Overview

A range of sciences was taught in the Platonist schools of late antiquity (third to sixth centuries) with the purpose of leading the human soul up to a divine life. This curriculum constituted so to speak a ladder of the sciences. The ways in which these sciences were newly interpreted in this context have not, however, been fully appreciated. This volume brings together selected essays, some translated into English for the first time, which show how a new vision of these disciplines and sciences was reached as part of a Platonist philosophical education. They cover a wide range of topics, from rhetoric, ethics and politics to mathematics, music and metaphysics, and discuss the work of various philosophers. Dominic O'Meara is considered one of the foremost scholars of Platonism and this book provides readers with an indispensable tool for accessing his most important scholarship in this area.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dominic J. O'Meara (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Weight:   0.809kg
ISBN:  

9781009539937

ISBN 10:   1009539930
Pages:   434
Publication Date:   08 January 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: the ladder of the sciences as divinization in late antique Platonismt Part I. Rhetoric as an Instrument of Philosophy: 1. Good and bad rhetors in Damascius' Life of Isidore; 2. Epistolographic philosophy: the many functions of Iamblichus' correspondence; 3. Lamblichus' On the Pythagorean Life in Context; 4. The praise of the mathematical sciences in late antique philosophy; 5. The rhetoric of the ineffable in late antique philosophy; Part II. Ethics: 6. Ethics in Plotinus and his successors; 7. Innovations in Plotinus' theory of virtue; 8. Ancient biographies of Pythagoras and Epicurus as models of the philosophical life; 9. Patterns of perfection in Damascius' Life of Isidore; 10. Love in Plotinus' thought; 11. Explaining evil in late antiquity: Plotinus and his critics; 12. Explaining evil in Justinian's reign: Simplicius and Procopius; 13. Philosophos Oikonomos. Household ethics in Porphyry's Vita Plotini and in Marinus' Vita Procli; Part III. Political Science: 14. Political theory; 15. Lady philosophy and politics in late antiquity: a tense relationship; 16. Simplicius on the place of the philosopher in the city (In Epictetum, ch. 32); 17. Souls and cities in late antique platonic philosophy; 18. The legislation of the world and human legislation in late antique Platonism; 19. Law and legislator in the philosophy of Julian the Emperor; 20. Plato's tyrant in Neoplatonic philosophy; Part IV. Mathematics: 21.Mathematics and the sciences in Proclus; 22. The music of philosophy in late antiquity; 23. The music of the virtues in late ancient Platonism; 24. Hearing the harmony of the spheres in late antiquity; Part V. Metaphysics: 25. The transformation of metaphysics in late antiquity; 26. Intentional objects in later Neoplatonism; 27. Metaphysical science (or theology) in Proclus as spiritual exercise; 28. The foundation of the principle of non-contradiction in Syrianus; 29. Notes on the aporetics of the one in Greek Neoplatonism.

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Author Information

DOMINIC J. O'MEARA is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland). His books include Cosmology and Politics in Plato's Later Works (Cambridge, 2017), Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (1993), Pythagoras Revived (1989) and Platonopolis (2003).

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