Sound, hearing and magic names in ancient neoplatonism Part 1: Aristotle’s doctrine and heritage

Annotation

Both Christian theologists and pagan philosophers of early Alexandrian tradition (2–4 cent. AD) took great pains to substantiate magic efficacy of names and speech. Linguistic conceptions of Plato’s Cratylus, Aristotelian De interpretatione and that of Stoics were reconsidered. One of the major difficulties of that time was the possibility for a human to communicate with gods and the intellectual realm, which hardly agrees with Platonic metaphysics. Ancient Neoplatonists, from Plotinus to Proclus to Ammonius, developed a doctrine harmonizing Aristotle’s linguistic conventionalism with the naturalistic approach of the Cratylus, which was essential for the Neoplatonic theurgy. The study of names and naming involved the scrutiny of human speech and hearing, including both the Aristotelian heritage and its Neoplatonic interpretation. As a result, they account for material properties of speech and word, especially their physical, anatomical, and phonetical aspects.

Keywords

word, sound, name, Aristotle, Proclus Lycius, Ammonius Hermiae, philosophy of language.

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