The Libraries of the Neoplatonists Proceedings of the Meeting of the European Science Foundation Network Late Antiquity and Arabic Thought. Patterns i

There is a scholarly consensus on the crucial role played by the philosophers of late Antiquity, especially the dominant figure of Plotinus, in reshaping the thought of Plato and Aristotle. It is also well-established that the rise of the Arabic philosophy was fostered by the movement of the Graeco-Arabic transmission. However, the development of coherent theories describing the role of late ancient philosophical thought in the creation of Arabic philosophy has been hampered by poor interaction between the various disciplines involved. The Libraries of the Neoplatonists, with its twin focus on the textual transmission within the schools of late Antiquity and on the dissemination of philosophical writings in the Syriac-speaking and Arabic-speaking areas, provides a magisterial survey of the Neoplatonic transmission of the Greek heritage to later ages and various linguistic areas.

Review:

D'Ancona is to be congratulated for her success in the appropriately Neoplatonic task of bringing some degree of unity to a bewildering multiplicity of sources and problems, many of which are rarely discussed at all, never mind together in one place. Peter Adamson in Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science 2010