Inaug.-Diss.--Kiel, 1906.

Thesis (doctoral)--Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, 1983. / Summary in Dutch. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. [555]-569).

Thesis (doctoral)--Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam, 1983. / Summary in Dutch. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. [555]-569).

La thèse cherche à établir les balises du discours mythique et de la métaphore au sein du langage philosophique de Plotin. Le premier chapitre pose comme éléments essentiels de cette recherche le temps, la discursivité, l'âme et les autres hypostases. Le deuxième chapitre expose différentes théories existantes sur le mythe dans la philosophie ancienne et évalue leur pertinence dans le contexte des Ennéades. Le troisième chapitre porte sur l'exégèse plotinienne du mythe cosmogénétique du Timée, en reprenant un débat inhérent au contexte platonicien au sujet du niveau de littéralité de la création du monde. Le dernier chapitre explore un procédé propre à Plotin, qui sera appelé l'accumulation des images et qui servirait à compenser l'insuffisance du langage littéral à l'égard du discours sur les hypostases, sans toutefois réellement appartenir au discours mythique. La thèse conclut au caractère essentiel et fondamental du discours mythique et des métaphores dans l'expression philosophique de Plotin. / This thesis aims to define and delimit myth and metaphorical language in the context of Plotinus’s Enneads. In the first chapter, time, discursive practices, soul and the hypostases are identified as essential elements of myth through a short but dense passage of Ennead III.5.9. As this passage proves insufficient to conjure a definition, the second chapter deals with other attempts at definition of myth in the broader context of platonism, and their adequacy to the context of Plotinus is assessed. In the third chapter, I give my insight on a long-standing and intricate debate about the status of the cosmogenesis of Plato’s Timaeus and its Plotinian exegesis. The last chapter is about the most properly Plotinian device, which consists of accumulating clusters of metaphors in order to describe his metaphysical world. This method is to be understood as different from myth but is also intended to bypass ordinary language’s shortcomings when it comes to highly abstract notions. The thesis concludes in the fundamental importance of Plotinus’s mythical and metaphorical language in expressing his philosophy; it should not be seen as a kind of language opposing or rephrasing philosophical thought, but rather as an indispensable part of it.

I sette libri del "De opificio mundi" dell'alessandrino Giovanni Filopono (metà VI p.Ch.) sono il primo commento speculativo alla pericope cosmopoietica del Genesi mediante la fruizione di categorie filosofiche aristoteliche. Presentandone la prima traduzione italiana, si illustra il conato di novità che il Filopono esercita nell'esegesi biblica giacché interpreta Genesi non già attraverso il paradigma demiurgico del "Timeo" platonico, come in àmbito giudaico (Aristobùlo e Filone Ebreo) e nella produzione esameronale patristica (Cappàdoci), bensì attingendo alle opere fisiche e logiche dello Stagirita. Invece della struttura mitico-allegorica sottesa alla lettura cristiana del "Timeo" si impone l'approccio analitico di Aristotele: Filopono rifiuta l'interpretazione allegoretica, impiegando l'argomentazione sillogistico-deduttiva dell'"Organon" aristotelico, ricorrendo a filosofemi cardinali in Aristotele e nella tradizione scientifica che dal medesimo fiorì in Alessandria. Così Filopono in-venta un nuovo modello esegetico: superando l'allegorismo tradizionale (arbitrario e infedele al messaggio rivelato) e il letteralismo della scuola antiochena di Teodoro di Mopsuestia, Teodoreto, Cosma (banalizzante e senza metodo critico) Filopono conia un letteralismo metodologicamente forte, ove il metodo proviene formalmente dalla logica aristotelica e contenutisticamente dalla fisica aristotelica. Già commentatore dello Stagirita, Filopono fa incontrare Rivelazione e filosofia aristotelica, lasciando nel "De opificio mundi" un singolarissimo prodromo della scolastica cristiana. / The present essay is meant to illustrate the philosophical and exegetic work intitled "De opificio mundi" (seven books) written by John Philoponus in Alexandria in the middle of the sixth century A.D. about the kosmopoiesis of the first chapter of Genesis. It is argued this treatise is the first evidence of Biblical exegesis led not according to Plato's "Timaeus" but according to Aristotelian corpus, specially "Physics" and "Organon". Philoponus rejects the allegorical method based upon demiurgic "Timaeus" since he thinks it is arbitrary and untrue compared with the Revelation literalism; therefore Philoponus passes the limit of Aristoboulos, of Philo's "De opificio mundi" and also the limit of Christian tradition of Hexaemerons (Fathers of the Church just like Cappadocians). Philoponus replaces allegorism with a new kind of Biblical literalism: not the trivializing one led by the school of Antioch (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Cosmas Indicopleustes) but a scientific and methodic literalism relied on Aristotelian logic and on the (meta)physical concepts derived from Aristotle (kinesis, dynamis, hexis, hypokeimenon, etc.); so "De opificio mundi" has a syllogistic and deductive structure, not a mythic-allegorical one. Last philosopher in Late Antiquity, Philoponus is in-ventor of a striking Christian-Aristotelian scholasticism.