(F. Horáček: Antropologie Synesiova spisu O snech) 30. 8. 2017 Synesiusʼ treatise On Dreams (early 5th cent. AD) contains a Neoplatonic conception of the so-called pneuma (called also ʻvehicleʼ, ʻluminous bodyʼ etc.) that, among its other functions, ʻrepresentsʼ the immaterial Neoplatonic soul in the material universe. As against the other Neoplatonic texts from Late Antiquity, the authorʼs book is relatively concetrated and detailed so that it offers a comparatively full picture of the pneuma even though the text is no clear cut self-explanatory piece of writing due to its intended esoteric Neoplatonic readership. In my work I try to discover possible implications for the pneuma against the background of other Neoplatonic conceptions of the earlier and also of slightly later time. Synesiusʼ views of the pneuma are not always identical with those of the earlier thinkers. As he switches backgrounds it is often hard to tell whether what he has in mind is identical, like or different from them. I address predominantly - beside contextualization of On Dreams and efforts to solve individual small-scale problems in the text - questions of physical existence of the pneuma before, during, and after reincarnation chain of individual souls, further I discuss the interface between materiality and...

<p>Jean d’Espagnet (c. 1564–1637?) was a magistrate and presiding judge at the<em> parlement </em>of  Bordeaux  in  the  late  sixteenth  and  early  seventeenth  centuries.    He  served  on  the  court  from 1590 until retiring in 1615, from 1600 as a <em>président</em>, a venal office of significant power and social standing. After retirement he wrote three books which comprise his literary and intellectual legacy.Together they speak to the fertile philosophical ground of the late Renaissance and present a vision of order and God’s cosmos deeply influenced by Neoplatonism,  Hermetism,  Paracelsianism, Neostoicism,  and  medieval  alchemy,  as  well  as  d’Espagnet’s  judicial  education  and  social experience as a magistrate.  This dissertation explores the foundations of d’Espagnet’s philosophy of nature, tracing the development of certain philosophical ideas from ancient sources such as the Platonic and Hermetic traditions through medieval and Renaissance philosophers like Ramon Lull, Pseudo-Geber, and Marsilio Ficino to d’Espagnet and his contemporaries.  Paracelsian chemical medicine found some  acceptance during d’Espagnet’s lifetime, though not without struggle and dangers to its adherents.  This project also examines the context of d’Espagnet’s life and experience as a judicial elite in a kingdom and community beset by religious strife and political uncertainty.It argues that d’Espagnet and his fellow magistrates desperately sought order in the midst of these troubles,  and  that d’Espagnet echoed across all his writings this  concern  for  order  alongside a particular set of ideas about gender, shared by his fellow magistrates, according to which feminine passions  were  the  root  of  disorder  and masculine  reason was  the  antidote.    This gendered understanding of order was fundamental to d’Espagnet’s thought and reinforced by his syncretic reading of ancient and modern philosophical textsalongside his own experience, leading him to produce a unique and consistent syncretic philosophy that sought to answer definitively some of humanity’s oldest questions about the nature of matter, man, and the cosmos.</p>

This project traces shifts in understandings of causation from the premodern to the early modern period, focusing on one premodern interpretation of causation as representative of the Neoplatonic period, that of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and comparing this perspective to several early modern thinkers, especially, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Francis Bacon. For Dionysius, formal and final causation have metaphysical superiority over efficient and material causation. By contrast, beginning in the early modern period, efficient causation, the sense that describes how an object acquires a particular shape, begins to be seen as metaphysically supreme. The main historical and philosophical reasons for this shift in perceived supremacy are the affirmation of the primary-secondary quality distinction, and the rejection of Forms and teleology. The primary-secondary quality distinction allows for reality to be completely quantified, and thereby renders superfluous qualitative approaches to reality, such as formal causation. Similarly, the rejection of Forms and teleology leaves formal causation meaningless. After this historical overview, the philosophical hypothesis that Dionysius's premodern understanding of causation is more amenable to those who want to avoid nihilism is defended: purely scientific notions of causation have no means for providing whatness, intelligibility, or determinacy to the world in a rationally defensible manner, and thus, when pressed, a purely scientific view of the world is without whatness, intelligibility, and determinacy, which, by definition, leads to nihilism. By contrast, a world with causes other than solely scientific causes, specifically, a world with formal (and final) causation such as Dionysius's, allows for whatness, intelligibility, and determinacy, and thereby escapes nihilism because whatness requires Form, intelligibility requires Form and teleology, and determinacy requires teleology (which, in turn, is a supplement to Form). As argued, science studies the world of becoming, and therefore cannot provide the grounds for the world of being (which belongs to metaphysics); to live in a world of pure becoming without being is to have a nihilistic worldview. The epilogue draws a significant implication from this conclusion: the premodern approach invites a necessary revival of natural philosophy because the world of becoming is wider than modern science acknowledges.

(F. Horáček: Antropologie Synesiova spisu O snech) 30. 8. 2017 Synesiusʼ treatise On Dreams (early 5th cent. AD) contains a Neoplatonic conception of the so-called pneuma (called also ʻvehicleʼ, ʻluminous bodyʼ etc.) that, among its other functions, ʻrepresentsʼ the immaterial Neoplatonic soul in the material universe. As against the other Neoplatonic texts from Late Antiquity, the authorʼs book is relatively concetrated and detailed so that it offers a comparatively full picture of the pneuma even though the text is no clear cut self-explanatory piece of writing due to its intended esoteric Neoplatonic readership. In my work I try to discover possible implications for the pneuma against the background of other Neoplatonic conceptions of the earlier and also of slightly later time. Synesiusʼ views of the pneuma are not always identical with those of the earlier thinkers. As he switches backgrounds it is often hard to tell whether what he has in mind is identical, like or different from them. I address predominantly - beside contextualization of On Dreams and efforts to solve individual small-scale problems in the text - questions of physical existence of the pneuma before, during, and after reincarnation chain of individual souls, further I discuss the interface between materiality and...

This thesis intends to explore the relationship between the Neoplatonist doctrines of the Renaissance philosopher, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), and astrological images in the Renaissance. The astrological ceiling fresco located in the Room of Maps in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola is in the center of the argument, which I analyze based on the metaphysical works of Ficino, the Platonic Theology (1482) and the Three Books on Life (1492). Authors have examined the fresco decoration and Ficinian philosophy individually, but never together. This study is the first to recognize Ficino's influence on Renaissance astrological images in its entirety.The present work synthesizes scholarship on Ficino and astrological image interpretations and provides a Neoplatonic reading of the fresco in question. The results demonstrate that the ceiling fresco at Caprarola is a visual manifestation of the principal Ficinian doctrines. The predominant decorative figures (Phaeton, Argo, Capella, and Jupiter) located at the four corners of the ceiling, communicate the importance of contemplation and introspection, the proper management of one's vices and virtues, and the immortality of the soul. Together, they comprise the microcosm of the patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589). The decoration provides an insight into the inner world of Cardinal Farnese and represents his dominant personality traits. In the end, he triumphs over his sins, and his good deeds enable his soul to ascend to the divine sphere. The current study opens the door to conducting psychoanalyses of other historical figures, who were major patrons of the art and involved with Ficino’s philosophy.

Ma thèse montre la présence et le rôle de la métaphysique dans Vérité et méthode. Elle tente de démontrer que Gadamer s'inspire du néoplatonisme pour surmonter le subjectivisme de la modernité et propose une métaphysique à cette fin. Après avoir expliqué comment Gadamer se réapproprie l’héritage de la pensée grecque pour critiquer la modernité en situant son interprétation de Platon par rapport à celle de Heidegger, je montre que Gadamer s’approprie la conception de l’être de Plotin de façon telle qu’il peut s’y appuyer pour penser l’autoprésentation de l’être dans l’expérience herméneutique de la vérité. L’art va, pour ce faire, redevenir sous la conduite du néoplatonisme source de vérité. Gadamer redonne en effet une dignité ontologique à l’art grâce à la notion d’émanation, notion qui permet de penser qu’il y a une présence réelle du représenté dans sa représentation, celle-ci émanant du représenté sans l’amoindrir, mais lui apportant au contraire un surcroît d’être. La notion d’émanation permet ensuite à Gadamer d’affirmer le lien indissoluble qui unit les mots aux choses. En effet, la doctrine du verbe intérieur de Thomas d’Aquin implique ce lien que Platon avait occulté en réduisant le langage, comme la logique, à n’être qu’un instrument de domination du réel. L’utilisation de la notion néoplatonicienne d’émanation permet donc de dépasser la philosophie grecque du logos et de mieux rendre compte de l’être de la langue. Je montre ensuite comment Gadamer radicalise sa pensée en affirmant que l’être qui peut être compris est langage, ce qui veut dire que l’être, comme chez Plotin, est autoprésentation de soi-même. Pour ce faire, Gadamer rattache l’être du langage à la métaphysique néoplatonicienne de la lumière. Les dernières pages de Vérité et méthode rappellent en effet que la splendeur du beau est manifestation de la vérité de l’être. On rattachera alors le concept de vérité herméneutique à ses origines métaphysiques. La vérité est une manifestation de l’être dont on ne peut avoir part que si on se laisse submerger par sa lumière. Loin d’être affaire de contrôle méthodique, l’expérience de la vérité exige de se laisser posséder par ce qui est à comprendre. Je démontre ainsi que Gadamer a découvert dans le néoplatonisme des éléments permettant de s’opposer à la dictature du sujet moderne, dictature qui doit être renversée, car elle masque le réel rapport de l’homme à la vérité en faisant abstraction de la finitude de son existence concrète. La critique du subjectivisme moderne sous la conduite du néoplatonisme ouvre ainsi le chemin vers une métaphysique de la finitude. / My thesis shows the presence and role of metaphysics in Truth and Method. It attempts to show that Gadamer builds upon Neoplatonism to overcome the subjectivism of modernity and offers a metaphysics in this regard. It explains how Gadamer reclaims the legacy of Greek thought to criticize modernity, placing his interpretation of Plato compared to that of Heidegger, I argue that Gadamer appropriates Plotinus’ concept of being in such a way that it may lean to think of self-presentation of being in the hermeneutic experience of truth. In that sense, art is going to be a source of truth under the leadership of Neoplatonism. Gadamer gives an ontological dignity to art through the concept of emanation, a concept which suggests that there is a real presence of the represented in its representation, the latter derived from the represented without weakening it, providing it instead with more being. The concept of emanation then gives Gadamer an opportunity to affirm the indissoluble bond that unites words and things. Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of the inner word indeed implies the link that Plato had covered up by making language, like logic, a mere domination instrument of the real. The use of the Neoplatonic concept of emanation makes it possible to overcome the logos of Greek philosophy and to better account for the being of language. I then show how Gadamer radicalized his thinking as he says that the being that can be understood is language, which means that being, as in Plotinus, is self-presentation. To this end, Gadamer links the being of language to Neoplatonic metaphysics of light. The last pages of Truth and Method recall indeed that the splendor of beauty is an expression for the truth of being. The concept of hermeneutic truth is then connected to its metaphysical origins. Truth is a display for the being in which we can partake only if one gets overwhelmed by its light. Far from being a matter of methodical control, the experience of truth requires to be possessed by what must be understood. In this way, I demonstrate that Gadamer found in Neoplatonism elements to challenge the dictatorship of the modern subject, which must be reversed because it hides the real relationship of man with truth by ignoring the finitude of its concrete existence. The criticism of modern subjectivism led by Neoplatonism opens the way to a metaphysics of finitude.

This Thesis deals with the philosophy and ethics of St.Thomas Aquinas and of St. Augustine. At first I characterize the time period then I am focusing on each cathegory concerning moral life of human being in the world such as God, soul, will, goodness, evil and happiness as well. My goal is to show the real purpose of human existence and to show how both philosophers understand individual topics, what is the same and different in their opinion.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-10-10T10:12:09Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Danllo Costa Lima.pdf: 2031270 bytes, checksum: 856f2aa658fc976e8ed18168a886628d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-10T10:12:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Danllo Costa Lima.pdf: 2031270 bytes, checksum: 856f2aa658fc976e8ed18168a886628d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-09-05 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / In Proclus, the delphic adage “gnothi seauton” reached the status of the fundamental principle of philosophy, according to two perspectives: theoretical and practical. From the theoretical point of view, and in answer to the Skeptical challenge to representative knowledge in its subject-object duality, the neoplatonic tradition carried out a considerable deepening of the philosophical reflexion on self-reflectivity or conversion to one’s self (epistrophê pros eauton), thus inaugurating a form of “turn to the subject” as philosophical method. From the practical point of view, self-knowledge constituted a true spiritual path of self-care, leading the soul from a natural and irreflected condition to a life of philosophical piety and self-transformation, culminating in the soul’s deification through union to the Divine. To this end, in the neoplatonic schools of this period, a formalization of the gradual process of the soul’s education takes place, delineating in the form of a ladder of virtues and sciences, the various levels of the path to be pursued until the soul’s ascension into the beatitude of assimilation to deity. Underlying these two perspectives is a comprehension of the core of the soul, its pure indeterminate existence (huparxis), as being deiform, in such a way that upon it depends both the possibility of true knowledge, in the form of intellectual intuition (noesis), and the possibility of beatitude, in the form of love (eros). To actualize them is the purpose of the ascesis to which the platonic philosopher dedicates himself. This dissertation aims at hypothetically reconstructing, based on Proclus, this path of self-knowledge in Late Neoplatonism, starting with an investigation upon its roots in greek religion, Plato and Plotinus / Em Proclo, a máxima délfica “gnothi seauton” alcançou o estatuto de princípio fundamental da filosofia, segundo duas perspectivas: teórica e prática. Do ponto de vista teórico, em resposta ao desafio do Ceticismo ao conhecimento representativo em sua dualidade sujeito-objeto, a tradição neoplatônica levou a cabo um considerável aprofundamento da reflexão filosófica sobre a autorreflexividade ou conversão a si mesmo (epistrophê pros eauton), inaugurando assim uma forma própria de “virada ao sujeito” como método filosófico. Do ponto de vista prático, o conhecimento de si constituía um verdadeiro caminho espiritual de cuidado de si, conduzindo a alma de uma condição natural e irrefletida para uma vida de piedade filosófica e transformação de si, culminando na deificação da alma em união ao Divino. Para este fim, há nas escolas neoplatônicas deste período uma formalização de um processo gradual de educação da alma, delineando, sob a forma de uma escada de virtudes e saberes, os vários níveis do caminho a serem percorridos por ela em sua ascensão até à bem-aventurança da assimilação à divindade. Subjacente às duas perspectivas está uma compreensão do cerne da alma, sua pura existência indeterminada (huparxis), como sendo deiforme, de modo que dele depende tanto a possibilidade do conhecimento verdadeiro, sob a forma de intuição intelectual (noesis), quanto a possibilidade da bem-aventurança, sob a forma do amor (eros). Atualizá-las é o propósito da ascese a que se dedica o filósofo platônico. Esta dissertação busca reconstruir hipoteticamente, a partir de Proclo, este caminho de autoconhecimento do Neoplatonismo Tardio, partindo de uma investigação de suas raízes na religião grega, em Platão e em Plotino

Samuel Taylor Coleridge used theories of evil and creation from Plato, Plotinus and Proclus to refine his definitions of the Trinity and the Absolute and Apostate Wills, and to move beyond the Germanic Naturphilosophie concept of self-hood as achieved by a self-objectification which emphasised differences between the persons of the Trinity rather than their similarities. His use of specific classical Greek concepts allowed him to propose that the Absolute Will�s self-substantiative act established unity and distinction as simultaneous and interrelated equals. From this, Coleridge investigated how identity and relationship rely upon unity and distinction, as he believed that identity is a unified self distinct from others, and that relationship is the unified common ground of many selves. My first chapter explains my methodology in dealing with Coleridge�s problematic relationship with both Greek and German sources, and describes how Coleridge�s philosophical investigations into evil and creation resulted from personal crises oyer his sense of self and sin. I provide an overview of the system Coleridge devised to address these concerns, concentrating upon the aspects which he believed clarified humanity�s status in relation to evil and the divine. I demonstrate how Coleridge accounts for the origin of the Apostate Will, and I explain his view of identity and relationships between the persons of the Trinity, providing a relevant overview that allows me to point out his use of the fundamental Greek concepts that anchor the subsequent chapters on Plato, Plotinus and Proclus. My second chapter examines Coleridge�s statement that Plato had formulated a triune creative principle, a concept critical to Coleridge�s need to unite God to the created universe. After describing the Platonic structure of reality and its divine creative act, I focus on the Platonic triad of Difference, Unity and Being. Plato�s account of these three principles and how they arise from the divine principle activity influences Coleridge�s view of the Trinity, what it contains in terms of distinction and unity, and how the Trinity arises from the superessential Absolute Will. I explain how Coleridge refined his definition of Christ as pleroma by referencing the way that the Form of the Good simultaneously exhibits plurality and identity. My third chapter shows how the Plotinian theory of the One�s will-based self-substantiation influenced Coleridge�s definition of the Absolute Will. I determine that Plotinus�s concept of heterotes (otherness) informs Coleridge�s view of the origin of evil, and I show how his concept of redemption is influenced by Plotinus�s account of noetic contemplation. My fourth chapter explains how Coleridge used the Proclian concept of Bound to develop the actualising quality of the Logos, in relation to Christ as a successful plurality but also in terms of Christ�s role in the redemption. My conclusion surveys all four philosophers to demonstrate how concepts drawn from Plato, Plotinus and Proclus helped Coleridge to define the Absolute Will and the way that its activity is the unity, distinction, identity and relationship of the Trinity. These three distinct yet related systems influenced Coleridge�s view of evil, as well as his understanding of the Absolute Will�s self-creative act, its relation to the Trinity, and the simultaneously fallen and divine status of humanity.

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