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This book presents a comprehensive study into Plato's theological doctrines, offering an important re-valuation of the status of Plato's gods and the relation between metaphysics and theology according to Plato. Starting from an examination of Plato's views of religion and the relation between religion and morality, Gerd Van Riel investigates Plato's innovative ways of speaking about the gods. This theology displays a number of diverging tendencies - viewing the gods as perfect moral actors, as cosmological principles or as celestial bodies whilst remaining true to traditional anthropomorphic representations. Plato's views are shown to be unified by the emphasis on the goodness of the gods i...
Essays on key moments in the intellectual history of the West This book forms a major contribution to the discussion on fate, providence and moral responsibility in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early Modern times. Through 37 original papers, renowned scholars from many different countries, as well as a number of young and promising researchers, write the history of the philosophical problems of freedom and determinism since its origins in pre-socratic philosophy up to the seventeenth century. The main focus points are classic Antiquity (Plato and Aristotle), the Neoplatonic synthesis of late Antiquity (Plotinus, Proclus, Simplicius), and thirteenth-century scholasticism (Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent). They do not only represent key moments in the intellectual history of the West, but are also the central figures and periods to which Carlos Steel, the dedicatary of this volume, has devoted his philosophical career.
This book presents a comprehensive study into Plato's theological doctrines, offering an important re-valuation of the status of Plato's gods and the relation between metaphysics and theology according to Plato. Starting from an examination of Plato's views of religion and the relation between religion and morality, Gerd Van Riel investigates Plato's innovative ways of speaking about the gods. This theology displays a number of diverging tendencies - viewing the gods as perfect moral actors, as cosmological principles or as celestial bodies whilst remaining true to traditional anthropomorphic representations. Plato's views are shown to be unified by the emphasis on the goodness of the gods i...
Studies of the notion of theoria and of the contemplative life have often been restricted to Plato and Aristotle. This volume shows that aspirations to contemplation and the life of the intellect survived long after the classical period, turning into topics of heated debates, powerful arguments and original applications throughout the Hellenistic, imperial, and late antique periods. The introduction attempts to reconstruct all the problems pertaining to the contemplative life in Antiquity, and the twelve papers, written by distinguished scholars, offer a thorough study of the appropriation, criticism and transformation of Plato’s and Aristotle’s positions on the contemplative life, including its epistemological and metaphysical foundation. The volume ranges from Theophrastus to the end of Antiquity, including Jewish and Christian authors, with a focus on Platonism from Cicero to Damascius.
The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity comprises over forty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of the period 200–800 CE. Designed as a successor to The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (edited by A. H. Armstrong), it takes into account some forty years of scholarship since the publication of that volume. The contributors examine philosophy as it entered literature, science and religion, and offer new and extensive assessments of philosophers who until recently have been mostly ignored. The volume also includes a complete digest of all philosophical works known to have been written during this period. It will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in this rich and still emerging field.
Plato is well known both for the harsh condemnations of images and image-making poets that appear in his dialogues and for the vivid and intense imagery that he himself uses in his matchless prose. Through their resemblance to true reality, images have the power to move their viewers to action and to change themselves, but because of their distance from true reality, that power always remains problematic. Two recurrent problems addressed here are how an image resembles what it represents and how to avoid mistaking that image for what it represents. Plato and the Power of Images comprises twelve chapters on the ways Plato has used images, and the ways we could, or should, understand their status as images.
This book explores how introductory methods shaped intellectual activity in various fields of thought of the post-Hellenistic Age and Late Antiquity by framing them in a wider interdisciplinary framework.
Forms and Concepts is the first comprehensive study of the central role of concepts and concept acquisition in the Platonic tradition. It sets up a stimulating dialogue between Plato’s innatist approach and Aristotle’s much more empirical response. The primary aim is to analyze and assess the strategies with which Platonists responded to Aristotle’s (and Alexander of Aphrodisias’) rival theory. The monograph culminates in a careful reconstruction of the elaborate attempt undertaken by the Neoplatonist Proclus (6th century AD) to devise a systematic Platonic theory of concept acquisition.
Traditional scholarship has generally neglected the philosophy of nature in Greek Neoplatonism. In the last few decades, however, this attitude has changed radically. Natural philosophy has increasingly been regarded as a crucial aspect of late antique thought. Furthermore, several studies have outlined the impressive historical legacy of Neoplatonic physics. Building on this new interest, the ten papers published here concentrate on Neoplatonic philosophy of nature from Plotinus to Simplicius, and on its main conceptual features and its relation to the previous philosophical and scientific traditions. The papers were presented at a conference sponsored by the European Science Foundation in Castelvecchio Pascoli in June 2006. This volume makes an important contribution to the understanding of Greek Neoplatonism and its historical significance.