Olympiodorus (AD c. 500-570), possibly the last non-Christian teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, delivered these lectures as an introduction to Plato with a biography. For us, they can serve as an accessible introduction to late Neoplatonism. Olympiodorus locates the First Alcibiades at the start of the curriculum on Plato, because it is about self-knowledge. His pupils are beginners, able to approach the hierarchy of philosophical virtues, like the aristocratic playboy Alcibiades. Alcibiades needs to know himself, at least as an individual with particular actions, before he can...
Olympiodorus (AD c. 500-570), possibly the last non-Christian teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, delivered these lectures as an introduction ...
Aristotle's Physics Book 3 covers two subjects: the definition of change and the finitude of the universe. Change enters into the very definition of nature as an internal source of change. Change receives two definitions in chapters 1 and 2, as involving the actualisation of the potential or of the changeable. Alexander of Aphrodisias is reported as thinking that the second version is designed to show that Book 3, like Book 5, means to disqualify change in relations from being genuine change. Aristotle's successor Theophrastus, we are told, and Simplicius himself, prefer to admit...
Aristotle's Physics Book 3 covers two subjects: the definition of change and the finitude of the universe. Change enters into the very definiti...
Olympiodorus (AD c. 500-570), possibly the last non-Christian teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, delivered these lectures as an introduction to Plato with a biography. For us, they can serve as an accessible introduction to late Neoplatonism. Olympiodorus locates the First Alcibiades at the start of the curriculum on Plato, because it is about self-knowledge. His pupils are beginners, able to approach the hierarchy of philosophical virtues, like the aristocratic playboy Alcibiades. Alcibiades needs to know himself, at least as an individual with particular actions, before he...
Olympiodorus (AD c. 500-570), possibly the last non-Christian teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, delivered these lectures as an introduction ...
Philoponus' On Aristotle Categories 1-5 discusses the nature of universals, preserving the views of Philoponus' teacher Ammonius, as well as presenting a Neoplatonist interpretation of Aristotle's Categories. Philoponus treats universals as concepts in the human mind produced by abstracting a form or nature from the material individual in which it has its being.
The work is important for its own philosophical discussion and for the insight it sheds on its sources. For considerable portions, On Aristotle Categories 1-5 resembles the wording of an earlier...
Philoponus' On Aristotle Categories 1-5 discusses the nature of universals, preserving the views of Philoponus' teacher Ammonius, as well as...
Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the Christian Emperor Justinian stopped the teaching of the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. This was one of the earliest examples of the sixth-century diffusion of the philosophy of the commentators to other cultures.
Tantalisingly, Priscian fully recorded in Greek the answers provided by the Athenian philosophers to the king's questions on philosophy and science. But these answers survive only in a later Latin translation which understood both the Greek and the...
Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the Christian Emperor Justin...
