_ Source: _Volume 61, Issue 1, pp 43 - 59 Contemporary debate on Plato’s cosmogony often assumes that the ‘literal’ reading of the _Timaeus_ yields an account of creation, while the view that the cosmos always existed is non-literal. In antiquity, Taurus has been seen as a forerunner of the ‘non-literal’ interpretation. This paper shows, on the contrary, that Taurus’ argument for the sempiternity of the cosmos is a literalist one, relying on a strict linguistic analysis of _Timaeus_ 28b6-8.

Richard Sorabji here takes time as his central theme, exploring fundamental questions about its nature: Is it real or an aspect of consciousness? Did it begin along with the universe? Can anything escape from it? Does it come in atomic chunks? In addressing these and myriad other issues, Sorabji engages in an illuminating discussion of early thought about time, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Islamic, Christian, and Jewish medieval thinkers. Sorabji argues that the thought of these often negelected philosophers (...) about the subject is, in many cases, more complete than that of their more recent counterparts. “Splendid. . . . The canvas is vast, the picture animated, the painter nonpareil. . . . Sorabji’s work will encourage more adventurers to follow him to this fascinating new-found land.”—Jonathan Barnes, Times Literary Supplement “One of the most important works in the history of metaphysics to appear in English for a considerable time. No one concerned with the problems with which it deals either as a historian of ideas or as a philosopher can afford to neglect it.”—Donald MacKinnon, Scottish Journal of Theology “Unusually readable for such scholarly content, the book provides in rich and cogent terms a lively and well-balanced discussion of matters of concern to a wide academic audience.”— Choice. (shrink)

Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from something pre-existing? How was it caused to come into (...) existence? Is it material or immaterial? The second part looks at questions concerning human agency and responsibility, including the problem of evil and the nature of will, considering thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Augustine. Highlighting some of the most important and interesting aspects of these philosophical debates, the volume will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of philosophy, classics, theology and ancient history. (shrink)

Plato was the first author to use the term mûthos (myth) in our modern sense.1 He described the role of myth in Athens, in order to contrast it with an argumentative philosophical discourse aimed at the truth. Even so, he had recourse to this unverifiable story not only in a practical role, in order to persuade the citizen to obey moral norms and political laws, but also in a theoretical context, evoking premises from which philosophical discourse could develop, and picturing (...) realities such as the soul, that could not be grasped by either the senses or the intellect. With the disappearance of the city-state and the constitution of Kingdoms and Empires, the social and political aspects of myth tended to disappear in the Mediterranean world, allowing the soul to take “centre-stage.” While theogony, cosmogony, and anthropogony persisted, they did so only to provide a framework for a vast drama—that of the salvation of the human soul—as described in the Chaldaean Oracles and the treatises of the Sethian Gnostics. (shrink)

This volume focuses on cosmological and cosmogonical concepts in hermetic writings and studies their syncretistic origins, subject matter and impact from an interdisciplinary perspective. In doing so, it incorporates articles from various fields of research and academic disciplines.

In antiquity living beings are inextricably linked to the cosmos as a whole. Ancient biology and cosmology depend upon one another and therefore a complete understanding of one requires a full account of the other. This volume addresses many philosophical issues that arise from this double relation. Does the cosmos have a soul of its own? Why? Is either of these two disciplines more basic than the other, or are they at the same explanatory level? What is the relationship between (...) living things and the cosmos as a whole? If the cosmos is an animate intelligent being, what is the nature of its thoughts and actions? How do these relate to our own thoughts and actions? Do they pose a threat to our autonomy as subjects and agents? And what is the place of zoogony in cosmogony? A distinguished international team of contributors provides original essays discussing these questions. (shrink)

Le volume rassemble quatorze contributions etudiant les diverses reinterpretations du Timee qui se situent entre l'empire romain et notre siecle. Tandis que les etudes portant sur des auteurs singuliers tels que Galien (M. Vegetti), Calcidius (E. Rudolph), Proclus (A. Lernould), Boece (W. Mesch), M. Ficin (A. Etienne) et N.A. Whitehead (G. Betegh) mettent en relief des moments importants de la reception du "Timee", les contributions de W. Rod, K. Gloy et L. Brisson permettent de comparer globalement la vision antique (...) et moderne de la cosmologie et en particulier des mathematiques. Le volume s'ouvre par un essai d'A. Neschke presentant une comprehension actuelle du Timee comme contribution a la physique grecque. Une bibliographie selective de la reception du Timee ainsi que des index donnent au volume le caractere d'un instrument de travail precieux. A. Neschke-Hentschke, nee a Berlin en 1942, enseigne actuellement la philosophie antique et l'histoire de la philosophie a l'Universite de Lausanne. Ses recherches portent en particulier sur Platon et sa reception. En temoignent, a part de nombreux articles, les deux volumes parus dans la meme collection: Images de Platon et lectures de ses oeuvres et Platonisme politique et theorie du droit naturel, vol. 1. (shrink)

This paper discusses Croatian maritime pilgrimages by searching for their sources in the prehistoric Mediterranean context. From the first search for the sacred, different and the other, from the prehistoric hierophanies and human being’s attempts to explain the mysterious Cosmos through their endeavour to respond to the unknown and give an order to the Chaos – we encounter a human being who travels searching for answers. The human being, as a part of the community, through cosmogonies, and then theophanies, explains (...) the creation of the world and tries to give meaning to the reality surrounding him. This modus of travel and pilgrimage to the sacred and divine continues through the historical period in three great monotheistic religions that are born and spread in the Mediterranean: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Mediterranean is a space of travels and travellers, intersections of thoughts, philosophies and religions. From late antiquity through the Middle Ages to the Modern Ages, the Mediterranean is the intersection of pilgrims from all directions. This paper describes pilgrimages and pilgrims who travelled from the Croatian coast to Loreto and Assisi in the 18th century. Based on 16,000 documents of Croatian Maritime Regesta of the 18th century vol. I–III, a total of 303 pilgrimages to Loreto and Assisi have been found, attesting to 2,513 pilgrims travelling, mostly in large and organized groups of up to 80 people, from the east coast of the Adriatic – from Umag in the north to Boka Kotorska in the south – to these old and Croatian believers well-known sanctuaries. Croatian maritime pilgrimages, therefore, have undeniable Mediterranean roots and an incredible continuity of tens of thousands of years. (shrink)

Allusions to a cosmogony contained in a Vedic hymn present striking analogies to a cosmogony attributed to the Pythagoreans by Aristotle, Simplicius and Stobaeus. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the extent to which they are similar and to which their differences respond to different cultural premises.

Cheikh Moctar Ba avait, dans un précédent traité, défini et constitué un parallèle entre les cosmogonies et les cosmologies grecques et africaines. Il entreprend ici une analyse de la fonction et de la place qu'elles occupent dans la vie des sociétés, et comment elles sont à l'origine de l'établissement d'un certain ordre. Face à ces problématiques qui regroupent en grande partie les questionnements du mouvement existentiel, il s'attèle à construire cet essai autour deux axes principaux: une étude de la question (...) de la centralité, et un examen du rapport entretenu par les cosmologies et les cosmogonies avec les différentes formes d'organisation sociale. (shrink)

: This essay examines the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate and its shifting interpretations—those of Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Wang Tingxiang (1474–1544) in particular—and by doing so explores the significance of ‘‘cosmogony’’ in the Confucian tradition and its significance for the change of political philosophy from the Song dynasty through the Ming. First, through a close reading of Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Diagram, it is argued that they should be interpreted primarily as a statement of political philosophy rather than (...) a mere textual study of Zhou Dunyi’s metaphysics. Wang Tingxiang’s reworking of the Diagram is examined in order to explore the transformation of its worldview through the shifted focus from li to qi. Then, by connecting the fundamental structures of the two cosmogonies to other aspects of their systems of thought, the moral and political implications that develop from the cosmogonies are unraveled. This examination of shifting interpretations of the Diagram will shed light on the cosmogonies as crucial expressions of political philosophy in the Confucian tradition without losing sight of their historical contexts. (shrink)

According to the ancient Greek Stoics, the cosmos regularly transitions between periods of conflagration, during which only fire exists, and periods of cosmic order, during which the four elements exist. This paper examines the cosmogonic process by which conflagrations are extinguished and cosmic orders are restored, and it defends three main conclusions. First, I argue that not all the conflagration’s fire is extinguished during the cosmogony, against recent arguments by Ricardo Salles. Second, at least with respect to the cosmogony, it (...) is not necessary to posit the existence of proto-elements. Third, while scholars such as Salles and David Hahm have argued that Cleanthes held a distinct theory of cosmogony from Zeno and Chrysippus, I argue that each of these Stoics endorse the same cosmogonic theory. (shrink)

The present paper focuses on some aspects of the Neoplatonist literary-metaphysical theory, which has clearly been expressed in the anony­mous Prolegomena to Plato’s philosophy and further confirmed in Proclus’ exegesis of the Timaeus. Thus, this contribution, examines and compares several passages from the Prolegomena and from Proclus’ Commentary on the Timaeus with a view to showing that it is legiti­mate to speak of a certain cosmogony of the Platonic dialogue that is analogous to that of the macrocosm. Moreover, the analogy (...) between macrocosm and microcosm makes it possible to further investigate the similarity between the λόγος-ζῷον of the Demiurge and that of Timaeus, on the one hand, and the reality which the λόγος expresses, on the other. This similarity turns out to be both structural/morphological and content-related/semantic. Thus, by combining the natural and theo­logical science, the analysis of the “generation” of the macrocosm and microcosm brings out the strongly analogical nature of Plato’s dialogues, which is particularly visible in the Timaeus. (shrink)

Razlicite ideje o tome kako se vasiona pojavila i kako se razvija, bile su u indijskoj tradiciji povezane sa mitskim, religijskim i filozofskim idejama i kontekstima, a razvijale su se u rasponu od oko 2.500 g. - od 15. v. st. e., do 16. v. - tj. od vremena veda, do purana. Kad je rec o nastanku vasione, dve glavne ideje su prisutne. Po jednoj koncepciji vasiona se samopostala, a bogovi su eventualno bili prva bica u sledu daljeg razvoja. Po (...) drugom shvatanju, vasiona je bozanska tvorevina, koje je nekad nastalo u mukotrpnom procesu, ili kao emanacija u bozanskoj igri. Indijska tradicija je poznavala i razlicite kritike mitskih i religijskih shvatanja, koji su davali prednost naturalistickim i materijalistickim objasnjenjima nastanka i razvoja univerzuma. Jedna od specificnosti indijskih kosmogonija i kosmologija je bilo i operisanje sa velikim vremenskim rasponima, sto su im omogucili indijski brojevi koje je u 13. v. u Evropu uveo Fibonaci. (shrink)

Following Xiao Gongchuan and F. Mote, this paper discussed the reasons why there is no myth of cosmogony in China. It was written before the tomb excavations that contain some cosmogony essays.

Beginning from a basis in the theoretical analysis of comparative religious ethics provided by David Little and Sumner Twiss, this essay extends that analysis by sketching certain "benchmark" theoretical options in comparative religious ethics and by identifying certain fundamental questions which ethicists ought to address to the data supplied by descriptive studies of comparative religions. To illustrate the application of the theoretical model thus defined, the essay concludes with an analysis of selected themes in the essays by Campany, Guberman, and (...) Read in this Focus. (shrink)