Many recent discoveries have confirmed the importance of Orphism for ancient Greek religion, philosophy, and literature. However, its nature and role are still very controversial. The key problem of its relationship to Christianity has been discussed by ancient and modern authors from many different viewpoints, albeit too often tainted with apologetic interests and unconscious projections. This free and thorough study of the ancient sources sheds light on these questions and illuminates the complexity of the encounter between Classical culture and Jewish-Christian (...) tradition. New perspectives on the relationship between Classical and Jewish-Christian culture On the avowed subject of Orphism Author is specialist within the field. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934, this book contains the Cromer Greek Prize-winning essay for that year on the subject of the still little-understood Greek religion Orphism. Watmough examines Orpheus and Orphism through a distinctly Protestant lens, arguing that both were religions 'of reform' sharing similar views on asceticism and the wages of sin in the afterlife. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Greek mysticism and ancient religion.

Souvent associé au genre poétique, à la fin du xix e siècle, on peut observer une application de la philosophie artistique de l’orphisme au genre romanesque. Si la finalité du poète orphique de l’époque 1900 était de créer une œuvre dans laquelle les paroles incarnent une facette du divin, tel n’est pas le souhait du romancier orphique, qui cherche plutôt à avertir un lecteur béotien de la réalité et la possibilité d’une expérience mystique — et ce afin de fournir (...) un contrepoint spirituel au climat de pessimisme engendré par la laïcisation et la décadence de la société d’alors. Dans un tel contexte, les romans de l’écrivain gallois Arthur Machen paraissent particulièrement intéressants. Reconnaissant toute forme d’expression humaine comme insuffisante pour brosser la complexité intégrale de Dieu, ainsi que toute expérience mystique, Machen n’ambitionne pas de décrire le divin, mais plutôt ses effets sur l’esprit de l’individu. Ceci se fait par une modification de la syntaxe narrative qui cherche désormais à reproduire les modulations internes que subit la pensée humaine lorsque le sujet passe entre dans un état d’extase en présence du divin. Ainsi, les romans mystiques de Machen ont pour finalité d’agir comme un catalyseur, déclenchant un éveil chez le lecteur, et le poussant à renouer avec sa propre spiritualité en-dehors du monde diégétique. (shrink)

Cet article cherche à montrer qu’une métaphysique s’engendre au sein même de l’orphisme, par l’auto-exégèse du mythe, métaphysique qui irriguera le platonisme et le néo-platonisme. Elle se place sous la figure d’un personnage conceptuel, Dionysos, depuis lequel se pensent les rapports de l’Un et du multiplie et par conséquent aussi, la façon dont les âmes s’engendrent à partir de l’Un.

This paper develops two central themes of the Canti Orfici, intrinsically connected to each other: Orphism, with particular attention to La Notte, and Dino Campana’s relationship with Nietzschean sources, in order to deepen the latent trace of a Nietzscheanism scattered in the metaphors and symbols of the poetic word. È forse un azzardo addentrarsi negli incerti sentieri sul crinale tra letteratura e filosofia, dove il confine non risulta visibilmente tracciato e non vi è alcun segno certo ch...

The purpose of the conference "On Pythagoreanism", held in Brasilia in 2011, was to bring together leading scholars from all over the world to define the status quaestionis for the ever-increasing interest and research on Pythagoreanism in the 21st century. The papers included in this volume exemplify the variety of topics and approaches now being used to understand the polyhedral image of one of the most fascinating and long-lasting intellectual phenomena in Western history. Cornelli's paper opens the volume by charting (...) the course of Pythagorean studies over the past two centuries. The remaining contributions range chronologically from Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans of the archaic period (6th-5th centuries BCE) through the classical, hellenistic and late antique periods, to the eighteenth century. Thematically they treat the connections of Pythagoreanism with Orphism and religion, with mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology and with politics and the Pythagorean way of life. (shrink)

Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism have a different position in the ancient philosophy tradition. The reason for this is the eclectical structure of Pythagoreanism which has syncretized from Orphism, Indian and Egyptian religions with philosophy. Orphism of these religions is especially important for affecting Pythagoreanism the most and giving to the ancient Greek religion a mystical content. Orphism which is a mystery cult is based on Orpheus, the poet, who sometimes is identified with Pythagoras in philosophy and the history of religions. Orpheus, (...) was attributed divine character by virtue of his beautiful voice and hymns in the ancient history, has brought many religious and philosophic elements such as reincarnation and unity with God to the Greek religion. The way of life and creeds of Orphism based on asceticism and wisdom, first affected Italian philosophy starting from Pythagoras and, later influenced both philosophy and the other religions such as Judaism and Christianity through Plato. The reason for this was the Orphism’s stronger theological structure than the Greek religion had. Thus, philosophy, the Miletus philosophers tried to purify from the Homeric religion, has regained some spirituality through Orphism and Pythagoras. Pythagoras, a philosopher and a religious leader, accepted students to his philosophy school by initiation in Crotone. In this way, Pythagoreanism gained the quality of both a school of philosophy and a community of mystery. In this school, Pythagoras constituted a strong natural philosophy based on the idea of arkhe consisting of numbers, and the system of mathematics and music. At the same time, for he was a religious leader, Pythagoras used his school both to teach philosophy and to celebrate the teletaic mystery rituals of Orphism. According to the Pythagoreans, as a master, Pythagoras has united with the spirit of Dionysos and has privileged to rise to the World-Soul of God. Due to this union, it has been believed that Pythagoras received revelations from Dionysos and knew the secrets of God’s spirit. Similarly, Pythagoras’ students of philosophy also joined these rituals. They, on the one hand, witnessed to the divine union of Pythagoras, on the other hand, experienced the communication with the subordinate gods, called daemons, allied to Dionysos. Through these mystical rituals in Pythagorean school, it was believed that the philosophical knowledge was not only a reasoning, but also a divine wisdom obtained from the divine word. Therefore, Pythagoreanism accepted that philosophy is from God and it is a way of life which rises the human to the divine level. According to Pythagoras philosophy, thinking about God is equal to dealing with natural philosophy. Because Pythagoreanism, that has a pantheistic belief in God, has acknowledged God and nature as the same. Additionally, the natural philosophy of the school was established on the Monad idea which has been accepted as the World-Soul. For Pythagoreanism, Monad is not a number, but it is the ONE as the source of all numbers and a theological principle. The ONE, which symbolizes God and the cosmic unity, brings into existence the life by limiting the chaos caused by the TWO. Similarly, the TWO, not a number but a principle, has been used in a positive sense in Anaximander and was called apeiron, meant “infiniteness”. But, for Pythagoras, infiniteness was a negative circumstance. For this reason, the TWO/Apeiron has been accepted as a female being which corresponds to limitless absence and evil. By Monad’s confinement the Apeiron had been passed into the cosmos, the cosmic harmony had been balanced and a spheric being had emerged. This is “unity” which corresponds with both the World Soul Monad and the nature in the Pythagorean philosophy. This study will discuss the notion of Monad which is known as the World-Soul and God in Pythagorean philosophy, from a perspective of the history of religions. In this context, the sources and knowledge of history of philosophy will be used by methods of the history of religions. Starting from Orphism, Monad will be discussed within similar mythical elements. Thus, the origin of the Pythagorean philosophy in ancient religions will be determined and the theological infrastructure will be shown. (shrink)

It has been much disputed to what extent thinkers in Greek and Roman antiquity adhered to ideas of evolution and progress in human affairs. Did they lack any conception of process in time, or did they anticipate Darwinian and Lamarckian hypotheses? The Origins of Civilization in Greek and Roman Thought, first published in1986, comprehensively examines this issue. Beginning with creation myths – Mother Earth and Pandora, the anti-progressive ideas of the Golden Age, and the cyclical theories of Orphism – Professor (...) Blundell goes on to explore the origins of scientific speculation among the Pre-Socratics, its development into the teleological science of Aristotle, and the advent of the progressivist views of the Stoics. Attention is also given to the ‘primitivist’ debate, involving ideas about the noble savage and reflections of such speculation in poetry, and finally the relationship between nature and culture in ancient thought is investigated. (shrink)

Beginning with the origins of Western philosophy, the profound creation of the Hellenic genius, Reale presents an appreciation of the Naturalists, the Sophists, Socrates, and the Minor Socratics. Special attention is paid to the Eleatics because their problems decisively mark Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Interpretation of the Sophists benefits from the recent reevaluation of their thought. Socrates himself would be inconceivable without the Sophists since he is one of them. Socrates is given major prominence. Plato, Aristotle, and all of Hellenistic (...) philosophy are deeply impregnated with his words and spirit. The teachings of the Minor Socratics are interpreted as one-sided reductions of the pluralistic values of Socratic thought and as anticipations of some issues that explode later in the Hellenistic Age. There are two appendices. The first concerns Orphism and contains a series of documents indispensable for the comprehension of some aspects of pre-Socratic and Platonic thought. The second explains the key to understanding the message of the Greeks—the message of “theorein”. (shrink)

Alors que Socrate avait été accusé de corrompre la jeunesse, Platon présente le philosophe comme le sauveur de la cité. On comprend ce que signifie « sauver » en examinant les décalages que les textes de Platon introduisent par rapports aux discours courants à leur époque, qu'ils soient littéraires (Homère, Sophocle), philosophiques (les Pythagoriciens), politiques (Thémistocle, Périclès, Conon), médicaux (collection hippocratique), ou religieux (Orphisme). S'il prend la place d'autres sauveurs de la cité, comme le militaire, le religieux ou le (...) médecin, le philosophe ne sauve pas en gouvernant mais en diffusant, dans le geste même de philosopher, une forme de vie spécifique, propre à faire régner l'harmonie. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LABYRINTHINE STRATEGIES OF SACRIFICE: THE CRETANS BY EURIPIDES Giuseppe Fornari The application of René Girard's mimetic hypothesis demands drastic re-interpretation of the history of our culture. The denunciation of sacrificial violence performed first by the Hebrew Bible and then by the Gospels figures as an objective watershed in the evaluation ofcivilizations and historical periods. This new methodological and theoretical situation brings Girard's ideas into conflict with current trends toward (...) relativism. The victim is the reality at the root ofhistory, an extra-historical element that disrupts the circle of interpretation and confronts us as an absolute value demanding our commitment one way or another. The epistemological problems thus become one and the same with a frankly religious need. In an elegant and paradoxical way Girard's thought gives new, vital emphasis to the Christocentric interpretation of human history typical of patristic and medieval thought. In this light, comparison ofour Christian Western civilization with its Classical predecessor becomes crucial. For the Middle Ages Antiquity was not separate from Christianity but itsfigura (préfiguration), in a positive or negative way. Modern culture, however, starting from humanism and the Renaissance, discovered the historical dimension of Classical civilization with ever-increasing admiration until, finally, Neoclassicism set it as the great alternative to modern civilization. This tendency became openly anti-Christian first with the French revolution and then with thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger. The very identity of Western culture is determined by its varying attitudes toward Classical Antiquity and Christianity, to such an extent that the different periods in history could be subdivided accordingly. The comparison is like asking ourselves 164Giuseppe Fornari what we would be without Christianity, or who we are and what Christianity is. The radical nature of these questions and the overall development of our culture therefore confirm Girard's radical, metahistorical model. Classical civilization is the inevitable touchstone for this trans-historical question of identity. The comparison is fascinating and complex, and it cannot be dismissed simply by juxtaposing victimary awareness and blindness. Girard himself in Violence and the Sacred notes the profound investigation of mimetic violence in Greek tragedy and pre-Socratic philosophy.1 Further research of my own into these aspects of Greek civilization confirms and widens the analysis, revealing a surprisingly varied and dramatic picture.2 The most interesting discovery may be that the Greeks had already faced this question of meta-historical identity in relation to the victim. I have chosen Euripides' lost tragedy,the Cretans, to illustrate this: its highly original subject within the corpus of Greek tragedy and its symbolic richness fully justify its choice. The few remaining fragments, which are almost entirely reproduced here, provide enough material for analyses that are necessarily more limited but more complete in themselves and thus more suitable for a single essay. Besides, they possess high literary quality and do not deserve to remain the sole preserve of specialists. The tragedy of the labyrinth Euripides probably wrote the Cretans before 430 B.C. The premisses of the plot are supplied by traditional mythical material. To demonstrate to his brothers that he has a divine right to the kingdom of Crete, Minos asks Poseidon to send a white bull from the sea for sacrifice. The god satisfies his request and Minos's power is confirmed, but he decided the bull is too beautiful to sacrifice. The wrath of the god is not slow to strike the king's family. Minos's wife, Pasiphae, falls in love with the bull and copulates with it. From this bestial union comes the Minotaur, the being, half-man half-bull, which is shut up in the labyrinth. Minos's nonperformance of the sacrifice therefore causes a grave crisis on the island, 1It could be said that the exciting comparison with Classical civilization is one of the inspiring forces of Violence and the Sacred. An analogous direction, as regards Virgil and sacrifice, is followed by Bandera in The Sacred Game (13IfI). See also note 1 1. 2G. Fornari, The Esoteric Knowledge of the Greeks: From Orphism to Tragedy, A SacrificialReading (forthcoming). Labyrinthine Strategies ofSacrifice165 jeopardizing the boundaries between man and animal. The monstrousness ofthe Minotaur represents the breaking-down ofthose differences that... (shrink)

Lobeck’s Aglaophamus (1829) has been read as beginning modern research on Orphism and the ‘ancient theology’. Replacing it in its historical context opens up new perspectives.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christian Humanism in the Age of Critical Philology:Ralph Häfner's Gods in ExileMartin MulsowHäfner's book is a monumental study and a milestone of German-language research.1 He delineates, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the Christian humanism of European philologists in the era of criticism. Recovering an immense wealth of forgotten sources, the book reveals the complex interaction and tension between pagan mythology and Christian culture in philological controversies. (...) Though authors might denounce the pagan histories of gods as fabulae, they were constitutive for the productive and emulative reception of ancient Greco-Roman patterns in Renaissance and Baroque culture. How could the peculiar logic of this paganizing be handled? Was it advisable to have faith in the integrative power of Christian truth, which was capable of finding precursors or even proofs of one's own truth in pagan patterns, or should the pagan be selectively separated from the Christian? And what was the role of philology in this process? Did the growing expertise in criticism advance the process of dissociation of paganism and Christianity? Did it further new possibilities of synthesis in the spirit of Apologetics? [End Page 659]The reconstruction of these processes involves much more than what the book's very specific title suggests. It is a large-scale history of scholarship written from the perspective of the most important tensions that Christian humanism had to overcome in its final stage. From an Anglo-American perspective, this book contributes to recent reconstructions of ideas of early modern men of learning, as well as the growing number of studies on antiquarianism and the history of religion.2 The final stage of Christian humanism, the period of time covered by the book, begins in the late sixteenth century and ends in the 1730s, a point in time which Häfner presents, with some justification, as the end of an era.Hymnology and PolymathyThe study consists of three basic parts. The first one is the "Persistence of Orphic-Platonic Hymnology in Christian Humanism" ("Fortleben der orphisch-platonischen Hymnologie im christlichen Humanismus"). This topic, apparently very specialized and marginal, proves to be a key arena of early modern scholarship, an arena traversed by the battle lines between pagan tradition and Christianity as well as between poetry and theology. Were hymns inspired poetry? What kind of inspiration could and should be conceded to hymns to Jupiter and the sun? Of course, those humanists who reappropriated Orphism and Neo-Platonism were interested in this genre. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and even into the mid-sixteenth century, this was not yet a problem. However, the more philological consciousness (and confessionalization) evolved, the more the genre's scope was delimited. What scope remained? Häfner relates the problem to the revival of an "eclectic Platonism" in the wake of the Second Sophistic. This "eclectic Platonism," which was particularly influential from 1500 on, combined Platonism with rhetorics, and the claim of comprehensive polymathy with the joyful presentation of the findings of reading. In this respect, Apuleius and Aulus Gellius were two model authors for early modern polyhistors. We must include Martianus Capella as a continuation of the "Renaissance of the Second Sophistic into Early Christian Encyclopedism" [End Page 660] ("Renaissance der Zweiten Sophistik bis in die frühchristliche Enzyklopädie hinein," p. 18).Häfner's approach is starkly original and, in my opinion, highly productive for the current debates about early modern encyclopedism and "cultures of knowledge" that are sometimes deadlocked.3 Too frequently, polymathy is used synonymously for encyclopedism, which is often associated with modern concepts of systematic classification. Yet, according to Häfner, this is a misunderstanding. It neglects the playful elements and skillful rhetorical options of throwing questions out into the open rather than narrowing them dogmatically. Perhaps the only addition to Häfner's sources could have been Louis de Cressolles's Theatrum veterum Rhetorum, which, according to Marc Fumaroli in L'age de l'éloquence, marked the return of the Second Sophistic.4 The analysis of the work of Gerhard Johannes Vossius, a classical philologist who resided in Leyden and Amsterdam, is the first test for Häfner... (shrink)

This book is an enquiry into memory in the Western world. Specifically, memory is the framework of culture, because it links the present to the past--or tradition--and projects it into the future. For this reason, any work focusing on memory involves a double challenge: (1) to reveal the origin of concepts and (2) to glimpse the course of thoughts. This is the case of the present volume, in which the authors make several tastings of Europe's intellectual heritage, by taking into (...) account both the Greek origin of this legacy and its relevance for understanding the European philosophical heritage. In particular, these papers focus on the Aristotelian tradition, the true keystone of Europe, and on other currents of thought that have also played an essential role in the intellectual evolution of the Old Continent. In the latter field, there are contributions, for instance, on philosophical-religious traditions such as Orphism or on certain fundamental aspects of Neoplatonism both in the Classical World and in Christian authors. The volume concludes with various works on the survival of these intellectual trends from the Renaissance to the present day. Consequently, this work offers the opportunity to delve deeper into some of the aspects that define Western civilisation, observed both from its origin and its evolution over the centuries. The volume contains papers in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and English. (shrink)

The aim of the following paper is to show that it is not possible to penetrate into the depths of Nikolay Raynov's universe and to comprehend its wholeness, without posing and investigating the question about the origin or the foundation of his various creative occupations, i.e his novels, philosophic and theosophic writings, art history and critique, paintings, decorative design etc. This question is far too complex to be answered briefly without being simplified, and therefore two main directions will be articulated: (...) the recption of Orphism developed in Plotinus' and Porphyry's Neoplatonism – which is the basis of modern Theosophy –, and the synthetic understanding of art, which puts Raynov's views in close proximity to Wassily Kandinsky and Nicholas Roerich. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 217 [Access article in PDF] Bogoljub Sijakovic. Bibliographica Praesocratica: A Bibliographical Guide to the Studies of Early Greek Philosophy in its Religious and Scientific Contexts with an Introductory Bibliography on the Historiography of Philosophy. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001. Pp. 700. Cloth, €18,00. Professor Sijakovic has given us an invaluable reference work for the Presocratics and for early Greek thought generally: (...) a bibliography of 17,664 entries covering the period 1450-2000. It has some advantages over its principal predecessor, Paquet et al., Les Présocratiques: Bibliographie Analytique (Montreal and Paris, 1988-95), which covers work up to 1980. Sijakovic includes more recent material and aims at complete coverage of works in the Slavic languages and Modern Greek. He does not cover the Sophists, but does include works on topics that extend more widely than the Presocratics. Unlike Paquet, Sijakovic does not provide summaries of articles nor does he list reviews of books, unless they have interest in their own right, or include translations of works into other modern languages. He provides indexes of subjects, Greek terms, proper names, and authors.The ambition of the work is revealed by the subject headings other than those on familiar Presocratic thinkers and the issues they treated. The bibliography begins with a long section on Historiography and Philosophy of the History of Philosophy (with 932 entries) and concludes with one on Presocratics in the Intellectual Tradition (590) from before Plato to the present, with subsections on figures such as Francis Bacon (5), Nietzsche (74), Heidegger (56), and Popper (6). Other sections are labelled Theories of Myth (550), Greek Mythmaking and Religion (667), Orpheus and Orphism (642), Homer (154), Hesiod (147), Theogonies, Greek and Oriental (159), From Myth to Philosophy (365), Mathematics (137), Medicine (86), and Hippocrates of Cos (199). It is here that ambition leads to weakness, since the section on Homer, for example, is obviously not a complete bibliography of Homeric studies, and yet it is not restricted to works on Homer that bear on "presocratic" topics. The absence of an explanatory preface to these sections leaves the principles of selection mysterious and decreases their usefulness.Another feature that limits the value of the book is the arrangement within sections. This is generally chronological, but not always. The irregularities are so pervasive that the cause must be due to some unannounced division into unlabelled subsections, and the result is that we must read through more entries than we should have to. Two other minor complaints: the language of the book is English (aside from the trilingual prefatory material), but there are mistakes of usage and grammar which a copyreader should have caught; and there are occasional unexplained words at the end of entries, frequently in a different type-face, that are not part of the bibliographical entry.I do not mean to detract from the great service Professor Sijakovic has done (seemingly laboring alone over many years) for all who work in the area of early Greek thought—and principally, he notes in a preface, written as NATO was bombing his country, scholars from Western Europe and the United States. We are deeply indebted to him. The book has replaced Paquet as my primary bibliographical resource on the Presocratics. Richard McKirahan Pomona College... (shrink)

In discussing the origin and history of Orphism, it is usual to treat it rather as a system of belief than as a ritual. The former aspect of it probably was more salient in later times, yet it is certain that the Orphic movement began rather as a ritual with strong emphasis on purification and a rule of life. Its theological and traditional aspect developed only gradually, and the greatest characteristic of this development was always its readiness to incorporate elements (...) possibly alien to the original Dionysos mystery, till it finally takes all Greek religious tradition within its scope. It was early influenced by Eleusinian ideas, and exerted a mutual influence on the cults and myths of the Kabeiroi and those of Sabazios. Whether its own ritual was affected by these latter to the same degree as its mythology we cannot say with certainty, but it may at any rate be affirmed that Orphism was an eclectic type of religion from the beginning. This was indeed only natural to such a system which depended for its teaching on wandering priests, and may never have possessed any kind of temple. It may also be safely said that neither the rite nor the central beliefs of Orphism were nearly as much affected by these borrowings as its mythology. It took over the names and some of the legends of strange deities and grafted them on to its own system. The ritual may have remained in all essentials the same, as did the eschatology. (shrink)

Ces dernières décennies, il est devenu habituel de considérer que la polis de la période classique contrôlait la religion sous tous ces aspects. Ce n’est que récemment que ce point de vue a été mis en question. Même si les aspects plus marginaux de la religion de la polis ont déjà reçu l’attention nécessaire, leur étude reste marquée, dans une certaine mesure, par les préjugés des savants des générations antérieures, eux-mêmes nourris des préjugés et des représentations des auteurs anciens. Cet (...) article se concentre sur les lieux de la vie reli­gieuse grecque, et plus particulièrement athénienne, où des livres et de l’écrit étaient particu­lièrement importants, dans la mesure où l’écrit permet aux gens de prendre une position plus indépendante en regard de la religion de la polis. Mes observations concerneront les manteis , la magie , les mystères et l’Orphisme , la mythographie , en terminant par quelques considérations sur la nature de la religion de la polis .In recent decades it has become customary to assume that in the classical period the polis controlled religion in all its aspects. It is only recently that this view is being questioned. Although the more marginal aspects of polis religion have already received the necessary attention, the study of these marginal aspects remains dominated, to a certain extent, by old prejudices of previous generations of scholars, which in turn were sometimes fed by the prejudices or representations of ancient authors. I will concentrate on those areas of Greek, especially Athenian, religious life in which books and writing were particularly important, as the written word enabled people to take a more independent stance in polis religion. Subsequently, I will make observations on manteis , magic , mysteries and Orphism and mythography , and end with some remarks on the nature of polis religion. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the historical and typological relation between Greek maturation rituals and Greek mystery religion. Particular attention is given to the word κλεινός (‘illustrious’) and its ritual uses in two roughly contemporary Late Classical sources: an Orphic-Bacchic funerary gold leaf from Hipponion in Magna Graecia and Ephorus’ account of a Cretan pederastic age-transition rite. In both contexts, κλεινός marks an elevated status conferred by initiation. (This usage finds antecedents in Alcman'sPartheneia.) Without positing direct development between puberty rites and mysteries, (...) the article argues on the basis of shared vocabulary and other ritual elements that age-transitions influenced the ideology of mystery cults. It is further claimed that puberty rites and mysteries performed similar functions in their respective social contexts, despite obvious differences of prestige and visibility. Age-transition rites have been analysed in Bourdieu's terms as ‘rites of institution’, in which young elites were publicly affirmed in civic roles: private mysteries can be described in analogous but opposed terms as rites of ‘counter-institution’, in which familiar ritual language and symbols of elite status were used to construct an alternative ‘imagined community’ of mystery initiates. (shrink)

In Plato’s _Laws_ is the earliest surviving fully developed cosmological argument. His influence on the philosophy of religion is wide ranging and this book examines both that and the influence of religion on Plato. Central to Plato’s thought is the theory of forms, which holds that there exists a realm of forms, perfect ideals of which things in this world are but imperfect copies. In this book, originally published in 1959, Feibleman finds two diverse strands in Plato’s philosophy: an idealism (...) centered upon the Forms denying full ontological status to the realm of becoming, and a moderate realism granting actuality equal reality with Forms. For each strand Plato developed a conception of religion: a supernatural one derived from Orphism, and a naturalistic religion revering the traditional Olympian deities. (shrink)

In Varia Socratica Professor A. E. Taylor devotes his first chapter to a proof that the impiety for which Socrates was condemned consisted in his connection with an Orphic-Pythagorean cult. This argument has more than historical interest, for it is the first step in an attempt to attribute to Socrates, and ultimately to Pythagorean sources, doctrines hitherto regarded as Platonic. Much of Dr. Taylor′s new evidence seems to rest on passages which in their context contradict or greatly modify his inferences; (...) other arguments have no better basis than the dubious principle that any fact shown to be related to Orphism in one connection is always so related; and, above all, the enquiry which set out to give precise legal grounds for the charge of impiety tails away lamentably into a mere discussion of doctrine. I propose, after examining the wording of the charge, to analyze the evidence for regarding Socrates′ offence as the importation of a foreign cultus, then to enquire how far Dr. Taylor′s discussion of doctrine is relevant to the legal charge, and, lastly, to ask whether the Apology of Plato and the Memorabilia really do preserve so suspicious a silence about the impiety as to justify a totally new theory to account for their reticence. (shrink)

En este artículo sostengo, frente a las explicaciones de carácter general basadas en supuestos doctrinales (p.ej., Allen y Falco), que el tipo de platonismo (y su relación con el orfismo) que revive con las labores filosóficas de Marsilio Ficino está anclado en el ejercicio de las tecnologías textuales que hereda de los neoplatónicos tardíos. Para mostrarlo, examino la negativa de Ficino de comentar el pasaje del Banquete (179d) donde se presenta a Orfeo como contraejemplo del valor de los amantes y (...) la comparo con la posición de Pico della Mirandola. Con ello pretendo distinguir el platonismo ficiniano del posible platonismo piquiano y subrayar su importancia como transmisor de la tradición platónica que incluye, en su caso, un orfismo comprometido no sólo doctrinalmente, sino también textualmente. In this paper I propose, against general explanations based on doctrinal assumptions (e.g., Allen and Falco), that the kind of Platonism (and its relationship with Orpheus) reviving in the philosophical works of Marsilio Ficino is anchored in the exercise of textual technologies inherited from the late Neoplatonists. To show this, I examine Ficino's refusal to comment on Symposium (179d) where Orpheus is presented as a counterexample of the lovers' courage and I compare it to the position of Pico della Mirandola on the same passage. This way, I distinguish Ficino's Platonism from Pico's and I emphasize its importance as a transmitter of the Platonic tradition that includes a committed Orphism not only doctrinally but also in a textual manner. (shrink)

This communication wants to deal with the relations between the Philosophy of Plato and the cult of Dionysus in Ancient Greece. This makes necessary to distinguish the cult of Dionysus with its feasts and secret rituals, especially the maenadic rites of women, from orphism. The Maenads practiced rites closely associated with mania and those rites included bloody sacrifice (sparagmos) and the consommation of raw flesh (omophagy). As we assumed in our book“Dionysos em transe: la voix des femmes”, this cult was (...) an iniciatic feminine rite, connected to biological transformations particular to women, as pregnance and birth. At the other side, orphism is an asceptic and vegetarian sect, which clearly influenced some platonic theories, as exposed in Cratyle or Gorgias, concerning “the body as the tomb of the soul”. What we want to show here is the dionysiac character of some other theories, as those about the mania in Phaedrus or even the so called “platonic theory of Love” in the Symposium. We are dealing than with the definition of Philosophy itself in platonic dialogs: is Philosophy a study about death as orphic influence demands or is it a work of birth, as dionysiac influence suggests? (shrink)

This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader can therefore observe (...) how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion. (shrink)

In this work, I present a selection of mythological and cultural insights from Ancient Greece that make our ambiguous relationship with memory and oblivion explicit. From Plato to Dante, or from Orphism to Nietzsche, and even today, the experiences of memory and forgetting appear as two sides of one essential nucleus in our cultural tradition in general and in the history of philosophy in particular. I intend to present a panoramic view of the main mythological sources that mention these two (...) experiences as well as their unequal consideration. I will thus stress the personifications of both figures, taking up their features and the moral, gnoseological, and even political implications that historically have been associated with them. This is especially apparent in the strong Platonic legacy latent in the history of philosophy, where every time it insists on defining knowledge as a form of memory, the peculiar attributes of forgetting unexpectedly surface, not as a mistake or cognitive error, but as an experience which is truly saving and therapeutic. (shrink)

This study juxtaposes an imaginal inquiry into the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with a historical exegesis of the ancient religious movement generally termed Orphism, which came to be associated with it. Inviting unconscious elements into the study of myth and subsequently elaborating a theoretical analysis as well as a creative project---as this study does in the form of a screenplay adaptation---corresponds to Carl Jung's theory of the transcendent function, which states that a new level of being is possible by (...) balancing these two approaches to such material. This study unfolds the myth's latent theology by dreaming it forward in this way. ;The principal thesis---that Orpheus looks back to Eurydice with purpose and an awareness that his gaze will cause her to return to Hades---is itself an example of unconscious material emerging into consciousness. The greater part of this study is devoted to deriving meaning from the twist that this re-imagining implies for the elucidation of myth in general and for the study of this myth in particular. ;A principle question addressed is "What aspects of the latent theology found to exist in this myth can be said to constitute a founder story of Orphism?" In addition, this study proposes the figure of Orpheus as emblematic of the active masculine principle---exalted in his balancing of solar and lunar masculinity---that provides a blueprint for a dualistic cognitive model of archetypal experience. ;This model posits that the dualities found in the myth, and sometimes in life, derive their patterning from the individual's inability to experience the archetype directly. Orpheus' look back exemplifies a breaching of the veil that separates us from the archetype, allowing a momentary interpenetration of the individual's sphere of consciousness with the essence of the archetype. It is thought that integration of unconscious and conscious material follows. Finally, how these insights can be applied to the lives of men and women is addressed in this study's conclusion. (shrink)

"The contributions to this book offer a broad vision of the relationships that were established between Greek Philosophy and the Mystery Cults. The authors centre their attention on such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and the Neoplatonist philosophers, who used - and in some cases criticised - doctrinal elements from Mystery Cults, adapting them to their own thinking. Thus, the volume provides a new approach to some of the most renowned Greek philosophers, highlighting the influence that Mystery Cults, (...) such as Orphism, Dionysianism, or the Eleusinian rites, had on the formation of fundamental aspects of their thinking. Given its interdisciplinary character, this book will appeal to a broad academic readership interested in the origin of Hellenic thinking and culture. It will be especially useful for those eager for a deeper approach to two fundamental domains that attract the attention of many Antiquity scholars: Greek philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This essential reference text on the life, thought and writings of Plato uses over 160 short, accessible articles to cover a complete range of topics for both the first-time student and seasoned scholar of Plato and ancient philosophy. It is organized into five parts illuminating Plato’s life, the whole of the Dialogues attributed to him, the Dialogues’ literary features, the concepts and themes explored within them and Plato’s reception via his influence on subsequent philosophers and the various interpretations of his (...) work. This fully updated 2nd edition includes 19 newly commissioned entries on topics ranging across comedy, tragedy, Xenophon, metatheatre, gender, musical theory, animals, Orphism, political theory, religion, time, Hellenistic philosophy and post-Platonic ancient commentaries. It also features revisions to the majority of articles from the 1st edition, including 8 which have been completely re-written, and 12 which have had the references substantially revised. Reflecting the growing diversity of Plato scholarship across the world, this edition includes contributions from a wide range of scholars who enrich the field and provide students and scholars with a vital resource for study and reference. (shrink)

Madison, G. B. Avant-propos.--Gadamer, H.-G. La mort comme question.--Lévinas, E. L'être et l'autre.--Dufrenne, M. L'esthétique de Paul Valéry.--Eliade, M. Orphée et l'orphisme.--Décarie, V. Vertu totale, vertu parfaite et kalokagathie dans l'Éthique à Eudème.--Strasser, S. Réflexions sur la proposition phénoménologique.--Peursen, C. van. L'existence fait-elle sens?--Edie, J. E. La pertinence actuelle de la conception husserlienne de l'idéalité du langage.--Taylor, C. Force et sens, les deux dimensions irréductibles d'une science de l'homme.--Henry, M. Phénoménologie de la conscience, phénoménologie de la vie.--Philibert, M. Marx, (...) la machine et la manufacture.--Dumas, A. Savoir objectif, croyance projective, foi interpellée.--Maqdici, A. L'ontologie kérygmatique de Paul Ricœur, approche arabe.--Kemp, P. Le rôle du mythe et de la poésie dans l'orientation sociale. (shrink)

While Platonists are generally committed to a non-materialist worldview and the idea that human happiness is attained by caring for the immortal soul, they show less agreement on how the founding texts of their tradition, the Platonic dialogues, should be interpreted. After a discussion of Proclus’ philosophical sources and of the curriculum of the later Neoplatonists, the author tackles the question as to Proclus’ place in the Platonic tradition first by showing how Proclus himself regarded his predecessors, before pointing to (...) the limitations of Proclus’ own perspective. The author argues that Proclus indeed belonged to the strand of Platonism ready to go beyond the Plato’s words, but that his exegesis of Plato was much more inspired by Numenius’ allegorical interpretation and by Porphyry’s and Iamblichus’ project of reconciling Plato with Orphism and the Chaldean Oracles than Plotinus’. (shrink)

Artykuł stanowi obszerne, krytyczne omówienie książki Przedracjonalne źródła racjonalnej refleksji filozoficznej autorstwa Jadwigi Skrzypek-Faluszczak. Krytyka obejmuje kolejne części monografii — „Wstęp” oraz trzy rozdziały, a zakończona jest wskazaniem na rozmaite uchybienia formalne, jakie w tej monografii się pojawiają. Rozważania nie ograniczają się do aspektu krytycznego, lecz prezentują rozmaite ujęcia danych kwestii obecne w literaturze przedmiotu, a nie zostały ujęte przez autorkę monografii, a także propozycje własnych autorskich rozwiązań.