Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2017

The sophist Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias is one of the few interlocutors of the Platonic Socrates who persistently refuses to be refuted by Socrates’ arguments. In the contrary, he develops an alternative conception of man which he believes can show Socrates’ ideas about the good and man’s happiness wrong and illusory. This contribution analyses Callicles’ anthropology in the Gorgias and argues that Callicles’ position indicates a systematic problem in Socrates’ conception of happiness. Therefore, its function within the Gorgias is to introduce in to the conception of the Politeia where Plato abandons his earlier individualistic (and Socratic) concept of happiness and replaces it by the idea of the philosopher’s state.

In Topics I.2, Aristotle famously claims that dialectic, as a critical inquiry, affords the path to the primary principles of science. This article sets out from the assumption that Aristotle shares with Plato the suspicion that dialectical critique cannot contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge as long as it is of the Socratic, elenctic kind, since its only benefit is to refute false beliefs. But when Plato in the Theaetetus has Socrates act as a midwife to his fellow men, he offers an alternative picture of dialectical critique that also, it is argued, captures the spirit of Aristotle’s dialectical work, especially as pursued in the Metaphysics. In Aristotle, however, the mission of Socratic midwifery, to help other individuals give birth to knowledge that was already innate to them, is transformed into a project that centers on the liberation of the as yet dormant and inarticulate truth of the tradition.

Commentaries on Plato’s and Aristotle’s works were central to the Neoplatonic school’s curriculum. In a fixed order, established since Jamblichus, the Aristotelian writings were first read, then the Platonic ones. At the beginning, the logical writings of Aristotle and particularly his Categories were examined. But like any other work, the Categories were construed from the perspective of Neoplatonic anagogy. In addition, the commentator was obliged to work out the commonalities between the two philosophical teachings. That anagogical and harmonising approach culminates in the commentaries on the Categories with the integration of the Aristotelian concept of substance into the Platonic concept of ideas. While Dexippus is primarily engaged in the right modes of predication corresponding to the sensible and the intelligible realm respectively, Simplicius focuses on the description of a continuous connection of being.

In the prologue to his Commentary on Proclus’ Elements of theology Ioane Petritsi, Georgian Neoplatonist of the twelfth century, argues that the main subject of Proclus’ Elements is the theory of the supreme One. In Petritsi’s opinion, Proclus’ merit was to elaborate the philosophy of the ‘pure’, absolutely transcendent One which is unperceivable even for the Intellect. On the other hand, the supreme One is, in Petritsi’s interpretation, the cause of everything, including matter, and It has some positive (‘kataphatic’) characteristics which cannot be separated from Its hyper-essence. These are, mainly, Its causality and productivity, Its will and providential activity. The aim of this article is to analyse, what the supreme One is in Petritsi’s Commentary and to answer the following question: Do the absolute transcendence of the supreme One and Its positive characteristics contradict each other or are they in a certain way compatible with each other? I argue that for making the transition from the first aspect of the supreme One (Its transcendence) to another one (Its productivity) more coherent, Petritsi made an attempt to introduce in the ontological hierarchy one more one after the supreme One and before the Henads. In my opinion, this ‘second one’, which is almost inseparable from the supreme transcendent One, is Its another aspect, representing Its productive activity. For the same purpose, as I think, Petritsi identified the creative aspect of the One with the Logos/the Son of God and, in certain cases, also with Plato’s Demiurge.

In early modernity, church historians initially showed little interest in Berthold of Moosburg. They knew him as a commentator of Proclus, but they did not recognise his importance for the history of Neoplatonism. The librarians and bibliographers who came across Berthold’s commentary on Proclus in the Balliol College Library at Oxford showed no interest in the philosophical content of this work. An article on Berthold in the monumental work Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum (1719) summarised the available information. It was Johann Albert Fabricius (1668–1736) who took notice of it. Fabricius was very interested in Proclus as well as in Neoplatonic theology and its narration in the Elements of Theology; he had started to collect all available information regarding this issue and had also come across Berthold’s commentary. However, he did not ignore him, as many had done before, but properly recognised the importance of Berthold for the history of the reception of Proclus’s philosophy. Fabricius always referred to the Dominican thinker when dealing with Proclus’s Elements of Theology, in particular in his own Bibliotheca graeca. One of the attentive readers of this work was the German philologist Friedrich Creuzer. In 1822, within the framework of publishing Neoplatonic writings, Creuzer reedited Proclus’s Elements of Theology. As a consequence of this new edition, Proclus together with his medieval commentator came into the focus of leading representatives of classical German philosophy.

The 18th century philosopher Salomon Maimon, who originated from a small village in Eastern Europe and who, despite having been destined to become a rabbi at a young age, emigrated to Berlin and other German locations to study philosophy, showed a strong bond to the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, most obviously by his self selected surname. Besides this, Maimon’s philosophical works have been significantly influenced by the rationalistic philosophy and theology of Maimonides. Most importantly, Maimonides’ theory of divine reason, which in turn refers to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, is incorporated into the philosophy of Maimon, who decisively transformed this conception into his own notion of an infinite intellect. In this article, it shall be demonstrated that Maimon uses this concept, derived from Maimonides’ thought to a large extent, yet significantly differing from it in important aspects, to argue against Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy: At first by rejecting the Kantian dualism of sensibility and intellect, then by trying to uncover Kant’s notion of the thing in itself as meaningless and eventually by trying to eliminate this notion from the system of transcendental philosophy in general. To present this specific constellation of argumentation, at first Maimon’s reception of central Maimonidean thoughts shall be examined in a strongly selective manner. In a second step, the application of these thoughts to the difficulties of Kant’s philosophy by Maimon has to be drafted. By inquiring the multifaceted relation of Maimon to the medieval philosopher in these important aspects, Maimonides’ particular relevance for German philosophy in the late 18th century shall be revealed.