Neoplatonists, Misc

Augustine’s accounts of his so-called mystical experiences in conf. 7.10.16, 17.23, and 9.10.24 are puzzling. The primary problem is that, although in all three accounts he claims to have seen “that which is,” we have no satisfactory account of what “that which is” is supposed to be. I shall be arguing that, contrary to a common interpretation, Augustine’s intellectual “seeing” of “being” in Books 7 and 9 was not a vision of the Christian God as a whole, nor of one (...) of the divine persons, each of whom is equally God, according to Augustine. This becomes clear when we attend to the fact that Augustine is appropriating a specific meaning of “that which is” or “being” used by Plotinus in his account of the lover of Beauty. This resolution, however, leads to a second question. Is there anything distinctively Christian about any, or all, of Augustine’s ascents? On the one hand, it would be odd if there were not, given that the Confessions are addressed to the Christian God. On the other hand, upon close inspection we find that the allegedly specific “Christian” characteristics that modern commentators have identified in the ascents of conf. 7 and 9 also occur in the Neoplatonists. I will argue that there is in fact one important difference between Augustine and the Neoplatonists here that has not been pointed out in these prior interpretations. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage part d’une question simple dans son énoncé et pourtant complexe dans sa solution : c’est la question du principe unique et absolu du tout. Pourquoi et comment en parler? En quoi résident sa nécessité, son importance et son sens pour la pensée? Cette question trouve une réponse radicale à la fin de la tradition néoplatonicienne, notamment chez Damascius, dans son Traité des premiers principes. Bien que ce problème ait toujours été présent sous le calame des philosophes héritiers de (...) Platon (à commencer par Plotin), ce n’est qu’à la fin de cette tradition – et dans sa phase éminemment critique – que le principe premier a été abordé frontalement, par l’entremise du doute radical, afin d’en acquérir une certitude ultime et d’identifier sa présence subtile dans la réalité, ainsi que dans la pensée elle-même. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous nous concentrons sur le problème du principe premier chez Damascius. La question est celle de savoir dans quelle mesure la discursivité – le fait d’en parler – affecte ce problème et l’accès de notre pensée. Bien que le principe premier se veut indicible, toute tentative de le suggérer ne nous rend qu’une image discursive et donc inadéquate de lui. Toute tentative de raffiner notre perspective sur le principe ne fait que nous en éloigner d’avantage. Quelle est (...) alors la solution de Damascius? Comment peut‑on toujours parler du principe, tout en le reconnaissant indicible? Quel est le rôle du discours dans la saisie du principe? Peut‑il devenir plus qu’une entrave? Nous analysons la manière dont Damascius comprend son propre discours sur le principe et comment il transforme ce discours inévitablement inadéquat, en une manière de produire la conscience du principe. Le principe n’est pas décrit, mais plutôt rendu manifeste par un véritable “travail d’enfantement” de la pensée. Nous analysons les manières de ce travail d’enfantement, afin de montrer comment l’indicible se manifeste à travers lui, sans recevoir une expression concrète, qui risquerait de le transformer en objet de notre pensée. Nous montrerons que le travail d’enfantement n’est pas le signe de l’impossibilité de saisir le principe et d’un indépassable tourment qui accablerait la pensée à cause de cette incapacité. Au contraire, il représente une manière indirecte, non‑descriptive, mais très technique et rigoureuse, dont on peut obtenir la conscience de l’indicible, dans le cadre du discours et par sa médiation. (shrink)

One of the major difficulties that the Neoplatonic tradition had to face concerns the relationship between the transcendence and the causality of the first principle. As transcendent, the One – or the absolute Good – must be above the intelligible being, completely different from its nature. As the first cause of the whole reality, the One is still conceived in a certain connection to the intellect. In this article, I discuss the philosophical background of this problem and Proclus’ attempt to (...) solve the apparent contradiction between causality and transcendence. Proclus puts these two aspects in agreement, by stressing the superiority of the principle and by making of it a non-being par excellence. (shrink)

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

Gregory of Nyssa’s treatise 'De opificio hominis' was one of the only Greek anthropological texts translated into latin during the early Middle Ages, by Dionysius Exiguus between the late 5th and early 6th centuries and by John Scotus Eriugena in the 9th century. Nicholas of Cusa certainly became acquainted with this work indirectly through the extensive citations in Eriugena’s 'Periphyseon' and through their partial reproduction in the 'Clavis physicae' of Honorius Augustodunensis. Our paper will analyse these and other possible ways (...) of reception –both direct and indirect– of Gregory's text by Cusanus, as well as the influence of certain philosophical themes of Nyssen’s anthropology in his thought, such as the conception of the 'imago Dei', of its ‘living’ character and its simplicity, the incomprehensibility of human intellect or mind (noûs) and theories regarding human free will and man as microcosm. (shrink)

In the Philosophical Anthropology of Gregory of Nyssa, inspired by his Trinitarian Theology, the new concept of hypostasis as a unique self implies for the first time the irreducibility of human person to the universal. Moreover, Gregory manages to account for both a deep communion of life and nature among all men and a clear distinction between persons, in a truly harmonious dynamism of the physical and the hypostatic. This union and distinction will also inspire his original conception of proaíresis, (...) which will express the unique character of each person in the community of nature. Difference and creativity are two of its main features. (shrink)

In two passages in particular of his Commentary on the Timaeus, Proclus attributes to his master Syrianus a series of arguments in favour of not confining gods or daemons to any particular level of the universe, either hypercosmic or encosmic, as had been the more or less universal practice of earlier Platonists, but asserting the ubiquity of all classes of ‘higher being’ at every level, and criticising earlier doctrine as in effect cutting the gods off from contact with man, thus (...) undermining the power of theurgy. This interesting development was in fact initiated by his Syrian forerunner Iamblichus of Chalkis, and it is this doctrine that this essay seeks to explore. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the reception of Dionysius in relation to non-Christian philosophy during the Latin Middle Ages with his reception in twentieth-centuryChristian thought. The medievals, including Eriugena, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, and many others, as a rule refuse to divide religion from philosophy and they distinguish or unite thinkers by their teaching rather than by their confessional adherence. Hence they see no need to set Dionysius in opposition to non-Christian philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Proclus, or to repudiate (...) the latter in favor of the former. By contrast, Vladimir Lossky and Jean-Luc Marion, with their shared background in Etienne Gilson, celebrate Dionysius in opposition to the non-Christian Neoplatonists, whom they polemically misrepresent as reducing God to conceptual categories. These twentieth-century figures evince a sectarian religious narrowness that blinds them to the textual and philosophical community of Dionysius with his non-Christian sources. (shrink)

The medieval fascination with the mysterious language of Dionysius the Areopagite is nowhere more evident than in the thirteenth-century textbook edition of his treatise on liturgical rites. Dionysius employed unfamiliar Greek to describe people, actions, and texts that would have been perfectly familiar to his readers. The Latin translation used in the thirteenth-century textbook strives to preserve this unfamiliarity, but commentaries are introduced between its lines and paragraphs, disrupting its ability to bewilder and surprise. These commentaries make the Dionysian text (...) less mysterious, while also slightly altering its meaning. In the hands of the commentators, Dionysius becomes less interested in the aesthetic mystery of the liturgy, and more interested in credal orthodoxy. To read text and commentary together is to confront seven hundred years of competing voices speaking on the nature and purpose of the Christian church. (shrink)

The luminaries of late thirteenth-century Europe took great interest in the mysterious fifth-century author known as Dionysius the Areopagite. They typically read Dionysius not in the original Greek, but in a Latin edition prepared sometime in the middle of the thirteenth century. This edition, which appeared first in Paris and later circulated all over Western Europe, was no mere translation. In addition to the famous translation made by Eriugena in the ninth century, it contained translations of scholia on the Dionysian (...) texts made by Anastasius the Librarian, alternative readings provided by Anastasius and other Latin readers, as well as excerpts from Eriugena's own theological masterwork, the Periphyseon. University scholars such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas thus learned Dionysian mystical theology not only from his text, but from the seven-hundred year interpretive tradition that literally surrounded it on the page. (shrink)

See also Tarrant's review on Notre Dame Philosophical Review.

This article is the first to bring into scientific discussion and to provide a historico-philosophical analysis of a manuscript “Neoplatonic Philosophy from the archive of Pamfil Danylovych Yurkevych (1826–1874). The reviewed manuscript belongs to P. D. Yurkevych’s handwritten nachlass stored in the funds of the Institute of Manuscript of V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the city of Kyiv. Additional archival materials (in particular, programs of P. D. Yurkevych’s lectures that took place in 1850s – beginning of 1860s (...) in Kyiv Theological Academy) are involved to answer several research questions. The author of this article provides arguments in favor of proving that the manuscript is to be attributed to P. D. Yurkevych’s own handwriting, to be dated circa 1856, and that the purposing of its content is to be qualified as didactic. As it is established in the article, textual content of the manuscript in question is an original concise description and analysis of neoplatonic philosophy, which belongs to the set of materials created by P. D. Yurkevych in preparation for teaching the course on Ancient Philosophy in Kyiv Theological Academy during Kyivan period of his work. Turning to the inner critique of the manuscript, author of this article emphasizes an analysis that P. D. Yurkevych conducts concerning Plotinus’s ideas of the process of emanation of the world from the One and the role that philosophy has in true cognition. While comparing the manuscript “Neoplatonic Philosophy” with one of P. D. Yurkevych’s substantial philosophical works “Idea” (1859), additional light is shed upon the prosess of genesis and development of Christian-Platonic worldview of the thinker. Furthermore, it is established that the manuscript in question played a major role in P. D. Yurkevych’s own schooling, particulary concerning his view on the philosophy of Plotinus, and his general reception of the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

31 chapters covering the Old Academy to Late Antiquity. See attached TOC.

In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Students of Plato now had access to the entire range of the dialogues, which revealed to Renaissance audiences the rich ancient landscape of myths, allegories, philosophical arguments, etymologies, fragments of poetry, other works of philosophy, aspects of ancient pagan religious practices, concepts of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the dialogic nature of the Platonic corpus's interlocutors. By and large, Renaissance readers in the (...) Latin West encountered Plato's text through Ficino's translations and interpretation. -/- In Plato's Persona, Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the first synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Robichaud analyzes Plato's works in their original Greek and in Ficino's Latin translations, as well as Ficino's non-Platonic writings and correspondence, in the process uncovering new aspects of Ficino's intellectual work habits. In his letters and works, Ficino self-consciously imitated a Platonic style of prose, in effect devising a persona for himself as a Platonic philosopher. Plato's dialogues are populated with a wealth of literary characters with whom Plato interacts and against whom Plato refines his own philosophies. Reading through Ficino's translations, Robichaud finds that the Renaissance philosopher seeks an understanding of Plato's persona(e) among all the dialogues' interlocutors. In effect, Ficino assumed the role of Plato's Latin spokesperson in the Renaissance. -/- Plato's Persona is grounded in an extensive study of scholarship in Renaissance humanism, classics, philosophy, and intellectual history, and contextualizes Ficino's intellectual achievements within the contemporary Christian orthodox view of Platonism. Ficino was an influential figure in the early Italian Renaissance: the key intermediary between Greek and Latin, and between manuscript and print, giving voice to Plato and access to the ancient frameworks needed to interpret his dialogues. (shrink)

In this paper I shall explore the motif of travel in theLife of Apollonius of Tyana, composed by Philostratus in the first half of the third century AD and published after 217. This text, apart from its novelistic, hagiographic and apologetic features, is an exemplary portrait of an ideal life. One aspect of its appeal is the metaphorical nature of much of the work's content—designed to create an ideal literary image of the Greek philosopher in the Roman empire. I examine (...) the theme of travel as a masterly rhetorical device on the part of Philostratus by which to establish and demonstrate the superiority of Apollonius. (shrink)

Abstract: This study situates Origen of Alexandria within the Platonic tradition, presenting Origen as a Christian philosopher who taught and studied philosophy, of which theology was part and parcel. More specifically, Origen can be described as a Christian Platonist. He criticized “false philosophies” as well as “heresies,” but not the philosophy of Plato. Against the background of recent scholarly debates, the thorny issue of the possible identity between Origen the Christian Platonist and Origen the Neoplatonist is partially addressed (although it (...) requires a much more extensive discussion); it is also discussed in the light of Origen’s formation at Ammonius’s school and the reception of his works and ideas in “pagan” Platonism. As a consequence, and against scholarly perspectives that tend to see Christianity as anti-Platonism, the final section of this paper asks the question of what is imperial and late antique Platonism and, on the basis of rich evidence, suggests that this was not only “pagan” institutional Platonism. Keywords: Origen of Alexandria; Origen the Neoplatonist; Platonism; Ammonius Saccas; Plotinus; Porphyry; Hierocles; Proclus; Patristic Platonism. (shrink)

While virtually all of the few scholars who have dealt with the subject of prophecy in Origen of Alexandria have limited their analysis to Origen’s Contra Celsum, the present essay will take into consideration the most remarkable insights from all of Origen’s extant literary output, including his definitions of prophecy, which can significantly enrich our understanding of the value, sources, and functions of prophecy according to Origen. Fruitful comparisons with Philo, Clement, Eusebius, and Plotinus will also be drawn. What will (...) emerge from the present investigation is that, for Origen, prophets are moral examples, and true prophecy is a gift shared by men and women alike, is a kind of “proof,” structurally related to allegory and philosophy, and contains the announcement of Christ and, closely connected to this, the promise of the eviction of evil and the universal restoration or apokatastasis, which is a core doctrine in Origen’s philosophico-theological system. (shrink)

This volume collects the thoroughly revised and expanded versions of the papers, with the relevant response, presented at two interrelated workshops at the 2015 Oxford Patristics Conference, on theology and philosophy between Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, and on theology in Evagrius Ponticus between Origen, the Cappadocians, and Neoplatonism. This volume contributes innova- tive research into core theological issues in Evagrius and the Cappadocians, also against the backdrop of Origen’s thought and contemporary Neoplatonism. A profound continuity emerges between Evagrius’ theology (...) and the theology of Origen and the Cappadocians, with particular attention paid to Gregory of Nyssa. The latter’s influence on Evagrius’ thought still needs to be investigated systematically; a substantial contribution towards this important desideratum is hopefully offered in the present volume. Thanks also to the research offered in this volume, Evagrius’ theology emerges more and more as part and parcel of Cappadocian theology, within the Origenian line, and thus in relation to Neoplatonism (‘pagan’ and Christian). In this connection, pointing out the so far overlooked link between Nyssen and Evagrius is crucial. (shrink)

This essay investigates Clement’s terminology related to allegorical exegesis of Scripture (μυστήριον first of all, but also αἴνιγμα, τύπος, ἀλληγορία, παραβολή etc.), as well as theoretical and methodological issues related to Biblical allegoresis (i.e. the figural, spiritual exegesis of the Bible, which is taken to contain allegories or metaphorical, figural expressions), the influence of Stoic allegoresis of theological myths on Clement’s allegoresis of Scripture, and the impact of Philo’s Biblical allegoresis, and of Pantaenus’s scriptural exegesis, on Clement’s own spiritual exegesis (...) of the Bible. (shrink)

This innovative book, in its monographic introduction and systematic commentary (and English translation from the Syriac based on new readings from the ms.), provides a thorough reassessment of Evagrius’ philosophical theology, Christology, and anthropology. It argues, e.g., that Evagrius is authentically Origenian, not Origenistic, nor Christologically subordinationist, and Nyssen influenced him more than usually assumed. New linguistic evidence is adduced for the differentiation of bodies in KG and Evagrius’ philosophical anthropology. This investigation is continued in a Peeters edited volume and (...) a future monograph on Evagrius’ philosophical theology. (shrink)

Questa monografia esamina in modo chiaro e conciso ma rigoroso e articolato le concezioni di tempo ed eternità nella filosofia greca, nella Bibbia e nella Patristica. Mostra come i Cristiani criticassero la nozione stoica di ripetizione infinita di evi in cui rivivono le stesse persone compiendo gli stessi atti, in quanto opposta al progresso morale, e ponessero invece l’eternità metafisica platonica alla fine del tempo storico, come luogo di retribuzione e partecipazione all’eternità divina.

Go to Online Edition Ilaria L. E. Ramelli The theory of apokatastasis (restoration), most famously defended by the Alexandrian exegete, philosopher and theologian Origen, has its roots in both Greek philosophy and Jewish-Christian Scriptures and literature, and became a major theologico-soteriological doctrine in patristics. This monograph—the first comprehensive, systematic scholarly study of the history of the Christian apokatastasis doctrine—argues its presence and Christological and Biblical foundation in numerous Christian thinkers, including Syriac, and analyses its origins, meaning, and development over eight (...) centuries, from the New Testament to Eriugena, the last patristic philosopher. Surprises await readers of this book, which results from fifteen years of research. For instance, they will discover that even Augustine, in his anti-Manichaean phase, supported the theory of universal restoration. (shrink)

Henry Dyson - Self: Ancient and Medieval Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.3 491-492 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Henry Dyson University of Michigan Richard Sorabji. Self: Ancient and Medieval Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 400. Cloth, $35.00. Once again, Richard Sorabji takes us on a fascinating tour of the historic boulevards and (...) back alleys of philosophy. His discussion covers a broad range of topics including personal identity through time , self-knowledge, and socially constructed personae. I will focus on two issues: Sorabji's view of the self and his contribution to recent discussions of the self in Hellenistic philosophy. Sorabji defines the self as the "I" who owns its psychological states, actions, and body.. (shrink)

Il presente studio si pone in ideale continuità con l’opera di Marcello Gigante Nomos Basileus, analisi fondamentale della nascita e delle interrelazioni tra diritto naturale, diritto divino e diritto positivo nel mondo greco, prendendo le mosse proprio dal punto in cui questi aveva interrotto la sua indagine, ossia sulle concezioni platoniche del nomos e le sue connessioni con il divino, l’anima e l’educazione. In Platone sono rintracciate le premesse teoretiche della concezione, poi diffusa in età ellenistica, imperiale e tardo-antica, e (...) solitamente attribuita agli stoici, del sovrano come nomos empsychos legge incarnata, fonte del diritto positivo in quanto è legge esso stesso. In Platone esiste uno stretto rapporto tra diritto naturale, diritto divino e diritto positivo: che il nomos empsychos sia espressione della legge di natura risulta dal principio platonico secondo cui natura è per l’uomo l’anima e principalmente la dimensione intellegibile e divina che è in essa. I governanti degni promulgano leggi positive che scaturiscono dalla loro anima divina: così può essere garantito il fondamento divino e naturale delle leggi positive. -/- . (shrink)

Translation and commentary on the only surviving sustained work on Plato's Phaedrus from antiquity.