Knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, Plato suggests, is important in organizing a human community which aims at happiness. This book investigates this theme in Plato's later works, the Timaeus, Statesman, and Laws. Dominic J. O'Meara proposes fresh readings of these texts, starting from the religious festivals and technical and artistic skills in the context of which Plato elaborates his cosmological and political theories, for example the Greek architect's use of models as applied by Plato in describing the (...) making of the world. O'Meara gives an account of the model of which Plato's world is an image; of the mathematics used in producing the world; and of the relation between the cosmic model and the political science and legislation involved in designing a model state in the Laws. Non-specialist scholars and students will be able to access and profit from the book. (shrink)

The Pythagorean idea that numbers are the key to understanding reality inspired philosophers in late Antiquity (4th and 5th centuries A.D.) to develop theories in physics and metaphysics based on mathematical models. This book draws on some newly discovered evidence, including fragments of Iamblichus's On Pythagoreanism, to examine these early theories and trace their influence on later Neoplatonists (particularly Proclus and Syrianus) and on medieval and early modern philosophy.

Though explicit references to music are infrequent in Barthes's Collège de France lectures, Barthes's use of music in other work from the 1970s makes it clear that music can act as a fruitful analogy in consideration of the text. This article uses the serialist or atonal analogy, as set up by Barthes in ‘From Work to Text’ and elsewhere, to examine the structuring of Comment vivre ensemble and The Neutral. In viewing these courses as serial or open works we can, (...) it is hoped, arrive at a fuller understanding of their methodology and the role they ascribe to the listener or reader. The atonal analogy, however, is left behind in 1978, as Barthes's major projects employ more conventional, developmental structuring. It is here, then, that the analogy with tonality, again suggested by Barthes, can be usefully employed. (shrink)

This book is addressed to readers new to the Enneads. One of the greatest of ancient philosophers, Plotinus is attracting ever-increasing attention from those interested in ancient philosophy, late Antiquity, and the importance of this period for the Western intellectual tradition. O'Meara presents a brief outline of Plotinus's life, and of the composition of the Enneads, placing Plotinus within the intellectual context of the philosophical schools and religious movements of his time. He then discusses selected Plotinian texts in relation (...) to a number of central philosophical issues to show how Plotinus's thinking on these issues evolved, and to assess the historical importance of his philosophy. (shrink)

Catholic theology today is not so much a new idea about God or Christian data but word, message, and medium interpreting and communicating the kerygma.

In the Timaeus Plato describes the world as the ‘most beautiful’ of generated things. Perhaps indeed this is the first systematic description of the beauty of the world. It is, at any rate, one of the most influential statements of the theme. The Stoics were deeply convinced by it and later, in the third century A.D., at a time when contempt and hate for the world were propagated by Gnostic movements, Plotinus, interpreting the Timaeus, would write magnificent passages on the (...) beauty and value of the world. But what does Plato mean by the ‘beauty’ of the world? What makes the world beautiful? In this paper these questions are approached first by a brief discussion of the distinction which Plato appears to make in the Timaeus between beauty and the good. In one passage ‘measure’ seems to relate to this distinction. It is suitable then to look at a section of another late work of Plato, the Philebus, where the themes of beauty, goodness and measure may be compared in more detail. The theme of measure then takes us back to the Timaeus, in order to examine the role played by measure, in particular mathematical measure, in constituting the beauty of the world. I discuss in detail the way in which mathematical structures make for the beauty of soul and body in the living whole that is the world. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity, from Plotinus (third century) to the sixth-century schools in Athens and Alexandria, neglected the political dimension of their Platonic heritage in their concentration on an otherworldly life. Dominic O'Meara presents a revelatory reappraisal of these thinkers, arguing that their otherworldliness involved rather than excluded political ideas, and he reconstructs for the first time a coherent political philosophy of Late Platonism.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy could state accurately in 1967: "Of all the major German philosophers, Schelling is the least known in the English-speaking world." A tentative survey discloses few articles and books on one who is casually ranked with Hegel. There is, in fact, not one book-length study in English on Schelling’s thought.

In his book, Reason and Morality, Gewirth has defended the principle of generic consistency as logically and materially necessary: “Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself.” This paper argues that Gewirth can make a good response to the evaluation of Adams that Gewirth gives “no conceptual analysis of ‘X is a necessary good’ and ‘X is a right’ that reveals... an entailment.” The paper also argues that Gewirth has not shown that one (...) who would claim superior rights because of superior intelligence necessarily involves himself in a logical self-contradiction. Finally, the paper considers how the positions of Gewirth and Adams could be used to provide an existentialist, assertoric foundation of morality and suggests how Gewirth would evaluate such a foundation. (shrink)

Sara Rappe has given us a stimulating book full of interesting suggestions concerning philosophers hardly known, in some cases, in the English-speaking world. She raises a question concerning these philosophers that has not previously been discussed on this scale. The question arises from the comparison of two features of Neoplatonism. For the Neoplatonist philosopher, discursive thinking does not yield knowledge. By discursive thought is meant the kind of thinking we normally practice. It has to do with objects external to thought, (...) objects mediated by images derived from sense perception or also from a higher form of thought. From these images discursive thought elaborates further ideas derived by methods of reasoning such as those codified in Aristotelian logic. This kind of thinking is open, however, to the attacks of Skepticism, against which the Neoplatonist argues by appealing to another form of thinking and to the knowledge it constitutes, a form of thinking free of all mediation separating subject and object of thought, where subject and object of thought are identical. This is not discursive thought; dis- cursive thought does not yield knowledge that is immune to skeptical attack and that is obtained by a form of thought beyond discursive thinking. To the extent that language is the expression of discursive thought, this knowledge is not expressed in language. Yet the Neoplatonists of Late Antiquity were plunged in discursivity. In particular, they did philosophy by interpreting texts, the authoritative texts of their tradition, not only Plato’s dialogues, but also the Aristotelian corpus and what they supposed were the more ancient sources of their philosophy, Pythagorean and Orphic texts and the Chaldaean Oracles. How are and to be reconciled? The thesis explored by Rappe in this book is that the Neoplatonists had recourse to nondiscursive textual strategies, images, symbols, myths, ritual formulae, so as to convey nondiscursive thought and knowledge through their reading of discursive texts. (shrink)

Europe is at war and does not know it. She is overrun by invaders from the Global South, who seek to replace those who have inhabited her lands for at least the last 30,000 years. She is subject to an American overlord, whose world system dictates her de-Europeanization and globalization. She is mismanaged and betrayed by EU technocrats, corrupt politicians, and plutocratic elites. Without a revolutionary mobilization in her defense, the thousand-year-old civilization that grew out of the medieval Respublica Christiana (...) and that we today associate with 'Europe' - along with the unique genetic heritage of her peoples - will forever cease to exist. Guillaume Faye - doctorate from one of France's most prestigious Ècoles, social philosopher, author of numerous books and articles - is the Cassandra warning Europeans of their approaching extinction, and the need to prepare for the impending Battle of Europe. Michael O'Meara, Ph.D., studied social theory at the Ècoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and modern European history at the University of California. He is the author of New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (2004). (shrink)

In this paper, I do not propose to discuss the ways of thinking about and coming to terms with our awareness of our coming death. I would like rather to discuss a more particular and perhaps unusual problem, that of the relation between our awareness of our death and our consciousness of ourselves. In the following I take four examples: Parmenides, Plato, Epicurus and Plotinus. I sketch the different ways in which these philosophers saw the relation between self-consciousness and death, (...) how they tried to dissipate what seemed to them to be a tension, even a contradiction, between these two parts of our existence. My discussion does not seek to contribute to the philological analysis of specific ancient texts, but proposes rather an attempt to reach an overall view, which might be of a broader interest. (shrink)

From the Preface: "The majority of the papers contained in this volume was delivered in the fall of 1978 at The Catholic University of America as part of the Machette series of lectures on Aristotle. Although collections of essays on Aristotle are hardly lacking at present, this volume presents new studies which, it is hoped, give some idea of the variety of philosophical perspectives in which Aristotle has held and continues to hold great interest and of the scholarly analysis needed (...) in order to reach a better understanding of a difficult author." • CONTENTS: 1. Categories in Aristotle, Michael Frede • 2. Definitions in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo • 3. Aristotle and Galileo: The Uses of ΥΠΟΘΕΣΙΣ (suppositio) in Scientific Reasoning, William A. Wallace • 4. Aristotle and the History of Greek Scepticism, A. A Long • 5. Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators, Gérard Verbeke • 6. ΕΙΔΗ in Aristotle's Earlier and Later Theories of Substance, John A. Driscol • 7. Averroes as Commentator on Aristotle's Theory of the Intellect, Arthur Hyman • 8. Aristotle's Method of Ethics, Terence Irwin • 9. Goodness and Human Aims in Aristotle's Ethics, Nicholas P. White • 10. Aristotle on the Essence of Happiness, Daniel T Devereux • 11. The ΚΑΛΟΝ in Aristotelian Ethics, Joseph Owens • 12. Telos and Teleology in Aristotelian Ethics, Henry B Veatch. (shrink)

This article by Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., never before translated into English, describes his contacts with Martin Heidegger. First it describes his arrival, along with Karl Rahner, S.J., to pursue doctoral studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and their first experiences with the famous professor. Lotz continues his narrative by mentioning times he met with Heidegger over the subsequent forty years up to the philosopher’s death. With Gustav Siewerth, Max Müller, Bernhard Welte, and Karl Rahner, Lotz belonged to a group of (...) Catholic thinkers influenced—some more, some less—by Martin Heidegger. In Lotz’s view some of Heidegger’s ideas were already found in Aquinas, and a philosophy of Being needed to go beyond existential analysis into religion, revelation, and cultural criticism. (shrink)

"O'Meara masterfully situates Pryzwara in relation to the traditional and contemporary theological, philosophical, ecclesial, cultural, and social contexts within which he wrote." --_William P. Loewe, professor of religious studies, Catholic University of America_ Erich Przywara, S.J. is one of the important Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century. Yet, in the English-speaking world Przywara remains largely unknown. Few of his sixty books or six hundred articles have been translated. In this engaging new book, Thomas O'Meara offers a comprehensive study (...) of the German Jesuit Erich Przywara and his philosophical theology. Przywara's scholarly contributions were remarkable. He was one of three theologians who introduced the writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman into Germany. From his position at the Jesuit journal in Munich, _Stimmen der Zeit_, he offered an open and broad Catholic perspective on the cultural, philosophical, and theological currents of his time. As one of the first Catholic intellectuals to employ the phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, he was also responsible for giving an influential, more theological interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. Przywara was also deeply engaged in the ideas and authors of his times. He was the first Catholic dialogue partner of Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Edmund Husserl was counted among Przywara's friends, and Edith Stein was a close personal and intellectual companion. Through his interactions with important figures of his age and his writings, ranging from speculative systems to liturgical hymns, Przywara was of marked importance in furthering a varied dialogue between German Catholicism and modern culture. Following a foreword by Michael Fahey, S.J., O'Meara presents a chapter on Pryzwara's life and a chronology of his writings. O'Meara then discusses Pryzwara's philosophical theology, his lecture-courses at German universities on Augustine and Aquinas, his philosophy of religion, and his influence on important intellectual contemporaries. O'Meara concludes with an in-depth analysis of Pryzwara's theology, focusing particularly on his Catholic views of person, liturgy, and church. (shrink)

In this article, it is shown that, following the precedent set in particular by Marinus' "Life of Proclus", Damascius, in his "Life of Isidore", uses biography so as to illustrate philosophical progress through the Neoplatonic scale of virtues. Damascius applies this scale, however, to a wide range of figures belonging to pagan philosophical circles of the fifth century AD: they show different degrees and forms of progress in this scale and thus provide an edificatory panorama of patterns of philosophical perfection. (...) Each level of the scale of virtues is shown to be exemplified in Damascius' biographies. It is suggested that few, in Damascius' opinion, reached the highest levels of virtue and that philosophical decline is intimated in his descriptions of his contemporaries. (shrink)