Medieval Studies, University of Notre Dame

Medieval Platonism – Between Metaphysics and Deconstruction

The lecture will pursue two overlapping interpretations. The first will propose that a cluster of textual themes which one might label “Platonism” underlies all medieval thought, and that of particular importance within this context are the notions of ambiguity and non-ambiguity. The second will suggest that the “Platonic” cluster of themes has reappeared strikingly in modern thought, as illustrated by the important Derridean quasi-concepts of “place” and “denial.” Throughout the lecture, Gersh says, he will tackle the question, misunderstood by pro-deconstructionists and anti-deconstructionists alike, of “the ontology of presence.”

Gersh received his doctorate from Cambridge University in 1973 with double first-class honors in Classics and Philosophy and is one of the world’s foremost scholars of medieval philosophy. He is the author of many books on Neoplatonism, most recently, Concord in Discourse: Harmonics and Semiotics in Late Classical and Early Medieval Platonism (1996), and co-editor of Platonism in Late Antiquity (1992).