Greek Philosophy and Christian Apologetics

LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2015

This work looks at the main themes, concepts and lead figures of the Hellenic philosophical tradition that not only influenced the Greek and then Latin world in antiquity, but also had a lasting influence on intellectual and theological development in the West right up until the Age of Enlightenment. To this end, the focus is on the Socratic tradition, through Plato and then Aristotle, and then the Stoic tradition whose strong imprint can be found on early Christianity, representing the core seed of Western theological evolution via Judaism, Christianity and then Islam.

2001

'Middle' Platonism is founded in an attempt to circumvent the skeptical argument from disagreement by establishing arguments for (and explanations of) the (likely) authority of Plato. These arguments develop earlier work in the allegorical interpretation of ancient theological traditions by the Stoics, and underpin the development of 'orthodoxy' as a normative category in Christian thought.

Paper compares Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates with the Christian understanding of creation, time, epistemology, and the soul. It also explores the influence of Stoicism in a few of Paul's writings. Keywords: Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, World Soul, motion, motility, mutable, immutable, eternal.

Keynote paper 10th London Ancient Science Conference, Institute of Classical Studies, University College London, Inst, 2016

There is a striking passage in Plato’s Laws that claims “it’s a risk to appeal to prayer, if you lack intelligence” (euchêi chrêsthai sphaleron einai noun mê kektêmenon, 688b6-7). In other words, what you wish for in your prayers should be supported by your rational judgement (phronêsei, 687e7-8). This was, I believe, axiomatic for Plato from his youth, and it seems that Socrates held the same position from his youth: he claims in the Crito (46b) that he is the kind of man who has always been (ou monon nun, alla kai aei) persuaded by the argument (logôi) that on reflection seemed best to him (logizomenôi beltistos phainêtai). Although Socrates claims in the Apology that God has instructed him by means of oracles, dreams, and other forms of divine manifestation that he should practise philosophy (Apology 33c; 29d; 38a), there is nothing in this or other Socratic encounters with the divine to suggest that he believed “supernatural” beings could or would counter the laws of nature. For both Plato and Socrates, the gods are by nature good (Republic 379b) and perfect (381b), and thus, like “natural” laws, they do not change. Prayers and sacrifices offered up with the aim of changing a god’s behavior are thus useless. The position of Plato and Socrates thus accords with the standard naturalist interpretation of the Presocratics—that they believed the world functioned entirely according to natural laws. I agree with this interpretation, but I am nonetheless intrigued by the question of what the early Greek philosophers thought they were doing when they entered a temple to pray and/or sacrifice to the gods. We must consider it more than probable that they did so, notwithstanding their bold and revolutionary thesis. It is highly unlikely that the early Greek philosophers (before 450 BC) would have even entertained notions that we associate with atheism. In this regard, I tend to agree with Andrew Gregory’s claim in his recent book The Presocratics and the Supernatural (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) that “not only could presocratic intellectuals devise their own theologies apart from the Greek religious tradition, they could devise their own means of prayer and notions of piety as well, entirely in accord with their naturalistic theologies” (109). But what were those means of prayer and notions of piety? In this paper I’ll argue that the answer lies in the strong similarity between the Presocratics and the Platonic texts cited above. In both instances, it is by seeing the connection of phusis with the divine that we gain both a nous of our own and a model to follow—and thus the capacity to act rationally and piously, by conforming our actions to the divine order of the universe. I’ll thus be examining in context a number of the early Greek natural philosophers, but also, in context, Socrates famous “autobiographical” passage in the Phaedo (96a-99d) in which Socrates describes his enthusiasm for natural philosophy (peri phuseôs historia) when he was young (neos ôn, 96a6). We’ll see that in many respects the natural philosophers were all engaged in a kind of theologia naturalis, but perhaps closer to what Thomas Nagel calls natural teleology. Finally, I’ll examine in context the notion and roles of hymns.

Scrinium. Т. 7–8: Ars Christiana. In memoriam Michail F. Murianov (21.XI.1928–6.VI.1995). Edited by R. Krivko, B. Lourié, and A. Orlov (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2011–2012) Part One. Р. 102-13, 2012

The Great Russian Encyclopaedia, 2007

A very brief and unorthodox history of Greek philosophy tries to demonstrate how the elimination of some persistent false stereotypes in the historiography of ancient philosophy will result in a different picture and in a different narrative about what happened in Archaic and Classical periods in Greek thought. The stereotypes that we eliminate in this sketch are the following: 1) The pseudo-historical and misleading concept of ‘Presocratics’. 2) Plato-centrism: the enormous exaggeration of the originality of Plato's basic doctrines and the denial of their archaic Pythagorean and Eleatic roots of Platonism. 3) Pseudo-historical evolutionism: focusing on (often imaginary) historical change and ‘development’ and neglect for persistent paradigms and stable forms of ancient thought; neglect for typological considerations which are based on conceptual schemes, and not on words. 4) Underestimation of the Scientific revolution in 6th century Miletus and the wrong denial by Popper and his followers of its empirical non-speculative method (inferential proofs from available evidence tekmeria, tekmairesthai). 5) Pseudo-historical denial (starting with Burnet 1892) of the existence of metaphysical idealism in Preplatonic Greek philosophy which is incomparably more archaic than the revolutionary new Milesian naturalism. Contrary to the deceptive evolutionist story of ‘discovery’ of the first principles in Aristotle’s Alpha book of Metaphysics, the Milesians should not be presented as primitive thinkers who ‘who have not yet’ discovered the moving cause (i.e. god distinct from matter), they rather should be presented as more advanced thinkers who ‘have already dismissed’ the moving cause together with archaic creationism and replaced the anthropomorphic gods of mythopoetic cosmogonies with a revolutionary concept of self-evolving ‘nature’ (physis) unknown before them. Greek philosophy and science had two ‘beginnings’ in the 6 century B.C. initiated by two intellectual giants: Anaximander in the East (the father of naturalistic monism), and Pythagoras in the West, the father of speculative idealist metaphysics. For the next 1000 years or so the two mainstream traditions of Greek thought were engaged in incessant ‘gigantomachia over being’ described in Plato’s Sophist. In the second half of the 5th century the naturalistic Ionian and the mentalist Italian traditions were joined by the new Attic dialectical tradition, that served both camps (Socrates versus Sophists).