Aristotle and Other Platonists

Aristotle and Other Platonists PDF Author: Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501716964
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
"Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."—from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony.

Aristotle and Other Platonists

Aristotle and Other Platonists PDF Author: Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501716964
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
"Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."—from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony.

From Plato to Platonism

From Plato to Platonism PDF Author: Lloyd P. Gerson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801469171
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism." Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."

Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250

Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250 PDF Author: George Boys-Stones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108229484
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy.

Plato and Aristotle in Agreement?

Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? PDF Author: George E. Karamanolis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199264562
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
George Karamanolis breaks new ground in the study of later ancient philosophy by examining the interplay of the two main schools of thought, Platonism and Aristotelianism, from the first century BC to the third century AD. Arguing against prevailing scholarly assumption, he argues that the Platonists turned to Aristotle only in order to elucidate Plato's doctrines and to reconstruct Plato's philosophy, and that they did not hesitate to criticize Aristotle when judging him to be at odds with Plato. Karamanolis offers much food for thought to ancient philosophers and classicists.

The Other Platonist Beginning

The Other Platonist Beginning PDF Author: Emile Alexandrov
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781803744759
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This book founds an other Platonist beginning by repositioning Plato and Neoplatonism in Heidegger's history of metaphysics. This beginning begins with Plato and culminates in Heidegger. By revisiting Heidegger's interpretation of Plato and retrieving Neoplatonist approaches to non-discursive thinking, the other beginning that has hitherto remained dormant within the history of thought is established. The author re-thinks Heidegger's attribution of the collapse of truth (alåetheia) to Plato by recovering the dialogues' deep topography, myths and inspired expression. The re-interpretation of Plato is then linked to Neoplatonism, where significant parallels with Heidegger emerge. The book thoroughly and consistently explores the non-discursive thinking of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus with Heidegger's poetic thinking"--

Platonism at the Origins of Modernity

Platonism at the Origins of Modernity PDF Author: Douglas Hedley
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402064071
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This collection of essays offers an overview of the range and breadth of Platonic philosophy in the early modern period. It examines philosophers of Platonic tradition, such as Cusanus, Ficino, and Cudworth. The book also addresses the impact of Platonism on major philosophers of the period, especially Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Shaftesbury and Berkeley.

Radical Platonism in Byzantium

Radical Platonism in Byzantium PDF Author: Niketas Siniossoglou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107013038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
A groundbreaking approach to late Byzantine intellectual history and the philosophy of visionary reformer Gemistos Plethon.

The Origins of the Platonic System

The Origins of the Platonic System PDF Author: Mauro Bonazzi
Publisher: Peeters
ISBN: 9789042921825
Category : Philosophy, Ancient
Languages : de
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the 1st century BC onwards followers of Plato began to systematize Plato's thought. These attempts went in various directions and were subjected to all kinds of philosophical influences, especially Aristotelian, Stoic, and Pythagorean. The result was a broad variety of Platonisms without orthodoxy. That would only change with Plotinus. This volume, being the fruit of the collaboration among leading scholars in the field, addresses a number of aspects of this period of system building with substantial contributions on Antiochus and Alcinous and their relation to Stoicism; on Pythagoreanising tendencies in Platonism; on Eudorus and the tradition of commentaries on Aristotle's Categories; on the creationism of the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria; on Ammonius, the Egyptian teacher of Plutarch; on Plutarch's discussion of Socrates' guardian spirit. The contributions are in English, French, Italian and German.

Plato's Philosophers

Plato's Philosophers PDF Author: Catherine H. Zuckert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226993388
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 898

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Book Description
Faced with the difficult task of discerning Plato’s true ideas from the contradictory voices he used to express them, scholars have never fully made sense of the many incompatibilities within and between the dialogues. In the magisterial Plato’s Philosophers, Catherine Zuckert explains for the first time how these prose dramas cohere to reveal a comprehensive Platonic understanding of philosophy. To expose this coherence, Zuckert examines the dialogues not in their supposed order of composition but according to the dramatic order in which Plato indicates they took place. This unconventional arrangement lays bare a narrative of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. In the drama’s earliest dialogues, for example, non-Socratic philosophers introduce the political and philosophical problems to which Socrates tries to respond. A second dramatic group shows how Socrates develops his distinctive philosophical style. And, finally, the later dialogues feature interlocutors who reveal his philosophy’s limitations. Despite these limitations, Zuckert concludes, Plato made Socrates the dialogues’ central figure because Socrates raises the fundamental human question: what is the best way to live? Plato’s dramatization of Socratic imperfections suggests, moreover, that he recognized the apparently unbridgeable gap between our understandings of human life and the nonhuman world. At a time when this gap continues to raise questions—about the division between sciences and the humanities and the potentially dehumanizing effects of scientific progress—Zuckert’s brilliant interpretation of the entire Platonic corpus offers genuinely new insights into worlds past and present.

Platonism, Naturalism, and Mathematical Knowledge

Platonism, Naturalism, and Mathematical Knowledge PDF Author: James Robert Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136580387
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
This study addresses a central theme in current philosophy: Platonism vs Naturalism and provides accounts of both approaches to mathematics, crucially discussing Quine, Maddy, Kitcher, Lakoff, Colyvan, and many others. Beginning with accounts of both approaches, Brown defends Platonism by arguing that only a Platonistic approach can account for concept acquisition in a number of special cases in the sciences. He also argues for a particular view of applied mathematics, a view that supports Platonism against Naturalist alternatives. Not only does this engaging book present the Platonist-Naturalist debate over mathematics in a comprehensive fashion, but it also sheds considerable light on non-mathematical aspects of a dispute that is central to contemporary philosophy.