- Title
- Apuleian Evidence regarding Pre-Plotinian Interpretation of the Parmenides
- Creator
- Tarrant, Harold
- Relation
- Plato's Parmenides: Selected Papers of the XIIth Symposium Platonicum p. 483-499
- Relation
- International Plato Studies 41
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783985720217
- Publisher
- Academia
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Both Plotinus in Enn. V. 1. 8 and Proclus (Theol, Plat, 2. 4. 31) are reluctant to attribute originality to his very incomplete interpretation of the final part of Prm. As also in Alcinous, it is possible to see from the newly published Expositio that Apuleius saw the dialogue as making contributions not only to logic but also to metaphysics, including first principles. After restoring the text of de Platone 190, I show how it can be seen to be dependent upon reading the negative epistemology of Prm. 142a4-5 as applied to the first god. Philo de Somniis 1. 67 offers a close comparison. I conclude that before Apuleius, indeed before Philo, there had been an attempt to interpret the first hypothesis of Parmenides as describing a supreme god who is properly thought of as one and is marked by non-possession of the properties that Plato there denies to the one. Eudorus is thus a likelier influence on Apuleius than Moderatus. Like Alcinous and Calcidius, Apuleius thus finds metaphysical, or epoptic, material in Pm,., while avoiding the extreme transcendence and causal priority characteristic of the Plotinian One. Apuleius' position agrees with his picture of Plato as blending both Eleatic and Pythagorean material with the Socratic.
- Subject
- Apuleius; interpretation; middle Platonism; Parmenides; Plato
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1481751
- Identifier
- uon:50793
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780128114766
- Language
- eng
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