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» A zmija reče zeni: nećete vi unirijeti; Nego zna Bog da će vam se u onaj dan kad okusite s njega otvoriti oči, pa ćete postati kao bogovi i znati što je dobro što li zlo. I žena, videći da je drvo vrlo drago radi znanja, uzabra roda s njega i okusi, pa dade i mužu svojemu, te i on okusi. Tada im se otvoriše oči I začuše glas Gospoda Boga, koji iđaše po vrtu kad zahladi; i sakri se Adam i žena mu ispred Gospoda Boga među drveta u vrhu.
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Kad sam bio pozvan da ovom kursu doprinesem jednim predavanjem o grčkoj filosofiji i nauci, moj prvi nagon je bio da odgovorim: grčka filosofija je počela kad je Tales iz Mileta uspešno predvideo pomračenje Sunca 585. pre nove ere, a završila se 529. nove ere, kad je hrišćanski car Justinijan zatvorio atinske škole. šta mogu za 50 minuta kazati o razvoju mišljenja koje je pokrivalo jedanaest vekova - duži razmak u vremenu nego onaj koji nas odvaja od vladavine kralja Alfreda?
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The intention of this research is to elaborate on Socrates’ philosophy and its serious consequences for the relationship between philosophy and politics, hence making them hostile to each other, and Socrates an enemy of the people. The author explores the tension between philosophy and public life by comparing and contrasting two opposing philosophical projects – Socrates and Plato’s – while illuminating different methods and paths they follow in their understanding of philosophy and politics. Since the author makes a claim that Socrates’ philosophy is anti-political and subversive, perceived useless for public life and leading to political instability, it tragically fails when confronted with political power, as Plato subtly reveals in the dialogues. On the contrary, Plato’s political project, regardless of its own contradictions, failures and turnovers, represents a radical shift. It is the project of re-founding the city on the new political grounds, attempting to make philosophy political, and the city safe for philosophy by permanently looking for a modus vivendi between philosophy and politics.
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L’article analyse les citations d’Aristote — cachées et évidentes — qu’on trouve dans les sermons de saint Th omas d’Aquin. L’édition critique de ces derniers, publiée récemment par la Commission Léonine, permet non seulement d’eff ectuer une simple recension des citations mais aussi de circonscrire leur contexte, de comprendre leur fonction dans la structure et le contenu des sermons ainsi que d’évaluer leur portée idéologique. En eff et, les citations d’Aristote — disons-le, pas très nombreuses — peuvent être divisées en quatre groupes. Premièrement elles servent comme sources du savoir philosophique ou celui concernant les sciences naturelles. Deuxièmement, elles doivent rendre plus forte l’opinion du prédicateur (fonction emphatique). Troisièmement, la pensée d’Aristote ou plus exactement ces mauvaises interprétations font l’objet d’une polémique. Quatrièmement, enfin, l’autorité d’Aristote apparaît comme consonante avec les vérités de la théologie chrétienne. L’auteur décrit et analyse chacun de ces groupes des citations en soulignant surtout l’originalité du dernier d’entre eux.
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Basing itself on the available historic testimonies, an attempt is made to reconstruct the thinking of Gorgias and Protagoras – the two most prominent Greek Sophists. Presuming that thinking is intentional, the objectives of Sophistical thinking are related to the political aspirations of Sophists. The author of the paper states that Solon’s juridical reforms were not sufficient to enhance the political activity of a free citizen as it was still paralysed by the authority of the gods – the embodiment of the Greek values. Thus, it is said that Sophists completed the juridical reform. On the one hand, they belittled the sphere of gods; on the other hand, they focused exclusively on the sphere of human activity and thinking and bestowed a man with an absolute authority within it. Both tasks were performed in an ardent polemic with preceding Greek philosophy that in its turn had provided the possibility of a rational approach towards the ontognoseological constitution of the Greek world. The polemic yielded the famous Protagorian man-measure statement that legitimated the political subject in the Greek cosmos. However, even this statement was not sufficient to stimulate the political activity of free citizens. Therefore, Sophists launched an instrument of political activity, namely, the art of eloquence. The art was enabled by the freedom of speech that emerged in the process of isolating it from gods and was implemented by exploiting the outer or material aspect of language. The paper concludes with the implications of the man-measure statement in political science and about the impact made by Sophists on the tradition of philosophy.
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The article deals with the problems of recollection and self-identity in the Platonic tradition, especially in Neoplatonism. Various peculiarities of the Platonic dialectic are interpreted and understood in the context of the ancient Orphic myths and Egyptian cult practices aimed at the noetic ascent of the soul and her reintegration within the realm of the noetic cosmos (or the Demiurge, tantamount to the divine Intellect). In this respect, philosophy may be regarded as the guide to the transcendent realities, though certain Neoplatonists (especially, Iamblichus) emphasized the role of theurgy in the process of „anagogic homecoming“, that is, the soul’s return to the One.
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Considering the fact that Socrates did not write, everything we can learn about his life and philosophy comes from other sources. If it is possible to establish who was the historical Socrates, then the only way is to try to evaluate and compare existing testimonies. There are four main sources: Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle. Solving “Socrates problem“, or responding on question who he was and what was his philosophy about, can't be done once and for all, but it might be possible to offer a solution which is more convincing than others. The problem would not exist if the four main sources would match in the description of Socrates. It can be justifiably claimed that the problem of the historical Socrates is for the first time clearly formulated in the works of authors in the 18th century. Among the experts, opinions are divided about Vlasto's description of the historical Socrates, but they all agree that this opinion is simply unavoidable because of the great importance of studying Socrates philosophy.
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The paper investigates directly and indirectly preserved views of Pythagoras and Pythagoreans who, according to the author, represent the antecedents of deviations from the mainstream Western philosophy and anticipate the majority of later modalities of non-anthropocentric approaches. Fragments of italic thinkers, in other words can serve almost as guidelines for today highly actual (bio)ethical requirements for a new and different resolution of the relation between humans and so called non-human living beings. The Pythagorean idea that all forms of life are kindred brought into connection not only humans with animals and plants, but also indicated that human soul, however only after purification, can achieve melding with eternal and divine soul, to which it belongs by its own nature. The link and analogy that may be established between a man and universe is referred to in Aristotle’s statement that, according to Pythagoreans it is possible for any soul to enter any body. This kinship of all varieties of life, eventually, was a necessary prerequisite for the well-known Pythagorean doctrine on immortality and the transmigration of souls (παλιγγενεσία).
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Modern scholarship on Late Antique philosophy seems to be more interested than ever before in examining in depth convergences and divergences between Platonism and Early Christian thought. Plotinus is a key figure in such an examination. This paper aims at shedding light to certain aspects of Plotinian metaphysics that bring Plotinus into dialogue with the thought of Church fathers by means either of similarities or differences between Neoplatonist and Christian thought. It proposes a preliminary study of the Plotinian concept of aptitude, as it emerges throughout the Enneads, and seeks to argue that this concept is crucial as it involves the relation between the One and the many, the reality of participation, the relation of the cosmos with, and its dependence on, the superior spheres of being, the bestowal of divine gifts upon beings, and the possibility of the deification of the human being.
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In this study, focusing our attention on the Paraphrase of Dionysius the Areopagite’s De divinis nominibus, we investigate whether matter is in George Pachymeres (1242-1310) a passive condition, which constantly receives the divine intervention, or expresses sensibly the productive projections of the divine energies. Raising a number of questions, we approach, on the one hand, the concept of causality as a relation between God and the creation and as a relation among the created beings and, on the other hand, the meaning of the concepts of corruption and death, in the sense that all of them are related to the forms of matter. The most important conclusions of ours are that matter is for G. Pachymeres absolutely related to the concept ofcausality and that corruption is just a microcosmic scale fact. Regarding whether G. Pachymeres tends to adopt materialist theories, we conclude that he accepts matter as a main component of the created world, in the sense of the projection of the divine creative action, without ever ignoring metaphysics of transcendence.
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The article examines the nature of the dogmatics found in the poetry written by Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-390) through a particular case-study, the poem On the Son. It demonstrates that his lyric composition contains the same doctrine conveyed by the orations authored by him and exposes the manner in which he employs similar terminology in works belonging to both genres. In order to attain its objective my article compares the above-mentioned piece with Orations 29 and 30 that bear the same title.
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At the end of the 19th century, Adolf von Harnack asserted the thesis that the Roman theologian Novatian wrote his "De Trinitate" under the strong influence of the doctrine of Tertullian of Carthage. Furthermore, he said that it was difficult to find any influences of Platonic thought in Novatian. Numerous studies of the philosophy of Middle Platonism conducted in the second half of the 20th century have, however, contributed to a new perspective on the sources of thought of several Christian authors, including Novatian. The Middle Platonists did not attempt to reconstruct faithfully Plato’s philosophical system. Rather, they inserted theses from various doctrines, including Aristotelian and Stoic, in their Platonic commentaries and textbooks. Based on new research, many of today’s thinkers have begun to point to the possible Middle Platonic sources for "De Trinitate". They have noted, for instance, that although Novatian uses stoic language inherited from Tertullian, he speaks of a transcendent and non-corporeal God, just as Plato and the Middle Platonists did. The latter, however, did not accept the concept of the infinity of God, since the infinite seemed to them unfinished and therefore imperfect. The concept of a transcendent, infinite and unknowable God appears in the Jewish and Christian theologians from Alexandria like Philo, Clement and Origen. The purpose of this article is to show the similarities and parallels that occur between the theology of Novatian and the Alexandrian theology of the first three centuries CE. The results of these studies confirm my thesis, stated in my previous article, that Plotinus was not the first thinker to develop the doctrine of the positive infinity of God, but that this thesis appeared as soon as Greek philosophy encountered the Bible. Regardless of whether Novatian was in fact able to read the actual works of the Alexandrian theologians (and the similarities between their doctrines are many), this article shows that, in the Western Roman Empire in the days before Porphyry edited the Enneads of Plotinus, Christian thinkers employed the concept of the infinity of God and drew important ontological and epistemological conclusions from this concept.
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The article is dealing with the paradigm of four elements in Ancient Greek science and philosophy. It argues that this paradigm is a unifying factor for different parts of Ancient science. Therefore, it serves as a foundation for holistic Ancient Greek science. The article reveals a link among different Ancient sciences of physics, cosmology, mathematics and medicine. The application of the paradigm in different authors is shown. Differences of four elements systems in various sciences are also emphasized. The limits of application are also analyzed.
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This article carries out the integral analysis of Aristotle’s concept of language. The analysis is partly set as the critique of Heidegger’s critique of Aristotle. The author refutes Heidegger’s understanding that Aristotle reduces the whole of manifestation of language to the logical function of judging (λόγος ἀποφαντικός). Made against this understanding is an investigative decision that Aristotle's concept of language – utilising the metaphysical doctrine of the four causes as the key – can be understood in its immanent quaternity, which goes to say what are Aristotle’s definitions for linguistic causa materialis, causa formalis, causa efficiens and causa finalis. The decision rests upon a clear difference between Aristotle's philosophy of understanding and philosophy of reason, as well as upon the high interpretative value of his nonthematic differentiation between categories of immediacy and categories of mediation.
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The author begins his examination of Aristotle's definition, but also of the origin and purpose of wisdom with the sentence that opens the Metaphysics ("All men by nature desire to know") which is the key to understanding this entire manuscript, and which simultaneously reveals the motive of the entire creative work of the philosopher of Stagira. According to Aristotle, this self-evident human longing for cognition, due to its natural reasoning, is independent of any pragmatic and utilitarian intentions. The article then analyzes the different types of knowledge which the Stagirites graded from the lowest one – sensation, then memory, appearance, experience, art and wisdom, which is at the top of the scale of knowledge. The notion of wisdom, according to these considerations, is based primarily on the knowledge of causes. It could be said that the higher and the more general causes the one knows, the wiser he shall be considered. This highest kind of knowledge, therefore, should demonstrate what things are and why they are. In his research, primarily of Metaphysics Book A, the author finds that wisdom, in addition to being the science about the universal, it represents the hardest and most exact science, which is more capable of teaching and which is most authoritative of the sciences. Finally, only "wisdom", "metaphysics", "science of first principles" fully corresponds to the concept of science that seeks the truth and whose purpose is knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
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The author describes the origin of politics in ancient polis. The archaic polis was originally a settlement ruled by aristocracy, social and religious centre of a small agrarian society. Intensive trade, wars and colonisation brought about the crisis of the aristocratic polis between 8th and 6th et. B.C.: the relations between the aristocracy and the peasantry were spoiled, tyrannies came into being, citizens revolted. In the 6th century B.C. the crisis was resolved through the establishment of the civic polis in which politics became an autonomous sphere of human acitivity in which all citizens had a say in the running of polis. The social basis of politics was the emergence of a relatively homogeneous citizenry (demos), in which the old aristocracy was mixed with smaller farmers, craftsmen and traders. The creators of the politics were wise individuals (sophoi) who, like Solon, embody the new virtue (arete), i.e. the ability to go beyond the ephemeral human thinking (doxa), which aims at maximizing fortune and glory, and to establish order (eunomia) in polis. Thanks to the classical Greek philosophy the epoch-making invention of politics became the paradigm of humanity and one of the foundations of western civilization.
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Modern philosophers of mathematics in their discussions tend to refer to mathematical platonism. Usually they believe that they talk about philosophical thought of Plato himself and understanding of mathematics that was introduced by the ancient philosopher. Unfortunately, contemporary mathematical platonism has very little in common with original platonism. In this paper I would like to clarify this issue and present Plato’s philosophy of mathematics.
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This article analyzes the genre of the excursion lectures in Hellenistic rhetoric.
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Eleai Parmenidés (flor. Kr. e. 504/1 vagy sz. Kr. e. 415 körül) a korai görög filozófia kiemelkedő alakja. Az őt megelőző domináns, ión természetfilozófiát metafizikai alapokról kritikailag átgondolja, miközben mély, elméleti kihívással szembesíti a természetfilozófia őt követő művelőinek lehetőségeit. Empedoklés, Anaxagoras és az atomisták (Démokritos és Leukippos) filozófiai tevékenysége tekinthető úgy, mint amelyek ennek a kihívásnak próbálnak megfelelni, mégpedig oly módon, hogy a parmenidési metafizika bizonyos, alapvető belátásait elfogadják, ám nem fogadják el annak egy implikált következményét, nevezetesen, hogy a természeti világ valamiképpen nem valóságos (eon), és nem vonatkozhat rá megbízható ismeret, csupán vélekedés (doxa). A szofisták két kiemelkedő alakja, Prótagoras és Gorgias szintén kapcsolódnak tanításaihoz, noha bizonyos értelemben parodikusan vagy legalábbis provokatívan.
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