"Paridigmi nel maschile e femminile nel Cristianesimo Antico. Incontro di Studiosi dell’Antichità Cristiana (Roma, 9-11 maggio 2019)", Nerbini International/Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, Roma 2020, pp. 625-632 [Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum, 157], 2020
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thereto. Special attention will be drawn to the close link between rhetoric and phantasia, both imaginative and creative forces that are present in all three authors. The master of these forces is the rhetorician, who assumes in this respect an exemplary anthropological function. In fact, if
on the one hand he is an ambiguous manipulator of shady speeches, on the other hand he is able to fully express the variety of human nature. This makes him an alter deus, that is, a demonic being whose nature is superior to any other. It is no accident that the demigod Proteus is a
theme in all three authors and is the symbol of a positive human nature, which reveals itself as amphibious, multiple and, above all, highly characterised on the verbal level and the imaginative level.
ethics. Synesius highlights the relevance of writing rhetorical speeches, which are the purest expression of intelligible beauty in the sensible world reminiscent of Plato’s Phaedrus. They are not only an instrument for philosophical speculation, but also the best way to guarantee aesthetic and cognitive delight, which the ‘philosophy of silence’, which had spread through Late Antiquity, cannot awaken. Synesius upholds writing as a joyful exercise commensurate with human nature as an alternative to the ‘overwhelming’ ethics of assimilation to God. Synesius’s writing itself also demonstrates the vitality of this exercise by being incoherent, thus also representing the soul's writing.
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thereto. Special attention will be drawn to the close link between rhetoric and phantasia, both imaginative and creative forces that are present in all three authors. The master of these forces is the rhetorician, who assumes in this respect an exemplary anthropological function. In fact, if
on the one hand he is an ambiguous manipulator of shady speeches, on the other hand he is able to fully express the variety of human nature. This makes him an alter deus, that is, a demonic being whose nature is superior to any other. It is no accident that the demigod Proteus is a
theme in all three authors and is the symbol of a positive human nature, which reveals itself as amphibious, multiple and, above all, highly characterised on the verbal level and the imaginative level.
ethics. Synesius highlights the relevance of writing rhetorical speeches, which are the purest expression of intelligible beauty in the sensible world reminiscent of Plato’s Phaedrus. They are not only an instrument for philosophical speculation, but also the best way to guarantee aesthetic and cognitive delight, which the ‘philosophy of silence’, which had spread through Late Antiquity, cannot awaken. Synesius upholds writing as a joyful exercise commensurate with human nature as an alternative to the ‘overwhelming’ ethics of assimilation to God. Synesius’s writing itself also demonstrates the vitality of this exercise by being incoherent, thus also representing the soul's writing.