Medieval Studies

The function of image in alchemical treatises like Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens opens a discussion of alchemy as laboratory work or as spiritual discipline. According to some scholars, the iconography of alchemy is a metaphorical illustration of laboratory work. This thesis argues that it is not the case with Atalanta fugiens, where the iconographical language is part of a tradition that stresses the power of image in expressing spiritual and metaphysical achievement. The tradition for which the image plays the major role is identified by Ernst Gombrich as a Neo-Platonic one. Using Gombrich’s theory (the Neo-Platonic symbol theory) and his terminology pertaining to the function of images (didactic, revelative, magic), I explored the possible ways of interpreting Atlanta fugiens’ iconography for both the initiated and the common “reader”. Three emblems (VIII, XXX, and XXI) are analyzed in relation to the additional text to illustrate the possibility of building a structural model for the images (didactic-revelative, didactic, and revelative), but also to discuss their ambiguity in several semiotic layers. The hypothesis is also advanced that Atalanta fugiens’ illustrations were influenced by the iconography of Lambspring’s De lapide Philosophorum, and not the other way around. This entire excursion returns to the starting point of the thesis, which stresses that alchemy is an allegorical manner of expression for something spiritual and religious, and not merely pre-chemistry.

Exegetical work on philosophical systems requires not only that one give
an  account  of  the  structure  of  a  system’s  assumptions  and  arguments,
but also of its forms, such as the form of expression (or genre: dialogue,
poem, aphorisms, and so on), or its form of argumentation (clear cut dis-
cursive  exposition,  logical  formalization,  metaphorical,  allegorical
discourse,  and  so  forth).  These  formal  considerations  may  seem  to  be
secondary,  merely  ornamental  issues,  but  they  can  raise  unexpected
questions. The literal reading of a text has its counter-part in allegorical
interpretation.  This  way  of  reading,  which  must  have  started  with  the
first readers of Homer and found a fertile ground in Philo’s allegorical
commentaries on the Bible, was amazingly natural for Proclus (c. 411–
485), whose writings and commentaries represent the last phases of late
antique philosophy, and particularly of the relation between philosophy
and rhetoric.

In the Parmenides 142b-144b Plato argues that the difference between one and being is done by virtue of difference, and from these three entities numbers are generated; firstly by obtaining the first even and the first odd number, and then, by the process of multiplication all numbers. This Platonic argument is seldom considered and discussed by the philosophers or the historians of mathematics. The argument rises several questions which could put a new perspective on Plato’s philosophy of mathematics and Greek mathematics. Similar to Plato’s view on the generation of number which starts from twoness (143c-d5), from pair to two, and from two to one, L.E.J. Brouwer postulates the structure of duality as basis.
This paper explores any possible resemblance between Plato’s conception on the generation of numbers and the intuitionism of Brouwer. It provides an analytical commentary of the stages of Plato’s arguments: the types of dualities used by Plato in order to generate number two are discussed: one is always two, it is never one; From three distinct entities pairs can be distinguished (τινε) (143c3); A pair is called both (ἀμφοτέρω) (143c4); What is called both is two (δύο) (143d2). I try to venture on why the mathematical one (ἓν εἶναι) for counting is obtained via δύο, and not as a given from the very beginning, from an initial ontological unity (ἓν). The common ground for this comparative reading is the conception of two-oneness shared by Plato and Brouwer - the two-oneness, “the basal intuition of mathematics”, creates all finite cardinal numbers”. I am also considering the possible reason for which Plato used an apparently specific formula for obtaining number 3. What the argument seems to be doing is to display that 3 is not 1+1+1, but it is essentially 1 added to 2. I argue that Plato’s formula for the generation of numbers could be understood in the following manner. We need only 2 and 2+1, and by multiplication, 2x2, 2x(2+1), (2+1)x(2+1) and so on, we obtain the remaining numbers. The rest of the numbers after two and three are products of multiplication: 2x2 (δύο δὶς), 3x3 (τρία τρὶς), 2x3(δύο τρίς), and 3x2 (τρία δὶς). The paper discusses also possible answers concerning the reason for which Plato’s argument does not provide a theory for the generation of prime numbers.

Abstract: This dissertation is a contribution to the reassessment of Platonic ontology and mathematical conceptions as found in the beginning of the second hypothesis of the second part of the Parmenides (142b -144b), in what I argue to be Plato’s ontological argument and the argument for the generation of numbers. I support the reading of these two specific arguments as a coherent continuum: how the being of one was conceived by Plato as necessarily different from one, differentiating thus himself from Eleatic philosophy and setting the grounds for multiplicity, which leads Plato into a discussion on the primordial of numbers. There are numbers (the mathematical argument) only because one and being can be separated (the ontological argument). My analysis of the argument for the generation of numbers is substantia ted by an evaluation of Aristotle’s testimony in Metaphysics A6, a testimony which, I argue, is built upon this passage of the Parmenides. The dissertation provides an analytical commentary of the stages of the arguments, in an attempt to place the arguments on the map of Plato’s philosophy. I demonstrate that the ontological and mathematical arguments are actual Platonic arguments, and not merely dialectic exercises, which have traceable conclusions in Plato’s philosophy of the so called late dialogues, especially the Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Timaeus.

Atât pentru antichitatea greacă, cât și pentru evul mediu, actorul este un periferic al societăţii. Prezența pe scenă și a persoanelor periferice social reiterează originile teatrului și ale scenei, coagulând meditaţia scenicului în jurul nebuniei (o altă dizabilitate, de data aceasta de natură psihologică). Spectatorul, scos din starea lui de bine, de confort cotidian şi sufletesc (pentru că nu este ne-bun), este obligat să-şi reconsidere atitudinea faţă de artă şi faţă de nebunie; este obligat la o introspecţie a propriei înclinaţii spre nebunie. Discursul de tip pozitivist ne spune că nebunia este patologie, un parazit al normalităţii, însă în viziunea Teresei Leonhard, nebunia este mult mai complexă, este o de-plasare pe diagonală – adică directă, asemenea nebunilor pe tabla de şah – înspre un registru religios.

Avand in vedere ca muzica lautareasca a fost asimilata de catre manea, iar muzica populara a fost oarecum „confiscata” de catre sarbatorile „Cantarii Romaniei”, iar astazi, sub un alt chip, de catre posturi de televiziune precum „Etno” si „Favorit”, cum intelegi activitatea trupei tale in peisajul muzical romanesc?