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Workshop: Platonist Discourses on Dualism. 1st c. BC to 3rd c. AD
September 5, 2024 @ 9:00 am - September 6, 2024 @ 5:00 pm
Since at least Plato dualism – the idea that there are two distinct types of reality that possibly have different origins – is a central topic of philosophy where it is addressed from a wide range of perspectives: metaphysics, psychology, epistemology, and ethics. In the Imperial Age (27 BC – AD 284) this issue is infused with non-Greek influences and perspectives (e.g. Gnosticism, Hermeticism), hailing mostly from the Eastern part of the Roman empire. Some of these lead to a stronger form of dualism whereby matter and evil are said to arise from a separate evil principle. Towards the end of the Imperial Age and the rise of Neoplatonism this view will be resolutely rejected in favour of a clear-cut monism. Up to now there still exists no true inclusive overview of this concept in the Imperial Age. The principal reason for this is the relatively recent exploration of philosophy in this period as well as the exclusion of sources that are not strictly philosophical. The workshop Platonist Discourses on Dualism. 1st c. BC to 3rd c. AD will bring together an interdisciplinary team of scholars tasked with considering how this can be done.
Programme
Thursday, 5th Sep.
9:00 Introduction
Chair: George Boys-Stones
9:15 Dylan Burns (Amsterdam): Matter and Dualism in Coptic Gnostica
10:45 Christian Wildberg (Pittsburgh): Monism and Dualism in the Corpus Hermeticum
— lunch 12:15 —
Chair: Samuel Boudreau
2:00 Kasra Abdavi Azar (Heidelberg/Leuven): Three, Two, One? Counting Plato’s Principles with Eudorus
3:30 Rareș Marinescu (Toronto): Numenius on Monism
Friday, 6th Sep.
Chair: Ulysse Chaintreuil
10:45 Phillip Horky (Durham): Reality in its Manifestations: Mathematicals in the Philosophy of the Neopythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa
— lunch 12:15 —
1:15 Arianna Piazzalunga (Turin): Soul, matter and evil: is Plutarch’s dualism Platonic?
Chair: Léa Derome
2:45 Lloyd Gerson (Toronto): Platonic Dualism?
4:15 Break
4:30 Denis Robichaud (Notre Dame): Co-Existence and Iamblichus’s Law of Mean Terms
Sponsors: SSHRC, Department of Classics, Department of Philosophy and Collaborative Specialization in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy