philosophia
(φιλοσοφια)
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| (Language: Greek) |
| Alternate Spellings: |
philosophy |
| Short Description: |
love of wisdom |
| Long Description: |
love of wisdom; the intellectual and ‘erotic’ path which leads to virtue and knowledge; the term itself perhaps is coined by Pythagoras; the Hellenic philosophia is a prolongation, modification and ‘modernization’ of the Egyptian and Near Eastern sapiential ways of life; philosophia cannot be reduced to philosophical discourse; for Aristotle, metaphysics is prote philosophia, or theologike, but philosophy as theoria means dedication to the bios theoretikos, the life of contemplation – thus the philosophical life means the participation in the divine and the actualization of the divine in the human through the personal askesis and inner transformation; Plato defines philosophy as a training for death ( Phaed.67cd); the Platonic philosophia helps the soul to become aware of its own immateriality, it liberates from passions and strips away everything that is not truly itself; for Plotinus, philosophy does not wish only ‘to be a discourse about objects, be they even the highest, but it wishes actually to lead the soul to a living, concrete union with the Intellect and the Good’; in the late Neoplatonism, the ineffable theurgy is regarded as the culmination of philosophy. |
| Example(s): |
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| Source(s): |
The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Platonic and Pythagorean Philosophy, by Dr. Algis Uždavinys |
| Notes & References: |
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