Philosophy as a way of life

chief among whom were Plato and Aristotle. We are, moreover, justified in asking ourselves if, even after the Cartesian revolution, philosophy does not still bear traces of its lengthy past, and if, even today, at least to a certain extent, it has not remained exegesis.

The long period of "exegetical" philosophy is linked to a sociological phenomenon: the existence of philosophical schools, in which the thought, life-style, and writings of a master were religiously preserved. This phenomenon seems already to have existed among the Presocratics, but we are best able to observe it from Plato on.

Plato had given his Academy an extremely solid material and juridical organization . The leaders of the school succeeded one another 1 in a continuous chain until Justinian's closure of the school of Athens in 529, and throughout this entire period, scholarly activity was carried out according to fixed, trnd itionnl methods. The other great schools, whether Peripatetic, Stoic, or Epicurean, were organized along similar lines. The writings of each Kl'hool'K foumler KcrVl'U 1111 the hnKiN for itK instruction and it

,

was determined

72

Method

in which order the student should read these writings, in order to acquire the best possible education. We still have some of the writings in which Platonists gave advice on the order in which Plato's dialogues were to be read. Thus, we can tell that from the fourth century BC on, Aristotle's logical writings were arranged in a definite scholastic order - the Organon which would not

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change until modem times.

Instruction consisted above all in commenting on Plato and Aristotle, using previous commentaries and adding a new interpretation here and there. In this regard, we have an interesting testimony from Porphyry about the lessons of Plotinus:

During his classes, he used to have the commentaries read, perhaps of Severus or of Cronius or of Numenius or Gaius or Atticus, or of Peripatetics like Aspasius, Alexander, or whichever other came to hand.

Yet he never repeated anything from these commentaries word for word, restricted himself to these readings alone. Rather, he himself used to give a general explanation [theoria] of (Plato's or Aristotle's) text in his own personal way, which was different from current opinion. In his investigations, moreover, he brought to bear the spirit of Ammonius.2

The first commentator on Plato's Timaeus seems to have been Crantor (ca. 330 BC), and Platonic commentators continued their activity until the end of the Athenian school in the sixth century. From this point, the tradition was continued, both in the Arab world and in the Latin West, up until the Renaissance (Marsilio Ficino). As for Aristotle, he was first commented upon by Andronicus of Rhodes (first century BC), who was the first in a series extending through the end of the Renaissance, in the person of Zabardella. In addition to commentaries slriclo sensu, the exegetical activity of the philosophical schools took the form of dogmatic treatises, devoted to particular points of exegesis, and manuals designed to serve as introductions to the study of the masters. Moreover, the end of antiquity witnessed the appearance of other authorities, in addition to Plato and Aristotle: the authority of Revelations.

For Christians and Jews, this meant primarily the Bible, and for pagan philosophers, the Chaldaean Oracles. Both Judaism and Christianity sought to present themselves to the Greek world as philosophies; they thus developed, in the persons of Philo and Origen respectively, a biblical exegesis analogous to the traditional pagan exegesis of Plato. For their part, such pagan commentators on the Clzaldaean Oracles as Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus did their best to show that the teachings of the "gods" coincided with Plato's doctrines. If we understand by "theology" the rational exegesis of n sacred text, then we can say that during this period philosophy was trim11formed into theology, and it was to stay that way throughoul l hc M idLllc Al(cN. From 1 his perspec1ive, medicvnl Schol11111icH 11ppe11r11 UN t h�· l1111k11 I rnnt 11111111 ion of the

Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes

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