Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism

Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism
Author: Eugene Afonasin
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2012-05-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004183272

Drawing on recent scholarship and delving systematically into Iamblichean texts, these ten papers establish Iamblichus as the great innovator of Neoplatonic philosophy who broadened its appeal for future generations of philosophers.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Author: Irene Caiazzo
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2021-11-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004499466

For the first time, the reader can have a synoptic view of the reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, East and West, in a multicultural perspective. All the major themes of Pythagoreanism are addressed, from mathematics, number philosophy and metaphysics to ethics and religious thought.

Plotinus on Number

Plotinus on Number
Author: Svetla Slaveva-Griffin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2009-03-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199703744

Plotinus on Number studies the fundamental role which number plays in the architecture of the universe in Neoplatonic philosophy. This book draws attention to Platinus' concept as a necesscary and fundamental link between the Platonic and the late Neoplatonic theories of number.

Neoplatonic Pedagogy and the Alcibiades I

Neoplatonic Pedagogy and the Alcibiades I
Author: James M. Ambury
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1009117971

Many philosophers in the ancient world shared a unitary vision of philosophy – meaning 'love of wisdom' – not just as a theoretical discipline, but as a way of life. Specifically, for the late Neoplatonic thinkers, philosophy began with self-knowledge, which led to a person's inner conversion or transformation into a lover, a human being erotically striving toward the totality of the real. This metamorphosis amounted to a complete existential conversion. It was initiated by learned guides who cultivated higher and higher levels of virtue in their students, leading, in the end, to their vision of the Good, or the One. In this book, James M. Ambury closely analyses two central texts in this tradition: the commentaries by Proclus (412–485 AD) and Olympiodorus (495–560 AD) on the Platonic Alcibiades I. Ambury's powerful study illuminates the way philosophy was conceived during a crucial period of its history, in the lecture halls of late antiquity.

Religio-Philosophical Discourses in the Mediterranean World

Religio-Philosophical Discourses in the Mediterranean World
Author: Anders Klostergaard Petersen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2017-03-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004323139

This first volume of the new Brill series “Ancient Philosophy & Religion” offers analyses of Platonic philosophy and piety, the emergence of a common religio-philosophical discourse in Antiquity, the place of Jesus among ancient philosophers, and responses of pagan philosophers to Christianity from the second century to Late Antiquity.

A New History of Greek Mathematics

A New History of Greek Mathematics
Author: Reviel Netz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2022-09-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108991912

The ancient Greeks played a fundamental role in the history of mathematics and their ideas were reused and developed in subsequent periods all the way down to the scientific revolution and beyond. In this, the first complete history for a century. Reviel Netz offers a panoramic view of the rise and influence of Greek mathematics and its significance in world history. He explores the Near Eastern antecedents and the social and intellectual developments underlying the subject's beginnings in Greece in the fifth century BCE. He leads the reader through the proofs and arguments of key figures like Archytas, Euclid and Archimedes, and considers the totality of the Greek mathematical achievement which also includes, in addition to pure mathematics, such applied fields as optics, music, mechanics and, above all, astronomy. This is the story not only of a major historical development, but of some of the finest mathematics ever created.

Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation

Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation
Author: Kjetil Kringlebotten
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2023-09-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666771252

Providing a metaphysical grounding for liturgical participation, this book argues that “active participation” in the liturgy must be understood principally as our participation in God’s act, particularly in the act of Christ, and only secondarily as our ritual involvement. Utilizing Neoplatonist philosophy, Kjetil Kringlebotten proposes that this should be understood in terms of theurgy, which is the human participation in divine action, which finds its consummation in the incarnation of Christ. Without the incarnation all acts will remain extrinsic and imposed but acts can become real and intrinsic precisely because the incarnation makes possible true union with the divine, a metaphysical union-in-distinction, without confusion, because this union is not extrinsic. Through union with Christ, as the one common focus of the divine-human relation, we can have true union with God and may offer true worship. In order to make sense of active participation, then, we need to understand theology in theurgic terms, where theurgy is understood not as a mechanical “coercion” of God but as a participation in His act, in creation and through Christ as the true theurgist, the “master theurgist,” Whose work transforms our act and the liturgy.

Proclus: Commentary on Plato's 'Republic'

Proclus: Commentary on Plato's 'Republic'
Author: Dirk Baltzly
Publisher: Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Republic
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2022-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107154715

The second volume of the first complete translation of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Republic.

Proclus: Commentary on Plato's 'Republic'

Proclus: Commentary on Plato's 'Republic'
Author:
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2022-05-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1009234099

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use which the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed by a Greek word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The second volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the tripartite soul and the virtues, female philosopher rulers, and the metaphysics and epistemology of the central books of the Republic. The longest of the essays in Volume II interprets the nature and significance of the 'marriage number' whose miscalculation leads to the degeneration of the ideal city-state.