| This thesis proposes to explore the reception and transformation of the doctrine of the soul as the self of the human subject and of the human as mediator in the procession and return of the cosmos from its source in a transcendent First Principle. In the course of this investigation, several figures of late Antiquity will be treated as marking important moments in one such progression of receptions and transformations. They will be treated in chronological order, with some mention made of their historical contexts, but in the main their relative philosophical positions will be the principal focus of the study.; This thesis will explore the transformation of the doctrines mentioned above from the Hellenised world of late Antiquity, to the Christian world which develops from within it. The reception of what are principally Greek or Eastern Christian doctrines by the Latin West in the ninth century will also be explored in the latter chapters of the thesis. It will be demonstrated that within a distinct and traceable progression (historical, philosophical and theological), in which certain key features are maintained, a great degree of variegation occurs, such that the doctrines which are developed at the end of this study in fact differ widely from those with which it begins. |
