'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy (...) in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy. (shrink)
Phaedo of Elis was well-known as a writer of Socratic dialogues, and it seems inconceivable that Plato could have been innocent of intertextuality when, excusing himself on the grounds of illness, he made him the narrator of one of his own: the "Phaedo". In fact the psychological model outlined by Socrates in this dialogue converges with the evidence we have (especially from fragments of the Zopyrus) for Phaedo's own beliefs about the soul. Specifically, Phaedo seems to have thought that non-rational (...) desires were ineliminable epiphenomena of the body, that reason was something distinct, and that the purpose of philosophy was its 'cure' and 'purification'. If Plato's intention with the "Phaedo" is to assert the separability and immortality of reason (whatever one might think about desire and pleasure), then Phaedo provides a useful standpoint for him. In particular, Phaedo has arguments that are useful against the 'harmony-theorists' (and are the more useful rhetorically speaking since it is only over the independence of reason that Phaedo disagrees with them). At the same time as allying himself with Phaedo, however, Plato is able to improve on him by adding to the demonstration that reason is independent a proof that it is actually immortal. (shrink)
This book traces, for the first time, a revolution in philosophy which took place during the early centuries of our era. It reconstructs the philosophical basis of the Stoics' theory that fragments of an ancient and divine wisdom could be reconstructed from mythological traditions, and shows that Platonism was founded on an argument that Plato had himself achieved a full reconstruction of this wisdom, and that subsequent philosophies had only regressed once again in their attempts to "improve" on his achievement.
A debate between Proclus and Damascius over whether intellect ‘remembers’ the forms in contemplating them is explained by Professor Adamson as a disagreement over the nature of memory looking back to Plato and Aristotle. But I argue that it is rather symptomatic of a disagreement stretching back through Plotinus to Middle Platonism over the nature of the intellect. This gives the debate its urgency; and it coheres better with the fact that, Plato and Aristotle aside, there is vanishingly little evidence (...) in ancient philosophy for a thematized interest in memory. (shrink)
This paper shows that our principal ancient source for the metaphysical views of the second-century Platonist Harpocration of Argos drew on his interpretation of Plato's Cratylus. This is important because there is no other evidence of the Cratylus being read for its metaphysical content until Proclus, 300 years later. It also changes our understanding of Harpocration: he is generally supposed to share the metaphysical views of Numenius, but his exegesis of the Cratylus reveals him to be a faithful student of (...) Atticus. (shrink)
According to a report in Athenaeus , the qualities of Erosled the Stoic Zeno to make him the tutelary god of his ideal state:Pontianus said that Zeno of Citium took Eros to be the god of love and freedom, and even the provider of concord, but nothing else. This is why he said in his Republic that Eros was the god who contributed to the safety of the city.
In CQ 46 , 591–5, I proposed an emendation to Plutarch, de Stoic, rep. 1048DE which included the adoption of the variant σχύουσιν for the σχύν otherwise attested in the MSS.
The de primo frigido has long been recognized as an important text for our understanding of Plutarch′s epistemological position. It is the aim of this paper to show, however, that the sophistication of the work, and with it of Plutarch′s epistemology, is not generally given the credit due to it.
In CQ 46, 591–5, I proposed an emendation to Plutarch, de Stoic, rep. 1048DE which included the adoption of the variant σχύουσιν for the σχύν otherwise attested in the MSS.
The de primo frigido has long been recognized as an important text for our understanding of Plutarch′s epistemological position. It is the aim of this paper to show, however, that the sophistication of the work, and with it of Plutarch′s epistemology, is not generally given the credit due to it.
According to a report in Athenaeus, the qualities of Erosled the Stoic Zeno to make him the tutelary god of his ideal state:Pontianus said that Zeno of Citium took Eros to be the god of love and freedom, and even the provider of concord, but nothing else. This is why he said in his Republic that Eros was the god who contributed to the safety of the city.
