Medieval Neoplatonism Research Articles

Negative Theology: Its Use and Christological Function in Late Antiquity and Subsequent Developments

This article discusses the historical development of negative theology from its formulations in early Christianity to its later forms in Medieval Neo-Platonism. First analyzing how in early Christian thought negative theology was often used for a Christological purpose, the article goes on to discuss the implications of the Neo-Platonic notion of God as beyond being. While primarily applying a historical methodology, the article concludes by encouraging a rediscovery of the Christological orientation for negative theology found in its early Christian formulations.

Inexhaustibility: St. John of the Cross and Barthes’s Author Function

St. John of the Cross was aware of the fact that his mysticism resisted prosaic, discursive representation; however, most contemporary scholars have overlooked this radical component of his work. First, I trace the major philosophical influences on John’s work: Medieval Neoplatonism and Scholasticism (especially Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as Ibn Arabi and possibly Averroes). Second, by drawing on the Barthesian-Foucauldian concept of the author function, I demonstrate that the Mystical Doctor saw his poetry as free-standing, inexhaustible by even his own efforts to systematize key aspects of his poetry—an insurmountable task, which he had to be compelled to compile and publish by the nuns he guided in spiritual direction.

Said and the world: typos, mistranslations and neoplatonism

This paper departs from the observation of a typo in a recurring quote from Hugh of Saint Victor’s Didascalicon in Edward Said’s works, a problem which upon closer inspection is symptomatic of an attitude toward religious thought that is counterproductive for Said’s arguments concerning a secular reading of texts. For decades, the words “in visible and transitory things” have been printed as “invisible and transitory things,” substantially changing the meaning of the text. Furthermore, following on Auerbach’s footsteps, Said draws from Hugh to substantiate central categories for his thought, namely exile, love, and the world, but, either willingly or unwillingly, he suppresses the original meaning of such concepts in Hugh, arriving to a characterization of them that is solely grounded on an anachronistic, 20th century perspective. By rereading Hugh in its original context, in light of the Bible and medieval Neoplatonism, we may arrive to a better understanding to how ideas that came to be of great importance to Comparative and World Literature came to occupy their place.

The Function of Metaphor in Medieval Neoplatonism, written by Sarah Pessin

The Function of Metaphor in Medieval Neoplatonism, written by Sarah Pessin

Light and Illumination

In contemporary philosophical and theoretical debates, Paul Virilio is relegated to a minor figure, often to a kind of “lesser Baudrillard” or a “diminutive Foucault.” This article contests this view and repositions Virilio as a leading intellectual of the so-called theological turn. More specifically, in an “esoteric reading” of his work, read here through the optics of late medieval Neoplatonism, the article claims that the key to understanding Virilio’s work resides in a Neoplatonic metaphysics of light rather than a social-theoretics of speed. As such, it argues that Virilio is a philosopher whose primary concern is with the ontological and epistemological effects of what it refers to as “technological illumination” and how the latter stands in stark contrast with those traditional ideas of (self/divine) illumination that were the basis of a traditional urbanity and the point of departure for all forms of philosophizing in the premodern world.

Book review: Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism, written by Sarah Pessin

Book review: Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism, written by Sarah Pessin

Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism. L. Michael Harrington

Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism. L. Michael Harrington

Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism. By L. Michael Harrington

Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism. By L. Michael Harrington

Neoplatonismo medieval en Borges

This paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, the A. describes Borges’ particular concern about medieval philosophy as a reader. In the second and larger part, she refers to medieval neoplatonism main notes and claims that the argentine writer applied echoes of those notes to the development of his own literature. In this sense, Scotus Erigena and Nicholas Cusanus’thesis are specially quoted. Lastly, the A. suggests that, in spite of the use of medieval neoplatonism in his poems and essays, Borges was skeptical about it as a philosophical point of view.

Sacred place in early medieval Neoplatonism

Sacred place in early medieval Neoplatonism

The Immanence of the Infinite: Hans Blumenberg and the Threshold to Modernity

Most scholars would agree that there is an epochal threshold between the world of the Middle Ages and the modern world. Agreement on the nature and dynamic structure of that threshold is harder to come by. Hans Blumenberg's original and compelling account of the transition from medieval to modern, given in his 1966 work The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, has received wide attention. Elizabeth Brient begins her own account of the transition with an extensive, critical assessment of central aspects of Blumenberg's work. She elucidates his dialogical method of historical explanation, then discusses the shortcomings of his defense of the legitimacy of modernity. The transition to the modern world is marked by the process of making infinite the finite medieval cosmos. Whereas focused on the spatial infinitization of the universe, Brient claims that the process must be understood intensively as well as extensively. In the now-infinite universe of the new science, the problem of finding a measure for man's self-assertive activity, and for human knowledge, comes to the fore. The second half of the book focuses on the way in which this difficulty is addressed with conceptual resources developed in the tradition of late medieval Neoplatonism, in particular in the speculative thought of Meister Eckart and Nicholas of Cusa. Specific attention is given to the way in which Cusanus' notion of the immanence of the infinite in the finite responds to the need for a regulative ideal for human knowing. This is the first book-length treatment of to appear in English and will be a most welcome resource for readers engaged by debates concerning the status of modernity. It will be of equal interest to students of Eckhart and Cusanus, and to those generally concerned with the transition between the medieval and the modern world. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Brient is Assistant Professor of philosophy at The University of Georgia. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: Blumenberg could not have wished for a more reverent critique of his achievements or a more exacting textual exegesis regarding the sources of their philosophical content, all written in a lucid style that is forthright in the defense of the depth of thought during the Middle Ages but also pleasing in its subtle irony with respect to Blumenberg's and the author's own metaphysical creed.- Walter F. Veit, Speculum Brient's analysis of Blumenberg's philosophy sheds significant light in the debate concerning modernity. . --Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, German Studies Review

Causalidad, expresión y alteridad. Neoplatonismo y modernidad

This article exposes the neoplatonic element present in the metaphysics of causality elaborated in the seventeenth century by Leibniz. It explains this question in relation with medieval Neoplatonism, whose metaphysics of the Verb appears as the nucleus of the explanation of the relationship between causality and otherness.

Punctuationism, cladistics and the legacy of medieval neoplatonism

The current dominant orthoxy in paleoanthropology has adopted the stance of cladistics and/or punctuationism and abandonned any concern for the mechanics by which selection has operated to control the course of human evolution. Rather than being a «new» intellectual development, this is simply the most recent manifestation of a tradition of thinking that goes back via Linnaeus to medieval scholasticism where reality was assumed to consist of discrete entities that can be dealt with solely by the exercis of deductive logic. While the construction of cladograms serves the useful function of proposing testable hypotheses, the promotion of cladistic logic as the only valid approach represents a great leap backwards into medieval intellectual stagnation. If an inductive component is not restored to paleoanthropology, it will cease to maintain its credibility as a productive science.

Book Notes

524 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY tional epistemology to distinguish the Neo- from the Critical Realists. This issue was advertised in the early platforms of the controversy, but seemed to recede into the background as the doctrines became more complicated. There is no space here to discuss this big issue. I recall merely that the realists whom I knew well seemed disinclined to debate this relatively ancient issue. They emphasized aspects of experience in which sense-perception was not central. R. B. Perry's first article in the campaign was entitled "a behaviorist account of purpose." Santayana's doctrine that knowledge rests not on the given but on "animal faith" is certainly illconcealed behaviorism. I could give many other examples. There are many detailed reflections on which I would welcome further reflection, especially on Peirce, James, and Whitehead. But I restrict myself to my "inside" acquaintances, which are less extensive than the impressive company with whom Sellars conversed. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California BOOK NOTES Platons dialektische Ethik, und andere Studien zur platonischen Philosophie. By Hans Georg Gadamer. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968. Pp. xiv+288) The greater part of this volume is a republication of the author's work of 1931 on Plato's Dialectical Ethics. This is an examination of whether or not Plato's dialectic constitutes a method for a scientific ethics. The first half is a study of several of the major dialogues from this point of view; the second, is a detailed examination of the Philebus, with special reference to it as a background for Aristotle's Ethics. Appended are four previously published essays. Two are early: Plato and the Poets (1934) and Plato's Educational State (1941), a commentary on the Republic, devoted chiefly to Plato's insistence that rulers need a philosophical education. Two are recent: Dialectic and Sophistics in Plato's Seventh Letter (1962); and Amicus Plato magis amica veritas (1968), in which Gadamer supplements his "phenomenological approach" by an interpretation of the relation between Plato and Aristotle as moral scientists which is explicitly under the impact of recent ontology, especially Heidegger's. He interprets Aristotle's critiques of Plato as being basically Aristotle's realisation that the Platonic use of mathematics as a model for scientific ethics made it impossible for Plato to understand the essential being of living organisms, and therefore, Aristotle shifted to a biological method. --H.W.S. Le Fonti della Filosofia Spinoziana nel Breve Trattato. By Pietro Addante. (Bari: Centro Ricerche Storico-Filosofiche, 1970. Pp. 26) This compact analysis examines the familiar question of the relation of Spinoza's philosophy to the traditions and to modern science, with special attention to his personal development. After a summary review of the interpretations of Hegel, Wachter, Riemann, Hamelin, Avenarius, Joel, Levy, the Rabbi of Bratislavia, and Semerari, he defends an hypothesis that is closest to that of Avenarius. Addante assigns as the chief influences that caused his break with orthodox Judaism the medieval neoplatonism (especially of Rabbi Mortiera) and medieval Aristotelianism. His isolation created in him an intensely personal ("psychological-moral") search for the summum bonum. In this search he was directly influenced by the current pietism, by renaissance naturalism, and by mysticism. As early as the Short Treatise he had arrived at a personal solution to which all these influences contributed not as distinct elements but as reciprocal stimuli. Most significant to him personally were the doctrine of the immanent BOOK REVIEWS 525 unity of God-Nature-Substance and the experience of the unity of the love of God and the knowledge of God. This theory is explicit especially in Chs. I, II, XXII, and XXVI of the Short Treatise. Having achieved this insight independently, he did not wish to identify himself with any religions tradition, though he recognized elements of his faith in both Judaism and Christian pietism. --H. W. S. ,4 Literary History of France, Vol. 3: The Eighteenth Century 1715-1789. By Niklaus, Robert. Foreword by P. E. Charvet (General Editor). (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970. Pp. xx+435. $11.50) This third volume of a distinguished historical series is of special importance for the history of philosophy, because the author is fully aware of the way in which...

Evolutionism and Richard Owen, 1830-1868: an episode in Darwin's century.

Previous articleNext article No AccessEvolutionism and Richard Owen, 1830-1868: An Episode in Darwin's CenturyRoy M. MacLeodRoy M. MacLeod Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 56, Number 3Autumn, 1965 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/349996 Views: 15Total views on this site Citations: 20Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1965 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Timothy D. Johnston The pre-Darwinian history of the comparative method, 1555–1855, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43, no.44 (Nov 2021).https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00474-8Peter Hobbins A Spur to Atavism: Placing Platypus Poison, Journal of the History of Biology 48, no.44 (May 2015): 499–537.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-015-9409-4Nils Petter Hellström The tree as evolutionary icon: TREE in the Natural History Museum, London (William T. Stearn Prize 2010), Archives of Natural History 38, no.11 (Apr 2011): 1–17.https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.2011.0001David B. Norman Professor Richard Owen and the important but neglected dinosaur Scelidosaurus harrisonii, Historical Biology 14, no.44 (Jan 2000): 235–253.https://doi.org/10.1080/10292380009380571Brian K. Hall Germ Layers and the Germ-Layer Theory Revisited, (Jan 1998): 121–186.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1751-5_5Charles G. Gross Hippocampus minor and man's place in nature: A case study in the social construction of neuroanatomy, Hippocampus 3, no.44 (Oct 1993): 403–415.https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.450030403Lynn J. Rothschild Protozoa, protista, protoctista: What's in a name?, Journal of the History of Biology 22, no.22 (Jan 1989): 277–305.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00139515Evelleen Richards The ?Moral Anatomy? of Robert Knox: The interplay between biological and social thought in Victorian scientific naturalism, Journal of the History of Biology 22, no.33 (Jan 1989): 373–436.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401576John Hedley Brooke Sctentific thought and its meaning for religion : The impact of French science on British Natural Theology, 1827–1859, Revue de synthèse 110, no.11 (Jan 1989): 33–59.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03189211C. L. Brace Punctuationism, cladistics and the legacy of medieval neoplatonism, Human Evolution 3, no.33 (Jun 1988): 121–139.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02437437Evelleen Richards A Question of Properly Rights: Richard Owen's Evolutionism Reassessed, The British Journal for the History of Science 20, no.22 (Jan 2009): 129–171.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400023724Richard R. Yeo The Principle of Plenitude and Natural Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain, The British Journal for the History of Science 19, no.33 (Jan 2009): 263–282.https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708740002327XDONALD K. GRAYSON The first three editions of Charles Lyell's The Geological Evidences of The Antiquity of Man, Archives of Natural History 13, no.22 (Jun 1986): 105–121.https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.1986.13.2.105ERIC L. MILLS A view of Edward Forbes, naturalist*, Archives of Natural History 11, no.33 (Apr 1984): 365–393.https://doi.org/10.3366/anh.1984.11.3.365W. F. Bynum Charles Lyell's Antiquity of Man and its critics, Journal of the History of Biology 17, no.22 (Jan 1984): 153–187.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00143731Silvan S. Schweber Darwin and the political economists: Divergence of character, Journal of the History of Biology 13, no.22 (Jan 1980): 195–289.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125744John Hedley Brooke Richard Owen, William Whewell, and the Vestiges, The British Journal for the History of Science 10, no.22 (Jan 2009): 132–145.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400015387Peter J. Bowler Darwinism and the argument from design: Suggestions for a reevaluation, Journal of the History of Biology 10, no.11 (Jan 1977): 29–43.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126093Michael Ruse The Relationship between Science and Religion in Britain, 1830–1870, Church History 44, no.44 (Jul 2009): 505–522.https://doi.org/10.2307/3163829Peter J. Bowler Evolutionism in the Enlightenment, History of Science 12, no.33 (Jul 2016): 159–183.https://doi.org/10.1177/007327537401200301