Ilaria Ramelli

Apokatastasis (restoration) is a major patristic doctrine stemming from Greek philosophy and Jewish-Christian Scriptures. Ramelli argues for its presence and Christological and Biblical foundation in many Fathers, analysing its meaning and development from the birth of Christianity to Eriugena.

A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena

The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis

Giulio A. Lucchetta

Allegoria: L'età classica

Were slavery and social injustice leading to dire poverty in antiquity and late antiquity only regarded as normal, "natural" (Aristotle), or at best something morally "indifferent" (the Stoics), or, in the Christian milieu, a sad but inevitable consequence of the Fall, or even an expression of God's unquestionable will? Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were also definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, and that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in Greco-Roman ("pagan") philosophy. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli argues that this depends on a link not only between asceticism and renunciation, but also between asceticism and justice, at least in ancient and late antique philosophical asceticism. Ramelli provides a careful investigation through all of Ancient Philosophy (not only Aristotle and the Stoics, but also the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, the Neoplatonists, and much more), Ancient to Rabbinic Judaism, Hellenistic Jewish ascetic groups such as the Essenes and the Therapeutae, all of the New Testament, with special focus on Paul and Jesus, and Greek, Latin, and Syriac Patristic, from Clement and Origen to the Cappadocians, from John Chrysostom to Theodoret to Byzantine monastics, from Ambrose to Augustine, from Bardaisan to Aphrahat, without neglecting the Christianized Sentences of Sextus. In particular, Ramelli considers Gregory of Nyssa and the interrelation between theory and practice in all of these ancient and patristic philosophers, as well as to the parallels that emerge in their arguments against slavery and against social injustice.

The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity

Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery

David Konstan

Hierocles, the Stoic philosopher of the early imperial age, is a crucial witness to Middle and Neo-Stoicism, especially with regard to their ethical philosophy. In this volume, all of Hierocles' surviving works are translated into English for the first time, with the original Greek and a facing English translation: the Elements of Ethics, preserved on papyrus, along with all fragments and excerpts from the treatise On Duties, collected by Stobaeus in the fifth century C.E. and dealing mainly with social relationships, marriage, household, and family. In addition, Ramelli's introductory essay demonstrates how Hierocles was indebted to the Old Stoa and how he modified its doctrines in accord with Middle Stoicism and further developments in philosophy as well as his personal views. Finally, Ramelli's extensive commentary on Hierocles' works clarifies philosophical questions raised by the text and provides rich and updated references to existing scholarship.

Ilaria Ramelli

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