Lukios Kalbenos Tauros

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Lukios Kalbenos Tauros ( Greek  Λούκιος Καλβῆνος Ταῦρος , Latin Lucius Calvenus Taurus or, according to another tradition, Calvisius Taurus ; * around 105) was a Greek philosopher ( Platonist ). He ran a philosophical school in Athens . His teaching is assigned to Middle Platonism .

Life

Tauros came from Berytos ( Beirut ). According to Jerome's Chronicle , he reached his akmḗ (end of the fourth decade of life) in 145; therefore he was born around 105. He lived in Athens, where he ran a Platonic school in the tradition of the Plato Academy . However, this was not, as was previously believed, the academy itself; this had already in the 1st century BC. Ceased to exist. Rather, it was a private school; Tauros taught in his private home. Apparently he was the most important teacher of Platonism in Athens at the time. Only two of his students are known by name: the politician and patron Herodes Atticus and the writer Aulus Gellius . Gellius accompanied Tauros on a trip to Delphi , where they participated as a spectator in the Pythian Games . In older research, this journey was often set in the year 163; According to the current state of research, however, the dating is uncertain. In Delphi, Tauros received honorary citizenship for himself and his children and was given an honorary inscription. Nothing is known about the death of the philosopher.

Gellius is an important source for the personality and teaching of the Tauros; he tells of numerous episodes and anecdotes and reports of cheerful table discussions. However, his level of knowledge was limited by the fact that he was not qualified to take part in advanced philosophy classes. The conversations reproduced by Gellius, in which Tauros appears as a speaker, are literary, but credible in terms of content. Advice and exhortations for character building played an important role. Any questions could be asked after the formal class.

Gellius emphasizes the friendliness and gentleness of his teacher and portrays him as a fully educated scholar. Tauros had a very thorough knowledge of Plato's dialogues . He deplored the decline in education as well as the amateurism and the presumptuous attitude of many people who only seem interested in serious teaching. According to the Platonic tradition, his relationship to rhetoric was distant, as he saw in it a distraction from the actual philosophical tasks. He particularly disliked the widespread lack of philosophical sentiment among those who wanted to learn from him. Among other things, he cited as an example of reprehensible superficiality someone who was interested in Plato's works not because of the content, but because he hoped to improve his linguistic ability by reading them.

Works

According to the Suda , a Byzantine lexicon, Tauros wrote a treatise "On the difference between the teachings of Plato and those of Aristotle" (Peri tēs tōn dogmátōn diaphorás Plátōnos kai Aristotélous) and a "On bodies and incorporeal things" (Peri sōmátōn) asōmátōn) as well as numerous other works. From the statements of Gellius it emerges that he wrote detailed comments on dialogues of Plato (the Gorgias and the Timaeus are called ) and wrote a work in which he criticized the teachings of the Stoa from a Platonic point of view and held contradictions in their thinking against the Stoics. Furthermore, in a work that did not survive, he wrote about anger, which he regarded as a disease; it is unclear whether it was a paper specially devoted to this topic. A commentary on Plato's Politeia , as the author of which a Tauros from Sidon is named, most likely came from him. All his works are lost; literal fragments are only preserved from the Timaeus Commentary and the Political Commentary.

Teaching

Like many other Platonists, Tauros was convinced that the world did not come into being in time, but was eternal. Therefore he meant that the account of creation in the Timaeus should not be understood literally but metaphorically ; only for the purpose of didactic illustration did Plato describe a temporal creation of the world. Tauros considered various possibilities of interpreting Plato's text in a figurative sense and listed four non-temporal meanings of the participle genētós ("become"). He favored the interpretation according to which the constitution of the world consists in its process character. Accordingly, the cosmos is created insofar as it is in constant change and thus incessantly becoming.

Tauros apparently belonged to the religiously minded Platonists who did not want to blur the contrasts between Plato and Aristotle and who also firmly asserted the Platonic point of view towards the Stoics and the Epicureans . In particular, he rejected the stoic ideal of apathy (radical liberation from affects), which he opposed to the concept of metriopathy (moderation instead of elimination of affects) advocated by Platonists and Peripatetics . With his criticism of the Stoa, he followed the example of Plutarch , a philosopher whom he particularly valued and liked to quote. Despite some differences, his relationship to Aristotelian philosophy was not fundamentally negative; in his lessons he used the writings of Aristotle. He sharply condemned Epicureanism.

Aftermath

As a personality and a teacher, Tauros evidently had an intense effect on his students. Apparently the Peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias had Tauros in his eye in his dispute with unnamed Platonists. In the 3rd century, the Neo-Platonist Porphyrios followed up on Tauros' reflections on the interpretation of the creation account in the Timaeus . In the 6th century, the Christian philosopher Johannes Philoponos was critical of the Timaeus commentary on the Taurus in his work “On Eternity of the World” . It is unclear whether Philoponos still had the commentary on Timaeus available in the original or was dependent on excerpts from later literature (especially with Porphyrios); the latter is more likely.

Source collections

  • Adriano Gioè (Ed.): Filosofi medioplatonici del II secolo dC Testimonianze e frammenti . Bibliopolis, Napoli 2002, ISBN 88-7088-430-9 , pp. 221–376 (Greek and Latin texts with Italian translation and commentary)
  • Marie-Luise Lakmann (Ed.): Platonici minores. 1st century BC - 2nd century AD. Prosopography, fragments and testimony with German translation (= Philosophia antiqua , volume 145). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2017, ISBN 978-90-04-31533-4 , pp. 238–248, 700–757 (critical edition)

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ On the different forms of name see Adriano Gioè (ed.): Filosofi medioplatonici del II secolo dC Testimonianze e frammenti , Napoli 2002, pp. 286–288.
  2. ^ John Dillon: The Middle Platonists , London 1977, p. 237 doubts this dating and advocates birth as early as the 1st century; refute part of his argumentation Adriano Gioè (ed.): Filosofi medioplatonici del II secolo dC Testimonianze e frammenti , Napoli 2002, p. 288 f. and Marie-Luise Lakmann: The Platonist Tauros in the presentation of Aulus Gellius , Leiden 1995, pp. 208, 227 f.
  3. ↑ Marie-Luise Lakmann: The Platonist Tauros in the representation of Aulus Gellius , Leiden 1995, p. 49, 209 f .; Adriano Gioè (Ed.): Filosofi medioplatonici del II secolo dC Testimonianze e frammenti , Napoli 2002, p. 289 f.
  4. ↑ Marie-Luise Lakmann: The Platonist Tauros in the representation of Aulus Gellius , Leiden 1995, p. 121 f .; Adriano Gioè (Ed.): Filosofi medioplatonici del II secolo dC Testimonianze e frammenti , Napoli 2002, p. 285 f.
  5. ↑ Fouilles de Delphes III 4:91 .
  6. ↑ Harold AS Tarrant: Platonic Interpretation in Aulus Gellius . In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 37, 1996, pp. 185-187.
  7. ↑ Gellius: Noctes Atticae 1, 9, 8-11.
  8. ↑ Marie-Luise Lakmann: The Platonist Tauros in the representation of Aulus Gellius , Leiden 1995, p. 211; Jaap Mansfeld : Intuitionism and Formalism: Zeno's Definition of Geometry in a Fragment of L. Calvenus Taurus . In: Phronesis 28, 1983, pp. 59-74, here: 60 f .; Adriano Gioè (Ed.): Filosofi medioplatonici del II secolo dC Testimonianze e frammenti , Napoli 2002, pp. 342-346.
  9. ↑ See the detailed discussion by Matthias Baltes : The World Origin of the Platonic Timaeus according to the ancient interpreters , Part 1, Leiden 1976, pp. 105–121.
  10. ^ John Dillon: The Middle Platonists , London 1977, pp. 241 f.
  11. ↑ George E. Karamanolis: Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry , Oxford 2006, pp. 179-184.
  12. ↑ George E. Karamanolis: Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry , Oxford 2006, p. 278.
personal data
SURNAME Tauros, Lukios Kalbenos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kalbenos Tauros, Lukios; Taurus, Lucius Calvenus; Calvenus Taurus, Lucius; Taurus, Lucius Calvisius; Calvisius Taurus, Lucius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek platonist
DATE OF BIRTH at 105
DATE OF DEATH 2nd century