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The Ladder of the Sciences in Late Antique Platonism: Selected Essays
Author(s): Dominic J. O'Meara (Author)
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date: 8 Jan. 2026
- Language: English
- Print length: 400 pages
- ISBN-10: 1009539930
- ISBN-13: 9781009539937
Book Description
A range of sciences was taught in the Platonist schools of late antiquity (third to sixth centuries) with the purpose of leading the human soul up to a divine life. This curriculum constituted so to speak a ladder of the sciences. The ways in which these sciences were newly interpreted in this context have not, however, been fully appreciated. This volume brings together selected essays, some translated into English for the first time, which show how a new vision of these disciplines and sciences was reached as part of a Platonist philosophical education. They cover a wide range of topics, from rhetoric, ethics and politics to mathematics, music and metaphysics, and discuss the work of various philosophers. Dominic O’Meara is considered one of the foremost scholars of Platonism and this book provides readers with an indispensable tool for accessing his most important scholarship in this area.
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Explores new conceptions of ethics, politics, mathematics and metaphysics developed in late antique Platonic philosophy.
About the Author
DOMINIC J. O’MEARA is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland). His books include Cosmology and Politics in Plato’s Later Works (Cambridge, 2017), Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (1993), Pythagoras Revived (1989) and Platonopolis (2003).
