Arthur Hilary Armstrong 1909–1997

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. A. Long
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Long Life ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
English Speaking World

Hilary Armstrong changed the subject of ancient philosophy by devoting much of his long life to promoting the study of the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus. When Armstrong graduated from Cambridge University in 1932, Plotinus was widely regarded in the English speaking world as an obscurely mystical thinker, a minority interest at best, and certainly not a philosopher remotely comparable in intellect and rigour to Plato and Aristotle. Today, thanks to Armstrong's prolific output, especially his seven-volume text and translation of the Enneads, no serious scholar of ancient philosophy can afford to neglect Plotinus. As well as being a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, Armstrong was a devout, active, and increasingly idiosyncratic Christian; or perhaps better, a free-thinking Christian Platonist. His religious outlook consistently informed his view of Plotinus. As he grew older, he became increasingly ecumenical, critical of ecclesiastical hierarchy, and sympathetic to the religious experience of other faiths. He published extensively both on contemporary theological issues and also on early Christian thought and its relation to Greek philosophy, especially Platonism.

The Enneads of Plotinus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kalligas
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Christian Thought

This is the first volume of a groundbreaking commentary on one of the most important works of ancient philosophy, the Enneads of Plotinus—a text that formed the basis of Neoplatonism and had a deep influence on early Christian thought and medieval and Renaissance philosophy. This volume covers the first three of the six Enneads, as well as Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, a document in which Plotinus’s student—the collector and arranger of the Enneads—introduces the philosopher and his work. A landmark contribution to modern Plotinus scholarship, this commentary is the most detailed and extensive ever written for the whole of the Enneads. For each of the treatises in the first three Enneads, the volume provides a brief introduction that presents the philosophical background against which Plotinus’s contribution can be assessed; a synopsis giving the main lines and the articulation of the argument; and a running commentary placing Plotinus’s thought in its intellectual context and making evident the systematic association of its various parts with each other.

JEWISH IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-900
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ALBANIS
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.

John Edwards (ed.), Language in Canada. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi, 504.

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-299
Author(s):  
Monica Heller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
First Languages ◽  
French And English ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Language Profiles ◽  
Aboriginal Languages

This volume is meant as a companion piece to three previous volumes published by Cambridge on language in various parts of the English-speaking world (the volume on the United States, edited by Charles Ferguson and Shirley Brice Heath, appeared in 1981, followed in 1984 by one on the British Isles edited by Peter Trudgill, and in 1991 by a volume on Australia edited by Suzanne Romaine). This collection contains 26 short articles, divided into three sets. The first set attempts to provide an overview of sociolinguistic issues in Canada from historical, demographic, and policy perspectives. The second set treats aboriginal languages and the two official languages, French and English; this set includes two articles on language teaching – restricted, however, to the teaching of international languages, mainly as first languages, and to the teaching of French as a second language through immersion methods. The third set offers language profiles of each of Canada's ten provinces, as well as of its two (now three) territories. The organization of the book is meant to provide different angles on sociolinguistic issues in Canada, but unfortunately the result too often is that material is either repeated or consistently left out.

Statistics and the Conversion of the Roman Aristocracy

1995 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 135-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. D. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Religious Change ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
The Public ◽  
Famous Paper ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
English Speaking World

In a justly famous paper published in 1961, Peter Brown set out a model for understanding the historical process whereby the formerly pagan aristocracy of imperial Rome became overwhelmingly Christian during the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. Brown's paper has deeply influenced all who have subsequently studied this historical phenomenon, at least in the English-speaking world. Since this article argues that the Roman aristocracy became Christian significantly earlier than Brown and most recent writers have assumed, it must begin by drawing an important distinction. Brown's paper marked a major advance in modern understanding because it redirected the focus of scholarly research away from conflict and confrontation, away from the political manifestations of paganism culminating in the ‘last great pagan revival in the West’ between 392 and 394, away from episodes which pitted pagan aristocrats of Rome against Christian emperors, away from ‘the public crises in relations between Roman paganism and a Christian court’, towards the less sensational but more fundamental processes of cultural and religious change which gradually transformed the landowning aristocracy of Italy after the conversion of Constantine. This change of emphasis was extremely salutary in 1961, it has permanently changed our perception of the period, and it entails a method of approaching the subject which remains completely valid. Unfortunately, however, Brown also adopted prevailing assumptions about the chronology of these changes which are mistaken, on the basis of which he asserted that the ‘drift into a respectable Christianity’ began no earlier than the reign of Constantius. The evidence and arguments set out here indicate that the process began much earlier and proceeded more rapidly than Brown assumed, but they in no way challenge the validity of his approach to understanding the nature of the process.

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