Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance PDF

Author: Carl Séan O'Brien

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-09-01

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 1108530095

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Platonic love is a concept that has profoundly shaped Western literature, philosophy and intellectual history for centuries. First developed in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, it was taken up by subsequent thinkers in antiquity, entered the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and played a key role in the reception of Neoplatonism and the etiquette of romantic relationships during the Italian Renaissance. In this wide-ranging reference work, a leading team of international specialists examines the Platonic distinction between higher and lower forms of eros, the role of the higher form in the ascent of the soul and the concept of Beauty. They also treat the possibilities for friendship and interpersonal love in a Platonic framework, as well as the relationship between love, rhetoric and wisdom. Subsequent developments are explored in Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ficino, della Mirandola, Castiglione and the contra amorem tradition.

Setting Plato Straight

Setting Plato Straight PDF

Author: Todd W. Reeser

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 022630700X

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In 'Setting Plato Straight', Todd W. Reeser undertakes the first sustained and comprehensive study of Renaissance textual responses to Platonic same-sex sexuality. Reeser mines an expansive collection of translations, commentaries, and literary sources to study how Renaissance translators transformed ancient eros into non-erotic, non-homosexual relations.

The Reception of Plato’s ›Phaedrus‹ from Antiquity to the Renaissance

The Reception of Plato’s ›Phaedrus‹ from Antiquity to the Renaissance PDF

Author: Sylvain Delcomminette

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 3110683938

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This volume explores the tremendous influence of Plato’s Phaedrus on the philosophical, religious, scientific and literary discussions in the West. Ranging from Plato’s first readers, over the Church Fathers and the Platonic commentators, to Byzantine and Renaissance thinkers, the papers collected here introduce the reader to the first two millennia of the dialogue’s reception history. Thirteen contributions by both junior and established scholars study the engagement with the Phaedrus by such major figures as Aristotle, Galen, Origen, Clemens of Alexandria, Plotinus, Augustine, Proclus, Psellus, Ficino, Erasmus, and many others. Together, they cover the wide range of topics discussed in the dialogue: the value of myth and allegory, religion and theology, love and beauty, the soul and its immortality, teaching and learning, metaphysics and epistemology, rhetoric and dialectic, as well as the role and the limits of writing. By placing the dialogue in this broad perspective, the volume will appeal to readers interested in the Phaedrus itself, as well as to classicists, literary theorists, and historians of philosophy, science and religion concerned with the dialogue’s reception history and its main protagonists.

Platonism and the English Imagination

Platonism and the English Imagination PDF

Author: Anna Baldwin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-03-24

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0521403081

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This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Philosophy

The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Philosophy PDF

Author: Mark Edwards

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-29

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 1134855982

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This volume offers the most comprehensive survey available of the philosophical background to the works of early Christian writers and the development of early Christian doctrine. It examines how the same philosophical questions were approached by Christian and pagan thinkers; the philosophical element in Christian doctrines; the interaction of particular philosophies with Christian thought; and the constructive use of existing philosophies by all Christian thinkers of late antiquity. While most studies of ancient Christian writers and the development of early Christian doctrine make some reference to the philosophic background, this is often of an anecdotal character, and does not enable the reader to determine whether the likenesses are deep or superficial, or how pervasively one particular philosopher may have influenced Christian thought. This volume is designed to provide not only a body of facts more compendious than can be found elsewhere, but the contextual information which will enable readers to judge or clarify the statements that they encounter in works of more limited scope. With contributions by an international group of experts in both philosophy and Christian thought, this is an invaluable resource for scholars of early Christianity, Late Antiquity and ancient philosophy alike.

Plato's Symposium

Plato's Symposium PDF

Author: James H. Lesher

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13:

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In his Symposium, Plato crafted speeches in praise of love that has influenced writers and artists from antiquity to the present. But questions remain concerning the meaning of specific features, the significance of the dialogue as a whole, and the character of its influence. Here, an international team of scholars addresses such questions.

The Roots of Platonism

The Roots of Platonism PDF

Author: John Dillon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-01-03

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 1108426913

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Explores the process by which the intellectual speculations pursued by Plato assumed the nature of a philosophical system.

Plato's Symposium

Plato's Symposium PDF

Author: Frisbee Sheffield

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2006-07-20

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0191536822

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Frisbee Sheffield argues that the Symposium has been unduly marginalized by philosophers. Although the topic - eros - and the setting at a symposium have seemed anomalous, she demonstrates that both are intimately related to Plato's preoccupation with the nature of the good life, with virtue, and how it is acquired and transmitted. For Plato, analysing our desires is a way of reflecting on the kind of people we will turn out to be and on our chances of leading a worthwhile and happy life. In its focus on the question why he considered desires to be amenable to this type of reflection, this book explores Plato's ethics of desire.

Plato of Athens

Plato of Athens PDF

Author: Robin Waterfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0197564755

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"Plato of Athens is the first-ever biography of the world-famous philosopher. Born into a well-to-do family, he grew up in the increasing gloom of wartime Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. Alongside a normal Athenian education, in his teens he honed his intellect by attending lectures by the many thinkers who passed through Athens, and toyed with the idea of writing poetry. He finally decided to go into politics, but became disillusioned, especially after the Athenians condemned his teacher, Socrates, to death. Instead he turned to writing and teaching. In 383 he founded the Academy, the world's first higher-educational research and teaching establishment, But he also returned after a while to practical politics and spent a considerable amount of time trying to create a constitution for Syracuse in Sicily that would reflect his political ideals. The attempt failed, and Plato's disappointment can be traced in his later political works"--