Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon (Cambridge Classical Studies) by Niketas Siniossoglou


Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon (Cambridge Classical Studies)
Title : Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon (Cambridge Classical Studies)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1107013038
ISBN-10 : 9781107013032
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 472
Publication : First published October 31, 2011

Byzantium has recently attracted much attention, but principally among cultural, social and economic historians. This book shifts the focus to intellectual history, exploring the thoughts of visionary reformer Gemistos Plethon (c.1355–1452). It argues that Plethon brought to their fulfilment latent tendencies among Byzantine humanists towards a distinctive anti-Christian and pagan outlook. His magnum opus, the pagan Nomoi, was meant to provide an alternative to and escape-route from the polarity of the Orthodoxy of Gregory Palamas and Thomism. It was also a groundbreaking reaction to the bankruptcy of a pre-existing humanist agenda and to aborted attempts at the secularisation of the State, whose cause Plethon had himself championed in his two utopian Memoranda. Inspired by Plato, Plethon's secular utopianism and paganism emerge as the two sides of a single coin. On another level, the book challenges anti-essentialist scholarship that views paganism and Christianity as social and cultural constructions.

Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon (Cambridge Classical Studies) Reviews

  • Athens

    CAMBRIDGE BINDING IS A DISGRACE FOR EXPENSIVE BOOKS

    Shame on you Cambridge for flushing hundreds of years of the finest English tradition into a cheap plastic portable toilet outside a football match. I am completely in earnest here. The binding on this high-cost book is trash. It is a poor glued-spine paperback in hard covers. My university library copy cracked in half at the glue the first day of gentle use from a real book lover, and the copy was brand-new.

    I have read others complaining that their brand new Cambridge hardbacks that are also well north of $100 broke in as many as 4 places, with pages just coming out loose-leaf.

    This new practice, along with their shoddy yet expensive print-on-demand hardback titles (the fact of the book being POD is hidden on Amazon and other outlets) should cause whoever signed off on the practices to lose their jobs, as in fired.

    In closing this topic, it is not about me venting or being a curmudgeon, it is about the apparent loss of an example of excellence in Western culture - the Cambridge book.


    BREAKTHROUGH SCHOLARSHIP AT A HIGH LEVEL OF ACTION

    Certainly Niketas Siniossoglou is a scholar among scholars. Rarely have I run across a book that is both researched out to the leaves of the tree and still highly engaging in it's style and message.

    Almost never do I give 5-stars to a work of history or secondary source, preferring to hold those ratings for works of breakthrough genius.

    In this case however, we have a man who at a minimum has achieved significant breakthroughs in the understanding of where Byzantine (Orthodox) Christianity meets Platonism head-on. And when you check the dates, you will be surprised how long Platonism did hang on, in a world physically hostile to those who espoused it. (As in you could well get yourself killed. It did happen and is documented.)

    DENSE SUBJECT MATTER

    This book is a lot of work to read, unless you are somehow already steeped in these tea leaves of scholarship. I barely scratched the surface in this, my first readthrough, and expect to now have to go buy a copy to replace the library book and hit it again in a year or less.

    In the author's view, Platonism and Christianity are not only different, they are fundamentally at odds from a theoretical standpoint. Gemistos Plethon is portrayed by Siniossoglou as a Platonist in Orthodox clothing. Hence, Plethon puts himself in the position of "going along to get along" while looking for opportunities to promote the Platonic viewpoint.

    USAGE

    Wondering why author uses "god" rather than "God". This is not an emotional rejection, I am just not familiar with this usage. Is there some scholarly or semantic distinction?

  • The Hellene

    This books reveals the living Hellenic culture of the so-called middle ages that is unknown to most people in the Western world. Siniossoglou is an expert in his field.