Time’s Causal Power

Antonio Vargas, Ph.D. (HU Berlin, 2017) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published in Political Theology and Dionysius.

Acknowledgments



Introduction

 Scope and Aims of the Book

 Distinctive Characteristics of Proclus’ Philosophy of Time

 Structure of the Book



1 Sources of Proclus’ Philosophy of Time in Plato

 1.1 Plato’s Timaeus as a Source: The Engineering of Time

 1.2 Plato’s Republic as a Source: The Cycles of Time



2 The Aristotelian Element: The Order of Time as Number and as Intelligence

 2.1 Factors in Proclus’ Reception of Aristotle

 2.2 Aristotle on Time as the Number Counted in Change

 2.3 Proclus’ Absorption of Aristotle’s Grounding of Change in the Philosophy of Time

 2.4 Time as the World’s Specific Kind of Intelligence



3 The Stoic Element: A Biology of the World as a Whole

 3.1 Plato and Aristotle on the Omnipresence of Time’s Passage

 3.2 The Stoic Biology of the Universe and the Unity of Change

 3.3 The Biology of the World in Plotinus’ Theory of Time

 3.4 Proclus’ Biology of the World



4 The Plotinian Element: The Flow of Time as the Life of the World Soul

 4.1 Platonic Sources and Aristotelian Objections to Time’s Uniform Flow

 4.2 Time’s Flow as the Soul’s Engineering of the World in Plotinus

 4.3 Time’s Flow as the Contemplative Activity of the World Soul in Proclus

 4.4 A Tension in Proclus’ Description of Time’s Flow



Conclusion: The Natural Theology of Time in Proclus

Bibliography

 Texts, Abbreviations and Citation Practices

 Translations

 Modern Scholarship

Index