Plotinus

Philosophy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd P. Gerson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History

After Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus (b. 204/5–d. 270 ce) stands out as the most accomplished and influential philosopher of Antiquity. He is also the only philosopher from this period, other than Plato, whose works are all extant. In his writings, collectively known by the name given to them by his student and editor, Porphyry, as Enneads (“nines” in Greek, for the six groups of nine “treatises”), he engages with the entire history of philosophy up to that time, systematizing Plato and defending that system against all comers, especially Peripatetics, Skeptics, and Stoics. For the next three hundred or so years, philosophy in Late Antiquity took Plotinus as its starting point. Proclus (b. 412–d. 485 ce) thought of him as the principal “exegete of the Platonic revelation.” Philosophy in Late Antiquity was essentially Platonism as constructed by Plotinus, and it is this philosophy that Christians, Muslims, and Jews appropriated and struggled to fit within their theological frameworks.

scholarly journals From devotion to commitment: Towards a critical ontology of engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-281
Author(s):  
Andrea Perunovic
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Critical Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Light Darkness ◽  
History Of

This article approaches the notion of engagement from the perspective of critical ontology. With language as the starting point of its hermeneutic task, it commences with an etymological analyses of diverse Indo-European words gravitating around the semantic field of the notion of engagement. From these introductory insights obtained by an exercise in comparative linguistics, devotion and commitment are mapped as two opposite, yet inseparable, modes of being of engagement. Both of these modes seem to condition engagement in an ontologically disparate manner. While examining their fundamental structures, some of the canonical concepts of history of philosophy such as being, existence, subjectivity, or world - and also some of its constitutive binary oppositions such as body/mind, individual/collective, transcendence/immanence, light/darkness and sacred/secular - will be reconsidered through the prism of different ontological dispositions that devotion and commitment impose respectively on engagement. The overall aim of this investigation is to bring forth the main existential characteristics of being-engaged, by interpreting the roles of who, where, and what of engagement, and in order to provide a fundamental conceptual apparatus for a critical ontology of engagement.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity

2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-235
Author(s):  
Sarah Klitenic Wear ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of

Being and Motion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nail
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Ontology ◽  
Fundamental Categories

Being and Motion offers an original philosophical ontology of movement. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time. Why, when movement has been central to human societies, did a philosophy based on movement never take hold in the West? This book is the first major work of systematic ontology to answer this question and finally overturn this long-standing metaphysical tradition by placing movement at the heart of philosophy. In doing so, Being and Motion provides a completely new understanding of the most fundamental categories of ontology from the ground up: quality, quantity, relation, modality, and others. It also provides the first history of the philosophy of motion, from the early prehistoric mythologies up to contemporary ontologies. More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility, and yet we lack a single contemporary ontology that takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. Being and Motion sets out to remedy this lacuna in contemporary thought by providing a historical ontology of our present: an ontology of movement.

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