The present volume is the successor to Dieu sans la puissance. Dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin (Paris, Vrin, 2006). In that book, the author examines Aristotelian metaphysics as an ontology of act-potency (energeia-dunamis). Her conclusion is that the act that is the life of the unmoved mover is pure or complete actualization, which means that it has no further actualizations. In that case, the effect of the unmoved mover as first principle of all can only be as (...) an ideal that... (shrink)

"Aristotle versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus."--from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the "harmony" of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. He aims (...) to show that the twentieth-century view that Aristotle started out as a Platonist and ended up as an anti-Platonist is seriously flawed. Gerson examines the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle based on their principle of harmony. In considering ancient studies of Aristotle's Categories, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, the author shows how the principle of harmony allows us to understand numerous texts that otherwise appear intractable. Gerson also explains how these "esoteric" treatises can be seen not to conflict with the early "exoteric" and admittedly Platonic dialogues of Aristotle. Aristotle and Other Platonists concludes with an assessment of some of the philosophical results of acknowledging harmony. (shrink)

Lloyd P. Gerson - Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 539-540 Book Review Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality Dominik Perler, editor. Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. x + 347. Cloth $107.00. This collection of fifteen essays originated in a conference on ancient and medieval theories of intentionality at Basel in 1999. Part I: Ancient Theories contains the following papers: (...) Victor Caston, "Connecting Traditions: Augustine and the Greeks on Intentionality"; Richard Sorabji, "Aristotle on Sensory Processes and Intentionality. A Reply to Myles Burnyeat"; Christoff Rapp, "Intentionalität und phantasia bei Aristoteles"; Hermann Weidemann, "War Aristoteles ein Repräsentationalist?"; Richard Sorabji, "Why the.. (shrink)

Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery. For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between (...) mind or soul and body. (shrink)

Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato's own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients are correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato's teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings (...) of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism." Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato--Plato's own Platonism, so to speak--was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato's Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation.". (shrink)

_The Plotinus Reader_ provides a generous selection of translations from the fifty-four treatises that together make up the _Enneads_ of Plotinus, a central work in the history of philosophy. They were prepared by a team of specialists in ancient philosophy and edited by Lloyd P. Gerson. Based on the definitive critical edition of the Greek along with decades of additional textual criticism by many scholars, these translations aim to provide a readable, accurate rendering of Plotinus’s often very difficult language. (...) Included are extensive references to Plotinus’s sources, scores of cross-references, and an extensive glossary of technical terms. (shrink)

In his third and concluding volume, Lloyd P. Gerson presents an innovative account of Platonism, the central tradition in the history of philosophy, in conjunction with Naturalism, the "anti-Platonism" in antiquity and contemporary philosophy. In this broad and sweeping argument, Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of (...) philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This is the first title in the Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series, which provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy which remain of philosophical interest today. In this book, Professor Gerson explores ancient accounts of the nature of knowledge and belief from the Presocratics up to the Platonists of late antiquity. He argues that ancient philosophers generally held a naturalistic view of knowledge as well as of belief. Hence, (...) knowledge was not viewed as a stipulated or semantically determined type of belief but was rather a real or objectively determinable achievement. In fact, its attainment was identical with the highest possible cognitive achievement, namely wisdom. It was this naturalistic view of knowledge at which the ancient Skeptics took aim. The book concludes by comparing the ancient naturalistic epistemology with some contemporary versions. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine what is for Plato and all those who follow in his footsteps the ne plus ultra of cognition, namely, intuition (nous or noēsis). This is the paradigm of cognition, meaning that all forms of human (and even animal) cognition are inferior manifestations of this. Intuition is mental seeing, analogous to physical seeing. Among embodied souls, it is seeing a unity of some sort manifested in some diversity or plurality. Thus, someone who sees that the Morning (...) Star is the Evening Star, or that S at t1 is identical with S at t2, or that f = ma, etc., sees the unity ‘behind’ the diversity. The disembodied intellect that is the Demiurge (or, for Aristotle, the Unmoved Mover) sees paradigmatically the diversity of all intelligible being as a unity. Because mental seeing or intuition is paradigmatic for all cognition, cognition is essentially a unificatory process. Plato's method of collection and division displays both this process and its reverse. In the light of this core doctrine, I examine some of the insights that Platonists, especially Plotinus and Proclus, arrived at regarding a host of issues, including the nature of the first principle of all and the nature of normativity. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is almost universally claimed to be a staple doctrine of Aristotle. In this paper, I discuss a wide range of texts from the dialogues of Plato that straightforwardly display hylomorphism. Both Plato and Aristotle rest their cognitive realism on their hylomorphism. The crucial difference between Aristotle’s hylomorphism and Plato’s is that Aristotle believes that hylomorphism supports and is supported by essentialism whereas Plato does not. Plotinus presents arguments against Aristotle’s essentialism at the same time as he defends Platonic hylomorphism (...) and his cognitive realism. (shrink)

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction The ancient biography of Epicurus The extant letters Ancient collections of maxims Doxographical reports The testimony of Cicero The testimony of Lucretius The polemic of Plutarch Short fragments and testimonia from known works: * From On Nature * From the Puzzles * From On the Goal * From the Symposium * From Against Theophrastus * Fragments of Epicurus' letters Short fragments and testimonia from uncertain works: * Logic and epistemology * Physics and theology * Ethics Index.

The question posed in the title of this paper is an historical one. I am not, for example, primarily interested in the term 'Platonism' as used by modern philosophers to stand for a particular theory under discussion – a theory, which it is typically acknowledged, no one may have actually held.1 I am rather concerned to understand and articulate on an historical basis the core position of that 'school' of thought prominent in antiquity from the time of the 'founder' up (...) until at least the middle of the 6th century C.E.2 Platonism was unquestionably the dominant philosophical position in the ancient world over a period of more than 800 years. Epicureanism is perhaps the sole major exception to the rule that in the ancient world all philosophers took Platonism as the starting-point for speculation, including those who thought their first task was to refute Platonism. Basically, Platonism sent the ancient philosophical agenda. Given this fact, understanding with some precision the nature of Platonism is obviously a desirable thing for the historian of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. Plotinus was the greatest philosopher in the 700-year period between Aristotle and Augustine. He thought of himself as a disciple (...) of Plato, but in his efforts to defend Platonism against Aristotelians, Stoics, and others, he actually produced a reinvigorated version of Platonism that later came to be known as 'Neoplatonism'. In this volume, sixteen leading scholars introduce and explain the many facets of Plotinus' complex system. They place Plotinus in the history of ancient philosophy while showing that he was a founder of medieval philosophy. (shrink)

Covers the philosophy of 200-800 CE and its place in literature, science, and religion. Includes a digest of all philosophical works known to have been written during the period.

Research Articles Lloyd P. Gerson, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

THE PRE-SOCRATIC ORIGINS OF NATURAL THEOLOGY § INTRODUCTION St Augustine informs us that pagan philosophers divided theology into three parts: () civic ...

In this paper, I examine the problem of the so-called Mathematical Objects within the context of the Divided Line. I argue that Plato believes that there are such objects but their distinctness and the mode of cognition relative to them can only be understood in relation to the superordinate, unhypothetical first principle of all, the Idea of the Good. The objects of mathematics or διάνοια are, unlike the objects of intellection or νόησις, cognized independently of the Good.

There are, very broadly speaking, two interpretative approaches to the study of Plato. Let us call the first the “Protestant” approach and the second the “Catholic” approach. According to the first, the fundamental principle of interpretation is sola scriptura, adherence to the texts of the dialogues as the only vehicle providing access to Plato’s philosophy. On this approach, putative evidence for Plato’s thinking drawn from Academic testimony or the indirect tradition is to be either excluded altogether or, if given any (...) evidentiary value, strictly subordinated to the “control” of the dialogues. Thus, the contents of the dialogues always trump testimony. According to the second approach, the dialogues are only .. (shrink)

This set reprints key articles on Aristotle's logic, metaphysics, physics, cosmology, biology, psychology, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and aesthetics, discussing the major issues of concern in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship.

ONE FREQUENTLY READS CASUAL REFERENCES to Neo-Platonic metaphysics as emanationist. It is somewhat less common to find analyses of the term "emanation" so used. In this paper I shall be concerned solely with Plotinus. I hereby set aside all questions regarding any common denominator one might suppose between Plotinus and, say, Proclus.

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 63 Heft: 3 Seiten: 584-589.

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 65 - 94 In his highly influential 1928 article ‘The _Parmenides_ of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic “One”,’ E.R. Dodds argued, _inter alia_, that among the so-called Neoplatonists Plotinus was the first to interpret Plato’s _Parmenides_ in terms of the distinctive three ‘hypostases’, One, Intellect, and Soul. Dodds argued that this interpretation was embraced and extensively developed by Proclus, among others. In this paper, I argue that although Plotinus took _Parmenides_ to (...) contain a sort of outline of the true metaphysical principles, he understood the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of the dialogue in a way importantly different from the way that Proclus understood it. The characterization of this One, especially its identity with the Idea of the Good of _Republic_, has significant ramification for Plotinus’ philosophy that set it apart from Proclus’ philosophy in ways hitherto infrequently noted. The widely accepted reasons for rejecting Proclus’ interpretation do not apply to the interpretation of Plotinus. The two different interpretations help explain why Proclus’ notorious proliferation of entities in the intelligible realm is not found in Plotinus. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind pronounced the “official doctrine” regarding the nature of the mind and the body as “hailing chiefly from Descartes.” That doctrine, anathematized by Ryle as “the dogma of the ghost in the machine,” is said to hold that every human being is composed of a body and a mind, that the body is physical whereas the mind is not, and that the mind may continue to exist when the body is destroyed. Ryle’s famous attack (...) on the official doctrine has undoubtedly stimulated Cartesian studies, both in those who wish to understand Descartes better in order to make the defense of the doctrine more effective and in those who wish to attack it, sometimes even with arguments which Ryle himself would have rejected. Occasionally, one reads a reference to “Platonic dualism,” not so much as a clearly defined alternative to Cartesian dualism but rather as an inchoate or loose version of Descartes’ doctrine. A recent exception is Richard Rorty who in the first chapter of his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature has insisted on the difference between the Platonic and the Cartesian positions, although it should perhaps be added that his hostility to the former is if anything greater than his hostility to the latter. Without suggesting that there are not obvious similarities in the Platonic and Cartesian versions of dualism, it will perhaps be useful to try to penetrate beneath the slogans in order to get a clearer picture of the arguments which impelled Plato to hold a position the strangeness which was evident even to his contemporaries. (shrink)