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The Ladder of the Sciences in Late Antique Platonism
  • Selected Essays
  • Dominic J. O'Meara
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 January 2026
  • A range of sciences was taught in the Platonist schools of late antiquity (third to sixth centuries) with the purpose of leading the human soul up to a divine life. This curriculum constituted so to speak a ladder of the sciences. The ways in which these sciences were newly interpreted in this context have not, however, been fully appreciated. This volume brings together selected essays, some translated into English for the first time, which show how a new vision of these disciplines and sciences was reached as part of a Platonist philosophical education. They cover a wide range of topics, from rhetoric, ethics and politics to mathematics, music and metaphysics, and discuss the work of various philosophers. Dominic O'Meara is considered one of the foremost scholars of Platonism and this book provides readers with an indispensable tool for accessing his most important scholarship in this area.

  • Chapter 6 - Love in Plotinus’ Thought

  • from Part II - Development of Platonic Love in Antiquity
  • Edited by Carl Séan O'Brien, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany, John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin
  • Book:
    Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance
    Published online:
    25 August 2022
    Print publication:
    01 September 2022, pp 111-124

  • Summary

    This chapter surveys different aspects of the theme of love (erōs) in Plotinus’ philosophy. Starting with what Plotinus finds significant in the human experience of love, we consider Plotinus’ nuanced evaluation of various types of earthly love (including sexuality), moving then to love as a desire of the beautiful expressing the very nature of soul in its relation to its origin in a divine transcendent Intellect, itself constituted in a relation of love to the ultimate first principle, the One/Good. Plotinus’ claim that the One is love/self-love is examined and two aspects of love, as expressing deficiency and as a generosity manifesting fulfilment, are discussed in relation to the One and as found in Intellect and in soul.

  • Chapter 10 - The Music of the Virtues in Late Ancient Platonism

  • Edited by Francesco Pelosi, Università degli Studi, Pisa, Federico M. Petrucci, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy
  • Book:
    Music and Philosophy in the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    27 November 2020
    Print publication:
    17 December 2020, pp 227-241

  • Summary

    In this chapter I discuss the paradigmatic function which music, as a theoretical science (‘harmonics’), can have in relation to practical philosophy, in particular ethics, for the Platonists of Late Antiquity, going from Iamblichus (end of the 3rd century) and Proclus to Damascius (mid 6th century). Inspired by some passages in Plato’s Republic, in Nicomachus of Gerasa and in Ptolemy’s Harmonics, these Platonists also introduced a hierarchy of types of music and a hierarchy of types of virtue. I will attempt to show the relation between these two hierarchies, starting with the ‘ethical’ and ‘political’ levels of virtue, showing how harmonics provides conceptual paradigms for the description of these virtues, and then moving up to the higher levels of virtue, the ‘purificatory’ and ‘theoretical’ virtues, asking how music, as harmonics, might relate to the higher virtues.

Cosmology and Politics in Plato's Later Works
  • Dominic J. O'Meara
  • Published online:
    25 October 2017
    Print publication:
    05 October 2017
  • Knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, Plato suggests, is important in organizing a human community which aims at happiness. This book investigates this theme in Plato's later works, the Timaeus, Statesman, and Laws. Dominic J. O'Meara proposes fresh readings of these texts, starting from the religious festivals and technical and artistic skills in the context of which Plato elaborates his cosmological and political theories, for example the Greek architect's use of models as applied by Plato in describing the making of the world. O'Meara gives an account of the model of which Plato's world is an image; of the mathematics used in producing the world; and of the relation between the cosmic model and the political science and legislation involved in designing a model state in the Laws. Non-specialist scholars and students will be able to access and profit from the book.

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