I examine the relation between sensation and discursive thought (dianoia) in Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus. In Theaetetus, a soul whose highest faculty was sensation would have no unified experience of the sensible world, lacking universal ideas to give order to the sensible flux. It is implied that such universals are grasped by the soul’s t…[Read more]

According to his Cratylus commentary Proclus thinks that, although an oracle or a poet is the customary promulgator of a divine name, it is the philosopher who is the authoritative interpreter of that divine name. The reason for this is that the philosopher has the same access to the source of revelation as does the oracle or the poet, because the…[Read more]

In this paper I will examine Proclus’ Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato in order to shed light on his doctrine of the partial soul’s nous. Proclus’ epistemology is in many ways the heart of his system. The human soul is a microcosm, and because each of its faculties corresponds to one or other order of the macrocosm, the soul’s knowled…[Read more]

On pourrait avoir l’impression que dans l’interprétation de Proclus de la ligne divisée de Platon, il y a deux types de connaissance des objets supérieurs : une noêsis ascendante qui monte jusqu’au principe anhypothétique, et dont les objets sont les eidê simples, et une dianoia qui inclut les mathématiques, dont le mouvement est descendant e…[Read more]

In the 7th essay of his Commentary on the Republic of Plato, Proclus supplies the elements of a fairly robust Neoplatonic political philosophy. In general he agrees with Plato’s account of the tripartite soul and the four cardinal virtues, while introducing important nuances into the theory. The idea of the dominance of one part of the soul over a…[Read more]

Philosophy has as its task not only the discovery of the determinations into which all things fall, but also the explanation of how these determinations arise. In Proclus we may distinguish three related sorts of deter- minations. First, there are the determinations which emerge within any given taxis in the hierarchy of all things and which may…[Read more]

In this study I will show how Neoplatonism is not properly understood as a moment within the Hegelian dialectic. The Hegelian analysis obscures both the true character of the Neoplatonic One, and the Neoplatonic account of the relation between thought and its object, because it treats these positions as deficient versions of itself. We must r…[Read more]

For Proclus philosophical system is expressed in dianoetic terms. Thus while Proclus is a systematic thinker, the terms in which his system is written themselves fall short of the reality which they seek to express. Moreover, because dianoia is a thinking which never has a complete grasp on its object, the Procline system must be considered to be…[Read more]

Proclus discusses imagination (phantasia) in the second prologue to his Euclid commentary. In his discussion, he describes phantasia in terms which make it seem like a passive screen, onto which geometrical figures are projected. However, he also speaks of phantasia in this text in terms which make it seem active, as if it were the projector…[Read more]

A reconstruction of the Greek text of the final part of Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides, from the extant Latin, by Carlos Steel and Friedrich Rumbach, with an English translation by D. Gregory MacIsaac.

In Proclus dianoia is the Soul’s thinking activity, through which it makes itself into a divided image of Nous. Dianoia’s thoughts are logoi, because in the Greek philosophical tradition, logos came to mean a division of a prior unity (ch.I). Proclus’ theory of dianoia rejects induction, and is a conscious development of Plato’s theory of…[Read more]

Responding to the title of the seminar, “Nordic Art Education in Motion,” and to its theme, “Digital competences and computational thinking: preparing children, young people and adults for a digitalized society,” I discuss the “archaic identity of change” (to draw from Etel Adnan) present in calls for motion and preparation. I conceptualize art…[Read more]

In Kant’s Critique of Judgment, his exploration of how something like life (organized matter) can appear to the faculties of a finite consciousness makes life as possible as it is impossible. A passing reference Kant makes to the idea that every organ of an organism can be seen as a parasite is taken as a lever to deconstruct his notion of…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: Presentamos una perspectiva pragmalingüística sobre la actuación discursiva inspirada en la sociología dramatística de Erving Goffman. En su actuación discursiva el hablante intenta justificar su postura con respecto a la afiliación con grupos e identidades sociales determinadas. Al posicionarse, perfila su identidad y modela…[Read more]

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion…[Read more]

Financial literacy in the Roman Empire.

The creation of mental models is one of the key modes of human thinking and is how we interact with the world. However, our perception of time and how we experience time is directly linked to this sort of modeling behavior.

Semantic and syntactical judgments play a central role in the development of classification systems. Syndetic relationships are relationships between indexing terms, sometimes referred to as cross references. Due to the extensiveness of synonyms for different concepts in natural languages, subject indexing has historically focused on developing…[Read more]