Time and the stars. The perceptions of time. Moving time as an image of immovable eternity. Theories about the planets. The 'four Ideas'. The sublunar gods.
Proclus, one of the last great thinkers of Neoplatonic philosophy and of ancient Greek philosophical thought in general, was born in Constantinople on February 8, 412 AD. Coming from a wealthy family from Lycia, he studied at the best educational centers of his time, Alexandria, Constantinople, Athens. There he became acquainted with the Athenian Neoplatonic Academy, which he was captivated by and became its director after the death of his teacher, Syrianus.
He died in Athens on April 17, 485 AD and was buried near Lycabettus. Living in a time of syncretistic chaos, he would synthesize into a unified and complex system the entire preceding Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, influenced by Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Stoic elements. In his system, he would amalgamate the One God, the intelligible and the intellectual hypostases, magic, and various beings of a demonic character, and in this form, he would pass it on to the scholastic Middle Ages.
His work is a key source for any scholar of Neoplatonic philosophy, as well as for Plato himself, whose original and extremely interesting interpretations he often proposes.
