Drawing on classical antisemitic themes, this chapter reconstructs the growth of antisemitism in the modern Muslim world.

Plotinus has two treatises on the central notions of ancient ethics, named by Porphyry On Virtues (peri aretôn) and On Happiness (peri eudaimonias). Both are found in Ennead 1 but they are not chronologically related. The study on virtues (Enn. 1.2) belongs to the earlier half of the treatises (no. 19) and was written between 253 and 264, while the treatise on happiness (Enn. 1.4) dates from the last year and a half in Plotinus’ life. Scholars have debated about whether Plotinus’ reflections on virtue and happiness amount to a consistent ethics that has something to offer for everyday life.1 I shall return to this question in the concluding section after considering the two treatises. It can be noted already that Porphyry’s title On Virtues (peri aretôn)2 could lead us to expect a comprehensive and practical account of virtue in Enn. 1.2 but no detailed guidelines are given for particular situations. This might suggest that ethics is an entirely theoretical affair for Plotinus. However, Plotinus’ focus is narrower, and it would be premature to exclude practical concerns for a Plotinian virtuous person because of the scope of the treatise.

An enduring interest in categories (katēgoriai),1 and in Aristotle’s Categories in particular, has led readers since antiquity to study the treatise which Porphyry entitled On the Genera of Being (6.1–3).2 Ancient and modern readers broadly agree that: (1) Plotinus understands his own subject matter to be ‘the kinds of things that exist’ (peri tōn genōn tou ontos); (2) the treatise displays the result of a deep and substantial engagement with Aristotle’s Categories; and (3) Plotinus raises important and substantive puzzles (aporiai) about what is said in the Categories.3 Beyond this, plausible interpretations diverge. On one view, Plotinus deploys the resources of earlier Platonist critics to challenge the Categories’ ontological prioritization of particular substance, especially as it is treated by earlier Aristotelian commentators.4 On an alternative reading, Plotinus ‘purifies’ Aristotelian ontology in order to sketch a new taxonomy of the sensible world, complementing his own account of the intelligible world and clearing a trail for Porphyry’s integration of Aristotle into a new Platonist curriculum.5

PEQ: Should we retain the decimal numbering of headings according to chapter number?

It can be difficult to get a handle on Plotinus’ conception of Nature (phusis), not least because of the numerous other connections in which Plotinus employs the Greek term phusis.1 Let us put the other uses of the term aside for now and focus on what I shall henceforth refer to as ‘Universal Nature’ or simply ‘Nature’.2 Universal Nature, for Plotinus, is no mere abstraction but a determinate entity that is causally efficacious in the sensible world in a number of ways.

This chapter considers the impact of theological doctrine on papal policy toward the Jews in medieval Europe. Specifically, it focuses on the ambivalence toward Jews and Judaism inherent in the Augustinian doctrine of Jewish witness and its expression in the decrees of Gregory the Great, Innocent III, and those popes who first condemned the Talmud in the 13th century.

This chapter examines the various ways in which antisemitism is defined and how it compares and is contrasted with other forms of prejudice and hatred. Unlike other prejudices, antisemitism has come from both the political left (the Soviet Union) and political right (Nazi Germany). The way in which contemporary “white power” movements have used antisemitism as ideological justification for their racism is also analyzed.

The Greek word empsukhos (‘ensouled’) was used in ordinary language to describe something as alive.1 Philosophers from all major schools specified this linguistically marked connection between soul and life by postulating or arguing that the soul is the principle of life.2 The soul can be understood to be so in three ways. All life-constituting activities of a living being are activities of the soul, or they are activities of the composite of body and soul, or some are activities of the soul and others of the composite. Plotinus defends the first option.3

This chapter examines antagonism toward Jews and Judaism as expressed by leading Church Fathers in the West. Particular attention is paid to the novel and influential perspective of Augustine.

The late Russian empire was notorious in the West for policies discriminating against its large Jewish population and for outbursts of anti-Jewish mob violence known as pogroms. As the country descended into revolution and civil war, antisemitism served the ideological purposes of both the Russo-centric counterrevolution and the anti-imperial nationalist mobilization, with fatal consequences for the Jews.

With Plotinus, Neoplatonism was inaugurated with the positing of a radical transcendence: the first principle, the One, or the Good,1 is beyond the essence, epekeina tēs ousias. In book 6 of the Republic, Plato already designated the Good as beyond essence, which it surpasses in seniority and in power, ‘epekeina tēs ousias presbeiai kai dunamei huperekhontos’ (509b9–10), but whereas in Plato this formula is found only once, and its interpretation is, moreover, disputed,2 it is recurrent and systematized in Plotinus.3 It also allows a series of variations; beyond essence, the One-Good is also ‘beyond thought’, ‘beyond knowledge’, ‘beyond life’, and, again, ‘beyond act’.4

This chapter surveys philo- and alter-Jewish attitudes in some early Christian writings (the Book of Revelation, the Ascension of Isaiah, Marcion’s Antitheses, the Gospel of Judas, and the First Revelation of James). Contrary to commonly held opinion, the circles that produced these texts were more sympathetic toward Judaism than the radically anti-Jewish bishop, Ignatius of Antioch, and other proto-orthodox Fathers.

The circulation and republication of Christian Roman laws on Jews and Judaism gives us a window into the ways imperial attention to the Jewish “other” – sometimes benevolent, sometimes punitive – created multiple paths for the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Laws on economic status, social interaction, and religious custom ultimately produced a Jewish “religion” analogous to imperial Christianity.

During the second half of the Middle Ages, western Christendom became the most powerful sector of the West, in the process attracting a growing Jewish population. Over the course of these centuries, the Christian majority of western Christendom fashioned damaging new imagery of Jews and harmful new limitations on Jewish life, both of which severely impacted Jewish existence.