The Ontotheology of Enlightenment: A Commentary on Plato's "Cratylus"

The Ontotheology of Enlightenment: A Commentary on Plato's "Cratylus"

Proclus is one of the last links in a nearly thousand-year-old tradition, a line of successors in Plato's Academy. According to Marinos, who wrote his biography, when Proclus first arrived in Athens and visited the Acropolis, the home of Athena, the goddess who protected philosophy, the guard at the gate said, "Indeed, if you hadn't come, I would have locked this place." He was born in Istanbul in 412 AD, grew up in Lycia, and took Plato's place in Athens. His commentaries on Plato's dialogues offer a dazzling glimpse not only of the Platonic tradition but also of all the accumulated knowledge that indirectly or directly permeated this tradition.

This book holds particular importance as it is the only known and surviving commentary on Plato's "Cratylus." The fundamental questions about naming that appear in Cratylus become the keys that unlock the door to Proclus's ontotheology in Plato's Commentary on Cratylus. The names of the gods, about which Socrates speaks with considerable hesitation in Cratylus, become signal flares revealing the secret of the universe in Proclus's boundless interpretive practice.

Series: Philosophy

 Dimensions: 13.5 x 21 cm

 Number of Pages: 384

 ISBN: 978-975-995-701-8

 Publication Year: March 2016

 Translator: Erman Gören