This book, a history of a religious category of ancient philosophy, is the first synthesis on the notion of daimÅn in the Platonic tradition. Platonic demonology is a body of doctrine that constantly reorganized and redefined itself, from the Old Academy to the last Neoplatonists, by reinterpreting Platoâs texts concerning demons. The present work illuminates the modus operandi of this exegesis by analysing the relationship between demonology and, respectively, cosmology, the philosophical hermeneutics of religion, and theories of the soul.
This study aims to provide a better understanding of the attempts to rationalize and to define the religious phenomenon in Late Antiquity.
Andrei Timotin, Ph.D. in History (EHESS, 2008), Ph.D. in Ancient Philosophy (EPHE, 2010), is a researcher at the Romanian Academy (Bucharest) and a post-doctoral researcher at the Ãcole Pratique des Hautes Ãtudes (Paris). He is currently working on dream theories in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.
All those interested in ancient philosophy, religion in Late Antiquity, the history of religions and the history of ideas, as well as classical philologists and historians of philosophy.