(1) Neo-Platonism
Alexander City is the cradle and base of Neo-Platonism. The founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas (175~242) of Alexandria. His student Plotinus (205~270) studied in Alexandria in his early years. His student Origen (Origen, AD 185～254) For a while, he was the dean of the seminary in Alexandria. Origen has a particularly clear concept of the nature of the church. He believes that the foundation of the church is spiritual, and all those who accept the divine life belong to the church. Therefore, the church cannot be arbitrarily compared with human organizations. A teacher like Origen who is respected and has a good example in life will have a profound influence no matter where he goes, among those who intend to maintain the testimony of the resurrected life for the Lord.
Speaking of Neo-Platonism, we can always think of Augustine (354-430) who was contemporary with Hipatia (370-415). Augustine believed in Neo-Platonism for 384 years, was baptized in 387 years, and became Bishop of Hippo for 396 years. Hippo is a port city in northeastern Algeria in North Africa. It should be said to be very close to Alexandria, Egypt in North Africa. Augustine’s main contribution was to merge the doctrine of the Trinity with Neo-Platonism. In this process of integration, the students of Hypatia and Sinnesis, who later became the bishop of Thoromes, also made a lot of contributions.
Hypatia is not a Christian, her faith is philosophy. Plotinus believes that the theological system proposed by Origen is a kind of science and philosophy, and a religious system that purifies the soul (Katharsis). He believes that the beauty of form is obtained by sharing a kind of rationality from the gods. The Copernican system attracts Kepler and Galileo "The first point is not because of its available scientific precision, but because of its aesthetic superiority. If there is no academic preconceptions formed by the aesthetic judgments prescribed by Neo-Platonism In my opinion, the scientific revolution will not happen, at least not in such a form in history.” (History of Western Thought 284)
(2) The
Museum of Alexandria is the Temple of Muse. For hundreds of years, it has been the highest school in Alexandria, the center of world culture. There are four colleges of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and literature under the palace. Hypatia's father Cylon (335 ~ 405) is the last researcher in the Academy. In 391, Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria, destroyed some of the pagan centers in the city, including the Alexandria Museum, and confirmed that it included the Serapeum Temple (this temple worships Egypt). Serapis, the night god, is also a sub-library of the Library of Alexandria).
About 400 AD, Hypatia became the leader of the Platonic School in Alexandria, teaching mathematics and philosophy, and there were many well-known Christians among the students. She is not keen on mysticism, and promotes metaphysical speculation through various precise scientific researches, so that education is neutral to religion. She has commented on Diophantus' Arithmetica, Apollonius' Conics and Ptolemy's works.
The Neo-Platonism of Hypatia is reviving the scientific spirit of the Pythagorean school. Bi Pai’s most fundamental ideal is to use a basic principle to explain all known phenomena at the time, while mathematics is a principle that lies between principle and phenomenon. This is a three-tier structure, and its details are undoubtedly immature, contrived, and far-fetched, so in the era of the Neo-Platonism, it degenerates into another structure that is more abstract and concise.
The physical structure of the Bipai universe is: the sun, the moon, and the earth plus the five planets and a virtual "anti-earth" nine elements orbiting in a circular orbit around the centered "central fireball", forming a "perfect celestial body". "; "Anti-earth" obscures the "central fireball", so the latter cannot be seen from the ground. As for the unproven conjecture of the earth and the five planets orbiting in a circular orbit around the central fireball, they were regarded in the West as the awe-inspiring arrow of the theory of geodynamics. Although it was later replaced by Ptolemy's earth-centered system, Before it was Eratosthenes (Eratosthenes) in the third century BC, followed by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and Kepler (Johanns Kepler, 1571-1630) in the 16th and 7th centuries. , Two thousand years apart, but also cited Bi's theory to advocate the heliocentric theory. Based on this alone, it is hard to believe that Bi Pai has nothing to do with modern science.
(3) The State Church
In 313 AD, Constantine issued an edict in Milan, the "Milan Edict", announcing that the persecution of Christians would cease and that Christians would enjoy the equal status of the law. In 325 AD, Constantine convened the first universal Christian conference in Nicaea and declared that the Bible was absolutely inerrant and was the cornerstone of the Roman Empire. In 380 AD, the Edict of Theodosius made Christianity the state religion.
Recall that after Lincoln, the U.S. Constitution has risen from a secular constitution to a constitution under the respect of God. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the full version of "Government by the People, by the People, and for the People" can be found in the preface of Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible in 1384. The complete statement reads: "This Bible." It is a government for the people, the people, and the people.” Look at the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: prohibiting the U.S. Congress from enacting any law to establish the state religion; obstructing freedom of religious belief; depriving freedom of speech; infringing on freedom of the press and freedom of assembly; interference or prohibition The right to petition the government.
The wisdom of the First Amendment can be traced back to Bodin in the 16th century. He also used sovereignty to resolve religious conflicts. Cut off the relationship between belief conflict and political power from the outside. There may be conscience judgments based on faith, but they must not endanger personal life, personal freedom, and property rights.
In 1959, Voegelin was invited to give a speech at the inauguration of the Bavarian Institute of Political Education. The topic was "Democracy in New Europe". The speech was published in the German magazine "Society•State•Education" in the same year. Voegelin distinguished three dimensions and areas of life in his speech.
Political dimension: personal life, personal freedom and private property rights; governance in the political field is subject to freedom of speech and freedom of supervision.
Rationality dimension: falsifiable logic can be constructed to be self-consistent; governance in the field of rationality is subject to freedom of thought and freedom of discussion.
Spiritual dimension: beyond this world, the unconstructable, unprovable truth. Governance in the spiritual realm is subject to freedom of conscience and freedom of belief.
Voegelin University of Munich said in the inaugural lecture: "The spiritual disorder of our time, the crisis of civilization that everyone can easily talk about, in any way, should not be an inevitable fate to bear. On the contrary, everyone is in his own Life has the means to overcome it...No one has the obligation to participate in the spiritual crisis of a society; on the contrary, everyone has the obligation to avoid this stupidity and live his own orderly life.”
(4) Echo
Hippa Before and after Tia's death, scholars from Alexandria fled to Athens. In 529, Justinian closed the Plato Academy of Athens as a pagan group. Seven philosophers including Damasius and Simplisius fled to Persia. Some Greek texts were translated into Persian. By the 9th century, a large number of Greek texts had been translated into Persian and Arabic and spread in Islamic academies. Isfahan in Persia became the center of world civilization. The representative of Islamic scholastic philosophy is Ibn Sina, one of the main representatives of the Arab/Persian Aristotelian school.
It was 1085 that Christianity regained Spain. This made Toledo, Spain, one of the centers of the translation movement. Christians translated ancient Greek classics from Arabic to Latin, including Euclid's "Original Geometry". It was not until 1505 that the "Geometric Original", which was translated from Greek into Latin, was published in Venice, and this was the revised Greek version of Hypatia's father Théon, which also included the contribution of Hypatia.
Finally, thank you for this Spanish film and the director for your diligence.
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