 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of Kings College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, A Tale of Two Cities, The Last Pagan Philosophers I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you have never sacrificed an animal to Zeus. If I'm right that you haven't, some of the credit should go to an anonymous Persian infantryman. In the year 363, this unknown soldier thrust a spear through the unarmored abdomen of the Roman emperor we call Julian the Apostate. As so often in history, if things had gone differently, the consequences could have been enormous. Had Julian not ventured into a rash campaign against the Persians, had he not rushed into battle without pulling on his armor, he might have lived. And had he lived, he might have gotten further with his project of weakening Christianity's hold on the Roman Empire, of resurrecting the pagan rituals and rededicating the temples. But as always in history, things did not go differently. Julian was mortally wounded and died sometime later. He was 32 years old and had ruled the empire for less than two years. Julian was, like Marcus Aurelius before him, a philosopher as well as an emperor. But Julian was no Stoic. He was a Platonist, and his philosophy went hand in hand with belief in the existence and power of the traditional gods. Julian was a great admirer of Iamblichus and a great believer in the pagan ritual practices known as Theurgy. Above all, he was a great opponent of Christianity. After surviving a political massacre of most of his close family, Julian was raised a Christian. But he converted to the path of paganism, hence his nickname the Apostate, applied by Christian authors who condemned him for renouncing the true faith. Julian was a scholar by temperament, and even while emperor, wrote philosophically informed works justifying his pagan worldview. This worldview informed the decisions he made during his short reign. Most notorious was his declaration that Christians would be banned from teaching throughout the empire. This was intended to block the Christians' access to the educational institutions that were so fundamental to the lifestyle of the late antique elite classes. But Julian could offer a plausible rationale, too. How could Christians teach the great works of antiquity such as Homer and Hesiod if they rejected the gods named in those texts? Julian also employed less obvious ways of undermining the Christians, for instance by making it easier for sectarian disputes to fester within the new faith. The emperor's death put an end to this short-lived experiment in pagan traditionalism. Julian was certainly not the last ancient admirer of Iamblichus, but he was the last man who could hope single-handedly to restore Iamblichus' gods to their position of undisputed honor. After Julian, pagan philosophy continued to come into conflict with Christianity, but from now on it would be the Christians who wielded imperial authority. The story of how that authority was used against Platonist philosophers is a tale of two cities, Athens and Alexandria. Both had long been centers of intellectual activity. Athens had gone through rough times in the Roman era, but its prestige as the home of Plato and Aristotle could still attract intellectual tourists, including Julian himself. As for Alexandria, it was not only the home of the famous library, but had been a center of Platonism in the early Roman Empire. So, it's no surprise that these were the cities that boasted the two most important philosophical schools of late antiquity. It has been argued that the two schools had distinct intellectual identities, with the school of Athens upholding the fervently religious Platonism of Iamblichus, and Alexandria concentrating on Aristotle and adopting a style of Platonism that reached back to the middle Platonists. But this distinction has come in for some searching criticism. The two schools were bound by student-teacher relationships, and even family ties. And if the Alexandrians failed to embrace Iamblichus' pagan enthusiasm very loudly, this was likely for political reasons. There was reason for caution in both places, but the group in Athens paid too little heed to the warning signs. The Athenian school was founded by the Plutarch I mentioned when we looked at Proclus. Again, he is not to be confused with the middle Platonist Plutarch. This later Plutarch had enough wealth and social standing to put the school on a firm footing, and it fared well through several generations. Proclus and his beloved master, Sirianus, were heads of the school during this time. But the institution was closed down by imperial edict in the year 529, when the head was a man named Damaschius. He and his associates were forced to seek asylum in the Persian Empire, though they did return after a short stay there. The golden chain of Platonist teachers and students had been broken, and it would not be reforged in the city of Athens. The closing of the school was a blow aimed directly at the philosophy inspired by Iamblichus and taught by men like Proclus and Damaschius. In fact, Damaschius thought Proclus insufficiently loyal to Iamblichus and frequently criticized him. But the Christians who appealed to the emperor Justinian to close the school would not have been interested in pagan disputes over fine points of metaphysics. Justinian was persuaded by Christian informers that the Platonists were illegally practicing divination, which became the excuse for shutting the school down. It did not come without warning. A century earlier, the other city of Platonists, Alexandria, had seen the most famous act of Christian violence against a pagan philosopher, the brutal murder of Hypatia in 415 AD. You may have noticed that just about every philosopher to feature in this podcast series has been a man. The one exception that springs to mind is the Cynic philosopher, Hyparchia. In his Republic, Plato had scandalously suggested that his ideal city would include female, as well as male, philosophers. But this had mostly remained theory rather than practice until the time of the Roman Empire. The Stoic Muzonius Rufus argued that since women possessed the same sorts of virtues as men, and are likewise rational, they should be educated, and should study philosophy. And many women in Roman society, especially of course aristocratic women, were educated and did study philosophy. We've already seen that Plotinus' circle of patrons and friends included women, and when we get to the ancient Christians, we'll see women again changing the course of philosophy, albeit that their contributions are always recorded by men. Women like Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, participated in philosophical discussions. She appears in Augustine's dialogues, like a latter-day Christian version of Socrates' teacher Diatima from Plato's Symposium. But whereas women like Monica exercised their influence within private Christian communities, Hypatia actually taught at a philosophical school. Both she and her father Theon were specialists in mathematics. In fact, Damascus, writing about Hypatia, sniffed that she was not only a woman rather than a man, but more a mathematician than a philosopher. This unattractive comment has some truth in it, because her real interest was probably in astronomy rather than Platonist philosophy. This would fit well with the fact that her father Theon wrote commentaries on the works of Ptolemy, and with the content of letters written to her by her student, the Christian Synesius. Synesius would not have been Hypatia's only student who was a Christian, and in fact it seems that Hypatia was far from being an anti-Christian pagan, like Julian the Apostate. Her death was mostly a matter of being in the wrong city at the wrong time. She was slain by a mob who were partisans of the bishop Cyril of Alexandria after she was accused of witchcraft. Hypatia's treatment was not the only case of violence against a pagan Platonist of Alexandria. A man named Hierocles was active there in the middle of the 5th century. He wrote a work Substantial Reports About Witch Survive on the topic of Providence, and a commentary on a collection of Pythagorean sayings called the Golden Verses. Hierocles was summoned before a Christian court, perhaps because he practiced theurgy. Here, he was beaten bloody. But he had the courage to scoop up some of his own blood and flick it at the judge, along with a choice quote from Homer's Odyssey, Here, Cyclops, drink this wine, now that you have eaten human flesh. This story, the closure of the school of Athens, and the death of Hypatia, suggests a context of unrelieved suppression and even savagery against pagans. But it's been suggested that Hypatia's shocking murder actually made it easier for a pagan school to arise in the following century, because many citizens were appalled by this killing of an innocent woman. When it did arise, the school was gathered around a man with a name that will sound familiar, Ammonius. This third ancient Platonist named Ammonius followed the lead of Hypatia in having both Christian and pagan students. In fact, Demaschius bitterly criticized Ammonius for making a deal with the local Christian authorities, which may explain the absence of references to theurgy and other typically-Yamblikian themes in the works of his school. His prudent approach was continued by the last pagan head of the Alexandrian school, whose name was Olympia Doris. He was clearly seeking peaceful coexistence with the Christians when, in his commentaries, he suggested that his audience might prefer to interpret the various divine entities of the Neoplatonic system as attributes of a single god. Mostly steering clear of more controversial subjects, the school concentrated on something both pagans and Christians could appreciate, Aristotle's logic. This may seem surprising, given that Ammonius and his students were committed Platonists, but the pedagogical setting of their work is crucial. Following Porphyry, they saw Aristotle as being fundamentally in harmony with Plato. And, as Platonists, they assumed that the works of Aristotle were more appropriate as an introduction to philosophy. The dialogues of the divine Plato were reserved for more advanced study. Thus, their school commentaries tend to focus on Aristotle, since it was his texts that were above all being taught in lectures for students. Just as there are more books printed every year on basic geometry than on advanced topology, so the ancients wrote more commentaries on Aristotle than on Plato, and more on the introductory subject of logic than on advanced disciplines like metaphysics. If this also helped the pagan teachers to avoid alienating Christian students and angering Christian bishops, so much the better. This also meant that the activities of the school could be carried on much as before by Christian Platonists. After Olympiodorus, the tradition of commentary on Aristotle was continued by his Christian students, one of whom sported the wonderful name David the Invincible. By this time, Christianity itself was invincible. There was no need to shut down the school of Alexandria by imperial edict, as had been done in Athens. In the 5th century, the Christians had beaten pagans like Hierocles, in the 6th century, they simply joined them. Olympiodorus's Christian students did not even hesitate to write down his ideas about Plato's dialogues, just as Ammonius's students had recorded his lectures. These student notes are the commentaries that survive today. Both Damascus and Olympiodorus taught Plato by following the instructions of the Iamblichus and beginning with dialogues they saw as introductory and ethical. But even these supposedly introductory, more ethical dialogues were quietly given of religious interpretation by the Neo-Platonists. For instance, the Phaedo, the dialogue that depicts Socrates's death and his final conversation about the soul's immortality, was taken to concern not just immortality, but the purification of our souls. Demaschius and Olympiodorus took seriously this dialogue's remark that philosophy can be understood as a kind of preparation for death. We're lucky enough to have commentaries, or at least sets of notes, on the Phaedo by both Damascus and Olympiodorus. Their approaches are strikingly different. Where Olympiodorus faithfully follows earlier Platonists, especially Proclus, Damascus rarely misses an opportunity to strike off in new directions. Indeed, he goes out of his way to reject the interpretations of Proclus and Iamblichus, which, by the way, are known to us mostly because they are quoted in these later commentaries. Yet, the goal of all these Neo-Platonists is the same, not only to interpret Plato, but also to vindicate him. They are still aware of attacks by long-dead opponents of Plato, such as the Aristotelian philosopher Strato. They quote these criticisms and rebut them forcefully. But ironically, they often use Aristotelian concepts in doing so. A good example is Damascus's handling of one rather unpersuasive argument in the Phaedo, which tries to prove the immortality of Sol. The argument is that everything comes in cycles from its opposite. For instance, justice comes from what is unjust and vice versa. This means that what goes from life to death should come back to life again. Thus, the death that befalls us at the end of our present life is only a temporary condition, which will be followed by another life in the future. Damascus does two things to show that this argument might be better than it looks. First, he readily admits that the argument is too weak to prove the Sol's immortality all by itself, as Iamblichus had claimed with his characteristic enthusiasm. For Damascus, Socrates's goal is only to show that the Sol will go through many lifetimes while admitting that it may run out of steam eventually. That possibility will be ruled out by different arguments, which come later in the Phaedo. A second way that Damascus lowers the stakes is to claim that Socrates is simply assuming that death is a condition the Sol can be in, rather than sheer non-existence for the Sol. For Sol to be dead, on this assumption, is merely for it to be separate from body. Damascus remarks that the Sol is thus a substance that acquires the accidents of being alive and dead, that is, connected to and then separate from the body. I think we should give Damascus some credit here. He's right, I would say, that in the Phaedo, Socrates just assumes that Sol and body are two different things, and that death is nothing more than the separation of Sol from body. And maybe the argument from opposites is merely supposed to persuade us that what gets separated is liable to be joined again. Perhaps Sol will not get the very same body back, but it will be connected again to some body or other, just as what is hot is liable to get cold, and vice versa. Also, we should admire, or at least notice, how Damascus effortlessly draws on Aristotle in defending Plato. The idea of a substance that survives through the alternation of accidents is pure Aristotelianism, after all. The novelty resides in his applying that idea to the Sol, and using it to explain the limited goals of Plato's argument. Damascus's most famous work is not this commentary on the Phaedo, but a long and complex treatise called On Principles. Here, Damascus grapples with the system handed down to him from Iamblichus and Proclus. He does not follow them slavishly. Rather, he raises, and then resolves, problems that arise within this late Neoplatonic system. His most important contribution comes towards the beginning of the work, when he tackles the difficult problem of the first principle itself. As we've seen, Platonists since even before Plotinus had argued that all things come from a transcendent source of unity, the One. It is meant to be utterly transcendent above the things it produces, a divinity beyond other divinities. And yet, it is still supposedly producing these things. It is somehow a cause for them. But how can this be, asks Damascus. In general, causes are related to their effects, and share characteristics with them. For instance, fire is hot, and gives heat to the things it affects. But if this first principle relates to, and shares characteristics with, the things it produces, then won't this compromise its transcendence? Though Proclus had raised the same worry, as we saw, Damascus accuses him and other Neoplatonic predecessors of trying to have their cake and eat it too. They insist that the One is completely removed from all things, and above all description, because it is so exalted. But in the next breath, they add that the One is intimately connected to all things, because it is the ultimate source of unity. Damascus decides to blow out the candles on this cake, and let darkness fall. If we are going to have a transcendent first principle, we should accept that it really is beyond all description. Drawing inspiration from Iamblichus, Damascus calls it simply the ineffable, cautioning us that even this name is misleading, because the first principle cannot even be said to be ineffable. He distinguishes this ineffable from the One, which we can describe to some extent simply by calling it One. However, even this One should not come into relation with anything else by giving it unity. Damascus instead envisions, following the ineffable, a highest One that is aloof from all things, remaining secluded in its utter unity, and only then, a second, lower One that actually bestows unity on everything. Thus, where Proclus had a single first principle called the One, Damascus winds up with three, the ineffable, the highest One, and the lower One from which unity streams forth to other things. Even fans of Neoplatonism may feel that things have gotten out of hand here. Surely, the whole point of the One is that there is, well, only one of them. But cast your mind back, if you will, to the middle Platonists. We saw that before Plotinus, figures like Numenius suggested that there should be two versions of the first principle, already called the One. The point of this was precisely that there should be a completely unified, transcendent principle, and then another god who would carry out the role of the divine craftsman of Plato's Timaeus. This is the One who gets his hands dirty by actually relating to the rest of the universe. Plotinus reacted by identifying the lower One with a universal intellect. Damascus, following Iamblichus, has effectively undone Plotinus' good work and re-established the middle-Platonic distinction between the types of principle. One that is exalted, one that condescends to cause other things. But he goes the middle Platonists one better, if you'll pardon the pun, by positing the ineffable even beyond the more exalted One. It would have been interesting to see the next move in this metaphysical chess game. But there was no next move, because paganism itself was swept off the board, leaving only the bishops. Demaschius was the last author to engage in the extravagant metaphysical speculation of late Neoplatonism. This is not to say that Neoplatonism itself died after Demaschius, far from it. But after him, Neoplatonism was domesticated within the revealed monotheistic religions. No longer would conceptual distinctions be drawn ever more sharply so as to accommodate the various divinities of traditional Greek religion. The pagans were now on the run, in the most literal of senses. This is shown poignantly by the career of a man who studied with Demaschius in Athens and with Ammonius in Alexandria. His name was Simplicius. He fled to Persia in the entourage of Demaschius, and his works allude to the difficult situation facing pagan philosophy in Athens. Some of his commentaries on Aristotle may even have been written in Persian exile. Wherever they were written, we should be thankful to Simplicius for his labors. These were commentaries unprecedented in their size and detail. He used them as an opportunity to record not only the ideas of previous commentators, especially Alexander of Aphrodisias, but also texts of early Greek thinkers mentioned by Aristotle. To provide context for Aristotle's discussion, Simplicius went to the trouble of copying these out in his commentary, often verbatim. Without Simplicius, we would know much less of Parmenides, for instance, and also lack many fragments from other Presocratic philosophers. This was not mere pedantic completism on Simplicius's part. His commentaries, scholarly and dry though they may be, are haunted by the sense that the pagan heritage is fading out of history. His writings are a candle lit against what he sees as the encroaching darkness of Christianity. Simplicius constantly seeks to show the unity and power of pagan Greek thought, and is thus one of the foremost defenders of the idea that Plato and Aristotle were fundamentally in agreement on all significant points of doctrine. He goes further by insisting that the Presocratics too were in harmony with these doctrines. Even Stoic philosophers could be embraced within the pagan philosophical family. Though Simplicius would have had no sympathy with Stoic materialism, he devoted a commentary to the Handbook of Epictetus, portraying it as a useful text for introductory ethics. It has been suggested that Epictetus's advice on greeting tyranny with fortitude struck a chord with Simplicius living under the shadow of the Christian emperor Justinian. Whether or not this is true, Simplicius's writings were clearly motivated by the hope of keeping alive the unified tradition of pagan philosophy. Naturally, then, Simplicius was horrified when a fellow student of Ammonius, a Christian Philoponus, had the temerity to criticize a fundamental tenet of Aristotelian philosophy. So horrified was he that he took the trouble to quote Philoponus's arguments at great length, much as he'd done with the texts of Presocratics and others. In this case, he wrote down the arguments not to preserve them, but to expose their stupidity. This turns out to have been a mistake. Modern scholars have found Philoponus's arguments not stupid, but amongst the cleverest bits of philosophy in late antiquity. The quotations are thus typically taken out of context and read without Simplicius's sarcastic and hostile rebuttal. Let this be a lesson. If you are ever attacking someone in print, don't do them the favor of carefully recording everything they said. What issue was at stake in this heated debate, sparked by Aristotle but stoked by the fires of pagan Christian conflict? You won't have to wait an eternity to find out, but only until the next episode of The History of Philosophy Without Any Caps.