ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ground stages of philosophical speculation. The Gnostics were, of course, in a very different situation from the pre-Socratics. The Gnostics vanished as a philosophico-religious sect, although people may speculate on their fate and the power of survival of the Gnostic themes. Judaic thought was heavily influenced by the Hellenistic teaching and philosophical debate, and its emphasis shifted to the compatibility of Genesis with the Parmenidean, Plotinian ontological and epistemological drama. Philosophy for the Greeks, writes Pierre Hadot, is the apprenticeship of death because it mediates between the will to live of the body and the superior demands of thought. At any rate, the work of Denys – The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology – may also be regarded as a bridge between neo-Platonism and Christian thought up until the first stirrings of Scholasticism which then emphasized Aristotle rather than the Platonic heritage.
