Michael Psellos and Ioane Petritsi on Intellect

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-38
Author(s):  
Lela Alexidze
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
The Common

"Michael Psellos exposed his theory on intellect in two major texts: De omnifaria doctrina and Philosophica minora. Psellos’ theory is based on different philosophical sources, including, first and foremost, Proclus’ texts. The younger contemporary of Psellos, Georgian philosopher Ioane Petritsi, who was trained in Byzantine philosophical school and was well acquainted with ancient Greek philosophical tradition, also commented on Proclus and his theory of intellect. For Proclus, Psellos and Petritsi intellect is an important entity because it embraces Forms and is, therefore, a basis for all kinds of beings. The aim of this paper is to analyze Psellos’ and Petritsi’s theories of intellect and their interrelationship taking into consideration their dependence on the common philosophical sources, mainly Proclus’ Elements of theology. Keywords: intellect, soul, one, participation, being. "

Dangers of Chicken Soup

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 785-786
Author(s):  
EDWARD CHU
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Effect ◽  
Common Cold ◽  
Medical Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Chicken Broth ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Moses Maimonides ◽  
The Common ◽  
Good For

To the Editor.— Chicken soup has long been regarded as a popular treatment for a wide variety of ailments. The 12th century philosopher and physician, Moses Maimonides, extracting from ancient Greek writings, recommended chicken broth for "rectifying corrupted humors,"1 which meant it was good for everything. Recently, chicken soup has again received attention in the medical literature, some of it serious2 and some of it tongue in beak [sic].3-6 The serious study demonstrated a significant increase in nasal mucous velocity following the ingestion of hot chicken soup, suggesting a therapeutic effect in the common cold.

The Stoic Theory of Beauty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aiste Celkyte
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Function Composition ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
Aesthetic Properties ◽  
Definition Of

The monograph aims to show that the Stoa, an ancient Greek philosophical school, made a substantial line of enquiry into the nature of aesthetic properties, and thus there are good reasons to analyse and discuss the sub-field of the Stoic thought that could be called ‘Stoic aesthetics.’ This study of Stoic views on beauty begins with the question of indifferents and the challenge it poses for aesthetics. The controversial Stoic theory of values states that ‘beauty’ is one of the so-called indifferents, that is, the things that do not contribute to human happiness and therefore ought not to be treated as the good. It is argued that a thorough reading of the material shows that beauty is not treated as irrelevant in general; the evidence only shows that beauty is an inferior value to virtue. This leaves the possibility of theorising aesthetic objects. This leads to a systematic interpretation of Stoic aesthetics by looking at other pieces of extant evidence where beauty is mentioned, including the argument ‘that only the beautiful is the good’, theological arguments, the claim that only the wise man is beautiful and the Stoic definition of beauty as summetria. The latter, it is argued, is a succinct formulation of the idea that beauty is a function composition, and this idea has emerged in the previous discussions of various arguments involving aesthetic terms. The monograph ends with a discussion of the Stoic views in ancient Greek philosophical context.

Ancient Greek Mathematics

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ferreirós
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Mathematics ◽  
Euclidean Geometry ◽  
Advanced Mathematics ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
The Common ◽  
Greek Mathematics ◽  
Joint Consideration ◽  
Practical Geometry ◽  
Further Development

This chapter focuses on the ancient Greek tradition of geometrical proof in light of recent studies by Kenneth Manders and others. It advances the view that the borderline of elementary mathematics is strictly linked with the adoption of hypotheses. To this end, the chapter considers Euclidean geometry, which elaborates on both the problems and the proof methods based on diagrams. It argues that Euclidean geometry can be understood as a theoretical, idealized analysis (and further development) of practical geometry; that by way of the idealizations introduced, Euclid's Elements builds on hypotheses that turn them into advanced mathematics; and that the axioms or “postulates” of Book I of the Elements mainly regiment diagrammatic constructions, while the “common notions” are general principles of a theory of quantities. The chapter concludes by discussing how the proposed approach, based on joint consideration of agents and frameworks, can be applied to the case of Greek geometry.

From Relativism to Expressivism

Dangerous Art ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 100-121
Author(s):  
James Harold
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Wang Yangming ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter begins with a relativist challenge: it is not clear that every philosophical tradition recognizes a clear distinction between aesthetics and morality. The chapter includes a discussion of ancient Greek, classical Chinese, and Yoruban conceptions of the relationship between moral and aesthetic judgment, as well as some familiar relativist arguments. Then it develops Alain Locke’s response to the relativist challenge: an expressivist account of different modes of valuing. Finally, the chapter draws on Wang Yangming to make an argument about the link between feeling and value. The chapter concludes that expressivism explains the variation in value at least as well as relativism does.

Greek and Latin Biography

Classics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei V. Zadorojnyi
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Literary Landscapes ◽  
Autobiographical Texts ◽  
The Common ◽  
Historical Individual

The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations spawned and recycled many stories about heroes, tyrants, sages, and other (predominantly male) celebrities. Yet, a holistic reading of Greco-Roman biography is tricky. The common denominator of Greek and Latin texts that must or may be considered biographical is narrative focused on the life of a noteworthy historical or quasi-historical individual. So the boundaries of the evidence base are blurred and negotiable, even around the core of the best-known mainstream authors such as Plutarch and Suetonius. Alongside the extant or attested works that present full-scale accounts of lives of statesmen and intellectuals, the ancient biographical outlook can be gauged from historiography, apophthegmatic anecdotes, encomia and lampoons, novelized history, and so on. Since no theory of life writing was developed in Greco-Roman criticism as far as we can tell, it is fair to think of ancient biography as an “inductive genre”: that is, a pattern suggested by the available material itself but also generating further interpretative configurations. Biography is thus a heuristic concept for unlocking a layered meshwork of political, sociocultural, and ethical values through a significant—or, better, a significantly “emplotted” and potentially paradigmatic—life story that acts out those values before the insiders of the Greek, Roman, and Greco-Roman ideological and literary landscapes. Scholarship is now used to appreciating ancient biography on its own, however fuzzy, terms rather than treating it as a lighter and implicitly inferior form of historiography. While the questions of source criticism and historicity continue to be vital, there is an ever-growing flow of studies focusing on the specific writerly and readerly aspects of ancient biography, with its propensity toward ethopoetic moralism and anecdotal montage. Similarly, autobiographical texts should be regarded both as historical documents and as textual artifacts of self-legitimization and authority.

The Power of God in Some Early Christian Texts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edwards
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Common ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Power Of God

This chapter delineates a typology of the power of God in early Christian sources, including the New Testament, Justin Martyr, and other apologists of the second century, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius. It argues that any investigation of the concept of dunamis in early Christian writings must begin with an acknowledgement of the Scriptures, maintaining that late antique Christianity should be considered as a distinct philosophical school, which had its own first principles, interpreted its own texts, and gave its own sense to terms that it used in common with other schools. Thus, a specifically Christian notion of divine power could have been born of reflection on the common ‘reservoir’ of Christian thought, any other influence being strictly secondary.

Judaism/Hellenism in Early Christology: Prepositional Metaphysics and Middle Platonic Intermediary Doctrine

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-225
Author(s):  
Chris Kugler
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy

The last 30 years of NT studies has witnessed a rebirth of interest in the questions surrounding the complex relationship between early Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy. Over roughly the same period, we have also seen a major resurgence of interest in the historical and theological questions surrounding the origins and contours of NT Christology. Little explicit dialogue, however, has occurred between these two movements. As such, not only have too many NT scholars treated ancient Jewish monotheism and early Christology as though they were discrete and impermeable entities, they have simply failed to appreciate the significance of the use of ‘prepositional metaphysics’ in four of the most important christological texts in all of the NT (Jn 1.3, 10; 1 Cor. 8.6; Col. 1.15-20; and Heb. 1.2). As several philosophical studies have shown (esp. Sterling and Cox), this tradition ultimately derives from the technical metaphysical speculation of the Greek philosophical tradition, and, in particular, these four NT christological traditions reflect the christological appropriation of Middle Platonic intermediary doctrine. This fact, inter alia, militates against any over-simplistic historical narrative in which early Jewish Christology was much later polluted (and obfuscated) by the importation of Greek metaphysical categories.

THE TERMINOLOGY FOR BEAUTY IN THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Hugo Shakeshaft
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
General Term ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Cultural Consciousness ◽  
Beauty Salon ◽  
Common Parlance ◽  
The Common

An ancient Greek proverb declares: ‘beautiful things are difficult’. One obvious difficulty arises from their almost limitless variety: sights, sounds, people, natural phenomena, man-made objects and abstract ideas may all be beautiful, but what do these things have in common? It is not just beauty's breadth of application, then, that makes it difficult, but the way in which its meaning varies depending on context. The beauty of a child may mean something quite different from the beauty of an old and wizened face, let alone the beauty of a supermodel. In common parlance, beautiful may be used as a general term of approbation alongside others like lovely or fine, while in academic discourse, the word beauty has a life of its own: since the emergence of aesthetics as an independent discipline in the mid eighteenth century, beauty has been constantly theorized and responded to in different ways that have laden the term with its own peculiar historical baggage. And although some of these philosophical reflections on beauty may have trickled into the common cultural consciousness, in general they seem a far cry from beauty's most ubiquitous incarnation in modern Western society, in the cosmetics industry; to put it another way, if you go into a beauty salon in search of a Kantian ideal of disinterested contemplation, I suspect you will be disappointed.

scholarly journals Greek demons who murdered children

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladislava Igorevna Makeeva
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Sudden Infant ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Murdered Children

This article describes the Ancient Greek mythological characters who were attributed with murdering children: Lamia (Λάμια), Mormo (μορμώ) and Gello (γελλώ).The ssuperstitions associated with these demons remain in Greece to this day, although their images have undergone certain transformation. The object of this research is the mythological representations of the Ancient Greeks, while the subject is demons who murdered children. The goal of this article is to determine the role of children's horror stories in life of the Ancient Greek society. The author reviews the facts testifying to the existence of characters as Lamia, Mormo, Gello and Empusa in the Greek and Roman texts, as well gives characteristics to their images based on the comparative analysis. The conducted analysis reveals the common traits of the demons who murdered children: frightening appearance, combination of human and animal traits, ability to transform, identification with Hecate, as well as the story of the failed motherhood underlying the history of emergence of the demon. The key functions of these mythological characters consisted in explanation of the sudden infant and maternal mortality typical to the ancient times, as well as teaching children and adults a lesson. The first could be frightened with such stories, and the latter had to learn from the tale that demonstrates the harm of reckless following the temptations or refusal of fulfilling the prescribed social roles, socially acceptable behavior.

scholarly journals AL-QUR’AN SEBAGAI SUMBER TEKSTUAL FILSAFAT ISLAM

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Wardani Wardani
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy

This article is intended to argue against those who say that the Islamic philosophy is really nothing more than thetrue ancient Greek philosophy that has been “repacked” by Islam, and to prove that Islamic philosophy, whilebeing as a result of historical process of its adopting of Greek philosophy, is to large extent the own Muslimthinkers’ thoughts by “adapting” that philosophical tradition with Islamic doctrine. As the result, they havesought to compromise between rational and revealed truth. Therefore, it sees that Islamic philosophy is a attemptto interpret the Qur’an in the light of reason. By this way of argumentation, the author wishes to say that thebalanced view of the origin of Islamic philosophy, e.g. between the historical and textual roots or betweeninfluence and originality, must be recognized, so that we will have a holistic understanding of the existence ofthis philosophical tradition in Islam.

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