Full Download Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles. - Ahbel-Rappe, Sara. | ePub Online

Oxford Scholarship Online 2010. Genre/Form: Electronic resource Additional Physical Format: Print version:Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles.Oxford Scholarship Online 2010(DLC) 2009022872 Material Type: Document, Internet resource Document Type: Internet Resource, Computer File All Authors / Contributors: Ahbel-Rappe, Sara. ISBN: 1282775987 9781282775985 9780199722310 0199722315 OCLC Number: 729023241 Description: 1 online resource (560). Contents: Cover -- Contents -- Prolegomenon -- Note on the Translation -- Abbreviations -- Introduction to the Life and Philosophy of Damascius -- Translation Of Damascius Problems And Solutions Concerning First Principles -- Part One. On The Ineffable -- Section I. On The Ineffable -- Chapter 1. On the Ineffable and Its Relationship to All Things -- Chapter 2. The Transcendence of the Ineffable -- Chapter 3. Our Affinity With the Ineffable -- Chapter 4. Speculation Concerning the Ineffable -- Chapter 5. On Plato and the Language of Metaphysics -- Chapter 6. That the One Is Unknowable -- Chapter 7. On the Complete Overturning of All Discourse Concerning the Ineffable -- Chapter 8. Three Questions Concerning the Ineffable Qua Its Status As First Principle -- Section II. Ascent To The First Principle -- Chapter 9. First Method: Self-Sufficiency As the Criterion -- Chapter 10. Nature As a First Principle -- Chapter 11. The Irrational Soul -- Chapter 12. The Rational Soul and Intellect -- Chapter 13. The One Is Not the First Principle -- Chapter 14. Second Method of Ascent: From the Potential to the Actual -- Chapter 15. Digression: Does Irrational Soul Move Itself? -- Chapter 16. Irrational Soul and the Living Being -- Chapter 17. Self-Motion Defined -- Chapter 18. The Degrees and Kinds of Self-Motion -- Chapter 19. The Self-Mover Is Not the First Principle -- Chapter 20. Intellect Is Not the First Principle -- Chapter 21. Being Is Not the First Principle -- Chapter 22. The One As the First Principle -- Chapter 23. Third Method of Ascent: The World As First Principle -- Chapter 24. The Unmanifest Diacosm Is Not the First Principle -- Part Two. On The One -- Section III. On The One And On Knowledge Of The One -- Chapter 25. Is There a Principle That Mediates Between the One and the Ineffable? -- Chapter 26. The One Cannot Be Known -- Chapter 27. Cognitive Reversion Does Not Bring About Knowledge of the One -- Chapter 28. Excursus on Multiplicity -- Chapter 29. Unitary Knowledge -- Section IV. On The One And All Things -- Chapter 30. Three Questions and Answer to the Third Question -- Chapter 31. Answer to the Second Question, Is the One All Things Equally? -- Chapter 32. Answer to the First Question, How Is the One All Things? -- Chapter 33. The One-All Is Both All-Inclusive and Determinate -- Section V. On Procession From The One -- Chapter 34. On the First Differentiation -- Chapter 35. On the Origin of Distinction -- Chapter 36. The One Is Neither In All Things Nor Is It Before All Things -- Section VI. The Causality Of The One -- Chapter 37. Questions About the Cause of Differentiation -- Chapter 38. Chaldean and Iamblichean Language Concerning the Cause of Differentiation From the One -- Chapter 39. Doctrine of the Chaldeans Applied to the OneS Procession -- Chapter 40. The One-All and Its Relationship to All Things -- Chapter 41. Conclusions About the One -- Chapter 42. The Three Henads As Remaining, Procession, and Reversion -- Section VII. On The Merits Of Iamblichus Position Concerning The Number Of Principles -- Chapter 43. On the Number of Principles Before the Intelligible Triad -- Chapter 44. Arguments on Behalf of Iamblichus Position -- Chapter 45. Arguments on Behalf of Iamblichus and Contra Iamblich. Series Title: AAR religion in translation. Abstract: Damascius was head of the Neoplatonist academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut its doors forever in 529. His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy. Its survey of Neoplatonist metaphysics, discussion of transcendence, and compendium of late antique theologies, make it unique among all extant works of late antique philosophy. It has never before been translated into English. The Problems and Solutions exhibits a thorough?going critique of Proclean metaphysics, starting with the principle that all that exists proceeds from a single cause, proceeding to critique the Proclean triadic view of procession and reversion, and severely undermining the status of intellectual reversion in establishing being as the intelligible object. Damascius investigates the internal contradictions lurking within the theory of descent as a whole, showing that similarity of cause and effect is vitiated in the case of processions where one order (e.g. intellect) gives rise to an entirely different order (e.g. soul). Neoplatonism as a speculative metaphysics posits the One as the exotic or extopic explanans for plurality, conceived as immediate, present to hand, and therefore requiring explanation. Damascius shifts the perspective of his metaphysics: he struggles to create a metaphysical discourse that accommodates, insofar as language is sufficient, the ultimate principle of reality. After all, how coherent is a metaphysical system that bases itself on the Ineffable as a first principle? Instead of creating an objective ontology, Damascius writes ever mindful of the limitations of dialectic, and of the pitfalls and snares inherent in the very structure of metaphysical discourse.