Emilie Kutash

S C H U LT Z ( J . ) , WI L B E RD I NG ( J . ) (edd.) Women and the Female in
Neoplatonism. (Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic
Tradition 30.) Pp. xiv + 312. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. Cased,
€135. ISBN: 978-90-04-51046-3.

Victorio Hosle called Hans Jonas "the last German philosopher." Jonas' Memoirs connect changing philosophical priorities with devastating life events. The shock of learning of his former mentor, Heidegger's, affiliation to National Socialism, his exile from Germany and his mother's death in Auschwitz, made the conceptual universe of German Idealism, Husserl and Heidegger, seem nihilistic and akin to a Gnostic denigration of worldliness. The brutal wartime realities exposed a callous removal from nature and any meaningful humanism. After soldiering in the war with "Maccabean rage," he subsequently created his philosophical biology of organism, one which respected the corporeal, metabolic basis of life. His consequent innovations in Environmental and Medical Ethics had an enormous impact on the German scholarly world. Jonas retained a lifelong attachment to German culture and "saved" German philosophy by making critical amendments. Later in life he wrote in German, spent a sabbatical year in Germany, received the medal of honor from the Federal Republic of Germany and honorary doctorates from several German universities. The "German" Jonas brought a respect for ontology and nature to a philosophy that was prone to sterile abstractions. The life-affirming "Jewish" Jonas restored an ethical mandate for responsibility for the future of the planet and humankind to a bereft ethics. "Ever since the Nazi Holocaust it is Western civilization that is on trial." 1 Emil Fackenheim

Dreams have an aura of mystery. To the Talmudist they are oracular. For Freud they represent a dark unknown: the drive dominated cauldron of unconscious desire. Babylonian Sura and Vienna were both Diaspora for the authors of canonical texts on dream interpretation. Remarkably, both Freud and the Talmud brought similar assumptions to this obscure playing field: Dreams hide a "truly real" but deferred meaning, they are polysemic and there are invariant symbols encrypted in their condensed "plastic" imagery. These assumptions allowed ancient interpreters to predict future events and psychoanalysts to uncover past infantile wishes and psychosexual conflict. A "hermeneutics of suspicion" resulted in techniques that empowered an enfranchised interpreter to "cure" and ameliorate the dream's meanings and portents.

Chôra-le «cratère à mélanger» maternel, vannant et secouant de Platon-remplit «l'écart explicatif» entre les paradigmes formels «intelligibles et toujours existants» (48E5) et un monde encosmique «généré et visible». Proclus traite la gamme polysémique des termes utilisés par Platon pour chôra : hypodochê (réceptacle), kratêr (cratère à mélanger), etc., comme désignant des forces actives dans un univers où la sympathie cosmique règne, à partir des plus élevées, jusqu'aux plus basses manifestations de l' «Un» transcendant. L'univers proclusien est un «hénothéisme», dans lequel une «unité» dominante surgit sur la totalité de l'Être et du Devenir. Chôra permet à la fois au monde immatériel et au monde matériel de recevoir, de manière appropriée à chacun, les mêmes dons transcendants que leurs homologues intellectifs-intelligibles supérieurs. aucun niveau de la réalité n'est dépourvu de cette donation. La réceptivité (hypodochê), indéterminée, mais toujours active, est présente à tous les niveaux. L'âme reçoit l'intellect, la temporalité reçoit le temps monadique, la matière reçoit la structure géométrique polyédrique, etc. Chôra n'est pas l'équivalent de la matière, mais permet à la matière d'être imprimée par des paradigmes formels. Dans son rôle de «cratère à mélanger», elle protège la matière de sa potentielle itérabilité et dissolution infinie. Dans l'univers proclusien, le Bien atteint la dernière et la plus extrême de ses limites, il est espace et lieu, recevant à la fois l'expansivité et une capacité à donner place à la forme pour qu'elle puisse s'imposer à la matière. après tout, les dons lui sont accordés depuis la plus haute hypostase, celle de la Limite et de l'illimité, premier niveau après l'Un lui-même. Vitale pour la création, la Chôra est alors la «mère» de tout. il n'est donc pas étonnant que, comme nous le dit Proclus, la chôra soit, en fait, la déesse Rhéa. En hommage à la littérature révélatrice antique, comme les Oracles chaldaïques, Homère et Hésiode, Proclus fournit une élucidation non seulement philosophique, mais aussi théologique, de la chôra. À la différence de Platon, il théologise la Physique.

L'A. suggere que Platon s'est approprie des tropes de la physique d'Anaxagore et les a adaptes a un nouvel usage dans la philosophie. Au cours de cette tentative une problematique completement nouvelle a ete introduite dans la philosophie. En examinant cette transposition des tropes d'Anaxagore par Platon, l'A. demontre la capacite des textes a produire des matrices nouvelles de signification a partir de la creation ancienne des mots

There is an analogy between two types of liminality: the geographic or cultural ‘outside’ space of the Marrano Jew, alienated from his/her original religion and the one he or she has been forced to adopt, and, a philosophical position that is outside of both Athens and Jerusalem. Derrida finds and re-finds ‘h’ors- texte’, an ‘internal desert’, a ‘secret’ outside place: alien to both the western philosophical tradition and the Hebraic archive. In this liminal space he questions the otherness of the French language to which he was acculturated, and, in a turn to a less discursive modality, autobiography, finds, in the words of Helene Cixous, “the Jew-who-doesn’t know-that-he-is”. Derrida’s galut (exile) is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It is a private place outside of all discourse, which he claims, is inevitably ethnocentric. In inhabiting this outside space, he exercises the prerogative of a Marrano, equipped to critique the French language of his acculturation and the western philosoph...

Proclus' commentary on Plato's "Timaeus" is perhaps the most important surviving Neoplatonic commentary. In it Proclus contemplates nature's mysterious origins and at the same time employs the deductive rigour required to address perennial philosophical questions. Nature, for him, is both divine and mathematically transparent. He renders theories of Time, Eternity, Providence, Evil, Soul and Intellect and constructs an elaborate ontology that includes mathematics and astronomy. He gives ample play to pagan theology too, frequently lapsing into the arcane language of the "Chaldaean Oracles". "Ten Gifts of the Demiurge" is an essential companion to this rich but complex and densely wrought text, providing an analysis of its arguments and showing that it, like the cosmos Proclus reveres, is a living coherent whole. The book provides aides to understanding Proclus' work within the complex background of Neoplatonic philosophy, familiarising the reader with the political context of the Athenian school, analysing Proclus' key terminology, and giving background to the philosophical arguments and ancient sciences upon which Proclus draws. Above all, it helps the reader appreciate the varicoloured light that Proclus sheds on the secrets of nature.

... Barbara Sattler takes on the issue of how the model to which the Demiurge looks for guidance, which is rational and reliant on ... and anomaly allows for biomorphological expression of beauty, much in the same vein as current architectural approaches such as Greg Lynn 1990's ...

The idea that mythos and logos are incompatible, and that truth is a product of scientific and dialectical thinking, was certainly disproven by later Platonic philosophers. Deploying the works of Hesiod and Homer, Homeric Hymns and other such literature, they considered myth a valuable and significant augment to philosophical discourse. Plato’s denigration of myth gave his followers an incentive to read myth as allegory. The Stoics and first-century philosophers such as Philo, treated allegory as a legitimate interpretive strategy. The Middle Platonists incorporated myth, for example, deifying the Monad and Dyad, as did 2nd century Platonists. Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris (2nd century CE), for example, equates Isis and Osiris with form and matter: the god (Osiris) sows in matter (Isis) logoi (forms or ideas) from himself (De Iside. 372F). Porphyry’s allegorizing of Plato’s Cave of the Nymphs is another example. Plotinus is a strong influence on how the late Neoplatonists regarded myth...

Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgments x
1 Introduction: “To Whom Death Never Comes” 1
2 Goddess Prototypes: The Classical Literature 17
3 The Goddesses of Philosophy: The Literature of Later Antiquity 37
4 Virgin, Erotic Temptress, Mother and Cosmic Womb 53
5 Dualism and the Mediating Goddess 73
6 “The Goddess of the Triple Ways”: Triads and Trinities 89
7 Naming the Goddess: Geopolitics and the Intertranslation of Names 107
8 Asherah, Sophia, Shekhinah: Are They Hebrew Goddesses? 123
9 Did Christianity Make the Goddess Disappear? 139
10 Personifying Nature and Wisdom: The Medieval and Early Modern Goddess 155
11 New Mythologies of Gender: Feminists, Psychoanalysts, Epistemologists 171
12 The Goddess Interpreted 189
Notes 196
Select Bibliography 225
Index 232
9780567697394_

This is a paper that I was invited to give in September, 2019 in a conference sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology in Warsaw ,Poland. The conference was "The Marrano Phenomena: Jewish 'Hidden Tradition' and Modernity. All comments welcomed.

The idea that mythos and logos are incompatible, and that truth is a product of scientific and dialectical thinking, was certainly disproven by later Platonic philosophers. Deploying the works of Hesiod and Homer, Homeric Hymns and other such literature, they considered myth a valuable and significant augment to philosophical discourse. Plato's denigration of myth gave his followers an incentive to read myth as allegory. The Stoics and first-century philosophers such as Philo, treated allegory as a legitimate in-terpretive strategy. The Middle Platonists incorporated myth, for example, deifying the Monad and Dyad, as did 2nd century Platonists. Plutarch's Isis and Osiris (2nd century CE), for example, equates Isis and Osiris with form and matter: the god (Osiris) sows in matter (Isis) logoi (forms or ideas) from himself (De Iside. 372F). Porphyry's allegoriz-ing of Plato's Cave of the Nymphs is another example. Plotinus is a strong influence on how the late Neoplatonists regarded myth. This paper argues that these philosophers' use of allegory prepared the way for the Neoplatonists treatment of myth as inspired symbolism. Proclus and Syrianus, as reported by Hermias, did something more extreme by using mythology to construct inspired symbolic argument. Mythos becomes another type of logos, a vehicle for representing the invisible world of being, another kind of truth that can even serve a function in anagogic ascent.

The idea that mythos and logos are incompatible, and that truth is a product of scientific and dialectical thinking, was certainly disproven by later Platonic philosophers. Deploying the works of Hesiod and Homer, Homeric Hymns and other such literature, they considered myth a valuable and significant augment to philosophical discourse. Plato's denigration of myth gave his followers an incentive to read myth as allegory. The Stoics and first-century philosophers such as Philo, treated allegory as a legitimate in-terpretive strategy. The Middle Platonists incorporated myth, for example, deifying the Monad and Dyad, as did 2nd century Platonists. Plutarch's Isis and Osiris (2nd century CE), for example, equates Isis and Osiris with form and matter: the god (Osiris) sows in matter (Isis) logoi (forms or ideas) from himself (De Iside. 372F). Porphyry's allegoriz-ing of Plato's Cave of the Nymphs is another example. Plotinus is a strong influence on how the late Neoplatonists regarded myth. This paper argues that these philosophers' use of allegory prepared the way for the Neoplatonists treatment of myth as inspired symbolism. Proclus and Syrianus, as reported by Hermias, did something more extreme by using mythology to construct inspired symbolic argument. Mythos becomes another type of logos, a vehicle for representing the invisible world of being, another kind of truth that can even serve a function in anagogic ascent.

Abstract: There is an analogy between two types of liminality: the geographic or cultural ‘outside’space of the Marrano Jew, alienated from his/her original religion and the one he or she has been
forced to adopt, and, a philosophical position that is outside of both Athens and Jerusalem. Derridafinds and re-finds ‘h’ors- texte’, an ‘internal desert’, a ‘secret’ outside place: alien to both the westernphilosophical tradition and the Hebraic archive. In this liminal space he questions the otherness ofthe French language to which he was acculturated, and, in a turn to a less discursive modality,autobiography, finds, in the words of Helene Cixous, “the Jew-who-doesn’t know-that-he-is”.Derrida’s galut (exile) is neither Hebrew nor Greek. It is a private place outside of all discourse,which he claims, is inevitably ethnocentric. In inhabiting this outside space, he exercises theprerogative of a Marrano, equipped to critique the French language of his acculturation and thewestern philosophy of the scholars. French and Hebrew are irreconcilable binaries, westernphilosophy and his Hebrew legacy is as well. These issues will be discussed in this paper with reference to Monolingualism of the Other and Archive Fever as they augment some of his earlier work,
Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena.

Keywords: Derrida; philosophical Marrano; liminal; archive; Hebrew; Greek; Monolingualism

Sarah Wear's volume consists largely of passages harvested from Proclus (with a few from Damascius), tagged by Proclus's reference to his teacher and beloved mentor, Syrianus. The premise of the book is that these passages contain doctrine that can be directly attributed to Syrianus. Lloyd Gerson, in a review of the volume that grew out of a 2006 colloquium on Syrianus,1 reminds us that the period between Iamblichus (c.245-325C.E.) and Proclus (412-485C.E.) presents the scholar with lacunae that are difficult to fill in. Syrianus, the link between the founder of the Athenian academy and Proclus, headed the Athenian school from 432-437. He was a key promulgator of Athenian school doctrine and a significant influence on the Alexandrian School Scholarchs such as Ammonius, Philoponus, Olympiodorus, Simplicius and Damascius. With these credentials, it would be mistaken to assume that Syrianus' core doctrines are confined to what is known to be his extant writings. Unresolved scholarly debate still centers around which works mentioned in the Suida (IV 478, 21) were written by Proclus and which were those of Syrianus. Both may have written works with the same name.2 It is equally difficult to establish with certainty whether Proclus elaborated upon Syrianus'lectures and whether they were, as is suspected, unwritten teachings. Syrianus' commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, 3 while the major portion of extant text, might still be only a minor glimpse into his larger philosophy. A good course of action in trying to recreate Syrianus' doctrine is that taken by Wear. She has meticulously mined Proclus' texts for doctrines directly attributable to his teacher. Disentangling Syrianus as independent from the Gordian knot that entangles Proclus and Syrianus is a daunting project. Wear has undertaken and accomplished this task within the boundaries of possibility. Her extracts are a valuable proof-text, making it possible to piece together a more probable account of Syrianus' teaching, while remaining within the confines of plausible documentation. Wear had done much of the spadework for this volume in her PhD thesis from Trinity College in 2005, under the guidance of John Dillon. This, if nothing else, guarantees that the project has received the highest scholarly imprimatur.

It is in the obscure terrain between the life- world of Greek science and technology and the language of its metaphysics, that one sees the attempts of early navigators and map makers to conceptualize what lies beyond the "oikoumene”. This interest; later effects astronomy in terms of what is “beyond the heavens” ("ezo tes ouranos") and then in metaphysics the advent of a “Beyond Being” (epekeina tes ousias) an ideal Beyond proposed by Plato in Republic 509  and one which is to eventually become a mainstay of NeoPlatonism. Thus the "fundamental act" that Romm describes in the above quote was not only taken up with geographical interest, but is one which can be seen as a preparatory gesture in a culture readying itself for the advent of metaphysics, a gesture which continued to make itself felt up until the last days of the Ancient Academy in the fifth century C.E..  The threads of the intellectual history of Beyond Being find technological roots in the increasingly sophisticated acts of representation that one finds in early cartography, astronomy, and cosmology, one of which will be to mark boundaries around the heavens themselves and to call that Being.

ABSTRACT: ‘Sparks’of Judeity appear everywhere within Derrida’s discourse.They illuminate previous gnomic terminology and propel future focus. His early
deconstruction of Husserl’s pseudo-intuitive epoché in 1964, for example, accrues added significance when seen as a pseudo-interiority in The Gift of Death in contrast to the silent avowal of Kierkegaard’s Abraham in the moment of the
Akedah. Levinas's “ethics beyond ethics” allows Derrida to launch a second sailing after deconstruction. In the autobiographical “Circumfession,” Derrida assumes an inner life hors-texte and, sans exemplarity, a personal election as a
Jew. In “Abraham, the Other,” he claims a “hyper-ethical, hyper-political, hyper-philosophical responsibility…that burns at the most irridescent core of what calls itself ‘jew.’” Derrida’s teshuvah finds its full fruition in later political writings
such as “Force of Law,” enacting a new equation: deconstruction is justice” (243). "!