"As for new start... it is not a western paradigm at all, even though some majestic has been created surrounded by English-reading occultists by the American mystic Edgar Cayce...."
[From "Dion Destiny and Wicca", a snitch obtainable by Ronald Hutton to the 2009 Dion Destiny Lecture]
1.
"Defenders of Plato [appearing in the Restoration] maintained that Plato's belief in individual immortality and in the handiwork of the world by a divine Demiurge through his philosophy outstanding well reconciled with Christianity, but critics noted the difficulties posed by Plato's belief in the transmigration of souls and by the fact that the handiwork described in the Timaeus was not a handiwork ex nihilo but reasonably from preexisting subject matter."
[Moral Doctrine by Ann Blair, which is Chp. 17 of The Cambridge Take notes of Science, Vol. 3 (2006). The quote is crazed from p. 374. In this and all quotes underneath, mass in bold has been further.]
2.
"To damage such arguments [in deem of Platonism], the Composite scholar and maximum Aristotelian, George of Trebizond, in 1458 wrote A Corresponding of the Philosophers Aristotle and Plato.... The proliferation of Platonism, in George's view, was a elder hazard to western customs than the advance of the Turks, not tiniest given that Plato's philosophy, in vivid diverge to Aristotle's, was emphatic not consistent with Christianity. Plato's philosophy of immortality, George contended, was damaged by his belief in the pre-existence and transmigration of souls; and in the Timaeus he did not point a handiwork into the world of whiz, as in Christian theology, to the same degree it is critical that the reduced-size was or in peculiar."
[The inheritance of ancient philosophy by Jill Kraye, which is Chp. 12 in The Cambridge Husband to Greek and Roman Doctrine (2003). The quote is from p. 333.]
3.
"The greatest extent well-known of the early [pre-Socratic] Greek philosophers, tranquil, was Pythagoras... In tallying to the biography [of Pythagoras] in Diogenes Laertius, at hand were selected works on Pythagoras by Iamblichus, which some humanists bound to be read -- Ficino even through a Latin kind, even though it never got voguish make known... and a Neo-Pythagorean dialogue attributed to Timaeus of Locri, the reverence reporter in Plato's Timaeus, carried thin weight to buy the dialogue in the Greek editions of Plato published in Aldus in 1513 and Estienne in 1578.
"It was this scorching bond in the middle of Pythagoreanism and Platonism, underscored in various Neoplatonic works, which gave Pythagoras a special substance for Restoration Platonists from Ficino to Patrizi. Pythagoras, for them, was the dreamer who bequeathed to Plato the philosophy of the immortality of the heart, surrounded by the best advertisements for Christian Platonism -- even though this did not restriction them from using him as a clever fall guy for Plato's humiliating belief in the transmigration of souls."
[Jill Kraye, ibid, pp. 341-342]
4.
"Plato's philosophy... equally confined to a small area elements thoroughly troubling to the larger Christian culture of the early Restoration. It is true that Plato had (arguably) engaged whatever thing fondness a Christian philosophy of handiwork, and he had irrefutably alleged in the immortality of the heart. But increassing intimacy with the dialogues would interruption other doctrines less easy to pacify with consistency. Nonetheless Plato had alleged in immortality, he had equally perceptibly alleged in the preexistence and transmigration of souls. A sure Christianizer possibly will, studying the depiction of handiwork in the Timaeus, appeal the demiurge with Christ and the Forms with Opinion in the mind of God. But it was troubled to know what to do with the "reduced-size", the in disarray subject matter which was that is to say declared (52D) to admit existed from all time without end, in line lack of the Christian ex nihilo."
[Plato in the Italian Restoration, Vol. 1 by James Hankins, pp. 10-11]
5.
"This leads to the third group of charges adjoining Plato: that his theological views were not consistent with Christian truth. The humanists, quoting a celebrated passage in Augustine's De civitate Dei, had argued that Plato's belief in individual immortality and handiwork through his theology closer to Christianity than Aristotle's. Plato's critics replied that, at all his qualities as a theologian, they were outweighed by his defects. They attacked his unorthodox views on the pre-existence and transmigration of souls. They noted that, even if Plato had alleged in handiwork, he had not alleged in handiwork ex nihilo; in the Timaeus it seemed that the reduced-size (or largest subject matter, as it was called by Restoration interpreters) was or in peculiar at the stage of handiwork."
[Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, bragging for "Platonism, Restoration", p. 442]
To the better-quality I mettle straightforwardly add three succinct footnotes:
(1) One of the charges adjoining John Italos that was not mentioned by Anna Comnena, was that Italos had rejected the Christian philosophy of handiwork ex nihilo in deem of the Pagan view that the have a bearing out of which the Opening is produced has existed for all time without end.
(2) In Witches, Druids and King Arthur, Ronald Hutton actually makes several references James Hankins' work on Platonism in the Restoration.
(3) I say sorry for the practice sort of these selections. The phenomenon, tranquil, is to prove that this stuff is not troubled to find, at tiniest not so want as one actually looks for it.
Ronald Hutton ">Dion Destiny, Ronald Hutton, Wicca ">Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena ">Ronald Hutton, New beginning ">"Restoration ">Ronald Hutton,Vergil, Ovid ">Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis
* Lick up Seven: Erotic Metempsychosis
