In this paper I show that Proclus is an adherent of the Classical Model of Science as set out elsewhere in this issue (de Jong and Betti 2008), and that he adjusts certain conditions of the Model to his Neoplatonic epistemology and metaphysics. In order to show this, I develop a case study concerning philosophy of nature, which, despite its unstable subject matter, Proclus considers to be a science. To give this science a firm foundation Proclus distills from Plato’s Timaeus (...) the basic concepts Being and Becoming and a number of basic propositions, among others the quasi-definitions of the basic concepts. He subsequently explains the use of these quasi-definitions, that are actually epistemic guides, in such a way that he obtains a connection between a rational and an empirical approach to the natural world. A crucial task in establishing the connection is performed by the faculty of doxa and by geometrical conversion. The result is that Proclus secures a universal, necessary and known foundation for all of philosophy of nature. (shrink)

According to Philoponus, the activity of drawing syllogisms is a dynamic operation. Following the classical idea that actions are specified by their objects and habitual powers by their actions, Philoponus concludes that only a dynamic power can elicit the act of syllogizing. This power is identified with discursive reasoning (dianoia). Imagination, on the contrary, is a static power, that cannot elicit that particular motion of drawing a syllogistic inference. The issue, however, is not entirely uncontroversial, because Ammonius maintains that sophistical (...) syllogisms can only be formed by imagination, since they involve “empty concepts” as terms and only imagination can form such concepts. In this paper I will reconstruct Philoponus’ and Ammonius’ theories about the “activity” of syllogizing, and I shall explain how Philoponus can deal with sophistical syllogisms in a consistent way. (shrink)

In this study, we aim to analyze the notions of “pragmatic” and “commatic” we encounter in what we highlight to be a process of canonization of style appropriate to each content and theological level since Porphyry. This research is divided into three parts: primarily, we investigate the sense in which the Neoplatonists use the adjective “commatic”, which includes on the one hand (1) defining what the Neoplatonists mean by “unity of meaning”, and on the other hand distinguishing between a “woven” (...) and continuous style and a “disjointed” and broken style, collecting the stylistic criticisms made by the Neoplatonists of the ancient texts; then (2) we seek to establish the areas of application of the “commatic” style in Neoplatonic discourse, distinguishing on the one hand inspired and ethical discourse, and on the other hand clear and sharp dialectical discourse, bordering on that which eludes philosophical demonstration, namely, the ἀσάφεια; finally (3), we aim to study the “pragmatic” style associated with each theological content in order to highlight its corresponding style and vocabulary. The present research stems from the need to show how behind the lexical and structural choices of the Neoplatonic writings there is a precise theory of style, produced by a process of aesthetic canonization that emerges clearly as early as Porphyry’s rhetorical fragments and from Neoplatonic exegetical activity on rhetorical works, as well as from an innumerable amount of references to a rhetorical tradition on the period and its parts, the commata and côla, which the Neoplatonists, as this study aims to show, master and apply on their own structuring and formalization of theological content. (shrink)