Download or read book Aristotle and Other Platonists written by Lloyd P. Gerson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."—from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony.
Download or read book The Middle Platonists 80 B C to A D 220 written by John M. Dillon and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of Contents Preface Abbreviations 1 The Old Academy and the Themes of Middle Platonism 1 2 Antiochus of Ascalon: The Turn to Dogmatism 52 3 Platonism at Alexandria: Eudorus and Philo 114 4 Plutarch of Chaeroneia and the Origins of Second-Century Platonism 184 5 The Athenian School in the Second Century A.D. 231 6 The 'School of Gaius': Shadow and Substance 266 7 The Neopythagoreans 341 8 Some Loose Ends 384 Bibliography 416 Afterword 422 General Index 453 Index of Platonic Passages 458 Modern Authorities Quoted 459.
Download or read book The Cambridge Platonists written by C. A. Patrides and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1980-11-06 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains selected discourses chosen to illustrate the tenets characteristic of the influential movement known as Cambridge Platonism.
Download or read book From Plato to Platonism written by Lloyd P. Gerson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-27 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism." Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."
Download or read book The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy written by Samuel M. Kaldas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often neglected by historians today, the seventeenth-century philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists were recognised in their time as some of the most influential and controversial philosophers in England. Whereas most studies of the Cambridge Platonists have discussed their later careers, this book focuses on their early, formative years at Cambridge during the English Civil Wars. Samuel M. Kaldas explores how the Cambridge Platonists addressed issues central to philosophy of religion as we know it today through their engagement with early seventeenth-century religious controversies about predestination, the character and nature of God, and the role of reason in religion. His study serves as an accessible introduction to both the Cambridge Platonists, and to English religious controversies that contributed to the birth of the modern philosophy of religion. At the same time, Kaldas provides context for and fresh insights into the Cambridge Platonists' intellectual development and the coherence of their thought.
Download or read book Aristotelians and Platonists written by Luigi Morelli and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-11-25 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of this book is Rudolf Steiner’s “culmination in the twentieth century,” or the convergence of the working of Aristotelians and Platonists for the renewal of culture. And questions arise. Where is the whole of the School of Michael at present? How can we characterize and honor one and the other stream, and avoid stereotypes and misunderstandings? This work approaches the matter in its historical unfolding, in three successive steps, in which Steiner/Aristotle’s and Plato/Schröer’s incarnations form a thread. The first tableau opens up in the previous Age of Michael, in Greece, when Plato and Aristotle inaugurated the work of the two Michaelic streams. The second addresses the Middle Ages, and centers around the contrast between Alain de Lille and Thomas Aquinas, between the School of Chartres and Scholasticism. Steiner’s and Schröer’s life tasks in the nineteenth century form the prelude to the present. The heart of the book, and its longest section, looks at the present. It contrasts the working of Aristotelians and Platonists in the natural sciences, in psychology and in the social sciences. From the ground of extensive observation and characterization, it then turns to pressing questions. What can Platonists learn from Aristotelians? And how about the reverse? Starting from the example of individuals meeting across the streams, how can we extend this understanding so that it becomes an ongoing practice and a cultural concern? How can Michaelic individuals and institutions work in ways that honor the whole of the Michaelic movement?
Download or read book An Anthology of the Cambridge Platonists written by Douglas Hedley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-08 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notwithstanding their neglect in many histories of ideas in the West, the Cambridge Platonists constitute the most significant and influential group of thinkers in the Platonic tradition between the Florentine Renaissance and the Romantic Age. This anthology offers readers a unique, thematically structured compendium of their key texts, along with an extensive introduction and a detailed account of their legacy. The volume draws upon a resurgence of interest in thinkers such as Benjamin Whichcote, 1609–1683; Ralph Cudworth, 1618–1688; Henry More, 1614–1687; John Smith, 1618–1652, and Anne Conway 1631–1679, and includes hitherto neglected extracts and some works of less familiar authors within the group, like George Rust 1627?–1670; Joseph Glanvill, 1636–1680, and John Norris 1657–1712. It also highlights the Cambridge Platonists’ important role in the history of philosophy and theology, influencing luminaries such as Shaftesbury, Berkeley, Leibniz, Joseph de Maistre, S.T. Coleridge, and W.R. Emerson. An Anthology of the Cambridge Platonists is an indispensable guide to the serious study of a pivotal group of Western metaphysicians and is of great value for both students and scholars of philosophy, literature, history, and theology. Key Features The only systematic anthology to the Cambridge Platonists available, facilitating quick comprehension of key themes and ideas Uses new translations of the Latin works, vastly improving upon faulty and misleading earlier translations Offers a wide range of new perspective on the Cambridge Platonists, showing the extent of their influence in early modern philosophy and beyond.
Download or read book The Cambridge Platonists written by Sarah Hutton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illustrates the vitality and diversity of the seventeenth-century philosophers now known as the “Cambridge Platonists”, focusing chiefly on Henry More, Ralph Cudworth and two women associated with the group — Anne Conway and Damaris Masham. The “Cambridge Platonists” made significant contributions to early modern philosophy. Their Platonist sobriquet obscures the fact that they were at the forefront of new thinking of their day.Some of the first English philosophers to write in the vernacular, they tackled the big themes of seventeenth-century philosophy (materialism, determinism, scepticism, atheism) and contributed original and innovative ideas in metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and ethics. This volume highlights their treatment of some key philosophical themes (from the infinity of the world and the concept of substance to consciousness animals, love), and their inter-connections with contemporary philosophers (Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke). This book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and Philosophy graduates. The chapters in this book were originally published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
Download or read book The Neo Platonists written by Thomas Whittaker and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Platonists written by John Tulloch and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context written by G.A. Rogers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the moral sphere ; they held that practical j u d g e m e n t came down in the last instance to individual conscience ; and they laid the foundations of our modern conceptions of conscience and liberty. But at the same time they ma intained the existence of eternal truths , and of a Good-in-itself , identical with Truth and Being, refusing to admit that freedom of conscience i m p li e d moral relativism. They were critics of dogmatism, and of the sectarian notion of "enthusiasm" as a source of illumination , on the grounds that both were disruptive of social harmony; they pleaded the cause of reason , in the hope that it could become the foundation of all human knowledge . Yet , for all that , they ma intained that a certain sort of mystical illumination lay at the heart of all true thought , and that human reason had validity only in virtue of i t s divine origin . They debated with Des cartes and took a keen interest in his mech- ism and his dualism ; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality link ing all phenomena.
Download or read book Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250 written by George Boys-Stones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy.
Download or read book Platonism at the Origins of Modernity written by Douglas Hedley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-12-22 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays offers an overview of the range and breadth of Platonic philosophy in the early modern period. It examines philosophers of Platonic tradition, such as Cusanus, Ficino, and Cudworth. The book also addresses the impact of Platonism on major philosophers of the period, especially Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Shaftesbury and Berkeley.
Download or read book Cambridge Platonist Spirituality written by Charles Taliaferro and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology collects essays, poetry and treatises by a group of English philosophers from the Age of Reason who were devoted to the goodness of God and the spiritual importance of rationalism. These philosophers, known as the Cambridge Platonists, produced a movement in philosophical theology that flourished around Cambridge University in the seventeenth century and influenced not only Great Britain, but the United States and beyond. Their school of thought emphasized the great goodness of God, the compatibility of reason and faith, an integrated life of virtue, and the deep joy of living in concord with God. This volume introduces and presents the key documents of the Cambridge Platonist movement while setting its thinkers in their historical and religious context: the decades of turbulence and political crises surrounding the English Civil War.
Download or read book Platonism and the Objects of Science written by Scott Berman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the objects of science? Are they just the things in our scientific experiments that are located in space and time? Or does science also require that there be additional things that are not located in space and time? Using clear examples, these are just some of the questions that Scott Berman explores as he shows why alternative theories such as Nominalism, Contemporary Aristotelianism, Constructivism, and Classical Aristotelianism, fall short. He demonstrates why the objects of scientific knowledge need to be not located in space or time if they are to do the explanatory work scientists need them to do. The result is a contemporary version of Platonism that provides us with the best way to explain what the objects of scientific understanding are, and how those non-spatiotemporal things relate to the spatiotemporal things of scientific experiments, as well as everything around us, including even ourselves.
Download or read book The Platonism of Walter Pater written by Adam Lee and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a teacher of Plato in Oxford's Literae Humaniores, Walter Pater was informed by philosophy from his earliest essays to his last book. The Platonism of Walter Pater examines Pater's deep engagement with Platonism throughout his career. It overturns his reputation as a superficial aesthete known mainly for his 'Conclusion' to The Renaissance to reposition his contribution to literature and the history of ideas. In his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth, Pater was influenced by several of Plato's dialogues. Phaedrua, Symposium, Theaetetus, Cratylus, and The Republic informed his philosophy of beauty, history, myth, knowledge, ethics, language, and style. As a philosopher, critic, and artist, Plato embodied what it meant to be an author to Pater, who imitated his creative practice from vision to expression. For Pater Platonism was also a point of contact with his contemporaries, including Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde, offering a means to take new measure of their literary relationships. Using the interdisciplinary critical tools of Pater's own educational milieu which combined literature, philosophy, and classics, The Platonism of Walter Pater repositions the importance Pater's contribution to literature and the history of ideas.
Download or read book Christian Platonism written by Alexander J. B. Hampton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 875 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of Platonism, as a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism.
