Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Rhetoric And Platonism In Fifth-Century Athens, Damian Caluori
Rhetoric And Platonism In Fifth-Century Athens, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
There are reasons to believe that relations between Platonism and rhetoric in Athens during the fifth century CE were rather close. Both were major pillars of pagan culture, or paideia, and thus essential elements in the defense of paganism against increasingly powerful and repressive Christian opponents. It is easy to imagine that, under these circumstances, paganism was closing ranks and that philosophers and orators united in their efforts to save traditional ways and values. Although there is no doubt some truth to this view, a closer look reveals that the relations between philosophy and rhetoric were rather more complicated. …
Reason And Necessity: The Descent Of The Philosopher Kings, Damian Caluori
Reason And Necessity: The Descent Of The Philosopher Kings, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
One of the reasons why one might find it worthwhile to study philosophers of late antiquity is the fact that they often have illuminating things to say about Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus, in particular, was a diligent and insightful reader of those great masters. Michael Frede was certainly of that view, and when he wrote that '[o]ne can learn much more from Plotinus about Aristotle than from most modern accounts of the Stagirite', he would not have objected, I presume, to the claim that Plotinus is also extremely helpful for the study of Plato. In this spirit I wish to …
Une Vie De Platon Du ViE Siècle (Olympiodore): Traduction Et Notes, N. D'Andres, Damian Caluori, D. Del Forno, L. Pitteloud, D. O'Meara, J. Schamp, E. Song, C. Tresson, M. Vonlanthen, S. Weiner
Une Vie De Platon Du ViE Siècle (Olympiodore): Traduction Et Notes, N. D'Andres, Damian Caluori, D. Del Forno, L. Pitteloud, D. O'Meara, J. Schamp, E. Song, C. Tresson, M. Vonlanthen, S. Weiner
Philosophy Faculty Research
Le lecteur trouvera ci‐dessous la première traduction française complète d’une biographie de Platon rédigée à partir d’un cours donné par Olympiodore, professeur de philosophie à l’école platonicienne d’Alexandrie vers le milieu du VIe siècle après J.‐C., ainsi que la première traduction française d’une biographie de Platon inclue dans un lexique (la Souda) de l’époque byzantine.1 Nous espérons contribuer ainsi à la mise à disposition en traduction française de l’ensemble des biographies antiques de Platon. En effet, outre les biographies d’Olympiodore et de la Souda, nous pouvons encore lire des Vies de Platon, toutes accessibles en …
Plotinus On Primary Being, Damian Caluori
Plotinus On Primary Being, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
Late antique philosophers took a great interest in metaphysics. Indeed, the discipline's very name, "metaphysics", goes back to late antiquity.1 One of the main reasons for this great interest can be found in the view - widespread in this period - that an understanding of reality is crucial for our lives and for the destiny and salvation of our souls.2 Only by contemplating and by possessing knowledge of reality - a reality that was thought to be beyond the world of our ordinary experience - is the soul in an uncorrupted state of well being. Metaphysics is precisely …
Literature And The Passion Of Virtue, Lawrence Kimmel
Literature And The Passion Of Virtue, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
There has always been a reasonable concern that passion constitutes a challenge to the ordeal of civility—that passion and pathology are close cousins if not twin siblings. But in a time and place where political correctness seems to be replacing moral sensibility and political biases are hawked as the morality of family values, it is reasonable to redirect attention to a world of literature in which morality has never been reduced to norms of social currency and where virtue still embodies a passion of commitment that aspires to excellence.
The Essential Functions Of A Plotinian Soul, Damian Caluori
The Essential Functions Of A Plotinian Soul, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
In reading Plotinus one might get the impression that the essential functions of a Plotinian soul are very similar to those of an Aristotelian soul. Plotinus talks of such vegetative functions as growth, nurture and reproduction. He discusses such animal functions as sense perception, imagination and memory. And he attributes such functions as reasoning, judging and having opinions to the soul. In Plotinus' Psychology, Blumenthal bases his whole discussion of the soul on an analysis of these functions. He concludes that Plotinus 'saw the soul's activities as the functions of a series of faculties which were basically those of …
Reconciliation And Harmony: The Philosophical Art Of Tragic Drama, Lawrence Kimmel
Reconciliation And Harmony: The Philosophical Art Of Tragic Drama, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
In the performance of art one can begin at the beginning, but in a discussion of art one must begin somewhere in the middle. Here, it is with the conviction that art, in whatever form, though it may surprise the sense and quicken the spirit, disturb our thinking or revoke a thoughtless ease, still, its full expression restores a sense of presence and wholeness to our being. That is, every art form has a point of closure in a harmony of the spirit. Even tragic drama, which brings the darkness of human character into a glare of recognition and acceptance, …
The Dialectical Convergence Of Rhetoric And Ethics: The Imperative Of Public Conversation, Lawrence Kimmel
The Dialectical Convergence Of Rhetoric And Ethics: The Imperative Of Public Conversation, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
Man is a rule-making, rule-governed creature—he is, as Aristotle put it, an animal defined by and within a community of speech. The two disciplines of ethics and rhetoric and the cultural activities they engage are instrumental to this defining activity of human life. If moral life is riddled with ambiguities, theoretical understanding of it is no less plagued with an ambivalent relationship which rhetoric and ethics have to each other, despite their mutual concern with the practical affairs of human beings. To argue a necessary convergence of rhetoric and ethics for an understanding of moral life, it is ironic and …