Inaug.-Diss.--Kiel. / Lebenslauf. "Litteratur": p. [v]-viii.

In Treatises 19 (I, 2) and 20 (I, 3), Plotinus unfolds several ‘grades’ of virtue by interpreting the Platonic dialogues. Beginning with the goal of Theaetetus, “likeness to god”, Plotinus frames his discussion with a glance to the virtue exhibited by World Soul, giving a cosmic significance to the Delphic command, “know thyself”. Within this cosmic framework, the limited sphere of human, “political” virtues is subordinated to higher forms of purification. Purificatory virtue is revealed as the missing step between the political virtues and their archetypes. This step is mediatory and dynamic; as a lower form of purification, civic virtue is dignified as the necessary condition for the soul’s divinisation. World Soul is the exemplary possessor of perfect virtue, and as such operates as the mediatrix for human souls. This particular mediation illustrates the foundation of virtue for Plotinus: the non-anthropocentric, providential activity of the most contemplative of all souls.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 190-208)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by Gregory E. Sterling for the Department of Theology. "April 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 420-436).

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1994. / This is an electronic reproduction of TREN, #090-0043. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-118).

Thesis advisor: Olivier Boulnois / Thesis advisor: Stephen F. Brown / The Dissertation Text has Three Parts. Each paragraph is referred at the end to the Part it summarizes. My dissertation places Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument within its original Neoplatonic context that should justify its validity. The historical thesis is that Anselm’s epistemology, underlying the Proslogion, the Monologion and De Veritate, was a natural, often unaccounted for, reflection of the essentially Neoplatonic vision that defined the pre-thirteenth century mental culture in Europe. (Introduction and Part I) This thesis is shown through the reception of Anselm’s argument by 27 XIIIth-XIVth century thinkers, whose reading of it exhibits a gradual weakening of Neoplatonic premises up to a complete change of paradigm towards the XIVth century, the first reason being the specificity of the Medieval reception of Aristotle’s teaching on first principles that is the subject of Posterior Analytics (Part II), and the second reason being the specificity of the Medieval reception of Dionysius the Areopagite (Part III, see sub-thesis 4 below). The defense of this main historical thesis aims at proving three systematic sub-theses, including a further historical sub-thesis. The Three Systematic Sub-Theses: 1) The inadequacy of rationalist and idealist epistemology in reaching and providing apodictic truths (the chief one of which is God’s existence) with ultimate ontic grounding, as well as the inadequacy of objectivistic metaphysics that underlies these epistemologies, calls for another, non-objectifying epistemic paradigm offered by the Neoplatonic (Proclian theorem of transcendence) apophatic and supra-discursive logic (kenotic epistemology) that should be a better method to achieve certainty, because of its ability to found logic in its ontic source and thus envisage thought as an experience and a mode of being in which it is grounded. Within such a dialectic, there cannot be any opposition or division either between being and thought, or between faith and reason, faith being an ontic ground of reason’s activity defined as self-transcendence. The argument of the Proslogion is thus an instance of logic that transcends itself into its own principle – into ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’. Such an epistemological vision is also supported by contemporary epistemology (Russell’s Paradox and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem) (Introduction and Part I) 2) In virtue of this apophatic and supra-discursive vision, God’s existence, thought by human mind (as expressed in the argument of the Proslogion), happens to be a common denominator between God’s inaccessible essence and the created essence of human mind, so that human consciousness can be defined as ‘con-science’ – the mind experiencing its own being as co-knowledge with God that forges being as such. (Part I) 3) However, God’s existence as a common denominator between God’s essence and the created essence of human mind cannot be legitimately accommodated within the XIIIth-XIVth century epistemology and metaphysics because of the specificity of relation between God’s essence and His attributes, typical of Medieval scholasticism and as stated by Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. If this relation is kept, while at the same time God’s existence is affirmed as immanent to the human mind (God as the first object of intellect), God’s transcendence is sacrificed and He becomes subject to metaphysics (Scotus’ nominal univocity of being). In order to achieve real univocity between the existence of human thinking and God’s existence, one needs a relation between God’s essence and His attributes that would allow a real participation of the created in the uncreated. The configuration of such a relation, however, needs the distinction between God’s essence and His energies that Western Medieval thought did not know, but that is inherent to the Neoplatonic epistemic tradition persisting through the Eastern Church theologians and Dionysius the Areopagite up to Gregory Palamas. (Part III) Another Historical Sub-Thesis: 4) One of the reasons why Medieval readers of Anselm’s Proslogion misread it in the Aristotelian key, was that they did not have access to the original work of Dionysius the Areopagite, in which the said distinction between God’s essence and His energies is present. This is due to the fact that the Medievals read Dionysius through Eriugena’s translation. However, Eriugena was himself influenced by Augustine’s De Trinitate that exhibits an essentialist theology: in fact, it places ideas within God’s essence, which yields the notion of the created as a mere similitude, not real participation, and which ultimately makes the vision (knowledge) of God possible only in the afterlife. Since already with Augustine the relation between grace and nature is modified (grace becomes a created manifestation of God, instead of being His uncreated energy), God’s essence remains incommunicable. Similarly, God’s existence is not in any way immanent to the created world, of which the created human intellect is a part, so that it remains as transcendent to the human mind as is His incommunicable essence. This should explain why for the Medievals analogy, and eventually univocity, was the only way to say something about God, and also why they mostly could not read Anselm’s Proslogion otherwise than either in terms of propositional or modal logic. (Part III) The dissertation concludes that whilst Anselm’s epistemology in the Proslogion is an instance of Neoplatonic metaphysical tradition, the question of the possibility of certainty in epistemology, as well as the possibility of metaphysics as such, depends on the possibility of real communicability between the immanence of human predicating mind and the transcendence of God’s essence through His trans-immanent existence.

Cette thèse se propose de donner une synthèse générale du système du néoplatonicien Jamblique de Chalcis, acteur important de l’évolution de la métaphysique grecque durant l’âge antique tardif. Elle reconstruit tour à tour sa doctrine psychologique, sa hiérarchie des êtres et quelques-uns de ses concepts fondamentaux, en mettant l’accent sur l’histoire des idées entre le fondateur de l’école, Plotin, et la naissance de l’école néoplatonicienne d’Athènes. L’ensemble des œuvres laissées par Jamblique est exploité, ainsi que les quelque 800 fragments et témoignages sur sa vie et sa doctrine laissés par les auteurs postérieurs. Les influences subies sont analysées et replacées en contexte : néoplatonisme de Plotin et Porphyre, qui donne à Jamblique les principaux niveaux de son ontologie, qu’il analyse et fractionne ; médio-platonisme, dont le néoplatonisme hérite des topiques philosophiques ; aristotélisme, qui lègue une conception dynamique de l’âme et une hiérarchie des puissances cognitives consacrant la transcendance de l’intellect ; pythagorisme, qui permet à Jamblique de concevoir les mathématiques comme un langage valable pour la description de toutes les parties de la philosophie. Par l’ampleur de son œuvre ainsi que l’originalité et la fermeté des solutions apportées aux problèmes traités, Jamblique crée une synthèse puissante qui sert de base doctrinale aux écoles néoplatoniciennes tardives d’Athènes et Alexandrie, et est profondément représentative d’un âge théocentrique, où l’âme humaine n’est qu’un principe dérivé, qui doit prendre sa place dans l’ordre universel des choses : une métaphysique de l’unité, reposant sur la dualité dynamique de l’ordre et de sa variation. / This thesis strives to provide modern research with a synthesis of the system of Iamblichus of Chalcis, an important figure in the development of later Greek metaphysics. It reconstructs in turn his psychology, his hierarchy of being and some of his most basic concepts and philosophical laws, with a stress on the continuity between Plotinus, founder of the Neoplatonic school, and the beginnings of the school of Athens. The whole of Iamblichus’ body of work is exploited, as well as the 800 fragments and testimonia on his life and doctrine handed down to us by later authors. Influences received are analysed and set in context: Plotinus’ and Porphyry’s Neoplatonism, which provides the general levels of reality which Iamblichus tried to analyse and enrich; Middle Platonism, whose topics are debated in Neoplatonism; Aristotelianism, which accounts for a dynamic conception of the human soul and a hierarchy of cognitive powers beginning with the transcendent Intellect; Pythagoreanism, which allows Iamblichus to depict mathematics as a universal language, able to take the mark of all parts of philosophy. By the scope of his work and the originality and neatness of the solutions he provided to problems which nascent Neoplatonism had to confront, Iamblichus is able to create a powerful synthesis which acts as a doctrinal basis for the later schools of Athens and Alexandria: it is profoundly representative of a theocentric era, in which human soul is but a derived principle that has to keep its place in the grand scheme of being. It is a metaphysics of unity, founded on the dual dynamic of order and variation.

This thesis analyses Edmund Spenser&rsquo / s Fowre Hymnes in light of the holistic Renaissance world view and poet&rsquo / s collection of various tradition of ideas. Spenser&rsquo / s treatment of love is explored as the cosmic principle of harmony. Universal order is examined with an emphasis on the position of man in the ontological hierarchy. Thus, this thesis investigates Spenser&rsquo / s own suggestions to imitate macrocosmic harmony and order in the microcosmic level.

This thesis is an attempt to understand the efficacy of prayer in Boethius’ 'Consolation of Philosophy.' Prayer is man’s commercium with the divine realm, and so prayer is higher than human thought. The highest stage of prayer in the Consolation is similar to that in Iamblichus’ 'De Mysteriis': man becomes aware of his own deficiency compared to the divine and so turns to prayer. Lower prayers are also effective because they are both immaterial theurgy and spiritual exercises. The circles throughout the work are a crucial instance of these prayers. They constantly purify the Prisoner’s soul of false notions, and restore it to its true state. They lead the Prisoner to discover that his activity of thinking is a form of theurgy. The Consolation reveals that in the life of philosophy there is a mutual interdependence between thought, prayer and theurgy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2005. / Advisor: Zdravko Planinc. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-208). Also available via World Wide Web.