Plethon the First Philhellene: Re-enacting the Antiquity

2015

ENGLISH ABSTRACT Originating as an extended review of a critical edition of the De virtutibus of Gemistos Plethon, this article takes into account many recent works on Plethon; it attempts to show how the little work On the virtues may provide access to a view of Plethon not as a crypto-advocate of paganism but as a broad-minded Orthodox believer, attempting to widen the cultural horizon of his contemporaries to include what is of value in pre-Christian thinkers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESUMEN ESPAÑOL Inicialmente la recensión de una edición crítica del De virtutibus de Gemisto Pletón, este artículo tiene en cuenta varios estudios recientes sobre Pletón; intenta mostrar cómo el tratado Sobre las virtudes puede devolvernos una imagen de Pletón no como un criptopagano sino como un ortodoxo de mentalidad abierta que intenta ampliar el horizonte cultural de sus coetáneos para incluir los valores de pensadores precristianos.

ABsTRAcT: This essay aims to survey certain key aspects of philhellenism underpinned by the recent and past bibliography on the issue. By exploring the definitions of the related terms, their origins and their various meanings, the paper underscores the notion of " revival " as a central working concept of philhellenic ideas and activities and explores its transformations, acceptances or rejections in Western europe and in Greece during the period from 1770 to 1870.

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, edited by Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglou, 2017

The present chapter will discuss Scholarios’ fixation with Plethon in terms of a pagan and Christian Doppelgänger theme. To begin with, both men claim a privileged access to an “ancient doctrine” (Scholarios: ἀρχαία δόξα / archaia doxa, πάτριος θεολογία / patrios theologia; Plethon: πάτριος δόξα / patrios doxa) and oppose Greek submission to Latin theology. Scholarios identifies this doxa with a centuries-old patristic tradition. Plethon opts for ancient Greek philosophy. Accordingly, both talk of a genos (people) to be saved. Scholarios thinks of this people as specifically and essentially Orthodox, while Plethon conceives of it in secular and proto-national terms, as the “Hellenes.” Consequently, their respective conceptualizations of the word soteria differ too. Scholarios understands it as a collective spiritual salvation to be attained by abiding to the tradition and practices of the Orthodox Church. Contrariwise, in Plethon’s Memoranda for the salvation of the Peloponnese the keyword soteria vigorously regains its Platonic meaning and is stripped of Christian soter- iological significations.8 His soteria is the resilience and survival of a particular political entity, in fact, its conservation through the course of history (to adapt Cicero’s conservare in "De re publica", an apt rendering of Plato’s soteria).

The relation of philosophy to theology is notoriously ambiguous. Reading Philo of Alexandria is a case in point. Understanding the dynamics of philosophy and theology in the Philonic corpus is a key to understanding Philo's thought. And yet, few scholars agree as to how to read Philo on this point. In this article I highlight some of the hermeneutical challenges posed by the Philonic corpus, based on two recent publications.

Deep Blue (University of Michigan), 2020

The Greek Revolution of 1821-1829 mobilized the ideas of classical reception and Philhellenism developed over the previous century to appeal for international support for the war. These complicated ideas influenced the ways both Greeks and non-Greeks thought about the nation, its political character, language, literature, history, culture and landscape. How the revolution and post-revolutionary Greece have been interpreted has shifted over the past 40 years, reflecting changes in both critical theory and also in the geopolitical circumstances in the Eastern Mediterranean and globally. The bicentenary celebrations of 2021 have highlighted the complex, competing claims for the authority to give the dominant account of the founding of modern Greece. Reviewing the scholarship on both Western and Greek Hellenism over the past four decades, our article considers the relationship between classical reception, revolution and the act of commemoration and reveals the hybridity of Hellas in 1821 and 2021. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the start of the Greek Revolution, known by non-Greeks as its 'War of Independence'. Two centuries ago, on 7th March 1821,

Teiresias Supplements Online, 2022

The readings are on the whole convincing: there can be no doubt that Plutarch meant his readers to compare the virtues and vices of these two men as in an ordinary pair of Lives. At the same time, scholars have recognized that Plutarch appears to have been equally interested in using this book to explore a pivotal moment in Greco-Roman history, the moment when Roman intervention began to calm centuries of intra-Greek fighting through the defeat of Philip V and the declaration of freedom for the Greek cities. This interest certainly affected his deployment of syncrisis and articulation of themes across the Lives, as illustrated by his handling of φιλονικία. Plutarch quite plainly ascribes this quality to Philopoemen in sketching his character (Phil. 3.1), but in the actual narrative he does not include many examples of its effects. 5 In fact, φιλονικία is just as important for explaining the historical moment as for characterizing Philopoemen as an individual or comparing him to Flamininus. Philopoemen as a whole, with its numerous descriptions of intra-Greek warfare, serves as a demonstration of the sort of contentiousness that plagued the Greeks and prevented them from achieving freedom on their own. Philopoemen's entire career involved him in conflict with other Greeks, especially Spartans: he established his reputation fighting against King Cleomenes and serving in Crete; 6 in Achaea, his greatest victories came against Machanidas and Nabis, tyrants of Sparta; he died on campaign against the Messenians. Now the victories over tyrants, at least, may be read (narrowly) as connected to the book's theme of liberty. 7 But from the (wider) perspective of the early empire and the pax Romana, that is, from Plutarch's own contemporary perspective, all Philopoemen's wars are just as easily read as examples of Greek military might directed, as usual, against fellow Greeks. By writing in the first Life about the wars in the Peloponnesus that both preceded and coincided with Flamininus's activity in Greece, Plutarch establishes the context for understanding the Roman general's achievement. From this angle, Philopoemen's military victories, though admirable within his Life and the narrow context of the Achaean League, were essentially, as Pelling writes, a demonstration of "that contentiousness that had always been the norm in Greek history, which had doomed his efforts to failure". 8 In Plutarch's 5 See Pelling 1986: 85 (= 2002: 350). 6 Philopoemen served in Crete twice, though Plutarch does not provide many details. Errington (1969: 27-48) argues that he was supporting the interests of Macedon, and so involved in the same sort of conflict that was happening in the Peloponnesus. On both occasions, according to Plutarch, his reputation preceded him back to Achaea, so that upon his return he immediately assumed positions of leadership (

The Classical Review (New Series), 2008

Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu

This article presents the features and meaning of the phrase „Christian Hellenism”, as it has been elaborated in the thinking of the Russian patrologist Georges V. Florovsky. He has based his thesis, namely that of the “radically Christianized” or “Churchified,” “New Hellenism” on three main points: 1) faith is always asserted in a “philosophical system”; 2) Semitic thinking is not radically opposed to Hellenism, because Judaism itself in Jesus’s time was a Hellenised Judaism; 3) Greek philosophy was the fertile, even providential environment in which Christianity could formulate and express its own experience. The result was a philosophia perennis, „something eternal and absolute in the thinking” of the Church. As closure of the study we briefly reflect upon the actuality, and the possibilities and limitations which are implied today in the notion of “Christian Hellenism”. The implications of Florovsky’s vision are thus assessed, both in what concerns the relationship between theol...

LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2015

This work looks at the main themes, concepts and lead figures of the Hellenic philosophical tradition that not only influenced the Greek and then Latin world in antiquity, but also had a lasting influence on intellectual and theological development in the West right up until the Age of Enlightenment. To this end, the focus is on the Socratic tradition, through Plato and then Aristotle, and then the Stoic tradition whose strong imprint can be found on early Christianity, representing the core seed of Western theological evolution via Judaism, Christianity and then Islam.

Classical Reception Journal, 2021

The Greek Revolution of 1821-1829 mobilized the ideas of classical reception and Philhellenism developed over the previous century to appeal for international support for the war. These complicated ideas influenced the ways both Greeks and non-Greeks thought about the nation, its political character, language, literature, history, culture and landscape. How the revolution and post-revolutionary Greece have been interpreted has shifted over the past 40 years, reflecting changes in both critical theory and also in the geopolitical circumstances in the Eastern Mediterranean and globally. The bicentenary celebrations of 2021 have highlighted the complex, competing claims for the authority to give the dominant account of the founding of modern Greece. Reviewing the scholarship on both Western and Greek Hellenism over the past four decades, our article considers the relationship between classical reception, revolution and the act of commemoration and reveals the hybridity of Hellas in 1821 and 2021. Classical reception made concrete This year marks the 200th anniversary of the start of the Greek Revolution, known by non-Greeks as its 'War of Independence'. Two centuries ago, on 7th March 1821,

2011