In several iterations of the Gnostic ontogenetic myth, we find variations on an intriguing notion: namely, that the first rupture in the otherwise eternal and continuous procession of ‘aeons’ in the divine ‘pleroma’ is caused by a cognitive overreach and failure (the “fall of Sophia”). As much as it might contain a distant echo of certain myths concerning hubris in the classical tradition or in biblical literature, this general schema of cognitive overreach—cognitive failure—fall has no obvious parallel in Greek philosophy (...) prior to Plotinus, in some of whose more pessimistic accounts of hypostatic procession we find a similar schema, in which the generation of each ontological stratum occurs as the result of a cognitive failure on the superjacent level. If Plotinus borrowed this schema from the Gnostics, one might ask how the latter came up with it in the first place. In response, this paper makes the following three points. [1] Gnostic thinkers ultimately derived this schema from a particular juxtaposition of two profoundly aporetic Platonic passages referring to the travails of the individual soul, one certainly genuine (the description of the unexplained but catastrophic fall of the soul that fails to follow the heavenly train of the gods through the intelligible realm at Phaedrus 248c2-d3), the other quite possibly spurious (the claim that the cause of all evils is the desire, and the failure, of the soul to understand the nature of the notoriously enigmatic ‘King,’ ‘Second,’ and ‘Third,’ at 2nd Letter 312e1-313a6). [2] The Platonizing Sethian Gnostics closest to Plotinus also employed this latter source text to justify their conception of the individual soul, whose vicissitudes were understood to parallel those of Sophia. [3] This hypothesis is confirmed by evidence of tacit anti-Gnostic argumentation alluding to the 2nd Letter throughout Plotinus’ oeuvre. (shrink)

This volume presents essays and seminars by Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, two of the most eminent scholars of ancient philosophy in recent decades, on the fascinating and much-debated Seventh Platonic Letter. They question the authenticity of the letter by showing how its philosophical content conflicts with the Platonic dialogues.

La VI Epistola platonica, ad una considerazione attenta, si rivela una lettera spuria, pervasa tutta di esotericità e di misticismo. Essa si ricollega al gruppo delle lettere pitagorizzanti dello pseudo-Platone.

The few people familiar with the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus generally have a low opinion of it. It's easy to see why: the dialogue is a mish-mash of Platonic, Epicurean and Cynic arguments against the fear of death, seemingly tossed together with no regard whatsoever for their consistency. As Furley notes, the Axiochus appears to be horribly confused. Whereas in the Apology Socrates argues that death is either annihilation or a relocation of the soul, and is a blessing (...) either way, "the Socrates of the Axiochus wants to have it both ways": death is both annihilation and a release of the soul from the body into a better realm. This may be used to construct a valid argument for the conclusion that death is not evil, but at the expense of having a contradiction as one of its premises. But D. S. Hutchinson has recently proposed that these inconsistencies shouldn't surprise us if we view the Axiochus as "an unconventional version of a very conventional genre--the consolation letter." In this paper I expand on Hutchinson's brief suggestion and argue that the Axiochus can be rehabilitated by paying attention to its genre. Although the Axiochus does display many similarities to the consolation letter, the shift from letter to dialogue does--pace Hutchinson--significantly affect what's going on. Within the dialogue, Socrates behaves toward Axiochus in a way similar to the way the author of a consolation letter behaves towards the letter's reader: he is willing to use inconsistent arguments, borrowed from any source, in order to soothe the patient. However, in depicting this type of consolatory relationship between Socrates and Axiochus, the dialogue itself is not aiming at consoling its readers. Instead, it should be seen as displaying for the reader's consideration a certain type of consolatory argumentative practice. -/- Socrates notes that Axiochus is "very much in need of consolation" (365a), and he uses any means necessary to accomplish this task. Socrates exhibits many ways in which he is willing to sacrifice argumentative hygiene for the sake of therapeutic effectiveness. These include: -/- * Use of arguments with inconsistent premises, presented in propria persona. * Appeals to emotion * Tailoring arguments to the audience. * Presenting invalid arguments so as to induce unjustified but comforting beliefs. * Evasion. In these respects, I think that Socrates' argumentative practice is best compared to PH III 280-1, where Sextus Empiricus says that the skeptic will deliberately use logically weak arguments as long as they work. Dorothy Tarrant claims that what links the Socrates of the Axiochus to Socrates as he appears elsewhere in the Platonic corpus is his evident care for the welfare of his interlocutor's psyche. But this concern takes a quite different form in the Axiochus than it usually does. As with Sextus, psychic therapy in the Axiochus involves relief from pain. The primary difference between them is that Socrates, unlike Sextus, is not aiming at producing epochê in his patient. (shrink)

Discussion on the Platonic Socrates in relation to the historic Socrates has to some extent subsided in recent years. The older tradition looks like maintaining itself. But the question remains a provocative one, and further light on it would be welcome. It is some years, indeed, since Professor Field showed reason to doubt whether any further light will now be found, and advised reliance on the main line of tradition, through Aristotle, in the belief that we cannot in any (...) case reach behind it. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate certain difficulties in the text of the Eryxias and to make the author's position as a thinker clearer than it has hitherto been. The Eryxias is a work which has suffered severely from excessive partisanship. While German and Dutch scholars of the eighteenth century appear to have valued it highly—a great deal too highly—as a work of enlightened ethical purpose, the scholarship of the nineteenth century was almost unanimous in condemning it as (...) an inept imitation of Plato's early writings. It soon became apparent, however, that it was not a mere imitation. The economist Hagen recognized in it traces of Stoic doctrine and proceeded somewhat hastily to the conclusion that the author was ‘a Stoic … who expressed the sentiments of his school in the form of a Platonic dialogue.’ Otto Schrohl of Göttingen, whose thesis is the most considerable work on the subject, is less emphatic in claiming the author as a Stoic, but nevertheless traces most of his ideas to Stoic and Cynic origins. This view is modified but retained in its essentials by Professor Souilhé in the Budé edition of Plato. While stressing the importance of the Platonic element, he agrees that the author's point of view has been influenced by Stoic and Cynic teaching, the influence of Cynicism being in his opinion predominant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Realm of Mimesis in Plato: Orality, Writing, and the Ontology of the Image by Mariangela EspositoDoug Al-MainiESPOSITO, Mariangela. The Realm of Mimesis in Plato: Orality, Writing, and the Ontology of the Image. Boston: Brill, 2023. xiv + 173 pp. Cloth, $143.00This manuscript grew out of the author’s original interest in Platonic aesthetics, itself developing into a more particularized examination of Plato’s account of beauty. Plato’s interest (...) in the arts is famously bound up in a broad criticism of their imitative nature; the relation between the original and the imitation, or the eidos and the eidolon, is the core topic of this book. When this binary nature of mimesis is emphasized, it is difficult not to see the two poles as opposed to each other, and indeed there are several passages in the Platonic corpus that tell us directly to value the eidos over the eidolon. “The critique of the arts, in general terms, is based on the assumption that they produce multiple, false, sensorial images (eidola ) that are far removed from the truth, while the truth is a process through which multiplicities are gathered together into an intellectual unity (eidos).” While this duality shows up in the dialogues in numerous ways, Esposito seeks to show a method that transcends it, a method that depends on the experience of [End Page 347] beauty. Beauty is the entity that allows for a transition from the sensual to the intellectual, a point Plato makes in both the Symposium and the Phaedrus, and thereby supports the view that the binary pair of image and original are not so discrete as we might originally believe.Esposito’s analysis of the relation between image and original is made concrete through its application to writing and speech. The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion that track the progress of our ascent to the eidos, with the first chapter devoted to Plato’s critique of writing, the second to the critique of speech, and the third to an analysis of how beauty facilitates going beyond their opposition. The main sources for the critique of writing are the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter; Socrates in the Phaedrus explicitly declares writing to be an imitation of speech and the Seventh Letter supports this position. Esposito follows Derrida’s famous essay, Plato’s Pharmacy, stating, “In Derrida’s account of the Phaedrus, this is the main charge against the written word: first, it imitates the original, and then—its second crime—substitutes itself for the original.” The ability of the copy to substitute itself for the original shows a sensitivity on Derrida’s part to the kind of project that Esposito wants to engage in, and indeed a major theme of Derrida’s work was his use of the concept of the pharmakon as something that transgressed a boundary between seemingly discrete opposites; the term pharmakon could refer to either a poison or a cure. But Esposito claims that focusing on the opposition between speech and writing ensures that it will never be overcome, and so this criticism of writing (as an imitation) must be demoted in importance. Esposito therefore ultimately distances herself from Derrida and also spends time taking on the importance of the so-called Unwritten Doctrines, especially as outlined by the Tübingen School. The Tübingen School straightforwardly accepts the criticism of writing in comparison to speech and so develops a theory of unwritten doctrines that Plato would only transfer orally. Given her project of synthesizing the tension between writing and speech, it is unsurprising that Esposito would be hostile to the project of the Tübingen School, “which this work does not consider sustainable.”In the second chapter Esposito moves on to the critique of speech. Here the core of her analysis is given to the Sophist, which provides us with “the best ontological expression of the criticism of image making.” The wider criticism of the Sophist is centered on the observation that appearances are bound up with nonbeing itself; “the biggest challenge posed by the sophist and the main danger of the mimetic mechanism is revealed: both allow the pseudos... (shrink)

English summary: After borrowing their alphabet from the Phoenicians, the Greeks invented grammar, which is initially the art of letters, grammata. Platos' grammatike techne is the mastery of reading and writing. Elementary grammar, however, subject of school masters (grammarians), progressively expanded its ambitions in order to become the savant study of written works and Greek language - it is the subject of grammatikos. It is for the most part in Alexandria where generations of grammarians gave autonomy to this new discipline. (...) Their activity can be chronologically situated between the 3rd and 2nd century BC and the 1st and 2nd century AD. Jean Lallot's 26 studies touch upon various aspects - problems and diverse approaches, technical terminology, theory of the parts of discourse, syntax - the origins and the development of the discipline bound to provide the epistemological base of modern linguistics. French text. French description: Apres avoir emprunte leur alphabet aux Pheniciens, les Grecs ont invente la grammaire, qui est au depart l'art des lettres, grammata : la grammatike techne de Platon est la maitrise de la lecture et de l'ecriture. Mais la grammaire elementaire, domaine du maitre d'ecole (grammatistes), a progressivement elargi ses ambitions pour devenir l'etude savante des oeuvres ecrites et de la langue (grecque)--c'est le domaine du grammatikos. Dans le sillage des philosophes precurseurs (Platon, Aristote, les stoiciens), c'est en grande partie a Alexandrie que des generations de grammairiens ont donne corps et confere une autonomie a la nouvelle discipline. On peut situer chronologiquement leur activite entre le IIIe -IIe siecle avant J.-C., epoque des savants philologues de la grande Bibliotheque--au premier rang desquels Aristarque de Samothrace (ca 217-145)--et le IIe siecle de notre ere, domine par l'activite d'Apollonius Dyscole et de son fils Herodien. Les vingt-six etudes de Jean Lallot regroupees ici eclairent sous de multiples aspects--problematiques et demarches, terminologie technique, theorie des parties du discours, syntaxe--les origines et le developpement d'une discipline vouee a devenir la premiere du trivium medieval et a fournir le socle epistemologique de la linguistique moderne. (shrink)

The pseudo-Platonic Definitions seems to ascribe to ὄνοµα, ‘name’, the function of signifying two kinds of predicate. This is problematic, and I propose an emendation of the text, arguing that a definition of ῥῆµα, ‘verb’, has fallen out.

The Seventh Platonic Letter describes Plato's attempts to turn the ruler of Sicily, Dionysius II, into a philosopher ruler along the lines of the Republic. It explains why Plato turned from politics to philosophy in his youth and how he then tried to apply his ideas to actual politics later on. It also sets out his views about language, writing and philosophy. But is it genuine? Scholars have debated the issue for centuries. The origin of this book was (...) a seminar given in Oxford in 2001 by Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, two of the most eminent scholars of ancient philosophy in recent decades. They question the authenticity of the letter head-on by showing how its philosophical content conflicts with what we find in the Platonic dialogues. They also reflect on the question of why the Letter was written, whether as an attempt to exculpate Plato from the charge of meddling in politics, or as an attempt to portray, through literary means, the ways in which human weakness and emotions can lead to disasters in political life. (shrink)

The works of Plato have been a cornerstone of Western philosophy for centuries, inspiring countless readers and thinkers over the course of millennia. But not all of the writings attributed to Plato are genuine. In this scholarly investigation, W.A. Heidel explores the origins and authenticity of some of these so-called 'pseudo-Platonic' texts, providing insights into the ways in which ancient cultures valued and appropriated the ideas of its greatest thinkers. 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 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. 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)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 1 - 39 Through a novel set of texts drawn from Plato, Porphyry, Plotinus, Ps. Julian, Proclus, Hermeias, Synesius and Damascius, I explore how anagogic _erōs_ in master-disciple relationships in Neoplatonism contributed to the attainment of self-knowledge and to the transmission of knowledge, authority and inspired insights within and outside the _diadochia_. I view anagogic _erōs_ as one of the most important channels of non-discursive pedagogy and argue for the mediating power of anagogic (...) _erōs_ in the attainment of the main goal of the Platonist: reorienting desire from sensible to intelligible beauty and changing one’s ontological status to become like god and attain union with the divine. After considering the problematic nature of Socratic _erōs_, its skeptics and detractors, I discuss the dynamics of philosopher-disciple relationships and the experience of anagogic _erōs_ in the following: the attack on Porphyry and defense by Plotinus following Porphyry’s recital of an ecstatic poem on _Hieros Gamos_, the concealment of anagogic _erōs_ behind the authoritative façade of an oracle, the intensely devotional private letters of Ps. Julian to the aged Iamblichus and of Synesius to his female master Hypatia; the identification of anagogic _erōs_ with theurgic ascent in Syrianus’s school according to Proclus and Hermeias and the experiences of anagogic _erōs_ outside the _diadochia_ in Damascius’ _Philosophical History_. I conclude that the true and correct practice of philosophy had much, if not everything to do with the anagogic _erōs_ between the true philosopher, the bacchant and the philosopher in training, aspiring to become transformed from thyrsus-bearer into bacchant. The privileged and exalted status given to the divine lover ensured the transmission of the philosophical tradition in all its richness, preserving both its discursive and non-discursive aspects as a system of thought, as a way of life and as a way of being and loving. (shrink)

Los estudiosos suelen concordar actualmente en que la “escuela eleática”, tal como se nos presenta por primera vez en los diálogos de Platón, tiene más de ficción que de realidad histórica. En este artículo trato de dilucidar el origen de esa ficción, empezando por examinar las hipótesis de que el comentario de Platón acerca de la “tribu eleática” iniciada por Jenófanes es una broma o bien refleja una interpretación previa debida a Hipias o a Antístenes. Argüiré que la “eleatización” de (...) Jenófanes fue introducida –junto a la lectura de Parménides y Zenón como filósofos monistas, a la manera de Meliso– por la escuela megárica de Euclides (lo cual me obliga a defender, contra Von Fritz y Döring, el carácter neo-eleático de la filosofía megárica), y sugeriré que una huella precisa de tal interpretación megárica puede encontrarse en la sección dedicada a Jenófanes del tratado pseudo-aristotélico De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia. (shrink)

The pseudo-Ciceronian Epistula ad Octavianum enjoys the unmerited distinction of being preserved not only in most of the manuscripts which contain the Ad Atticum letters but also in some of those which contain the second half of the Ad Familiares letters; the former tradition is usually designated Ω, the latter I shall designate X. It was on the Ω tradition that the earliest printed texts were based. In the sixteenth century Cratander and Turnebus introduced a number of readings from (...) the X tradition; some of these were incorporated in the vulgate, but the printed editions from that of Lambinus to that of Purser still continued to be based mainly on Ω. In 1913, in an article in Eranos, xiii. 136–46, Sjögren set himself to prove that the value of Ω had been overrated in the establishment of the text, and that greater importance should be attached to X than to Ω; and in accordance with this view, in his 1914 Teubner text, Sjögren follows X, as against Ω, about twice as often3 as Purser does. This view of Sjögren's, I believe, will not stand examination, and to disprove it is the purpose of the present article. (shrink)

Platonic love is a concept that has profoundly shaped Western literature, philosophy and intellectual history for centuries. First developed in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, it was taken up by subsequent thinkers in antiquity, entered the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and played a key role in the reception of Neoplatonism and the etiquette of romantic relationships during the Italian Renaissance. In this wide-ranging reference work, a leading team of international specialists examines the Platonic distinction between higher (...) and lower forms of eros, the role of the higher form in the ascent of the soul and the concept of Beauty. They also treat the possibilities for friendship and interpersonal love in a Platonic framework, as well as the relationship between love, rhetoric and wisdom. Subsequent developments are explored in Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ficino, della Mirandola, Castiglione and the contra amorem tradition. (shrink)

The Arabic version of the Enneads is the earliest datable text in which appears the term "anniyya", that features in Avicenna’s metaphysics and lies in the background of the Latin definition of the Causa prima as esse tantum, typical of the Liber de Causis. This paper examines some examples of the use of "to be" in the Arabic translation of the Enneads. It also discusses the description of the First Cause as ‘pure Being’ or ‘first Being’ in the Arabic Plotinus, (...) and compares it with the Divine Names of the pseudo-Dionysius. icona . (shrink)

In a letter to Franz Overbeck from 1883 Nietzsche confessed that the more he read the German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller the more he realized »how poorly« he understood Plato and »how much Zarathustra Platonizes«. This is a striking admission from a thinker who defined his own philosophy as »inverted Platonism« and it has yet to be adequately explained. This article examines what Nietzsche may have meant by the verb »to Platonize« by drawing an explicit connection to Teichmüller's controversial views (...) on Platonic psychology. Two possible meanings of the verb are put forth, a weak and a strong meaning and a case in defense of the latter is made. In the strong sense of the word »to Platonize« meant that the Overman was a mythos in the Platonic sense, in that it made Nietzsche's much more recondite »Bundle Theory« of the self accessible to the average reader, but it did not correspond to a view of the self which Nietzsche espoused in his own voice. (shrink)

A pesar de desarrollar una teoría del placer que incorpora elementos de tradiciones filosóficas posteriores, Damascio defiende en su Comentario al Filebo la concepción platónica del placer como un "proceso de repleción". Este trabajo pretende mostrar que Damascio no solo respeta la letra del Filebo, sino también el espíritu de la comprensión platónica del placer y, en particular, de los placeres intelectuales. Suponiendo la polaridad entre el deseo y su satisfacción, Damascio propone entender la experiencia de placer intelectual como aquella (...) en la que el deseo es efectivamente realizado, de modo que tanto el proceso como el resultado del conocer producen placer. Contra lo que inicialmente se podría pensar, la exégesis del filósofo neoplatónico permite poner de relieve supuestos fundamentales de la concepción platónica del placer, a saber, la conexión entre el placer y la experiencia humana de la temporalidad como su dependencia con respecto a la estructura del deseo. In spite of developing a theory of pleasure that incorporates elements from subsequent philosophical traditions, Damascius defends, in his Commentary on the Philebus, the Platonic conception of pleasure as a "process of filling". This paper aims to show that Damascius respects not only the letter of the Philebus, but also the spirit of Plato’s understanding of the nature of pleasure and, in particular, that of intellectual pleasures. Having assumed the polarity between desire and its satisfaction, Damascius proposes to understand the experience of intellectual pleasure as the experience where desire is fully achieved, so that both the process and the result of knowing produce pleasure. Contrary to what one may initially expect, the exegesis of the Neoplatonic Philosopher allows to highlighting some of Plato’s underlying assumptions about the nature of pleasure, namely: the connection between pleasure and the human experience of temporality, and the dependence of pleasure on the structure of desire. (shrink)