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2The Third Intelligible Triad and the Intellective GodsMéthexis 25 (1): 131-150. 2012.Completing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proсlus’ Platonic Theology begun in The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus (“Méthexis” 21, 2008, pp. 131-143) and The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective Gods (“Méthexis” 23, 2010, pp. 137-157), the present article concerns the conditions of the emergence of fully mediated, diacritical multiplicity out of the polycentric henadic manifold. The product of the activity of the intellective Gods (that…Read more
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7The Iconic Logic of Peirce’s Graphs (review)Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (2): 233-234. 2002.
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16Review of S. Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism (review)Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (1): 199-200. 2001.
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43Parmenides - Adluri Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy. Return from Transcendence. Pp. xviii + 212. London and New York: Continuum, 2011. Cased, £65. ISBN: 978-0-8264-5753-0 (review)The Classical Review 62 (2): 361-363. 2012.
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29Bhakti and HenadologyJournal of Dharma Studies 1 (1): 147-161. 2018.In henadological Platonism, the significance of “the One” is understood to lie, not in an eminent singular entity, but in the modes of unity and the ways of being a unit. The science of units qua units is a systematic ground and counterweight to substance-based ontology, and manifests an organic bond with theology as the science of relation to supra-essential individuals or Gods. Because of the basic nature of unity relative to being, doctrines respecting unity tend to situate themselves as crit…Read more
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18Living in AgreementThe Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (review)Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 24 (2): 147-160. 2003.The latest entry in the long-running series of Companions will hopefully raise the profile of Stoicism in philosophical curricula—hope, however, being a sentiment condemned by the Stoics. There is not a single area of philosophical reflection that could not be advanced by an intensive reexamination of Stoic positions and polemics. The school’s long duration in diverse habitats, molded by a succession of powerful intellects with differing facilities and preoccupations, and represented by a panopl…Read more
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66Animal and Paradigm in PlatoEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (2): 311-323. 2014.The paradigm according to which the cosmos is ordered by the demiurge is characterized in the Timaeus as ‘Animal Itself,’ while παράδειγμα in the vision of Er from the Republic denotes the patterns of lives chosen by individual humans and other animals. The essay seeks to grasp the animality of the paradigm, as well as the paradigmatic nature of animality, by means of the homology discernible between these usages. This inquiry affirms the value within a Platonic doctrine of principles of persons…Read more
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Sea of Dissimilitude: Poseidon and PlatonismIn Rebecca Buchanan (ed.), From the Roaring Deep: A Devotional in Honor of Poseidon and the Spirits of the Sea, Bibliotheca Alexandrina. pp. 213-235. 2015.
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554Esoteric City: Theological Hermeneutics in Plato's RepublicAbraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies 5 95-104. 2014.
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1263The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective GodsMéthexis 23 (1): 137-157. 2010.Continuing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proclus' Platonic Theology begun in "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (Methexis 21, 2008, pp. 131-143), the present article treats of the basic characteristics of intelligible-intellective (or noetico-noeric) multiplicity and its roots in henadic individuality. Intelligible-intellective multiplicity (the hypostasis of Life) is at once a universal organization of Being in its own right, and also transitional betwe…Read more
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48Review of D. Nikulin, On Dialogue (review)Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 28 (2): 167-176. 2007.
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32The Theological Interpretation of MythPomegranate 7 (1): 27-41. 2005.This article seeks in the Platonic philosophers of late antiquity insights applicable to a new discipline, the philosophy of Pagan religion. An impor¬tant element of any such discipline would be a method of mythological hermeneutics that could be applied cross-culturally. The article draws par¬ticular elements of this method from Sallust and Olympiodorus. Sallust’s five modes of the interpretation of myth (theological, physical, psychical, material and mixed) are discussed, with one of them, the…Read more
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1402Polytheism and the EuthyphroWalking the Worlds: A Biannual Journal of Polytheism and Spiritwork 2 (2). 2016.In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather submits it to e…Read more
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26Review of S. Ahbel-Rappe, Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles (review)Philosophy in Review 31 (3): 199-202. 2011.
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1503Transformation and Individuation in Giordano Bruno's MonadologySOCRATES 3 (2): 57-70. 2015.The essay explores the systematic relationship in the work of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) between his monadology, his metaphysics as presented in works such as De la causa, principio et uno, the mythopoeic cosmology of Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, and practical works like De vinculis in genere. Bruno subverts the conceptual regime of the Aristotelian substantial forms and its accompanying cosmology with a metaphysics of individuality that privileges individual unity (singularity) over form…Read more
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122Essays on a Polytheistic Philosophy of ReligionPhaidra Editions. 2012.These essays lay the groundwork for a practice of philosophical inquiry adequate to polytheistic or "Pagan" religious traditions, including in particular the non-reductive hermeneutics of myth and the theory of the polycentric divine manifold. Includes the previously published articles "The Theological Interpretation of Myth" and "Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of Religion", as well as the previously unpublished essays "Neoplatonism and Polytheism" and "A Theological Exegesis of the I…Read more
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821The Third Intelligible Triad and the Intellective GodsMéthexis. Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia Antica / International Journal for Ancient Philosophy 25 131-150. 2012.Completing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proclus' Platonic Theology begun in "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (Méthexis 21, 2008, pp. 131-143) and "The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective Gods" (Methexis 23, 2010, pp. 137-157), the present article concerns the conditions of the emergence of fully mediated, diacritical multiplicity out of the polycentric henadic manifold. The product of the activity of the intellective Gods (that…Read more
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1508Plotinian HenadologyKronos - metafizyka, kultura, religia 1 (5): 143-159. 2016.Plotinus’ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plot…Read more
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462The Metaphysics of Polytheism in ProclusDissertation, New School University. 2003.This dissertation seeks to demonstrate that Proclus articulates a metaphysics not merely compatible with his polytheism, but to which in fact polytheism is integral. For Proclus the One Itself, which according to the First Hypothesis of the Parmenides neither is, nor is one, is instead as each henad, that is, as each God. The henads or Gods thus form a multiplicity unlike any other. Ontic multiplicities always exhibit mediation, in accord with a logic subordinating the many to the one. Correlati…Read more
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25Review of E. C. Halper, One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: Books Alpha-Delta (review)Philosophy in Review 30 (3): 196-198. 2010.
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4Time and the HeroesWalking the Worlds: A Biannual Journal of Polytheism and Spiritwork 1 (1): 23-44. 2014.The Platonist Proclus (c. 412-485 CE) identifies the procession of the angels, daimons, and heroes as operating three universal temporal potencies through which we experience time in the forms of past, present, and future, respectively. This essay explicates the Proclean doctrine of the three forms of time in its context within his system and its wider implications, with particular reference to the form of temporality associated with the heroes. Proclus’ schematic account of heroic temporality o…Read more
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211Opening the Way of Writing: Semiotic Metaphysics in the Book of ThothIn April D. De Conick, Gregory Shaw & John Douglas Turner (eds.), Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy, and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature : Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Stu. pp. 215-247. 2006.
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2Universality and Locality in Platonic PolytheismWalking the Worlds: A Biannual Journal of Polytheism and Spiritwork 1 (2). 2015.In a famous quote reported by his biographer Marinus, Proclus says that a philosopher should be like a “priest of the whole world in common”. This essay examines what this universality of the philosopher’s religious practice entails, first with reference to Marinus’ testimony concerning Proclus’ own devotional life, and then with respect to the systematic Platonic understanding of divine ‘locality’. The result is, first, that the philosopher’s ‘universality’ is at once more humble than it sounds…Read more
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41Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of ReligionPomegranate 10 (2): 207-229. 2008.The comparison drawn by the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus between the Stoic doctrine of the reciprocal implication of the virtues and the Neoplatonic doctrine of the presence of all the gods in each helps to elucidate the latter. In particular, the idea of primary and secondary “perspectives” in each virtue, when applied to Neoplatonic theology, can clarify certain theoretical statements made by Proclus in his Cratylus commentary concerning specific patterns of inherence of deities in one another. M…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |