Events Calendar – British School at Athens

Michael Frede

Annual Michael Frede Memorial Lecture

Professor Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson (University of Oslo), “Idealist, dualist or something else? Plotinus on the status of the sensible world”

Abstract: In this paper I shall discuss Plotinus’ views on causation of and in the sensible sphere—by “the sensible sphere” I mean the physical world around us. The main focus is on the question whether all causes are ultimately mental and, if so, what conclusions can be drawn from that about Plotinus’ ontology. Is he a dualist with respect to the mind and the body? Or is he perhaps some sort of idealist, believing that everything is somehow mental? It will be argued that in a certain sense that will be explained he may be called an idealist: a non-reductive idealist, meaning that there are non-mental things but they do not do any work in the grand scheme of reality.

Bio: Eyjólfur K. Emilsson is professor emeritus at the University of Oslo. He was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1953. He studied philosophy and ancient Greek at the University of Iceland before he went to Princeton for the Ph.D. which he received in 1984 with the dissertation Plotinus on Sense-Perception, supervisor Prof. Michael Frede. He taught at the University of Iceland from 1982 to 1992 when he became professor at the University of Oslo. Most of his scholarly publications are on the philosophy of Plotinus. In addition to numerous articles, they include Plotinus on Sense-Perception (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Plotinus on Intellect (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Plotinus (Routledge, 2017, 2 nd extended edition planned in 2025). Emilsson has in addition translated a number of ancient philosophical works into Icelandic and Norwegian, including Plato’s Republic.

Hybrid Lecture

To attend in person in Athens, please register HERE

To attend online via Zoom webinar, please register HERE