Platonism and Neoplatonism Unit
The World Soul in the Platonic Tradition
The Platonic notion of the world soul originates in the Timaeus as the cosmos’s animating intelligence mediating between Forms and material embodiment. Elaborated by Plotinus and subsequent Neoplatonists, it developed into a dynamic metaphysical principle that continued to shape medieval philosophical theology, Renaissance Platonism, and Romanticism, where it functioned as a unifying, ensouling presence structuring cosmic order and ecological interrelation. In contemporary thought, this legacy re-emerges in panpsychicism and cosmopsychism with claims concerning a fundamental cosmic consciousness, and in plant and animal studies, which foreground distributed agency and interspecies relationality of the more-than-human world. We invite submissions that examine the concept of the world soul from historical, contemporary, constructive, and comparative perspectives. Papers may address textual, philosophical, theological, ecological, or interdisciplinary dimensions of this enduring idea as it relates to the Platonic tradition.
Participation and Poetics in the Platonic Tradition
Poetics, broadly encompassing all forms of creative art, from literature and the visual arts to music, ritual, and symbolic performance, has a distinctive relationship to the metaphysics of participation. Poetics can serve as a privileged medium for exploring participatory metaphysics in non-discursive form, rendering participation experientially accessible beyond analytic argument. More broadly, creation has been framed as divine poiēsis, while human artistic activity may be seen as co-creation. Historically, this link is wide-ranging. Plato’s Timaeus presents the cosmos as a crafted, intelligible image of the eternal Paradigm, while the Phaedrus and Ion describe poetic inspiration as divine mania mediating transcendence. Proclus develops a theology of symbols, hymns, and theurgic practices as participatory expression. Medieval thinkers, from Pseudo-Dionysius to Aquinas, integrate participation into accounts of beauty, creation, and artistic making. Early modern and Romantic authors reinterpret participation as a dynamic relation between mind, nature, and divine creativity. Twentieth-century figures such as Weil, Murdoch, and Jones draw on participatory metaphysics for ethical attention, artistic making, and liturgical creativity. Twentieth-century figures such as Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and David Jones draw explicitly on participatory metaphysics to theorize ethical attention, artistic making, and liturgical creativity. We invite submissions examining the relationship between participation and poetics across any historical period, tradition, or methodological approach.
Book Panel on The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure (Oxford, 2025) by David Albertson
Co-sponsored with the SBL Religion and Philosophy in Antiquity Unit
This panel invites submissions engaging with David Albertson’s The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure (Oxford, 2025), a study that explores the intersection of mystical theology, mathematical imagination, and the conceptual frameworks of Christian contemplative practice. Albertson argues that Christian contemplation can be understood through a logic of ‘measure without measure,’ in which the disciplined structures of the mind and imagination allow for encounters with the infinite, the ineffable, and the divine. Drawing on historical sources from patristic, medieval, and early modern authors, the book examines how geometric, proportional, and formal analogies mediate the relationship between human cognition and divine transcendence. We invite papers that engage concepts key to Albertson’s work, including historical investigations of geometric or numerical metaphors in Christian spirituality; philosophical or theological analyses of measure, proportion, and the infinite; comparative studies of contemplative techniques across traditions; or critical engagement with the book’s methodology and conceptual framework; or other topics.
Platonism and Abrahamic Religions in Honour of Kevin Corrigan
Co-sponsored with the AAR Islamic Mysticism Unit
This panel invites submissions exploring the intersections of Platonism and the Abrahamic religions, in recognition of Kevin Corrigan’s seminal contributions to the study of Platonism and religious thought. Platonism has profoundly shaped theological, philosophical, and mystical currents within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, influencing conceptions of the divine, the soul, cosmology, and ethical life. From Philo and early Christian thinkers to medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers, and onward to modern receptions, the Platonic tradition offers a rich framework for understanding how abstract metaphysical ideas inform religious belief and practice. We welcome papers that engage historical, philosophical, theological, or comparative approaches, including studies of metaphysical interpretation, mystical or contemplative traditions, scripture, and the reception of Platonic thought across different Abrahamic contexts. Interdisciplinary perspectives that illuminate Corrigan’s influence or extend his insights into new directions are particularly encouraged.
Submissions should address how Platonism shapes, challenges, or illuminates Abrahamic religious thought.
The unit also welcomes proposals on other elements of the Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition.
This unit is committed to the ongoing study of Platonic traditions in connection with the history and philosophy of religions, from antiquity to the present. In this context we seek to feature the research of new and established scholars working in the field. We provide an avenue for the dissemination of new historical scholarship, as well as scholarship that draws upon the tradition as a resource to engage important contemporary questions. Many panelists publish their research through the many avenues that arise out of the unit’s collaborative endeavours.