Research: Political reflection in Neoplatonism. A new reading of Damascius's ‘Life of Isidore’
ABSTRACT:
This project investigates the nature and status of political reflection in late Neoplatonism, with particular focus on Damascius. Starting from an analysis of the hierarchy of virtues as a key site for examining the relationship between ethics and metaphysics, it seeks to determine whether a coherent theoretical core of the “political” can be identified within the Neoplatonic tradition.
Through comparison with earlier thinkers, especially Proclus, the study examines the role and status of civic virtues within an increasingly theologized system. In Damascius, the reformulation of the hierarchy of virtues in the Commentary on the Phaedo and the Commentary on the Philebus, together with the aporetic structure of the De principiis, raises the question of whether ethics can retain structural stability even when metaphysical foundations become uncertain.
The project also addresses the meaning of hieratic virtues and the figure of the “philosopher-Bacchus.” In Damascius, theurgy is reinterpreted in an anagogical and dialectical sense, reshaping the model of the intellectual and his role as guide of the community. The political thus emerges not as an institutional sphere but as a providential and ordering function, historically reflected in the practice of the Athenian School and in the Life of Isidore.