The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Psychology (with ethics and religion)

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Psychology (with ethics and religion)
Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2005
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780801489877

The third volume of this invaluable sourcebook covers three main subject areas. First, the metaphysics of Aristotle's logical works: the concepts of universal and particular underwent surprising transformations in this period, which gave rise to debates, still raging today, on personal survival after an interruption such as death. Second, logic in a more conventional sense: perhaps the most impressive debate was on the existence of the subject in singular and universal statements. There was also debate about the very different Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of syllogism, of modal logic, of induction, of the nature of mathematics, and of philosophy of language. Third, the higher metaphysics of the Neoplatonists taught Augustine, and indirectly Descartes, to look for truth within themselves. The Neoplatonists struggled with the question whether our higher intellectual selves have distinct individuality, and thus they fed both sides in the great medieval debate between Aquinas and the followers of Averroes on individual human immortality. All sources appear in English translation and are carefully linked and cross-referenced by editorial comment and explanation. Bibliographies are provided throughout.

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD
Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher:
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2012
Genre: Ethics
ISBN: 9781472598141

"This is a sourcebook that draws upon the 400 years of transition from ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval philosophy of Islam and the West. Philosophy was then often written in the form of commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Many ideas wrongly credited to the Middle Ages derive from this period, e.g. that of impetus in dynamics and intentional objects in philosophy of mind. The later Neoplatonist commentators fought a losing battle with Christianity, but inadvertently made Aristotle acceptable to Christians by ascribing to him belief in a Creator God and human immortality. They also provided a panorama of up to 1000 years of preceding Greek philosophy, much of it otherwise lost. They serve as the missing link essential for understanding the history of Western philosophy. Psychology was for the Neoplatonist commentators the gateway to metaphysics and theology. It was the subject on which Plato and Aristotle disagreed most, and the subject on which the commentators went furthest beyond them in their search for an amalgamation. Ethics and religious practice fall naturally under psychology and are included in this volume. All sources appear in English translation and are carefully linked and cross-referenced by editorial comment and explanation."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD
Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher:
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2012
Genre: Philosophy, Ancient
ISBN: 9781472598134

"This is a sourcebook that draws upon the 400 years of transition from ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval philosophy of Islam and the West. Philosophy was then often written in the form of commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Many ideas wrongly credited to the Middle Ages derive from this period, e.g. that of impetus in dynamics and intentional objects in philosophy of mind. The later Neoplatonist commentators fought a losing battle with Christianity, but inadvertently made Aristotle acceptable to Christians by ascribing to him belief in a Creator God and human immortality. They also provided a panorama of up to 1000 years of preceding Greek philosophy, much of it otherwise lost. They serve as the missing link essential for understanding the history of Western philosophy. Psychology was for the Neoplatonist commentators the gateway to metaphysics and theology. It was the subject on which Plato and Aristotle disagreed most, and the subject on which the commentators went furthest beyond them in their search for an amalgamation. Ethics and religious practice fall naturally under psychology and are included in this volume. All sources appear in English translation and are carefully linked and cross-referenced by editorial comment and explanation."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Physics

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Physics
Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2004
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

This is a sourcebook that draws upon the 400 years of transition from ancient Greek philosophy to the medieval philosophy of Islam and the West. Philosophy was then often written in the form of commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle. Many ideas wrongly credited to the Middle Ages derive from this period, e.g. that of impetus in dynamics and intentional objects in philosophy of mind. The later Neoplatonist commentators fought a losing battle with Christianity, but inadvertently made Aristotle acceptable to Christians by ascribing to him belief in a Creator God and human immortality. They also provided a panorama of up to 1000 years of preceding Greek philosophy, much of it otherwise lost. They serve as the missing link essential for understanding the history of Western philosophy. The physics of the commentators was innovatory. The Neoplatonists among them thought that the world of space and time was causally ordered by a non-spatial, non-temporal world, and this required original thinking. Of the sixth-century Neoplatonists, Simplicius considered his teacher's ideas on space and time to be unprecedented, and Philoponus revised Aristotelianism, to produce a new physics built around the Christian belief in God's creation of the world. The Middle Ages borrowed from Philoponus and other commentators, the proofs of a finite past, the idea of degrees of latitude in change and mixture, and in dynamics the idea of impetus and the defence of motion in a vacuum. All sources appear in English translation and are carefully linked and cross-referenced by editorial comment and explanation.

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Physics

The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD: Physics
Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2005
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780801489884

Physics in Neoplatonist thought, the subject which occupies the second volume of this sourcebook, was innovative: the world of space and time was causally ordered by a nonspatial, nontemporal world, and this view required original thinking

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism
Author: Pauliina Remes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317492889

Although Neoplatonism has long been studied by classicists, until recently most philosophers saw the ideas of Plotinus et al as a lot of religious/magical mumbo-jumbo. Recent work however has provided a new perspective on the philosophical issues in Neoplatonism and Pauliina Remes new introduction to the subject is the first to take account of this fresh research and provides a reassessment of Neoplatonism's philosophical credentials. Covering the Neoplatonic movement from its founder, Plotinus (AD 204-70) to the closure of Plato's Academy in AD 529 Remes explores the ideas of leading Neoplatonists such as Porphyry, lamblichus, Proclus, Simplicius and Damascius as well as less well-known thinkers. Situating their ideas alongside classical Platonism, Stoicism, and the neo-Pythagoreans as well as other intellectual movements of the time such as Gnosticism, Judaism and Christianity, Remes provides a valuable survey for the beginning student and non-specialist.

Augustine on Memory

Augustine on Memory
Author: Kevin G. Grove
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2021
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197587216

Augustine of Hippo, indisputably one of the most important figures for the study of memory, is credited with establishing memory as the inner source of selfhood and locus of the search for God. Yet, those who study memory in Augustine have never before taken into account his preaching. His sermons are the sources of memory's greatest development for Augustine. In Augustine's preaching, especially on the Psalms, the interior gives way to communal exterior. Both the self and search for God are re-established in a shared Christological identity and the communal labors of remembering and forgetting. This book opens with Augustine's early works and Confessions as the beginning of memory and concludes with Augustine's Trinity and preaching on Psalm 50 as the end of memory. The heart of the book, the work of memory, sets forth how ongoing remembering and forgetting in Christ are for Augustine are foundational to the life of grace. To that end, Augustine and his congregants go leaping in memory together, keep festival with abiding traces, and become forgetful runners like St. Paul. Remembering and forgetting in Christ, the ongoing work of memory, prove for Augustine to be actions of reconciliation of the distended experiences of human life-of praising and groaning, labouring and resting, solitude and communion. Augustine on Memory presents this new communal and Christological paradigm not only for Augustinian studies, but also for theologians, philosophers, ethicists, and interdisciplinary scholars of memory.

Ancient and Medieval Greek Etymology

Ancient and Medieval Greek Etymology
Author: Arnaud Zucker
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2021-01-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110714876

This volume on Greek synchronic etymology offers a set of papers evidencing the cultural significance of etymological commitment in ancient and medieval literature. The four sections illustrate the variety of approaches of the same object, which for Greek writers was much more than a technical way of studying language. Contributions focus on the functions of etymology as they were intended by the authors according to their own aims. (1) “Philosophical issues” addresses the theory of etymology and its explanatory power, especially in Plato and in Neoplatonism. (2) “Linguistic issues” discusses various etymologizing techniques and the status of etymology, which was criticized and openly rejected by some authors. (3) “Poetical practices of etymology” investigates the ubiquitous presence of etymological reflections in learned poetry, whatever the genre, didactic, aetiological or epic. (4) “Etymology and word-plays” addresses the vexed question of the limit between a mere pun and a real etymological explanation, which is more than once difficult to establish. The wide range of genres and authors and the interplay between theoretical reflection and applied practice shows clearly the importance of etymology in Greek thought.

Black Terror White Soldiers

Black Terror White Soldiers
Author: David Livingstone
Publisher: David Livingstone
Total Pages: 714
Release: 2013-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1481226509

Far too ignorant of the histories of the rest of the world, being aware of only the accomplishments of Greece, Rome and Europe, Westerners have been made to believe that their societies represent the most superior examples of civilization. However, the Western value system stems from a misconception that, as in nature, human society too is evolving. The idea derives from the hidden influence of secret societies, who followed the belief in spiritual evolution of the Kabbalah, which taught that history would attain its fulfillment when man would become God, and make his own laws. Therefore, the infamous Illuminati gave its name to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which claimed that human progress must abandon "superstition," meaning Christianity, in favor of "reason." Thus the Illuminati succeeded in bringing about the French and American revolutions, which instituted the separation of Church and State, and from that point forward, the Western values of Humanism, seen to include secularism, human rights, democracy and capitalism, have been celebrated as the culmination of centuries of human intellectual evolution. This is the basis of the propaganda which has been used to foster a Clash of Civilizations, where the Islamic world is presented as stubbornly adhering to the anachronistic idea of "theocracy." Where once the spread of Christianity and civilizing the world were used as pretexts for colonization, today a new White Man's Burden makes use of human rights and democracy to justify imperial aggression. However, because, after centuries of decline, the Islamic world is incapable of mobilizing a defense, the Western powers, as part of their age-old strategy of Divide and Conquer, have fostered the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, to both serve as agent-provocateurs and to malign the image of Islam. These sects, known to scholars as Revivalists, opposed the traditions of classical Islamic scholarship in order to create the opportunity to rewrite the laws of the religion to better serve their sponsors. Thus were created the Wahhabi and Salafi sects of Islam, from which were derived the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in the service of the West ever since. But, the story of the development of these Islamic sects involves the bizarre doctrines and hidden networks of occult secret societies, being based on a Rosicrucian myth of Egyptian Freemasonry, which see the Muslim radicals as inheritors of an ancient mystery tradition of the Middle East which was passed on to the Knights Templar during the Crusades, thus forming the foundation of the legends of the Holy Grail. These beliefs would not only form the cause for the association of Western intelligence agencies with Islamic fundamentalists, but would fundamentally shape much of twentieth century history.