Radical Platonism in Byzantium
Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon

A groundbreaking approach to late Byzantine intellectual history and the philosophy of visionary reformer Gemistos Plethon.

Niketas Siniossoglou (Author)

9781107013032, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 November 2011

472 pages, 1 table
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.69 kg

"This stimulating book will offer much food for thought, even to those readers who, in the end, will not be prepared to accept all of Siniossoglou’s conclusions." --BMCR

Byzantium has recently attracted much attention, principally among cultural, social and economic historians. This book shifts the focus to philosophy and intellectual history, exploring the thought-world of visionary reformer Gemistos Plethon (c.1355–1452). It argues that Plethon brought to their fulfilment latent tendencies among Byzantine humanists towards a distinctive anti-Christian and pagan outlook. His magnum opus, the pagan Nomoi, was meant to provide an alternative to, and escape-route from, the disputes over the Orthodoxy of Gregory Palamas and Thomism. It was also a groundbreaking reaction to the bankruptcy of a pre-existing humanist agenda and to aborted attempts at the secularisation of the State, whose cause Plethon had himself championed in his two utopian Memoranda. Inspired by Plato, Plethon's secular utopianism and paganism emerge as the two sides of a single coin. On another level, the book challenges anti-essentialist scholarship that views paganism and Christianity as social and cultural constructions.

Introduction: Plethon and the notion of Paganism
Part I. Lost Rings of the Platonist Golden Chain: 1. Underground Platonism in Byzantium
2. The rise of the Byzantine Illuminati
3. The Plethon affair
Part II. The Elements of Pagan Platonism: 4. Epistemic optimism
5. Pagan ontology
6. Symbolic theology: the mythologising of Platonic ontology
Part III. Mistra versus Athos: 7. Intellectual and spiritual utopias
Part IV. The Path of Ulysses and the Path of Abraham: 8. Conclusion
Epilogue: 'Spinozism before Spinoza', or the pagan roots of modernity.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]