Neoplatonism

The paper has two main aims: first, to offer a general overview about Augustine’s concept of corporeal matter, based on a comprehensive
examination of all the occurrences of the Latin lemmas "materia" and "materies" in his works; second, to discuss more in detail the vexed question of Plotinus' influence on Augustine’s conception of matter, in order to highlight that the major meeting points between Augustine and Plotinus rest on a purely literal level, and to rather point out the significant conceptual differences between these two thinkers.

As followers of the Jewish Messiah Yeshua, the Messianic Jewish movement has the task of communicating the divinity of Messiah to the Jewish world. A popular method for recontextualizing the incarnation as a Jewish concept has been to cite ancient Jewish precedents for the idea. This historical-textual approach, as popularized by Daniel Boyarin and others, has significant benefits. However, it also ignores underlying theological and philosophical issues that make the idea of incarnation nonsensical or redundant in the eyes of religious Jewish people. In order to address the objections of religious Jewish people, the Messianic Jewish movement may need to increase its proficiency in theological and philosophical discourse. This paper outlines a second approach to explaining the deity of Messiah, called the Theological-Philosophical approach.

In henadological Platonism, the significance of “the One” is understood to lie, not in an eminent singular entity, but in the modes of unity and the ways of being a unit. The science of units qua units is a systematic ground and counterweight to substance-based ontology, and manifests an organic bond with theology as the science of relation to supra-essential individuals or Gods. Because of the basic nature of unity relative to being, doctrines respecting unity tend to situate themselves as critiques of ontology; they exhibit both an analytical and a soteriological value. For its part, bhakti is not a mere sectarian movement but rather an inquiry at once speculative and practical into the nature of the relationship between the human and the divine. It bridges the diverse genres of ancient Indian thought (including the theophanic/cultic, the epic, along with diverse philosophical perspectives) and displays key commonalities with henadological Platonism. This paper begins the process of identifying these common themes with particular reference to the Bhagavadgītā. Chief among its themes is the distinction between structuring cause and structured mixture, which runs through Platonism from the Phaedo to the doctrine of principles, and which parallels the account of action in the Gītā as freedom independent of result, insofar as the latter pertains to the solidarity of worldly causality heteronomous to the agency of the ātman.

Abū Yaʻqūb al-Sijistānī’s works might be considered as some of the most clear examples of an Ismaī‘lī reading of the Neoplatonic doctrines. In his Kitāb al-Yanābīʻ there is a dichotomy: even if “mediation” is the main characteristic of the present reality, it seems that some kind of “direct” access to the spiritual dimension is possible for all humans at any moment. Both perspectives seem incompatible: if a human being can reach the universal dimension without any intermediation but his own soul, why would he need to “participate” in the daʻwa al-ʼismāʻīliyya?

The famous argument for the existence of God is analyzed with a survey of the Greek and Arabic influences of Avicenna's system.

Turning to the text, The Salvation, ‘’Metaphysics,’’ II. 12, it is stated that ‘’at any one and the same time there cannot be for anything that is possible in itself a cause that is possible ad infinitum’’ (II.12.2). Here he’s saying that a possible being cannot have an infinite amount of causes at the same time. Because if that infinite totality of causes would itself have either an internal cause or an external necessary cause. It can’t be internal, because it would either be (a) necessary, which is not an option because everything internal to that totality is possible; then (b) an internal possible cause – which is not an option because that would make it a part of the totality and a part can’t be a cause of the whole. So if that cause is not internal, then it has to be external. It can’t be possible, because all of the possible causes have been established in that inner totality. Therefore it has to be necessary. He concludes the argument by stating that:
Thus, things existing possibly terminate in a cause existing necessarily, in which case not every effect that exists as something possible will have simultaneously with it a cause that exists as something possible, and so an infinite number of causes existing at a single time is impossible. (II.12.2)
This argument can be considered as a subsidiary conclusion to Avicenna’s main argument for the proof of God’s existence (McGinnis 166-67). There are considered to be four main categories of arguments: (1) the metaphysical proof from necessity; (2) the proof from movement; (3) the proof from causality; (4) the proof from ontology (Netton 172-73). The themes are similar to the discussions on the problem of infinite causal regress as discussed for example in book two of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Aristotle’s Metaphysics. I think that he is essentially concerned with establishing a logical argument that integrates a hierarchy of ontological causality rather than simply natural causality. In that sense, it could be considered similar to the ‘’a posteriori cosmological arguments’’ of the quinque via  of ThomasAquinas (Netton 173).

Research undertaken in Durham University, Faculty of Social Sciences and Health: Department of Archaeology; supervised by Dr Anna Leone.

Viva voce examination held on April 15th, 2016.
Examiners: Prof. Roland R. R. Smith (University of Oxford), Dr Catherine M. Draycott (Durham University).
Outcome: passed forthwith (no corrections; thesis passed unconditionally).

This article deals with the theory of the so-called ‘intelligible Triad’ (esse, vivere, intellegere) to show in what way this theory was developed in Neoplatonism (by Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus) and transformed in the Patristic Thought (in Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Dionysius Areopagita, Maximus the Confessor, John Scott Eriugena),
where this theory was used to describe three main attributes of God as well as mutual relations between three Persons of the Holy Trinity and the structure of the created world and human soul.

This paper examines the Dyonisian and Orphic symbolic and ritual iconographical aspects of a Centuripe vase from Southern Italy from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Measuring 70.5 by 34.5 centimeters, the basic form of the vase is that of a bell krater without handles set on a high foot and surmounted by a domed lid ending in an egg-shaped finial (Richter 188), formed of separate sections that have been assembled in production. The vase has been assembled from broken pieces, showing little surface damage. In order to facilitate description and analysis, two very similar Centuripe vases, one in New York, the other in Princeton, are  referred to.
A.Description of the iconographic and decorative aspects of the vase, which depicts a scene of three woman and a man in a ritual scene. One woman holds a thyrsus and tympaneum and there is a tripod.
B. Analysis of the elements in relation to the history and development of Greek vase art. Mayo has observed that ‘’death, marriage, and the mysteries is a frequent triad in South Italian and Sicilian vase-painting’’ (283). These aspects will be examined, in the context of feminine themes, to see if they can shed light on the imagery and function of the vase.
1. Feminine aspects
2. Marriage aspects
3. Funerary aspects
4. Dyonisian aspects
5. Orphic aspects
C. Interpretation.  Ariadne has often been linked  with Aphrodite (Otto 182-85).  Figure 29 (de Grummond 92)  is a wall painting from Pompeii depicting Dionysus and Ariadne watching a contest between Pan and Eros, aptly illustrating the combination of the worlds of Dionysus and Aphrodite. Figure 30 (Lissarague in Masks 21),  from a fifth century Bell krater, depicting what could be a puberty initiation scene,  illustrates  Dionysus and Ariadne in a ritual context. The Maenad holding the rabbit, a well-known fertility symbol could be an aspect linking Ariadne to Aphrodite. 
The portrait on the Montreal Centuripe vase could serve to indicate that the deceased identified herself with Ariadne, as her features resembles the Ariadne figure on the body. The head can be related to the ascension of Aphrodite in a  role of chthonian goddess (Calinescu in Mayo 143), and possibly related to Ariadne’s divinization after her revival  by Dionysus, where Zeus placed her crown in the heavens (Seyffert 64). As shown in figures 11-14, Centuripe imagery has been related to the Dionysus and Ariadne figures of the frieze of the Villa of Mysteries.

Go here for uncorrected proofs: http://kellenplaxco.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/5/4/26547638/vc_070_04_1277-plaxco.pdf

This article provides an account of Didymus’s subtle attention to theological nuance and invites readers to reconsider his importance for the theological debates of the late fourth century. The polemical shape of Didymus the Blind’s theology of the trinity is underdetermined. This article argues that Didymus responded to Eunomius’s first Apology. The argument takes the shape of a short history of the reception of John 16:14. This verse was used in anti-monarchian tradition to distinguish the Holy Spirit from the Son, but it also led to low pneumatologies that in some cases implied angelomorphic pneumatology. Eunomius’s pneumatology in Apology 25 is a radicalization of this anti-monarchian reading of John 16:14, which Didymus opposed with careful attention to Scripture’s usage of terms for “pouring out.”

The palimpsest manuscript Sin. ar. NF 66 is one of the treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine located in the Sinai Peninsula. Nowadays it consists of a few fragmentary parchment sheets, but originally it was a larger codex of ca. 300 folia. Some of these leaves have been purloined from the Sinai and are now kept in Cambridge, Leipzig, and Saint Petersburg, while others have been lost. The codex contained the Lives of Palestinian monastic Saints in Arabic translation and was copied at the Monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem in the first quarter of the 10th century. It was later brought, under unknown circumstances, to the Sinai. All preserved folia are palimpsests, with scriptiones inferiores in Greek and Christian Palestinian Aramaic. This article focuses on one of the Greek erased texts – a previously unknown classical text in hexameters of mythological content – and offers its editio princeps. Based on an analysis of codicological and palaeographical features, combined with that of linguistic and stylistic elements, it will be suggested that the Sinai hexameters might originate from the Hieroi Logoi in 24 Rhapsodies, i.e. the longest lost Orphic poem we know of.

This article examines the performance context of Synesius of Cyrene’s
(ca. 370–415 CE) On Kingship. Synesius draws heavily on the classical tradition, and also incorporates many elements of Themistius’ philosophical style into his speech. But the work was not delivered before the emperor, as it purports, and hints at the fictionality of its own dramatic situation. These hints are not mere play but fit very closely the rhetorical needs of the circumstances. The performance appears to have been a success.

In the second chapter of De mysteriis,  Iamblichus (AD c.245–325) quotes his interlocutor, Porphyry (AD 234–c.305), as having asked: “what is the sign of the presence of a god, an angel, an archangel, a daemon, or of some archon or a soul”?  With this query, Iamblichus launches into an exhaustive discourse detailing the epiphanies revealed by the aforementioned beings.  When discussing the κρείττονα γενή (“superior classes”), Iamblichus had previously restricted his discourse to the four groups known to so many of the Platonists before him—θεοί (“gods”), δαίμονες (“daimones”), ἥρωες (“heroes”), and ψυχαὶ ἄχρατοι (“pure souls”).  Yet, his response to Porphyry’s question includes αρχάγγελος (“archangels”), άγγελος (“angels”), and two varieties of ἄρκοντος (“archons”).  Although angels were mentioned by Porphyry  and several Middle Platonists,  the inclusion of archons in Neoplatonic hierology is uniquely Iamblichean.  What then is the nature of these archons?  Thus far, studies of Iamblichus have neglected to deal with the issue of the archons in a thorough manner.  The secondary literature that does mention them relegates them either to footnotes or a paragraph at most.  This paper’s purpose is to remedy this gap in scholarship and to explore the origin of the idea and the resulting role of the archons in De mysteriis.  In particular, I will argue that the conventional assignation of both archontic classes as being below the heroes in the hierarchy of the superior classes  is incorrect, and that it can be demonstrated that the cosmic archons are not only ontologically prior to the daimones, but are also identical with the visible gods.

The unique copy of al-Majālis al-sab‘ bayna al-Shaykh wa al-‘Āmirī (Ragıp Paşa Library 1461, ff. 150a-162b) consists of seven sessions including forty-one questions and answers. While the name of al-‘Āmirī (d. 381/992) does not appear in the texts except for the title, we understand from the phrases at the end that the al-Shaykh in the title corresponds to Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037). In this article, I will broadly describe structural characteristics of al-Majālis and examine the historical and geographical possibility of the philosophical debate between al-‘Āmirī and Ibn Sīnā outlined in al-Majālis. Then, I will compare the philosophical approach in the first three sessions of al-Majālis, where the stages of coming of the universe into being are treated, with al-‘Āmirī’s extant works. I can talk two principal conclusions of the article: (i) It was historically and geographically possible that young Ibn Sīnā and his older contemporary al-Āmirī could make the debate told in al-Majālis. (ii) The examination and comparison for the first three sessions of al-Majālis shows that the answers are mostly consistent with the approach of al-‘Āmirī according to his extant works and this leads me to conclude that the one asks questions or comments is Ibn Sīnā while the one answers is al-‘Āmirī.

The final Book of The Mind’s Journey into God is unlike the earlier six in several ways. One is that a substantial portion is quotation from the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite. It is important, although Bonaventure did not know this, that the quotation carries the theology of the great pagan philosopher – theologians: Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and the last of the “successors” of Plato at his Academy in Athens, Damascius. Damascius was driven to Persia with his colleagues by Christian persecution in the 6th century, closing the Neoplatonic Academy. These two considerations require us to think about quotation and the transmission of ideas. We shall do so under the dictum of the Postmodern philosophers: “nothing is repeated identically,” a law medieval theology confirms ceaselessly.
We shall approach this through a series of questions. The first is one we have already asked: Why after the introduction is the peace supposed to be described in this Book never mentioned again? This question leads to the next: What is the theology governing the quotations from the Mystical Theology? This philosophical theology is central for Bonaventure’s mysticism, although he transforms it. What do they derive from their pagan sources? How does placing the Platonic theology within Dionysius’ work transform it? Again how does placing Dionysius in Bonaventure’s text here change it? Finally, what does this continuity and difference between pagan and Christian, Greek Patristic and Medieval Latin tell us about philosophy, theology, and Christianity? These questions we shall consider this week.

CURRENTLY UNDERGOING SOME SERIOUS REVISIONS - WILL RETURN (IN MUCH BETTER SHAPE) SOON!

Against an Orthodoxy of Platonic Theology: Why the Demiurge is not Nous
Jason G. Rheins

In this paper I argue against the thesis that in Plato’s dialogues the Divine Craftsman or Demiurge (dēmiourgos - δημιουργός) represents or is equivalent to Intellect (nous - νοῦς). This claim (abbreviated as ΔΝ throughout) has been central to interpretations of Plato’s theology since antiquity, and it has been nearly universally conceded among Platonists. It has continued to be taken for granted in modern scholarship. Despite their many disagreements about Plato’s theology and cosmology, all the major interpretive camps have accepted the ΔΝ. By explicitly rejecting the ΔΝ, I argue that we can resolve several persistent and long-standing dilemmas that have undermined attempts to reconstruct a coherent Platonic view about the gods or to give an adequate reading of Plato’s late dialogues, especially the Timaeus.
In §I, I briefly introduce the central debates concerning Plato’s views about the nature of the gods and explain how the concepts of immanent and transcendent hypostases can be used to clearly frame these issues. In §II I lay out three key theses endorsed by Plato that any adequate position must be able to embrace. They are: 1. Immanence of Intellect; 2. Distinctness of Demiurge from Soul; 3. Venerability of the World-soul. These Platonic theses are all textually well supported, so rejecting any one of them from a reconstruction of Plato’s theology is not a viable option. I outline and categorize the major views that modern scholars have taken in terms of their commitments with respect to these theses. I show that each camp fails to account for one of the three theses and that they seem jointly incompatible. However, it is only in conjunction with the ΔΝ that the theses become incompatible; without the ΔΝ all three can be endorsed in tandem coherently. Thus I show that it is their further commitment to the ΔΝ that undermines all the major positions.
One of the three theses in particular, what I call the “Immanence of Intellect” principle, has been especially controversial. In §III I present the evidence for the principle and address the most prominent text that has been used as a reason to reject it, Philebus 30a8-b7. This text has been widely misread; I correct the misreading and show that when properly construed the passage provides no evidence for rejecting or attenuating the Immanence of Intellect principle.
In §IV I present several other reasons why the ΔΝ has been embraced, and I reexamine the textual evidence that has been adduced in its support. For instance, interpreters have mistakenly made this assumption on the grounds that the Demiurge is called the best of causes in the Timaeus, while intellect seems to be the cause of all good and generated things in the Philebus. The latter part of that argument is doubly mistaken; intellect is neither presented as the maker of soul (which Plato came to regard as a generated thing in his late dialogues), nor as the cause of all things that come to be. It is only identified as belonging to and being an exemplar of the class of things that are causes/makers of generated things. In all but one instance, these texts fail to provide evidence for the ΔΝ thesis, and in some cases it will be shown that they do not refer to the Demiurge at all. One passage, however, Timaeus 47e5-48a5, does seem to refer to the Demiurge with the term ‘nous’. I will argue that while it refers to the Demiurge by means of the word “nous” and makes an association between the two, it is not a completely clear case of Plato actually identifying the Demiurge with nous. For the sake of argument, I will grant the passage as evidence for ΔΝ, but I will show that in spite of it, the full range of texts that must be considered do not support the ΔΝ thesis.
In §§V several arguments are presented that show that the Demiurge can be equated neither with intellect nor soul. Thus the body of evidence weighing against the ΔΝ, both within the Timaeus and in other works, dwarfs the one solid piece of evidence that stands in its favor.

Barrionuevo, S. J. (2019). El platonismo de Leo Strauss y su recepción neoconservadora. Res Publica. Revista De Historia De Las Ideas Políticas, 22(2), 425-443

RESUMEN: La recepción del pensamiento platónico se torna un elemento clave en el contexto de re-configuración de "los grandes relatos", en tanto constituye uno de los ejes sobre el cual se estructuran una serie de trabajos en torno a la comprensión de nuestro tiempo. En el presente artículo me propongo mostrar que la recuperación del pensamiento platónico en el marco de los debates políticos contempo-ráneos establece una desarticulación de la "lógica política platónica". Para ello analizo la rehabilitación del pensamiento platónico por parte de Leo Strauss y su construcción del "platonismo".

ABSTRACT: The reception of Platonic thought becomes a key element in the context of reconfiguration of "great stories", as it is one of the axes on which a series of works are structured around the understanding of our time. In this paper I intend to show that the recovery of Platonic thinking in the context of contemporary political debates establishes a disarticulation of "Platonic political logic". For this, I analyze the rehabilitation of Platonic thinking by Leo Strauss and his construction of "Platonism".

The paper analyzes the correlation of time and creation in St. Augustine. Building upon researches of recent decades, it subdivides the issue into three topics, which facilitates the treatment of memory as a philosophical and theological problem, and thus enables to deal with the problem of time. First, it is the question about the content of memory, or rather, of its ability to keep some content, which may be called synthetic ability. This question not only clarifies psychological objectives of memory — the possibility to keep impressions, feelings, and images, to bring together and hold whatever experience of thinking — but also exposes any synthesis whatsoever as dependent on the ability of memory to constitute the duration. The second question fo-cuses on the analysis of memory as a guarantee of self-identity of the subject. The human being, taken in her spiritual existence, is viewed by St. Augustine through the Trinitarian schema of «memoria-intelligentia-voluntas», expounded in his treatise On the Trinity. Hypostatized memory is a representation of God the Father who embodies the principle of being within the Trinity. Besides the obvious influence on the further elaboration of the Trinitarian dogma and the doctrine of filioque, this idea of St. Au-gustine reveals an additional anthropological dimension, since the Trinitarian unity implicates the unity of soul, perception and thought. The third aspect conveys the ontological significance of memory, which explicates the nature of creation and its associate mutability. Undoubtedly, the doctrine of memory contains a Platonism, which is inherent in all  Augustinian epistemology. Attempting to clarify the effect of this combination of Platonism and Christianity on the dealing with the problem of time, the author also probes a modern phenomenological interpretation of the doctrine of memoryformulated by J.-L. Marion.

In the thought of Plotinus, the imagination is responsible for the apprehension of the activity of Intellect. If creativity in the arts involves an exercise of the imagination, the image-making power that links sense perception to noetic thought and the nous poietikos, the poetic or creative intellect, then the arts exercise the apprehension of intellectual activity. According to John Dillon in “Plotinus and the Transcendental Imagination,” Plotinus’ conception of the imagination led to the formulation of the imagination as a basis of artistic creativity. In Plotinus, imagination operates on several different levels: it produces images in sense perception, it synthesizes images in dianoetic thought, and it produces images in correspondence with the articulation through logos of noetic thought. The imagination is what connects the intelligible in intellect and the form in sense perception. Plotinus imagines an art which is a product of noetic thought as made possible by the imagination. The primary principle of beauty is Intellect, from which all images should be taken, as facilitated by imagination. Forms of art, like the forms of nature, are the product of Intellect. The production of a work of art is an intellectual or spiritual exercise of the imagination that allows apprehension of Intellect and noesis in nous poietikos. All art is metaphysical, and is an expression of intelligible form in imagination, an expression of an intellectual idea that can be differentiated from sensible form in intellectual apprehension. There are many ways in which the tenets of the thought of Plotinus become currents of art and aesthetic theory as it develops to the present day.

This paper explores key themes and doctrines in the writings of popular Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. It examines and evaluates Rohr’s incarnational worldview. It argues that Rohr’s mysticism must be understood in the light of pagan Neoplatonism. Rohr follows Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism by asserting that God lives in the deepest part of every human being whereas the New Testament teaches that God lives in every person who welcomes Him. God dwells in people by His Holy Spirit when they repent and believe the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection.   https://doi.org/10.19108/KOERS.86.1.2498

The three ancient philosophical introductions translated in this volume flesh out our picture of what it would have been like to sit in a first-year Philosophy course in ancient Alexandria.

Ammonius (AD 445-517/26) set up a new teaching programme in Alexandria with up to six introductions to the philosophy curriculum, which made it far more accessible, and encouraged its spread from Greek to other cultures. This volume's three introductory texts include one by his student Olympiodorus and one each by Olympiodorus' students Elias and David.

Elias' Introductions to Philosophy starts with six definitions of Philosophy, to which David adds replies to the sceptical question whether there is such a thing as Philosophy. Olympiodorus' text translated here is an Introduction to Logic, which is just one of the three introductions he wrote himself.

Damascius’ Problems and Solutions Concerning
First Principles must be one of the most
remarkable philosophical texts written in late
antiquity. It is a tour de force of Neoplatonic
metaphysics which critically examines concepts
such as the causality of a first principle in relation
to the plurality that derives from it, the processes
of remaining, procession and reversion, and the
relationship between being and knowledge (and
much, much more). Readers of English are
fortunate that Ahbel-Rappe has undertaken the
colossal task of producing the first English translation
of this work.

https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/livre/3694-le-parmenide-au-miroir-des-platonismes

Prix Reinach de l'Association des Etudes grecques (2019)

CR :
Philosophie antique (G. Aubry ) : https://journals.openedition.org/philosant/1790
BMCR (R. Matoso) : http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2019/2019-07-27.html

Ao consideramos o discurso cotidiano ou especializado uma forma de comunicação consciente e ordenada segundo a lógica linguística, precisamos considerar suas motivações e interesses, geralmente, submersos aos códigos de linguagem, embora ajam fortemente na constituição da mensagem discursiva. A "comunicação inconsciente" transportada pelo discurso pode informar muitas vezes mais do que a mensagem denotada das palavras.

Il volume è il risultato di una ricerca sull’atteggiamento di medici e filosofi di fronte alla peste, dalle prime reazioni nel ‘300 fino al maturo ‘400, con particolare attenzione all’umanesimo fiorentino e alla figura di Marsilio Ficino. Si è voluto mostrare come l’avvento del morbo abbia profondamente inciso sulla produzione della letteratura filosofica, accelerando l’osmosi tra i saperi e le tendenze culturali, calamitando l’attenzione di molti sull’urgenza medica. La trattazione si concentra sulle opere di Marsilio Ficino, soprattutto sul Consilio contro la pestilentia, pubblicato per la prima volta a Firenze nel 1481 e da allora testo di riferimento per la tradizione posteriore. Attraverso l’analisi delle fonti e della fortuna di quest’opera si possono rileggere le questioni fondamentali che sono al centro della letteratura medico-filosofica contro la peste. In Appendice si presenta un’edizione accompagnata da alcune annotazioni critiche, con un Glossario essenziale di termini notevoli.

In this article I investigate the origins and the main stages in the development of the doctrine of self-diffusion of the Good in ancient philosophy, patristics and medieval Scholasticism. The first formulation of the idea of the Good as a universal principle, which is not only the final goal of all things, but also bestows being on all things and renders them
capable of cognition, is given by Plato in the Republic. This doctrine of the Good came to be adopted and further reinterpreted both in the ancient philosophy and Christian theology. Here I propose my own classification of the two main forms (or versions) of the concept
of self-diffusion of the Good, ‘demiurgic’ and ‘emanational’, and identifies their respective attributes when applied in the analysis of the surviving works of the philosophers. I have shown that in Christian patristic and medieval thinking it is the first, or ‘demiurgic’, variant of this doctrine that dominates the discourse, since the goodness of the Creator is commonly regarded as the main reason for creating the world, and his bestowing of goodness on all things is viewed as an act of free will, which presupposes communication of the Good by way of imitation and participation. The ‘emanational’ version of the concept of self-diffusion of the Good, on the other hand, was characteristic of Neoplatonism, and as such was adopted by Christian thinkers only to a limited degree: it was applied almost exclusively to justify the existence of the three consubstantial and coeternal hypostases in one God.

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. A Source for Features of the Ascent in The Mountain and the Valley?
When I first read The Mountain and the Valley my memory was pushed back to parts of the passage I insert here from Ibn Tufayl Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale. That Ernest Buckler should have carried features of the mysticism of Ibn Tufayl into his novel may seem unlikely. However, like the Hellenes, Buckler is a philosopher mystic and Islamic mysticism is especially tied into philosophy. Those of you acquainted with the writings of al-Fārābī (870-950), Ibn Sīnā (called Avicenna by the Latins, 980-1037) and al-Ghazālī (1058-1111), Ibn Rushd (died 1198, called by the Latins, “Averroes” and “The Commentator”), will hear echoes of their teachings in Ibn Tufyal (c. 1105- 1185). Lenn Goodman is correct to say in his introduction that for these Islamic philosophical mystics and mystical philosophers “nothing revealed in a beatific experience can contradict the truths we learn through the use of reason”. The inverse is also true: nothing rigorously demonstrated through the use of reason can contradict the truths of prophecy. Thomas Aquinas would say the same.
Ibn Tufayl was attached to both the occidental (rational) and the oriental (mystical) Arabic philosophies. He had introduced Ibn Rushd (Averroes) to the Caliph, was succeeded by Averroes as court physician, and was behind the commissioning of Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle.
Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was widely influential. It had a large following in the Arab world, was summarized to the Royal Society in England in 1672 and in the 18th and 19th centuries became a best seller in the West. Translated to English and Dutch in the first decade of the 18th century, it played a role in the European Enlightenment (see Samar Attar, The Vital Roots of the European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl’s Influence , Lexington Books, 2007). Hayy is “the man of reason,” whose most well-known appearance is in Robinson Crusoe, and in the idea of the tabula rasa, it enables an escape from the framework imposed by the Augustinian opposition of nature and grace and a revival of Aristotelian philosophy.
At the level of fundamentals there is much in common between The Mountain and the Valley and Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. In the latter, there is a step by step ascent by way of a correspondence between individual, social, philosophical, mystical and religious developments which is represented as inherent to the cosmic structure. However, crucially “wide awake” (the name of the solitary who makes the ascent) cannot live in the social world. He attempts to bring enlightenment to it but is rejected and forced to flee back to his island.
Suggesting any connection between the two works is somewhat daring and it is clear that there is no identical repetition but there are images and concepts and programmatic elements in common. Enough I judge to make me suggest that reading this will be a worthwhile for some of you.