Philoponus: Against Proclus On the Eternity of the World 6-8

Philoponus was a brilliant Christian philosopher who turned the ideas of the pagans of the Neoplatonist school against them. Here, he attacks the most devout pagan philosopher, Proclus, defending the Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' arguments to the contrary.

This is one of the most interesting of all post-Aristotelian Greek philosophical texts, written at a crucial moment in the defeat of paganism by Christianity, AD 529, when the Emperor Justinian closed the pagan Neoplatonist school in Athens. Philoponus in Alexandria was a brilliant Christian philosopher, steeped in Neoplatonism, who turned the pagans' ideas against them. Here he attacks the most devout of the earlier Athenian pagan philosophers, Proclus, defending the distinctively Christian view that the universe had a beginning against Proclus' eighteen arguments to the contrary, which are discussed in eighteen chapters. Chapters 6-8 are translated in this volume.