Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity

Author(s):  
Dmitri Nikulin

This book is a philosophical study of two major thinkers who span the period of late antiquity. While Plotinus stands at the beginning of its philosophical tradition, setting the themes for debate and establishing strategies of argument and interpretation, Proclus falls closer to its end, developing a grand synthesis of late ancient thought. The book discusses many central topics of philosophy and science in Plotinus and Proclus, such as the one and the many; number and being; the individuation and constitution of the soul, imagination, and cognition; the constitution of number and geometrical objects; indivisibility and continuity; intelligible and bodily matter; and evil. It shows that late ancient philosophy did not simply embrace and borrow from the major philosophical traditions of earlier antiquity—Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism—by providing marginal comments on widely known philosophical texts. Rather, Neoplatonism offered a set of highly original and innovative insights into the nature of being and thought, which can be distinguished in much subsequent philosophical thought up until modernity.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (36) ◽  
pp. 01-16
Author(s):  
Antonio Consentino

Lipman’s curriculum of “Philosophy for Children” was the outcome of a harmonious and fruitful partnership between philosophy and pedagogy, but over the time practice shows the risk of a double fall and reduction: on the one side into the ditch of pedagese and, on the other, into the ditch of philosofese. Using the expression “Philosophical Practice of Community” (PPC) instead of “Philosophy for children” (P4C) appears preferable to protect the latter from the risk of being considered, because of its evocative vagueness, both a sort of toy-philosophy, and a kind of pedagogical device suitable for all purposes. Set out in terms of PPC, the project of doing philosophy with children becomes part of a broader field of research concerning each of the three components (“philosophical”, “practice”, and “community”) and their relationships. If ideas are not clear about what “philosophical” means, the risk is that philosophy can be assimilated to other approaches and used as general as empty label. Among the many questions that a PPC puts on the table, I’ll try to frame three of them: 1) Is it necessary to know the philosophical tradition to practice philosophy with children? 2) Who are the philosophers?  3) How to revitalize the Socratic orality?


1970 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-88
Author(s):  
Janusz Salamon

Although it became customary to warn against confusing postmodernism with deconstructionism (deconstructionism having narrower focus), it seems plausible to suggest that their central agendas are not dissimilar. Moreover, from the philosophical point of view, it is the idea of the 'deconstruction of meaning' that can be said to constitute the foundation of postmodernism understood here as an intellectual movement. It is true that grounded in the  poststructuralist language analysis, deconstructionism seeks primarily to challenge the attempts inherent in the Western philosophical tradition to establish ultimate meaning in a text. However, as one might have anticipated, the deconstruction of meaning of texts (especially philosophical texts) provided a basis for a large scale project leading to deconstruction of all 'truths', as conceived in the mainstream philosophical tradition. And it did it by questioning the coherence of the very concept of 'truth'. Eclectic as postmodernism is, it can be recognized by the fundamental assumption (with a clearly deconstructionist overtones) that there is no common denominator (like 'nature', 'truth' or 'God') that guarantees the one-ness of the world, or the possibility of objective or neutral thought. This assumption would suffice to make one expect that postmodernism will challenge the very foundations of any metaphysical or religious system of beliefs. And so it does. In this paper I would like to ellucidate just one way this challange may be construed, poiting to the example of Don Cupitt, the leading exponent of the 'antirealist' critique of the discourse of theism.


Author(s):  
Josef Stern

One of the most influential medieval Jewish thinkers to engage with the philosophical tradition, Nahmanides was also a leading Talmudist, biblical exegete, and a founding figure of the Jewish mystical tradition (Kabbalah) that emerged in thirteenth-century Spain. Generally critical of Aristotle, he was deeply influenced by predecessors such as Moses Maimonides. As the leading rabbi in Catalonia, Nahmanides played a central role in the ‘Maimonidean controversy’ of 1232–3, a dispute that raged over the permissibility of philosophical study. He was also at the centre of the ‘Barcelona disputation’ of 1263, conducted with the apostate Pablo Christiani over the issue of philosophically motivated allegories. Unlike his Provençal contemporaries, Nahmanides wrote neither free-standing philosophical treatises nor commentaries on Graeco-Arabic philosophical texts. Instead, he developed his original metaphysical views in sermons and his highlt influential biblical commentaries treating such topics as miracles, providence and idolatry. The commentaries proved especially influential through their thematic treatments of philosophical questions raised by the biblical text and for their suggestive expositions of mystical and theosophical ideas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Rachel Fensham

The Viennese modern choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser's black coat leads to an analysis of her choreography in four main phases – the early European career; the rise of Nazism; war's brutality; and postwar attempts at reconciliation. Utilising archival and embodied research, the article focuses on a selection of Bodenwieser costumes that survived her journey from Vienna, or were remade in Australia, and their role in the dramaturgy of works such as Swinging Bells (1926), The Masks of Lucifer (1936, 1944), Cain and Abel (1940) and The One and the Many (1946). In addition to dance history, costume studies provides a distinctive way to engage with the question of what remains of performance, and what survives of the historical conditions and experience of modern dance-drama. Throughout, Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition (1958) provides a critical guide to the acts of reconstruction undertaken by Bodenwieser as an émigré choreographer in the practice of her craft, and its ‘materializing reification’ of creative thought. As a study in affective memory, information regarding Bodenwieser's personal life becomes interwoven with the author's response to the material evidence of costumes, oral histories and documents located in various Australian archives. By resurrecting the ‘dead letters’ of this choreography, the article therefore considers how dance costumes offer the trace of an artistic resistance to totalitarianism.


Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 126-137
Author(s):  
Tatyana G. Korneeva

The article discusses the problem of the formation of philosophical prose in the Persian language. The first section presents a brief excursion into the history of philosophical prose in Persian and the stages of formation of modern Persian as a language of science and philosophy. In the Arab-Muslim philosophical tradition, representatives of various schools and trends contributed to the development of philosophical terminology in Farsi. The author dwells on the works of such philosophers as Ibn Sīnā, Nāṣir Khusraw, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Aḥmad al-Ghazālī, ʼAbū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and gives an overview of their works written in Persian. The second section poses the question whether the Persian language proved able to compete with the Arabic language in the field of science. The author examines the style of philosophical prose in Farsi, considering the causes of creation of Persian-language philosophical texts and defining their target audience. The article presents viewpoints of modern orientalist researchers as well as the views of medieval philosophers who wrote in Persian. We find that most philosophical texts in Persian were written for a public who had little or no knowledge of the Arabic language, yet wanted to get acquainted with current philosophical and religious doctrines, albeit in an abbreviated format. The conclusion summarizes and presents two positions regarding the necessity of writing philosophical prose in Persian. According to one point of view, Persian-language philosophical works helped people who did not speak Arabic to get acquainted with the concepts and views of contemporary philosophy. According to an alternative view, there was no special need to compose philosophical texts in Persian, because the corpus of Arabic philosophical terminology had already been formed, and these Arabic terms were widely and successfully used, while the new Persian philosophical vocabulary was difficult to understand.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Münz-Manor

The article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. These relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. The significant connections of content between the different genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. Thus the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time.


2019 ◽  
pp. 14-31
Author(s):  
P.V. Kuzenkov

The article offers a new evaluation of the wellknown phenomenon of cultural renaissance of the peoples of the Middle East and Egypt of the Syrians, the Copts, the Armenians, the Georgians, etc., in the first centuries AD. This period is commonly associated with the spreading of Christianity around the territory of the Roman Empire and the Parthian, later on Sassanid Iran. According to the author there are reasons to regard the genesis of the Christianity in the Middle East as a single yet multifaceted process of transformation of the Late Antiquity culture in its totality of the Eucumene, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pamir mountains. The essence of this process could roughly be defined as overcoming the Hellenistic culture crisis called forth by the ever deepening disparity between the transcendental intellectual environment it had given rise to, on the one hand, and its ideological nucleus rooted in the archaic Greek mythology, on the other. The only feasible recourse out of this crisis was the appearance of a new cultural nucleus, conventionally described as the canonized sacred text (The Holy Scriptures). This nucleus, together with the Hellenistic cultural and technological achievements (general literacy, school education, science, literature, symbolic culture, etc.) gave rise to religious civilizations with Christianity as the principal example. Thus, the author describes the historical transition from the Late Hellenistic and Post Hellenistic cultures of the Ancient Rome and the Ancient Middle East that resulted in the new nationallytinged in form but supranational in content cultures of the Christianity in the Middle East.В статье предлагается новая оценка известного феномена культурного возрождения народов Ближнего Востока и ЕгиптоСирийцев, Коптов, Армян, Грузин и др. в первые века нашей эры. Этот период обычно связывают с распространением христианства по территории Римской Империи и Парфянского, позднее Сасанидского Ирана. По мнению автора есть основания рассматривать генезис христианства на Ближнем Востоке как единый, но многогранный процесс трансформации культуры поздней Античности в ее тотальности Ойкумены, от Атлантического океана до Памирских гор. Суть этого процесса можно приблизительно определить как преодоление кризиса эллинистической культуры, вызванного все более углубляющимся несоответствием между трансцендентальной интеллектуальной средой, которую она породила, с одной стороны, и ее идеологическим ядром, коренящимся в архаической греческой мифологии, с другой. Единственным возможным выходом из этого кризиса было появление нового культурного ядра, условно описываемого как канонизированный священный текст (Священное Писание). Это ядро, наряду с эллинистическими культурными и технологическими достижениями (общая грамотность, школьное образование, наука, литература, символическая культура и др.) породило религиозные цивилизации с христианством, в качестве основного примера. Таким образом, автор описывает исторический переход от Позднеэллинистической и Постэллинистической культур Древнего Рима и Древнего Ближнего Востока к новым национально окрашенным по форме, но наднациональным по содержанию культурам христианства в Cредние века.


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