Please join us for “Laws that Deify, and Deifying the Laws: Iamblichus’ defense of ‘pagan’ Mediterranean religious practices” with Paul DiRado (CSU) on Tuesday, April 1 at 5 pm in the Behavioral Sciences Building rm 103.

The Syrian Neoplatonist Iamblichus was one of the most significant philosophical and religious figures of the 4th century Roman world. Despite his significance in his own time, in the 20th century thinkers uniformly dismissed his philosophy as irrational superstition and “magic.” In this talk, I’ll join other contemporary scholars in reevaluating this dismissal.

Central to this reevaluation is a crucial political dimension in Iamblichus’ largest extant work, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, that has been largely overlooked. When read in light of this in addition to a more charitable reading of the Neoplatonic metaphysics underlying it, I argue Iamblichus offers a compelling defense of the polytheistic and syncretic pluralism that is at the heart of the “pagan” religions of the Mediterranean.  Based on this defense, many religious practices of the ancient world that we find completely foreign today, like ritualized idol worship, can be understood in a new way.

Dr. Paul DiRado is a faculty member in the CSU Philosophy Department. He works on the Platonic tradition of philosophy broadly conceived, with particular focus on Neoplatonic thought in the late Roman and early Arabic worlds.