Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs in its Intellectual Context PDF Download

Author: K. Nilüfer Akçay
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408274
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Neoplatonic allegorical interpretation expounds how literary texts present philosophical ideas in an enigmatic and coded form, offering an alternative path to the divine truths. The Neoplatonist Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs is one of the most significant allegorical interpretation handed down to us from Antiquity. This monograph, exclusively dedicated to the analysis of On the Cave of Nymphs, demonstrates that Porphyry interprets Homer’s verse from Odyssey 13.102-112 to convey his philosophical thoughts, particularly on the material world, relationship between soul and body and the salvation of the soul through the doctrines of Plato and Plotinus. The Homeric cave of the nymphs with two gates is a station where the souls descend into genesis and ascend to the intelligible realm. Porphyry associates Odysseus’ long wanderings with the journey of the soul and its salvation from the irrational to rational through escape from all toils of the material world.

Author: Porphyry
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Author: Winfried Schröder
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004536132
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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A comparative analysis of the objections raised against Christianity by late antique philosophers (Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian the Apostate) and Enlightenment freethinkers, focusing on discussions concerning the Bible, the concept of faith, religious coercion, miracles, and morality.

Author: P. D. Newman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1644118378
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Connects the magical practice of theurgy to the time of Homer • Explores the many theurgic themes and events in the Odyssey and the Iliad • Analyzes the writings of Neoplatonists Porphyry and Proclus, showing how both describe the technical ritual praxis of theurgy in Homeric terms • Examines the methods of telestikē, a form of theurgic statue animation and technique to divinize the soul, and how theurgy is akin to shamanic soul flight First defined by the second century Chaldean Oracles, theurgy is an ancient magic practice whereby practitioners divinized the soul and achieved mystical union with a deity, the Demiurge, or the One. In this detailed study, P. D. Newman pushes the roots of theurgy all the way back before the time of Homer. He shows how the Chaldean Oracles were not only written in Homeric Greek but also in dactylic hexameter, the same meter as the epics of Homer. Linking the Greek shamanic practices of the late Archaic period with the theurgic rites of late antiquity, the author explains how both anabasis, soul ascent, and katabasis, soul descent, can be considered varieties of shamanic soul flight and how these practices existed in ancient Greek culture prior to the influx of shamanic influence from Thrace and the Hyperborean North. The author explores the many theurgic themes and symbolic events in the Odyssey and the Iliad, including the famous journey of Odysseus to Hades and the incident of the funeral pyre of Patroclus. He presents a close analysis of On the Cave of the Nymphs, Porphyry’s commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, as well as a detailed look at Proclus’s symbolic reading of Homer’s Iliad, showing how both of these Neoplatonists describe the philosophical theory and the technical ritual praxis of theurgy. Using the Chaldean Oracles as a case study, Newman examines in detail the methods of telestikē, a form of theurgic statue animation, linking this practice to ancient Egyptian and Greek traditions as well as theurgic techniques to divinize the soul. Revealing how the theurgic arts are far older than the second century, Newman’s study not only examines the philosophical theory of theurgy but also the actual ritual practices of the theurgists, as described in their own words.

Author: Ilsetraut Hadot
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004281592
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmonization of Aristotle and Plato by I. Hadot deals with the Neoplatonist tendency to harmonize the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. It shows that this harmonizing tendency, born in Middle Platonism, prevailed in Neoplatonism from Porphyry and Iamblichus, where it persisted until the end of this philosophy. Hadot aims to illustrate that it is not the different schools themselves, for instance those of Athens and Alexandria, that differ from one another by the intensity of the will to harmonization, but groups of philosophers within these schools.

Author: Luc Brisson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004374981
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Neoplatonic Demons and Angels is a collection of eleven studies which examine, in chronological order, the place reserved for angels and demons not only by the main Neoplatonic philosophers (Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus), but also in Gnosticism, the Chaldaean Oracles, Christian Neoplatonism, especially by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. This volume originates from a panel held at the 2014 ISNS meeting in Lisbon, but is supplemented by a number of invited papers.

Author: Herbert Hrachovec
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111386309
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
The clean separation between manifold phenomena and a systematic order that prevails in them is a basic feature of the rational-scientific orientation system. The first authoritative formulation of this premise is found in Plato. His discussion of constitutive forms of world events has initiated a broad development in the history of philosophy, which is also effective today in the preference for reason-guided analyses of often confusing circumstances. The authors of this volume address the lasting relevance of this idea within two interrelated areas of research, namely Plato scholarship and contemporary Platonism. Of particular interest is the relationship between Plato and Wittgenstein. Following this overall idea, this volume is divided into three sections: Plato scholarship, Platonism, and Plato and Wittgenstein. As the contributions show, Platonism proves to be not only a purely historical-exegetical field of research but rather a fruitful stimulus for contemporary discussions on logical, linguistic, and social topics.

Author: Whitman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004453598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Western literary, philosophical, and religious traditions from Plato and Paul to Augustine and Avicenna have utilized, exploited, or been subjected to allegorical interpretation. Naturally developing a composite picture of interpretive allegory from such a large landscape faces numerous difficulties. As the editor puts it, “to imagine a ‘definitive’ account of the theory and practice of allegorical interpretation in the West would require something of an allegorical vision in its own right.” With that caveat in mind, however, the international team of contributors—from a variety of disciplines—offers a “historical and conceptual framework” for understanding interpretive allegory in the West, from antiquity through the early and late medieval and renaissance periods, and from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Author: Reviel Netz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108481477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 905

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Book Description
A history of ancient literary culture told through the quantitative facts of canon, geography, and scale.

Author: Stephen R. L. Clark
Publisher: Angelico Press
ISBN: 1621388557
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
What would a "reappeared" Plotinus answer today if asked how we might build a divinely-ordered city? That is the question at the core of this unique book, and Stephen Clark takes us on a wide-ranging deep dive to uncover possible answers. To do so, he first gives an account of the Plotinian philosophy of mind and metaphysics, showing how Plotinus nicely balances the entanglement of soul-body composites (our immediate identities) with the workings of the World Soul and the eternal soul that animates "from within." Drawing on later Christian and Islamic interpretations of the Neoplatonic tradition, and parallel developments in Hindu thought, he then describes the various social forms that seem to be the inevitable context of our lives here and now. Furthermore, we discover that the form a Plotinian religion adopts depends on taking seriously the thought of reincarnating souls and wandering hermits, but now with the difference in our time that, although some sages may be content to consider themselves simple wanderers in a world without borders or settled communities, some will follow the same path as Buddhists, Epicureans, and Christians: forming communities of friends loyal to their founder and to the fellowship of the Sangha. We learn as well that in due course even those among the hermits who prefer to go, almost literally, "alone to the Alone" will become part of dispersed, unhierarchical communities. Finally, Clark offers cautious thoughts about our likely futures, dependent both on current technological advances and on the realistic suspicion (shared by our predecessors) that catastrophes and wholly unexpected turns are always to be expected.