Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic

Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic
Author: Sebastian Gertz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2018-04-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350051764

The three ancient philosophical introductions translated in this volume flesh out our picture of what it would have been like to sit in a first-year Philosophy course in ancient Alexandria. Ammonius (AD 445-517/26) set up a new teaching programme in Alexandria with up to six introductions to the philosophy curriculum, which made it far more accessible, and encouraged its spread from Greek to other cultures. This volume's three introductory texts include one by his student Olympiodorus and one each by Olympiodorus' students Elias and David. Elias' Introductions to Philosophy starts with six definitions of Philosophy, to which David adds replies to the sceptical question whether there is such a thing as Philosophy. Olympiodorus' text translated here is an Introduction to Logic, which is just one of the three introductions he wrote himself.

Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic

Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic
Author: Sebastian Gertz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-04-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350051756

The three ancient philosophical introductions translated in this volume flesh out our picture of what it would have been like to sit in a first-year Philosophy course in ancient Alexandria. Ammonius (AD 445-517/26) set up a new teaching programme in Alexandria with up to six introductions to the philosophy curriculum, which made it far more accessible, and encouraged its spread from Greek to other cultures. This volume's three introductory texts include one by his student Olympiodorus and one each by Olympiodorus' students Elias and David. Elias' Introductions to Philosophy starts with six definitions of Philosophy, to which David adds replies to the sceptical question whether there is such a thing as Philosophy. Olympiodorus' text translated here is an Introduction to Logic, which is just one of the three introductions he wrote himself.

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education
Author: Associate Professor in Late Antique and Early Christian Studies Michael W Champion
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2022-07-07
Genre: Asceticism
ISBN: 0198869266

Dorotheus of Gaza and Ascetic Education approaches fundamental questions about the role and function of education in late antiquity through a detailed study of the thought of Dorotheus of Gaza, a sixth-century Palestinian monk. It illumines the thought of a significant figure in Palestinian monasticism, clarifies relationships between ascetic and classical education, and contributes to debates about how different educational projects related to late-antique cultural change. Dorotheus appropriates and reconfigures classical discourses of rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine and builds on earlier ascetic traditions. Education is a powerful site for the reconfiguration and reproduction of culture, and Dorotheus' educational programme can be read as a microcosm of the wider culture he aims to construct partly through his adaptation and representation of classical and ascetic discourses. Key features of his educational programme include the role of the notion of godlikeness, the governing role of humility as an epistemic virtue intended to organize affective and ethical development, and his notion of education as life-long habituation. For Dorotheus, education is irreducibly affective and transformative rather than merely informative at the individual and communal scales. His epistemology and ethics are set within an account of the divine plan of salvation which is intended to provide a narrative framework through which his students come to understand the world and their place in it. His account of ways of knowing and ordering knowledge, ethics and moral development, emotions of education, and relationships between affect, cognition, and ethical action aims towards transformation of his students and their communities.

Ammonius: Interpretation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Five Terms

Ammonius: Interpretation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Five Terms
Author: Michael Chase
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350089230

One of his six introductions to philosophy, widely used by students in Alexandria, Ammonius' lecture on Porphyry was recorded in writing by his students in the commentary translated here. Along with five other types of introductions (three of which are translated in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle volume Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic) it made Greek philosophy more accessible to other cultures. These introductions became standard in Ammonius' school and included a popular set of five or more definitions of philosophy, some of them drawn from commentaries on quite different works. Ammonius' lecture expounded the most celebrated and discussed previous introduction written by Porphyry 200 years earlier, which was devoted to five main technical terms of Aristotle's logic. Ammonius was sympathetic to Porphyry because they both sought to harmonise the views of Plato and Aristotle with each other, arguing in different ways that the two philosophers did not disagree about the nature of universals. Porphyry's introduction was a hugely influential work for centuries after its composition, and this commentary by Ammonius served to maintain its position at the centre of later schools of philosophy. This English translation of Ammonius' work is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.

Neoplatonic Pedagogy and the Alcibiades I

Neoplatonic Pedagogy and the Alcibiades I
Author: James M. Ambury
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1009117971

Many philosophers in the ancient world shared a unitary vision of philosophy – meaning 'love of wisdom' – not just as a theoretical discipline, but as a way of life. Specifically, for the late Neoplatonic thinkers, philosophy began with self-knowledge, which led to a person's inner conversion or transformation into a lover, a human being erotically striving toward the totality of the real. This metamorphosis amounted to a complete existential conversion. It was initiated by learned guides who cultivated higher and higher levels of virtue in their students, leading, in the end, to their vision of the Good, or the One. In this book, James M. Ambury closely analyses two central texts in this tradition: the commentaries by Proclus (412–485 AD) and Olympiodorus (495–560 AD) on the Platonic Alcibiades I. Ambury's powerful study illuminates the way philosophy was conceived during a crucial period of its history, in the lecture halls of late antiquity.

Philosophy at the Festival: The Festal Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus and the Classical Tradition

Philosophy at the Festival: The Festal Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus and the Classical Tradition
Author: Byron MacDougall
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2022-10-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004521402

Gregory's festal orations are foundational for Byzantine literature. This book shows how besides his priestly role, Gregory plays that of a rhetor performing philosophy for a festival audience, channeling traditions of Classical philosophy and the Second Sophistic into Christian culture.

Later Platonists and their Heirs among Christians, Jews, and Muslims

Later Platonists and their Heirs among Christians, Jews, and Muslims
Author: Eva Anagnostou
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2022-12-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004527850

In this volume authors working across different disciplines of late antique and medieval thought explore the reception of Platonic and Neoplatonic tenets among Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

Sergius of Reshaina, Commentary on Aristotle's >Categories

Sergius of Reshaina, Commentary on Aristotle's >Categories
Author: Yury Arzhanov
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2024-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 3111444538

Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536) is a major figure in the history of the Syriac reception of Aristotle's logic. He studied philosophy and medicine in the late 5th century in Alexandria with the famous Ammonius Hermeiou, whose lectures formed the basis for Sergius' main philosophical work, his extensive Commentary on the Categories. In this treatise, Sergius adapted for his Christian audience the Alexandrian educational model and exegesis of Aristotle logical writings and in this way influenced subsequent centuries of Aristotelian studies in Syriac. The commentary contains an extensive introductory part which deals with the traditional set of preliminaries (prolegomena), e.g., the general division of sciences, the scope of Aristotle's logic in general and of his treatise Categories in particular, etc. Moreover, it includes excurses in natural philosophy and contains extensive quotations from Aristotle's Physics. Thus, Sergius' treatise not only introduced the tradition of exegesis of Aristotle to the Syriac world, but provided Syriac readers with a general introduction to philosophy and logic and thus paved the way for the transmission of Greek sciences and philosophy from Alexandria to Baghdad.