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 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 2018-11-08 with total page 0 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 Productive Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy written by Thomas Kjeller Johansen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work investigates how ancient philosophers understood productive knowledge or technê and used it to explain ethics, rhetoric, politics and cosmology. In eleven chapters leading scholars set out the ancient debates about technê from the Presocratic and Hippocratic writers, through Plato and Aristotle and the Hellenistic age (Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics), ending in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Amongst the many themes that come into focus are: the model status of ancient medicine in defining the political art, the similarities between the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of technê, the use of technê as a paradigm for virtue and practical rationality, technê ́s determining role in Platonic conceptions of cosmology, technê ́s relationship to experience and theoretical knowledge, virtue as an 'art of living', the adaptability of the criteria of technê to suit different skills, including philosophy itself, the use in productive knowledge of models, deliberation, conjecture and imagination.
Download or read book One Book the Whole Universe written by Richard D. Mohr and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most wide ranging and stimulating presentation of ancient and modern views on Plato's cosmological dialogue ever published. Highly recommended." David T. Runia, University of Melbourne --
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 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 Chorology written by John Sallis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The major American philosopher . . . makes us want to re-read the Platonic text with fascination. And that is but its grandest gift.” —Daniel Guerriere, professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, Long Beach In Chorology, John Sallis takes up one of the most enigmatic discourses in the history of philosophy. Plato’s discourse on the chora—the chorology—forms the pivotal moment in the Timaeus. The implications of the chorology are momentous and communicate with many of the most decisive issues in contemporary philosophical discussions. “This excellent work . . . deserves the serious consideration of all who are interested in contemporary philosophy as well as those who concern themselves with ancient philosophy, especially Plato.” —Review of Metaphysics
Download or read book A Free Will written by Michael Frede and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-12 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As readers will quickly discover, the quality of the text that [Frede] has bequeathed fully matches the brilliance and incisiveness for which all his work is admired." From the foreword by David Sedley
Download or read book Timaeus and Critias written by Plato and published by 1st World Publishing. This book was released on 1929 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Neoplatonism and Christian Thought written by Dominic J. O'Meara and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1981-06-30 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the relationships between two of the most vital currents in Western thought are examined by a group of nineteen internationally known specialists in a variety of disciplines—classics, patristics, philosophy, theology, history of ideas, and literature. The contributing scholars discuss Neoplatonic theories about God, creation, man, and salvation, in relation to the ways in which they were adopted, adapted, or rejected by major Christian thinkers of five periods: Patristic, Later Greek and Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern. Contributors include G.-H. Allard, A. Hilary Armstrong, Elizabeth Bieman, Linos Benakis, Henry Blumenthal, Mary T. Clark, Norris Clarke, John Dillon, Cornelio Fabro, John N. Findlay, Maurice de Gandillac, Edward P. Mahoney, Bernard McGinn, Dominic J. O'Meara, John J. O'Meara, Jean Pépin, Mary Carman Rose, Henri-Dominique Saffrey, Charles B. Schmitt, and Gérard Verbeke.
Download or read book Nature and Divinity in Plato s Timaeus written by Sarah Broadie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-10 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato's Timaeus is one of the most influential and challenging works of ancient philosophy to have come down to us. Sarah Broadie's rich and compelling study proposes new interpretations of major elements of the Timaeus, including the separate Demiurge, the cosmic 'beginning', the 'second mixing', the Receptacle and the Atlantis story. Broadie shows how Plato deploys the mythic themes of the Timaeus to convey fundamental philosophical insights and examines the profoundly differing methods of interpretation which have been brought to bear on the work. Her book is for everyone interested in Ancient Greek philosophy, cosmology and mythology, whether classicists, philosophers, historians of ideas or historians of science. It offers new findings to scholars familiar with the material, but it is also a clear and reliable resource for anyone coming to it for the first time.
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.
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 Plato s Natural Philosophy written by Thomas Kjeller Johansen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato's dialogue the Timaeus-Critias presents two connected accounts, that of the story of Atlantis and its defeat by ancient Athens and that of the creation of the cosmos by a divine craftsman. This book offers a unified reading of the dialogue. It tackles a wide range of interpretative and philosophical issues. Topics discussed include the function of the famous Atlantis story, the notion of cosmology as 'myth' and as 'likely', and the role of God in Platonic cosmology. Other areas commented upon are Plato's concepts of 'necessity' and 'teleology', the nature of the 'receptacle', the relationship between the soul and the body, the use of perception in cosmology, and the work's peculiar monologue form. The unifying theme is teleology: Plato's attempt to show the cosmos to be organised for the good. A central lesson which emerges is that the Timaeus is closer to Aristotle's physics than previously thought.
Download or read book The Forbidden Religion written by Jose M. Herrou Aragon and published by José M. Herrou Aragón. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gnosis means knowledge. But we are not referring to just any knowledge. Gnosis is knowledge which produces a great transformation in those who receive it. Knowledge capable of nothing less than waking up man and helping him to escape from the prison in which he finds himself. That is why Gnosis has been so persecuted throughout the course of history, because it is knowledge considered dangerous for the religious and political authorities who govern mankind from the shadows. Every time this religion, absolutely different from the rest, appears before man, the other religions unite to try to destroy or hide it again. Primordial Gnosis is the original Gnosis, true Gnosis, eternal Gnosis, Gnostic knowledge in its pure form. Due to multiple persecutions, Primordial Gnosis has been fragmented, distorted and hidden.
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.
