Download or read book The Platonic Tradition written by Peter Kreeft and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Platonic tradition in Western philosophy is not just one of many equally central traditions. It is so much THE central one that the very existence and survival of Western civilization depends on it. It is like the Confucian tradition in Chinese culture, or the monotheistic tradition in religion, or the human rights tradition in politics. In the first of his eight lectures, Peter Kreeft defines Platonism and its "Big Idea," the idea of a transcendent reality that the history of philosophy has labeled "Platonic Ideas" or Platonic Forms. In the second lecture, he briefly explores Plato's two basic predecessors or sources, myth and Socrates; and then looks at 12 applications of the Forms in Plato's own dialogues. The third lecture covers the three most important modifications or additions to Plato himself in the Platonic tradition: Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine, each of whom gave the Forms a new metaphysical address. The fourth lecture explores six Christian Platonists, three in the New Testament and three philosophers, Justin Martyr, Bonaventure, and Aquinas. The next three lectures explore the consequences of the modern abandoning of Platonism, beginning with William of Ockham's Nominalism, as the source of nearly all modern philosophical errors, and its results in the Empiricism of Locke and Hume, the so-called Copernican Revolution in philosophy in Kant, the so-called "analytic philosophy," which still dominates English and American philosophy departments. In the sixth essays, Kreeft looks at 13 influential kinds of positivism or reductionism in modern thought: in method, history, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, sociology, politics, logics, linguistics, sex, psychology, and theology, exemplified by Descartes, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx, Kant, Comte, Rousseau, Rawls, Ayer, Derrida, Freud, Skimmer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Lecture 7 looks at the results of abandoning the Platonic tradition in ethics, the values vacuum, or nihilism, in Ecclesiastes, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, Marcel, and Buber. In the last lecture, Kreeft looks at some experiential evidence for Platonism, doors out of the cave that are still open, signals of transcendence.
Download or read book The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages written by Stephen Gersh and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays delineates the history of the rather disparate intellectual tradition usually labeled as "Platonic" or "Neoplatonic". In chronological order, the book covers the most eminent philosophic schools of thought within that tradition. The most important terms of the Platonic tradition are studied together with a discussion of their semantic implications, the philosophical and theological claims associated with the terms, the sources that furnish the terms, and the intellectual traditions aligned with or opposed to them. The contributors thereby provide a vivid intellectual map of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Contributions are written in English or German.
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 Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition written by Michael Erler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheds light on the meaning, import and philosophical outlook of the notion of authority throughout the Platonist tradition.
Download or read book The Unknown God written by Deirdre Carabine and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-01-26 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""This book contains a careful, thorough, and where necessary skeptical as regards doubtful evidence (especially in the case of Plato and the Old Academy) of the beginnings in European thought of the negative or apophatic way of thinking and its relations to more positive or kataphatic ways of thinking about God. One of its greatest strengths, perhaps the greatest, is that the author makes clear that none of the persons concerned, Hellenic, Jewish or Christian, was engaged in the pursuit of a philosophical abstraction, or the heaping of rhetorical superlatives on God. They were rather concerned to present the origin of the universe as an intimately present living reality which infinitely transcends our thought and speech. This, combined with careful attention to the varieties of negative theology and its relations with positive, and the particular difficulties experienced by the members of the various traditions involved, makes the book the best introduction to the negative theology available."" -A. H. Armstrong, Emeritus Professor of Greek, University of Liverpool, England. Emeritus Professor of Classics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Senior Fellow of the British Academy. Irish academic Deirdre Carabine has lived and taught in Uganda for more than twenty years. She has recently been founder Vice-Chancellor at the Virtual University of Uganda (VUU), the first fully online university in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to that she set up International Health Sciences University in Kampala. She has taught at Queen's Belfast, University College Dublin, and Uganda Martyrs University. Currently, she is Director of Programmes at VUU. She attended the Queen's University of Belfast where she graduated with a PhD in philosophy, and University College Dublin where, as one of the first Newman Scholars, she gained a second PhD in Classics. She is also author of John Scottus Eriugena in the Great Medieval Thinkers Series (2000).
Download or read book Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition written by John Douglas Turner and published by Presses Université Laval. This book was released on 2001 with total page 868 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Forms and Concepts written by Christoph Helmig and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-19 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Plato and Tradition written by Patricia Fagan and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato’s dialogues are some of the most widely read texts in Western philosophy, and one would imagine them fully mined for elemental material. Yet, in Plato and Tradition, Patricia Fagan reveals the dialogues to be continuing sources of fresh insight. She recovers from them an underappreciated depth of cultural reference that is crucial to understanding their central philosophical concerns. Through careful readings of six dialogues, Fagan demonstrates that Plato’s presentation of Socrates highlights the centrality of tradition in political, erotic, and philosophic life. Plato embeds Socrates’s arguments and ideas in traditional references that would have been familiar to contemporaries of Socrates or Plato but that today’s reader typically passes over. Fagan’s book unpacks this cultural and literary context for the proper and full understanding of the philosophical argument of the Platonic dialogues. She concludes that, as Socrates demonstrates in word and deed, tradition is essential to successful living. But we must take up tradition with a critical openness to questioning its significance and future. Her original and compelling analyses may change the views of many readers who think themselves already well versed in the dialogues.
Download or read book Platonic Theories of Prayer written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Platonic Theories of Prayer is a collection of ten essays on the topic of prayer in the later Platonic tradition. Composed by a panel of distinguished scholars, they offer a comprehensive view of the various roles and levels of prayer characteristic of this period.
Download or read book Plato s Persona written by Denis J.-J. Robichaud and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Students of Plato now had access to the entire range of the dialogues, which revealed to Renaissance audiences the rich ancient landscape of myths, allegories, philosophical arguments, etymologies, fragments of poetry, other works of philosophy, aspects of ancient pagan religious practices, concepts of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the dialogic nature of the Platonic corpus's interlocutors. By and large, Renaissance readers in the Latin West encountered Plato's text through Ficino's translations and interpretation. In Plato's Persona, Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the first synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Robichaud analyzes Plato's works in their original Greek and in Ficino's Latin translations, as well as Ficino's non-Platonic writings and correspondence, in the process uncovering new aspects of Ficino's intellectual work habits. In his letters and works, Ficino self-consciously imitated a Platonic style of prose, in effect devising a persona for himself as a Platonic philosopher. Plato's dialogues are populated with a wealth of literary characters with whom Plato interacts and against whom Plato refines his own philosophies. Reading through Ficino's translations, Robichaud finds that the Renaissance philosopher seeks an understanding of Plato's persona(e) among all the dialogues' interlocutors. In effect, Ficino assumed the role of Plato's Latin spokesperson in the Renaissance. Plato's Persona is grounded in an extensive study of scholarship in Renaissance humanism, classics, philosophy, and intellectual history, and contextualizes Ficino's intellectual achievements within the contemporary Christian orthodox view of Platonism. Ficino was an influential figure in the early Italian Renaissance: the key intermediary between Greek and Latin, and between manuscript and print, giving voice to Plato and access to the ancient frameworks needed to interpret his dialogues.
Download or read book The Platonic Tradition in Anglo Saxon Philosophy written by John Henry Muirhead and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Neoplatonic Demons and Angels written by Luc Brisson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neoplatonic Demons and Angels is a collection of studies which examine the place reserved for angels and demons not only by the main Neoplatonic philosophers, but also in Gnosticism, the Chaldaean Oracles and Christian Neoplatonism.
Download or read book Herodicus the Cratetean written by Ingemar During and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1941. Herodicus was a Greek physician of the fifth century BC, and a native of Selymbria. The first use of therapeutic exercise for the treatment of disease and maintenance of health is credited to him, and he is believed to have been one of the tutors of Hippocates.
Download or read book Platonic Mysticism written by Arthur Versluis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Restores the Platonic history and context of mysticism and shows how it helps us understand more deeply the humanities as a whole, from philosophy and literature to art. In Platonic Mysticism, Arthur Versluisclearly and tautly argues that mysticism must be properly understood as belonging to the great tradition of Platonism. He demonstrates how mysticism was historically understood in Western philosophical and religious traditions and emphatically rejects externalist approaches to esoteric religion. Instead he develops a new theoretical-critical model for understanding mystical literature and the humanities as a whole, from philosophy and literature to art. A sequel to his Restoring Paradise, this is an audacious book that places Platonic mysticism in the context of contemporary cognitive and other approaches to the study of religion, and presents an emerging model for the new field of contemplative science. An important work on the mystical experience delving deep into its history, particularly from the Platonic perspective. An essential text for anyone interested in mysticism and its relationship to philosophy and creative expression. Andrew Newberg, author of How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation The present work, the latest from the pen of Arthur Versluis, provides a trenchant, learned, and illuminating analysis of the origins of Western mysticism in the Platonist tradition, relayed through such figures as Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite, down through Meister Eckhart and others, while suitably excoriating the attempts of certain modern philosophers and sociologists of religion to deconstruct it from a materialist perspective. I found it a rattling good read! John Dillon, author of The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347274 BC)
Download or read book Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought written by Tae-Yeoun Keum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ambitious reinterpretation and defense of Plato’s basic enterprise and influence, arguing that the power of his myths was central to the founding of philosophical rationalism. Plato’s use of myths—the Myth of Metals, the Myth of Er—sits uneasily with his canonical reputation as the inventor of rational philosophy. Since the Enlightenment, interpreters like Hegel have sought to resolve this tension by treating Plato’s myths as mere regrettable embellishments, irrelevant to his main enterprise. Others, such as Karl Popper, have railed against the deceptive power of myth, concluding that a tradition built on Platonic foundations can be neither rational nor desirable. Tae-Yeoun Keum challenges the premise underlying both of these positions. She argues that myth is neither irrelevant nor inimical to the ideal of rational progress. She tracks the influence of Plato’s dialogues through the early modern period and on to the twentieth century, showing how pivotal figures in the history of political thought—More, Bacon, Leibniz, the German Idealists, Cassirer, and others—have been inspired by Plato’s mythmaking. She finds that Plato’s followers perennially raised the possibility that there is a vital role for myth in rational political thinking.
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.
Download or read book The Platonic Heritage written by John Dillon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third collection of articles by John Dillon covers the period 1996-2006, the decade since the appearance of The Great Tradition. Once again, the subjects covered range from Plato himself and the Old Academy, through Philo and Middle Platonism, to the Neoplatonists and beyond. Particular concerns evidenced in the papers are the continuities in the Platonic tradition, and the setting of philosophers in their social and cultural contexts, while at the same time teasing out the philosophical implications of particular texts. Such topics are addressed as atomism in the Old Academy, Philo's concept of immateriality, Plutarch's and Julian's views on theology, and peculiar features of Iamblichus' exegeses of Plato and Aristotle, but also the broader questions of the social position of the philosopher in second century A.D. society, and the nature of ancient biography.
