Download or read book Imitations of Infinity written by Michael Motia and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-11-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Imitations of Infinity, Michael A. Motia places Gregory of Nyssa at the center of a world filled with Platonic philosophers, rhetorical teachers, and early Christian leaders all competing over what and how to imitate. Their debates demanded the attentions of people at every level of the Roman Empire.
Download or read book Imitations of Infinity written by Michael A. Motia and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-11-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We do not have many definitions of Christianity from late antiquity, but among the few extant is the brief statement of Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 CE) that it is "mimesis of the divine nature." The sentence is both a historical gem and theologically puzzling. Gregory was the first Christian to make the infinity of God central to his theological program, but how could he intend for humans to imitate the infinite? If the aim of the Christian life is "never to stop growing towards what is better and never to place any limit on perfection," how could mimesis function within this endless pursuit? In Imitations of Infinity, Michael A. Motia situates Gregory among Platonist philosophers, rhetorical teachers, and early Christian leaders to demonstrate how much of late ancient life was governed by notions of imitation. Questions both intimate and immense, of education, childcare, or cosmology, all found form in a relationship of archetype and image. It is no wonder that these debates demanded the attention of people at every level of the Roman Empire, including the Christians looking to form new social habits and norms. Whatever else the late ancient transformation of the empire affected, it changed the names, spaces, and characters that filled the imagination and common sense of its citizens, and it changed how they thought of their imitations. Like religion, imitation was a way to organize the world and a way to reach toward new possibilities, Motia argues, and two earlier conceptions of mimesis—one centering on ontological participation, the other on aesthetic representation—merged in late antiquity. As philosophers and religious leaders pondered how linking oneself to reality depended on practices of representation, their theoretical debates accompanied practical concerns about what kinds of objects would best guide practitioners toward the divine. Motia places Gregory within a broader landscape of figures who retheorized the role of mimesis in search of perfection. No longer was imitation a marker of inauthenticity or immaturity. Mimesis became a way of life.
Download or read book Proclus Ten Problems Concerning Providence written by Carlos Steel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The universe is, as it were, one machine, wherein the celestial spheres are analogous to the interlocking wheels and the particular beings are like the things moved by the wheels, and all events are determined by an inescapable necessity. To speak of free choice or self determination is only an illusion we human beings cherish.' Thus writes Theodore the engineer to his old friend Proclus, one of the last major Classical philosophers. Proclus' reply is one of the most remarkable discussions on fate, providence and free choice in Late Antiquity. It continues a long debate that had started with the first polemics of the Platonists against the Stoic doctrine of determinism. How can there be a place for free choice and moral responsibility in a world governed by an unalterable fate? Proclus discusses ten problems on providence and fate, foreknowledge of the future, human responsibility, evil and punishment (or seemingly absence of punishment), social and individual responsibility for evil, and the unequal fate of different animals. Until now, despite its great interest, Proclus' treatise has not received the attention it deserves, probably because its text is not very accessible to the modern reader. It has survived only in a Latin medieval translation and in some extensive Byzantine Greek extracts. This first English translation, based on a retro-conversion that works out what the original Greek must have been, brings the arguments he formulates again to the fore.
Download or read book Delphi Collected Works of Proclus Illustrated written by Proclus Lycius and published by Delphi Classics. This book was released on 2023-05-05 with total page 2948 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proclus the Successor was a fifth-century Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and the last major ancient Greek philosopher. He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism. Like Iamblichus, Proclus opposed Christianity and passionately defended paganism. He upheld that thoughts constitute reality, while concrete “things” are mere appearances. Ultimate reality, the “One,” is both God and the Good and unifies his ethical and theological systems. His attitudes significantly influenced the development of theology in both the East and the West. Delphi’s Ancient Classics series provides eReaders with the wisdom of the Classical world, with both English translations and the original Greek texts. This eBook presents Proclus’ collected works, with illustrations, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Proclus’ life and works * Features the collected works of Proclus, in both English translation and the original Greek * Includes Thomas Taylor’s seminal translations * Excellent formatting of the texts * Easily locate the texts you want to read with individual contents tables * Includes Proclus’ rare treatises, digitised here for the first time * Provides a special dual English and Greek text of ‘Elements of Theology’, allowing readers to compare the sections paragraph by paragraph — ideal for students * Features Marinus’ (Proclus’ successor) biography — discover Proclus’ ancient world * Ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres CONTENTS: The Translations Commentary on Timaeus Commentary on the First Alcibiades An Apology for the Fables of Homer Commentaries on the First Book of Euclid’s ‘Elements of Geometry’ Elements of Physics Elements of Theology On the Theology of Plato Ten Doubts Concerning Providence On the Existence of Evils On Providence and Fate Hymns Fragments The Greek Texts Selected Greek Texts The Dual Text Elements of Theology The Biography Life of Proclus by Marinus Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to explore our range of Ancient Classics titles or buy the entire series as a Super Set
Download or read book The Journal of speculative philosophy written by and published by . This book was released on 1867 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume VIII written by Daniel Garber and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.
Download or read book First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature written by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2004-02-26 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appearing here in English for the first time, this isF.W.J. Schelling's vital document of the attempts of German idealism and Romanticism to recover a deeper relationship between humanity and nature and to overcome the separation between mind and matter induced by the modern reductionist program. Written in 1799 and building upon his earlier work, "First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature provides the most inclusive exposition of Schelling's philosophy of the natural world. He presents a startlingly contemporary model of an expanding and contracting universe; a unified theory of electricity, gravity magnetism, and chemical forces; and, perhaps most importantly, a conception of nature as a living and organic whole.
Download or read book Journal of Speculative Philosophy written by and published by . This book was released on 1867 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Two Treatises of Proclus the Platonic Successor written by Proclus and published by . This book was released on 1833 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Living Mirrors written by Ohad Nachtomy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Living Mirrors, Ohad Nachtomy examines Leibniz's attempt to "re-enchant" the natural world-that is, to infuse life, purpose, and value into the very foundations of nature, a nature that Leibniz saw as disenchanted by Descartes' and Spinoza's more naturalistic and mechanistic theories. Nachtomy sees Leibniz's nuanced view of infinity- how it differs in the divine as well as human spheres, and its relationship to numerical and metaphysical unity-as key in this effort. Leibniz defined living beings by means of an infinite nested structure particular to what he called "natural machines"-and for him, an intermediate kind of infinity is the defining feature of living beings. Using a metaphor of a "living mirror," Leibniz put forth infinity as crucial to explaining the unity of a living being as well as the harmony between the infinitely small and the infinitely large; in this way, employing infinity and unity, we can better understand life itself, both as a metaphysical principle and as an empirical fact. Nachtomy's sophisticated and novel treatment of the essential themes in Leibniz's work will not only interest Leibniz scholars, but scholars of early modern philosophy and students of the history of philosophy and science as well.
Download or read book The Americana written by and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 1176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Encyclopedia Americana written by Frederick Converse Beach and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 1058 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social Change in a Material World written by Theodore R. Schatzki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Change in a Material World offers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author’s earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book argues that chains of activity combine with material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change.
Download or read book The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy written by Ohad Nachtomy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume advances a recent historiographical turn towards the intersection of early modern philosophy and the life sciences by bringing together many of its leading scholars to present the contributions of important but often neglected figures, such as Ralph Cudworth, Nehemiah Grew, Francis Glisson, Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Georg Ernst Stahl, Juan Gallego de la Serna, Nicholas Hartsoeker, Henry More, as well as more familiar figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, and Kant. The contributions to this volume are organized in accordance with the particular problems that living beings and living nature posed for early modern philosophy: the problem of life in general, whether it constitutes something ontologically distinct at all, or whether it can ultimately be exhaustively comprehended "in the same manner as the rest"; the problem of the structure of living beings, by which we understand not just bare anatomy but also physiological processes such as irritability, motion, digestion, and so on; the problem of generation, which might be included alongside digestion and other vital processes, were it not for the fact that it presented such an exceptional riddle to philosophers since antiquity, namely, the riddle of coming-into-being out of -- apparent or real -- non-being; and, finally, the problem of natural order.
Download or read book The Infinity of God written by Benedikt Paul Göcke and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-12-30 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two questions regarding contemporary theological and philosophical studies are often overlooked: “Is God infinite or finite?” and, “What does it mean to say that God is infinite?” In The Infinity of God, Benedikt Paul Göcke and Christian Tapp bring together prominent scholars to discuss God’s infinitude from philosophical and theological perspectives. Each contributor deals with a particular aspect of the infinity of God, employing the methods of analytic theology and analytic philosophy. The essays in the first section examine historical issues from a systematic point of view. The contributors focus on the Cappadocian Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Bolzano, and Cantor. The second section deals with particular issues concerning the relation between God's infinity and both the finitude of the world and the classical attributes of God: eternity, simplicity, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection. There are some books that deal with the notion of infinity in mathematics and in general philosophy, but no single text brings together the best analytic philosophers and theologians tackling the various aspects of the infinity of God and the correlated problems. This book will interest students and scholars in philosophy of religion, theology, and metaphysics. Contributors: Benedikt Paul Göcke, Christian Tapp, Franz Krainer, Adam Drosdek, William E. Carroll, Christina Schneider, Ruben Schneider, Robert M. Wallace, Bruce A. Hedman, Bernhard Lang, Richard Swinburne, Kenneth L. Pearce, William Hasker, Paul Helm, Brian Leftow, Ken Perszyk, Thomas Schärtl, and Philip Clayton.
Download or read book The Order of the Ages written by Robert Bolton and published by Sophia Perennis. This book was released on 2001 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Legends of the End written by Charles Upton and published by Sophia Perennis. This book was released on 2004 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The laws which relate the modern world to earlier ages, and the position of our own era in a universal time-cycle, are explained in this book in a way which reveals the essential nature of time. It is shown that time imposes patterns of its own on the order of events, which reveal themselves by numerical regularities. By means of a Platonic view of creation, which connects temporal with non-temporal realities, it is shown to be possible to see how man's inner life holds the balance between these two kinds of objective reality. Traditional cosmological doctrines form the background to the ideas presented, which include insights into the power of universal time to realize evil, and how this can be overcome by those who understand it. Both non-Christian and Early Christian sources are also quoted in this connection, to illustrate the universality of the cyclic idea of time. Connections are made between metaphysical ideas of time and the scientific idea of entropy and its varied applications. The cyclic idea of time is used to resolve the apparent conflict between the vast tracts of time which have elapsed before Homo Sapiens and the relatively recent appearance of revealed religion. The last two thousand years are analyzed numerically in terms of traditional cosmology, so as to make it possible to calculate our present position in a universal era, together with the time within which this era will end. Finally, there is a review of the possibility that this ending may coincide with the Last Times, and the implications that this would have for current values and religious beliefs. 'How, when, and why did the world begin? And how will it end? Or is there no ending or beginning? What is infinity, and are such questions merely about illusions? What part does mind play in creation? Are we and the universe programed toward a certain end. . . ? All that can honestly be given in response to such questions is an introduction to that constant and recurrent world-view which this book uniquely provides.' -John Michell Christian Platonism has a long and distinguished history, but few orthodox Catholics have tried to make a serious contribution to this tradition in recent times. Robert Bolton's extraordinary book is just such a contribution. Influenced by Ren Gunon's The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, and respectful of Tradition, this is a work of great creativity as well as metaphysical intelligence. -Stratford Caldecott, Chesterton Review, Centre for Faith & Culture, Oxford Time, like beauty, is one of the foremost mysteries of human experience. Here Dr. Bolton has taken a deliberate and courageous effort to confront the nature of time. It is like a breath of fresh air to see such care taken to present what can authentically be called the traditional view. 'Recurrence' and 'Never Again' are the poles of this mystery so well and ably covered in this book. Any work that presents the views of such as Plato so well is inevitably going to be of cardinal value-but Dr. Bolton also goes into other wisdom traditions. This may not be easy reading, but what a relief from the mechanically tedious choice between 'Big Bang' and 'Steady State', and whatever else the material mechanists have dreamed up as our only diet for consideration. It -Keith Critchlow, Nov. 2000
