STOIC AND NEOPLATONIC INFLUENCES IN CANTEMIR’S WORK
STOIC AND NEOPLATONIC INFLUENCES IN CANTEMIR’S WORK

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to show the influence of two ancient philosophical doctrines in Dimitrie Cantemir’s main philosophical work, the Divan. Among stoic ideas of the ephemeral world, the power of wisdom, the beauty of the soul and the attitude of the wiseman towards death, there are some other references, like the world considered as a dungeon and the body as the soul’s tomb which clearly are prove of Neoplatonic influence, even if no Neoplatonic authors are ever quoted in the whole work. Obviously poorer than the infuence of the overwhelmingly Christian tradition, the few references to ancient philosophical tradition are significant to the message that sends Cantemir whose ideal seems to be a symbiosis of European spirituality.

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