Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250
An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation

The first comprehensive guide in English to 'Middle' Platonism, based on a wealth of source-texts in English translation.

George Boys-Stones (Author)

9780521838580, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 December 2017

662 pages
23.5 x 16 x 3.3 cm, 1.17 kg

'Boys-Stones handles with painstaking precision and philosophical acumen an incredible amount of complex and controversial issues, without ever losing sight of the project as a whole. The result is an exciting and novel book.' Sara Magrin, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

'Middle' Platonism has some claim to be the single most influential philosophical movement of the last two thousand years, as the common background to 'Neoplatonism' and the early development of Christian theology. This book breaks with the tradition of considering it primarily in terms of its sources, instead putting its contemporary philosophical engagements front and centre to reconstruct its philosophical motivations and activity across the full range of its interests. The volume explores the ideas at the heart of Platonist philosophy in this period and includes a comprehensive selection of primary sources, a significant number of which appear in English translation for the first time, along with dedicated guides to the questions that have been, and might be, asked about the movement. The result is a tool intended to help bring the study of Middle Platonism into mainstream discussions of ancient philosophy.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: studying middle platonism
1. Plato's authority and the history of philosophy
2. Making sense of the dialogues
Part I. Cosmology: 3. Causal principles for a non-materialist cosmology
4. The debate over matter and the problem of evil
5. Paradigm-forms
6. The creator god
7. Theories of creation
8. World soul and nature
9. Individual souls and their faculties
10. Living beings: gods, daimons, humans, animals, plants
11. Providence
12. Fate
Part II. Dialectic: 13. Epistemology
14. Logic
15. Aristotle's Categories: ontology and linguistics
16. The hierarchy of sciences
Part III. Ethics: 17. The goal of virtue and the ideal life
18. Ethical virtue and the management of the passions
19. Politics
20. The system of the Chaldaean Oracles
Glossary
References
Catalogue of platonists
Index of sources and references
Index to notes and further reading.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Philosophy [HP], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Humanities [H]