Download or read book Six Lectures on Plotinus and Gnosticism written by Th.G. Sinnige and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book an attempt is made to single out those elements in the philosophical system of the Enneads that stand apart from the Platonist tradition. On the basis of an extensive analysis of fundamental texts the author shows that what Plotinus had in mind was a quite independent paradigm of metaphysical theology, with at its centre the human person.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Plotinus written by William Ralph Inge and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Platonizing Sethian Background of Plotinus s Mysticism written by Zeke Mazur and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Platonizing Sethian Background of Plotinus’s Mysticism, Zeke Mazur offers a radical reconceptualization of Plotinus with reference to Gnostic thought and praxis, chiefly as evidenced by Coptic works among the Nag Hammadi Codices whose Greek Vorlagen were read in Plotinus’s school.
Download or read book Plotinus on the Appearance of Time and the World of Sense written by Deepa Majumdar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plotinus (c.205-70) was a Neoplatonist philosopher, his work posthumously published by Porphyry and divided into six books, nine tractates each, called the Enneads. In this book Majumdar makes a valuable addition to the literature on his work, especially Ennead III.7(45)11-13 - in particular explaining Plotinus' cosmology using the genus-species model of soul, coordinating the literature on the appearance of time and the cosmos with that on the larger issue of Plotinian "emanation" and examining the role of tolma and the restless nature of soul in this conjoint appearance. This book investigates Plotinian "emanation," its laws of poiesis (contemplative making ) and the roles of nature, matter, logos, (rational formative principle) and contemplation and highlights the subtler details of Plotinus' cosmology by disentangling conceptual issues about the nature of soul and self ("we") and their impact on the process of generation of time and the cosmos.
Download or read book Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism Epistemology and Ethics written by David J. Yount and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues against the common view that there are no essential differences between Plato and the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, on the issues of mysticism, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning by examining the ways in which Plato and Plotinus claim that it is possible to have an ultimate experience that answers the most significant philosophical questions, David J. Yount provides an extended analysis of why we should interpret both philosophers as mystics. The book then moves on to demonstrate that both philosophers share a belief in non-discursive knowledge and the methods to attain it, including dialectic and recollection, and shows that they do not essentially differ on any significant views on ethics. Making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology and Ethics shows the similarities between the thought of these two philosophers on a variety of philosophical questions, such as meditation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, truth, happiness and love.
Download or read book The Philosophy Theology and Rhetoric of Marius Victorinus written by Stephen A. Cooper and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pagan rhetor, (Neo-)Platonist philosopher, Christian theologian This collection of essays is devoted to the rhetoric, Neoplatonic philosophy, and Christian theology of Marius Victorinus, a mid-fourth-century professor of rhetoric and philosopher who converted to Christianity late in life. Scholars from eight different countries, some of whom have not previously published in English, reflect on debates about his writings and theological development. These topics include Victorinus's deployment of philosophical sources for trinitarian theology, possible connections in his work to Origen, Augustine, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Gnosticism, as well as his contributions to Latin rhetoric and dialectic. Contributors include Jan Dominik Bogataj, Michael Chase, Nello Cipriani, Stephen A. Cooper, Volker Henning Drecoll, Lenka Karfíková, Josef Lössl, Václav Němec, Thomas Riesenweber, Guadalupe Lopetegui Semperena, Miran Špelič, Chiara O. Tommasi, John D. Turner, and Florian Zacher. The chapters in this volume are of great interest to students of late antique philosophy, Christian theology, and Latin rhetoric.
Download or read book The Joy of Religion written by Ariel Glucklich and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a psychological and historical approach, the book describes the ways that religions deepen and prolong feelings of wellbeing.
Download or read book Plotinus the Platonist written by David J. Yount and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this insightful new book David J. Yount argues, against received wisdom, that there are no essential differences between the metaphysics of Plato and Plotinus. Yount covers the core principles of Plotinian thought: The One or Good, Intellect, and All-Soul (the Three Hypostases), Beauty, God(s), Forms, Emanation, Matter, and Evil. After addressing the interpretive issues that surround the authenticity of Plato's works, Plotinus: The Platonist deftly argues against the commonly held view that Plotinus is best interpreted as a Neo-Platonist, proposing he should be thought of as a Platonist proper. Yount presents thorough explanations and quotations from the works of each classical philosopher to demonstrate his thesis, concluding comprehensively that Plato and Plotinus do not essentially differ on their metaphysical conceptions. This is an ideal text for Plato and Plotinus scholars and academics, and excellent supplementary reading for upper-level undergraduates students and postgraduate students of ancient philosophy.
Download or read book Nag Hammadi Bibliography 1995 2006 written by David Scholer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-01-31 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the third volume of the immensely useful Nag Hammadi Bibliography, the first volume of which covered 1948–1969 and was the first publication in the Nag Hammadi Studies series. The second volume covered 1970–1994. This third volume provides a complete integration of Supplements II/1–II/8 to the Bibliography as published in Novum Testamentum 1998–2008, with additions and corrections. This latest update contains 3,063 entries, with the set of three volumes containing 11,580 entries. Nag Hammadi and Gnostic studies continue to be of critical importance for the study of ancient religions in the Graeco-Roman world and for the study of the world of early Christianity, and the present bibliography provides an indispensable reference tool for work in these fields.
Download or read book Nag Hammadi Bibliography written by David M. Scholer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the third volume of the immensely useful "Nag Hammadi Bibliography," the first volume of which covered 1948a "1969 and was the first publication in the Nag Hammadi Studies series. The second volume covered 1970a "1994. This third volume provides a complete integration of Supplements II/1a "II/8 to the Bibliography as published in "Novum Testamentum" 1998a "2008, with additions and corrections. This latest update contains 3,063 entries, with the set of three volumes containing 11,580 entries. Nag Hammadi and Gnostic studies continue to be of critical importance for the study of ancient religions in the Graeco-Roman world and for the study of the world of early Christianity, and the present bibliography provides an indispensable reference tool for work in these fields.
Download or read book Gnostica Judaica Catholica written by Gilles Quispel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a rich and varied collection of essays by Gilles Quispel (1916-2006), Professor of the History of the Early Church at Utrecht University from 1951 until his retirement in 1983. During his illustrious career, Professor Quispel was also visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1964/65, and visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1969 until 1974. The fifty essays collected in this volume testify to most of the prominent themes from Professor Quispela (TM)s scholarly career: the writings of the Nag Hammadi library in general and the "Gospel of Thomas" in particular; Tatiana (TM)s "Diatessaron" and its influences; the "Hermetica"; Mani and Manichaeism; the Jewish origins of Gnosticism; and Gnosis and the future of Christianity. This volume also makes a number of his less known earlier publications (mainly presented under the heading a ~Catholicaa (TM)) available to the international community. Until shortly before he died, Professor Quispel remained active in his study of the "Gospel of Thomas." He had been one of the first to acquire the Coptic text of the "Gospel of Thomas," of which he published the first translation in 1959 and his final translation in 2005. He was also active in researching the "Diatessaron," and Valentinus a ~the Gnostica (TM). One of his most recent essays a " published for the first time in this volume a " is on a ~the Muslim Jesus.a (TM)
Download or read book Plotinus in Dialogue with the Gnostics written by Jean-Marc Narbonne and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-18 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The point of view put forth in the following pages differs greatly from the common perspective according to which the treatises 30 to 33 constitute a single work, a Großschrift, and this single work, Plotinus’ essential response to the Gnostics. Our perspective is that of an ongoing discussions with his “Gnostic”—yet Platonizing—friends, which started early in his writings (at least treatise 6), developed into what we could call a Großzyklus (treatises 27 to 39), and went on in later treatises as well (e. g. 47-48, 51).
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 2014-01-06 with total page 342 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 Contingency Time and Possibility written by Pascal Massie and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we are to distinguish mere non-being from that which is not, yet may be, from that which was not, yet could have been, or from that which will not be, yet could become, we are committed in some way to grant being to possibilities. The possible is not actual; yet it is not nothing. What then could it be? What ontological status could it possess? In Contingency, Time, and Possibility: An Essay on Aristotle and Duns Scotus, Pascal Massie opens these questions by combining two approaches: First, an original inquiry that analyses the notions of chance, fate, event, contradiction, and so forth, and suggests that the distinction between potency and act arises from a confrontation with the impossible. Second, a historical inquiry that focuses on Aristotle and Duns Scotus, two key figures contributing to a fundamental transformation in the history of Western ontology; namely, the transition from a metaphysics of nature (Aristotle) to a metaphysics of the will (Scotus). In doing so, this book departs from the prevailing interpretation of the history of modal logic according to which Scotus rejected the principle of plenitude attributed to Aristotle and replaced the ancient diachronic theory of possibilities with a synchronic one, thereby contributing to a "possible world's semantics." Rather, Massie argues that in its proper ontological import, the question of possibility concerns the limit between being and non-being and that this limit must be thought in terms of temporality. With Scotus, however, a radical shift occurs. Possibilities are understood in terms of will, creation, omnipotence, and transcending freedom. As such, they belong to the realm of what is supremely actual (i.e., superabundant activity). What used to be understood as a lesser degree of being (the quasi non-being of uninformed matter and mere possibilities) becomes the mark of omnipotence.
Download or read book Commission Narratives written by István Czachesz and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commission Narratives is based on the author's doctoral dissertation in Groningen (2002). The monograph offers the first overarching, comparative treatment of commission narratives in the canonical and apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, analysing them in their ancient literary setting. Following a survey of this widespread narrative theme in the cultural environment of early Christianity, Czachesz establishes a threefold social typology of divine commission (institutional, prophetic and philosophical) and explores the occurences of the three types in the canonical and apocryphal Acts. The central chapters of the book provide a close reading of the textual evidence, investigating intertextual relations, the function of commission in the narrative structure, and the biographical models of self-definition that commission stories offered to the ancient readers in their changing social and ecclesiastical environments. Based on this textual analysis, Czachesz makes new proposals about the reconstruction, Sitz im Leben and dating of several apocryphal Acts. Finally, he examines the synchronic structure of commission, showing that the variety of commission narratives emerges from a constant set of motifs that are generated by interactions among the characters.
Download or read book Psychedelic Mysticism written by Morgan Shipley and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concerned with scholarly, popular, and religious backdrops that understand the connection between psychedelics and mystical experiences to be devoid of moral concerns and ethical dimensions—a position supported empirically by the rise of acid fascism and psychedelic cults by the late 1960s—Psychedelic Mysticism: Transforming Consciousness, Religious Experiences, and Voluntary Peasants in Postwar America traces the development of sixties psychedelic mysticism from the deconditioned mind and perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley, to the sacramental ethics of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, to the altruistic religiosity practiced by Stephen Gaskin and The Farm. Building directly off the pioneering psychedelic writing of Huxley, these psychedelic mystics understood the height of psychedelic consciousness as an existential awareness of unitive oneness, a position that offered worldly alternatives to the maladies associated with the postwar moment (e.g., vapid consumerism and materialism, lifeless conformity, unremitting racism, heightened militarism). In opening a doorway to a common world, Morgan Shipley locates how psychedelics challenged the coherency of Western modernity by fundamentally reorienting postwar society away from neoliberal ideologies and toward a sacred understanding of reality defined by mutual coexistence and responsible interdependence. In 1960s America, psychedelics catalyzed a religious awakening defined by compassion, expressed through altruism, and actualized in projects that sought to ameliorate the conditions of the least advantaged among us. In the exact moments that historians and cultural critics often locate as signaling the death knell of the counterculture, Gaskin and The Farm emerged, not as a response to the perceived failures of the hippies, nor as an alternative to sixties politicos, but in an effort to fulfill the religious obligation to help teach the world how to live more harmoniously. Today, as we continue to confront issues of socioeconomic inequality, entrenched differences, widespread violence, and the limits of religious pluralism, Psychedelic Mysticism serves as a timely reminder of how religion in America can operate as a tool for destabilization and as a means to actively reimagine the very basis of how people relate—such a legacy can aid in our own efforts to build a more peaceful, sustainable, and compassionate world.
Download or read book Introduction and Commentary to Plotinus Treatise 33 II 9 Against the Gnostics and related studies written by Jean-Marc Narbonne and published by Presses de l'Université Laval. This book was released on 2019-02-08T00:00:00-05:00 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plotinus’ Treatise 33 (II.9), entitled Against the Gnostics, is one of the most fascinating and complex writings of the Roman Neoplatonic master, as well as one of the most polemical, as it is the sole treatise to openly side against a rival sect or school of thought. We here present the reader with the full analysis of this exceptional treatise, in its original English, of Zeke Mazur (), one of the scholars most deeply versed in the connections between the Gnostics, most notably those identified as belonging to a subgroup of Platonising Sethians, and the first generation of Neoplatonists (i.e. Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry). An abridged and simplified version of the English original, accompanied by a translation of Treatise 33 (II.9) itself, will appear in 2018 in French in the Collection des Universités de France, alias the Collection Budé.