Reading Plato, Tracing Plato

Stephen Gersh deals here with the Platonic tradition in European thought from the 4th to the 14th century. During this period one can distinguish an earlier phase, consisting of the work of ancient Greek commentators who possessed Plato's original works, and a later phase comprising the activities of medieval Latin scholars who, in the absence of most or all of Plato's own works, derived their own version of 'Platonism' from the patristic and secular writers of late antiquity. The essays collected in this volume deal with such important figures in the history of Platonism as Porphyry, Proclus, Boethius, Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury, and Thierry of Chartres, and together serve to demonstrate the variety, continuity, and especially creativity of these writers. Also notable is the light which many of the essays cast not only on the dialectical or logical aspects usually emphasized by historians of philosophy, but also on the grammatical, rhetorical, and even semiotic elements of texts.