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11366 results in Ancient philosophy

Page 149 of 569

Philosophic Silence and the ‘One' in Plotinus
  • Nicholas Banner
  • Published online:
    16 March 2018
    Print publication:
    29 March 2018
  • Plotinus, the greatest philosopher of Late Antiquity, discusses at length a first principle of reality - the One - which, he tells us, cannot be expressed in words or grasped in thought. How and why, then, does Plotinus write about it at all? This book explores this act of writing the unwritable. Seeking to explain what seems to be an insoluble paradox in the very practice of late Platonist writing, it examines not only the philosophical concerns involved, but the cultural and rhetorical aspects of the question. The discussion outlines an ancient practice of ‛philosophical silence' which determined the themes and tropes of public secrecy appropriate to Late Platonist philosophy. Through philosophic silence, public secrecy and silence flow into one another, and the unsaid space of the text becomes an initiatory secret. Understanding this mode of discourse allows us to resolve many apparent contradictions in Plotinus' thought.

  • Chapter 7 - Piety, Pride and the Problem of Evil

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 169-229

  • Summary

    De libero arbitrio’s “faith seeking understanding” and rambling scriptural exegesis may seem to depart from the Platonist methods of C. Acad. The difference, I suggest, is scale. Like Sol. + De imm. an., De lib. arbit. 1 and 2 each presents a complete round of ARP. Book 3’s exploration of Genesis, while longer, functions analogously to the scriptural cues of earlier dialogues’ plausible conclusions. The key is another virtue: piety. Augustine defines this as (a) thinking of God in the highest terms, (b) thanking God for even minor goods and (c) taking responsibility for one’s own shortcomings. He presents this as prerequisite for fruitful philosophical inquiry. I suggest that the work’s two rounds of ARP aim to instill piety as preparation for book 3’s search for a scriptural answer to evil. Book 1’s discussion of sin instills (c), book 2’s proof for God’s existence instills (a) and its grades of goods instill (b). In book 3, Augustine addresses evil from theoretical and pastoral angles at once, identifying pride as the root of sin and nurturing piety as a remedy to it. My reading shows Augustine’s final dialogue to be tightly unified around a project firmly rooted in his first.

  • Chapter 5 - An Advanced Course

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 141-159

  • Summary

    Soliloquia presents a particular challenge for holistic readings insofar as Augustine never finished writing it. That said, a sketch for its final book survives as a treatise, De immortalitate animae. Scholars have reconstructed the overarching argument of composite work, Sol. + De imm. an., in various ways. Yet, as with many of Augustine’s dialogues, these same scholars have a generally low view of this argument’s success. By reading the composite work as an application of ARP (see ch 1), my reconstruction articulates the purpose of its failed arguments and seeming redundancies. Unlike De beata v. and De ord., its plausible conclusions are presented using explicitly skeptical language, and its moments of self-reflection are also explicitly noted. While written at Cassiciacum, Sol. departs from the scenic dialogues in that it pursues not one “round” of ARP but three. These, in turn, are structured around the Pauline virtues of faith, hope and love. As Augustine plays the role of student here, I take this to present a more advanced approach to the pedagogical method set out in C. Acad. and a step along the way to the more elaborate structure of De lib. arbit.

  • Conclusion

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 230-236

  • Summary

    The concluding chapter opens by suggesting how the present study may refocus existing debates. My account of Augustine’s method brings new substance to the historicity debate by elaborating what it would mean for Augustine’s flesh-and-blood companions to bring the words and Augustine, as author, to organize them. And by shifting the developmental debate’s focus on doctrinal content onto issues of methodology, I reframe the question of Augustine’s development over time and suggest a smooth progression as Augustine fuses Platonist pedagogy and Christian exegesis in increasingly sophisticated ways. I close by drawing out the implications of Augustine’s pedagogical methods for teachers today. The dialogues’ emphasis on unteaching through aporetic debate runs usefully counter to today’s test-taking culture. Their search for self-knowledge through reflection brings a third option to the contest between content and marketable skills which tends to frame current discussions of the liberal arts’ value. And their willingness to trade in provisional, plausible conclusions provides an attractive model for navigating our pluralistic society.

  • Chapter 2 - From Plato to Augustine

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 57-81

  • Summary

    Augustine claims to be following a “Platonic” method. While he had little direct knowledge of Plato’s works, his method of Aporetic debate, Reflection on rational activity and Plausible conclusions (ARP) bears striking resemblance to Plato’s Meno with its paradox of inquiry, theory of recollection and geometry lesson. Meno combines two methods: the elenchus of Plato’s “Socratic” dialogues and the hypothetical method his from “middle” works, e.g. Republic and Symposium. These strands separate as Cicero’s skeptical dialogues present a formalized version of Socratic elenchus, while Plotinus’ Enneads, e.g. 1.6 “On Beauty,” give a distilled version of hypothetical method. I suggest that Augustine recombines these strands to create ARP. Aporetic debate is taken from Cicero; reflection on rational activity from Plotinus; plausible conclusions have roots in both. Augustine claims his Platonic pedigree in Contra Academicos’ “secret history” which suggests that Academic skeptics such as Cicero shared the same doctrinal and methodological commitments as Plotinus and Plato himself. Whatever the historical validity of this thesis, it shows Augustine using his predecessors to think with.

  • Chapter 3 - The Measure of Happiness

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 82-100

  • Summary

    De beata vita opens with a debate over the conditions of happiness and closes with an oratio in which Augustine grounds happiness in one’s relation to the Christian Trinity. Scholars routinely discuss either the work’s “philosophical” or “theological” halves but not both. I argue for a holistic reading by applying Contra Academicos’ method: ARP. Aporetic debate shows that happiness depends on having good things, moderation and God, yet stumbles on whether one who seeks God “has God” or not. Reflection on a wealthy individual who doesn’t care about virtue or truth stirs up debaters’ own desire for truth. Augustine’s oratio uses this desire to move beyond aporia, suggesting that a partial grasp of truth “admonishes” individuals to seek the whole of truth. He credits the Holy Spirit with this admonition and identifies the Son as the whole of truth and “measure of the soul.” A seeker after God thus has God the Spirit but not God the Son. The work’s overarching argument integrates philosophy and theology, reason and emotion. While explicitly skeptical language of plausibility is absent, reading this dialogue in terms of ARP makes the best sense of the work as a whole.

  • Introduction

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 1-23

  • Summary

    20th-century debates over how Augustine’s thought developed across his dialogues and the historicity of the earliest of them have set scholarly agendas at odds with the dialogues themselves. Over time, scholars have come to see them as poorly composed. This study seeks to articulate the philosophical/pedagogical method at play in the dialogues by using the earliest of them, Contra Academicos, as a programmatic work (ch 1). Applying its method to the remaining dialogues allows us to see how each, despite plurality of content, is tightly unified around a single pedagogical project (ch 3-5, 7), in what ways this project is ‘Platonic’ (ch 2), and how the earliest dialogues operate as a set (ch 6).

  • Chapter 1 - The Pursuit of Wisdom

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 24-56

  • Summary

    Contra Academicos presents a debate over the Academic skeptical claim that certainty is impossible. The debate ends in perplexity (aporia). Augustine then delivers an oratio which refutes the skeptics’ arguments against certainty yet concludes, in skeptical fashion, that it is plausible (probabile) that wisdom can be found within Christianity/Platonism and suggests that the Academic skeptics were secretly Platonists all along. I read this work as setting out a three-part pedagogical method: Aporetic debates “un-teach” characters’ problematic assumptions (e.g. materialism); Reflection on the act of debating brings self-knowledge (e.g. that rational inquiry presupposes certain norms); Plausible conclusions avoid the problems that led to aporia and provide explanatory frameworks for the characters’ self-reflective discovery (e.g. Platonic intellectualism). I argue that this fusion of Aporia, Reflection and Plausibility (ARP) drives each of Augustine’s dialogues. While scholars see the dialogues’ failed arguments, sudden reversals and shifts into oratio as flaws in Augustine’s refutation of skepticism, I see them as advancing a bigger pedagogical program rooted in skeptical practice.

  • Chapter 4 - God’s Classroom

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 101-140

  • Summary

    De ordine opens as mice prompt Licentius to claim that all things are ruled by Providence (ordo). Characters debate this claim, but the effort ends in aporia. Augustine suggests they have not held to the “order of study” and sets out a curriculum of seven liberal disciplines. Scholars disagree as to why the debate fails, yet all assume that the content of this curriculum holds the answer. Augustine, however, presents the liberal arts as useful but unnecessary preparation for philosophy. On my reading, it is the act, not the content, of liberal study that matters here. The self-reflective payoff of liberal study is that human reason seeks unity. Debaters fall into aporia because they explain mice moving men to inquiry in terms of mice rather than men. Augustine concludes that the world is good for humans because experience of disorder prompts us to seek deeper unity, moving us closer to the distinctively human good of grasping Unity itself, i.e. God. In short, this work presents an application of ARP (see ch 1). I present De Musica pursuing this philosophical use of liberal studies, and I trace De ord.’s account of providence through the scenic dialogues’ dedications.

  • Chapter 6 - Philosophy and Kathartic Virtue

  • Erik Kenyon, Rollins College, Florida
  • Book:
    Augustine and the Dialogue
    Published online:
    16 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 March 2018, pp 160-168

  • Summary

    Scriptural references in Augustine’s early dialogues are scarce. Yet by reading them in terms of ARP, we find them playing a key structural role. Augustine’s plausible conclusions invoke the “dual weight of reason and authority” (C. Acad.), Christ as “measure of the soul” (De beata v.) and “Unity” as first cause (De ord.). Taken together, these works present an extended meditation on Wisdom 11:20’s claim that God holds all things in “measure, number, weight.” They also exploring the Classical virtues of wisdom, moderation and justice. Sol. + De imm. an. completes the set using 1 Cor. 13:13’s “faith, hope, love” to structure an exploration of courage. I use De quantitate animae as a framework for understanding the place of virtue in these works. This slightly later dialogue presents the Platonist idea that virtues come in grades: civic, kathartic and contemplative. I argue that Augustine’s Cassiciacum dialogues present an exercise in kathartic virtue, as aporia and reflection “purify” characters’ minds, preparing them for the eventual contemplation of truth. This echoes C. Acad.’s presentation of Platonism as a mystery cult and shows the tight programmatic unity of these works.

Page 149 of 569