Name der Zeitschrift: Philologus Jahrgang: 159 Heft: 2 Seiten: 327-364.

This article explores an issue of some ongoing controversy in Ovidian scholarship: the identity of the anonymous person addressed in the epilogue of the “Tristia”’s third book. The exploration combines an analysis of the text with an examination of salient aspects of Hellenistic and Roman literary culture. These in turn inform a systematic prosopographical reassessment of four hypotheses. Evidence converges in the conclusion that the addressee was likely a high-level library administrator, most probably C. Iulius Hyginus.

In his exitus letter on the death of Corellius Rufus, Pliny attempts to present his dead friend with Stoic characteristics. Not only does Corellius follow the Stoic view on suicide in the case of an incurable disease, but also he is implicitly compared to the Stoic sapiens. This is greatly facilitated by allusions to Seneca’s Epistulae Morales, and in particular to epistle 85, where the sapiens is described and dolor is presented as indifferent to the pursuit of virtus. These (...) allusions allow Pliny to both praise Corellius and at the same time express his objections to the prose consolationes of his predecessors. (shrink)

The name Iphianassa occurs only once in Latin literature—in the proem to De Rerum Natura. Here Lucretius illustrates the evils of religion with a description of Iphianassa's sacrifice at Aulis :illud in his rebus uereor, ne forte rearisimpia te rationis inire elementa uiamqueindugredi sceleris. quod contra saepius illareligio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta.Aulide quo pacto Triuiai uirginis aramIphianassai turparunt sanguine foedeductores Danaum delecti, prima uirorum.cui simul infula uirgineos circumdata comptusex utraque pari malarum parte profusast,et maestum simul ante aras adstare parentemsensit (...) et hunc propter ferrum celare ministrosaspectuque suo lacrimas effundere ciuis,muta metu terram genibus summissa petebat.nec miserae prodesse in tali tempore quibatquod patrio princeps donarat nomine regem.nam sublata uirum manibus tremibundaque ad arasdeductast, non ut sollemni more sacrorumperfecto posset claro comitari Hymenaeo,sed casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipsohostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis,exitus ut classi felix faustusque daretur.tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.It is clear that Lucretius treats the name Iphianassa as a synonym for Iphigenia. Homer and Sophocles mention a daughter of Agamemnon called Iphianassa, but in neither author is she the daughter who was sacrificed at Aulis. The first known mention of this myth was in the Cypria, where, according to the summary of Proclus, the daughter was called Iphigenia. Hesiod refers to it in the Catalogue of Women, where he calls the daughter Iphimede. From the fifth century b.c.e., the extant sources, beginning with Pindar and Aeschylus, call her Iphigenia. Why did Lucretius choose Iphianassa? (shrink)

Utjecajni Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon Christiana Gottlieba Jöchera u svom trećem svesku sadržava natuknicu o filozofu Frani Petriću. Izuzevši dvojbe o mjestu rođenja, Jöcherovi su podaci točni, ali oskudni. Da bi se ustanovilo kojim je podacima raspolagao ili mogao raspolagati njemački leksikograf, proučeni su Jöcherovi izvori. Od njih devet, koje je Jöcher popisao na kraju svoje natuknice o Petriću, njemački se leksikograf poslužio samo djelom Les Eloges des hommes savans Antoinea Teissiera i drugim izdanjem rječnika Dictionaire historique et critique Pierra Baylea. Najstariji (...) i najmlađi među Jöcherovim izvorima, Elogia illustrium Belgii scriptorum Auberta Le Mirea i Mémoires Jean-Pierrea Nicerona, nemaju ni retka o Petriću. Ostalih pet Jöcherovih izvora sadržavaju vrijedne podatke o Petriću, ali se Jöcher njima nije poslužio.The third volume of the authoritative Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon , compiled by Christian Gottlieb Jöcher, contains an entry on the philosopher Frane Petrić. Apart from Petrić’s obscure place of birth, Jöcher’s data, if scarce, are correct. In order to establish the information that had been or may have been available to the German lexicographer, Jöcher’s sources have been traced. Out of the nine sources Jöcher listed at the end of his entry on Petrić, the German lexicographer consulted only the work Les Eloges des hommes savans by Antoine Teissier and the second edition of the Dictionaire historique et critique by Pierre Bayle. The oldest and most recent among Jöcher’s sources, Elogia illustrium Belgii scriptorum by Aubert Le Mire and Mémoires by Jean-Pierre Niceron, make no reference to Petrić. Although the remaining five sources contain valuable information on Petrić, Jöcher failed to consult them. (shrink)

Zunächst wird anhand von drei europäischen Schriftstellern, Ärzten und Historikern und in Form von zusammengesetzten Auszügen eine Zusammenfassung der arabisch-islamischen Medizin während 500 Jahren vorgelegt.Die Ethik im allgemeinen und dann in der Medizin der Araber im speziellen wird fortfahrend sehr klar dargestellt.Da im Islam die Wissenschaft sehr gelobt und vorangetrieben wird, ist die schnelle Entwicklung der modernen Medizin – Klonen, Organverpflanzung, Exitus, Sterbehilfe etc. – nicht in Kontradiktion mit der Religion, vorausgesetzt, daß die Einheit Gottes und die Würde seiner (...) Propheten – Moses, Jesus und Mohammed – nicht und die Würde des Menschen selbst nicht erniedrigt wird. (shrink)

Esiste un confine certo tra vita e morte? Il volume ripercorre, con un approccio transculturale, la storia della definizione di morte e le vicende connesse alle tecniche di accertamento del decesso dall'antichità ai giorni nostri. Da sempre, infatti, medici, filosofi e teologi si sono sforzati di individuare il momento preciso dell'exitus, l'istante in cui, secondo la tradizione, l'anima avrebbe lasciato il corpo. Nondimeno, soglie e parametri stabiliti da una generazione furono spesso posti in discussione e ridisegnati dalla successiva. Alimentato (...) dai successi conseguiti nelle tecniche rianimative e nella trapiantologia, il dibattito ha conosciuto una fase di grande vivacità proprio negli ultimi decenni, tanto che, pur avendo in genere abbandonato - o, perlomeno, ridimensionato - considerazioni su principi metafisici, la definizione di morte appare ancor oggi come un oggetto di negoziazione scientifica e bioetica. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Metaphysics of Creation. Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles IIE.J. AshworthNorman Kretzmann. The Metaphysics of Creation. Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xiii + 483. Cloth, $65.00.Thomas Aquinas is astounding not just for the richness, complexity and timeless interest of his thought, but for the sheer bulk of his works. The challenge this bulk presents to commentators has been (...) taken up in various ways. Some people focus on Aquinas's architectonic, giving a global overview of individual works in such terms as the neo-Platonic exitus-reditus schema; others focus on the interplay of faith and reason in his works by classifying Aquinas as a theologian, or a Christian philosopher, or a philosopher-theologian; still others try to organize his thought by bringing together thematically-linked discussions from a variety of places. All three approaches tend to overlook perhaps the most striking feature of Aquinas's writings: the continuous progression of carefully-formulated, detailed arguments and sub-arguments.In the second book of his uncompleted trilogy on Summa contra gentiles, Norman Kretzmann combines the best of the first two approaches to Aquinas with an impressive and largely successful attempt to come to terms with Aquinas as an arguer. He takes an ample selection of Aquinas's own arguments in their order of appearance in SCG II; he analyzes their premisses; he shows how they function in relation to earlier and later arguments; and he criticizes their weaknesses. He does all this in an elegant, lucid prose that ensures the attentive reader an enhanced understanding of the specific topics discussed by Aquinas. [End Page 434]To understand the full import of the arguments examined, however, we need to consider what Aquinas hopes to achieve by his sequences of arguments. While granting that Aquinas is a theologian, and that he intends his Summa contra gentiles to give a full account of what Christians believe, Kretzmann argues that the first three books of SCG present a fully-developed natural theology which can serve as guide and inspiration to thinkers today. The key to understanding Aquinas here is the recognition that the philosopher, particularly the metaphysician, is, or should be, concerned with the first principles and most ultimate aspects of reality. If it turns out, as most philosophers before the twentieth century have believed, that these first principles are divine, then truths taught by revelation can be integrated with truths arrived at by reason. Moreover, once the existence and nature of God have been established, or at least rendered plausible, one can take God as a starting point for the explanation of this-worldly phenomena, from the nature of the physical world to the nature of the human person. This explanation, while buttressed by references to Biblical revelation, will nonetheless be fully natural, insofar as it relies on arguments whose premisses are those available to any rational being independently of revelation.In his earlier book, The Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford, 1997) Kretzmann examined the start of Aquinas's natural theology, the movement from things around us to God. In The Metaphysics of Creation, finished just before his death, Kretzmann takes up the emergence of things from God. The book is divided into three unequal parts. First, there is a long discussion of Aquinas's view of creation, and the precise way in which the world is dependent upon God, its first cause. Particularly notable in this section is the discussion of Aquinas's view that creation is compatible with the notion of a beginningless world. The second, very brief, section takes up Aquinas's treatment of the emergence of different species, and his willingness to reject the kind of literal reading of Genesis espoused by contemporary creationists. The third and longest section takes up the nature of the human mind or soul. What makes this section particularly interesting is its emphasis on the implications of the top-down approach. If we start with the ideas that God is a pure intellect, and that immaterial substance is possible, then the mind-body problem becomes that of explaining how intellect can ever be closely related to matter, rather that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue by David DecosimoTravis KroekerEthics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue David Decosimo stanford, ca: stanford university press, 2014. 376 pp. $65.00 / $29.95If "debeo distinguere" represents the programmatic scholarly agenda for "prophetic Thomism," over against the more mystical narrative "exitus et reditus" itinerary of Dionysian Augustinianism, David Decosmio should be considered a (...) virtuous practitioner of this Thomistic craft in the domain of political ethics. To put it more accurately, Decosimo provides a complex, lucid account of his reading of Thomas as one who tutors Christians and especially Christian ethicists through "fraternal correction" in what it means to provide a generous, charitable account of "pagan virtue" via the making of distinctions. For Decosimo the word "pagan" refers to non-Christian "outsiders"—that is, "all those without charity" (11). While that may seem to be a noncharitable way to put it, Decosimo means it to bespeak that form of charity that allows non-Christians to be and to speak as non-Christians, absent (or refusing) those virtues that Thomas calls "theological"—those habits infused supernaturally by God through the "redemptive grace" that orders and unites humans "in loving friendship with the God revealed in Jesus Christ" (11). Thomas's representative pagan is, of course, Aristotle. Decosimo insists that a correct reading of Thomas opposes both "hyper-Augustinian Thomism" (on which account non-Christians are incapable of true virtue) as well as a "public reason Thomism" (which avoids theological claims). At the same time, Decosimo claims that Thomas remains fully Augustinian in his theological account of charity and yet "unites and transforms Aristotle and Augustine alike to teach charity toward outsiders and their virtues" (1). To put it in terms of the formula Decosimo reiterates throughout the book, Aquinas "strives to be Aristotelian by being Augustinian and vice versa" (41, 70, 181 253, etc.). In so doing, he offers resources for a prophetic Thomism that more charitably navigates the church's relations to secular politics by welcoming the contributions of pagan virtue to its own Christian virtue.If "charity's scholarly work is the multiplication of distinctions" (8) then Decosimo's book is a model of charity. Decosimo works as an analytic philosopher at a high level of erudition to elucidate the linguistic and syllogistic puzzles in Thomas's accounts of virtue in a close reading of a range of works to show that, for Thomas, natural human virtue oriented toward the shared human and political good (the highest good attainable without charity) is true [End Page 199] virtue in which Christians and non-Christians, Augustinians and Aristotelians, may fully share and participate together. Indeed, the theological virtues must be devoted to the charitable interpretation of all contributions dialectically considered and ordered to the highest human good. Only by adhering to such a vision of virtue that welcomes pagan virtue will Christians practice the ethics of charity, and prophetic Thomism provides a model for how the church may engage difference in a way that honors others while being faithful to its own vision of the gift of grace.I hope it will not be taken as uncharitable or (ugh!) "hyper-Augustinian" to suggest that Decosimo's account of prophetic Thomism is more attuned to Aristotelian logic and the dialectic of definitional distinctions than it is to Augustine's more Platonic account of pagan virtue as a Dionysian erotic dialectic in which the "logos is wild." But I am in full agreement with Decosimo's claim that ethics as a work of charity ought to be open to both (and "all") in providing resources to Christian and non-Christian ethicists alike for engaging contemporary political challenges concerning otherness and difference in the service of justice.Travis KroekerMcMaster UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Since its rediscovery in 1903, the Logica Demonstrativa by Girolamo Saccheri is known in three editions ?1697, 1701, and 1735, the 1735, edition being posthumous. The 1697 edition is without the name of the author. This article calls attention to two unnoticed editions (1696? and 1699), the first one unsigned and the second by ?Carolus Iosephus Saccarellus?, a Saccheri pseudonym. The publishing history of the work has been partially clarified, though a number of problems remain unsolved. Après sa redécouverte in (...) 1903, on connait trois éditions de la Logica demonstrativa par Girolamo Saccheri (1697, 1701, 1735: cette dernière édition après sa mort). L'édition du 1697 est anonyme. L'article veut faire connaitre deux éditions inconnues (1696? et 1699), dont la première est ancore anonyme et la deuxième a comme auteur ?Carolus Saccarellus?, un pseudonyme de Saccheri. Ça éclaircit, en part, les questions liées à l'histoire des éditions de l'oeuvre. Hieronymi Saccherii Logica demonstrativa ex oblivione tracta est a Johannes Vailati, Italiae philosopho, Anno Domini 1903. Ter Logica edita fuit, in commune doctorum virorum opinione, annis Domini 1697, 1701, 1735. Quorum editionum, prima sine nomine auctoris est, postrema eius mortem secuta. Duas autem ignotas Logicae editiones inveni, alteram pariter sine auctoris nomine, alteram quodam Iosepho Saccarello ascriptam, certe ipsius Saccherii alienum nomen. Quae omnia nonnullas quaestiones de Logica demonstrativa illustrant. (shrink)

Thomas geht davon aus, dass die Weisheit, gemäß der aristotelischen Definition, in der Erkenntnis der ersten Ursachen besteht. Nach Thomas ist die Theologie diese Weisheit, weil sie die Erkenntnis über Gott als erste Ursache des ganzen Universums ist und zugleich die Erkenntnis über alles in Bezug auf Gott als ihren Ursprung und Ziel. Angenommen, dass für Thomas die Theologie die Weisheit ist, kann die logische Struktur seines Hauptwerkes Summa theologica anders wie gewöhnlich interpretiert werden und zwar, nicht nach dem neoplatonischen (...) Schema: exitus—reditus, sondern als Realisation des Programms der Theologie als Weisheit. (shrink)

We have sought to expound how Jan van Ruusbroec goes about representing the relationship of love between God and human beings by proceeding from God’s inner life of love. Therefore, in the first part of our paper we elucidated Ruusbroec’s view of the inner love reality of the Triune God. In the second part we explained how genuine Christian mystical life is founded within the intra-trinitarian life of love. Prior to discussing the characteristics of Ruusbroec’s trinitarian position, we dwelled upon (...) the author’s development of his idea of the Trinity from a personal perception of his relation with God, the embedding of Ruusbroec’s love-mysticism in traditional Christian faith and his repeated clarification of the Triune God from two perspectives: God’s nature and God’s essence. We found that, in his explanation of God’s nature, Ruusbroec underlines its fruitfulness as a way of demonstrating that God is one dynamic of love, without beginning or end, which ceaselessly and simultaneously consists in “flowing out” and “being flowed back”. This phenomenon, we stated, he associates with the concept, “oneness in threeness” and “threeness in oneness”. Through an exposition on the differing features of unity and the Persons of the Trinity, we came to the conclusion that the author in all of his works combines both the origin of “flowing out” and “flowing-back” with the Holy Spirit as the bond or unity of love of Father and Son. From this we concluded that none of the Persons is the principle or source of regiratio, i.e. return, to the unity. The view that God’s unity of Persons is the principle of exitus-reditus – and not only the third Person as recent scientific research has sought to demonstrate – is what we consider to be the heart of Ruusbroec’s trinitarian way of thinking. We ascertained, further, that the author not only links the unity of the Persons with fruitfulness; he believes that the same “fruitful” unity, drawing in the divine Persons on the level of God’s nature, is the “enjoying” unity on the level of God’s essence. By means of the distinction between God’s enjoying unity and the unity of God’s fruitful nature, Ruusbroec explicates the true facts of the intra-trinitarian life of love. The perception leads him to conclude that God, as a unity of Persons, is ceaselessly and simultaneously working and enjoying. In the second part, we illustrated how Ruusbroec’s trinitarian thought mirrors the basis of his mystical doctrine: the conviction that mystics are unified with the divine Persons both in working and enjoying, and that they are one reality of love with God. We explained how the author, first of all, maintains that mystics, who bear a full likeness to God’s fruitful nature, ceaselessly turn to good works and virtues, just as God, ceaselessly, through the divine Persons, flows out in love. We then avered that the likeness to God’s nature is not the result of human effort and that it arises from God’s touch within the human mind. Moreover, we showed that Ruusbroec, in accordance with his intuition that God’s fruitful unity is both out-flowing and inwarddrawing, believes that God is both impelling humans outward toward virtues and drawing them into God’s unity of love. In analogy with the first part of our argument – as far as the “return” of humans is concerned – we ascertained that our author is stressing the initiative of God’s unity of the Holy Spirit, i.e. the mutual love between the Father and the Son. We found the emphasis on God’s inward-drawing unity to be of great significance, because God’s unity of love also plays a crucial role with respect to the transition to “enjoyment” of human beings in God’s essence. We clarified how human beings, according to Ruusbroec, through the likeness to God’s nature, participate in the enjoyment of God’s essence with the divine Persons. We pointed out that the union in God’s essence is the most intimate experience, but not the end-point of the mystical life as, according to our author, contemplatives are directed, again and again, to good works. Lastly, we arrived at the conclusion that Ruusbroec considers the mystical life, like the life of God, to be ceaselessly consisting of action and enjoyment. However, it is not primarily the analogy with God’s trinitarian reality of love that Ruusbroecs stresses. Basically, he accentuates the fact that mystics ceaselessly experience unification with the divine Persons, both in working and enjoying. This means that mystics, united with the divine Persons in one enjoyment on the level of God’s essence, concurrently experience that, with the divine Persons, they also “share” in God’s “flowing” and “ebbing” on the level of God’s nature. On the basis of this we have affirmed that, according to Ruusbroec, God’s activity and enjoyment in the “Divinity Itself” is God’s activity and enjoyment in the human being, and the inverse. Moreover, we have shown how the author considers both moments to occur simultaneously, both in God and in human beings, meaning that the mystical life is continuously one reality of love with God. (shrink)

William Blake’s prophetic works seem to present the reader with a puzzling contradiction. On the one hand Blake can be read as a prophet of sexual revolution with his attacks on puritanism and hypocritical chastity. On the other hand, in many passages he seems to express characteristically Platonic/Patristic skepticism concerning bodily experience. What is more he often portrays sexuality and indeed femininity as manipulative and cruel. Is there a coherent attitude to sexuality in Blake? This paper argues that Blake’s soteriology (...) strongly implies that the ‘return’ to unity with the divine pivots on the incarnation which Blake even insists is the product of natural sexuality. To this extent there is a place for the sexualized body in the economy of salvation. This economy links Blake to a larger Platonist and Christian Platonist tradition that understands salvation in terms of an exitus/reditus pattern. (shrink)