Federico Maria Petrucci | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)
Books by Federico Maria Petrucci
This book explores how introductory methods shaped school practice and intellectual activity in v... more This book explores how introductory methods shaped school practice and intellectual activity in various fields of thought of the Early Imperial Age and Late Antiquity. The isagogical crossroads—the intersection of philosophical, philological, religious and scientific introductory methods—embody a fascinating narrative of the methods regulating ancient readers' approach to authoritative texts and disciplines. The strongly innovative character of this book consists exactly in the attempt to explore isagogical issues in a wide-ranging and comprehensive perspective—from philosophy to religion, from medicine to exact sciences—with the aim of detecting connections, reciprocal influences, and interactions shaping the intellectual environment of the Early Imperial Age and Late Antiquity.
Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of interest just to musicians? By ... more Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of interest just to
musicians? By exploring different authors and philosophical trends of the Roman
Empire, from Philo of Alexandria to Alexander of Aphrodisias, from the rebirth of
Platonism with Plutarch to the last Neoplatonists, this book sheds light on different
ways in which music and musical notions were made a crucial part of philosophical
discourse. Far from being mere metaphors, notions such as harmony, concord and
attunement became key philosophical tools in order to better grasp and
conceptualise fundamental notions in philosophical debates from cosmology to
ethics and from epistemology to theology. The volume is written by a distinguished
international team of contributors.
This book is the first monograph devoted to the philosophy of Taurus of Beirut, and will provide ... more This book is the first monograph devoted to the philosophy of Taurus of Beirut, and will provide a long-awaited analysis of his texts and their first English translation. Through close examination of the extant witnesses, Petrucci gives a new account of Middle Platonism based on a fresh approach to the theological and cosmological view of Taurus. In this way, the book contributes substantially to the debate on Post-Hellenistic Platonism from the point of view of both exegetical methods and philosophical doctrines, and will prove a starting point for a new understanding of many aspects of ancient thought.
Theon was a teacher of Platonism and an exegete of Plato's text in the flourishing town of Smyrna... more Theon was a teacher of Platonism and an exegete of Plato's text in the flourishing town of Smyrna during the first and second century of our age (fl. 125 a.D.). The Expositio is the only work of Theon that has been transmitted to us. It is an important witness in order to grasp not only the approach to mathematics (arithmetic, music and astronomy) typical of a middle-Platonist, but also (and above all) the exegetic aims of this project.
Here the Expositio is translated in Italian for the first time, with a deep revisal of the Teubner text. The commentary shows that this work is a technical exegesis of the Timaeus, an attempt to argue that Plato has grasped in the most authentic way the true structure of the cosmos. On this ground, it is possible to see at work methods, intentions and strategies of a middle-Platonist engaged in the reargumentation of the Timaeus.
Nella fiorente Smirne dei primi due secoli della nostra era, Teone (fl. 125 d.C.) fu maestro di Platonismo ed esegeta del testo di Platone. L'unica sua opera a noi tràdita, l'Expositio, è una testimonianza ampia e importante per cogliere non solo l'approccio di un filosofo medioplatonico alle matematiche (aritmetica, musica e astronomia), ma anche (e soprattutto) le finalità, essenzialmente esegetiche, di questa operazione.
Alla luce del commentario continuo l'Expositio, qui tradotta per la prima volta in lingua italiana sulla base di una radicale revisione del testo teubneriano, si presenta come un'esegesi tecnica del Timeo, un tentativo di chiarire e sostenere che Platone ha colto nel modo più autentico e profondo la vera struttura del cosmo: emergono così i metodi, le intenzioni e le strategie di un filosofo medioplatonico impegnato nella riargomentazione del Timeo.
Papers by Federico Maria Petrucci
Is an account of hair or nails as negotiable as one of the Demiurge? It should not be. The aim of... more Is an account of hair or nails as negotiable as one of the Demiurge? It should not be. The aim of this paper is to supplement existing interpretations of Timaeus’ eikōs logos in order to provide well-grounded answers to this and similar questions. More specifically, I shall demonstrate that Timaeus’ account cannot be confined to a single epistemological field, namely that of unstable likeliness, because it exhibits a much more nuanced and graduated structure, just as do the realities it deals with, and, as a whole, leaves minimal room for refutation and scepticism.
The aim of this paper is to provide a new reading of Plato's precosmos (Ti. 52d2-53c3). More spec... more The aim of this paper is to provide a new reading of Plato's precosmos (Ti. 52d2-53c3). More specifically, I shall argue that the precosmos is populated by bodies deriving from random complexes of properties, and that this is the effect of the Receptacle's full precosmic participation in the Paradigm. This will turn out to be consistent with a robust notion of 'precosmic generation' and will reveal why Plato may have sought to refer to this otherwise puzzling scenario: representing the precosmos in this way allows Plato to effectively justify why the Demiurge is responsible only for the goodness and perfection of the universe, and why it is properly the best possible cause.
The chapter’s title is “The Perfect World. On the Relation Between the World and the Paradigm in ... more The chapter’s title is “The Perfect World. On the Relation Between the World and the Paradigm in Plato’s Timaeus”, and its argument mainly focuses on two specific mimetic relations. The first one is that of the Paradigm, i.e., the intelligible Living Being – interpreted by the author as identical with the world of Forms in its entirety – and the created world, while the second is that of eternity and its moving image, i.e., time. The study of both these kinds of imaging leads to the same conclusion: with the generation of the one, complete, sempiternal world, the Demiurge does not replicate the intelligible model’s stable and unchanging nature, but rather its dynamic and all-inclusive structure. This conclusion is entailed by three premises. First, the Demiurge’s omnibenevolence warrants that he will construct the best possible world by contemplating the most complete paradigm. Second, as per the doctrine of five greater kinds developed in the Sophist, the ontology of the organic whole that is the Living Being is dynamic and effervescent. Third, the nature of eternity, on the likeness of which time has been framed, is also one of intelligent motion and life, and not only of static unity. It is on account of these properties of the Paradigm and its mode of existence, i.e., of eternity, that the sensible image is rightly called a living being and a majestic god whose lifespan is measured by everlasting time.
Méthexis, 2023
This paper aims to show that the Middle Platonists’ appeal to the Timaeus was grounded in a compl... more This paper aims to show that the Middle Platonists’ appeal to the Timaeus was grounded in a complex and effective philosophical reasoning: the Middle Platonists conceived of Plato’s text as a web of passages which Plato himself had carefully established. Only a few of them were granted a qualified priority, namely, those offering a complete and comprehensive philosophical account of the key elements which the Platonists regarded as fundamental. This will allow us to show that the Middle Platonists’ preference for the Timaeus does not depend on the fact that it is systematic. Rather it is systematic insofar as it proves capable of giving context to passages from other dialogues and provides them with an account that is philosophically sound.
In questo contributo mi riprometto di sciogliere un paradosso che pare prodursi all’interno del T... more In questo contributo mi riprometto di sciogliere un paradosso che pare prodursi all’interno del Timeo stesso nel momento in cui siano avvicinate una così forte teoria dell’immagine visiva e un’ontologia che priva i particolari sensibili di identità diacronica. Ciò condurrà a una ridefinizione dell’oggetto stesso della vista nel Timeo – che è in realtà primariamente da identificare non con oggetti o corpi, ma con traiettorie, dunque con le strutture matematiche che governano il movimento dei corpi – e a cogliere qual è il vantaggio filosofico di una simile peculiare caratterizzazione della vista.
The aim of this paper is to reveal the implicit criticism against some Middle Platonist philosoph... more The aim of this paper is to reveal the implicit criticism against some Middle Platonist philosophical stances in the polemical part of IV 7 (2) (i.e., 2-85), which is usually regarded as being directed only against Stoic and Peripateric doctrines and as relying on earlier Platonist material. I want to suggest that Plotinus' polemic is designed to dismantle not only Stoic and Peripatetic views of the soul, but also what he regards as the Middle Platonists’ erroneous ways of understanding the soul's nature and immortality.
Il Timeo continua a presentare un'enorme quantità di problemi di natura generale o puntuale, teor... more Il Timeo continua a presentare un'enorme quantità di problemi di natura generale o puntuale, teorica o testuale, anche seo forse proprio perchéè stato oggetto di attenzione crescente negli ultimi decenni . In questo breve contributo voglio soffermarmi su un passo molto circoscritto relativo alla natura del Ricettacolo (48a7), passo che a mio avviso è stato ampiamente frainteso, con conseguenze pesanti dal punto di vista filosofico. Il mio fine è quello di argomentare a favore di un modo specifico di intendere la formulazione di Platone, e di una conseguente traduzione, che possa rendere conto di alcuni aspetti rilevanti della teoria platonica del Ricettacolo.
In this chapter I set out to address the problem of post-Hellenistic isagogical views of Aristotl... more In this chapter I set out to address the problem of post-Hellenistic isagogical views of Aristotle’s writings from an ‘indirect’ point of view, namely by focusing on extant witnesses of pre-Alexandrian commentaries. More specifically, by relying on the scarce extant sources, and above all on Aspasius, I shall identify some structural features characterising Peripatetic commentaries in order to detect what conception of Aristotle’s texts they imply. In this way, we will be in a position to address the following questions, which would usually find answers in isagogical writings: how should one read Aristotle’s texts? What, if any, is their specific nature? Why are Aristotle’s writings shaped the way they are? Are they clear or obscure, and why so? To be clear, the point is not that in Peripatetics before Alexander one can already discover later isagogical schemata: this had been suggested by Moraux with reference to Andronicus, but I take Mansfeld to be right in saying that exploring isagogical issues does not imply adopting isagogical schemata. My point is that we should focus neither on the presence of isagogical schemata (since, quite simply, they are not attested), nor on partial ways of addressing them (since this would imply taking later structures as absolute parameters). Rather, we should focus on the possibility of outlining an overall conception of Aristotle’s texts even without isagogical writings, whose goal is – theoretically – to display such a conception and to determine the best approach to the texts within its framework. The limited number of extant sources and their narrow focus might of course discourage us from applying my conclusions to Aristotle's corpus as a whole. However, by making these sources interact and by discovering their methodological consistency, we can at least consider the conclusions drawn from them to represent specific instances (the only known ones) of a wider scenario that is lost to us.
This book explores how introductory methods shaped school practice and intellectual activity in v... more This book explores how introductory methods shaped school practice and intellectual activity in various fields of thought of the Early Imperial Age and Late Antiquity. The isagogical crossroads—the intersection of philosophical, philological, religious and scientific introductory methods—embody a fascinating narrative of the methods regulating ancient readers' approach to authoritative texts and disciplines. The strongly innovative character of this book consists exactly in the attempt to explore isagogical issues in a wide-ranging and comprehensive perspective—from philosophy to religion, from medicine to exact sciences—with the aim of detecting connections, reciprocal influences, and interactions shaping the intellectual environment of the Early Imperial Age and Late Antiquity.
Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of interest just to musicians? By ... more Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of interest just to
musicians? By exploring different authors and philosophical trends of the Roman
Empire, from Philo of Alexandria to Alexander of Aphrodisias, from the rebirth of
Platonism with Plutarch to the last Neoplatonists, this book sheds light on different
ways in which music and musical notions were made a crucial part of philosophical
discourse. Far from being mere metaphors, notions such as harmony, concord and
attunement became key philosophical tools in order to better grasp and
conceptualise fundamental notions in philosophical debates from cosmology to
ethics and from epistemology to theology. The volume is written by a distinguished
international team of contributors.
This book is the first monograph devoted to the philosophy of Taurus of Beirut, and will provide ... more This book is the first monograph devoted to the philosophy of Taurus of Beirut, and will provide a long-awaited analysis of his texts and their first English translation. Through close examination of the extant witnesses, Petrucci gives a new account of Middle Platonism based on a fresh approach to the theological and cosmological view of Taurus. In this way, the book contributes substantially to the debate on Post-Hellenistic Platonism from the point of view of both exegetical methods and philosophical doctrines, and will prove a starting point for a new understanding of many aspects of ancient thought.
Theon was a teacher of Platonism and an exegete of Plato's text in the flourishing town of Smyrna... more Theon was a teacher of Platonism and an exegete of Plato's text in the flourishing town of Smyrna during the first and second century of our age (fl. 125 a.D.). The Expositio is the only work of Theon that has been transmitted to us. It is an important witness in order to grasp not only the approach to mathematics (arithmetic, music and astronomy) typical of a middle-Platonist, but also (and above all) the exegetic aims of this project.
Here the Expositio is translated in Italian for the first time, with a deep revisal of the Teubner text. The commentary shows that this work is a technical exegesis of the Timaeus, an attempt to argue that Plato has grasped in the most authentic way the true structure of the cosmos. On this ground, it is possible to see at work methods, intentions and strategies of a middle-Platonist engaged in the reargumentation of the Timaeus.
Nella fiorente Smirne dei primi due secoli della nostra era, Teone (fl. 125 d.C.) fu maestro di Platonismo ed esegeta del testo di Platone. L'unica sua opera a noi tràdita, l'Expositio, è una testimonianza ampia e importante per cogliere non solo l'approccio di un filosofo medioplatonico alle matematiche (aritmetica, musica e astronomia), ma anche (e soprattutto) le finalità, essenzialmente esegetiche, di questa operazione.
Alla luce del commentario continuo l'Expositio, qui tradotta per la prima volta in lingua italiana sulla base di una radicale revisione del testo teubneriano, si presenta come un'esegesi tecnica del Timeo, un tentativo di chiarire e sostenere che Platone ha colto nel modo più autentico e profondo la vera struttura del cosmo: emergono così i metodi, le intenzioni e le strategie di un filosofo medioplatonico impegnato nella riargomentazione del Timeo.
Is an account of hair or nails as negotiable as one of the Demiurge? It should not be. The aim of... more Is an account of hair or nails as negotiable as one of the Demiurge? It should not be. The aim of this paper is to supplement existing interpretations of Timaeus’ eikōs logos in order to provide well-grounded answers to this and similar questions. More specifically, I shall demonstrate that Timaeus’ account cannot be confined to a single epistemological field, namely that of unstable likeliness, because it exhibits a much more nuanced and graduated structure, just as do the realities it deals with, and, as a whole, leaves minimal room for refutation and scepticism.
The aim of this paper is to provide a new reading of Plato's precosmos (Ti. 52d2-53c3). More spec... more The aim of this paper is to provide a new reading of Plato's precosmos (Ti. 52d2-53c3). More specifically, I shall argue that the precosmos is populated by bodies deriving from random complexes of properties, and that this is the effect of the Receptacle's full precosmic participation in the Paradigm. This will turn out to be consistent with a robust notion of 'precosmic generation' and will reveal why Plato may have sought to refer to this otherwise puzzling scenario: representing the precosmos in this way allows Plato to effectively justify why the Demiurge is responsible only for the goodness and perfection of the universe, and why it is properly the best possible cause.
The chapter’s title is “The Perfect World. On the Relation Between the World and the Paradigm in ... more The chapter’s title is “The Perfect World. On the Relation Between the World and the Paradigm in Plato’s Timaeus”, and its argument mainly focuses on two specific mimetic relations. The first one is that of the Paradigm, i.e., the intelligible Living Being – interpreted by the author as identical with the world of Forms in its entirety – and the created world, while the second is that of eternity and its moving image, i.e., time. The study of both these kinds of imaging leads to the same conclusion: with the generation of the one, complete, sempiternal world, the Demiurge does not replicate the intelligible model’s stable and unchanging nature, but rather its dynamic and all-inclusive structure. This conclusion is entailed by three premises. First, the Demiurge’s omnibenevolence warrants that he will construct the best possible world by contemplating the most complete paradigm. Second, as per the doctrine of five greater kinds developed in the Sophist, the ontology of the organic whole that is the Living Being is dynamic and effervescent. Third, the nature of eternity, on the likeness of which time has been framed, is also one of intelligent motion and life, and not only of static unity. It is on account of these properties of the Paradigm and its mode of existence, i.e., of eternity, that the sensible image is rightly called a living being and a majestic god whose lifespan is measured by everlasting time.
Méthexis, 2023
This paper aims to show that the Middle Platonists’ appeal to the Timaeus was grounded in a compl... more This paper aims to show that the Middle Platonists’ appeal to the Timaeus was grounded in a complex and effective philosophical reasoning: the Middle Platonists conceived of Plato’s text as a web of passages which Plato himself had carefully established. Only a few of them were granted a qualified priority, namely, those offering a complete and comprehensive philosophical account of the key elements which the Platonists regarded as fundamental. This will allow us to show that the Middle Platonists’ preference for the Timaeus does not depend on the fact that it is systematic. Rather it is systematic insofar as it proves capable of giving context to passages from other dialogues and provides them with an account that is philosophically sound.
In questo contributo mi riprometto di sciogliere un paradosso che pare prodursi all’interno del T... more In questo contributo mi riprometto di sciogliere un paradosso che pare prodursi all’interno del Timeo stesso nel momento in cui siano avvicinate una così forte teoria dell’immagine visiva e un’ontologia che priva i particolari sensibili di identità diacronica. Ciò condurrà a una ridefinizione dell’oggetto stesso della vista nel Timeo – che è in realtà primariamente da identificare non con oggetti o corpi, ma con traiettorie, dunque con le strutture matematiche che governano il movimento dei corpi – e a cogliere qual è il vantaggio filosofico di una simile peculiare caratterizzazione della vista.
The aim of this paper is to reveal the implicit criticism against some Middle Platonist philosoph... more The aim of this paper is to reveal the implicit criticism against some Middle Platonist philosophical stances in the polemical part of IV 7 (2) (i.e., 2-85), which is usually regarded as being directed only against Stoic and Peripateric doctrines and as relying on earlier Platonist material. I want to suggest that Plotinus' polemic is designed to dismantle not only Stoic and Peripatetic views of the soul, but also what he regards as the Middle Platonists’ erroneous ways of understanding the soul's nature and immortality.
Il Timeo continua a presentare un'enorme quantità di problemi di natura generale o puntuale, teor... more Il Timeo continua a presentare un'enorme quantità di problemi di natura generale o puntuale, teorica o testuale, anche seo forse proprio perchéè stato oggetto di attenzione crescente negli ultimi decenni . In questo breve contributo voglio soffermarmi su un passo molto circoscritto relativo alla natura del Ricettacolo (48a7), passo che a mio avviso è stato ampiamente frainteso, con conseguenze pesanti dal punto di vista filosofico. Il mio fine è quello di argomentare a favore di un modo specifico di intendere la formulazione di Platone, e di una conseguente traduzione, che possa rendere conto di alcuni aspetti rilevanti della teoria platonica del Ricettacolo.
In this chapter I set out to address the problem of post-Hellenistic isagogical views of Aristotl... more In this chapter I set out to address the problem of post-Hellenistic isagogical views of Aristotle’s writings from an ‘indirect’ point of view, namely by focusing on extant witnesses of pre-Alexandrian commentaries. More specifically, by relying on the scarce extant sources, and above all on Aspasius, I shall identify some structural features characterising Peripatetic commentaries in order to detect what conception of Aristotle’s texts they imply. In this way, we will be in a position to address the following questions, which would usually find answers in isagogical writings: how should one read Aristotle’s texts? What, if any, is their specific nature? Why are Aristotle’s writings shaped the way they are? Are they clear or obscure, and why so? To be clear, the point is not that in Peripatetics before Alexander one can already discover later isagogical schemata: this had been suggested by Moraux with reference to Andronicus, but I take Mansfeld to be right in saying that exploring isagogical issues does not imply adopting isagogical schemata. My point is that we should focus neither on the presence of isagogical schemata (since, quite simply, they are not attested), nor on partial ways of addressing them (since this would imply taking later structures as absolute parameters). Rather, we should focus on the possibility of outlining an overall conception of Aristotle’s texts even without isagogical writings, whose goal is – theoretically – to display such a conception and to determine the best approach to the texts within its framework. The limited number of extant sources and their narrow focus might of course discourage us from applying my conclusions to Aristotle's corpus as a whole. However, by making these sources interact and by discovering their methodological consistency, we can at least consider the conclusions drawn from them to represent specific instances (the only known ones) of a wider scenario that is lost to us.
The aim of this paper is to explore Atticus' argument in favour of a temporalist theory of the ge... more The aim of this paper is to explore Atticus' argument in favour of a temporalist theory of the generation of the world as a passage from precosmic disorder to cosmic order due to the providential and intentional intervention of god. More specifically, I shall suggest that Atticus' main concern when supporting temporalism is to provide Platonism with an effective theory of providence; that temporalism is introduced in conditional arguments, which do not show by themselves the necessity of temporalism; and that the argumentative key introduced by Atticus in order to ensure that these conditional arguments are actually decisive is a radicalisation related to the ontological status of bodies and the evil nature of the precosmic soul.
Burnet's text at Timaeus 55c7-d6 is at least questionable, and opting for a different reading at ... more Burnet's text at Timaeus 55c7-d6 is at least questionable, and opting for a different reading at 55d5 (θεός instead of θεόν) would shed light on an intriguing argumentative aspect of Plato's cosmological account: God confirms the metaphysical reasons why there is just one perfect world.
in F. Aronadio, Variazioni sul tema del vedere. Saggi sui Verba Videndi nella grecità classica, Napoli 2021, 89-120
In the light of an overall analysis of the occurrences of βλέπω in the dialogues and the conseque... more In the light of an overall analysis of the occurrences of βλέπω in the dialogues and the consequent mapping of the semantic components of the verb, I show that Plato bases philosophically in a much more solid way the "blepein" of the Demiurge and offers, through the hypothesis of the use of a sensible paradigm for the cosmos, a strong implicit argument in favor of the actors at play in his own cosmology.
In this paper I show that Antiochus of Ascalon provided some crucial material for Platonism in th... more In this paper I show that Antiochus of Ascalon provided some crucial material for Platonism in the qualified sense that he coined a model of Plato’s authority, in a dogmatic perspective, that preceded and had priority over the various doctrines which were to be embedded into it. I will then briefly turn to Eudorus in order to confirm my point. If my view is correct, it is bound to have significant consequences with respect to our conception of the history of Platonism. On the one hand, one should backdate the theoretical construction of a conception of Plato as a dogmatic authority after the sceptical period of the Academy to the 1st century BC. On the other, however, we are in a better position to detect in what sense Middle Platonism only emerged in the 1st century AD, namely in terms of the application of shared exegetical methods and a commitment to a set of crucial (yet very general) philosophical tenets.
It is a commonplace that the notion of cosmic harmony is key in the Platonist tradition, and inde... more It is a commonplace that the notion of cosmic harmony is key in the Platonist tradition, and indeed Middle Platonists frequently appeal to the world’s harmony in order to describe the perfect condition of the ensouled world and to state that God is the cause of this harmony . This can be regarded as a testimony to the importance of exegesis in Middle Platonist philosophy, for several Platonic passages – from the myth of Er to the divisio animae in the Timaeus – would prove good bases for claiming that the world as a whole entails harmony. Relegating the Middle Platonist doctrine of cosmic harmony to the field of mere exegesis, however, risks leading us towards an oversimplification: for this idea, if unqualified, would ultimately amount to a broad metaphor referring to the world’s order, a metaphor of no particular philosophical import in itself and simply based on the fact that sometimes Plato describes the world as harmonic. On the other hand, this does not imply that speaking of cosmic harmony without referring to Plato’s dialogues necessarily entails any intriguing philosophical doctrine: for instance, the notion of a ‘cosmic harmony’ also occurs in technical writings or Pythagorean-flavoured Hellenistic poems, such as those by Alexander of Hephesos . In this paper I aim to show not only that Middle Platonist views of cosmic harmony went beyond mere exegesis and were part of a complex philosophical reasoning, but also that the notion of cosmic harmony played different roles in Middle Platonism and was invoked in support of rival theological and cosmological models. More specifically, I will suggest that it is possible to detect two Middle Platonist models of cosmic harmony and divine harmonisation, a dynamic and artisanal one on the one hand, and a static and non-artisanal one on the other, and that each plays a key role within the theological model in which it is framed: by understanding the Middle Platonist doctrines of cosmic harmony one is in a position also to enter an intriguing debate on the sense in which God is to be regarded, according to the Middle Platonists, as the harmoniser of the world.
In questo contributo propongo di leggere la teologia di Apuleio come non artigianale: il Dio come... more In questo contributo propongo di leggere la teologia di Apuleio come non artigianale: il Dio come causa divina, pur venendo ancora chiamato δημιουργός (o artifex), è in realtà una causa benefica che assicura per sua stessa natura che tutti i meccanismi cosmologici, essendo in sé stessi in grado di preservarsi e di procedere autonomamente, siano i migliori e i più efficaci possibili, e di conseguenza garantisce in questo senso specifico l’ordine del cosmo.
This paper aims to discuss the conceptions of the stereometric body in the Platonist tradition of... more This paper aims to discuss the conceptions of the stereometric body in the Platonist tradition of the Imperial age and Late Antiquity. I shall first suggest that the Middle Platonists formulated an arithmo-stereometric theory, which they combined with the traditional Euclidean stereometry. This move was meant to solve a specific philosophical problem, namely the need to describe in arithmo-stereometric terms the structure of the cosmic soul in such a way as to guarantee, on the one hand, its dissimilarity with respect to the corporeality, whose "solid" structure can be described in Euclidean terms, and on the other hand, the effectiveness of the action of the soul within the physical and three-dimensional cosmos. Precisely because of the disappearance of these requirements and for an overall change of philosophical approach, starting from Plotinus, Neoplatonism will instead be able to renounce the arithmostereometry and return to a consistently Euclidean definition of the notion of stereometric body.
Tempus quaerendi, 2019
Actes du colloque Tempus quaerendi: Nouvelles expériences philologiques dans le domaine de la pen... more Actes du colloque Tempus quaerendi: Nouvelles expériences philologiques dans le domaine de la pensée de l'Antiquité tardive, Paris, ENS, 2017, organisé par T. Dorandi et Lorenzo Ferroni
This is a specimen of a new comprehensive volume on Plato's Timaeus. The volume includes: a subst... more This is a specimen of a new comprehensive volume on Plato's Timaeus. The volume includes: a substantial introductory essay by Franco Ferrari; a new critical edition, based on seven primary witnesses, a complete review of ad litteram quotations of the dialogue and a new assessment of ancient corrections of "A", a running commentary with technical notes and tables.
Scholarship on Plato('s metaphysics) is constantly growing both in terms of quantity and of compl... more Scholarship on Plato('s metaphysics) is constantly growing both in terms of quantity and of complexity, and embarking in a new study on the exact philosophical import of Plato's theory of forms requires not only specific knowledge of the matter and vast argumentative skills, but also a considerable amount of bravery. Fortunately, Vasilis Politis is endowed with all of this, and his Plato's Essentialism offers an insightful, brilliant and effective exploration of the metaphysical core of Plato's philosophy, namely his theory of forms. After reading this breath-taking volume, the reader might not agree with Politis on his main claim or (as in my case) on some aspects of his
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