Daniela Taormina

In an excerpt preserved by John Stobaeus in the chapter of the Anthologion entitled Peri tôn eph’hêmin, Porphyry addresses the issue of the origin of evil within the context of a broader investigation of individual autonomy : is it enough to envisage man as a subject with the freedom to act in order to make him responsible for evil and thus to free God of any responsibility with regard to the ills besetting individuals? An answer to this question is provided on the basis of a comparative reading of the Myth of Er and of Homer. The conclusion reached is that evil is not intrinsic to human nature, but rather concerns certain forms of existence which individuals opt for when they disregard the divine and forego rationality. Consequently, God is not responsible for evil.The exegetical and argumentative strategy adopted by Porphyry in order to support this answer suggests that his stance is a polemical one, targeting Stoics in particular. Against Chrysippus’ reading of the same verses from Homer, which leads to a deterministic perspective, or at any rate one likely to prove inconsistent, Porphyry offers an interpretation of Homer as a coherent thinker and a forerunner of Plato : Homer is seen to have proposed a kind of dichotomy between the self-determination and the necessity that characterise the life of the soul, and as having assigned individuals the faculty of choosing between virtue and vice, thus making them ultimately responsible with regard to evil.

Est-il possible de donner a la metaphysique un statut scientifique tel qu'elle soit en mesure de controler toute la realite? En particulier, est-il possible d'appliquer un tel programme a la meta-ontologie neoplatonicienne, qui pose comme principe de toute realite l'Un ineffable, au-dela de l'etre? La reponse positive a cette question se trouve au fondement de la querelle entre les neoplatoniciens sur l'architecture de la meta-ontologie. Cette etude esquisse la premiere phase de ce debat qui eut comme protagonistes les philosophes les plus affirmes du IIIe et IVe siecle apres J.C.: Plotin, Porphyre et Jamblique. Elle vise a mettre en evidence le trajet epistemique que Jamblique a parcouru. La polemique qu'il conduit contre ses predecesseurs sert ici de fil conducteur pour suivre la demarche de cette legitimation. Elle est aussi l'indice d'un programme de recherche, un paradigme implicite, qui determine la selection et la formulation des problemes philosophiques et la validite des reponses, donc aussi le choix des methodes de preuve et des procedures de persuasion.

This note aims to show that the text attested by the Medieval sources for Plotinus, Ennead IV, 6 (41) 2, 22-24 can be retained, notwithstanding the doubts of several scholars who tried to amend it. Retaining the manuscript tradition enables us to read in the passage three different kinds of vision of the soul : (1) the soul’s ordinary vision of itself, characterized by duality and otherness ; (2) the soul’s vision of intellect and (3) its vision of itself, when she is within the intelligible : both these visions are characterized by the unified duality of the subject and the object of vision.

This volume investigates the reasons why Plotinus, a philosopher inspired by Plato, made critical use of Epicurean philosophy. Eminent scholars show that some fundamental Epicurean conceptions pertaining to ethics, physics, epistemology and theology are drawn upon in the Enneads to discuss crucial notions such as pleasure and happiness, providence and fate, matter and the role of sense perception, intuition and intellectual evidence in relation to the process of knowledge acquisition. By focusing on the meaning of these terms in Epicureanism, Plotinus deploys sophisticated methods of comparative analysis and argumentative procedures that ultimately lead him to approach certain aspects of Epicurus' philosophy as a benchmark for his own theories and to accept, reject or discredit the positions of authors of his own day. At the same time, these discussions reveal what aspects of Epicurean philosophy were still perceived to be of vital relevance in the third century AD.

Iamblichus took a clear stand in the late-antique debate on the origin of matter: in his view, matter is generated, in the sense that it is brought about by a higher principle (primary causes) outside physical time. Two passages testify to this conception: In Tim. fr. 38 Dillon (= Procl. In Tim. I, p. 386.8-13 D.) and Ad Porph. (De myst.) p. 196.14-19 Saffrey-Segonds (= VIII3, p. 265.6-10 Parthey). The relation between the two, however, is rather problematic and scholars stand divided: some maintain that Proclus drew the conception expounded in In Tim. fr. 38 from Iamblichus’ commentary by the same title, others that he drew it from Ad Porph. The question is a far from marginal one. It is connected to the problem of the attribution of Ad Porph. and strongly bears upon the issues of Iamblichus’ work method and of his doctrine. Moreover, the very reconstruction of the text of Ad Porph. closely depends on how the analogy connecting it to In Tim. fr. 38 is understood. A reading of the two passages, first each in its own context and then in the light of one another, reveals that In Tim. fr. 38 is based on the lost commentary on the Timeaeus. Consequently, the two passages are seen to adopt a reverse perspective on the subject, so to speak: In Tim. fr. 38 elucidates Plato through Hermes, while Ad Porph. elucidates Hermes by introducing Platonic notions. Finally, with regard to Ad Porph. p. 196.14-19, a suggestion is made to retain the transmitted text.

'We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece', the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote. It is in Greek that the questions which shaped the destiny of Western culture were asked, and so were the first attempts at an answer, and the search for a method of investigation. This book tries to rediscover the propulsive force that for over two millennia spread, and still lives in our system of thought. By systematically quoting the very words of the leading actors and by tracing their sources, it leads the reader along a path where they will be able to observe the establishment of philosophical ideas and language, in an updated and balanced picture of archaic lore, of the thought of the classical and hellenistic ages, and of the philosophy of late antiquity. The book looks closely at the progress of scientific thought and at its increasing autonomy, while following the evolution of the fruitful yet problematic relationship between the Greek world and the Near East.

La perception du temps et la mémoire sont présentés dans leur spécificité et dans leur rapport réciproque. Après avoir rejeté deux interprétations, celle selon laquelle la perception du temps est différente chez l’homme et chez les autres animaux, et celle selon laquelle le temps est perçu par la sensation commune, est proposée l’hypothèse de lecture suivante : la perception du temps présuppose des sujets sentants et doués d’imagination. Cela permet de reconstituer, dans un cadre unitaire, la différence et en même temps la coopération entre les facultés de la partie sensitive de l’âme et de montrer que la mémoire, qui présuppose la perception du temps, conserve de façon stable les images. En ce sens elle ordonne les données provenant de la sensation via l’imagination selon une disposition chronologique, disposition sans laquelle ces données seraient illisibles, voire inutiles et inutilisables.

Bergson interprets Plotinian mysticism in the light of his distinction between two different kinds of mysticism: one which translates union with God into action, the other which translates it into contemplation. Plotinus embodies the highest expression of the latter, intellectual mysticism. This thesis runs through Bergson’s oeuvre from his early works to Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion. The present study traces its origins back to a reading of Ennead VI 9 on the basis of notes in the philosopher’s own hand, in all likelihood pertaining to the lecture course he delivered at the Collège de Fance in 1901-1902. These notes, here published for the first time, show that a careful engagement with the Plotinian text led Bergson to stress the continuity between two forms of ecstasy, regarded as stages in the soul’s return to its source: in the first stage, the soul reverts to the intelligible and identifies with it (intellectual ecstasy); in the second, the intellect, united with itself, attains ultimate unity (supra-intellectual ecstasy). In both cases, the soul does not identify with God’s creative will and hence the ecstasy it experiences is still a theoretical, or intellectual, one.