International Network for Byzantine Philosophy

The things that are painful for you are truly painful for us, too. For we make common property of all that belongs to friends, whether good or otherwise—this, surely, is the definition of friendship. Still, if we must philosophize a little about these things and discuss with you what seems right (and surely we must, as the law of friendship demands!), then I do not wish—I do not suppose it is a good thing—that you, Philagrius, a person unusually well schooled in the things of God, should experience the same feelings as ordinary people, or succumb to the weakness that affects your body, or that you should lament over your suffering as something incurable. You must find in your vulnerability a place to philosophize, and purify your mind now more than ever, and show yourself stronger than the things that hold you in check, and consider this illness a profitable training—namely, to look down on the body and bodily things, and on all that is fleeting and disturbing and passing away, and so ...

Posted by Ken Parry Galen (second century CE) On ‘Fake News’. “It has indeed happened that some of my friends, hearing from someone else that such-and such a person had returned from travel abroad, have actually announced his arrival to us – and then after been refuted as liars. When I criticized such behaviour, they do not resolve to be surer of their ground next time; far from it. They actually get annoyed with me, saying that they are not responsible for the false information; they believed so-and-so’s account, and the error was his alone. They refuse to accept the blame for attaching themselves to every rash assent. If they had framed their statement as I do habitually, and said that so-and-so had told them such-and-such about such-and-such a person, they would not have been guilty of telling a lie. As things stood, their mistake in trusting the giver of that information led to them displaying the mendacity, not only of that person but simultaneously also of themselves – wherea...

Welcome to the official blog of the International Network for Byzantine Philosophy. Here you will find short communications, reflections, and announcements of events and publications related to the field of Byzantine Philosophy. About the INBP The initiative for the International Network for Byzantine Philosophy has arisen from the increasing body of published texts and studies in Byzantine philosophy. It is only in the last twenty years or so that we have seen growth in this field of Byzantine studies following the pioneering work of Basil Tatakis (1896-1996) and Linos Benakis (b. 1928-). More recent work has taken the subject forward by defining what is meant by ‘Byzantine philosophy’, rather than ‘philosophy in Byzantium’. Study of the subject remained problematic because few took the Byzantines seriously, often because it was thought there was no one who stood comparison with the great medieval figures of the Latin west or the Islamic east. Thankfully such comparisons are no lo...