I provide an overview of which the main thesis is that Aristotle’s view of thought and feelings is sui generis, different from Kantian and Humean style views of motivation. Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is introduced, along with a discussion of philosophical method and a synopsis of chapters.

Is beauty simply subjective, or does it have an “objective” foundation and referent? Is art simply self-referential, or can it be a mediation of ontological values? Modern art and aesthetics offer contradictory replies to these questions; but the Platonic tradition of metaphysical realism offers an integration of the arts with intelligibility and value that would otherwise be lacking.

Chapter 4 of De mundo concludes the first, ‘scientific’ part of the treatise, which contains a description of the universe. Chapter 4 deals with the phenomena that belong to the science of meteorology as the ancients understood it, which included not only all kinds of precipitation, cloud formations, wind and thunder, but also phenomena such as shooting stars, earthquakes, tides and volcanic eruptions. Chapter 4 of De mundo shows similarity with Aristotle’s Meteorology in theory and general structure, but there are notable differences – the construction of the wind rose, omission of the Milky Way, and the inclusion of a lunar tide theory – which seem to indicate another source for this chapter. This is also indicated by the compendium style of Chapter 4: instead of offering causal explanations of the meteorological phenomena, the author proceeds by dividing them into groups and then briefly describing each member of every group. Some scholars have argued that the source of this chapter of De mundo is Posidonius’ treatise on meteorology. Despite some striking similarities, reasons are given against accepting this thesis. It is suggested that an earlier compendium of meteorology, combining Peripatetic and Stoic elements, was the principal source of Chapter 4 of De mundo.

This chapter highlights the formative role of Platonism in the making of Christian doctrine. It argues that Platonism’s greatest substantive influences on Christian Trinitarian theology lay in the area of participation metaphysics, as well as in inspiring the more general theological dictum of divine immateriality and intelligibility. Early Christian authors discussed include: Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Theodoret, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Eunomius. The claim that the Christian creator–creature distinction competed with the Platonic intelligible–sensible distinction is examined and rejected.

This chapter considers the often overlooked historical contributions and contemporary importance of traditions of Christian Platonism within the development of the natural sciences. After introducing key conceptual elements, it considers the salience of Christian Platonic approaches for a variety of scientific fields including mathematics, biology, psychology, and ecology.”

The introduction presents the nature and scope of De mundo and explains the objectives of the present volume. De mundo is a protreptic work aiming to present philosophy as a study of the universe and its relation to God. For that reason, it sets out to explain the world in terms of what makes it an orderly arrangement, a kosmos. The work’s central thesis is that the orderly arrangement of the universe is due to God and that it is hence crucial to have a proper conception of God and his causal relation to the universe in order to fully appreciate the universe, its structure and the phenomena that occur in it. Unlike most scholarly work done on this text, the present volume does not focus on the question of authenticity and dating, but on its content and philosophy. However, the introduction does explain at some length why De mundo should not be ascribed to Aristotle, although the author clearly aimed to present a picture of the world and God that is essentially Aristotelian. The introduction is accompanied by an overview of the argument presented in De mundo.

In his Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, the fourth-century exegete Calcidius makes ample use of musical theory and its kinship with the related sciences arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Musical theory impacts upon the metaphysical, physical and ethical aspects in his account of the composition of the cosmic soul. Calcidius draws upon the soul’s musical make-up to show how it translates into the arrangement of the heavenly bodies, the relationships between the immortal and mortal creatures in the cosmos, and the tripartite human soul. Emphasizing the overall significance of harmonics for his exegesis, Calcidius, in fact, likens the creator god to a musician who composed the All as a well-tuned symphony. I shall discuss these aspects of his exegesis by placing them, initially, into the context of his sources, thereafter focusing on more idiosyncratic aspects: Calcidius’ referencing of musical composition for the question of the soul’s (un-)createdness, the relationship he establishes between harmonics and his demonology, and his view on human psychological conditions such as anger and passion. These conditions, according to Calcidius, are not merely a consequence of the human soul’s association with the body, but psychological manifestations of its natural make-up, which is determined by numeric-musical proportions.

This paper explores Platonic and Aristotelian thought on multiplicity, forms, and matter, and considers the relationship between Abrahamic and pagan understandings of the order of divine creation.

The author of De mundo offers his outline of geography in the second part of Chapter 3. In this contribution, we look at the details of the author’s account and analyse it in the context of the historical development of ancient geographic ideas. There is a number of indications that the text can be dated to later Hellenistic times: the author’s view on the insularity of the inhabited world, on the nature and role of the ocean and its connection with the Caspian/Hyrcanian Sea, on the borders between the continents and on the calculation of the dimensions of the inhabited world (oikoumenē). We argue that the author might have been influenced by the treatises on the ocean as a literary model for this section of De mundo. We know that authors such as Pytheas of Massalia, Posidonius of Apamea and Athenodorus of Tharsus wrote works under the title On the Ocean, which survive only in scarce fragments. The information we can extract from De mundo in this respect is, therefore, invaluable for a reconstruction of the content, circulation and reception of this sub-genre of geographic literature in the last decades of Hellenism.

In his commentary on Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic, John Philoponus explains the role that mathematics, and hence harmonics, play in Platonic philosophy, as redefined by the Neoplatonists. There are two main issues regarding harmonics. The first issue: harmonics is one of the mathematical sciences that lead to the knowledge of divine and absolutely immaterial entities; but harmonics also concerns other mathematical disciplines, because there is an astronomical harmony, that is, the harmony of the revolution of the stars, and there is a geometric harmony, that is, the cube, one of the Platonic solids that are the constitutive elements of the physical world as a geometric model of equality. The second issue: there exists a harmonic proportion, already known to the Pythagoreans, Plato and Aristotle. Both these aspects in Philoponus’ study of harmonics have a common denominator, namely the fact that, as Plato teaches in the Timaeus, the universe, its soul and human souls have a numerical structure based on the relationship between two principles, that is, equality and inequality. But harmonics is precisely the mathematical science of relationship. Therefore, harmonics has a privileged place in the Neoplatonic philosophical system, as Philoponus’ commentary worthily testifies.

This chapter frames the complex and contested concept of Christian Platonism explicated throughout this volume. Here, it is introduced as an object of theological and philosophical contention, the subject of historical and conceptual communication, and a theme of compulsory knowledge for the student of intellectual history.

The notion of Platonic Forms as divine thoughts was critical to the theistic interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. This chapter considers the origins and development of the theory of divine ideas. The chapter begins by examining the evidence for this theory in the Old Academy, including Speusippus, Xenocrates and Aristotle. The notion is then traced among subsequent Platonists, including Antiochus of Ascalon, Eudorus of Alexandria, Alcinous, and the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. The reception of the theory of divine ideas in Christianity concludes the chapter, with reference to Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor.