Polytheistic Platonism - SCRATCH AND DENT

These copies have noticeable cosmetic damage (ink on the outside edges of the pages, and/or dents to the spine), but are otherwise clean inside. They are offered at a "scratch and dent" discount while supplies last. For clean, unmarked copies, please visit the main product page.

By Edward Butler.

With a preface by Michael Griffin, and an introduction by Antonio Vargas.

The Platonic tradition is one of the most fertile and enduring currents of thought in our shared history, amply repaying whatever thoughtful attention is given to it. But the tendency of recent centuries to remove Platonic philosophy from its (polytheistic) devotional and ritual roots has limited those rewards, both in terms of intellectual insights, and especially in terms of embracing Platonism as a living practice.

Edward Butler’s writings seek not only to restore the balance which flourished in the ancient world between theory and practice but also to build upon it: it is, after all, the very nature of a tradition to re-express its timeless principles in ways appropriate to each passing age. In nature, growth is from the tip: the collection of essays in this book offers the reader a profound glimpse of that philosophic growth so clearly rooted in the tradition of Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and many others. What we clearly see here is the startling truth that all these sages were polytheists not from some accident of history, but because polytheism is the natural soil in which the flower of philosophy germinates, grows, and blossoms.

320 pages. Paperback.