Lloyd P Gerson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3680978 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lloyd P Gerson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lloyd P |
| FAMILY NAME | Gerson |
| SIGNATURE | GERSON L P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7406-8022 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Plato's Moral Realism
Intuition in Plato and the Platonic tradition
In this paper, I examine what is for Plato and all those who follow in his footsteps the ne plus ultra of cognition, namely, intuition (nous or noēsis). This is the paradigm of cognition, meaning that all forms of human (and even animal) cognition are inferior manifestations of this. Intuition is mental seeing, analogous to physical seeing. Among embodied souls, it is seeing a unity of some sort manifested in some diversity or plurality. Thus, so…
The New Cambridge Companion to Plotinus
Plotinus stands at a crossroads in ancient philosophy, between the more than 600 years of philosophy that came before him and the new Platonic tradition. He was the first and perhaps the greatest systematizer of Plato's thought, and all later students of Plato in the following centuries approached Plato through him. This Companion from a new generation of ancient philosophy scholars reflects the current state of research on Plotinus, with chapter…
Platonism and Naturalism
In his third and concluding volume, the author presents an innovative account of Platonism, the central tradition in the history of philosophy, in conjunction with Naturalism, the “anti-Platonism” in antiquity and contemporary philosophy. The book contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a dis…
Platonism and Naturalism
Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Plotinus
The Enneads by Plotinus is a work which is central to the history of philosophy in late antiquity. This volume is the first complete edition of the Enneads in English for over seventy-five years, and also includes Porphyry's Life of Plotinus. Led by Lloyd P. Gerson, a team of experts present up-to-date translations which are based on the best available text, the editio minor of Henry and Schwyzer and its corrections. The translations are consiste…
Heidi Marx-Wolf. Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority
This illuminating monograph is a contribution to the history of ideas in Late Antiquity. It focuses on the engagement of third-century Platonists with the various religious practices of the time. In particular, Heidi Marx-Wolf explores some of the extant works of Porphyry (ca. 234–305), Iamblichus (ca. 245–325), and Origen, a classmate of Plotinus (204–270), whom the author accepts, on the basis of the latest research, as identical with the Chris…
Aristotle and Other Platonists
versus Plato. For a long time that is the angle from which the tale has been told, in textbooks on the history of philosophy and to university students. Aristotle's philosophy, so the story goes, was au fond in opposition to Plato's. But it was not always thus.-from the Introduction In a wide-ranging book likely to cause controversy, Lloyd P. Gerson sets out the case for the of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the standard view in late antiquity. H…
Plotinus and the Platonic response to Stoicism
In his classic article “The Two Faces of Humanism: Stoicism and Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought,” the historian William Bouwsma postulated a confrontation between two polarities in Western culture and explored the ways in which the tension between them constituted an internal struggle within early modern humanism. Noting that “pure” Stoics or Augustinians are hard to find, he nevertheless suggested that the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus…
The ‘Neoplatonic’ Interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides
In his highly influential 1928 article ‘The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic “One”,’ E.R. Dodds argued, inter alia , that among the so-called Neoplatonists Plotinus was the first to interpret Plato’s Parmenides in terms of the distinctive three ‘hypostases’, One, Intellect, and Soul. Dodds argued that this interpretation was embraced and extensively developed by Proclus, among others. In this paper, I argue that although Plot…
Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
Plotinus
After Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus (b. 204/5–d. 270 ce) stands out as the most accomplished and influential philosopher of Antiquity. He is also the only philosopher from this period, other than Plato, whose works are all extant. In his writings, collectively known by the name given to them by his student and editor, Porphyry, as Enneads (“nines” in Greek, for the six groups of nine “treatises”), he engages with the entire history of philosophy …
Harold Cherniss and the Study of Plato Today
Harold Cherniss and the Study of Plato Today Lloyd P. Gerson (bio) There are, very broadly speaking, two interpretative approaches to the study of Plato. Let us call the first the "Protestant" approach and the second the "Catholic" approach. According to the first, the fundamental principle of interpretation is sola scriptura, adherence to the texts of the dialogues as the only vehicle providing access to Plato's philosophy. On this approach, put…
Gandhi and the Stoics
From Plato to Platonism
Platonic Ethics in Later Antiquity
This chapter examines the ethical theories of Platonists in later Antiquity. The focus is on Plotinus, given that later Platonists follow him in his exposition of the Platonic position. The chapter also discusses how Plotinus's pupil, Porphyry, and later Platonists systematized his account of virtue. It is argued that the fundamental truth contained in the Platonic interpretation of Plato's ethics is the refusal to foist upon Plato a facile view …
Why Plato Wrote
Book Review| April 01 2013 Why Plato Wrote Allen, Danielle S., Why Plato Wrote (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 232 pp. Lloyd P. Gerson Lloyd P. Gerson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2013) 19 (2): 391. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2073515 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Lloyd P. Gerson; Why Plato Wrote. Common Knowledge 1 April 2013;…
Who Owns What? Some Reflections on the Foundation of Political Philosophy
Neither a doctrine of rights nor a doctrine of justice can provide a non-question-begging foundation for political philosophy. Instead, all political philosophical theories must rest on the recognition of the existence of moral agents, individual members of a natural kind capable of entering into associations with other moral agents. Beginning with moral agency, we can deduce that for there to be any associations, political or otherwise, there ha…
Plotinus on logos
This paper offers an interpretation of ‘y is the logos of ’ in Plotinus’ Enneads. The focus is primarily on those passages wherein x and y have ontological referents, though it also includes comments about those passages wherein x and y are used semantically or epistemologically. The thesis is that for Plotinus, anything that is the logos of anything else has derivative intelligibility. Thus, only the One is unqualifiedly self-explicable. The One…
New essays in political and social philosophy
Ancient Epistemology
This is the first title in the Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series, which provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy which remain of philosophical interest today. In this book, Professor Gerson explores ancient accounts of the nature of knowledge and belief from the Presocratics up to the Platonists of late antiquity. He argues that ancient philosophers genera…
Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists
The ‘Holy Solemnity’ of Forms and the Platonic Interpretation of Sophist
Platonic Knowledge and the Standard Analysis
In this paper I explore Plato’s reasons for his rejection of the so‐called standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. I argue that Plato held that knowledge is an infallible mental state in which (a) the knowable is present in the knower and (b) the knower is aware of this presence. Accordingly, knowledge (epistēmē) is non‐propositional. Since there are no infallible belief states, the standard analysis, which assumes that knowledge…
The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's De Anima
The perennial problem in interpreting De Anima 3.5 has produced two drastic solutions, one ancient and one contemporary. According to the first, Aristotle in 3.5 identi fies the 'agent intellect' with the divine intellect. Thus, everything Aristotle has to say about the human intellect is contained mainly in 3.4, though Aristotle returns to its treatment in 3.6. In contrast to this ancient interpretation, a more recent view holds that the divine …
Graceful reason
Plato, Aquinas, and the Universal Good
Plato's Parmenides. Translation and Analysis
Hamartia
Chapter Six
In the Politics of Aristotle there is a remarkable interwea- ving of tentative dialectic and magisterial pronouncements, the latter expressed with an air of finality. The combination of dialectic and sweeping generalization is the hallmark of an Aristotelian scientific treatise. Typically, Aristotle begins by surveying critically the contributions of his predecessors and with the results of the survey proceeds to establish the concep- tual founda…
Causality, Univocity, and First Philosophy in Metaphysics ii
Aristotele
God and Greek Philosophy
Plotin
God and Greek Philosophy
This is a study of the main arguments for the existence of a god or first causal principle in the ancient Greek philosophers. Gerson's study of ancient Greek philosophers includes the pre-Socratics - Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and sceptics, and Plotinus. In the Greek philosophers, arguments for the existence of God are a part of theology, which is distinguished from and held to be superior to mythic and civic theology. Unlike a Jewish, Christia…
Posterior Analytics . Aristotle, Jonathan Barnes
Alexander of Aphrodisias. On Aristotle Metaphysics 4
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Alexander of Aphrodisias. On Aristotle Metaphysics 4. Translated By Arthur Madigan. (London: Duckworth, 1993. Pp. 227. Price £35.00.)Alexander of Aphrodisias. On Aristotle Metaphysics 5. Translated by William E. Dooley. (London: Duckworth, 1993. Pp. 224. Price £35.00.)Simplicius. On Aristotle Physics 7. Translated by Charles Hagen. (London: Duckworth, 1993. Pp. 195. Price £35.00.)Philoponus. On Aristotle Ph…
The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus
Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. Plotinus was the greatest philosopher in the 700-year peri…
Plotinus Ennead III.6 On the Impassivity of the Bodiless
Aristotle
Platonic Ethics, Old and New
The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity
Late antique philosophy grew out of the mé'lange of cultures and traditions flourishing during the Augustan pax Romana. It took its quintessential attributes in the pressures besetting the late Roman Empire, and it quietly came to an end when the Mediterranean no longer linked but divided the shores it washed, becoming a barrier separating the Islamic Abbasids, the Byzantines and the Frankish empire. According to the church historian Eusebius of …
Platonism and the Invention of the Problem of Universals
In this paper, I explore the origins of the 'problem of universals'. I argue that the problem has come to be badly formulated and that consideration of it has been impeded by falsely supposing that Platonic Forms were ever intended as an alternative to Aristotelian universals. In fact, the role that Forms are supposed by Plato to fulfill is independent of the function of a universal. I briefly consider the gradual mutation of the problem in the A…
Platonism In Aristotle’S Ethics
Modern interpretations of Aristotle’s ethical theory labour unduly under the influence of Werner Jaeger’s hypothesis regarding Aristotle’s development. According to this hypothesis, Aristotle’s philosophical career can be plotted along an axis whose termini are Platonism and anti-Platonism. Jaeger argued that without such a hypothesis no coherent account of Aristotle’s philosophy could be extracted. Specifically, a number of Aristotelian works ap…
The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's De Anima
The perennial problem in interpreting De Anima 3.5 has produced two drastic solutions, one ancient and one contemporary. According to the first, Aristotle in 3.5 identi fies the 'agent intellect' with the divine intellect. Thus, everything Aristotle has to say about the human intellect is contained mainly in 3.4, though Aristotle returns to its treatment in 3.6. In contrast to this ancient interpretation, a more recent view holds that the divine …
What is Platonism?
What is Platonism? Lloyd P. Gerson (bio) 1. The Problem The question posed in the title of this paper is an historical one. I am not, for example, primarily interested in the term 'Platonism' as used by modern philosophers to stand for a particular theory under discussion—a theory, which it is typically acknowledged, no one may have actually held.1 I am rather concerned to understand and articulate on an historical basis the core position of that…
The ‘Holy Solemnity’ of Forms and the Platonic Interpretation of Sophist
Platonic Knowledge and the Standard Analysis
In this paper I explore Plato’s reasons for his rejection of the so‐called standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. I argue that Plato held that knowledge is an infallible mental state in which (a) the knowable is present in the knower and (b) the knower is aware of this presence. Accordingly, knowledge (epistēmē) is non‐propositional. Since there are no infallible belief states, the standard analysis, which assumes that knowledge…
Ancient Epistemology
This is the first title in the Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series, which provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy which remain of philosophical interest today. In this book, Professor Gerson explores ancient accounts of the nature of knowledge and belief from the Presocratics up to the Platonists of late antiquity. He argues that ancient philosophers genera…
Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists
Philosophy (40 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (37 works) · Epistemology (31 works) · Art (16 works) · Literature (16 works) · History (13 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (11 works) · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies (11 works) · Platonism (10 works) · Theology (9 works)