New book: Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity. Edited by Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle Australia, Danielle A. Layne, Gonzaga University, Dirk Baltzly, University of Tasmania and Monash University, and François Renaud, Université de Moncton. Brill's Companions to Classical Reception 13. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Courtesy of the website at Brill: "Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquityoffers a comprehensive account of the ways in which ancient readers responded to Plato, as philosopher, as author, and more generally as a central figure in the intellectual heritage of Classical Greece, from his death in the fourth century BCE until the Platonist and Aristotelian commentators in the sixth century CE. The volume is divided into three sections: ‘Early Developments in Reception’ (four chapters); ‘Early Imperial Reception’ (nine chapters); and ‘Early Christianity and Late Antique Platonism’ (eighteen chapters). Sectional introductions cover matters of importance that could not easily be covered in dedicated chapters. The book demonstrates the great variety of approaches to and interpretations of Plato among even his most dedicated ancient readers, offering some salutary lessons for his modern readers too."

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Part I. Early Developments in Reception

Introduction: The Old Academy to Cicero

1 Speusippus and Xenocrates on the Pursuit and Ends of Philosophy

Phillip Sidney Horky

2 The Influence of the Platonic Dialogues on Stoic Ethics from Zeno to Panaetius of Rhodes

Francesca Alesse

3 Plato and the Freedom of the New Academy

Charles E. Snyder

4 Return to Plato and Transition to Middle Platonism in Cicero

François Renaud

Part II. Early Imperial Reception of Plato

Introduction: Early Imperial Reception of Plato

5 From Fringe Reading to Core Curriculum: Commentary, Introduction and Doctrinal Summary

Harold Tarrant

6 Philo of Alexandria

Sami Yli-Karjanmaa

7 Plutarch of Chaeronea and the Anonymous Commentator on the Theaetetus

Mauro Bonazzi

8 Theon of Smyrna: Re-thinking Platonic Mathematics in Middle Platonism

Federico M. Petrucci

9 Cupid's Swan from the Academy (De Plat. 1.1, 183): Apuleius' Reception of Plato

Geert Roskam

10 Alcinous' Reception of Plato

Carl S. O'Brien

11 Numenius: Portrait of a Platonicus

Polymnia Athanassiadi

12 Galen and Middle Platonism: The Case of the Demiurge

Julius Rocca

13 Variations of Receptions of Plato during the Second Sophistic

Ryan C. Fowler

Part III. Early Christianity and Late Antique Platonism

Introduction: Early Christianity and Late Antique Platonism

14 Origen to Evagrius

Ilaria Ramelli

15 Sethian Gnostic Appropriations of Plato

John D. Turner

16 Plotinus and Platonism

Lloyd P. Gerson

17 Porphyry

Michael Chase

18 The Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides

Dennis Clark

19 Iamblichus, the Commentary Tradition, and the Soul

John Finamore

20 Amelius and Theodore of Asine

Dirk Baltzly

21 Plato's Political Dialogues in the Writings of Julian the Emperor

Dominic J. O'Meara

22 Plato's Women Readers

Crystal Addey

23 Calcidius

Christina Hoenig

24 Augustine's Plato

Gerd Van Riel

25 Orthodoxy and Allegory: Syrianus' Metaphysical Hermeneutics

Sarah Klitenic Wear

26 Hermias: On Plato's Phaedrus

Harold Tarrant and Dirk Baltzly

27 Proclus and the Authority of Plato

Jan Opsomer

28 Damascius the Platonic Successor: Socratic Activity and Philosophy in the 6^th Century CE

Sara Ahbel-Rappe

29 The Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy

Danielle A. Layne

30 Olympiodorus of Alexandria

Michael Griffin

31 Simplicius of Cilicia: Plato's Last Interpreter

Gary Gabor

Conclusion

Bibliography

General Index

Index Locorum

Defining Platonism

A new volume of studies of the ISNS on Neoplatonism: Defining Platonism: Essays in Honor of the 75th Birthday of John M. Dillon, edited by Sarah Klitenic Wear and John F. Finamore (Franciscan University Press). Below is the table of contents:

Apologia pro Vita Sua Operibusque, by John Dillon viii

Introduction 1

John F. Finamore and Sarah Klitenic Wear

Part I. Plato

1. Platonic Eschatology 11

John Bussanich

2. The Platonist as Friend 29

Kevin Corrigan

3. Plato’s Timaeus: What Is in the Paradigm? 44

Allan Silverman

4. The Athenians against the Persians: Plato’s View

(Laws III, 698a–700a) 64

Christopher Rowe

Part II. Ancient Platonism

5. Numenius, Neopythagoreanism, and the

Troublesome “King(s)” 85

Harold Tarrant

6. Can One Speak of Mysticism in Plotinus? 96

Luc Brisson

7. The Relentless Pursuit of Justice 117

Gary M. Gurtler, SJ

8. Plotinus on Evil: Proclus and the Author of The Divine Names 130

Denis O’Brien

9. Plotinus on Suicide 162

Suzanne Stern-Gillet

10. Self-Reflexive Ontogenesis in the Tripartite Tractate

and Plotinus 181

John D. Turner

11. The Metaphysics of Power, Logos, and Harmony in Porphyry 198

Stephen Gersh

12. The Soul as a Writing Tablet, from Plato to Proclus 218

Anne Sheppard

13. Hermias and the Soul’s Pilot 228

John F. Finamore

14. Plotinus and the Apophatic Augustine 238

John Peter Kenney

15. The Figure of the Diadochos, from Socrates to the Late Antique

Athenian School of Neoplatonism 253

Carl Séan O’Brien and Sarah Klitenic Wear

Part III. Modern Platonism

16. The Platonist as Music Lover: Some Reflections

and Auditions 273

Jay Bregman

17. Platonism versus Naturalism 291

Lloyd P. Gerson

New books in Neoplatonism, spring 2017

Several juicy titles in Neoplatonic Studies are popping up for 2017 already. One is a promising-looking set of studies on Byzantine Perspectives on Neoplatonism, which includes a number of papers on Proclus, Plethon, and the reception of Neoplatonic texts in the Byzantine world. The other is the latest installment in Cambridge UP's series of new translations of Proclus' Commentary on Plato's 'Timaeus': "Volume 6. Book 5: Proclus on the Gods of Generation and the Creation of Humans." These translations - and esp. their introductions and notes - have become indispensible resources for scholars working on Neoplatonism.

VIA: AncientEsotericism.org :: Network for the Study of Esotericism in Antiquity

New translation of Calcidius

Medieval manuscript of Calcidius' Latin
translation of Plato's Timaeus.

John Magee's new translation of the fourth-century Latin commentary of Calcidius on Plato's Timaeus has now appeared, courtesy of Harvard University Press. Check it out here. This should be a very useful resource for anybody tangling with ancient philosophy.

More details from HUP: "Until the Renaissance, the work of Calcidius offered the medieval West almost the only direct access to Plato’s corpus not dispersed in fragments. In the 4th century CE, Calcidius translated into Latin an important section of Plato’sTimaeus, complemented by extensive commentary and organized into coordinated parts. The first part is broadly devoted to the architecture of the world, to its intelligible structure. The second delves into the nature of the living creatures that inhabit it. This basic division subsequently informed the sense of macrocosm and microcosm—of the world and our place in it—which is prevalent in western European thought in the Middle Ages. At the same time, this medieval volume altered perspectives on Plato by drawing on other philosophical traditions, particularly the Stoic and Peripatetic, while including Judeo-Christian cosmology and anthropology. The present edition provides the first English translation of Calcidius’s work."

New edition of the Refutation of All Heresies

One of the most important ancient Christian sources regarding not only Gnosticism, but Elchasai and the Elchasaites, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and much, much more is the anonymous Refutation of All Heresies. Scholars familiar with the work know the commonly used Greek text (of Marcovich) to be deficient due to the editor's zeal for emendation; meanwhile, the English translation in the Anti-Nicene Fathers series (accessible onlinehere) is not only completely unreliable, but uses a different numbering scheme than we find in Marcovich. A totally revised critical edition of the Greek and English alike has been a desideratum for a long time, and M. David Litwa (U. Virginia) has delivered the goods in this wonderful new edition published by the Society of Biblical Literature. More information is available here.

Via: AncientEsotericism.org :: Network for the Study of Esotericism in Antiquity

Free Book – Gemistos Plethon, The Byzantine and Latin Renaissance

Jozef Matula and Paul Richard Blum have published the proceedings of the conference “Georgios Gemistos Plethon: The Byzantine and the Latin Renaissance" (Center for Renaissance Texts at the Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 10-12 May 2013). The volume is available online, here.
(Via AncientEsotericism.org :: Network for the Study of Esotericism in Antiquity)

Late Antiquity and the New Humanities: An Open Forum

Starting last week, Marginalia has been publishing a lovely series of essays on the study of Late Antiquity; now the series is complete, and accessible in toto with an introduction from Ellen Muehlberger here. (Via AncientEsoterism and PaleoJudaica)

The Enneads: Abridged Edition (Penguin Classics)

The essence of mystic thought of all times. Grandeur of Logos and Ecstasy. This is an abridged edition, for a first contact with Plotinus' masterpiece. His thought of course is not easily accessible. One should not have the illusion that reading only one time a translation of the Enneads, in English, will understand the complicated and at the same time simple in its architecture plotinian system of thought. If someone tries to be absorbed in the text, probably he will be disappointed. If again he tries to read indirectly, and believes he understands the skeleton of Plotinus' thought, probably he will leave somehow or other with empty hands. Only with the combination of both, maybe, at the end, one can comprehend something of his thought.