Rareș Marinescu

After finishing my PhD at the University of Cambridge in December 2023, I started a postdoc at KU Leuven. From September 2023 I will hold a postodoctoral fellowship in ancient philosophy at the Department of Classics of the Unviersity of Toronto. My research interests lie mostly in Aristotle and in the history of Platonism from the Old Academy to Neoplatonism. Systemically, I am intrigued by questions in metaphysics, psychology, and natural philosophy.

During my stay at Notre Dame I would like to further develop my project on the reception of Laws X in Platonism by focusing on the issue of psychological dualism. By investigating primarily Middle Platonist sources I will show that Laws X stood at the centre of the debate between psychological monism and dualism. Essentially, some Middle Platonists adopt a dualist world-view whereby the cosmos is – or was – in part governed by an evil and irrational (world-)soul. This topic is more generally related to the problem of evil, as this type of soul is supposed to account for evil in the cosmos. The presence of this doctrine is most prominent in Plutarch, Atticus, and Numenius (all 2nd c. AD), but we find certain traces also in Alcinous. It continues to be significant in Neoplatonism where dualist positions are discarded and the irrational world-soul of Laws X is interpreted in a different light. In my research, I consider not only the Platonists’ dependence on Laws X for the development of this idea but also other Platonic and non-Platonic sources, since the concept of an evil soul is connected by these authors with, for instance, the pre-cosmic receptacle of the Timaeus and the myth of the Statesman as well as Gnostic texts.

Affiliation: KU Leuven, University of Toronto

Host: Gretchen Reydams-Schils