Download or read book Demiurge and Providence written by Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils and published by Brepols Pub. This book was released on 1999 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the rich legacy of the Timaeus, this study deals with the cross-pollination between Stoic and Platonist readings of Timaeus, spanning the period from Plato's writings to that of the so-called Middle Platonist authors. Plato's Timaeus and Stoic doctrine had their fates intertwined from very early on, both in polemical and reconciliatory contexts. The blend of Platonic and Stoic elements ultimately constituted one of the main conceptual bridges between the pagan tradition on the one hand and the Judeo-Christian, in its own search for the distinction between transcendence and immanence, on the other. Contrary to the received opinion, later platonist authors do not merely borrow Stoic terminology. Rather, in a genuine 'discourse of assimilation' the Stoic analysis of the universe has left a profound mark on Platonist views of the principles, of the place of humans in the universe, as well as of human freedom and its interaction with divine Providence.
Download or read book Ten Gifts of the Demiurge written by Emilie Kutash and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-10-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proclus' commentary on Plato's "Timaeus" is perhaps the most important surviving Neoplatonic commentary. In it Proclus contemplates nature's mysterious origins and at the same time employs the deductive rigour required to address perennial philosophical questions. Nature, for him, is both divine and mathematically transparent. He renders theories of Time, Eternity, Providence, Evil, Soul and Intellect and constructs an elaborate ontology that includes mathematics and astronomy. He gives ample play to pagan theology too, frequently lapsing into the arcane language of the "Chaldaean Oracles". "Ten Gifts of the Demiurge" is an essential companion to this rich but complex and densely wrought text, providing an analysis of its arguments and showing that it, like the cosmos Proclus reveres, is a living coherent whole. The book provides aides to understanding Proclus' work within the complex background of Neoplatonic philosophy, familiarising the reader with the political context of the Athenian school, analysing Proclus' key terminology, and giving background to the philosophical arguments and ancient sciences upon which Proclus draws.Above all, it helps the reader appreciate the varicoloured light that Proclus sheds on the secrets of nature.
Download or read book Fate Providence and Free Will Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a collection of papers about the notions of fate, providence, and free will, as developed and debated in philosophy and religion in the early Imperial age (ca. 31 BCE-250 CE).
Download or read book The Demiurge in Ancient Thought written by Carl Séan O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was the world generated and how does matter continue to be ordered so that the world can continue functioning? Questions like these have existed as long as humanity has been capable of rational thought. In antiquity, Plato's Timaeus introduced the concept of the Demiurge, or Craftsman-god, to answer them. This lucid and wide-ranging book argues that the concept of the Demiurge was highly influential on the many discussions operating in Middle Platonist, Gnostic, Hermetic and Christian contexts in the first three centuries AD. It explores key metaphysical problems such as the origin of evil, the relationship between matter and the First Principle and the deployment of ever-increasing numbers of secondary deities to insulate the First Principle from the sensible world. It also focuses on the decreasing importance of demiurgy in Neoplatonism, with its postulation of procession and return.
Download or read book The Demiurge in Ancient Thought written by Carl Séan O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines religious and 'scientific'/philosophical accounts of world-generation as represented by the figure of the Demiurge, or Craftsman-god.
Download or read book Medieval Theories of Divine Providence 1250 1350 written by Mikko Posti and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Medieval Theories of Divine Providence 1250-1350 Mikko Posti presents a historical and philosophical study of the doctrine of divine providence in 13th- and 14th-century Latin philosophical theology. In addition to offering a fresh and engaging reading of Thomas Aquinas’s ideas concerning providence, Posti focuses on Siger of Brabant, Peter Auriol and Thomas Bradwardine, among others. The book also provides an extended treatment of the relatively little-known 13th-century work Liber de bona fortuna, consisting of Latin translations of chapters found originally in Aristotle’s Ethica Eudemia and Magna moralia. In their treatments of Liber de bona fortuna, the medieval theologians provided philosophically interesting explanations of good fortune and its relationship to divine providence. See inside the book.
Download or read book Calcidius on Plato s Timaeus written by Gretchen Reydams-Schils and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study to assess in its entirety the fourth-century Latin commentary on Plato's Timaeus by the otherwise unknown Calcidius, also addressing features of his Latin translation. The first part examines the authorial voice of the commentator and the overall purpose of the work; the second part provides an overview of the key themes; and the third part reassesses the commentary's relation to Stoicism, Aristotle, potential sources, and the Christian tradition. This commentary was one of the main channels through which the legacy of Plato and Greek philosophy was passed on to the Christian Latin West. The text, which also establishes a connection between Plato's cosmology and Genesis, thus represents a distinctive cultural encounter between the Greek and the Roman philosophical traditions, and between non-Christian and Christian currents of thought.
Download or read book Time and Cosmology in Plato and the Platonic Tradition written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assembles an international team of scholars to move forward the study of Plato’s conception of time, to find fresh insights for interpreting his cosmology, and to reimagine the Platonic tradition.
Download or read book From Stoicism to Platonism written by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-13 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the process during 100 BCE-100 CE by which dualistic Platonism became the reigning school in philosophy.
Download or read book Abrahamic Reflections on Randomness and Providence written by Kelly James Clark and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book addresses the question of how God can providentially govern apparently ungovernable randomness. Medieval theologians confidently held that God is provident, that is, God is the ultimate cause of or is responsible for everything that happens. However, scientific advances since the 19th century pose serious challenges to traditional views of providence. From Darwinian evolution to quantum mechanics, randomness has become an essential part of the scientific worldview. An interdisciplinary team of Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars—biologists, physicists, philosophers and theologians—addresses questions of randomness and providence.
Download or read book Apocalypse of the Alien God written by Dylan M. Burns and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-02-19 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second century, Platonist and Judeo-Christian thought were sufficiently friendly that a Greek philosopher could declare, "What is Plato but Moses speaking Greek?" Four hundred years later, a Christian emperor had ended the public teaching of subversive Platonic thought. When and how did this philosophical rupture occur? Dylan M. Burns argues that the fundamental break occurred in Rome, ca. 263, in the circle of the great mystic Plotinus, author of the Enneads. Groups of controversial Christian metaphysicians called Gnostics ("knowers") frequented his seminars, disputed his views, and then disappeared from the history of philosophy—until the 1945 discovery, at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of codices containing Gnostic literature, including versions of the books circulated by Plotinus's Christian opponents. Blending state-of-the-art Greek metaphysics and ecstatic Jewish mysticism, these texts describe techniques for entering celestial realms, participating in the angelic liturgy, confronting the transcendent God, and even becoming a divine being oneself. They also describe the revelation of an alien God to his elect, a race of "foreigners" under the protection of the patriarch Seth, whose interventions will ultimately culminate in the end of the world. Apocalypse of the Alien God proposes a radical interpretation of these long-lost apocalypses, placing them firmly in the context of Judeo-Christian authorship rather than ascribing them to a pagan offshoot of Gnosticism. According to Burns, this Sethian literature emerged along the fault lines between Judaism and Christianity, drew on traditions known to scholars from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Enochic texts, and ultimately catalyzed the rivalry of Platonism with Christianity. Plunging the reader into the culture wars and classrooms of the high Empire, Apocalypse of the Alien God offers the most concrete social and historical description available of any group of Gnostic Christians as it explores the intersections of ancient Judaism, Christianity, Hellenism, myth, and philosophy.
Download or read book Neo Platonism written by Richard T. Wallis and published by Scribner Book Company. This book was released on 1972 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Neoplatonism, a development of Plato’s metaphysical and religious teaching, whose best-known representatives were Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, was the dominant philosophical school of the later Roman Empire and has been a major influence on European and Near Eastern thought and culture ever since. Yet, though Plotinus has gained fame as a mystic and Porphyry as a formidable opponent of the early Church, the school’s philosophy has been little studied in modern times, largely because of the difficulty of the Neoplatonists’ writings and the lack of a good summary exposition. This defect Dr Wallis seeks to remedy in this, the first full-length study of the school by a single author to appear for over half a century.Dr Wallis’ aim has been to assist readers of the Neoplatonists’ works by an analysis of their leading ideas, based on the most recent scholarship and explaining clearly both what they said and why they said it. Particular attention is given to doctrinal disagreements within the school, and special sections deal with the Neoplatonists’ treatment of Platonic and Aristotelian texts, their attitude to Christianity and their later influence. It is shown how from one point of view Neoplatonism marks a synthesis of Classical Greek thought, whereas from another it applies that synthesis to problems of religious experience and man’s inner life which had been relatively little discussed by its predecessors. It is this application of reason to inner experience, the author suggests, that gives Neoplatonism a continuing importance and special relevance to our own day.”- Publisher
Download or read book Plato s Timaeus as Cultural Icon written by Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New forms of transnational mobility and diasporic belonging have become emblematic of a supposed global condition of uprootedness. Yet much recent theorizing of our so-called postmodern life emphasizes movement and fluidity without interrogating who and what is on the move. This book examines the interdependence of mobility and belonging by considering how homes are formed in relationship to movement. It suggests that movement does not only happen when one leaves home, and that homes are not always fixed in a single location. Home and belonging may involve attachment and movement, fixation and loss, and the transgression and enforcement of boundaries.
Download or read book The Roman Stoics written by Gretchen Reydams-Schils and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-02-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman Stoic thinkers in the imperial period adapted Greek doctrine to create a model of the self that served to connect philosophical ideals with traditional societal values. The Roman Stoics-the most prominent being Marcus Aurelius-engaged in rigorous self-examination that enabled them to integrate philosophy into the practice of living. Gretchen Reydams-Schils's innovative new book shows how these Romans applied their distinct brand of social ethics to everyday relations and responsibilities. The Roman Stoics reexamines the philosophical basis that instructed social practice in friendship, marriage, parenting, and community. From this analysis emerge Stoics who were neither cold nor detached, as the stereotype has it, but all too aware of their human weaknesses. In a valuable contribution to current discussions in the humanities on identity, autonomy, and altruism, Reydams-Schils ultimately conveys the wisdom of Stoics to the citizens of modern society.
Download or read book Plato s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition written by Christina Hoenig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Did God Care written by Dylan M. Burns and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Did God Care? Dylan Burns offers the first comprehensive survey of providence (pronoia) in ancient philosophy, from Plato to Plotinus, that takes into full account the importance and innovations of early Christian thinkers, including Coptic Gnostic and Syriac sources.
Download or read book Plato and the Stoics written by Alex Long and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven essays provide new and detailed explorations of the complex relationship between Plato and the Greek and Roman Stoic traditions.
