The last phase of Greek philosophy has until recently been less intelligently studied than any other, and in our understanding of its development there are still lamentable lacunae. Three errors in particular have in the past prevented a proper appreciation of Plotinus' place in the history of philosophy. The first was the failure to distinguish Neoplatonism from Platonism: this vitiates the work of many early exponents from Ficinus down to Kirchner. The second was the belief that the Neoplatonists, being (...) ‘mystics,’ were necessarily incomprehensible to the plain man or even to the plain philosopher. To have encouraged the persistence of this superstition in the nineteenth century is the least pardonable of Creuzer's many sins. The third was the chronological confusion involved in the ascription to Saint Paul's contemporary of the works of the pretended Dionysius Areopagita, which contain a fully-developed Neoplatonic theology. Though the fraud had been exposed by Scaliger, these writings continued down to the beginning of the nineteenth century to be used as evidence that the ‘Nsoplatonic trinity’ was an inferior imitation of the Christian one. When this false trail was at length abandoned the fashion for orientalizing explanations persisted in another guise: to the earliest historians of Neoplatonism, Simon and Vacherot, the school of Plotinus was ‘the school of Alexandria,’ and its inspiration was mainly Egyptian. Vacherot says of Neoplatonism that it is ‘essentially and radically oriental, having nothing of Greek thought but its language and procedure.’ Few would be found to-day to subscribe to so sweeping a pronouncement; but the existence of an important oriental element in Plotinus' thought is still affirmed by many French and German writers. (shrink)

Inhalt: Alexander BÖHLIG: Vorwort. Der Manichäismus und das Christentum. Bemerkungen zur Metaphysik in Gnosis und Philosophie. Die Bedeutung des CMC für den Manichäismus. Mani und Platon - ein Vergleich. Wolfgang FAUTH: Manis anderes Ich. Gestalthafte Metaphysik im Kölner Mani-Kodex. Syzygos und Eikon. Edgar FRÜCHTEL: Platonismus und Christentum. Einige Bemerkungen zu Zeit und Zeitlichkeit in der Platonica Theologia des Marsilius Ficinus. Einige Bemerkungen zum Bild des Seelenwagenlenkers. Carl-A. KELLER: Gnostik, Urform christlicher Mystik. Christoph MARKSCHIES: Die Krise einer philosophischen Theologie.

Ennead I. 4. 3: Plotinus is arguing that happiness is fullness and completeness of life, and continues, according to the MSS. , οϋτω γρ ν οùδέ έπακτòν τò γαθòν ύπάρΧοι, ούδ' λλο τò ύποκείμενον άλλαΧόθεν γενόμενον παρέξει αύτò ν άγαθεναι. Mr. MacKenna translates the last phrase by ‘a life needing no foreign substance called in from a foreign realm to establish it in good ’; Ficinus by ‘neque aliud quicquam aliunde adueniens efficiet ut subiectum collocetur in bono.’ Ficinus (...) is undoubtedly right. τò ύποκειμέν means ‘the subject,’ which a few lines above has been identified with the λογικ ζωή. The passage should be corrected by writing τ, ύποκειμέν, dependent on γενόμενον, for τò úποκείμενον. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 127 les Paiens de leurs t6nebres,... de les fortifier de telle sorte contre les pr~jugez & contre les erreurs populaires qu'ils fussent incapables d'y tomber. Again, we learn that Bayle says "we do not know if a substance is by nature spiritual or corporeal, nor if the soul is immortal" with references to "Pyrrhon, B" and "Charron, O" (p. 112). Whatever Professor Mason means about substance, it (...) is not contained as far as I can see in "Pyrrhon, B"; and the point in "Charron, O" is that there is no irrefutable proof of the immortality of the soul. 2Professor Mason is following Voltaire's example more thanBayle's when he attributes to an author implications or attitudes not clearly expressed in the original. This is not to say that his conclusions are totally invalidated; on the contrary, they stand up despite his unreliability on Bayle, for his principal concern is Voltaire's reactions to the Scholar of Rotterdam. Apart from these reservations, it is good to have so important and so complicated a subject so compactly documented. CRAm B. BRVS~ Columbia University Das medizinische Weltbild des Paracelsus. Seine Zusammenhiinge mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis. By Waiter Pagel. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962. "Kosmosophie", Forschungen und Texte zur Geschichte des Weltbildes, der Naturphilosophie, der Mystik und des Spiritualismus vom Sp~tmittelalter bis zur Romantik, ed. by K. Goldammer, Vol. I. Pp. xvi ~- 160. DM 24.) The new monograph series "Kosmosophie" couId not have been introduced more excellently than by Walter Pagel's work on Paracelsus which supplements and extends his earlier study Paracelsus, An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel & New York: 1958). The new series is devoted to studies in the history of science, exploring the old traditions of a "sophic" understanding of the cosmos which always existed side by side with a "logical" one, i.e., the heritage from ancient mysticism, gnosticism, alchemy, and metaphysical speculation which so "disgracefully" characterizes the beginnings of modern science. In this book, Pagel tries to locate the great physician and philosopher Theophrastus of Hohenheim called Paracelsus (1493-1541) within the history of science at that turning point between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to understand him on the basis of the specific relationship of inheriting and modifying the traditions of neoplatonie and gnostic thought in his writings. After an introductory chapter about Paracelsus's position in the history of medicine and in contemporary times, the author investigates the neoplatonic and gnostic sources and presuppositions for the medical-physical world-view of Paracelsus. It should have been pointed out more clearly in this chapter, however, that the study of gnosticism and its effect upon the thinking of the later Hellenism is still in its beginning stages. He describes, then, Paracelsus's world of ideas as it is to be seen in the light of these neoplatonic and gnostic traditions: the doctrines of the invisible spiritual world, the astral powers, the astral body, dualism of sex, the two kinds of fire, the Logoi, the elements, primordial matter, etc. In each case, possible connections with the Hermetic writings, alchemy, gnosticism, neoplatonism, and their transmission through mysticism, cabbala, and the neoplatonic philosophers of the Renaissance (especially Marsilius Ficinus) as well as through St. Augustine have been discussed. Here are a few other distressing misrepresentations of what Bayle has to say: p. 30, on Jews; p. 30, n. 6, on the inspiration of scripture; p. 31, n. 2, on the same subject; p. 37, on miracles; p. 61, n. 1, on man's dominion over animals; p. 92, n. 4, on Christian and natural morality; p. 137, n. 4, on moral and speculative dogmas. Page 92, n. 9, refers to several pages in which Bayle's concluding remark flatly contradicts Professor Mason's interpretation. Spot checks in Moland have turned up no misrepresentations of Voltaire's thought, which is generally less qualified than Bayle's. 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The result is that this Hellenistic-Middle Age syncretism has had a far-reaching influence upon Paracelsus's thought. Because he was in no way a systematic philosopher, his writings are full of contradictions, developments, unitarian and dualistic tendencies, theistic... (shrink)