Description

Edited by Ierodiakonou Katerina

Short /annotation:
The 11 contributions in this volume, which cover most periods of Byzantine culture from the 4th to the 15th century, systematically investigate the response of the Byzantines to their inheritance from ancient philosophy to uncover the distinctive character of Byzantine thought.

:
Byzantine philosophy is an almost unexplored field. Being regarded either as mere scholars or as primarily religious thinkers, Byzantine philosophers, for the most part, have not been studied on their own philosophical merit, and their works have hardly been scrutinized as works of philosophy. Thus, although distinguished scholars in the past have tried to reconstruct the intellectual life of the Byzantine period, there is no question that we still lack even the beginnings of a systematic understanding of the philosophy of the Byzantines.Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources is conceived as a concerted attempt in this direction. It examines the attitude the Byzantines took towards the ancient philosophical tradition and the specific ancient sources which they relied upon to form their theories. But did the Byzantines merely copy ancient philosophers or interpret them the way they already had been interpreted in late antiquity? Does Byzantine philosophy as a whole lack a distinctive character which differentiates it from the previous periods in the history of philosophy?Eleven scholars, representing different disciplines from philosophy and history to classics and medieval studies, approach these questions by thoroughly investigating particular topics which give us some insight as to the directions in which we should look for possible answers. These topics range, in modern terms, from philosophy of language, theory of knowledge, and logic, to political philosophy, ethics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. The philosophers whose works our contributors study belong to all periods from the beginnings of Byzantine culture in the fourth century to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century.

Table of contents:
Introduction ; 1. Greek-Latin Philosophical Interaction ; 2. Basil of Caesarea on the Semantics of Proper Names ; 3. The Justinianic Dialogue On Political Science and its Neoplatonic Sources ; 4. John of Damascus on Human Action, the Will, and Human Freedom ; 5. Syllogistic in the Anonymous Heiberg ; 6. Helenic Philosophy in Byzantium and the Lonely Mission of Michael Psellos ; 7. Psellis” Paraphrasis on Aristotle”s De Interpretatione ; 8. ”To Every Argument There is a Counter-Argument”. Theodore Metochites” Defence of Scepticism (Semeiosis 61) ; 9. The Anti-Logical Movement in the 14th Century ; 10. Byzantine Commentators on the Chaldaean Oracles: Psellos and Plethon ; 11. Plethon and Scholarios on Aristotle ; Epilogue: Current Research in Byzantine Philosophy ; Index Locorum, Index of Names

Review quote:
This book is an excellent beginning, particularly as it makes accessible and available to the reader writers one might not normally read, including scholars from Greek institutions, whose work is here translated from the Greek.

Version history:
a ground-breaking work, opening up Byzantine philosophy as an area of studyfills an important gap in the history of ideasrelevant for theology and the history of Christianityexcellent line-up of contributors – eminent philosophers and Byzantine expertsfeatures a helpful introduction to the subject and the literatureall essays previously unpublished

Feature:
a ground-breaking work, opening up Byzantine philosophy as an area of studyfills an important gap in the history of ideasrelevant for theology and the history of Christianityexcellent line-up of contributors – eminent philosophers and Byzantine expertsfeatures a helpful introduction to the subject and the literatureall essays previously unpubli