Julian the Apostate's interpretation of the religious ecumene of the Empire in the context of the project for the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple

Julian the Apostate carried out his religious reforms, relying on the concept of religious piety, which he developed on the basis of the "Chaldean oracles" and contemporary Neoplatonism. His attempt to find a concordat with the Jewish communities fully fits into this concept. Having discovered the "Chaldean" origins of the religion of Abraham, Julian was able to include even the worship of Yahweh in the framework of neo-Platonic theology. The restoration of the Jerusalem temple was for him one of the elements of the renovation of divine-human communication. The lack of information about these events in medieval Jewish literature demonstrates that his attempt to include Judaism in the imperial religious ecumene was based on a misinterpretation of the Abrahamic type of religion.

Alessandro di Afrodisia e Proclo sulla dialettica

In this paper I compare Alexander of Aphrodisias’ and Proclus’ conceptions of dialectic by discussing a passage from Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Topics and texts from Proclus’ Platonic Theology and commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. I show how Alexander takes up Aristotle’s view of dialectic as an argumentative technique that has no specific object but can be put in the service of philosophy e. g. to establish first principles. In a key passage, Alexander quotes some lines from the Parmenides to emphasize that this was also Plato’s view on dialectic. By contrast, Proclus uses the Parmenides as a crucial source for his conception of dialectic as the crowning glory of philosophy, and fiercely criticizes such interpretations of the Parmenides as that of Alexander, which reduce it to the illustration of a logical method. I argue that the difference in their conceptions of dialectic lies in Alexander’s positive and Proclus’ negative view on doxa and on its role in knowledge.

On symbolon and synthēma in the Platonic Theology of Proclus

Many recent studies propose that symbolon and synthēma are synonymous in the writings of Proclus. However, his Platonic Theology contains reliable evidence to put this opinion to doubt. The goal of this research is to determine the meaning of both terms from the contexts of their usage, engaging the textual analysis and the following philosophical reconstruction. As distinguished from a symbol, a synthēma has substantial nature, is stable and remains invariable when is discovered at different levels of the ontological hierarchy. In the Platonic Theology, a symbol is often considered in terms of the hierarchic level, where it appears: in the material world, it is corporeal; among numbers, it is ontologically irrelevant, the intelligible realm contains its proper symbols as well. A significant difference between symbolon and synthēma is related to the dialectics of participation: synthēma in an object keeps it on an unparticipated level, while a symbol implies further participation to a symbolic object. Finally, a synthēma is described as “disseminated,” “planted,” or in any other way hidden in the being; while a symbol is “discovered,” or found in the being, therefore synthēma may be considered an inner kernel of what is discovered as a symbol, and a symbol — as an outward expression of a synthēma. Such understanding of these terms agrees with both exegetical and theurgic contexts in Proclus’ Platonic Theology.

Ficino, Marsilio (1433–99)

With Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino was the most important philosopher working under the patronage of Lorenzo de’Medici, ‘Il Magnifico’, in the Florence of the High Renaissance. Ficino’s main contribution was as a translator of Platonic philosophy from Greek into Latin: he produced the first complete Latin version of the works of Plato (1484) and Plotinus (1492) as well as renderings of a number of minor Platonists. He supplied many of his translations with philosophical commentaries, and these came to exercise great influence on the interpretation of Platonic philosophy in the Renaissance and early modern periods. Ficino’s most important philosophical work, the Theologia platonica de immortalitate animae (Platonic Theology, On the Immortality of the Soul) (1474) aimed to use Platonic arguments to combat the Averroists, ‘impious’ scholastic philosophers who denied that the immortality of the soul could be proven by reason. The most famous concept associated with his name is that of ‘Platonic love’.