Iconology, Neoplatonism, and the Arts in the Renaissance

Iconology, Neoplatonism, and the Arts in the Renaissance
Author: Berthold Hub
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2020-09-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000179117

The mid-twentieth century saw a change in paradigms of art history: iconology. The main claim of this novel trend in art history was that renowned Renaissance artists (such as Botticelli, Leonardo, or Michelangelo) created imaginative syntheses between their art and contemporary cosmology, philosophy, theology, and magic. The Neoplatonism in the books by Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola became widely acknowledged for its lasting influence on art. It thus became common knowledge that Renaissance artists were not exclusively concerned with problems intrinsic to their work but that their artifacts encompassed a much larger intellectual and cultural horizon. This volume brings together historians concerned with the history of their own discipline – and also those whose research is on the art and culture of the Italian Renaissance itself – with historians from a wide variety of specialist fields, in order to engage with the contested field of iconology. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance history, Renaissance studies, historiography, philosophy, theology, gender studies, and literature.

Neoplatonism and the Arts

Neoplatonism and the Arts
Author: Liana Cheney
Publisher:
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2002
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This collection of essays explores the scope of the important relationships between the philosophical system of Neoplatonism and the arts in Italy.

Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance

Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance
Author: Nesca A. Robb
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000362884

Originally published in 1935, the aim of this title is first to give a clear outline of Florentine Neoplatonism, and then to consider its influence on art and literature during a period that extends roughly from the age of Lorenzo de’ Medici to the middle of the sixteenth century and the beginnings of the Counter-Reformation. No rigid divisions of time have been fixed, but with few exceptions the works discussed may be placed between these bounds. Even within these limits it would require a work of greater dimensions that the present to exhaust so large a subject in all its bearings. The leaven of Neoplatonism had penetrated the thought of the age in many directions; this study is confined to such of its manifestations as were, in a somewhat narrow sense, artistic and literary and to the use and abuse of philosophical ideas for aesthetic purposes.

Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature

Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature
Author: James Wilberding
Publisher:
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2012-04-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

This volume dispels the idea that Platonism was an otherworldly enterprise which neglected the study of the natural world. Leading scholars examine how the Platonists of late antiquity sought to understand and explain natural phenomena: their essays offer a new understanding of the metaphysics of Platonism, and its place in the history of science.

Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmonization of Aristotle and Plato

Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmonization of Aristotle and Plato
Author: Ilsetraut Hadot
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2015-01-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004281592

Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmonization of Aristotle and Plato by I. Hadot deals with the Neoplatonist tendency to harmonize the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. It shows that this harmonizing tendency, born in Middle Platonism, prevailed in Neoplatonism from Porphyry and Iamblichus, where it persisted until the end of this philosophy. Hadot aims to illustrate that it is not the different schools themselves, for instance those of Athens and Alexandria, that differ from one another by the intensity of the will to harmonization, but groups of philosophers within these schools.

Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino
Author: Michael J. B. Allen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789004118553

This volume consists of 21 essays on Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus-priest who was the architect of Renaissance Platonism. They cast fascinating new light on his theology, philosophy, and psychology as well as on his influence and sources.

Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought

Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought
Author: Ursula Coope
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-04-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192558285

The Neoplatonists have a perfectionist view of freedom: an entity is free to the extent that it succeeds in making itself good. Free entities are wholly in control of themselves—they are self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing. Neoplatonist philosophers argue that such freedom is only possible for non-bodily things. The human soul is free insofar as it rises above bodily things and engages in intellection, but when it turns its desires to bodily things, it is drawn under the sway of fate and becomes enslaved. Ursula Coope discusses this notion of freedom and its relation to questions about responsibility. She explains the important role of notions of self-reflexivity in Neoplatonist accounts of both freedom and responsibility. In Part I, Coope sets out the puzzles Neoplatonist philosophers face about freedom and responsibility and explains how these puzzles arise from earlier discussions. Part II explores the metaphysical underpinnings of the Neoplatonist notion of freedom (concentrating especially on the views of Plotinus and Proclus). In what sense, if any, is the ultimate first principle of everything (the One) free? If everything else is under this ultimate first principle, how can anything other than the One be free? What is the connection between freedom and nonbodiliness? Finally, Coope considers in Part III questions about responsibility, arising from this perfectionist view of freedom. Why are human beings responsible for their behaviour, in a way that other animals are not? If we are enslaved when we act viciously, how can we be to blame for our vicious actions and choices?

Neoplatonic Aesthetics

Neoplatonic Aesthetics
Author: Liana Cheney
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2004
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Neoplatonic Aesthetics: Music, Literature, and the Visual Arts explores the idea of a Neoplatonic aesthetic, a philosophy of the arts based on the writings of Plato and the Neoplatonists - principally Plotinus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Nicolas Cusanus, and Marsilio Ficino - and more contemporary philosophers - Stephen MacKenna, Iris Murdoch, Denman Ross, Jacques Derrida, and Hans Georg Gadamer. This book examines the artistic production of figures such as Gioseffe Zarlino, Fra Angelico, Leon Battista Alberti, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Giorgio Vasari, and it formulates theoretical approaches to contemporary production based in the Neoplatonic philosophies.

The Neoplatonic Socrates

The Neoplatonic Socrates
Author: Danielle A. Layne
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2014-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812246292

Today the name Socrates invokes a powerful idealization of wisdom and nobility that would surprise many of his contemporaries, who excoriated the philosopher for corrupting youth. The problem of who Socrates "really" was—the true history of his activities and beliefs—has long been thought insoluble, and most recent Socratic studies have instead focused on reconstructing his legacy and tracing his ideas through other philosophical traditions. But this scholarship has neglected to examine closely a period of philosophy that has much to reveal about what Socrates stood for and how he taught: the Neoplatonic tradition of the first six centuries C.E., which at times decried or denied his importance yet relied on his methods. In The Neoplatonic Socrates, leading scholars in classics and philosophy address this gap by examining Neoplatonic attitudes toward the Socratic method, Socratic love, Socrates's divine mission and moral example, and the much-debated issue of moral rectitude. Collectively, they demonstrate the importance of Socrates for the majority of Neoplatonists, a point that has often been questioned owing to the comparative neglect of surviving commentaries on the Alcibiades, Gorgias, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, in favor of dialogues dealing explicitly with metaphysical issues. Supplemented with a contextualizing introduction and a substantial appendix detailing where evidence for Socrates can be found in the extant literature, The Neoplatonic Socrates makes a clear case for the significant place Socrates held in the education and philosophy of late antiquity. Contributors: Crystal Addey, James M. Ambury, John F. Finamore, Michael Griffin, Marilynn Lawrence, Danielle A. Layne, Christina-Panagiota Manolea, François Renaud, Geert Roskam, Harold Tarrant.

Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism

Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism
Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0826266223

Contemporary scholarship tends to view Albert Camus as a modern, but he himself was conscious of the past and called the transition from Hellenism to Christianity "the true and only turning point in history." For Camus, modernity was not fully comprehensible without an examination of the aspirations that were first articulated in antiquity and that later received their clearest expression in Christianity. These aspirations amounted to a fundamental reorientation of human life in politics, religion, science, and philosophy. Understanding the nature and achievement of that reorientation became the central task of Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. Primarily known through its inclusion in a French omnibus edition, it has remained one of Camus' least-read works, yet it marks his first attempt to understand the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity as he charted the movement from the Gospels through Gnosticism and Plotinus to what he calls Augustine's "second revelation" of the Christian faith. Ronald Srigley's translation of this seminal document helps illuminate these aspects of Camus' work. His freestanding English edition exposes readers to an important part of Camus' thought that is often overlooked by those concerned primarily with the book's literary value and supersedes the extant McBride translation by retaining a greater degree of literalness. Srigley has fully annotated Christian Metaphysics to include nearly all of Camus' original citations and has tracked down many poorly identified sources. When Camus cites an ancient primary source, whether in French translation or in the original language, Srigley substitutes a standard English translation in the interest of making his edition accessible to a wider range of readers. His introduction places the text in the context of Camus' better-known later work, explicating its relationship to those mature writings and exploring how its themes were reworked in subsequent books. Arguing that Camus was one of the great critics of modernity through his attempt to disentangle the Greeks from the Christians, Srigley clearly demonstrates the place of Christian Metaphysics in Camus' oeuvre. As the only stand-alone English version of this important work-and a long-overdue critical edition-his fluent translation is an essential benchmark in our understanding of Camus and his place in modern thought.