Pagan Philosophy Research Articles

"Nunca mayor sobervia comidió Luçifer": límites del conocimiento y cultura claustral en el Libro de Alexandre by Fernando Riva

Reviewed by: "Nunca mayor sobervia comidió Luçifer": límites del conocimiento y cultura claustral en el Libro de Alexandre by Fernando Riva Ryan D. Giles Riva, Fernando. "Nunca mayor sobervia comidió Luçifer": límites del conocimiento y cultura claustral en el Libro de Alexandre. Iberoamericana / Vervuert, 2019. Medievalia Hispánica 27. ISBN: 978-84-9192-057-1. The Libro de Alexandre has often been considered the most significant literary work to emerge from the mester de clerecía poetic movement during the long thirteenth century. While the poem has attracted extensive critical attention over the years, most book-length studies have been limited to traditional, philological approaches to the anonymous poet's use of language and style, and his Latin sources. Fernando Riva, in his splendid new monograph, delves deeply into the intellectual context of the poem, showing how it reflects the learned Latin culture of the early twelfth-century cloister. In the introduction Riva explains how the work was most likely penned by a canon working during the 1220s, who, having received the kind of training available at cathedral schools and the fledgling University of Palencia, cultivated [End Page 197] scholarly, ecclesiastical interests as well as a knowledge of secular, political matters related to the court. Riva goes on to show how the poem expresses preoccupations characteristic of such writers, who belonged to a religious order, but circulated outside the cloister: namely, a concern over worldly learning influenced by heterodox Aristotelianism, natural sciences, and magic arts, leading the curious and prideful astray from the orthodoxy of patristic wisdom. During this period a new, earthly scientia was challenging the spiritual sapientia of Church authorities. Alexander the Great's excessive pursuit of secular knowledge, as Riva demonstrates, would have been expected to bring about a Luciferic downfall. In Chapter 1, "El saber de Alejandro y sus límites," Riva explores the danger of curiositas, warned against by St. Augustine and other Church Fathers, as well as medieval theologians. This vain desire to know for the sake of knowing was linked exegetically to the fall in the Garden of Eden, and opposed to true wisdom acquired by seeking God through Christian faith. According to Riva, Alexander's proud adherence to the former at the expense of the latter, his unbridled vitium curiositatis, leads him on a quest to conquer and perceive everything in the world, causes his failure to interpret signs correctly, and blinds him to prophesies revealing his fate. This chapter demonstrates how Alexander is linked—as a legendary student of Aristotle who constructs machines to see above and below the earth—not just to science and philosophy, but also esoteric knowledge being translated on the Iberian Peninsula from Arabic (and Hebrew) into Latin. Chapter 2, "Scientia, sapientia y profecía de Daniel," examines the typological use of the biblical prophesies of Daniel and how this relates to Alexander's hermeneutical blindness. A rex curiosus, as Riva shows, cannot understand scriptural wisdom in spite of his efforts to rationalize nature. Alexander, in this sense, serves as a negative exemplar who illustrates the problem of vainglorious scientia as decried by influential figures like the canon regular Hugh of St Victor. Unlike Solomon, the Macedonian ruler fails to come to terms fully with his intellectual pride, his inordinate desire to know all that can be known. Ascending to look down on the world from above, Alexander fails to see that a fall is inevitable—being, like the Pagan philosophers of old, unable to discern the divine truth in spite of all his learning. As Riva explains, his role in sacred history and exegetical relationship to the apocalyptic coming of the Antichrist, preceded by Antioch IV, is closed to him. In this way, the book shows how the Alexandre reacts against new kinds of knowledge being absorbed on the Peninsula during the thirteenth century, and instead promotes the sapientia of the Church. [End Page 198] Chapter 3, "El clero y el claustro: el contemptus mundi y el fin de los tiempos," explores how the Alexandre develops the topic of contemptus mundi or disdain for the transitory nature of the physical world, popular among cloistered writers and reformers of the period, such as...

"Some Synchronic Moment": Gregory of Nyssa, Théologie Mystique, and French Ressourcement

"Some Synchronic Moment":Gregory of Nyssa, Théologie Mystique, and French Ressourcement Michel René Ponchin Barnes "In the cold light I only live for youTo love and adore you.[It's all that I have.]Why do I keep falling?" In memory of Michael Ossorgine, Dennis Vincent Higgins, and Franny Glass Introduction The present importance of the thought of Gregory of Nyssa and the wisdom of a contemporary scholarly "turn" to his theology is so much taken for granted now that it can seem as though any thoughtful early-twentieth-century theologian looking to explore a patristic-sourced "mystical theology" obviously would have sought out Gregory. However, a pre–World War II patristics student seeking an existential theology not captive to rationalism more likely would have settled upon Gregory of Nazianzus—Gregory "the Theologian"—who wrote mystical poetry, or John Chrysostom, whose interests spanned all genres of writing. 1 The turn to Gregory of Nyssa in modern theological sensitivities is not a [End Page 367] development to be regarded as inevitable, nor should the motives for the turn be presumed to be obvious or inevitable. In its simplest form, my hypothesis for explaining this turn to Gregory of Nyssa is that through his writings on the human experience of God (i.e., on mystical ascent) Gregory personified the principal question of the day: "How do faith and philosophy co-exist?" His theology was easily contextualized within the new appreciation of Neoplatonism (as was also the case with, e.g., Peter Brown's biography of Augustine); he was regarded as "orthodox" but problematically so; and he was a stepping-stone to Origen. It is difficult not to see Gregory's marginal status as reflecting the experience of his more thoughtful mid-twentieth-century readers. Moreover, Gregory's theology was written with a strong anthropological bent, and taken as a whole (as it was in Migne) it seemed potentially to offer an anthropology as comprehensive as Augustine's; this allowed for Gregory's theology to be easily merged with a modern theological logic that started from "human nature" rather than divine. 2 I believe the plastic capability of Gregory's theological anthropology recommended his work to theologians newly bedazzled by subjectivity and new notions of "consciousness" (other than simply Bewusstein). Gregory wrote several treatises on theological anthropology (unlike, e.g., the mystical poet, Gregory of Nazianzus), and anthropology is a genuine and consistent concern for Gregory. Last (but not least!) among hypothetical motives for a modern theological "turn" to Gregory may be that his works laid out an epistemology—or, at the least, he was explicitly concerned with epistemological questions of the day. This concern places Gregory among a small group of early Church Fathers—such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine—whose theology was framed with an awareness that revelation and epistemology were inevitably intertwined. Modern questions such as "is certain knowledge mediated, and if so, how?" or "what in humans properly knows God?" can be posed to Gregory directly. 3 [End Page 368] Given the theological focus on the encounter with God as experience or encounter, Gregory can share our question of "in what state of mind does a person approach knowing God?" 4 The line between an account of "mystical experience" and of "human openness to God (or not)" is blurred and each theologian works through a theological anthropology that is propaedeutic to a théologie mystique. Among Catholic and Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, Gregory of Nyssa was rehabilitated before Origen. The utility of Origen's theology was uncertain; 5 even more uncertain was his status as a bona fide representative of early Christian theology. Aside from the traditional concerns regarding Gregory's problematical "Origenism" there was the modern linking of Gregory to Origen by Adolf von Harnack, who found Origen's brand of "Hellenization" in the theologies of the Cappadocians—especially Gregory of Nyssa. 6 The defense and rehabilitation of Gregory accepted Harnack's fundamental criticism of Origen's theology as Hellenism—but revealed Gregory's theology to be rooted in a hermeneutic radically different from Origen's: Gregory's theology was fundamentally different from Origen's in its relationship to pagan philosophy...

Justin

Abstract Among the polyphonic theology of the »church fathers« of the first centuries, Justin, who lived from about 100-165, who led a Christian school in Rome and died there as a martyr, contributes an important voice. He is concerned with the conversation between Christianity and pagan philosophy as well as Judaism, and in this seeks to prove the supremacy of Christianity. To accomplish this, he also emphasizes the proximity between Christianity and Platonism. His theology can be analyzed and structured in terms of ethics, anthropology, the doctrine of God and the Logos, demonology, and eschatology. The Christian tradition received and discussed Justin and his ideas up until the fourth century, while the pagan world opposed him, most strongly through the critical response of the philosopher Celsus.

The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey

Reviewed by: The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey H. A. Drake The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. By Catherine Nixey. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2018. Pp. xxxvi, 315. $28.00. ISBN 978-0-544-80088.5.) Scholarship, like the heavenly orbs, has its cycles. For the better part of two centuries, the narrative of Christianity's role in Rome's fall followed a path laid out by the philosophes in the eighteenth century—a story of a robust, enlightened, and sexually liberated civilization brought low by a swift descent into barbarism and superstition (readers will recognize the footprints of Edward Gibbon). Then, about fifty years ago, a new narrative exploded into view with Peter Brown's exuberant World of Late Antiquity (1971). Rejecting the model of "decline and fall" as artificial, scholars in this new field insisted on understanding the centuries between Rome's high point in the second century and the fragmentation of the Middle Ages as a time of "change" rather than "decline." The problem with the old view, these scholars argued, was that it focused almost exclusively on the fledgling states of western Europe, treating vital parts of this new culture as either foreign (the eastern Roman empire, now relabeled "Byzantium") or hostile (Muslims in Spain and North Africa). Then came the inevitable pushback, about twenty years ago, when more traditional scholars began to complain that their colleagues in Late Antiquity were ignoring clear signs of political disintegration and cultural decline, and most of all the baleful impact of Christianity. Seemingly, Catherine Nixey's The Darkening Age is just another broadside in this ongoing battle: even its title harks back to a time when "the Dark Ages" that followed Rome were dismissed as "a thousand years without a bath." But Nixey has an entirely different agenda. Her target is not a bunch of greybeards but all those complacent readers in the West who reacted with shock and indignation when the Taliban blew up millennia-old Buddhist statues in Afghanistan or, more recently, Islamic State did the same to the monumental temples of Palmyra. Nixey wants this audience to know that their forebears did all this and much more to the treasures of the ancient world. With vigorous prose and an eye for graphic detail, she writes of the destruction of ancient temples like the Serapeum in Alexandria and [End Page 708] the Parthenon in Athens, the murder of the philosopher Hypatia and relentless condemnation of her peers, and the burning of classical texts and statues. Nixey tempers this dismal story with disarming candor and wit, and her prose sparkles. But her point comes at a cost. Readers of this journal will frequently catch themselves saying, "Yes, but…," for Nixey's account is frequently one-sided, ignoring a broader context that, admittedly, would not excuse the destruction she narrates but would give readers a better perspective on the world in which it happened. Christian judges, for instance, did torture pagan philosophers, as she writes in chapter 16, but as Ramsay MacMullen noted long ago, elites had lost their exemption from torture much earlier, in a process that Christians had nothing to do with ("Judicial Savagery in the Roman Empire." Chiron, 16 [1986], 147–66). Similar observations could be made about the contrast Nixey draws between the playfully sexual banter of an Ovid and the stern moralizing of Christian homilists. As Nixey herself points out, "an increasingly moralizing tone" had emerged in the four centuries that separate Ovid from John Chrysostom, and "the rise in Christianity might even have been in part a symptom of such moralizing" (p. 191). This deliberately one-sided account is by design, justified by what Nixey sees as the whitewashing that Christianity has gotten in modern scholarship (p. 107). Specialists will lament the missed opportunities to draw wider conclusions about causality (by juxtaposing, say, the defiant language philosophers hurled at their torturers with the similar language of Christian martyrs). But that would be to call for a different book. If the one Nixey has written leads non-specialists to recognize that, just as Christian thugs do not define their faith...

Against Scarecrows and Half-Baked Christians

The aim of this paper is to trace Thomas Hobbes’s arguments for the rejection of spiritual possession in Leviathan (1651). Several layers of Hobbes’s thought converge in this subject: his suggestion regarding the sovereign’s right to control religious doctrine; his mechanistic critique of incorporeal substances; his tirade against demonology and Pagan philosophy; his ideas about fear and the natural seeds of religion; his Biblical criticism. Hobbes’s reflections over the matter of spiritual possession allowed him to simultaneously attack institutionalized and charismatic supernatural experiences, rejecting on Biblical as well as philosophical grounds the possibility of demonic and divine possession. This assault on traditional pneumatology led him to new interpretations of the notions of spirit and immateriality, a core element in Leviathan’s resignification of the interaction between nature and supernature. The paper will address Hobbes’s call for a civil exorcism―political, exegetical, and philosophical―against the spiritual powers that possess the Commonwealth.

Preaching to Seneca: Christ as Stoic Sapiens in Divinae Institutiones IV

AbstractLactantius’s Divine Institutes is a conversation with many partners. His affinity for Stoic thought in general, and Seneca in particular, is especially pronounced. Throughout the Institutes we find a delicate back-and-forth between Lactantius’s claim of a novel philosophy centered on the Christian Gospel and his attraction to—and dependence on—the pagan philosophy he hoped to supplant. This interplay is distinctly relevant to Lactantius’s portrayal of the figure of Jesus in Institutes IV. In this paper, I argue that Lactantius shapes his story of the nature and work of Jesus in part to give an answer to a primary Stoic question: where is the sapiens? Indeed, the figure of the sapiens, the “Stoic sage,” had presented something of a problem for the Stoa: Stoic cosmology demanded he exist while Stoic history had failed to find him. By Seneca’s time, a resigned acceptance of the absence of such figures of incarnate wisdom was commonplace; the figure of the sapiens had begun to fade away into the realm of theory, separated from imperfect human practice. In redressing this concern, Lactantius portrays his Christ: the true sage and exemplum, wisdom and virtue incarnate. In short, to Seneca’s resignation, Lactantius offers a rebuke and a corrective by a clever re-shaping of both Christian and Stoic expectation.

Eusebius of Caesarea’s Un-Platonic Platonic Political Theology

Eusebius of Caesarea drew heavily on pagan philosophy in developing the first Christian political theology. His quotations from Plato’s most political work, the Laws, are so extensive that they are treated as a manuscript authority by modern editors. Yet Eusebius’s actual use of the Laws is oddly detached from Plato’s own political intentions in that work, adapting it to a model of philosophical kingship closer to the Republic and applied to the emperor Constantine. For Eusebius the Laws mainly shows the agreement of Christian and pagan morality, while his political theory centers on the establishment and maintenance of a Christian empire under a Christian emperor who is a philosopher-king. His view represents one of the fundamental political options in ancient Christianity, one that influenced later Byzantine political theology, but was largely rejected in the west.

Porphyrios: Gegen die Christen (Contra Christianos). Fragmente, Testimonien und dubia mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen by Matthias Becker

Reviewed by: Porphyrios: Gegen die Christen (Contra Christianos). Fragmente, Testimonien und dubia mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen by Matthias Becker Aaron P. Johnson Porphyrios: Gegen die Christen (Contra Christianos). Fragmente, Testimonien und dubia mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen Matthias Becker Texte und Kommentare 52. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2015. Pp. x + 667. ISBN 9783110432152. A mountain of scholarship on Porphyry's famous third-century polemic against Christianity has, from the nineteenth century to the present, continued to grow: the last seven years alone have seen at least four books dedicated to Porphyry's [End Page 277] religious thought, two international colloquia dedicated entirely to his contra Christianos, and dozens of articles (whether dedicated to the anti-Christian treatise or to his religious thought more generally). Because the contra Christianos survives in fragments of varying degrees of reliability, the constructions of different scholars predictably vary a great deal. A particularly significant culprit in fanning the diversity of interpretations has been the problematic nature of von Harnack's 1916 edition of the fragments. Under the inclusive label of "Fragmente und Exzerpte, Referate und Abgeleitetes," Harnack included verbatim quotations and paraphrases directly attributed to Porphyry, paraphrases or passing statements about Porphyry and other anti-Christians, and criticisms attributed to anonymous Greeks by Christian authors (such as Eusebius or Macarius Magnes). Critical assessments of Harnack's methodology began to be aired in the 1970s and have increased so that now only a few accept his collection without demur. And yet, in spite of the growing complaints about including anonymous material in an assessment of Porphyry's original work, post-Harnack collections of the fragments have only supplemented his collection with later discoveries rather than trimmed the collection down to the securely attested material. Becker's new collection, in the book under review here, has superseded all previously published collections in its truly critical methodology and commentary (although its minimalist approach was preceded by Muscolino's Salerno thesis, 2008–2009, which is generously made available online). The book contains a lengthy introduction, the collection of fragments with German translation and commentary following each, and then an exhaustive bibliography and several useful indices. The introduction covers Porphyry's life and the composition of the contra Christianos; an extended account of the anti-Christian work that sets it within the framework of pagan perceptions of Christians as a threat; and an articulation of the methodology used in collecting and arranging the present collection of fragments. Porphyry composed the fifteen-book treatise at some point after he left Plotinus for Sicily and before the beginning of the Diocletianic persecution—any time between 270/271 and 303—and probably at Rome, though, as with the dating, certainty is impossible (22–27). The treatise drew upon a wide range of sources from biblical to Greek philosophical texts and early Christian authors such as Julius Africanus and especially Origen (28–32). The lengthiest portion of Becker's introduction devotes itself to a presentation of the modern theory of threat communication (Bedrohungskommunikation) as an attempt to render more precise and careful the ongoing scholarly search for what Porphyry might have perceived as threatening in Christianity (32–41). Porphyry's perception of Christians saw them as threatening the religious (44–45, 57–61) and political order (48–57), an interpretation that, I would argue, should devote more attention to those passages which show the clear distance between Porphyry's philosophical position and the standard defense of civic loyalty. Ultimately, however, what may have most provoked Porphyry's sense of a Christian threat was the growing competition felt between pagan philosophers, especially Platonists, and Christians, whose numbers within the educated elite had [End Page 278] been growing, even as these developed intellectual positions akin to those of the Platonists (62–70). Porphyry's Contra Christianos sought to sharpen distinctions between Christians and pagan philosophers that were otherwise increasingly blurred in the third century (68). Several of the main argumentative themes of the fragments resonate with this concern. His rejection of allegoresis of biblical texts, his criticisms of Christian notions of the deity, his attack on the character of persons depicted in the Bible or more recent Christian history, and his historicizing approach...

Augustine's Vergilian Retreat: Reading the Auctores at Cassiciacum by Joseph Pucci

Reviewed by: Augustine's Vergilian Retreat: Reading the Auctores at Cassiciacum by Joseph Pucci Stefan Freund Augustine's Vergilian Retreat: Reading the Auctores at Cassiciacum Joseph Pucci Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Pp. xvi + 192. ISBN 9780888441874. After his conversion in summer 386, Augustine left Milan for Cassiciacum. There, in a friend's country house, he stayed with his closest relatives and confidants until he returned to the city for his baptism during the Easter vigil of 387. During this period of seclusion, Augustine produced his first extant writings Contra Academicos, De beata vita, De ordine, and the Soliloquia, in which the author, in dialogic form, reflects on the fundamental questions of happiness and truth in a way that starts from pagan philosophy and leads to God. In his book, Pucci takes both these dialogues from Cassiciacum and the De doctrina Christiana—composed a [End Page 285] decade later and sketching the hermeneutics of a Christian (reading) culture—and focuses on the use of classical literature, especially of Virgil. He attempts to show "a pedagogy in place devoted to making Virgil possible for Christianity" (xiii). Pucci ("Confessiones: The problem of reading Virgil," 1–32) starts from the famous passage Confessiones 1.13: Augustine condemns the vanity of Virgil's Dido tale which deeply impressed him as a schoolboy, but he does so using poetic style and quotations. This requires, as Pucci argues, a hermeneutic model for rereading ancient authors. In Cassiciacum, Augustine developed a philosophical and pedagogic program of reading and understanding classical authors in a specifically Christian way, based on the traditions of ancient philosophy and of ancient classrooms, both referring to poetry. Pucci finds this model revealed in Contra Academicos 2.4.10 by recensere, tractare, and congruere. The author supposes these verbs to be something like termini technici ("to review," "to ponder," "to suite to") sketching the way "in which Virgil's words were in some way fitted to the larger project of engaging the skeptical tradition" (25). Subsequently ("Contra Academicos: Recuperating Virgil," 33–71), Pucci delves deeper into the text in order to make clear what he supposes to be Augustine's method of reviving Virgil: Licentius, he argues, in Contra Academicos 1.5.14, quotes Aeneid 1.401 perge modo et, qua te ducit via, dirige gressum, which, however, fits with the philosophical point his opponent Trygetius had made rather than with his own. Within the rest of the work, Pucci argues, Augustine presents his disputants using poetry and especially Virgil, often in a superficial way, which does not yet meet the ideal of revival the author has in mind. In the end, Augustine (Contra Academicos 3.4.9) alludes to Eclogues 3.104–107 in order to reveal through Damoetas's and Menalcas's competition, which cannot be judged by Palaemon, his own dissatisfaction with the state of the philosophical debates which the participants had reached up to this point. The next chapter ("De beata vita: Remedial Recuperation," 72–86) starts from a comparison between Contra Academicos and De beata vita: Although both dialogues, of course, deal with happiness, the first one ends with an aporia, the latter one, however, tends to show consensus and solution. Pucci supposes this to be a pedagogic development. Part of it, he argues, is the use of Terence whose sententiae harmoniously fit into the philosophical discourse. In the chapter "De ordine: Recuperating at night" (87–126), Pucci analyses the nocturnal scenery in the beginning of the dialogue: Augustine fears that Licentius's enthusiasm for "poetics" (see Pucci's semantic differentiation, 98–99) might separate him from philosophical thinking. The author supposes this to refer to a wrong use and understanding of poetry, which separates it from the seeking of truth like the wall that separates Thisbe from Pyramus, whose name the pupil is singing (De ordine 1.3.8). Licentius's subsequent (1.3.9) use of a quotation from Terence, Eunuchus 1024, however, hermeneutically characterized by the verb vertere ("to turn"), introduces and shows his "philosophic progress" and "seems in league with his [sc. Licentius'] new found recuperative abilities" (107). Delighted by this pedagogic success, Pucci argues, Augustine reacts with "turning" a Virgilian verse (1.4.10, Aeneid 10...

In the end there was the beginning: Pagan cosmogonies in the age of Justinian

The conflict between the pagans and the Christian authorities of the Eastern Roman Empire has given birth to numerous polemical discussions among modern commentators, which is due to the fact that our sources on the subject were often biased. The closing of the Neo-Platonic Academy in Athens in 529 has nevertheless been cited as the end of pagan philosophy, even though its last leader, Damascius, would continue his philosophical activity around the Persian border. My paper deals with the persistent reception of one subject that was at odds with the Christian dogma, the cosmogony. Damascius is also known for his De principiis, a lengthy treaty about the One and the Ineffable that precedes it. Although the work itself is first and foremost an answer to previous Neoplatonists, it is also an extremely valuable source for other lost Pre-Socratic cosmogonies, namely the Orphic ones, which are interpreted alongside other non-Greek creation myths in the final pages of the treatise. On the other hand, John Lydus provides an intriguing adaptation of such creation myths in De magistratibus reipublicae Romanae, where he combines Platonic and Aristotelian ideas in order to build an explanatory model for the contemporary decline in offices of state. His choice of sources shows, however, that he was likely a pagan himself and that he had professed the official religion in order to avoid persecution. Thus, he bases his argumentation on a pagan cosmogony as a form of resistance against recent changes in Byzantine bureaucracy.

Ramon Llull y la filosofía antigua. Precisiones sobre la obra parisina de 1297 a 1299

One of the definitive aspects of the relationship between Ramon Llull and the University of Paris was his opposition to Latin Averroism. This opposition was not static, but evolved over four increasingly intense stays at Paris. This study examines the second of these stays (1297-1299) in order to clarify if the main interest was in fact Latin Averroism. The first part studies the basis of this issue and the theoretical framework for its interpretation the second part; analyses the interest attributed to this period, considering the books written by Llull during this stay and his biographical works. The conclusion will be that Llull’s central interest at this time turns on the problem of the use of pagan philosophy by Christian thought.

Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of a Commentator

This is the first book-length study in English of the interpretative and philosophical approach of the commentaries of of Cilicia (c. AD 530). Simplicius' work, marked by doctrinal complexity and scholarship, is unusually self-conscious, learned and rich in its sources, and he is therefore one of those rare authors who is of interest to ancient philosophers, historians and classicists alike. Here, Han Baltussen argues that our understanding of Simplicius' methodology will be greatly enhanced if we study how his scholarly approach impacts on his philosophical exegesis. His commentaries are placed in their intellectual context and several case studies shed light on his critical treatment of earlier philosophers and his often polemical use of previous commentaries. Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius not only clarifies the objectives, pre-suppositions and impact of Simplicius' work, but also illustrates how, as a competent philosopher explicating Aristotelian and Platonic ideas, he continues and develops a method that pursues philosophy by way of exegetical engagement with earlier thinkers and commentators. The investigation opens up connections with broader issues, such as the reception of Presocratic philosophy within the commentary tradition, the nature and purpose of his commentaries, and the demise of pagan philosophy.

Theology and secularization: the paradox of Abelard

The article presents an analysis of the teachings of Pierre Abelard from the point of view of how it affected the allocation of the secular spheres of knowledge from totally religious medieval discourse. Scholastic theology, the creator of which is Abelard, is considered as a specific result of philosophical thinking in the ultimate existential circumstances and the token secular shifts in medieval Christian culture.The author traces the parallels in the personal fate of Abelard and his philosophical teaching, arguing that the thinker did not put secular philosophy above the creeds of the Church and obey the decisions of the Church even if they were contrary to his thinking. However, the progress of Abelard`s thought, his attempt to understand religious tradition, the sayings of the Church fathers and the question of the salvation of the pagan philosophers suggest that in the theology religion excels in a particular field, that can be the subject of discussion, not only the starting point for discourse.

Divine Immutability for Henotheists

Discussions of divine immutability normally take place against the backdrop of a presupposition of monotheism. This background makes some problems seem especially salient—for instance, does the notion that God is immutable have any implications for God’s relation to time? In what follows, I’ll consider the problem of divine immutability in the context of henotheistic conceptions of god. I take henotheism to be the view that, although there are a plurality of gods, all of them are in some sense dependent upon and subordinate to one god that is the supreme first principle or arche. Henoetheism was the dominant approach to gods among the pagan philosophers of antiquity—with a few exceptions. I consider the development of henotheistic defences of divine immutability through a dialectical development from Xenophanes to Plato to Proclus (d. 485 CE).

El filósofo y el teúrgo en el pensamiento de Jámblico: Una metafísica del símbolo

La razón de la convivencia en el pensamiento de Jámblico de una valoración incontestable de la filosofía con una sólida presencia de la teúrgia plantea un reto a la crítica contemporánea. Desde los parámetros actuales de interpretación se hace difícilmente comprensible esta convivencia que parece, en su núcleo mismo, contradictoria. Pese a la recuperación paulatina de la importancia y la seriedad de este pensamiento que en la actualidad se lleva a cabo, muchos puntos quedan sin resolver. Se hace necesario ensayar un nuevo marco interpretativo capaz de dar razón de la convergencia entre filosofía y teúrgia en el pensamiento de Jámblico, respetando su coherencia interna y buscando el sentido y la solidez de su propuesta. En la búsqueda de este marco, la naturaleza y la función del símbolo ha de ser determinante. La comprensión de la figura del teúrgo en el pensamiento de Jámblico adquirirá sentido en este marco interpretativo.

Friedrich Nietzsche & Alberto Caeiro: paganismo e linguagem

Resumo:Neste artigo pretendemos aproximar reflexões sobre a linguagem apresentadas pelo filósofo Friedrich Nietzsche em seu texto Sobre verdade e mentira no sentido extramoral, e a filosofia pagã do heterônimo de Fernando Pessoa, Alberto Caeiro. Utilizaremos no corpus desta análise o texto de Nietzsche já citado, a obra O Guardador de Rebanhos de autoria de Caeiro, e alguns textos em prosa de Fernando Pessoa, António Mora, Ricardo Reis e Álvaro de Campos. O artigo está dividido em três partes: na primeira, mostraremos as leituras que Pessoa realizou sobre a obra de Nietzsche, no segundo momento mostraremos a dinâmica de linguagem que envolve a filosofia pagã de Alberto Caeiro e suas possíveis relações com a crítica realizada pelo jovem Nietzsche sobre a linguagem e no terceiro momento a relação entre o paganismo de Nietzsche e do mestre Caeiro à luz dos escritos de António Mora, Fernando Pessoa e Ricardo Reis.

Mercy as a Theological Term

The author of the article analyses different meanings of the term ‘mercy’. He begins with the ancient use of the word by pagan philosophers. This is the background for the analysis of the term ‘mercy’ in the Old and New Testament. The biblical sources lead to the definition of dogmatic foundations of God’s Mercy and allow the ethical and moral aspects of the human mercy to be shown. Closely connected with the last is the social dimension of the mercy. The author also deals with other dimensions of the mercy, such as: pastoral, liturgical, psychological and juridical. He also discusses the meaning of the mercy in the spirituality and Christian art.

The Liberal Arts and the Virtues: A Thomistic History

When philosophy stood stainless in honor and wise in judgment, then, as facts and constant experience showed, the liberal arts flourished as never before or since; but, neglected and almost blotted out, they lay prone, since philosophy began to lean to error and join hands with folly. POPE LEO XIII, AETERNI PATRIS Although the importance of the liberal arts is self-evident to many, the present crisis in the humanities has revealed the need for better defenses of their unique goals and worth. One of the most interesting attempts to take up this challenge argues that the humanities offer special instruction in questions of value. While disagreement about the canon and much else remains, there is a growing, if fragile, consensus that the liberal arts can benefit students morally. As evidence for this, one might turn to a spate of new books that defend the study of the humanities as an inherently moral activity. Martha Nussbaum and Andrew Delbanco have recently argued that the humanities encourage forms of imagination and empathy necessary for full moral development. Mark Roche commends the liberal arts for their ability to groom the virtues of attentiveness and intellectual courage. Anthony Kronman has claimed that a liberal education is indispensable in helping students discern and take responsibility for their chosen moral identities. Their arguments reflect the views of an increasing number of educators. A recent study found that 70 percent of surveyed faculty believed that courses in the humanities should moral and 66 percent responded that liberal education ought to help students develop personal values. Both numbers represent sharp increases from three years earlier. (1) The warm reception these books have received is not surprising. In the face of mounting financial and academic pressures, the need for a compelling justification of the liberal arts is undeniably pressing. Greater scrutiny is nonetheless warranted, perhaps especially for Catholic institutions seeking to promote the humanities through appeals to their ability to cultivate students' moral capacities. (2) The question I wish to raise can be found in Seneca's 88th letter: Do the liberal arts impart virtue? At the time Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius, pagan philosophers and orators had debated the question for almost five centuries. Seneca himself took a middle position between those defending the perfective powers of a liberal education and those skeptical that virtue could be taught, arguing that the liberal arts provided students an essential foundation for acquiring good character later in life. What Seneca did not foresee, and what he plainly could not take into account, was that this debate would soon be joined by Christians, who would in time radically alter the content and aims of liberal education. Since it now seems we are poised to relive this debate, or at least positioned to learn from it, I think it might be worth recalling some of the ways Christian thinkers in the West struggled to explain the relation between the liberal arts and the virtues. This is a large and many-sided topic and one that cannot be undertaken through a conventional history of the extensive Christian borrowing of pagan learning; nor, I think, should our theme be confused with a history of the individual liberal disciplines. I am instead interested in reflecting morally on the activity of humanistic study itself. How might liberal education perfect or corrupt human character? Is there a connection between the liberal arts and the virtues? My attempt to provide some answers will focus on St. Thomas Aquinas's attempted resolution of a problem that remained curiously unsettled in early Christian thought. The essay comes in two parts. The first is historical and will broadly describe the state of the question as Aquinas inherited it. In his reflections on the liberal arts Aquinas is commenting, both explicitly and implicitly, on a number of received authorities, and his positions will be better understood when set against a background that includes Greek philosophy, early Christian thought, and the writings of St. …

Late Neoplatonic discourses on suicide and the question of Christian philosophy professors at Alexandria

Abstract:The later Neoplatonic commentaries attributed to David and Elias are considered by many scholars to be the work of Christians who dominated the Alexandrian school in the latter half of the sixth century. Christian Wildberg has challenged this prevailing view: he argues that the commentaries are more likely the work of pagan philosophers. Scholars who support Christian authorship have appealed to the strict prohibition against suicide expressed in the parts of the commentaries that discuss Socrates’ characterization in the Phaedo of philosophy as the practice of death. But the proscription of suicide that the commentators read into the Phaedo is consistent with the teachings of pagan Neoplatonists and thus provides no basis for a rejection of Wildberg’s thesis. I discuss the literary and historical exempla that the commentators use and propose that these are drawn in part from Gregory of Nazianzus’ Invective against Julian. The connection between the discourses and Gregory’s text suggests that the commentators may have been deliberately responding to his accusations of pagan hypocrisy.

Fine dell’impero romano ed escatologia

In this paper ancient topics about the end of the world are investigated: the eternity of the world according to the pagan philosophers, the eternity of Rome and its empire, the waiting for a new golden age according to the senatorial milieu of the Historia Augusta and, on the contrary, the waiting for the Antichrist and a next end of the world according to many Christian authors, the refusal of the Church (from Eusebius to Augustine) to accept this perspective and its reappearance in peripheral areas (Fulgentius in Africa, Hydatius in Spain) and also in Gaul (Sulpicius Severus), while the Roman empire was collapsing.