Greek Philosophy and Mystery Cults
The contributions to this book offer a broad vision of the relationships that were established between Greek Philosophy and the Mystery Cults. The authors centre their attention on such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and the Neoplatonist philosophers, who used – and in some cases criticised – doctrinal elements from Mystery Cults, adapting them to their own thinking. Thus, the volume provides a new approach to some of the most renowned Greek philosophers, highlighting the influence that Mystery Cults, such as Orphism, Dionysianism, or the Eleusinian rites, had on the formation of fundamental aspects of their thinking. Given its interdisciplinary character, this book will appeal to a broad academic readership interested in the origin of Hellenic thinking and culture. It will be especially useful for those eager for a deeper approach to two fundamental domains that attract the attention of many Antiquity scholars: Greek philosophy and religion.
Maria José Martín-Velasco is Professor of Greek at the Instituto Arzobispo Gelmírez, Santiago de Compostela, specialising in political philosophy in Greece and especially in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and oratory in general. She has worked as an Associate Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, teaching Master’s courses in Philosophy, Classical Philology and Teacher Training. She is a member of the Iberian Society of Greek Philosophy, under the auspices of which she organized the working sessions on Greek Philosophy and Mystery Cults in 2013, and the International Conference: Poetic Language and Religion in Greece and Rome in 2012. Her recent publications include “What is Convenient in Homer” (2015), “The Concept of Nomos and the Definition of Characters in Alcestis” (2013) and La concepción aristotélica de la historia (2012).
María José García Blanco is Professor of Greek Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and specialist in Greek linguistics and dialectology. Her publications include Gramática de las inscripciones eleas (1981). She is the Principal Coordinator of the collective volume Antidoron: Homenaje a Juan José Moralejo (2011) and is responsible for the latest edition of the Codex Calixtinus (2015). She is currently preparing the translation of the final books of Eusebio de Cesarea’s Preparación Evangélica, and is involved with the development of the online Greek-Spanish dictionary and with the Royal Galician Academy’s project to catalogue all proper nouns of Greek origin which are standardised in Galician.
"The nature of Greek culture makes it possible to publish a book with a title announcing what would be a contradictio in terminis when dealing with other cultures. But it is a crucial theme in the history of Greek philosophy and this is why we must celebrate the publication of a volume like this one in which some of the most relevant questions suggested by the title are dealt with, offering interesting analyses and proposals. [...] The issue of the relationship—and not only at the level of vocabulary—between philosophy and mystery cults or, more generally speaking, religion and philosophy, has become a substantial issue that deserves attention from an interdisciplinary methodology, and this book is a worthy contribution in this sense."
Emilio Suárez de la Torre Pompeu Fabra University Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.01.36
"This book is a very good example of how mystery cults and philosophy had important relationships even at the time of the most ancient philosophers, but most of all thanks to Plato. The result is a wide-rangning work, but one with a clear overarching theme, which offers very interesting theories both from a philosophical perspective and the study of religions."
Sara Macias Otero Spanish National Research Council Emerita: Revista de Linguistica y Filologia Clasica, 85:2 (2017)
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