This chapter identifies three key features of theological discourse in the Roman empire during the first six centuries CE. First, theological language remained shared across the ‘pagan’–Christian divide. Secondly, truthfulness of religious practice was a central theological concern. Thirdly, theology progressively became the remit of professionals, philosophers and bishops. Offering an alternative understanding of the Christianisation of the Roman empire, the chapter argues that, from a Certeaunian perspective, the loss of plausibility that Late Antique ‘paganism’ suffered is reflected in the way in which Neoplatonist discourse distorted the balance between theology and ritual by fully subsuming the latter to the former.

This chapter analyzes Plotinus’ connection of dialectic to grasping Intellect’s holistic unity. It examines how Ennead III 7 links the dialectical method to the unity of the Greatest Kinds, and how Ennead VI 7 redefines the roles of Sameness and Otherness within Intellect’s life. Plotinus presents Intellect as self-same yet generating internal otherness through division, offering an ‘inverted’ interpretation of the Sophist’s interweaving (συμπλοκή) of kinds.

By analysing surviving testimonies on the existence of a possible Commentary on the Sophist and some passages from Damascius’ Commentary on the Parmenides and Problems and Solutions, this chapter explores Damascius’ reading of the Sophist on not-being. It argues that Damascius, drawing on the Sophist, distinguishes not just two types of non-being but two types of nothingness. This nuanced interpretation, grounded in a close reading of the text, allows Damascius to offer a fresh interpretation of the ‘parricide’ of Parmenides, advancing the Neoplatonic discussion on nothingness.

Plotinus’ treatise 6.2 offers a metaphysical interpretation of the five greatest genera of Plato’s Sophist – being, motion, rest, sameness, and otherness – as fundamental constituents of the intelligible realm. This chapter connects Plotinus’ arguments to ancient debates on division. Plotinus holds that the greatest genera are both genera and causative principles within Intellect, while higher and lower levels of reality are homonymous and cannot be subsumed under a common genus. This view explains his focus on the Sophist, a dialogue concerned with both the division of beings (as in the Philebus) and the status of Forms as living beings (as in the Timaeus). The chapter further argues that Plotinus’ discussion likely influenced Porphyry’s lost commentary on the Sophist. Passages from the Isagoge and other works suggest that Porphyry adopted Plotinus’ idea of the genera as both genera and principles but extended it to higher and lower levels of the hierarchy. Thus, the greatest genera become principles not only of partial Forms but also of lower entities, a view later echoed by Simplicius in In Phys. 405.10–17.

Plotinus’ interpretation of Plato’s Sophist centers on the “greatest kinds”: Being, Motion, Rest, Identity, and Difference. Within his metaphysics of Intellect and intelligible Being, these kinds play a privileged role in expressing the unity of subject and object characteristic of the second hypostasis. This chapter examines Plotinus’ exegesis of the greatest kinds in On the Genera of Being (Enneads VI 1–3), focusing especially on VI 2, where the Platonic kinds are established as intelligible genera. Yet the entire tripartite treatise may be read as an interpretation of the ontological section of the Sophist. The critiques of Aristotelian and Stoic categories in VI 1 develop Plato’s rejection of pluralists and monists, while the principle that Being is both one and many reflects Plato’s search for an ontology avoiding both extremes. Plotinus’ derivation of the genera from the life and thought of Intellect, and his view of them as structural moments of self-thinking activity, rests on the claim that ‘Being in the full sense’ must possess life and thought. This principle underlies both Plotinus’ reading of the Sophist and his broader interpretation of Platonic metaphysics.

This chapter contrasts Porphyry’s and Iamblichus’ interpretations of the Sophist. Despite shared exegetical principles, they reached conflicting conclusions. Porphyry read the dialogue primarily logically, understanding division within that framework. Iamblichus offered a metaphysical reading, interpreting division as an imitation of procession from the One. Their disagreement over the statue-making example (φάντασμα) further reflects their divergent views on theurgy.

This chapter investigates whether Proclus employs a distinction akin to the Fregean subsumption/subordination distinction to cast light on puzzling claims in the Sophist, such as ‘Motion is at rest’. It argues that Proclus distinguishes predicates true of a Form’s nature from those true by participation to avoid contradiction. The chapter concludes that Proclus’ account, while ingenious, suffers from logical and ontological flaws, cautioning against its adoption for interpreting Plato.

In this concluding chapter, I provide an outline of the Proclan system drawn exclusively from his personal works. I then proceed to compare it to the philosophical system found in Plato’s dialogues along with the testimony regarding it in the Platonic tradition. I examine the two systems under the rubrics: One, Intellect, and Soul. I conclude by arguing that, while Proclus has elevated theology to a place beyond that which Plato himself endorses, nevertheless Proclus emerges as a highly accurate and philosophically sophisticated exegete of Plato and that for the most part, Plato and Proclus stand or fall together philosophically. In the notional Triad: Plato, Platonism, and Proclus, the “middle term” does unite the two “extremes,” even if the logos of each of these is different.

This chapter examines the role of Greek philosophy in forming the worldview of the Byzantine Church. It begins with the fundamental identification of God as the Good (in the Platonic sense of the Form of the Good) found in the Cappadocian Fathers. This identification provides the basis for a number of characteristic themes in Byzantine theology, including the primacy of the experience of God over theoretical inquiry; the need for poetic imagery in describing God; the naturalness of virtue; and the active role of God within human choice. The chapter also examines a further important Platonic theme, the understanding of the Divine Liturgy as a form of participation in heavenly worship. It ends by noting a number of ways in which Greek philosophy factored into later developments, including the rise of ‘Byzantine scholasticism’ based on Aristotle and the Neoplatonism of Michael Psellos and his followers.

Emerson’s aesthetics addresses fundamental philosophical questions on the reality of beauty, experience, and the nature of art and creativity. A central thread running throughout his aesthetic views is the love of beauty, which celebrates a felt appreciation for the diverse beauties found in nature and society in and for themselves. The experiential self as it exists in a connatural relationship with its surroundings has the potential to enjoy such deep folds of qualitative significance. Emerson, moreover, theorizes the existence of an absolute form of beauty having a metaphysical primacy. Beauty exists as the ultimate ideal of human conduct and thought and as the primordial ground or first cause of the universe. In this aesthetic cosmology, art through its imaginative symbolic appropriations of its environment shares in the greater metamorphic processes of a creatively polyphonous and open universe.

The Comedy’s recantation of an error determines Paradiso’s role. The poem recants Convivio’s rationalism, not for the sake of faith but for philosophy properly understood. Dante initiates that change when, in Convivio IV, he pivots from a metaphysical impasse to investigating the meaning of nobility, a focus on human affairs that persists in the Comedy. Because wisdom must be sought, understanding the ground from which the search begins is crucial to its justification and, once it’s undertaken, to forestall passion-induced distortions. As a guide, Dante looks to Aristotle, the genuine Aristotle, not the derivative versions of his contemporaries.

But Dante’s path to the question of happiness, which animates philosophy, differs from Aristotle’s. To defend the philosophic life, Dante must liberate philosophy from subordination to faith. I here sketch the way in which the Comedy’s form aids him in this effort. In thus prosecuting political philosophy’s central task, the defense of the philosophic life, Paradiso fulfills its role not as the poem’s telos but as the portal to that life “figured” in Purgatorio’s Earthly Paradise.

Chapter 1 begins by addressing how faith was central to Augustine’s theology, reading of Scripture, and Christian experience. Although Augustine understood faith as intellectual, this fit within his classical understanding of the human person. Moreover, though faith is intellectual, it is never without some motivating affection, is deeply interpersonal, and frequently has the sense of personal trust. Three early works ground and foreshadow his mature thinking on justification by faith. In de vera religione (True Religions), faith emerges as theological because it truly relates one to God through the incarnation; it is not merely pedagogical and instrumental, as in Neoplatonism. In de utilitate credendi (The Advantage of Believing), Augustine appeals to the necessity of faith in the case of students and friends to demonstrate how faith is virtuous. Lastly, de fide et symbolo (Faith and the Creed) shows how faith is fundamentally ecclesial through the inseparable relationship between the faith animating the believer and the faith received from the Church.

This chapter explores Augustine’s intellectual formation and conversion to Christianity in the context of late antiquity’s philosophical, religious, and political transformations. Tracing his journey through Manichaean dualism, Neoplatonism, and finally Pauline Christianity, the chapter highlights Augustine’s struggles with the nature of evil, the limits of human will, and the role of divine grace. Drawing on the Confessions, it examines Augustine’s dialogue with Platonism, particularly Plotinus, whose hierarchy of being and emphasis on inner ascent deeply influenced him – but could not resolve the question of the incarnation. Augustine’s embrace of Christ as both divine and human offered a radically new model of wisdom grounded in humility and love (caritas), unavailable in pagan philosophical traditions. The chapter contextualizes Augustine’s thought within Roman imperial history, the codification of Christian scripture, and the evolving notion of philosophy as a way of life. Ultimately, it shows how Augustine’s life and writings forged a new intellectual synthesis, in which classical reason and biblical faith coalesced into a powerful vision of human transformation, one that would shape Christian anthropology, literary practice, and theological reflection for centuries.

One of the conversion stories related to Augustine in the run-up to his own conversion was that of the philosopher and orator Marius Victorinus, who had translated the “books of the Platonists” that Augustine encountered in Book 7. What he does not tell us, however, is how important Victorinus was, not only as an exemplar of boldness in confessing Christ, but in shaping Augustine’s own reading of Plotinus. This chapter compellingly lays out Victorinus’ influence on Augustine’s Trinitarian theology as expressed in a brief and bewildering passage in Book 13. It shows that wherever Augustine departs from Plotinus, he does so in a way that he found in Victorinus; Victorinus also taught Augustine distinctions and arguments from Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics that he could not have known from other Latin texts available to him. Through Augustine, then, Victorinus had a much larger influence on the history of metaphysics than has been appreciated up to now. Moreover, we find that “Augustine’s common designation as ‘Platonist’ would be more precise if it were revised to ‘Victorine Neoplatonist.’”

Chapter 4 begins by tracing some reappearances and interconnections of Emersonian themes, in what Goodman calls paths of coherence in Emerson’s philosophy: not a complete system, but ways that his thoughts hang together. The chapter focuses on “Nominalist and Realist,” where Emerson sets out the competing metaphysics of particulars and universals without reconciling their opposition. Near the end of the essay, he draws a skeptical lesson from his epistemology of moods. “I am always insincere,” he writes, “as always knowing there are other moods.” This might be cause for despair, but Emerson’s tone in this final paragraph is more in tune with ancient skepticism and Montaigne. He ends “Nominalist and Realist” by withdrawing from the dispute, but this does not mean that he gives up inquiring. Skepticism can be both a withholding of final judgment, and, as Herwig Friedl observes, “a constant looking around, without any attempt at closure.”

The book concludes with a reflection on one of the main features of the joy of love, its unreality: joy is or feels like it is out of this world. For many of the authors surveyed in this book, joy’s unreality does not suggest its naivety or foolishness but its very power to bridge phantasm and reality, the transcendent and the immanent. The conclusion opens up onto the European Renaissance: while the language of phantasmatic love’s joy is taken up by Petrarchist poetry, it is in seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry that is found the continuation of a language of love’s joy as the arresting and expansion of the present moment. John Donne and Thomas Traherne write of a joy that is here and now yet experienced as an everywhere, they write of its power to bring us out of ourselves and to reveal the transcendent within human love.

This chapter excavates a conception of autonomy from Olympiodorus’ (495–570) commentary on Plato’s Gorgias. For Olympiodorus, the subject of the dialogue is the ethical principles that lead to constitutional happiness, i.e., the well-being of one who exhibits a proper interior ‘constitution’, psychic arrangement or order. Such a person knows himself insofar as he identifies himself with the rational soul and rules himself accordingly. The principal interlocutors in the dialogue falter and stumble primarily because they do not know themselves, and this self-ignorance renders them heteronomic. The present essay therefore detects in Olympiodorus’ commentary an insistence on self-knowledge as the archaeological ground upon which an autonomous human life is based. By reading the pages of the Gorgias, Olympiodorus aspires to draw forth for his students a notion of freedom that is truly human. This chapter attends to Olympiodorus’ commentary with the hope of accomplishing a similar outcome.