Late Antique Epistemology explores the techniques used by late antique philosophers to discuss truth. Non-rational ways to discover truth, or to reform the soul, have usually been thought inferior to the philosophically approved techniques of rational argument, suitable for the less philosophically inclined, for children, savages or the uneducated. Religious rituals, oracles, erotic passion, madness may all have served to waken courage or remind us of realities obscured by everyday concerns. What is unusual in the late antique classical philosophers is that these techniques were reckoned as reliable as reasoned argument, or better still. Late twentieth century commentators have offered psychological explanations of this turn, but only recently had it been accepted that there might also have been philosophical explanations, and that the later antique philosophers were not necessarily deluded.

Autorentext
ROBERT M. BERCHMAN is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Dowling College and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College, USA DANIELE BERTINI is fellow of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Parma, Italy JAY BREGMAN is Professor of History and coordinator of the Minor in Religious studies at the University of Maine, USA AUDE BUSINE, is Research Associate of the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium KEVIN CORRIGAN is Professor of the Liberal Arts in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA JOHN DILLON is Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin, and Director of the Dublin Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, Ireland MALCOLM HEATH is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Leeds, UK OIVA KUISMA is a lecturer in Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki, Institute for Art Research, Finland TANELI KUKKONEN held the Canada Research Chair in the Aristotelian Tradition from 2003 to 2007, when he became Research Professor in Antiquity at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland EMILIE KUTASH is a Research Associate at Boston University Center for the History and Philosophy of Science and teaches Philosophy at St. Joseph's College, USA JOACHIM LACROSSE is Collaborateur Scientifique at the Centre de Philosophie Ancienne de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium CHRISTINAPANAGIOTA MANOLEA is a tutor at the Hellenic Open University, Greece ZEKE MAZUR is currently working on a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, USA. His dissertation is on the Gnostic background of Plotinus' mysticism. CAROL POSTER is Associate Professor of English at York University, Ontario, Canada ALGIS UZDAVINYS is Associated Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, and Senior Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Lithuania

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction; P.Vassilopoulou PART I: RITUALS, RELIGION, AND REALITY Porphyry and the Debate over Traditional Religious Practices; A.Busine St John in Amelius' Seminar; J.Dillon Eternal Time and Temporal Expansion: Proclus' Golden Ratio; E.F.Kutash Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor; Z.Mazur PART II: CROSSING BOUNDARIES Ibn T*Ufayl and the Wisdom of the East: On Apprehending the Divine; T.Kukkonen Plotinus, Porphyry, and India: A Re-Examination; J.Lacrosse Animation of Statues in Ancient Civilizations and Neoplatonism; A.Uzdavinys PART III: ART AND POETRY Platonists and the Teaching of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity; M.Heath Proclus's Notion of Poetry; O.Kuisma The Homeric Tradition in Ammonius and Asclepius; C-P.Manolea PART IV: LATER INFLUENCES Nous and Geist: Self-Identity and Methodological Solipsism in Plotinus and Hegel; R.M.Berchman Plotinus, Leibniz, and Berkeley on Determinism; D.Bertini Proclus Americanus; J.Bregman Ecology's Future Debt to Plotinus and Neoplatonism; K.Corrigan Heathen Martyrs or Romish Idolaters: Socrates and Plato in Eighteenth-Century England; C.Poster Conclusion; S.Clark Glossary Index