W. Norris Clarke, SJ
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823229284
- eISBN:
- 9780823236671
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823229284.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter traces a period in the history of ideas within the broad stream of Neoplatonism as it passes into Christian thought. It focuses on the basic philosophical problem itself, and on tracing ...
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This chapter traces a period in the history of ideas within the broad stream of Neoplatonism as it passes into Christian thought. It focuses on the basic philosophical problem itself, and on tracing out the general types of solutions tried out by different key thinkers from Plato to Saint Thomas. It argues that although large areas of Neoplatonism can be assimilated for the profound enrichment of Christian thought, there is one doctrine that stubbornly resists coherent assimilation and this is the doctrine of the realism of ideas, that the true being of things consists in the pure ideas of them as found in the mind of God.Less
This chapter traces a period in the history of ideas within the broad stream of Neoplatonism as it passes into Christian thought. It focuses on the basic philosophical problem itself, and on tracing out the general types of solutions tried out by different key thinkers from Plato to Saint Thomas. It argues that although large areas of Neoplatonism can be assimilated for the profound enrichment of Christian thought, there is one doctrine that stubbornly resists coherent assimilation and this is the doctrine of the realism of ideas, that the true being of things consists in the pure ideas of them as found in the mind of God.
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar ...
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Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar opposite; both are “beyond being” and the metaphors hitherto thought to disclose the transcendent. They underlie Plato's distinction of a procreative gap between being and becoming. The chiasmus between the Good and chora makes possible their mutual participation in one another. This gap makes possible both phenomenological and cosmological interpretations of Plato. Metaphor is restricted to beings as they appear in this gap through the crossing of metaphor's terms, terms that dwell with, rather than subulate, one another. Hermeneutically, through its“is”we can see something being engendered or determined by that crossing. The book's larger goal is to align the primacy of the Good in Plato and Christian Neoplatonism with the creator God of Genesis and the God of love in the New Testament.Less
Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar opposite; both are “beyond being” and the metaphors hitherto thought to disclose the transcendent. They underlie Plato's distinction of a procreative gap between being and becoming. The chiasmus between the Good and chora makes possible their mutual participation in one another. This gap makes possible both phenomenological and cosmological interpretations of Plato. Metaphor is restricted to beings as they appear in this gap through the crossing of metaphor's terms, terms that dwell with, rather than subulate, one another. Hermeneutically, through its“is”we can see something being engendered or determined by that crossing. The book's larger goal is to align the primacy of the Good in Plato and Christian Neoplatonism with the creator God of Genesis and the God of love in the New Testament.
Stephen H. Daniel
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- March 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780192893895
- eISBN:
- 9780191915260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780192893895.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Berkeley’s doctrine of archetypes explains how God perceives and can have the same ideas as finite minds. His appeal to Christian Neoplatonism opens up a way to understand how the relation of mind, ...
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Berkeley’s doctrine of archetypes explains how God perceives and can have the same ideas as finite minds. His appeal to Christian Neoplatonism opens up a way to understand how the relation of mind, ideas, and their union is modeled on the Cappadocian Church Fathers’ account of the Persons of the Trinity. This way of understanding Berkeley indicates why he, in contrast to Descartes or Locke, thinks that mind (spiritual substance) and ideas (objects of mind) cannot exist or be thought of apart from one another. It also hints at why Gregory of Nyssa’s immaterialism sounds so much like Berkeley’s.Less
Berkeley’s doctrine of archetypes explains how God perceives and can have the same ideas as finite minds. His appeal to Christian Neoplatonism opens up a way to understand how the relation of mind, ideas, and their union is modeled on the Cappadocian Church Fathers’ account of the Persons of the Trinity. This way of understanding Berkeley indicates why he, in contrast to Descartes or Locke, thinks that mind (spiritual substance) and ideas (objects of mind) cannot exist or be thought of apart from one another. It also hints at why Gregory of Nyssa’s immaterialism sounds so much like Berkeley’s.
