Peter Adamson presents an engaging and wide-ranging introduction to two great intellectual cultures: Byzantium and the Italian Renaissance. First he tells the story of philosophy in the Eastern Christian world, from the 8th century to the 15th century, then he explores the rebirth of philosophy in Italy in the era of Machiavelli and Galileo.

Byzantine philosophy is an almost unexplored field. Being regarded either as mere scholars or as primarily religious thinkers, Byzantine philosophers, for the most part, have not been studied on their own philosophical merit, and their works have hardly been scrutinized as works of philosophy.Thus, although distinguished scholars in the past have tried to reconstruct the intellectual life of the Byzantine period, there is no question that we still lack even the beginnings of a systematic understanding of the philosophy of the Byzantines.Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources is conceived as a concerted attempt in this direction. It examines the attitude the Byzantines took towards the ancient philosophical tradition and the specific ancient sources which they relied upon to form their theories. But did the Byzantines merelycopy ancient philosophers or interpret them the way they already had been interpreted in late antiquity? Does Byzantine philosophy as a whole lack a distinctive character which differentiates it from the previous periods in the history of philosophy?Eleven scholars, representing different disciplines from philosophy and history to classics and medieval studies, approach these questions by thoroughly investigating particular topics which give us some insight as to the directions in which we should look for possible answers. These topics range,in modern terms, from philosophy of language, theory of knowledge, and logic, to political philosophy, ethics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics. The philosophers whose works our contributors study belong to all periods from the beginnings of Byzantine culture in the fourth century to the demiseof the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century.

Few Byzantine emperors had a life as rich and as turbulent as Manuel II Palaiologos. A fascinating figure at the crossroads of Byzantine, Western European and Ottoman history, he endured political turmoil, witnessed no less than three sieges by the Ottomans and travelled as far as France and England. He was a prolific writer, producing a vast corpus of literary, theological and philosophical works. Yet, despite his talent, Manuel has largely been ignored as an author. This biography constructs an in-depth picture of him of as a ruler, author and personality, as well as providing insight into his world and times. It offers the first analysis of the emperor's complete oeuvre, focusing on his literary style, self-representation philosophical/theological thought. By focusing not only on political events, but also on the personality, personal life and literary output of Manuel, this biography paints a new portrait of a multifaceted emperor.

This is the first book to provide an account of the influence of Proclus, a member of the Athenian Neoplatonic School, during more than one thousand years of European history (c.500–1600). Proclus was the most important philosopher of late antiquity, a dominant (albeit controversial) voice in Byzantine thought, the second most influential Greek philosopher in the later western Middle Ages (after Aristotle), and a major figure (together with Plotinus) in the revival of Greek philosophy in the Renaissance. Proclus was also intensively studied in the Islamic world of the Middle Ages and was a major influence on the thought of medieval Georgia. The volume begins with a substantial essay by the editor summarizing the entire history of Proclus' reception. This is followed by the essays of more than a dozen of the world's leading authorities in the various specific areas covered.

Considering the interrelations between sight, touch, and imagination, this book surveys classical, late antique, and medieval theories of vision to elaborate on how various spheres of the Byzantine world categorized and comprehended sensation and perception. Revisiting scholarly assumptions about the tactility of sight in the Byzantine world, it demonstrates how the haptic language associated with vision referred to the cognitive actions of the viewer as they grasped sensory data in the mind in order to comprehend and produce working imaginations of objects for thought and memory. At stake is how the affordances and limitations of the senses came to delineate and cultivate the manner in which art and rhetoric was understood as mediating the realities they wished to convey. This would similarly come to contour how Byzantine religious culture could also go about accessing the sacred, the image serving as a site of desire for the mediated representation of the Divine.

Addresses the importance of ancient literature for Byzantine society and explores various ways of recycling and understanding ancient works.