Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

Author: Sara Ahbel-Rappe

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-10-28

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0199882150

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Damascius was head of the Neoplatonist academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut its doors forever in 529. His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy. Its survey of Neoplatonist metaphysics, discussion of transcendence, and compendium of late antique theologies, make it unique among all extant works of late antique philosophy. It has never before been translated into English. The Problems and Solutions exhibits a thorough?going critique of Proclean metaphysics, starting with the principle that all that exists proceeds from a single cause, proceeding to critique the Proclean triadic view of procession and reversion, and severely undermining the status of intellectual reversion in establishing being as the intelligible object. Damascius investigates the internal contradictions lurking within the theory of descent as a whole, showing that similarity of cause and effect is vitiated in the case of processions where one order (e.g. intellect) gives rise to an entirely different order (e.g. soul). Neoplatonism as a speculative metaphysics posits the One as the exotic or extopic explanans for plurality, conceived as immediate, present to hand, and therefore requiring explanation. Damascius shifts the perspective of his metaphysics: he struggles to create a metaphysical discourse that accommodates, insofar as language is sufficient, the ultimate principle of reality. After all, how coherent is a metaphysical system that bases itself on the Ineffable as a first principle? Instead of creating an objective ontology, Damascius writes ever mindful of the limitations of dialectic, and of the pitfalls and snares inherent in the very structure of metaphysical discourse.


The Philosophical History

The Philosophical History

Author: Damaskios

Publisher: APA

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13:

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This new edition features the Greek text reconstructed from Photius' Epitome and Suidas' Lexicon with critical apparatus, English translation, commentary, and a full historical introduction; there are three appendices, a bibliography, indices, and tables of concordance between the present edition and Zintzen's (Vitae Isidori Reliquiae.) Written in the early sixth century by the head of the Platonic Academy in Athens, this work tells the story of the pagan community from the late fourth century AD. The critical landmarks of this 'anti-ecclesiastical' history are the destruction of the Serapeion in 391 and the persecution of the pagan intelligentsia of Alexandria in 488/9. (The Philisophical History) also establishes a sacred geography of paganism, comprising not merely intellectual centres like Athens, Alexandria and Aphrodisias but sacred sites in the countryside of the Greater Eastern Mediterranean as well. Offering a panorama of the spiritual life of late antiquity from a pagan perspective, the book puts on stage orthodox and heretical exegetes of Hellinism - rhetors, philosophers, iatrosophists, poets, politicians and holy men and women. The linguistic, historical and philisophical commentary on the reconstructed text allows the solution of several prospographical enigmas, while providing at the same time fresh comparative evidence for the study of the period's historiographical methodology. Greek text, critical apparatus, English translation, commentary, historical introduction, appendices, bibliography, indices, and tables of concordance between the present edition and Zinten's


The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy

The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy

Author: George Karamanolis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1107110157

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The first comprehensive study of the function and value of aporia, or puzzlement, as a key tool in ancient philosophical enquiry.


A Philosophy of the Unsayable

A Philosophy of the Unsayable

Author: William P. Franke

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2014-03-30

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0268079773

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In A Philosophy of the Unsayable, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who attempt to deny or delimit it. In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion—Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. A Philosophy of the Unsayable will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition.


Philosophy in the Ancient World

Philosophy in the Ancient World

Author: James A. Arieti

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9780742533288

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Philosophy in the Ancient World: An Introduction--an intellectual history of the ancient world from the eighth century B.C.E. to the fifth century C.E., from Homer to Boethius--describes and evaluates ancient thought in its cultural setting, showing how it affected and was affected by that setting. The greatest philosophers (Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine) and cultural figures (Homer, Euripides, Thucydides, Archimedes) and a number of lesser ones (Hesiod, Posidonius, Basil) receive careful description and evaluation. Philosophy in the Ancient World is ideally suited as a supplement for undergraduate courses in Ancient Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in the West.


The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity

The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity

Author: Lloyd P. Gerson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-12-10

Total Pages: 1584

ISBN-13: 1316175936

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The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity comprises over forty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of the period 200–800 CE. Designed as a successor to The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (edited by A. H. Armstrong), it takes into account some forty years of scholarship since the publication of that volume. The contributors examine philosophy as it entered literature, science and religion, and offer new and extensive assessments of philosophers who until recently have been mostly ignored. The volume also includes a complete digest of all philosophical works known to have been written during this period. It will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in this rich and still emerging field.


Numinous Seditions

Numinous Seditions

Author: Tim Lilburn

Publisher: University of Alberta

Published: 2024-02-14

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1772127256

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With Numinous Seditions, celebrated poet and essayist Tim Lilburn investigates inner dispositions that might help us bear the new sorrows of the climate crisis. The book draws from the West’s almost forgotten contemplative tradition in its Platonic, Islamic, Christian, and Zoharic forms. It also explores ideas from modern philosophers Jan Zwicky, Gillian Rose, Dorothy Day, and Simone Weil, and from contemporary poets Don Domanski, Philip Kevin Paul, Anne Szumigalski, and Roberto Harrison. Lilburn suggests that listening, noticing, reading, and stretching our imaginations are all part of an interior stance that can assist with the difficult tasks of forming deep relationships with the land, with Indigenous peoples, and with pedagogy itself. Numinous Seditions is for scholars and readers interested in poetry, environmental philosophy, and in the possibility of a contemplative politics.


Time for the Ancients

Time for the Ancients

Author: P. N. Singer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-01-19

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 3110752395

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The book presents the author's latest research on ancient perceptions of time; it centres on medical discussions, especially of the doctor-philosopher Galen, while also contextualizing his work within Graeco-Roman evidence and discussions – archaeological, medical, technological, philosophical, literary – more broadly. The focus is on questions of medical or experiential significance: life cycles, disease cycles, daily regimes for mind and body, clinical assessment, including the vital area of diagnosis through the pulse, technologies of time measurement. But the philosophical background is also examined: questions of the nature and definition of time and its relationship to space and motion. Galen offers original contributions in all these areas, at the same time as shedding important light on both contemporary attitudes and previous discussions. The book thus offers an accessible and vivid overview of key issues in ancient time perception and awareness, while also offering the first in-depth exploration of the insights that the Galenic texts add to this picture. Five thematic chapters – Time Measurement, Year and Life Cycles, Biography, Medical Cycles – consider a wide range of evidence and of recent scholarship, while highlighting the contribution of medical texts.


Reading Neoplatonism

Reading Neoplatonism

Author: Sara Rappe

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-01-28

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780521651585

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Neoplatonism is a term used to designate the form of Platonic philosophy that developed in the Roman Empire from the third to the fifth century A.D. and that based itself on the corpus of Plato's dialogues. Sara Rappe's challenging and innovative study is the first book to analyze Neoplatonic texts themselves using contemporary philosophy of language. It covers the whole tradition of Neoplatonic writing from Plotinus through Proclus to Damascius. In providing the broadest available survey of Neoplatonic writing the book will appeal to classical philosophers, classicists, as well as students of religious studies.