HOMOIOSIS THEOI. A STUDY OF THE TELOS IN MIDDLE PLATONISM

Abstract

What is the final end of a human being? What is his supreme and ultimate good, his function in the world? In the history of Greek philosophy, all these questions have given birth to a doctrine that is at the heart of this dissertation: that of the telos. Such word was the starting point in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, then becoming in Hellenism the technical term which all those who embarked on an ethical inquiry referred to. The problem of determining the telos of the human being is indeed the most crucial ethical question in ancient ethics after Aristotle: everything is consequent and subordinated to it. In this work, I present one possible answer to this crucial question, namely the Platonist one, which arose within a tradition as old as the ideal master Plato, albeit was put into words only around the I century BC. The Platonists of the I century BC began to formulate the telos by means of a formula borrowed from Plato, i.e. the expression homoiōsis theōi kata to dynaton (“assimilation to God as far as possible”), which occurs in many of Plato’s dialogues and in different contexts. This formulation of the telos was destined to become a Platonist hallmark for all the centuries thereafter. But, what is the meaning of the formula? What implications does it have on ethics? These are the interrogatives that I address in the course of the work, while dealing with the “many voices” of Plato and his tradition. The dissertation opens with those passages from Plato that represented the basis for the doctrine (chapter 1). After this section I present the origins of the concept of the telos with regards to Aristotle’s raising of the question in the Nichomachan Ethics, on the one hand, and of Stoic position, on the other (chapter 2 and 3). The very core of the dissertation is devoted to Early Imperial Platonism (I century BC – III century AD). I analyse all the appearances of the doctrine, moving from the short but extremely meaningful passage from Stobaeus’s Anthologium, traditionally attributed to Eudorus, which is the first witness to this doctrine (chapter 5). I also take into consideration the enormous corpus of Philo of Alexandria (chapter 10), in which the topic of the assimilation to God occurs very often, Plutarch of Chaeronea’s Moralia, and De sera numinis vindicta, De genio Socratis, De E apud Delphos and De Iside et Osiride in particular, as well as some passages form the Lives (chapter 11). Indeed, the main sources for my study are the two handbooks on Platonism, namely Alcinous’ Didaskalikos (chapter 8) and Apuleius’ De Platone et eius dogmate (chapter 9). I also consider the testimony in the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus (chapter 7), which is rather essential so as to understand the polemical context wherein the doctrine developed. A recurring motif in the dissertation is the discussion on two collateral topics that arise from the analyses of the testimonies. First, I insert the reception and the interpretation of the doctrine in the…