth century to be used as evidence that the ‘Nsoplatonic trinity’ was an inferior imitation of the Christian one. When this false trail was at length abandoned the fashion for orientalizing explanations persisted in another guise: to the earliest historians of Neoplatonism, Simon and Vacherot, the school of Plotinus was ‘the school of Alexandria,’ and its inspiration was mainly Egyptian. Vacherot says of Neoplatonism that it is ‘essentially and radically oriental, having nothing of Greek thought but its language and procedure.’ Few would be found to-day to subscribe to so sweeping a pronouncement; but the existence of an important oriental element in Plotinus' thought is still affirmed by many French and German writers. (shrink)

The paper examines the status of ambiguity in the thought of Plotinus (c. 204/205-270). Even though ambiguity should be regarded as the enemy of the philosopher and as pertaining rather to the rhetorical tradition and not the philosophical one as it was especially established by Plato and Aristotle, one can argue that the particularly Neoplatonist philosophical project permitted an important place to it due to some fundamental inherent aspects that it contained. Most importantly, the ambiguity in the generation of the (...) Intellect from the One is examined in this paper as related to the dialectic between existence and being. In such a perspective, ambiguity is initiated by the fact that being is both one in order to exist and not one in order to be a being. Thus, it can be explained only in dialectic with an ontological reality beyond it, namely an absolute One. This means that, in turn, its generation as Intellect from the latter is necessarily a two-fold movement: Both a distribution of existence by procession and a reverting contemplative act for acquisition of substantial definition. This dialectic does not only concern the highest ontological level of the relation of the Being to the One, but is a permanent ontological vacillation in the system of Plotinus. The paper observes this valorization of ambiguity as an original and dynamic feature of Plotinian ontology that arguably paved the way for Modernity. (shrink)

Sara Rappe has given us a stimulating book full of interesting suggestions concerning philosophers hardly known, in some cases, in the English-speaking world. She raises a question concerning these philosophers that has not previously been discussed on this scale. The question arises from the comparison of two features of Neoplatonism. For the Neoplatonist philosopher, discursive thinking does not yield knowledge. By discursive thought is meant the kind of thinking we normally practice. It has to do with objects external to thought, (...) objects mediated by images derived from sense perception or also from a higher form of thought. From these images discursive thought elaborates further ideas derived by methods of reasoning such as those codified in Aristotelian logic. This kind of thinking is open, however, to the attacks of Skepticism, against which the Neoplatonist argues by appealing to another form of thinking and to the knowledge it constitutes, a form of thinking free of all mediation separating subject and object of thought, where subject and object of thought are identical. This is not discursive thought; dis- cursive thought does not yield knowledge that is immune to skeptical attack and that is obtained by a form of thought beyond discursive thinking. To the extent that language is the expression of discursive thought, this knowledge is not expressed in language. Yet the Neoplatonists of Late Antiquity were plunged in discursivity. In particular, they did philosophy by interpreting texts, the authoritative texts of their tradition, not only Plato’s dialogues, but also the Aristotelian corpus and what they supposed were the more ancient sources of their philosophy, Pythagorean and Orphic texts and the Chaldaean Oracles. How are and to be reconciled? The thesis explored by Rappe in this book is that the Neoplatonists had recourse to nondiscursive textual strategies, images, symbols, myths, ritual formulae, so as to convey nondiscursive thought and knowledge through their reading of discursive texts. (shrink)

The great chain of being is an ontological conception in which all beings, from inanimate things to God, are ranked on a scale according to their perfectness. This hierarchical scheme, though widely known in the history of ideas, was systematically addressed by Arthur Lovejoy in 1936. The great chain of being as formulated by Lovejoy is composed of three main principles, whose roots can be found in Plato and Aristotle’s philosophies. These principles are “the principle of plenitude”, “the principle of (...) gradation” and “the principle of continuity.” The first principle, the principle of plenitude, was pointed out in Plato’s philosophy and the latter two, the principle of gradation and the principle of continuity, were addressed in Aristotle’s philosophy. According to Lovejoy, these three principles were systematically addressed in Plotinus’s philosophy and became an essential part of Neo-Platonic cosmology. Platon explains the abundance of beings with reference to the absolute goodness of the God in his famous book Timaios. Accordingly, God has absolute goodness and this attribution has given rise to an abundance of beings as goodness requires the existence of things. The other two principles, the principle of gradation and the principle of continuity, were forwarded by Aristotle and through his works affected Western thought. While the principle of gradation refers to the ranking of beings in a chain based on the criteria of their perfection, the principle of continuity is the natural consequence of that ranking in that all beings share at least a minimum level of similarity. Plotinus synthesized and systematized those three principles as an expression of ranked beings specific to emanation theory and added three hypostasis -One, Nous, and Soul- in addition to the natural world addressed in Aristotle’s works. Therefore, we see that beings were ranked from inanimate things to God in Plotinus’s works. This concept of hierarchical order of beings, the great chain of being, affected many cultures and philosophical ideas from Classical Islamic philosophy to the Western tradition. In this article, we confine our subject to only Western thought, including Medieval Christian theology and philosophy, the Renaissance period, and the Age of Enlightenment as well as a peculiar implication and interpretation of the great chain of being specific to modern times. In every period we will deal with just one thinker and their ideas to demonstrate the effect of the great chain of being on those thinkers’ philosophies and systems. In this context, we examined how Thomas Aquinas used the great chain of being to justify some theological and philosophical matters and tried to show how he utilized the principle of continuity effectively to explain the relationship between matter and soul. Marcilio Ficino, a Neo-Platonist philosopher of the Renaissance period, also used the great chain of being to explain the hierarchical order of beings and their ontological relationship to the perfect being, which is God, placing them in a rising line according to their closeness to God. On the other hand, when we come to the Age of Enlightenment we see that the great chain of being continues to be apparent in some philosophical works. One example is John Locke’s famous book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Here Locke tries to make sense of the existence of many species of spirits with reference to the great chain of being, especially by using the principle of continuity. This attempt of justification shows us that the great chain of being, as an old philosophical and ontological concept, was still used even in the Enlightenment. Finally, it would be beneficial to address how the chain of being in question was presented and understood in modern times. Unlike the justification of some philosophical or theological subjects, in modern times the hierarchical structure of the great chain of being has been anachronistically read into the theory of evolution with reference to some medieval Muslim philosophers’ works. This approach, however, springs from the figural similarities between the great chain of being and the theory of evolution, although the contents of both theories are completely different. It would be accepted easily that similarities in figure do not necessitate similarities in content. In short, the great chain of being has been very effectively used in the history of philosophy to justify different subjects in different areas such as philosophy and theology. In this article, we address the usages of the chain in question and trace its effects specific to the Western tradition from the ancient period to modern times. (shrink)

Reale points out that the good and the demiurgic intelligence are radically distinct, a conclusion denied by J. Seifert in the last paper of the book. Fourteen characteristics of the idea of the good are listed by T. A. Szlezák. It is obvious, he argues, that the theory of principles of Plato’s unwritten doctrines is not identical with what Republic 6 and 7 say about the good, but there is no real opposition. In the next paper, however, H. W. Ausland, (...) after a sober evaluation of the esoteric teachings, suspects that Reale and Szlezák succumb to a certain romanticism. According to L. Brisson, the good belongs to the sphere of being, even if it is not being ; it is not in every way beyond being. Plotinus was the first to place it above being. M. Erler shows what must be the attitude of the philosopher with regard to the information orally received by him. Although Plato did not want to define the good, he pointed out several of its characteristics. The good, M. Migliori notes, combines in itself beauty, proportion, and unity. The Philebus pursues the doctrine of the Republic and goes into the direction of the unwritten doctrines. The ultimate reality, however, is beyond our understanding. E. Cattanei attempts to explain how for Plato mathematics is a way of access to the knowledge of the good. R. Ferber, on the other hand, stresses that Plato nowhere directly says that the essence of the good is the one. Beauty, symmetry, and truth are not the good itself. According to C. Gill, Gadamer demystified the idea of the good, a view which shows some common ground with the position of analytical philosophy: the good is not a transcendent entity. M. Vegetti, however, upholds the transcendent character of the good as a cause of being. G. A. Press argues that over the past hundred years Plato was considered a dogmatic philosopher, and it was believed that the leading speaker in the dialogues states Plato’s own views, but the situation is far more complex. Plato wants us to acquire a vision rather than propositional knowledge. The idea of the good should not be accorded a special position. C. Rowe tries to demystify some current interpretations, whereas F. Ferrari insists on the causality of the good, and sees Plato’s teaching as the origin of the entire tradition of negative theology. Yet some texts give the impression that the good belongs to the ontological order. C. Porebski reminds us that problems of ethics are the starting point of what Plato says about the good in the Republic. According to F. Trabattoni, Aristotle’s description of Plato’s theory of principles is wrong and his philosophy differs fundamentally from Plato’s. The School of Tübingen is a prisoner of Aristotle’s interpretation. Plato’s reluctance to describe the good in detail may mark the beginning of a skeptic trend in the Academy. The Parmenides tells us, E. Berti says, that one has first to remove all hypotheses before a definition of the Good can be given. E. Moutsopoulos draws attention to some simplistic and wrong qualifications of Plato’s thought as related to idealism and mentions Kant and Hegel’s attitudes with regard to Platonism. J. F. Crosby points to a clear leaving behind of the Socratic “no one knowingly does wrong” in the Alcibiades 216b: as Plato explains in the Protagoras, one may live according to one’s lower appetite or follow the insight of the rational soul. G. Santos makes a strong stand in favor of the identity of goodness and reality. L. P. Gerson examines theories of Platos’s development: there is no evidence of a theory of the form of the good earlier than the Republic. Aristotle, J. Dudley writes, upheld an ethical ideal resembling that of Plato, substituting the contemplation of the unmoved mover for that of the idea of the good. In the last paper J. Seifert argues that Plato identified the demiurge and the good. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus ed. by Lloyd P. Gerson and James WilberdingBrandon ZimmermanGERSON, Lloyd P. and James Wilberding, editors. The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. xxiv + 471 pp. Cloth, $105.00; paper, $34.99The original 1996 Cambridge Companion to Plotinus had the advantage of being one of the few systematic studies of Plotinus available and was able to recruit some of the (...) pioneers in the field to epitomize their research. In recent times, scholarship on Neoplatonism has exploded with new commentaries on and translations of Plotinus's works as well as significant studies of his Platonic predecessors and successors. Given the difficulty of following, let alone mastering, the burgeoning scholarship on late antique philosophy, The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus is a sample of the work of current, generally younger, scholars in the field, rather than a comprehensive study of Plotinus's sources, thought, and influence.Because they address philosophical questions from a comprehensive metaphysical framework, Plotinus's treatises are difficult to group systematically. The same is true of the contributions of this volume, which elude the editors' attempts to classify them into sections. The first three essays are on historical topics. Eric Perl presents examples of how Plotinus creatively reworks material from Plato and Aristotle. Sebastian Gertz explores Plotinus's knowledge of Gnosticism, outlines his criticism of it in II.9, and speculates on whether certain criticisms were meant to apply to Christianity as well. Marije Martijn summarizes the critical reception and development of Plotinus's ideas in later pagan Neoplatonism. Little connection is made between Plotinus and the preceding Platonic and Pythagorean revivals, and nothing more is said about his reception.The order of the remaining essays is generally the inverse of Porphyry's arrangement of the Enneads, insofar as they move from the first principle downward to conclude with humanity's place in the whole. In her interpretation of Plotinus's first principle, Gwenaëlle Aubry presents the power of the One as an intermediary between it and its effects. Unlike Perl, who depicts the One as pure activity, and Gatti, who in the 1996 volume said the One is self-creative freedom, Aubry denies both freedom and activity to the One. Mauro Bonazzi and Christian Tornau both cover Plotinus's account of the divine intellect that is identical with the Forms as a response to the challenge of skepticism. Bonazzi begins with the Middle Platonic debate over Plato's first principles, while Tornau works upward from how our participation in Intellect enables us to judge the truth of sense perceptions. Svelta Slaveva-Griffin tries to show how Number is a metaphysical principle for Plotinus, suggesting that there is participated One posterior to the transcendent One. Michael Griffin rediscovers Plotinus's important place in the late antique development of Aristotle's logic. Griffin summarizes his criticisms of Aristotle's categories as being inconsistent with Aristotle's own logical principles, and then presents Plotinus's own categories (really more like transcendentals) of intelligible being and then of sensibles. Similarly, D. M. Hutchinsin's summary of Plotinus on the composition of sensible bodies highlights [End Page 349] Plotinus's valid probing of the relation between the predicables and the categories, even if Plotinus himself would reduce bodies to heaps or bundles of qualities. Damian Caluori insightfully reconstructs Plotinus's account of body–soul relations and operations as a synthesis of Aristotelian principles, Galen's anatomical discoveries, and his own understanding of the soul as an active intelligible reality. Plotinus is far more concerned about the distinct nature of bodily reality than he is often given credit for. Transcending the narrow historical focus of this volume, Pauliina Remes meditates upon and praises Plotinus's contributions to the philosophical problem of self-knowledge. Riccardo Chiaradonna ably summarizes III.7 "On Eternity and Time," but with no comments on the significance of Plotinus's teachings. James Wilberding questions whether Nature, which is the aspect of the World-Soul at work in giving the cosmos its life and form, should be considered its own level of reality (hypostasis). Jan Opsomer summarizes Plotinus's idiosyncratic teaching that matter, despite ultimately originating from... (shrink)

F.W.J. Schelling, one of the essential thinkers in the development of German Idealism, formed his own thought not only in a critical dialogue with Kant's and Fichte's transcendentalism and Hegel's earlier conception of thinking, but also in an intensive discussion with Plato and Aristotle. Over and above that, Neoplatonism - especially Plotinus, Proclus and the Christian Dionysius the Areopagite - played a decisive role in Schelling's reception and transformation of ancient philosophy.Selecting the manifold aspects which could be reflected on in (...) this field, I want to make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus' concept of self-knowledge Schelling's requirement for a raising-up and transformation of the finite 'I' into the form of the Absolute, whose central features converge with the goal of the Plotinian self - transformation of thought into a timeless self-thinking and its ground.A main part of this paper discusses Schelling's and Plotinus' concept of nature as a dynamic process constituted by an immanent 'creating theoria'. Furthermore we find in Schelling's theory of the Absolute as the 'utterly One' a union of Plotinus' notion of a pure One beyond Being with that of the reflexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understood as an All-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality - because it is in itself the most unifying self-affirmation or self-mediation. What follows is a reflection on the anagogical function of art, especially from the viewpoint of Plotinus' non-Platonic rehabilitation of art as an imitation of nature. The last perspectives focus on Schelling's concept of matter and emanation - as different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus - and on Schelling's theory of an absolute self - willing will in connection with Plotinus' Enneads VI.8, 'On free will and the will of the One' as a causa sui. (shrink)

Plato, the great philosopher of Athens, was born in 427 BCE. In early manhood an admirer of Socrates, he later founded the famous school of philosophy in the grove Academus. Much else recorded of his life is uncertain; that he left Athens for a time after Socrates' execution is probable; that later he went to Cyrene, Egypt, and Sicily is possible; that he was wealthy is likely; that he was critical of 'advanced' democracy is obvious. He lived to be 80 (...) years old. Linguistic tests including those of computer science still try to establish the order of his extant philosophical dialogues, written in splendid prose and revealing Socrates' mind fused with Plato's thought. In Laches, Charmides, and Lysis, Socrates and others discuss separate ethical conceptions. Protagoras, Ion, and Meno discuss whether righteousness can be taught. In Gorgias, Socrates is estranged from his city's thought, and his fate is impending. The Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, and the unforgettable Phaedo relate the trial and death of Socrates and propound the immortality of the soul. In the famous Symposium and Phaedrus, written when Socrates was still alive, we find the origin and meaning of love. Cratylus discusses the nature of language. The great masterpiece in ten books, the Republic, concerns righteousness. Of the six so-called dialectical dialogues Euthydemus deals with philosophy; metaphysical Parmenides is about general concepts and absolute being; Theaetetus reasons about the theory of knowledge. Of its sequels, Sophist deals with not-being; Politicus with good and bad statesmanship and governments; Philebus with what is good. The Timaeus seeks the origin of the visible universe out of abstract geometrical elements. The unfinished Critias treats of lost Atlantis. Unfinished also is Plato's last work of the twelve books of Laws, a critical discussion of principles of law which Plato thought the Greeks might accept. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plato is in twelve volumes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.4 (2004) 489-490 [Access article in PDF] Ian M. Crystal. Self-Intellection and its Epistemological Origins in Ancient Greek Thought. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. Pp. x + 220. Cloth, $79.95. In this excellent re-working of his King's College Ph.D. thesis, Ian Crystal presents an account of the problem of self-intellection in Greek philosophy from Parmenides through Plotinus. The problem, at least as it (...) appears in ancient Greek philosophy, is connected to the way in which a faculty of soul relates to its proper object. For example, the proper object of the visual faculty is light, that of the auditory faculty sound, and it is the difference in kind between these proper objects that requires different faculties of soul in any account of how it is that we come to grasp the two different kinds of sensory data. Reason is itself a faculty of soul that is supposed to correspond to objects of cognition, but since it is possible to grasp, cognitively, the structure of this faculty the question arises: May this faculty function as its own object? The question is famously answered in the affirmative in Aristotle's treatise De anima at 430a2-5 on the grounds that any immaterial object of cognition is identical to thought itself (epi men gar tôn aneu hulês to auto esti to nooun kai to nooumenon).While this may seem like a peculiarly Aristotelian analysis of cognition (relying, as it does, on Aristotle's distinction between matter and form and his rather cryptic claim that the faculties of soul are actually what their proper objects are potentially), Crystal traces the idea both backwards and forwards in time, rooting the problem in Parmenides' general account of faculties of soul and tracing it through Plotinus's sophisticated account of noetic intellect, with visits along the way not only with Aristotle but Plato and the Stoics as well.The book is divided into three parts. In the first ("The Epistemological Origins") Crystal examines the evolution of the philosophical analysis of cognition from Parmenides through Plato. Parmenides, on this account, was the first to offer anything like a philosophical treatment of intellect (Greek nous). In particular, Parmenides distinguishes between a faculty of intellection and an object of that faculty. Plato, consciously working in the Parmenidean tradition, further analyses mind into its faculties and their proper objects but also gives a more detailed analysis of the epistemological subject. Specifically, Plato's treatment of the faculty in the Theaetetus provides an account of the structure of our cognitive faculty and how that structure relates to the metaphysics of the external world. It is here that Crystal recognizes the emergence of a linguistic component in the epistemic subject's cognitive activity (101; cf. Theaetetus189e6-190a6).Part II ("The Emergence of Self-Intellection") consists of a single chapter in which Crystal reads Aristotle's treatment of self-intellection in the De anima as "Aristotle's epistemological response to Plato." Since self-intellection per se really only emerges for the first time in the De anima, this chapter is in some sense the meatiest part of the book. We are given first a careful treatment of Aristotle's account of perception in DA3.2, affection in DA2.5 and De generatione et corruptione1.7, and the central problem of self-consciousness in DA3.2. The argument moves quickly here but Crystal's analysis is precise and clear. Next comes the analysis of the cognitive structure of intellect itself in DA3.4 and Crystal's account of how Aristotle's two aporiai (How can intellect be both a passive affection and something simple and impassive; and Is intellect itself an intelligible object) are responses to Plato's account of cognition at Theaetetus197c1-200d4 (the Aviary passage) on the one hand and to the general lack of an account of intelligible objects in the Theaetetus on the [End Page 489] other. On Crystal's account, Aristotle improves on Plato in the sense... (shrink)

Plotinus’ thesis of the relationship between the One and Nous (Intellect) is central to his thought. In dealing with this relationship, he concentrates far more on what makes the One and Nous alike than on what makes them different. This is because by preference he envisages the One as the ‘causal principle () of everything’, in what might be termed a ‘top‐down’ model of metaphysics in which first cause (the One) leads downwards to second cause (Nous). Plotinus is obliged to (...) present the distinction between the One and Nous as relative, not as absolute, precisely because he wants to show that Nous is firmly grounded in the One. The One differs from Nous to no more than the degree, and in no more than the manner, that are necessary for there to be created a Nous which is as like as possible to the One Itself. (shrink)

Two fundamentally different conceptions of unity can be found in the philosophical tradition. My thesis is that both of them go back to one text, Plato's Parmenides. Plato argues that if the One is posed as unity (the first hypothesis), the One is unthinkable and unnamable. If the One is posed as being (the second hypothesis), we think a plurality. Plotinus explicitly relates his conception of unity to the Parmenides. The One is the origin of the second hypostasis that (...) is marked by the connection of unity and plurality. The One itself is Apollo, a name that is explained as a polla, that is, the ‘not-many’, is indistinct and beyond being. Characteristic of Neoplatonic thought, for which the term ‘henology’ has been introduced, is the absolute transcendence of the One. According to E. Gilson (Being and Some Philosophers) Neoplatonism is incompatible with ‘the mental universe of Christian thinkers’ on account of its thesis that the One transcends being. Yet two henological moments strongly influenced Christian tradition. The first is the idea of ‘negative theology’. It is perceptible in Nicolaus of Cues, who considers ‘Unity’ the most appropriate name for God. The second moment is the spiritual, mystical idea of ‘the union with the One’ (cf. Master Eckhart). More substantial than Gilson's criticism is the position of Levinas who reproaches classical philosophy with the elimination of plurality. The question is whether unity can be conceived in such a way that the plurality of things is saved. The second conception of unity was developed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (IV, 2). In a critical reaction to the second hypothesis of the Parmenides he argues that ‘being’ and ‘one’ are identical in reality, but differ conceptually. ‘One’ expresses the undividedness (indivisio) of that which is. What deserves attention is that unity does not deny plurality, but division. Aristotle's exposition became the startingpoint of the 13th century doctrine of the transcendentia. Characteristic of this conception of the one is the transcendentality : the one is a property belonging to every being. The importance of this view is twofold. First, the metaphysical one is clearly distinguished from the mathematical one, that belongs to the category of quantity. Second, from the transcendentality follows that ‘one’ has an analogous character. There is no uniformity in unity. The transcendental one determines being in itself. Is not another type of unity required, that is relational in nature ? Some Dutch philosophers have recently developed a new conception of unity, namely, ‘unity as intersubjectivity’. This conception has a theological root : Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The modern view of unity as an intersubjective unity of a plurality can be understood as a completion of the transcendental conception of the one. The transcendent conception of the One and the transcendental conception have common traits. Thinking of the one is always a transcending movement. Moreover, it implies the task of a union, for it deals with a unity that is not yet, but must be. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Parmenides and Plato’s Late Philosophy by Robert G. TurnbullScott CarsonRobert G. Turnbull. The Parmenides and Plato’s Late Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 209. Cloth, $50.00.Plato’s Parmenides presents a number of puzzles for the interpreter. Some of these are the result of the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato’s late philosophy; due ultimately to Plotinus and still widely influential, it fails to give a satisfactory (...) account of such elements of Plato’s metaphysics as the mathematicals, forms as “universals,” and an “acquaintance” explanation of our awareness of sensibles and forms. Turnbull strikes a decisive blow against the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenides. More importantly, he makes considerable progress, where others have achieved only limited success, in placing the Parmenides into the wider context of Plato’s later thought.The present work is primarily a translation of and commentary upon the Parmenides. The translation is not intended to be a literary work but rather as an aid to the reader of the commentary, and translation and commentary move forward together, section by section, as in Cornford’s edition. The translation is fairly literal, and some passages are omitted; in the notorious “exercise” of Part II the responses of Aristoteles are regularly elided wherever possible. In some places Turnbull has sacrificed English style in favor of interpretation-neutral renderings: “no many” for Zeno’s ou polla einai at 128b2, for example. While this can sometimes make the translation difficult to read in isolation, it is very useful for the knowledgeable but Greekless reader who can do without such interpretive intrusions as, for example, rendering to hen as “Unity” (Allen). The four final chapters serve to put the dialogue into its place in Plato’s later philosophy. An appendix discusses Cornford, Allen, Sayre, Miller, and Meinwald, as well as the standard lines of the Neoplatonic interpretation.The strength of Turnbull’s interpretation is its attention to literary as well as philosophical detail. The significance of the dramatic coherence among many passages from dialogues generally thought to be late, particularly the Timaeus, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Philebus, has attracted the attention of other commentators, but it has not always been so convincingly connected to the related philosophical issues. With the Theaetetus and Sophist the Parmenides has been called “critical” in the sense that some commentators see in these dialogues a reassessment on Plato’s part of the ontology of forms as described in the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic. Turnbull, by contrast, puts the Parmenides squarely in line with the Republic and Plato’s middle period generally by connecting the dramatic setting of the two dialogues through the characters of Glaucon and Adeimantus; this, in turn, connects with the Timaeus, which is set on the day following the discussion of the Republic. Similar dramatic ties relate the Theaetetus to the Sophist, and the presence of the Eleatic stranger in the latter and mention of Parmenides in the former complete the [End Page 355] artistic connections among these late dialogues and Plato’s middle period. The Philebus is connected with these dialogues because of its discussion of the four factors of the universe: Unlimited, Limit, the Mixture of Unlimited and Limit, and the Cause of the Mixture, factors that are also explored in Part II of the Parmenides.The philosophical connections among the dialogues have their foundation in Plato’s attempt to give an account of the rational structure of the world system (the World Animal of the Timaeus) that underscores the importance of the ultimate sources of intelligibility in the kosmos. The Parmenides opens with a discussion of Zeno’s largely destructive arguments against plurality; Plato then employs Zeno’s own “method of suppositions” to present a constructive thesis to the effect that “from the fundamental forms, through the generation of the intelligible numbers, thence to their being mixed with the Unlimited (apeiron), there is and can be nothing that is that fails to be a source of intelligibility or the intelligible product of such sources” (187). The difficult deductions of the second half of the Parmenides thus exhibit two aspects: a negative, or Parmenidean, version, and a positive, or Platonic version. The Parmenidean... (shrink)

Plotinus (204-70) is the founder of Neoplatonism and its most significant thinker. He shaped late antique philosophy and significantly influenced the entire metaphysical tradition of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and German Idealism. In this volume, Jens Halfwassen presents Plotinus' life and work, as well as the most important aspects of his historical influence. Issues of key importance for the Neoplatonists-such as the interaction between Being and Thought, the ascent of the soul, and the interpretation of Plato's theory of principles-are explained (...) in detail in the course of outlining the Neoplatonic metaphysical system. The introduction outlines Halfwassen's significant contribution to the study of Plotinus, paying particular attention to the differences between the current German and Anglophone approaches to the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plotinus and the Augustine on the Mid-Rank of the Soul: Navigating Two Worlds by Joseph TorchiaThomas ClemmonsTORCHIA, Joseph. Plotinus and the Augustine on the Mid-Rank of the Soul: Navigating Two Worlds. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2023. vii + 237 pp. Cloth, $105.00For nearly four decades, Joseph Torchia, O.P., has written extensively on Augustine and Plotinus. He has produced numerous scholarly articles on both Augustine and Plotinus, as well (...) as monographs on Augustine’s understanding of creatio ex nihilo and tolma in Plotinus. This volume on the mid-rank of the soul in Plotinus and Augustine is the fruit of this life-long study.The major premise of Torchia’s study is the profound relation, even continuity, between Hellenistic philosophy, especially Neoplatonism, and early Christian thought. The Hellenistic view of an ordered universe, which extends from the material and physical to the spiritual and noetic, [End Page 730] places the human in a middle place. This view is exposited most clearly by Plotinus and shared, though with qualifications, by early Christians, especially St. Augustine. Torchia asserts that we are able to see this shared legacy and continuity between philosophers such as Plotinus and Augustine in “their respective anthropological and psychological theories.”The book is divided into halves; the first on Plotinus and the second on Augustine. Torchia’s discussion of Plotinus’s philosophy narrows and deepens through five chapters, from a general outline of the Alexandrian’s system to a heightened focus on the journey of the soul, as imaged through the figure of Odysseus. Torchia rightly notes the inconsistent depiction of the descent of soul(s), especially of individual souls as both in a sense “fallen” and “sent.” This tension is in part resolved through Plotinus’s emphasis on the middle place of the soul and the harmony of all the parts within the unity of the whole.The chapters on Plotinus are excellent. Torchia shows how Plotinus integrates concepts from Aristotle, especially his De anima, and qualifies the spiritualized philosophy of Plato. What we get, then, is Plotinus as a highly original philosopher, whose insights deserve closer examination. For example, Torchia glosses the Plotinian dictum, “we are soul,” to examine what is meant by “we” and “soul.” Far from leading to a dismissive view of the body and individuality (as is often stated about Plotinus), Torchia emphasizes that the middle state of the soul is the condition of soul. The lower soul, or the composite (per Torchia), cannot be simply lopped off. To do so, the unity of soul would be destroyed. Torchia thus presents a Plotinus profoundly concerned with humanity in its entirety—our affections, body, thoughts, and individuality. This is why Plotinus and Torchia land on the image of Odysseus as the journeyman to depict human existence.In the final five chapters, the book turns exclusively to Augustine. Torchia outlines the profound difference between Augustine and Plotinus as regards the ontological distinction between God as creator and the human. Because of this distinction, Torchia observes that the mid-rank of the soul takes on a more profound “existential significance.” This existential significance is witnessed in Augustine’s emphasis on free will and the “weight of love,” which, according to Torchia, shows affinities with Plotinus but also departs from the determinism and necessity of the descent of soul(s) in the Alexandrian’s system.The final chapter of the book examines Augustine’s understanding of the two cities, of God and of man. Torchia asserts that the middle-rank of the soul provides the philosophical undercurrent to Augustine’s conception of the City of God. The City of God is not exclusively a spiritual reality. Rather, much as with the middle-rank of the soul, the City of God is both “here” and “there.” The permixta of the Church as an intermediate state is “analogous to the mid-rank status of the rational soul.” For Augustine, both the individual and the Church journey, like Plotinus’s Odysseus, on the stormy seas. [End Page 731]In this book, Torchia has provided a thorough and insightful reading of Plotinus. He highlights the inherent rational optimism of Plotinus as well as the goodness... (shrink)

The present article examines the theology of John Zizioulas with a view to understanding its coherence and viability for ecclesiology. Instead of treating his trinitarian theology, or his historical claims, I focus upon the basic themes of his personalistic ontology, especially the relationship between the ‘hypostasis’ and its ‘nature.’ I argue that Zizioulas's central concept of freedom rests upon an equivocation: he affirms both that freedom and being are identical, and that they are mutually exclusive. In conversation with the (...) philosophy of Levinas, I further argue that Zizioulas's proposal, as an ontology of communion, falls prey to the same reduction of being to thought that forms the central tenet of Western conceptions of subjectivity. In conclusion, I argue that both of these problems trade on a basic inability to account for grace as the fundamental reality of communion. Throughout my basic concern is to inquire into just what function the category of ‘being’ has in Zizioulas's theology, and to point out its surprising obscurity. (shrink)

RECENT studies on the philosophy of Plotinus have drawn attention to the complex problems interpreters face when discussing the number of hypostases, or what the term means in the case of the One, the Nous, and the Soul. The full exploration of these broad topics, especially in the light of Plotinus’ theory of "production" and his critique of the alternative views other Neoplatonists held, falls outside the scope of this paper. Since Plotinus’ answer to the question "What criteria must X (...) satisfy to qualify as a hypostasis?" is given in the relevant texts, and as such may be treated as a separate issue, the present paper assumes familiarity with the related doctrines in order to consider in some detail certain logical aspects of the One qua hypostasis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of PhilosophyScott AustinArnold Hermann. To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of Philosophy. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004. Pp. xxx + 374. Cloth, $32.00.Mr. Arnold Hermann could presumably have used his connection with Parmenides Press to publish anything he wanted. Instead, he has put out a sober, bibliographically well aware, thesis about the origin, nature, and motivations (...) of Parmenides' thought, one evolved in dialogue with scholars such as Cordero, McKirahan, and Curd. The resulting monograph, to be the first of three on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides, is a legitimate contribution to the field, to be taken very seriously as part of any scholarly bibliography. Best of all, in this reviewer's opinion, is the exploration of Parmenides' legal language and metaphors as they might affect the type of abstract object which can count as subject for the esti, the differences between or among routes and rules of inquiry, the necessity for a Doxa-section, the relationships with Xenophanes and Plato. Less successful, I think, is the attempt to put together a coherent picture out of the hazy evidence on Pythagoras and to distinguish levels of probability within that evidence. Nor, in spite of his praise for Mourelatos's book ("... truly one of the most indispensable works on the Eleatic," 214), does Hermann seem aware (see 189) that the possibility of a pluralistic Eleatic ontology was also present in that book, before it was followed by Curd's book.Hermann's thesis is that Parmenidean philosophy was an answer both to Xenophanes' challenge, to his indication of the limits of our human inquiry—our difference from the gods—and the problem of irrationals in Pythagoreanism. By setting out the rational limits which any purely theoretical inquiry must have, Parmenides intended to show that, in pursuing theory, we can, indeed, think like the gods. (Here excellent use is made of work by Mourelatos and Long.) But by distinguishing theoretical inquiry from empirical inquiry, Parmenides showed the limits of Pythagoreanism, which had been unable to make that distinction. (Units are theoretical entities, but points are empirical, so there are in reality no Pythagorean unit-points; rational numbers are theoretical while irrationals are empirical, and so on.) (Here there are affinities with the recent Popper book.) That is, the Doxa-section, according to Hermann, shows tragically that we do not always think like the gods, especially when we think empirically. Our contemporary science is continuing the inquiry that Parmenides began, but the original Parmenidean philosophy was a methodology about how to inquire into abstract objects, not necessarily a metaphysics, a theory about what those abstract objects are. Here Hermann differs from the standard portrait of Parmenides as theorist of an intelligible world; he thinks that it is Plato who is more responsible than Parmenides for theorizing about which objects correspond to the methodology. (Here he follows Mourelatos and Curd in viewing fragment 2 as setting up types of inquiry rather than types of entity.)One has no quarrel with the claim that Parmenides' originality is at least partly methodological. Yet a methodology whose strictures are this strong was thought, by Plato at least, to require absolute monism; is it an accident that I cannot have a pluralistic ontology without having non-identities between members of pairs of objects, non-identity being an example of saying what is not (fragment 8, lines 36–38)? Does not this particular methodology necessitate a very particular metaphysics? [End Page 481]And, if we do think like the gods, at least at times, are we not then thinking about what is ultimately real, i.e., about a certain type of object? If rules can be given which secure a kind of thought which is exempt from Xenophanean scepticism, do not these rules determine sorts of entities? And, if Pythagoreanism errs in confusing theoretical with empirical entities, must not we ourselves possess the perspective of a god or goddess in order to avoid the confusion?These are some of the questions provoked by this fresh book, which, untrammelled by much scholarly narrowness, is yet capable of contributing much to scholarly... (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 65 - 94 In his highly influential 1928 article ‘The _Parmenides_ of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic “One”,’ E.R. Dodds argued, _inter alia_, that among the so-called Neoplatonists Plotinus was the first to interpret Plato’s _Parmenides_ in terms of the distinctive three ‘hypostases’, One, Intellect, and Soul. Dodds argued that this interpretation was embraced and extensively developed by Proclus, among others. In this paper, I argue that although Plotinus took _Parmenides_ to (...) contain a sort of outline of the true metaphysical principles, he understood the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of the dialogue in a way importantly different from the way that Proclus understood it. The characterization of this One, especially its identity with the Idea of the Good of _Republic_, has significant ramification for Plotinus’ philosophy that set it apart from Proclus’ philosophy in ways hitherto infrequently noted. The widely accepted reasons for rejecting Proclus’ interpretation do not apply to the interpretation of Plotinus. The two different interpretations help explain why Proclus’ notorious proliferation of entities in the intelligible realm is not found in Plotinus. (shrink)

As is well known, Plotinus's philosophy served as the starting point for the development of all Neoplatonism. It created the basic schema that set the framework for the thought of all later representatives of this tendency from Porphyry to Damascius. The doctrine of the transcendence of the One, of the three original hypostases, the application of the categories of Plato's Parmenides in the construction of ontology—all this and much else besides became the property of the Neoplatonic schools, which were scattered (...) throughout the Roman empire, and was incorporated partly into the Christian theology, which was then in the process of formation. Naturally, as a result of its wide dissemination and the change in its cultural and social environment, Plotinus's legacy appeared in a different light and took on new forms; through these changes in form we can try to understand the difference in content. For this purpose Plotinus's treatise on the virtues is of special interest. The point is that Porphyry relies precisely on this treatise and at times even literally borrows large fragments from it in setting out the doctrine concerning the virtues in the thirty-second maxim . The same treatise serves as a basis for Marinus in his biography of Proclus. The aim of my lecture is to analyze the content of the treatise and its interpretations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 121-122 [Access article in PDF] Harold Tarrant. Plato's First Interpreters. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 263. Cloth, $55.00. This is Tarrant's third book on the ancient Platonist tradition, following his Scepticism or Platonism? (1985) and Thrasyllan Platonism (1993). In those earlier volumes his focus was on the first centuries bc and ad. Here his scope is much (...) wider. Stating that "Platonic interpretation is today at a crossroads," he has written a book that explores "ancient attempts to wrestle with this corpus," with the ultimate objective "to encourage a fresh, almost primitive reading of Plato himself" (vii).He begins engagingly by confronting the ancients with questions any modern reader of Plato must ask: What kind of text is this? Are there doctrines here? Where do I look for Plato's doctrines? The second part of his book is a historical survey, taking us from Plato, the early Academy and Aristotle, through the Hellenistic and early Roman Imperial period, and concluding with the principal Neoplatonist interpreters. In the third and longest part, he focuses on the interpretation of specific dialogues, giving most space to the Gorgias and Theaetetus, but also dealing in particular detail with the Meno, Parmenides, and Philebus. Something is said about every dialogue, but Tarrant writes only briefly about such major works as the Republic and Timaeus. He explains his selectivity (not very convincingly) as due to his wish to "discuss issues of meta-interpretation, with emphasis on the period before Plotinus" (198).Taking his book as a whole, one realizes that few strands of modern interpretation were not prefigured to quite a large extent in antiquity. The two most obvious exceptions are the chronological and developmental approach (Early, Middle, and Late), at present under strong attack from some quarters, and the theological, numerological, and allegorical readings practiced by Neoplatonists. Plato's ancient interpreters were doctrinal unitarians, but they implicitly anticipated our tendency to distinguish "Socratic dialogues," which some of them called "gymnastic" and "inquisitive," from such "canonical" works as the Phaedo,Republic, Symposium, and Timaeus, to which they applied the labels "dogmatic" and "expository." And they recognized that both types of characteristics could be found in the same dialogue, as in the Meno and Theaetetus. Plato himself, they proposed, spoke primarily through the voices of Socrates, Timaeus, and the Eleatic and Athenian strangers; but other characters, such as Pausanias in the Symposium, or Protagoras in the dialogue of that name, utter thoughts with some philosophical value. In explaining difficult passages of one dialogue, they would typically refer to passages from other parts of the corpus. An especially intriguing instance is the strategy of the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus, who reads the Meno into the dialogue on which he is officially commenting.Ancient scholars, just like ourselves, asked questions about the unifying themes of complex dialogues. Hence the sub-titles given to certain works: "On the soul" for the Phaedo, and "On justice" for the Republic, etc. For Olympiodorus (whose commentary on the Gorgias Tarrant has recently co-edited [Leiden, 1998]), earlier interpreters have seriously erred by giving too limited an account of that dialogue's scope. It is not, he says, simply about rhetoric, nor about justice and injustice; nor is its theme the divine demiurge (as some Neoplatonists had strangely proposed, on the basis of the concluding myth). Rather, the subject of the Gorgias is "the ethical principles that lead to constitutional well-being" (125). [End Page 121] However, Olympiodorus's eminently "sensible" reading (as Tarrant calls it) is deeply embedded in the Neoplatonic contrast between the "purificatory virtues" of the Phaedo and the "constitutional virtues" of Republic4.Strong or weak scepticism, esotericism, unwritten doctrines, spurious versus genuine, a canon of central dialogues, dramatic considerations, and the philosophical importance or non-importance of the dialogues' prologues—all of these are interpretive approaches that Tarrant surveys in this immensely learned book, and all of them continue to resonate for us. Modern scholars, who emphasize the literary and philosophical unity of each dialogue, are walking... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plotinus by Lloyd P. GersonGary M. Gurtler S.J.Lloyd P. Gerson. Plotinus. The Arguments of the Philosophers. London: Routledge, 1994. Pp. xviii + 338. Cloth, $59.95.This challenging account of Plotinus’ philosophy is appropriately published in a series called The Arguments of the Philosophers. Professor Gerson confronts Plotinus’ position on some major issues in the history of philosophy with an array of counterarguments, ancient, medieval, and modern. More often than (...) not, Plotinus’ position is presented cogently and sympathetically, refuting the notion that Plotinus is merely a philosophical lightweight. The book is rigorous, demanding more than passing knowledge of the history of philosophy and its current trends, especially the Anglo-American. It will thus serve to establish Plotinus as a reputable philosopher among analytic philosophers. Students of Plotinus will find it controversial. Both results will enhance the scholarly work on Plotinus that has flourished recently, indicated in Gerson’s extensive bibliography, although less apparently utilized in establishing his account of Plotinus’ philosophy.The author himself admits that the book is difficult and he indicates where he thinks Plotinus is to blame (225). It thus falls to the reviewer to indicate difficulties traceable to the author. The symptoms are easily seen in the portrait of Plotinus that emerges from these pages. It is a strange one indeed: a Plotinus who is scholastic in organization, Thomist in holding the real distinction and post-Cartesian in epistemology. The Platonic character of Plotinus’ Neoplatonism is not merely absent, but positively excluded by Gerson’s insistence on fitting Plotinus to the Procrustean bed of modern logic, eliminating experience as of dubious philosophical worth. This is most noticeable in his treatment of mysticism, but occurs also when he considers the social or intersubjective dimension of human life and, more crucially, the methodological starting point of Plotinus’ philosophy. Gerson’s method proceeds, in scholastic fashion, from the First Principle to those ontological and logical principles that are deduced from it, coming finally to consider the soul and its capacities. This inversion of Plotinus’ [End Page 128] position entails constant difficulties as Gerson drives his logical engine to make deductions where none are necessary.Attention to Plotinus’ Platonism entails two interlocking assumptions excluded in the above portrait. One concerns the nature and limits of language itself. Language and discursive thought in general are essentially images of what in some way is and they are thus subordinate to the more direct contact of experience, whether sensible or intelligible. The other concerns the nature of experience itself as the starting point of Plotinus’ reflection, moving from the immediate awareness of the empirical self (Gerson’s “endowed self”) to those conditions that make such awareness possible in the dependence both of the soul and the sensible world on the intelligible world, and ultimately on the One. That Plotinus begins with the human situation can be seen in V 3[49] 6,1–11, where he contrasts precisely the necessity of Intellect with the persuasion possible for the soul. He recognizes that whatever the allure of logical thought it is not sufficient to convince the soul. It does not take into account the status of language as an image and the experience of the soul as essentially embodied. It is characteristic of post-Cartesian philosophy, on the contrary, to read necessity into the soul and to assume that propositional thought is identical with the real and brings certitude with it. This denies the analogous character that human knowledge has for someone like Plotinus. Similar problems arise about the nature of intellect.Within the logical parameters that Gerson has set for his interpretation, the influence of Plotinus on and the claims made about him with regard to religion (203–12) and mysticism (218–24) fall by the way. This may please those who would otherwise ignore Plotinus’ philosophy, but it will not persuade people on either side of the religious divide. The issue, however, is less about a specific kind of experience than about any kind of experience that cannot be reduced to logical categories. Ultimately, the claim being made is that what cannot be captured in logical categories is no more than an empty surd. Gerson, in fact, reverses... (shrink)

In book VI of his Parmenides commentary, Proclus surveys the previous Neoplatonic interpretations of the “hypotheses” of Plato’s Parmenides, starting with Amelius, a disciple of Plotinus. This paper analyses Amelius’ exegesis of the hypotheses. After presenting the extant evidence about his Parmenides commentary, I explore three puzzling aspects of his interpretation: 1) unlike most Neoplatonists, Amelius distinguished eight hypotheses instead of nine. I argue that he considered the last section (Prm. 165e2-166c2) to be devoid of any positive content and merged (...) it with the previous one – contrary to the modern advocates of an eight-fold divisio textus. 2) Amelius assumed that each hypothesis deals with one layer of reality, but the precise meaning of some identifications is elusive: what are the three kinds of matter matched to hypotheses 5-7? I show that these three material layers probably correspond to three entities whose existence is posited on the basis of the Timaeus: the chōra/prime matter, the level of the element-traces, and the ordered universe. 3) In at least one point, Amelius’ exegesis disrupts the descending hierarchical ordering of the subject-matters of the hypotheses (i.e. from the highest to the lowest-ranked entity), which was an undisputed governing principle of the Neoplatonic interpretations. This irregularity depends, as I argue, on a further interpretative rule: the negative quality of a hypothesis (except for the first one) is taken to indicate some sort of debasement of the corresponding entity. Since, in the second part of the Parmenides, the negative hypotheses alternate with the positive ones, this further principle clashed with the linear downward arrangement implied by the hierarchical principle. In the conclusion of the paper, I sketch how the insights gained by this analysis can shed some light on the subsequent development of the ancient Parmenides exegesis. (shrink)

Unconsciousness and quasiconsciousness in Plotinus -- The significance of practical ethics for Plotinus -- Action and contemplation in Plotinus -- Eternity and time -- Soul and time in Plotinus -- Reason and experience in Plotinus -- Plotinus on fate and free will -- Potentiality and the problem of plurality in the intelligible world -- Dunamis in Plotinus and Porphyry -- Plotinus and the myth of love -- The object of perception in Plotinus -- Plotinus on ideas between Plato and Aristotle (...) -- The Neoplatonic Socrates -- Porphyrian studies since 1913 -- Porphyry: scope for a reassessment -- A Porphyrian treatise against Aristotle? -- Did Porphyry reject the transmigration of human souls into animals -- Porphyry and pagan religious practice -- Religion, magic and theurgy in Porphyry -- Porphyry and the Platonic theology -- More Neoplatonic ethics -- Hypostasis and hyparxis in Porphyry -- Philosophical objections to Christianity on the eve of the Great Persecution -- Iamblichus' views on the relationship of philosophy to religion in De Mysteriis -- Further thoughts on Iamblichus as the first philosopher of religion. (shrink)

This paper aims to suggest a new approach to Plato’s theory of being in Republic V and Sophist based on the notion of difference and the being of a copy. To understand Plato’s ontology in these two dialogues we are going to suggest a theory we call Pollachos Esti; a name we took from Aristotle’s pollachos legetai both to remind the similarities of the two structures and to reach a consistent view of Plato’s ontology. Based on this theory, when Plato (...) says that something both is and is not, he is applying difference on being which is interpreted here as saying, borrowing Aristotle’s terminology, 'is is (esti) in different senses'. I hope this paper can show how Pollachos Esti can bring forth not only a new approach to Plato’s ontology in Sophist and Republic but also a different approach to being in general. -/- Keywords Plato; being; difference; image; pollachos esti; pollachos legetai 1. Being, Not-Being and Difference The three dialogues where the notion of "difference" attaches to the notion of being, namely Parmenides II, Sophist and Timaeus,and specifically the first two we try to discuss here. In these dialogues, Plato is going to achieve a new and revolutionary understanding of being which is not anymore based on the notion of "same" as it was before in Greek ontology. It was his discovery, I think, that the notion of being in the Greek ontology is attached to the notion of the "same" and it is because of this attachment that there have always been many problems understanding being especially after Parmenides. That being has always been relying on the "same" can be found out from the way most of the Presocratics understood it. It was based on such a relationship between being and "same" that a later Ionian, Heraclitus of Ephesus, rejected Being by rejecting its sameness: unable to be the same, being cannot be being anymore but becoming. Heraclitus’ criticism of his predecessors’ understanding of being was due to his discovery that what they call being is not the same but different in every moment. The relation of being and sameness reaches to its highest point in Parmenides. What Plato does in using the "difference" is nothing but the establishment of a creative relation between being and "difference". In this new relation, although he is in agreement with Heraclitus that being is not the same but different, he does not do it by use of becoming. He disagrees, on the other hand, with Parmenides that such a relation between being and difference leads to not being. At Parmenides 142b5-6 it is said that if One is, it is not possible for it to be without partaking (μετέχειν) of being (οὐσίας), which leads to the distinction of being and one: -/- So there would be also the being of the one (ἡ οὐσία του̑ ἑνὸς) which is not the same (ταὐτὸν) as the one. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be its being, nor the one would partake of it. (142b7-c1) -/- The fact that what is (ἔστι) signifies (σημαῖνον) is other (ἀλλο) than what One signifies (c4-5), is being taken as a reason for their distinction. The conclusion is that when we say 'one is', we speak of two different things, one partaking of the other (c5-7). Having repeated these arguments of the otherness of being and one at 143a-b, Parmenides says that the cause of this otherness can be neither Being nor One but "difference": -/- So if being is something different (ἕτερον) and one something different (ἕτερον), it is not by being one that the one is different from being nor by its being being that being is other than one, but they are different from each other (ἕτερα ἀλλήλων) by difference (τῷ ἑτερῳ) and otherness (ἄλλῳ). (143b3-6) -/- The fifth hypothesis, 'one is not' (160b5ff.) is also linked with the notion of difference. When we say about two things, largeness and smallness, that they are not, it is clear that we are talking about not being of different (ἕτερον) things (160c2-4). When it is said that something is not, besides the fact that there must be knowledge of that thing, we can say that it entails also its difference: 'difference in kind pertains to it in addition to knowledge' (160d8). Parmenides explains the reason as such: -/- For someone doesn’t speak of the difference in kind of the others when he says that the one is different from the others, but of that thing’s own difference in kind. (160e1-2) -/- Although the theory of being as "difference" is not fulfilled yet, an exact look at what occurs in Sophist can make us sure that this was the launching step for "difference" to get its deserved role in Plato’s ontology. The notion of the "difference" is not yet well-functioned in Parmenides because we can see that being is still attached to the same: -/- For that which is the same is being (ὄν γὰρ ἐστι τὸ ταὐτόν) (162d2-3). -/- The notion of difference in Sophist is the key element based on which a new understanding of being is presented and the problem of not being is somehow resolved. The friends of Forms, the Stranger says, are those who distinguish between being and becoming (248a7-8) and believe that we deal with the latter with our body and through perception while with the former, the real being (ὄντως οὐσίαν) with our soul and through reasoning (a10-11). Being is then bound with the "same" by adding: -/- You say that being always stays the same and in the same state (ἣν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἔχειν) but becoming varies from one time to another (δὲ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως). (248a12-13) -/- That the theory of the relation of being and capacity (247d8f., 248c4-5) matches more with becoming than with being (248c7-9) must be rejected because being is also the subject of knowledge which is kind of doing something (248d-e). It does, however, confirm that 'both that which changes and also change have to be admitted as existing things (ὄντα) (249b2-3). I believe that this is what Socrates would incline to do at Theaetetus 180e-181a, that is, putting a fight between two parties of Parmenidean being and Heraclitean becoming and then escaping. The solution is that becoming is itself a kind of being and we ought to accept what changes as being. This is what must be done by a philosopher, namely, to refuse both the claim that 'everything is at rest' and that 'being changes in every way' and beg, like a child, for both and say being (τὸὄν) is both the unchanging and that which changes (249c10-d4). This kind of begging for both is obviously under the attack of contradiction (249e-250b). For both and each of rest and change similarly are (250a11-12) but it cannot be said either that both of them change or both of them rest, being must be considered as a third thing both of the rest and change associate with (250b7-10). The conclusion is that 'being is not both change and rest but different (ἕτερον) from them instead' (c3-4). The notion of difference helps Plato to take being departed from both rest and change because it was their sophisticated relation with being that made the opposition of being and becoming. Plato is now trying to separate being from rest and, thus, from "same" by "difference". Such a crucial change is great enough to need a 'fearless' decision (256d5-6). The possibility of being of not being is resulted (d11-12) comes as the answer to the question 'so it’s clear that change is not being and also is being (ἡ κίνησις ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν) since it partakes in being?' (d8-9). It is then by the notion of difference that becoming is considered as that which both is and is not. This coincidence of being and not being about change is apparently similar to Socrates’ paradoxical statement at Republic 477a about what both is and is not. -/- Introduction The Republic 476-477 has always been a matter of controversy mainly about two interwoven points. The first problem is the meaning of being here; that whether what he has in mind is a veridical, existential or propositional sense of being. The second problem is his distinction between the objects of knowledge and opinion which seems to lead, some believe, to the Two Worlds (TW) theory. The crucial point in Republic is that what is considered between knowledge (ἐπιστήμης) and ignorance (α͗γνοιας), namely opinion, must have a different object that leads Socrates to draw the distinction of knowledge and opinion between their objects. The problem of understanding being in the fifth book of the Republic is that when it is said that the Form of F is F but a particular participating in F, both is and is not F, it sounds too bizarre and unacceptable. It cannot be imaginable how a thing can be existent and non-existent at the same time. At the first sight, the only solution seems to be the degrees of existence which is called by Annas (1981, 197) a 'childish fallacy' and a 'silly argument'. Kirwan (1974, 118) thinks that Republic V does not attribute 'any doctrine about existence' to Plato and Kahn (1966, 250) claims that the most fundamental value of einai when used alone (without predicate) is not "to exist" but "to be so", "to be the case" or "to be true". The problems of understanding being in Republic and Sophist besides the difficulties of the existential reading led scholars to the other senses of being, mostly related to the well-known Aristotelian distinctions between different senses of being. In the predicative reading, Annas, for example, refers this difference to the qualified and unqualified application. Whereas the Form of F is unqualifiedly F, a particular instance of F can be F only qualifiedly (1981, 221). Vlastos’ well-known substitution of 'degrees of reality' for 'degrees of being/existence' must be categorized as a predicative reading. Kahn thinks that the basic sense of being for Plato is 'something like propositional structure, involving both predication and truth claims, together with existence for the subject of predication' (2013, 96). Believing that the complete-incomplete distinction terminology is misleading about Plato, he thinks that semantic functions are only second-order uses of the verb and it is the predicative or incomplete function which is fundamental. Suggesting a veridical reading, Fine (2003, 70 ff) thinks that while both existential and predicative readings separate the objects of knowledge and belief, it is only her reading which does not force such separation of the objects and thus does not imply TW. Stokes (1998, 266) thinks that though Fine is right saying that Plato does not endorse TW in book V, she is wrong in rejecting existential in favor of the veridical reading. The reception of existential reading can be seen more obviously in Calvert who thinks, in agreement with Runciman, that 'it would be safer to say that Plato’s gradational ontology is probably not entirely free from degrees of existence' (1970, 46). At Sophist 254d-e Plato singles out five most important kinds (or Forms!?) in which the same (ταὐτὸν) and difference (θάτερον) are regarded besides being, rest and change. They are, therefore, neither the same nor the difference but share in both (b3). Being (τὸ ὄν) cannot be the same also because if they 'do not signify distinct things' both change and rest will have the same label when we say they are (255b11-c1). We have then four distinct kinds, being, change, rest and same, none of them is the other. The case of difference is more complicated. When the stranger wants to assess the relation of being and difference, he can say simply neither that they are distinct nor that they are not. He has to make an important distinction inside being to get able to draw the relation of being and difference: -/- But I think you'll admit that some of the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) are said (λέγεσθαι) by themselves (αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτά) but some [are said] always referring to (πρὸς) other things (ἄλλα) (255b12-13) -/- The difference is always said referring to other things (τὸδέγ’ ἕτερον ἀεὶ πρὸς ἕτερον) (255d1). It pervades all kinds because each of them should be different from the others and is so due to the difference and not its own nature (253e3f.) After asserting that change is different from being and therefore both is and is not (256d), the difference is described as what makes all the other kinds not be, by making each different from being. Given that all of them are by being, this association of being and difference is the cause of their being and not-being at the same time, the issue that its version at RepublicV made all those controversies we discussed above: -/- So in the case of change and all the kinds, not being necessarily is (Ἔστιν ἄρα ἐξ ἀναγκης τὸ μὴ ὄν). Τhat’s because as applied to all of them, the nature of the difference (ἡ θατέρον φύσις) makes each of them not be by making it different from being. And we’re going to be right if we say that all of them are not in the same way. And conversely [we’re also going to be right if we say] that they are because they partake in being. (Sophist 256d11-e3) -/- Plato’s new construction of five distinct kinds and the role he gives to thedifference among them is aimed to resolve the old problem of understanding being which has always been annoying from the time of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Both the ontological status of becoming and that of not being were, in Plato’s mind, based on the absolute domination of the notion of the Same over being. Now, not only becoming is understandable as being but also not being which is not the contrary of being anymore but only different (ἕτερον) (257b3-4). Though I agree partly with Frede that the account of not being which is needed for false statements is more complicated than just saying, as Cropsey (1995, 101) says, that Plato is substituting 'X is not Y' with 'X is different from Y', I totally disagree with him that when we say X is not beautiful, Plato could not have thought that it is not a matter of its being different from beautiful because 'it would be different from beauty even if it were beautiful by participation in beauty' (1992, 411). Conversely, as we will discuss, it is exactly the relation of the beautiful thing, X, and the beautiful itself, in which X shares that is to be solved by the notion of not being as difference. Though it is beautiful because of sharing in beauty, X is not beautiful because it is different from beautiful itself. What the difference is to do is to show how something can both be and not be the same thing. The difference is what makes one thing both be and not be a certain other thing. This equips the difference with the ability to explain a certain thing’s not-being when it is. Thanks to the notion of difference, it is now possible to explain not only not being but also the simultaneous being and not being of a thing: 'What we call "not-beautiful" is the thing that ἕτερόν ἐστιν from nothing other than του̑ καλου̑ φύσεως' (257d10-11). The result is that not beautiful happens to be (συμβέβηκεν εἶναι) one single thing among kinds of beings (τι τῶν ὄντων τινὸς ἑνὸς γένους) and at the same time set over against one of the beings (πρός τι τῶν ὄντων αὖ πάλιν ἀντιτεθὲν) (257e2-4) and thus be something that happens to be not beautiful (εἶναί τις συμβαίνει τὸ μὴ καλόν); a being set over against being (ὄντος δὴ πρὸς ὄν ἀντίθεσις) (e6-7). Neither the beautiful is more a being (μα̑λλον ... ἐστι τῶν ὄντων) nor not beautiful less (e9-10) and thus both the contraries similarly are (ὁμοίως εἶναι) (258a1). This conclusion, it is emphasized again (a7-9), owes to θατέρου φύσις now turned out as being. Therefore, each of the many things that are of the nature of the difference and set over each other in being (τῆς τοῦ ὄντος πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀντικειμένων ἀντίθεσις) is being as being itself is being (αὐτοῦ τοῦὄν τοςοὐσία ἐστιν) and not less. They are different from, and not the contrary of, each other (a11-b3). This is exactly τὸμὴὄν, the subject of the inquiry (b6-7). Hence, not being has its own nature (b10) and is one εἶδοςamong the many things that are (b9-c3). Such far departing from Parmenides’ ontological principle is done on the basis of the nature of the difference. It was the discovery of such a notion that made the stranger brave enough to say that not being is each part of the nature of the difference that is set over against being (258d7-e3, cf. 260b7-8). That the relation of being and difference is difference is the key element of the new ontology. The difference is, only because of its sharing in being, but it is not that which it shares in but different from it (259a6-8). Not being is exactly based on this difference: ἕτερον δὲ τοῦ ὄντος ὄν ἔστι σαφέστατα ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἶναι μὴ ὄν (a8-b1). 2. Difference and the Being of a Copy We discussed above that the sense of being of particulars in Republic V made so many debates that whether being is there used in an existential sense or not. Particulars in Republic are regarded as images in the allegories of Line and Cave. The being of an image/copy makes, thus, the same problem. Plato’s analogy of original -copy for the relation of Forms and their particulars in Republic has obviously a different attitude to being. The main question is that what is the ontological status of a copy in respect of its original? Are there two kinds of being, 'real being' versus 'being' as Ketchum says (1980, 140) or only one kind? What is the difference of being in an original and its copy? Is it a matter of degrees of being or reality as some commentators have suggested? Is it a matter of being relational? By reducing the ontological issue to an epistemological one, Vlastos’ suggestion of degrees of reality in an article with the same name does neither, I think, pay attention to the problem nor resolve it. He agrees that Plato never speaks of "degrees" or "grades" of reality (1998, 219). What allows him to entitle it as such are some of Plato’s words in Republic as well as Plato’s words in some other dialogues (1998, 219). When Plato states that the Forms only can completely, purely or perfectly be real he means, Vlastos says, they are cognitively reliable (1998, 229); an obvious reduction of the issue to an epistemological one. He thinks that when in Republic we are being said that a particular’s being F is less pure than its Form, it is because it is not exclusively F, but it is and is not F and this being adulterated by contrary characters is the reason of our confused and uncertain understanding of it (1998, 222). Ketchum rightly criticizes Vlastos’ doctrine in its disparting from ontology thinking that 'to understand Plato’s talk of being as talk of reality is to obscure the close relation that exists between "being" and the verb "to be"' (1980, 213). He thinks, therefore, that οὐσία must be understοοd as being rather than reality, τὸὄν as "that which is" and not "that which is real" and … (ibid). His conclusion is that degrees of reality cannot interpret Plato correctly and we must accept degrees of being. Allen believes that a 'purely epistemic' reading of the passage in Republic is patently at odds with Plato’s text (1961, 325). He thinks that not only degrees of reality but also degrees of reality must be maintained (1998, 67). What Cooper suggests gets close to this paper’s solution: -/- Plato does not I think wish to suggest that existence is a matter of degree in the way in which being pleasant or painful is a matter of degree. Rather there are different grades of ontological status. (1986, 241) -/- A more ontological solution for the problem of understanding the being of a copy and its relation with the being of its original is suggested by the theory of copy as a relational entity. Based on this interpretation, 'the very being of a reflection is relational, wholly dependent upon what is other than itself: the original…' (Allen, 1998, 62). As relational entities, particulars have no independent ontological status; they are purely relational entities which derive their whole character and existence from Forms (ibid, 67). Although these relational entities are and have a kind of existence, we must also say that 'they do not have existence in the way that Forms, things which are fully real, do' (ibid). Allen (1961, 331) extends his theory to Phaedo where it is said that particulars are deficient (74d5-7, 75a2-3, 75b4-8), 'wish' to be like (74d10) or desire to be of its nature (75a2); an extension that, like F.C. white (1977, 200), I cannot admit. He correctly states that Plato did not start out with a doctrine of particulars as images and semblances but come to such a view after Phaedo, or perhaps after Republic V (1977, 202). Though we may not agree with him about Republic V, if we have to consider its last pages also, we must agree with him that not only the ontology of Phaedo but also that of Republic II-V (except the last pages of the latter book) are somehow different from (but at the same time appealing to) the ontology of original-copy which should exclusively assign to Sophist, Timaeus and RepublicVI-VII besides the last pages of book V. The answer to the problem of Plato’s sense of being in RepublicV can be reached only if we read Republic V based on and as following Sophist. We can find out his meaning of that which both is and is not only by the ontological status he assigns to a copy in Sophist. The kind of being of a copy in Sophist reveals as Plato’s key for the lock of the problem of not being. Let’s see how the ontological status of a copy is the critical point of Plato’s ontology. In the earlier pages of Sophist, we are still in the same situation about not being. To think that that which is not is is called a rash assumption (237a3-4) and Parmenides’ principle of the impossibility of being of not being is still at work (a8-9). At 237c1-4, the problem of "not being" is noticed in a new way which shows some kinds of a more realistic position to the problem of not being. Nevertheless, not being is still unthinkable, unsayable, unutterable and unformulable in speech (238c10). Soon after mentioning that it is difficult even to refuse not being (238d), the solution to the problem appears: the being of a copy (εἴδωλον) (239d). A copy is, says Theaetetus, something that is made referring to a true thing (πρὸς τἀληθινὸν) but still is 'another such thing (ἕτεροντοιου̑τον)' (240a8). Nevertheless, this 'another such thing' cannot be another such real or true thing. In answer to the question of the Stranger that if this 'another such thing' is the true thing (240a9), Theaetetus answers: οὐδαμῶς ἀληθινόν γε, ἀλλ’ ἐοικὸςμὲν (240b2). A copy’s being 'another such thing' does not mean another true thing but only a resemblance of it. Not only is not a copy another true thing besides the original, but it is the opposite of the true thing (b5) because only its original is the thing genuinely and being a copy is being the thing only untruly. The word ἐοικὸς is opposed to ὄντως ὄν in the next line (240b7): 'So you are saying that that which is like (ἐοικὸς) is not really that which is (οὐκ ὄντως [οὐκ] ὄν)'. But still a copy 'is in a way (ἔστι γε μήν πως)' (b9). While it is not really what it is its resemblance, it has its own being and reality because it really is a likeness (εἰκων ὄντως) (b11). The Stranger asks: -/- So it is not really what is (οὐκ ὄν ἄρα [οὐκ] ὄντως ἐστὶν) but it really is what we call a likeness (ὄντως ἣν λέγομεν εἰκόνα)? (b12-13) -/- This is Plato’s innovative ontological solution to the problem of not being. Theaetetus’ answer confirms this: 'Maybe that which is not is woven together with that which is' (c1-2). Therefore, a copy neither is what really is nor is not-being but only is what in a way is. Thanks to the ontological status of a copy, the third status intermediate between being and not being is brought forth. The essence of an image, in Kohnke’s words, does not consist 'solely in the negation of what is genuine and has real being' because otherwise 'it would be an ὄντως οὐκ ὄν,essentially and really a not being' (1957, 37). The characteristics of a copy can be summed up as folows: i) A copy is a copy by referring to a true thing (πρὸς τἀληθινὸν). ii) A copy is different from that of which it is a copy (ἕτερον). iii) A copy is not itself a true thing (ἀληθινόν) as that of which it is a copy but only that which is like it (ἐοικὸς). iv) It is not really that which really is (ὄντως ὄν) but only really a likeness (εἰκων ὄντως). The conclusion is that: v) A copy in a way (πως) is that means it both is and in not, the product of interweaving being with not being. This leads to the refutation of father Parmenides’ principle, accepting that 'that which is not somehow is (τό τε μὴ ὄν ὡς ἔστι)' and 'that which is, somehow is not (τό ὄν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι) (241d5-7). Besides copies and likenesses (εἰκόνων), we have also imitations (μιμημάτων) and appearances (φαντασμάτων) as the subjects of this new kind of being and thus false belief (241e3). In Timaeus, the world of becoming which cannot correctly be called and thus we have to call it "what is such" (τὸ τοιου̑τον) (49e5) or "what is altogether such" (τὸ διἀ παντὸς τοιου̑τον) (e6-7), consists solely of imitations (μιμημάτα) (50c5) which are identifiable only by the things that they are their imitations. The word τοιου̑τον which had been used to determine the situation of a copy in respect of its original, now becomes the definition of the world of becoming in which everything is an image of another thing, a Being, that stays always the same and is different and separated from its image. Cherniss, in my view rightly, draws attention to the very important point about the ontological status of an image that can at the same time be considered a criticism of the relational theory. What we are being said in Timaeus, he thinks,cannot be explained by saying that an image is not self-related and making its being relational. What is crucial about an image is that it 'stands for something, refers to something, means something and this meaning the image has not independently as its own but only in reference to something else apart from it' (1998, 296). This function finds its best explanation in the theory we are to suggest in the following. 3. πολλαχῶς ἔστι The best way to understand the ontological status of an image in Plato is to see first how his most clever pupil, Aristotle, resolved the same problem that Plato brought his theory of image for its sake. Aristotle’s theory of pollachos legetai is a brilliant and, at the same time, deviated version of Plato’s theory that is able, however, to help us read Plato in a better way. We discuss Aristotle’s theory to reach to a full understanding of Plato’s theory because it is, firstly, constructed in Aristotle in a more clear way and, secondly, it can also be taken as an evidence that our reading of Plato is legitimate. The phrase τὸ ὄν πολλαχῶς λέγεται, a so much repeated phrase in Aristotle’s works, is his resolution for some of the ontological problems of his predecessors all treating being as if it has only one sense. Aristotle is right in his criticism of the philosophical tradition specially Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato since all did presuppose only one sense for being and his theory is, thus, a creative and revolutionary solution for many problems that all the past philosophers were stuck in. But it is at the same time somehow a borrowed theory. As we will discuss, both the structure of the doctrine and the problems it tries to resolve are the same as Plato’s doctrine (and even is comparable in its phraseology) though it is in Aristotle, as can be expected, a more clear and better structured doctrine. 1) Associated with the theory of pros hen and the theory of substance, the theory of several senses of being provides a structure which, I insist, is the best guide to understand Plato’s theory of Being in Sophist, Timeaus and Republic. a) Although the theory of pollachos legetai is not necessarily based on the theory of pros hen, they become tightly interdependent about being: -/- Being is said in many ways/senses (τὸ δὲ ὄν λέγεται μὲν πολλαχῶς) but by reference to one (πρὸς ἕν) [way/sense] and one kind of nature (μίαν τινὰ φύσιν). (Metaphysics 1003a33-34) -/- The doctrine of pros hen which is Aristotle’s initiative third alternative besides the homonymous and synonymous application of words, is primarily a linguistic theory that tries to provide a new theory to explain the different implementations of the same word. The pros hen implementation of being is to provide an alternative for the theory of the synonymous (in Plato: homonymous) implementation of being which says being is said in one sense (kath hen) (1060b 32-33). That both the pros hen and the kath hen implementation of a word has one thing (hen) as what is common, makes them in opposition to the homonymous implementation which does not consider anything in common. Whereas both pros hen and kath hen assume a common nature, with which all the implementations of the word have some kind of relation, their difference is that while kath hen takes all the implementations of the word as the same with the common nature, pros hen makes them different. Substance is called πρῶτον ὄν because it is said to be primarily: -/- For as is (τὸ ἔστιν) is predicated of all things, not however in the same way (οὐχ ὁμοίως) but of one sort of thing primarily and of others in a secondary way. So too τὸτί ἐστιν belongs simply (ἁπλῶς) to substance but in a limited sense (πῶς) to the others [other categories] (1030a21-23). -/- The word ἁπλῶς standing against κατὰ συμβεβηκός tries to make substance different from the accidents. When we are being said that τὸ ὄν πολλαχῶς λέγεται, it means that only the substance that is simply (ἁπλῶς) the ἕν, the common nature, τὸὄν. When we use the word 'being' about a substance, the being is said differently from when we use 'being' about an accident. The distinction between the substance and the other categories is a distinction between what simply is said to be and what only with reference to (pros) the substance is said to be. The doctrine of pros hen, changing kath hen to pros hen in respect of to on, makes a distinction that wants to show that while there is a kind of implementing the word being that is simply being, there is another kind which is called being only by reference to that which is simply being. In the doctrine of pros hen it is not so that all the things that are said to be are only by reference to a common one thing, but that while one thing is called being because it is that thing itself, the other things are called so without being that thing itself but only by referring to it. At the very beginning of book Γ, it is said that: -/- Being is said in many senses but all refer to one arche. Some things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substances, others because they are a process towards substances or destructions or privations or qualities of substances … (1003b5-9, cf. 1028a18-20) -/- Substance is what really is said to be and all other things that are said to be are said only in favor of it. This difference of substance from all other senses of being is what is, I believe, primarily aimed in Aristotle’s interrelated theories of pollachos legetai,pros hen and the theory of substance. b) The difference of the implementation of being in the case of substance and the accidents goes so deep that while substance is considered as the real being, the accidents are almost not being. An accident is a mere name (Metaphysics 1026b13-14) and is obviously akin to not being (b21). Aristotle adds that Plato was 'in a sense not wrong' saying that sophists deal with not being (τὸ μὴ ὄν) because the arguments of sophists are, above all, about the accidental (1026b13-16). At the beginning of book , he says about quality and quantity (which look to be more of a being than other accidents) that they are not existent (οὐδ̕ ὄντα ὡς εἰπεῖν) in an unqualified sense (ἁπλῶς) (1069a21-22). The two above-mentioned points, Aristotle’s (a) interwoven theories of pollachos legetai, pros hen and the theory of substance and (b) taking accidents almost as not being, comparedwith substance, brings forth a structure that I shall call Pollachos Legetai (with capital first letters). What is of the highest importance in this structure for me is the difference of substance from accidents and the kind of relation which is settled between them. There is a substance that without any qualification is said to be and the accidents that are said to be only by reference (pros) to it. Adding Aristotle’s point about accidents that they are nearly not being to this relation and difference, we can obviously see how much this structure is close to Plato’s original-copy ontology. We spoke of the relation of being and difference in Plato’s model and the way Plato construes the being of a copy. A copy is a copy only by referring to (pros) a model; it is different from (ἕτερον) that of which it is a copy; it is not itself a true thing as its model and not really that which is (ὄντως ὄν) but only is in a way (πῶς). If we behold the difference of substance and accident in the context of the theory of pollachos legetai and pros hen, we can observe its fundamental similarity with Plato’s original-copy theory in its structure. Allen draws attention to the fact that the relation between Forms and particulars in Plato’s original-copy model is 'something intermediate between univocity and full equivocity' (1998, 70, n. 24) and the same as what Aristotle calls it pros hen (ibid). What made us compare the two structures was not, of course, the complete similarity of two structures (we have to agree with many possible differences of the two theories) but exactly the specific relation between an original and its copy on the one hand, and a substance and its accident on the other hand. As substance and accident do not share a common character and the substance -accident model hints that they stand in a certain relation, there is no common character between the original and copy in Plato’s model as well. Furthermore, their similarity is not confined to their structure only; they are also aimed to solve the same problem. The central point of the theory is that all the predecessors took being in one sense and this was their weakness point. Besides the mentioned above passages about the relation of pollachos legetai and presocratics’, as well as Plato’s, ontology, the relation of the theory with the problem of not being is clear in several passages. In Metaphysics, it is said: 'Being is then said in many senses… It is for this reason that we say even of not being that it is not being' (1003b5-10). Discussing the accidental sense of being, Aristotle points that it is in the accidental way that we say, for example, that not-white is because that of which it is an accident is (1017a18-19, cf. 1069a22-24). We mentioned that he thought Plato was right saying that sophistic deals with not being because sophistic deals with accidental, which is somehow not being (1026b14-16). Plato turned sophistic not-being to what both is and is not and Aristotle to what accidentally is said to be. What helps Aristotle to resolve the problem of not being is his distinction between ἁπλῶς and κατὰ σθμβεβηκός. Aristotle’s "qua" (ᾕ) which is directly linked with his distinction between καθ’ αὑτο λέγεται and κατὰ συμβεβηκός λέγεται, is used to resolve the old problem of coming to be out of not being (Physics 191b4-10). He strictly asserts that his predecessors could not solve the problem because they failed to observe the distinction of "qua itself" from "qua another thing" (b10-13). He then continues: -/- We ourselves are in agreement with them in holding that nothing can be said simply (ἁπλως) to come from not being (μὴὄντος). But nevertheless we maintain that a thing may come to be from not being in an accidental way (κατὰ συμβεβηκός). For from privation which ὅ ἐστι καθ’ αὑτο μὴ ὄν, nothing can become. (Phy. 191b13-16, cf. b19-25) . (shrink)

Being can no longer be thought, for Plato, in accordance with Parmenides’ either/or; rather, it is both/and, both present in and absent from things, which is how they can come-to-presence and go-out-into-absence. But as the Parmenides demonstrates, Greek grammar hints at a fundamental ontological truth: the expression, “one one,” ἓν ἕν, shows that being can be implied, neither present nor absent—for being is an implication. But then participating must be rethought in terms of implying: being is implied in everything that (...) is and is one, which is how it is present in beings and absent therefrom. But this understanding of participation—as Aristotle insists—is contradictory. Luckily, there is another way: implication qua belonging—being no longer participates-in, but belongs-to things, which is how it is one with them, distinct but inseparable. But this too, betrays implication, fails to grasp being’s way of being, and the meaning of being qua implied, and so cannot illuminate how being and beings are and are one—for as the suspension of presence and/or absence, implying is irreducible to participating or belonging. Rather, if being is implied, it is because implication is suspension, which is why it is so suspenseful. (shrink)

The late Hector-Neri Castañeda, the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, and founding editor of Noûs, has deeply influenced current analytic philosophy with diverse contributions, including guise theory, the theory of indicators and quasi-indicators, and the proposition/practition theory. This volume collects 15 papers--for the most part previously unpublished--in ontology, philosophy of language, cognitive science, and related areas by ex-students of Professor Castañeda, most of whom are now well-known researchers or even distinguished scholars. The authors share the conviction that (...) Castañeda's work must continue to be explored and that his philosophical methodology must continue to be applied in an effort to further illuminate all the issues that he so deeply investigated. The topics covered by the contributions include intensional contexts, possible worlds, quasi-indicators, guise theory, property theory, Russell's substitutional theory of propositions, event theory, the adverbial theory of mental attitudes, existentialist ontology, and Plato's, Leibniz's, Kant's, and Peirce's ontologies. An introduction by the editors relates all these themes to Castañeda's philosophical interests and methodology. (shrink)

It will be shown in this article that an ontological approach for some problems related to the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics could emerge from a re-evaluation of the main paradox of early Greek thought: the paradox of Being and non-Being, and the solutions presented to it by Plato and Aristotle. More well known are the derivative paradoxes of Zeno: the paradox of motion and the paradox of the One and the Many. They stem from what was perceived by classical philosophy (...) to be the fundamental enigma for thinking about the world: the seemingly contradictory results that followed from the co-incidence of being and non-being in the world of change and motion as we experience it, and the experience of absolute existence here and now. The most clear expression of both stances can be found, again following classical thought, in the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus and Parmenides of Elea. The problem put forward by these paradoxes reduces for both Plato and Aristotle to the possibility of the existence of stable objects as a necessary condition for knowledge. Hence the primarily ontological nature of the solutions they proposed: Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's metaphysics and logic. Plato's and Aristotle's systems are argued here to do on the ontological level essentially the same: to introduce stability in the world by introducing the notion of a separable, stable object, for which a principle of contradiction is valid: an object cannot be and not-be at the same place at the same time. So it becomes possible to forbid contradiction on an epistemological level, and thus to guarantee the certainty of knowledge that seemed to be threatened before. After leaving Aristotelian metaphysics, early modern science had to cope with these problems: it did so by introducing "space" as the seat of stability, and "time" as the theater of motion. But the ontological structure present in this solution remained the same. Therefore the fundamental notion `separable system', related to the notions observation and measurement, themselves related to the modern concepts of space and time, appears to be intrinsically problematic, because it is inextricably connected to classical logic on the ontological level. We see therefore the problems dealt with by quantum logic not as merely formal, and the problem of `non-locality' as related to it, indicating the need to re-think the notions `system', `entity', as well as the implications of the operation `measurement', which is seen here as an application of classical logic on the material world. (shrink)

This book argues against the common view that there are no essential differences between Plato and the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, on the issues of mysticism, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning by examining the ways in which Plato and Plotinus claim that it is possible to have an ultimate experience that answers the most significant philosophical questions, David J. Yount provides an extended analysis of why we should interpret both philosophers as mystics. The book then moves on to demonstrate that both philosophers (...) share a belief in non-discursive knowledge and the methods to attain it, including dialectic and recollection, and shows that they do not essentially differ on any significant views on ethics. Making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology and Ethics shows the similarities between the thought of these two philosophers on a variety of philosophical questions, such as meditation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, truth, happiness and love. (shrink)

It is difficult to imagine a major philosopher more in need of introduction than Plotinus, nor one whose thought is so deeply resistant to summary treatment. O'Meara succeeds by awakening the beginner's interest in his subject and reminding the specialist why it is so fascinating. First we are familiarized with the details of Plotinus's life, the diverse influences upon him, stylistic features of his writings, and remarks on his philosophical method. One hundred pages are devoted to exploring Plotinus's philosophical views, (...) beginning with his complex account of soul's relation to body and the intelligible world's relation to the sensible. O'Meara carefully articulates Plotinus's immaterialism, his comprehensive scheme of hierarchical ontological dependence, and the dense dialectical context within which he seeks to solve difficulties in Plato's positions by responding to Aristotelian and Stoic objections. Chapter 4 tackles Plotinus's very difficult views on knowledge. He severely devalues knowledge of the external world, arguing that it is only a deficient form of self-knowledge. True knowledge pertains to the divine intellect, which is self-reflexive and identical with its "objects." O'Meara rightly wonders whether Plotinus's epistemological stance amounts to a retreat and indeed whether he eliminates knowledge altogether, at least in the contemporary sense. But if--from the Plotinian perspective--pure thought is nonpropositional, it is puzzling why O'Meara believes it is not intuitive, not "a form of knowing that is an alternative... to science and logic" ; in his view, it is the "goal" of the latter. It might, however, be the goal of scientific knowledge precisely by being an alternative to it. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Ennead IV.7 is a very early treatise, where Plotinus presents the teachings of the main schools current in his day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material and neither truly immortal nor imperishable. It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction; on Pythagorean attunement; and on Peripatetic entelechy. In Chapters 9-10 Plotinuspresents Plato's doctrines on soul's immortality--mainly that of the individual (...) soul, but a fortiori that of the soul of the cosmos. These offer some of his most powerful prose. Plotinus is not concerned to prove the soul's immortality--an uncontroversial tenet of Platonism--but rather with laying down the indisputable foundations for his later writings. (shrink)

This thesis is a study of the philosophical system of a little-studied, but important medieval thinker, John Scottus Eriugena , concentrating on his Periphyseon . ;I argue that Eriugena's system of nature must be approached through an investigation of his epistemology and general philosophy of mind. Instead of beginning with his fourfold classification of Nature, as most commentators have done, I begin with Eriugena's concept of the mind and its dialectical operations , and continue with an examination of his anthropology (...) , and his concept of self-knowledge , before turning to his relativist ontology of being and non-being . Chapter Seven examines Eriugena's fourfold division of Nature in the light of the earlier chapters. ;Against some recent commentators, I argue that Eriugena should not be interpreted solely from within the framework of the Latin-Augustinian metaphysical tradition of the early Middle Ages, that it was his sympathy for Greek Christian Neoplatonism which led him to develop an idealist philosophical outlook . Eriugena synthesises the Greek Eastern and the Latin Western traditions into a profound and original philosophical system. ;I show further that Eriugena "deconstructs" Latin metaphysical realism in favour of his own "me-ontology" or "meta-ontology," inspired by the Greeks. He produces the most detailed account of non-being between Plato's Parmenides and the phenomenologies of nothingness of Heidegger and Sartre. ;The summit of Eriugena's system is infinite Non-being, or infinite self-identical subjectivity. This philosophy bears strong similarities to post-Kantian critical philosophy, especially the Idealism of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. My interpretation thus agrees with the nineteenth-century Idealist reading of Eriugena. At the same time, it suggests the implications of Eriugena's idealism for the interpretation of certain modern philosophies. (shrink)

This dissertation discusses how being and unity are related in the metaphysical systems of Aristotle and Plotinus. I suggest that Aristotle's metaphysical position contrasts with what I call the Platonic metaphysical hierarchy, a general trend in Platonism to place being in a dependent relationship to unity, and particular things in a dependent relationship to being. Aristotle, by contrast, sees being and unity as dependent on particulars. Understanding Aristotle against the backdrop of the Platonic metaphysical hierarchy is of some assistance in (...) understanding his critique of Plato, and his own position in the Metaphysics regarding substance, cosmology and first principles. Aristotle's Unmoved Mover is substance par excellence , and stands as an exemplary cause for the First Moved Mover, guaranteeing the motion necessary for the generation of other particulars, but it does not provide them with being and unity. This is because being and unity are dependent on, and logically posterior to, particulars. I also examine some of the difficulties in Aristotle's system which Plotinus takes up in the Enneads . Plotinus, in trying to remain true to his understanding Platonism, rejects Aristotelianism, and posits instead, a revised version of the Platonic metaphysical hierarchy. In addition to examining Plotinus, critique of Aristotle, I examine some of Plotinus, other influences. These include Parmenides, Plato, Albinus and Numenius, in order to provide some grounding in understanding Plotinus' own philosophy. I conclude with an examination of Plotinus' metaphysics that shows its consistency with the general direction of Platonism, if in a different, hypostatic system. Plotinus I first principle, the One, is a synergy of negative and positive theology, grounded in the belief that being and thinking are extensionally the same in his second principle, Nous. That being and thinking are multiple necessitates the positing of a principle of unity which is "[Special characters omitted.] ," (beyond being) a phrase which Plotinus takes over from Plato's Republic in the service of his own philosophy. (shrink)

There is a well-known tension in Plotinus' thought regarding the location of the intelligible region. He appears to make three mutually incompatible claims about it: (1) it is everywhere; (2) it is nowhere; and (3) it borders on the heavens, where the third claim is associated with Plotinus' affection for cosmic religion. Traditionally, although scholars have found a reasonable way to make sense of the compatibility of the first two claims, they have sought to relieve the tension generated by (3) (...) by both downplaying the importance of cosmic religion to Plotinus and reinterpreting his spatial language metaphorically. In this paper I argue that both of these maneuvers are unsatisfactory. Rather, it is possible to reconcile Plotinus' metaphysics with the world-view of cosmic religion (CR world-view), i.e., to retain the spatial sense of Plotinus' language without making his metaphysics incoherent. In the first part of this paper, I show that cosmic religion is not just an awkward appendage to Plotinus' metaphysics. After explaining what cosmic religion involves, I argue that the CR world-view is in fact central to his natural philosophy. Then, I turn to the problem of the compatibility between cosmic religion and Plotinus' thought. By carefully considering how Aristotle's Prime Mover is present to his universe, I show how we can make claims (2) and (3) compatible for Plotinus. Then, I argue that Plotinus' own account of the omnipresence of soul and its powers' actualizations in particular locations provides a parallel to the problem of the compatibility between (1) and (3), and further that these two accounts can be combined to resolve completely the tension between the CR world-view and Plotinus' metaphysics. In the final section, I discuss the implications this has for our understanding of the soul's ascent and descent. (shrink)

For Plotinus, the nature and status of the human soul is one of the central problems of philosophy.Ennead IV.3­–4.29 constitutes his most penetrating enquiry into this topic, addressing the issues of the relation of the individual soul to the World Soul, the descent of the soul into body, its relations with that body, problems of personal identity and the nature of memory, sense perception, and the true seat of the emotions —many of which still have a resonance today. The treatise (...) is an excellent example of Plotinus' distinctive method of enquiry: not dogmatic (though he is no sceptic), but worrying away at questions until he has uncovered their complexities to the best of his ability. Such a work requires detailed commentary, such as is provided here, to tease out fully the fascinating convolutions of his thought. (shrink)

There is a well-known tension in Plotinus' thought regarding the location of the intelligible region. He appears to make three mutually incompatible claims about it: (1) it is everywhere; (2) it is nowhere; and (3) it borders on the heavens, where the third claim is associated with Plotinus' affection for cosmic religion. Traditionally, although scholars have found a reasonable way to make sense of the compatibility of the first two claims, they have sought to relieve the tension generated by (3) (...) by both downplaying the importance of cosmic religion to Plotinus and reinterpreting his spatial language metaphorically. In this paper I argue that both of these maneuvers are unsatisfactory. Rather, it is possible to reconcile Plotinus' metaphysics with the world-view of cosmic religion (CR world-view), i.e., to retain the spatial sense of Plotinus' language without making his metaphysics incoherent. In the first part of this paper, I show that cosmic religion is not just an awkward appendage to Plotinus' metaphysics. After explaining what cosmic religion involves, I argue that the CR world-view is in fact central to his natural philosophy. Then, I turn to the problem of the compatibility between cosmic religion and Plotinus' thought. By carefully considering how Aristotle's Prime Mover is present to his universe, I show how we can make claims (2) and (3) compatible for Plotinus. Then, I argue that Plotinus' own account of the omnipresence of soul and its powers' actualizations in particular locations provides a parallel to the problem of the compatibility between (1) and (3), and further that these two accounts can be combined to resolve completely the tension between the CR world-view and Plotinus' metaphysics. In the final section, I discuss the implications this has for our understanding of the soul's ascent and descent. (shrink)

"Gill's and Ryan's Parmenides is, simply, superb: the Introduction, more than a hundred pages long, is transparently clear, takes the reader meticulously through the arguments, avoids perverseness, and still manages to make sense of the dialogue as a whole; there is a fine selective bibliography; and those parts of the translation I have looked at in detail suggest that it too is very good indeed." --Christopher Rowe, _Phronesis_.

Neoplatonists from Plotinus onward incorporate Aristotle's logic and ontology into their philosophies: this process is of both intrinsic and historical interest and paves the way for subsequent philosophical debates in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Era. The fifteen essays collected in this book focus on the readings of Aristotle by Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Their discussions cover key issues in the history of logic and metaphysics such as substance, hylomorphism, causation, existence, and (...) predication. Among the topics tackled in this volume are Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle's physical essentialism, which is a major chapter in the history of metaphysics, and the interpretation of Porphyry's Isagoge, one of the most influential and enigmatic works in the history of philosophy. Further essays focus on the readings of Aristotle's categories developed by Porphyry and Iamblichus, which raise interesting questions at the intersection of logic and ontology, and on the integration of Aristotle's ontology into Neoplatonist accounts of being and existence. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all (...) the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic. (shrink)

In this study, I reconstruct and compare Alain Badiou’sBeing and Event(2005) and Graham Priest’sOne(2014), arguing that the ontologies pursued within the two texts are intriguingly analogous in a number of ways. Both Badiou and Priest are committed to thinking through classically ontological problems without denying the validity of the paradoxes they raise; both regard Plato’sParmenidesas an early and formative account of these paradoxes; both establish conclusions to the effect that unity – or “oneness” – is indeed a contradictory phenomenon; and (...) both, as a corollary of this conclusion, develop frameworks which confer ontological prominence uponthe voidandemptinessrespectively, thereby arriving at what appears to be a shared ontological nihilism. In this comparative study, I not only enquire whether the frameworks adopted by Badiou and Priest really do lead to nihilist conclusions, but also attempt to clearly outline their trajectories of thought for the benefit of those who might be tempted to dismiss their seemingly outlandish theses out of hand. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato's Doctrine of the Psyche as a Self-Moving Motion RAPHAEL DEMOS I WILLXSXTHEREADERto ignore for the time being what he has gleaned about the soul from the reading of the Phaedo and the Republic. In these dialogues Plato speaks of the soul sometimes as wholly rational, as having three parts, and so forth. But in these dialogues he is t~lklng of the human soul, which is a special case, (...) whereas in this essay I am de~Hng with the wider role and the concept of the soul as the efficient cause of motion, change, and all becoming everywhere in the cosmos. My cardinal texts in this exposition are the Sophist (246a-249d), the Phaedrus (245c, d), and a considerable portion of Laws, X. Consider the Phaedo, a dialogue with at least four motifs: it is a dramatic evocation of the last day in the life of Socrates, it is an argument for the immortality of the soul and for the reality of the world of ideas, it is a myth of the nether world, and finally, it is a theory of the cosmos as ruled by purpose--all in all, one of the great pieces of literature of the Western world. For the reader, it is an evocation of an attitude to life, based on Plato's conception of the soul--an attitude expressed in the famous phrase that the wise man spends his life meditating on death. As contrasted with what may be called his existential concern with the soul, in the other dialogues on which I will comment, Plato approaches the topic of the soul as part of his explanation of the cosmos. In these his attitude is objective and quasi-scientific. It is to this side of Plato's thought that I wish to call attention in this essay, where the establishment of the immortality of the soul is incidental to the more basic doctrine that the soul is an arche, a primary factor and an ontological principle. In the,Sophist, we find Plato playing the music of his philosophy in a new key. He refers to the "friends of the forms" as though he, himself, were an outsider looking in; then, too, he asserts that motion is really real in contrast to his derogatory references to motion in the Cratylus, the Phaedo, and the Republic.I In these (and other) dialogues, Plato contrasts change and changing things with the timeless forms in respect of reality: the former are said, at best, to be semi-real; only the latter are really real. But in the Sophist he changes his tune, arguing that total reality (~o ~v, to' ~a~rE~ By) includes both motion and rest (248e 8; 249d 3-4). What does he mean by these two words? That by 'rest' he means the realm of ideas is indicated (if not proved) by his references to the forms in the same context (247b 1But in the Theaeteius,he classifiesmotions in a semi-scientific fashion, leaving the impression on the reader that he regards motion as a reality. [133] 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 1-2; 249b, 10, c 1).2 As for motion, Plato makes it clear that the term covers not only (a) physical motion but also (b) life, (c) psyche, and (d) phronesis or naus (249b 5). All these are said to be forms of kinesis; how this is so--how life, soul, mason may be described as motions or changes--is a matter for later comment. What is more to the point is Plato's insistence that motion and what is moved are onta (beings, 249b 2, d 3). Plato uses change (metabol$) interchangeably with kinesis; anticipating the Phaedrus, I will include activity under change. And anticipating the Laws, I will characterize some of this activity as mental; indeed the Sophist, includes within change nous, phronesis, and episteme; that is to say, understanding (in the sense of an activity, 249a, b, c).s Plato offers various reasons in support of his contention that change is real. He may also be offering a special demonstration as follows. The philosopher who denies that change is real is engaged in a mental activity, in short... (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

Aristotle and Plotinus both demonstrate the existence of a first principle as cause of the existence of all things. Aristotle puts forward that this first principle is a divine intellect which thinks on itself, and in being the highest being in complete actuality and without potentiality, it is also absolutely simple. Plotinus, on the other hand, sees reason to assert that the divine intellect can not be absolutely simple but a duality of some sort, and thus the first principle, as (...) a cause of unity for all things, must be beyond the divine intellect and thus beyond being in being, itself, absolutely simple. Comparing Plotinus to Aristotle, Plotinus’ position appears odd at the outset given that he also holds to the divine intellect being completely in act and that it thinks on itself. Why thinking should be dual even when it is self-referential and unified in its activity is not apparent, and so Aristotle’s position seems the more coherent one. Yet, through an analysis of both positions, this dissertation proposes that Plotinus better accounts for the problem of self-intellection as requiring some form of distinction in thought while maintaining an identity between the subject and object of thought. If absolute simplicity is an essential attribute to being the first principle, Plotinus’ position is ultimately more consistent in positing a first principle beyond the divine intellect while also holding to a more coherent understanding of thinking with his understanding of divine intellect as a duality instead of an absolute simplicity. (shrink)

In order to confirm that the sophist is a manufacturer of illusions, Plato argues that it is necessary to refute Parmenides’s thesis which states that there is only – as Plato interprets it – the absolute being. Most likely an echo of this thesis is found in Antisthenes, whom Plato seems to allude to in the _Sophist, _for whom “what is, is true”. This conception of truth is known as “ante-predicative” or ontological, and, according to Heidegger, would be original. It (...) is not the case. From Homer to Parmenides, truth was always attributed to a speech or thought, never to a “being”. The “ante-predicative” conception of truth was a creation of philosophy, which probably began with Parmenides and continued with Antisthenes. When Plato refutes it, in the second part of the _Sophist, _only returns to the past, because he makes speech the “place” of truth. (shrink)

In _Basic Concepts_, Heidegger claims that "Being is the most worn-out" and yet also that Being "remains constantly available." Santiago Zabala radicalizes the consequences of these little known but significant affirmations. Revisiting the work of Jacques Derrida, Reiner Schürmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Tugendhat, and Gianni Vattimo, he finds these remains of Being within which ontological thought can still operate. Being is an event, Zabala argues, a kind of generosity and gift that generates astonishment in those who experience it. (...) This sense of wonder has fueled questions of meaning for centuries-from Plato to the present day. Postmetaphysical accounts of Being, as exemplified by the thinkers of Zabala's analysis, as well as by Nietzsche, Dewey, and others he encounters, don't abandon Being. Rather, they reject rigid, determined modes of essentialist thought in favor of more fluid, malleable, and adaptable conceptions, redefining the pursuit and meaning of philosophy itself. (shrink)