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One of the most often mentioned groups throughout the fifty-one treatises of the Brethren of Purity is the Sabeans (or Mandaean) of Ḥarrān. They are mentioned about a dozen times throughout the treatises and the Brethren dedicate an entire section of their fifty-first treatise on magic to them. The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’) were a ninth-tenth century Shīʾite philosophical movement from Baṣra, Iraq. Little is known about the actual group or its members, and their only remains are fifty-one treatises with two summaries. However, their works played an influential role in various intellectual trajectories throughout Islamic and Jewish philosophical history. This paper argues that the Brethren’s philosophical and religious conception of the Intellect stands in between that of the Sabian-Mandaean, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Shīʾite Islamic thought.
The temptation to see Damascius’ Ineffable as anticipating skeptical modernity is nearly irresistible. First, he insists that in everything that we say about the “first principle” reflects our own cognitive limitations rather than anything objective. Second, he draws attention to the aporiae of negative theology, “overturning… all discourse.” Third, he radically modifies the schema of procession, in ways that some see as annihilating the Neoplatonic hierarchy. Others have rightly pushed back, insisting that Damascius is no skeptic, modern or postmodern, and that his modifications emerge from problems immanent to his predecessors. But if Damascius is not Kant (much less Derrida), why? This paper suggests that Damascius allows us to see, perhaps more clearly than anyone else, what separates the metaphysics of Neoplatonism (and the Hellenistic world) from that of modernity —precisely by pushing this boundary to its limit. This boundary is the question of philosophy’s presupposed starting point.
This paper examines the distinction between vision and union in later Neoplatonism, particularly in the works of Iamblichus, Hermias, and Proclus. While the vision of the divine is traditionally considered the highest religious experience, later Neoplatonists argued that it remains an intellective act and, as such, is insufficient for true union with the divine. Instead, they proposed that genuine union transcends intellect and is realized through theurgy—a ritual practice that activates a distinct "part" of the soul, the “One of the soul.” By analysing the metaphysical and epistemological framework of later Neoplatonism, this paper challenges the assumption that divine vision represents the ultimate stage of religious ascent. In doing so, it sheds new light on the role of theurgy as a transformative process that not only surpasses intellectual contemplation but also reconfigures the relationship between human and divine activity.