Anna Motta

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss a particular paideutic instance of ekphrasis in order to show that in the Neoplatonic scholastic milieu the aesthetics reflection is a way to teach the students how to look away from the sensible and to guide towards the intelligible. In the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic philosophy, the ekphrasis of the work of literature, fashioned by Plato through biological and cosmic images, reveals the connection between literature and truth, visible and invisible, sensible and intelligible. The maker of the most beautiful dialogic universe is the divine philosopher, poet and demiurge of images, who brings a figurative message able to connect, making evident, the different levels of metaphysical reality. The description of every component of the dialogic universe makes it clear that the Platonic dialogue, a philosophic eikon, is the reflection of the intelligible beauty.

Anna Motta (1982) obtained her MA in Classical Philology at the University of Naples Federico II (2008) with a thesis in Ancient Philosophy on Cicero’s Academica. She has been akademischer Gast of the Graduiertenschule für Antike Philosophie at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin (2011) and received her Ph.D. in Late Antique, Medieval and Humanistic Philosophy at University of Salerno (2012) with a thesis titled «Platone demiurgo di verità. I Prolegomena tardo-antichi alla lettura dei dialoghi platonici». She works on the history of Platonism, above all on the relation between the Alexandrian and Athenian Neoplatonism, and has published articles concerning these topics.