Hellenistic and Later Ancient Philosophy

1. Pereḳ Yetsiʼot ha-Shabat u-fereḳ Kirah.

Interpretation of devotion based on wayang stories and the Bible.

This volume of 18 essays shows how leading philosophers address the problems of ancient metaphysics: one and the many, the potential and the actual, the material and immaterial, the divine and the world itself. Includes three original and previously unpublished translations of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Aubenque and Barbara Cassin.

There is not just a desire but a profound human need for enhancement - the irrepressible yearning to become better than ourselves. Today, enhancement is often conceived of in terms of biotechnical intervention: genetic modification, prostheses, implants, drug therapy - even mind uploading. The theme of this book is an ancient form of enhancement: a physical upgrade that involves ethical practices of self-realization. It has been called 'angelification' - a transformation by which people become angels. The parallel process is 'daimonification', (...) or becoming daimones. Ranging in time from Hesiod and Empedocles through Plato and Origen to Plotinus and Christian gnostics, this book explores not only how these two forms of posthuman transformation are related, but also how they connect and chasten modern visions of transhumanist enhancement which generally lack a robust account of moral improvement. (shrink)

In this essay, we consider the formal and ontological implications of one specific and intensely contested dialectical context from which Deleuze’s thinking about structural ideal genesis visibly arises. This is the formal/ontological dualism between the principles, ἀρχαί, of the One (ἕν) and the Indefinite/Unlimited Dyad (ἀόριστος δυάς), which is arguably the culminating achievement of the later Plato’s development of a mathematical dialectic.3 Following commentators including Lautman, Oskar Becker, and Kenneth M. Sayre, we argue that the duality of the One and (...) the Indefinite Dyad provides, in the later Plato, a unitary theoretical formalism accounting, by means of an iterated mixing without synthesis, for the structural origin and genesis of both supersensible Ideas and the sensible particulars which participate in them. As these commentators also argue, this duality furthermore provides a maximally general answer to the problem of temporal becoming that runs through Plato’s corpus: that of the relationship of the flux of sensory experiences to the fixity and order of what is thinkable in itself. Additionally, it provides a basis for understanding some of the famously puzzling claims about forms, numbers, and the principled genesis of both attributed to Plato by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, and plausibly underlies the late Plato’s deep considerations of the structural paradoxes of temporal change and becoming in the Parmenides, the Sophist, and the Philebus. After extracting this structure of duality and developing some of its formal, ontological, and metalogical features, we consider some of its specific implications for a thinking of time and ideality that follows Deleuze in a formally unitary genetic understanding of structural difference. These implications of Plato’s duality include not only those of the constitution of specific theoretical domains and problematics, but also implicate the reflexive problematic of the ideal determinants of the form of a unitary theory as such. We argue that the consequences of the underlying duality on the level of content are ultimately such as to raise, on the level of form, the broader reflexive problem of the basis for its own formal or meta-theoretical employment. We conclude by arguing for the decisive and substantive presence of a proper “Platonism” of the Idea in Deleuze, and weighing the potential for a substantive recuperation of Plato’s duality in the context of a dialectical affirmation of what Deleuze recognizes as the “only” ontological proposition that has ever been uttered. This is the proposition of the univocity of Being, whereby “being is said in the same sense, everywhere and always,” but is said (both problematically and decisively) of difference itself. (shrink)

Abu al-Hasan al-)Amiri was an important Muslim philosopher from eastern Iran, who is of particular interest for his unique approach to the problem of reason and revelation. His al-Amad ala al-abad is an attempt to demonstrate that philosophy, properly understood, is not in conflict with the teachings of Islam, but rather supports and complements the religion. Taking up a specific theological issue, that of the Afterlife, )Amiri presents a series of Neoplantonic proofs for the immortality of the soul, and then (...) attempts to justify philosophically the need for revelation to supplement intellectual inquiry in this question. ;My translation of the Arabic text of the Amad is accompanied by a running commentary, which is concerned with elucidating both the Greek background of the discussion and its relation to the major schools of thought among )Amiri's Muslim contemporaries. The bulk of the work is shown to be dependent on an unknown Neoplatonic commentary on the Phaedo of Plato, which, while reproducing interpretations from known figures of the late Greek school tradition, was probably put together by a later Christian writer himself anxious to reconcile philosophical doctrine with revealed dogma. In his introductory chapters, )Amiri offers a brief history of Greek philosophy; here also his biographical material is shown to go back to the late Greek schools, while his primary doxographical source is identified as the "Opinions of the Philosophers", an Arabic pseudepigraph attributed to Ammonius. ;Comparison with the works of )Amiri's philosophical contemporaries shows the relative unity of the tradition which they inherited; on the other hand, )Amiri's conservative treatment of Islam sets him apart, and represents rather a conscious continuation of the approach initiated a century before by Kindi. The interpretation of Islam which )Amiri presents in the Amad, and tries to reconcile with philosophy, is shown to be that of the emerging Ashari-Maturidi "orthodoxy", particularly as opposed to the Mutazilite school, which he attacks directly. ;My introduction to the translation surveys )Amiri's life and works, and attempts to give a broader picture of his role as an apologist for philosophy among the Muslims. (shrink)