{"_index":"sire","_id":"1442","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1442,"authors_free":[{"id":2303,"entry_id":1442,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":211,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Opsomer, Jan","free_first_name":"Jan","free_last_name":"Opsomer","norm_person":{"id":211,"first_name":"Jan","last_name":"Opsomer","full_name":"Opsomer, Jan","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1120966310","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2304,"entry_id":1442,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":14,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Steel, Carlos","free_first_name":"Carlos","free_last_name":"Steel","norm_person":{"id":14,"first_name":"Carlos ","last_name":"Steel","full_name":"Steel, Carlos ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/122963083","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2657,"entry_id":1442,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":3,"role_name":"translator"},"free_name":"Opsomer, Jan","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":null},{"id":2658,"entry_id":1442,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":null,"person_id":null,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":3,"role_name":"translator"},"free_name":"Steel, Carlos","free_first_name":"","free_last_name":"","norm_person":null}],"entry_title":"Proclus: On the Existence of Evils","main_title":{"title":"Proclus: On the Existence of Evils"},"abstract":"Proclus\u2019 On the Existence of Evils is not a commentary, but helps to compensate for the dearth of Neoplatonist ethical commentaries. The central question addressed in the work is: how can there be evil in a providential world? Neoplatonists agree that it cannot be caused by higher and worthier beings. Plotinus had said that evil is matter, which, unlike Aristotle, he collapsed into mere privation or lack, thus reducing its reality. He also protected higher causes from responsibility by saying that evil may result from a combination of goods. Proclus objects: evil is real, and not a privation. Rather, it is a parasite feeding off good. Parasites have no proper cause, and higher beings are thus vindicated as being the causes only of the good off which evil feeds. [author's abstract]","btype":1,"date":"2003","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/jf422McdNmgpCnP","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":211,"full_name":"Opsomer, Jan","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":14,"full_name":"Steel, Carlos ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":{"id":1442,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Bloomsbury Academic","series":"Ancient Commentators on Aristotle","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null},"booksection":null,"article":null},"sort":["Proclus: On the Existence of Evils"]}

{"_index":"sire","_id":"1445","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1445,"authors_free":[{"id":2314,"entry_id":1445,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":14,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Steel, Carlos","free_first_name":"Carlos","free_last_name":"Steel","norm_person":{"id":14,"first_name":"Carlos ","last_name":"Steel","full_name":"Steel, Carlos ","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/122963083","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism; Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus","main_title":{"title":"The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism; Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus"},"abstract":"The later Neoplatonist writers are not easy to read or sympathize with for several reasons. To begin with, it is necessary to reconstruct their views not with the help of their own writings, but with extracts and summaries in later writers. This is particularly true of Iamblichus. Only fragments of his treatise De Anima may be found in Stobaeus (Ecl. 1, 362, 23\u2013367, 9), and to this somewhat exiguous number may be added what is reported in various places by Proclus, Damascius, and Priscianus, fifth- and sixth-century writers living two centuries after the death of Iamblichus in 326. This makes any attempt at reconstruction particularly uncertain.\r\n\r\nIamblichus' views, insofar as we can reconstruct them, are primarily interesting because they represent the first and in many ways most serious challenge to the doctrines of Plotinus. And the challenge itself may be said to have split the later Neoplatonists, with Damascius and Priscianus following Iamblichus and Proclus reverting to the views of Plotinus.\r\n\r\nThe real question at issue, and one dealt with with admirable fairness and clarity by Steel, is the nature of the soul and, more particularly, \"Does it fall or not?\" Plotinus maintained on many occasions that it remained, at least in its upper and true self, unfallen. This is clear, for example, at Enn. IV.1.12. Iamblichus' critique of this view is instructive and sympathetic. The view of Plotinus fails to explain far too many factors in our moral and empirical lives\u2014the fact of sin, our awareness of unhappiness, and the apparent betrayal of the vision of the soul offered by Plato in the Phaedrus 248a ff.\r\n\r\nNot that Plotinus was unaware of these drawbacks to his theory. He had anticipated and dealt with some already at Enn. I.1 and III.6. Iamblichus also objected to the Plotinian doctrine that all souls were homogeneous (cf. Enn. IV.7.10.19). To obviate these difficulties, Iamblichus developed a theory about the substantial change of the soul (cf. p. 53 ff.). The evidence for this view comes largely from Priscianus, so it is perhaps unwise to be too uncritical about accepting it as Iamblichus' own, especially when considering the reverence in which he was held by many later writers, who, beginning at least as early as Julian, called him \"the divine.\"\r\n\r\nThe arguments produced in favor of such a view of the mutable substance of the soul all seem to argue from perceived activities to the unperceived cause\u2014a methodological principle that derives from Aristotle and seems to run counter to the method employed by Plotinus. The system of Plotinus, like that of the great systematizer Proclus, is deductive rather than inductive.\r\n\r\nThe central vision around which the Iamblichean picture revolves is of a soul that remains in itself and simultaneously proceeds from itself\u2014a view that is often repeated in Priscianus. Whereas in Plotinus the upper, true soul never sallies forth and only the image of the soul does, here it is the whole soul. This reduced cosmic status of the soul may be the reason why Iamblichus was willing to allow people to approach the divine through theurgy and not simply through the activity of the soul.\r\n\r\nTwo points may be mentioned. One is the relation of Iamblichus to Proclus. It has often been assumed that the former had a great influence on the latter, and this is the view put forward by Professor Dodds in his edition of the Elements of Proclus (cf. Introd., xvi ff.). Just how much influence was there?\r\n\r\nAgain, on p. 157, it is stated that much later pagan psychology was occasioned by the desire to refute either the views or objections of Christians, or both. But there is a considerable question as to the knowledge of and interest in what Christians believed and wrote on the part of educated pagans. It really is an open question whether there is any reference at all to anything Christian in Iamblichus or Plotinus. It would be most interesting if any serious evidence could be found in favor of such a hypothesis. [review by Anthony Meredith p. 290-291 ]","btype":1,"date":"1978","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/tntYMFyZHiMovai","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":14,"full_name":"Steel, Carlos ","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":{"id":1445,"pubplace":"Br\u00fcssel","publisher":"Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null},"booksection":null,"article":null},"sort":["The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism; Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus"]}