Late Antique Epistemology
Other Ways to Truth
Vassilopoulou, P., Clark, S. (Eds.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
Description
Late Antique Epistemology explores the techniques used by late antique philosophers to discuss truth. Non-rational ways to discover truth, or to reform the soul, have usually been thought inferior to the philosophically approved techniques of rational argument, suitable for the less philosophically inclined, for children, savages or the uneducated. Religious rituals, oracles, erotic passion, madness may all have served to waken courage or remind us of realities obscured by everyday concerns. What is unusual in the late antique classical philosophers is that these techniques were reckoned as reliable as reasoned argument, or better still. Late twentieth century commentators have offered psychological explanations of this turn, but only recently had it been accepted that there might also have been philosophical explanations, and that the later antique philosophers were not necessarily deluded.
(Text from the publisher)
Table of contents
Introduction – Vassilopoulou, Panayiota
Part 1 – Rituals, Religion and Reality
1. Porphyry and the Debate Over Traditional Religious Practices – Busine, Aude
2. St John in Amelius’ Seminar – Dillon, John
3. Eternal Time and Temporal Expansion: Proclus’ Golden Ratio – Kutash, Emilie F.
4. Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor – Mazur, Zeke
Part II – Crossing Boundaries
5. Ibn Ṭufayl and the Wisdom of the East: On Apprehending the Divine – Kukkonen, Taneli
6. Plotinus, Porphyry, and India: A Re-Examination – Lacrosse, Joachim
7. Animation of Statues in Ancient Civilizations and Neoplatonism – Uzdavinys, Algis
Part III – Art and Poetry
8. Platonists and the Teaching of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity – Heath, Maclcom
9. Proclus’ Notion of Poetry – Kuisma, Oiva
10. The Homeric Tradition in Ammonius and Asclepius – Manolea, Christina-Panagiota Manolea
Part IV – Later Influences
11. Nous and Geist: Self-Identity and Methodological Solipsism in Plotinus and Hegel – Rerchman, Robert M.
12. Μεστὰ πάντα σημείων. Plotinus, Leibniz, and Berkeley on Determinism – Bertini, Daniele
13. Proclus Americanus – Bregman, Jay
14. Ecology’s Future Debt to Plotinus and Neoplatonism – Corrigan, Kevin
15. Heathen Martyrs or Romish Idolaters: Socrates and Plato in Eighteenth-Century England – Poster, Carol
Conclusion – Clark, Stephen R. L.
Glossary – Prepared by Crystal Addey
Index of Names
Subject Index
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