Harmonizing Binaries: Hypatia's Synesius.
Hypatia and Synesius lived in a highly divisive time with religious extremism on the rise and the meaning and role of Classical cultural fixtures like paideia, philosophia and manteia being questioned and redefined. I examine Synesius' Letters, Dion , and De Insomniis to tease out the universalizing...
| Publicado en: | International Journal of the Platonic Tradition Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 49 - 82 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Brill Academic Publishers
2021
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=150187615&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 150187615 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 18725082 2SGP jtl: International Journal of the Platonic Tradition issn: 18725082 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: 2021 vid: 15 iid: 1 pid: 639 pub: Brill Academic Publishers artinfo: ui: 150187615 10.1163/18725473-BJA10007 ppf: 49 ppct: 33 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 1.6MB tig: atl: Harmonizing Binaries: Hypatia's Synesius. aug: au: Markus, Donka affil: University of Ann Arbor, Michigan su: Religious extremists Hypatia, d. 415 sug: subj: Religious extremists Hypatia, d. 415 keyword: Christian contemplation dream-divination education pagan philosophy theurgy ab: Hypatia and Synesius lived in a highly divisive time with religious extremism on the rise and the meaning and role of Classical cultural fixtures like paideia, philosophia and manteia being questioned and redefined. I examine Synesius' Letters, Dion , and De Insomniis to tease out the universalizing and harmonizing tendencies between pagan and Christian, theoria and paideia, philosophia and manteia that Synesius' writings, life and career embody. I look at Synesius' synthesis of Iamblichean and Plotinian tendencies, a binary found in modern scholarship, to show that theurgy was likely part of Hypatia's teaching within a well-rounded curriculum that included classical paideia and philosophical theoria. Synesius advocates for the importance of paideia , including rhetoric and philosophia as aids in the step-by-step approach to the spiritual ascent, while also acknowledging the value and universal accessibility of theoria reached by desert monks and the dream-divination (oneiromanteia) that everyone can experience in sleep. Paideia makes the fall from the heights of theoria more pleasant, while philosophia (which in Synesius' mind included theurgy) is essential for purifying the pneuma and making it receptive to divinely inspired dreams. I propose that it was in Hypatia's school that Synesius internalized a quote (from a lost work of Aristotle) that reconciles the two approaches (curated and amateur) to the ascent. While society at large was obsessed with ever widening opposites and binaries, Hypatia's Synesius both overtly and covertly emphasized harmonization and unity that are at the heart of philosophia. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of International Journal of the Platonic Tradition is the property of Brill Academic Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: International Journal of the Platonic Tradition holder: Brill Academic Publishers dt: @attributes: year: 2021 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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