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Plato held the eternity of matter. The material of which the world was formed was originally a shapeless mass existing from eternity. It was arranged in perfect and beautiful forms by God. Plato comments on the nature of the soul, the soul of the world, the origin of evil, and the four original elements of all created, corporeal things. But the soul is both created and uncreated. The subject is illustrated by geometry and the doctrine of ratios, and by the musical scale. The divisible and the indivisible are the Other and the Same. The opinion of those philosophers who make the soul a compound of both refuted. Two discordant principles rule the world: Fate or Necessity, and Intelligence or Wisdom. The soul is not altogether the workmanship of the Deity: Illustrations from geometry, the planetary system, and the science of music. The soul derives its beginning neither from time nor is the product of generation, but it is endowed with several faculties and virtues.
Images have always stirred ambivalent reactions. Yet whether eliciting fascinated gazes or iconoclastic repulsion from their beholders, they have hardly ever been seen as true sources of knowledge. They were long viewed as mere appearances, placeholders for the things themselves or deceptive illusions. Today, the traditional critique of the spectacle has given way to an unconditional embrace of the visual. However, we still lack a persuasive theoretical account of how images work. Emmanuel Alloa retraces the history of Western attitudes toward the visual to propose a major rethinking of images as irreplaceable agents of our everyday engagement with the world. He examines how ideas of images and their powers have been constructed in Western humanities, art theory, and philosophy, developing a novel genealogy of both visual studies and the concept of the medium. Alloa reconstructs the earliest Western media theory—Aristotle’s concept of the diaphanous milieu of vision—and the significance of its subsequent erasure in the history of science. Ultimately, he argues for a historically informed phenomenology of images and visual media that explains why images are not simply referential depictions, windows onto the world. Instead, images constantly reactivate the power of appearing. As media of visualization, they allow things to appear that could not be visible except in and through these very material devices.
Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was one of the luminaries of the Florentine Renaissance and the scholar responsible for the revival of Platonism. The translator and interpreter of the works of both Plato and Plotinus as well as of various Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts, Ficino was also a musician, priest, magus and psychotherapist, an original philosopher and the author of a vast and important correspondence with the intellectual figures of his day including Lorenzo the Magnificent. Professor Allen has become the foremost interpreter of Ficino’s metaphysics and mythology, and the ancient sources they draw upon; and this collection of essays assembles his work on Ficino’s complex interrogation of Platonic 'theology’ as not only a preparation for Christianity but as an enduring medium for intellectuals to explore and to express Christian truths.
First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The "theory of forms" usually attributed to Plato is one of the most famous of philosophical theories, yet it has engendered such controversy in the literature on Plato that scholars even debate whether or not such a theory exists in his texts. Plato's Forms: Varieties of Interpretation is an ambitious work that brings together, in a single volume, widely divergent approaches to the topic of the forms in Plato's dialogues. With contributions rooted in both Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, the book illustrates the contentious role the forms have played in Platonic scholarship and suggests new approaches to a central problem of Plato studies.
Arrested in the Soviet Union in 1975 for composing and distributing "subversive" pamphlets-compiled of quotes from official Soviet sources-Alexander V. Avakov was sentenced to hard labor in a KGB camp. After serving his sentence, he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1981. Avakov soon found himself subject to the shadowy invasion of FBI surveillance, for no apparent reason; was it for the letters he wrote to friends back home? In his book, Avakov examines the evolution of electronic surveillance as well as the extent of modern "total surveillance," with a consideration of the impact of electronic surveillance on citizen rights, and the philosophical basis for the connection between rights and privacy. "Without privacy, there is no autonomy of person; without autonomy of person, there is no freedom." Yet the United States government employs several legal mechanisms which hinge on innovative uses of electronic surveillance to evade the safeguards that are the pride of America. Such techniques include the use of friendly countries' intelligence services and the Echelon program to avoid the ticklish problem of obtaining warrants. With the "war on terror" and new legislation such as the USA Patriot Act, the US government has been expanding the use of searches without warrants (such as wiretaps and other forms of surveillance) to gather information that technically is supposed to be barred from presentation in criminal court as evidence. The resultant weakening of the exclusionary rule and due process in general violate the Constitution and make a mockery of the freedoms America advertises to the rest of the world. America, he shows, declares high-minded legal ideals but hasconsistently cheated in their implementation. There is logic, tradition, and a stable "modus operandi" in the way the US security apparatus violates the Constitution. The history of political spying in the US, as well as warnings by US legal authorities, point to the dangers of electronic surveillance to human rights. The author outlines various ways in which surveillance of citizens is increasing, then examines the bases of our expectations of liberty, from Plato to the US Constitution. In the tradition of the Russian intelligentsia, he brings a broad knowledge of literature, philosophy, history and legal studies to his analysis. Avakov concludes with a discussion of practical solutions to counter these dangers as suggested in a number of publications.
This book investigates the thought of two of the most influential philosophers from antiquity, Plato and his predecessor Anaxagoras, with respect to their metaphysical account of objects and their properties. The book's subject matter is of wide interest to philosophers and historians of philosophy alike. The methodology applied in the study of the subject matter in this book also facilitates reaching out to both domains of readership. The innovative (and possiblycontroversial) claims made in the book will spark debate and bring the book at the forefront of current discussions in philosophy.