•  1417
    Plotinian Henadology
    Kronos - 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
  •  1216
    Polytheism and the Euthyphro
    Walking 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
  •  1127
    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
  •  1053
    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
  •  765
    The Third Intelligible Triad and the Intellective Gods
    Méthexis. 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
  •  488
    Esoteric City: Theological Hermeneutics in Plato's Republic
    Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies 5 95-104. 2014.
  •  394
    The Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus
    Dissertation, 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
  •  110
    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
  •  54
    Animal and Paradigm in Plato
    Epoché: 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
  •  51
    Review of D. Nikulin, On Dialogue (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 28 (2): 167-176. 2007.
  •  46
    Theophrastus On First Principles (review)
    Ancient Philosophy 32 (1): 211-213. 2012.
  •  41
    Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of Religion
    Pomegranate 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
  •  37
    Reading Neoplatonism (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (1): 199-200. 2001.
  •  32
    The Theological Interpretation of Myth
    Pomegranate 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
  •  28
    The Iconic Logic of Peirce’s Graphs (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (2): 233-234. 2002.
  •  21
    Review of E. C. Halper, One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics: Books Alpha-Delta (review)
    Philosophy in Review 30 (3): 196-198. 2010.
  •  19
    Living 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
  •  15
    Bhakti and Henadology
    Journal 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
  •  15
    Review of S. Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (1): 199-200. 2001.
  •  4
    Living in Agreement (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 24 (2): 147-160. 2003.
  •  2
    Time and the Heroes
    Walking 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
  •  2
    Universality and Locality in Platonic Polytheism
    Walking 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