HISTORY OF ANCIENT AESTHETICS

LAST CENTURIES

History of Ancient Aesthetics, Volume VII

Moscow, Iskusstvo Publ., 1988

BOOK ONE

From the author

The present volume of the History of Ancient Aesthetics is the seventh volume of our entire publication, which has been published for more than twenty years{1}. Like the sixth volume, the present one, the seventh volume covers a huge stage of ancient thought, which is associated with late Hellenism or, in other words, the Hellenistic-Roman period, and is entirely devoted to the last four-century ancient philosophical school, Neoplatonism.

Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism in the third century, has already been given a special study in Volume VI, which contains the socio-political basis of Neoplatonism, its historical, philosophical, and theoretical characteristics. In this seventh volume we are occupied with the pupils and successors of Plotinus, Amelius and Porphyry, who, like their teacher, belong to the so-called Roman school of Neoplatonism. But most importantly, Volume VII includes several more types of Neoplatonism - Syrian (Iamblichus and Theodore), Pergamon (Julian and Sallust), Athenian (Plutarch of Athens, Syrian, Proclus, Damascus) - neither philosophy, nor aesthetics of which have ever been the subject of consideration in our science.

The author was engaged in the history of ancient aesthetics back in the 20s. A multi-volume edition of "The History of Ancient Aesthetics" was conceived by him in 1934. By 1941, the first volume was completed and production work began. However, the war delayed the appearance of this first volume in print for a long time. Only in 1963 did it finally see the light of day, however, in a completely revised and expanded form. Thus, the seven volumes of the History of Ancient Aesthetics now offered to the reader are the result of at least half a century.

In this brief preface, we would also like to remind the reader of the Marxist-Leninist methodology that we have pursued in the previous six volumes of The History of Ancient Aesthetics. The same methodology is unswervingly pursued by us in the present, seventh volume. It is important to recall this because the trends of Neoplatonism that are analyzed here abound in dialectical, mythological, and generally logical subtleties that can distract the reader from our basic socio-historical methodology. The reader should remember here at least the following essential features of our methodology.