Owlseyes ’s Reviews > The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition : Plato to Eriugena > Status Update

"It is the hidden God who creates all things, by making them manifest he himself remains unmanifest, and hidden", "we cannot see him with our eyes"
Hermes Trismegistus c. 900 B.C

“The monad and the dyad are gods, and from these 2 principles proceed numbers/ideas , soul and physical bodies”
So thought Xenocrates and Speusippus, according to Aristotle.

Xenocrates thought the first monad was Zeus.

“...of the gods we know nothing, neither of them nor of their names, whatever they may be, by which they call themselves”.
Socrates in Cratylus

Socrates c. 470 – 399 BC

Socrates followed in the footsteps of Xenophantes. At his trial he was charged of "...[being guilty due to] refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, and of introducing other new divinities"

PLATO c. 428 B.C.E. – c. 348 B.C.E.

“To discover the maker and father of this universe is a task indeed, and having discovered him, to declare him to all men is an impossible thing”
Timaeus

"No man knows, or ever will know, the truth about the gods and everything I speak of"
Xenophanes (c. 570-c. 478 B. C.)

Protagoras (481-411 B.C.)

PART 1

GREEK APOPHASIS

Early Greek philosophy and Plato

Protagoras agnosticism was condemned by the authories; he was expelled from Athens; copies of his treatise were ordered to be destroyed.

Introduction

There's both Apophasis and Kataphasis.

God is both hidden and present, known and unknown, transcendent and immanent.

Introduction

"I pray to God to make me free of God"
Meister Eckhart

In the West there's been a tendency to favor affirmative Theology, unlike the negative tradition of Eriugena, Eckhart and Nicholas de Cusa.