Apuleius' Platonism

Apuleius' Platonism
Author: Richard Fletcher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2014-07-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107025478

Apuleius of Madauros (c.AD 120-180), known to us today for his Latin fiction, the Metamorphoses, was also a Platonic philosopher. This book is the first exploration of his idiosyncratic brand of Platonism across his multifarious literary corpus, contributing to the study of the dynamic between literature and philosophy in antiquity.

Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Platonism

Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Platonism
Author: Claudio Moreschini
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Philosophy in literature
ISBN: 9782503554709

Apuleius was a respected philosophus Platonicus in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Until the middle of last century, he attracted the attention of scholars as a so-called 'Middle Platonist' author. Then, with the rejection of the historical schema that he had been situated in (the so-called 'school of Gaius', which we will treat shortly), his 'brother' Alcinous was the object of studies and (even harsh) criticisms, while almost nothing more was written about Apuleius by anyone. Studies of Middle Platonism primarily accentuated the liberty of the philosophers of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, who interpreted the doctrines of Plato without constituting a specific school. Due to this new vision of Middle Platonism, Apuleius' role was difficult to define. It is not uncommon to find that Apuleius the philosopher is completely neglected . The literary character, and especially the 'rhetorical' nature of some of his works and of his personality have probably hurt his reputation in philosophy. These aspects of his personality have however been ever more accentuated in the last few decades within the development of studies on Second Sophistics. Consequently not only have there been few scholars to show interest for Apuleius' philosophical doctrines, but those few who have the opportunity to almost manage his philosophical doctrines usually disregard his literary works. In this way one cannot understand the most specific aspect of his philosophy, which consists in a sort of intermingling of philosophy and literature (a typical attitude of Greek and Latin culture of the 2nd century AD), and above all, of religion and Platonism. The dichotomy between philosophy and literature that was normal in the 19th and 20th centuries therefore still persists in the case of Apuleius. Claudio Moreschini attempted in some way to fill this gap in his 1978 study on Apuleio e il Platonismo. It was obviously in vain. Accordingly, in this book he would like to reflect on the possibility of a synthesis between these two aspects.

The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius' Metamorphoses

The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius' Metamorphoses
Author: James Gollnick
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 1999-04-06
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0889203008

Discusses the centrality of dreams and the dreamworld to Apuleius' Metamorphoses, and uses the dreamworld of the work to investigate second-century beliefs about dreams, particularly those regarding religious transformation. Through this investigation, Gollnick (U. of Waterloo) offers an historical background on the contemporary psychological interest in dreams and dream interpretation. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Apuleius' Platonism

Apuleius' Platonism
Author: Richard Fletcher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2014-07-17
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1139916246

Apuleius of Madauros, writing in the latter half of the second century CE in Roman North Africa, is best known to us today for his Latin fiction, the Metamorphoses aka The Golden Ass, about a man who turned into a donkey and back again. However, he was also a Platonic philosopher, who, even though many of his writings are lost, wrote a range of rhetorical and philosophical works which survive to this day. This book examines these works to reveal how Apuleius' Platonism is a result of his 'impersonation of philosophy', that is, a rhetorically powerful methodological tool that allows him to 'speak' on behalf of Plato and his philosophy. This book is the first exploration of the full scope of his idiosyncratic brand of Platonism across his multifarious literary corpus and is a major contribution to the study of the dynamic between literature and philosophy in antiquity and beyond.

The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220

The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220
Author: John M. Dillon
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801483165

Table of Contents Preface Abbreviations 1 The Old Academy and the Themes of Middle Platonism 1 2 Antiochus of Ascalon: The Turn to Dogmatism 52 3 Platonism at Alexandria: Eudorus and Philo 114 4 Plutarch of Chaeroneia and the Origins of Second-Century Platonism 184 5 The Athenian School in the Second Century A.D. 231 6 The 'School of Gaius': Shadow and Substance 266 7 The Neopythagoreans 341 8 Some Loose Ends 384 Bibliography 416 Afterword 422 General Index 453 Index of Platonic Passages 458 Modern Authorities Quoted 459.

Allegories of Writing

Allegories of Writing
Author: Bruce Clarke
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1995-08-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780791426241

This is a theoretical study of human metamorphosis in Western literature.

Plato's Timaeus and the Latin Tradition

Plato's Timaeus and the Latin Tradition
Author: Christina Hoenig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2018-08-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108415806

The book explores the development of Platonic philosophy by Roman writers between the first century BCE and the early fifth century CE. Discusses the interpretation of Plato's Timaeus by Cicero, Apuleius, Calcidius, and Augustine, and examines how they contributed to the construction of the complex and multifaceted genre of Roman Platonism.

Roman Reflections

Roman Reflections
Author: Gareth D. Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199999767

Collection of 13 essays delivered at a conference held at Columbia University in March 2012.

Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought

Late Ancient Platonism in Eighteenth-Century German Thought
Author: Leo Catana
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2019-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030205118

This work synthesizes work previously published in leading journals in the field into a coherent narrative that has a distinctive focus on Germany while also being aware of a broader European dimension. It argues that the German Lutheran Christoph August Heumann (1681-1764) marginalized the biographical approach to past philosophy and paved the way for the German Lutheran Johann Jacob Brucker’s (1696-1770) influential method for the writing of past philosophy, centred on depersonalised and abstract systems of philosophy. The work offers an authoritative and engaging account of how late ancient Platonism, Plotinus in particular, was interpreted in eighteenth-century Germany according to these new precepts. Moreover, it reveals the Lutheran religious assumptions of this new approach to past philosophy, which underpinned the works of Heumann and Brucker, but also influential reviews that rejected the English Plato translator Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) and his understanding and evaluation of late ancient Platonism.

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy
Author: Myrto Garani
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2023-03-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199328382

"Several decades of scholarship by now have demonstrated that Roman thinkers have developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of thought they inherited from the Greeks, and that, taken together, they offer a range of perspectives that are of philosophical interest in their own right. This collection of essays pursues a maximally inclusive approach, covering not only authors such as Augustine, but also poets or historians. It pays attention to the mode in which these works were written (giving rhetoric too its due) and their often conscious reflections on the process of translating, or transferring Greek ideas to Roman contexts"--