The moral psychology of Clement of Alexandria : Mosaic philosophy / Kathleen Gibbons.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gibbons, Kathleen, author.

Series:

Ashgate studies in philosophy & theology in late antiquity

Routledge studies in philosophy and theology in late antiquity

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Clement, of Alexandria, Saint, approximately 150-approximately 215.

Clement.

Christian ethics--Early works to 1800.

Christian ethics.

Genre:

Early works.

Physical Description:

xvi, 192 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

Summary:

In The Moral Psychology of Clement of Alexandria, Kathleen Gibbons proposes a new approach to Clement's moral philosophy and explores how his construction of Christianity's relationship with Jewishness informed, and was informed by, his philosophical project. As one of the earliest Christian philosophers, Clement's work has alternatively been treated as important for understanding the history of relations between Christianity and Judaism and between Christianity and pagan philosophy. This study argues that an adequate examination of his significance for the one requires an adequate examination of his significance for the other. While the ancient claim that the writings of Moses were read by the philosophical schools was found in Jewish, Christian, and pagan authors, Gibbons demonstrates that Clement's use of this claim shapes not only his justification of his authorial project, but also his philosophical argumentation. In explaining what he took to be the cosmological, metaphysical, and ethical implications of the doctrine that the supreme God is a lawgiver, Clement provided the theoretical justifications for his views on a range of issues that included martyrdom, sexual asceticism, the status of the law of Moses, and the relationship between divine providence and human autonomy. By contextualizing Clement's discussions of volition against wider Greco-Roman debates about self-determination, it becomes possible to reinterpret the invocation of "free will" in early Christian heresiological discourse as part of a larger dispute about what human autonomy requires. Book jacket.

Contents:

The mosaic law in early Christianity

Miming Moses: Clement's self-presentation and the dependency theme

Moses, statesman, and philosopher

The logos of God, the problem of evil, and Clement's transformation of providence

Right reason and the gnostic's grasp of the Mosaic law

Clement's idiosyncratic concept of autonomy in the context of ancient thought.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781472454447

1472454448

OCLC:

960737441