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The Genius of Our Lady Nature. Pierre Hadot, Le Voile d'Isis. Essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de Nature. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

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The Genius of Our Lady Nature. Pierre Hadot, Le Voile d'Isis. Essai sur l'histoire de l'idée de Nature. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Wolfgang Wackernagel
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Abstract

This is a review enriched with personal thoughts. The topics covered are: the various interpretations of a fragment from Heraclitus ‘nature loves to conceal herself’, deposited 2500 years ago in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the idea of nature's secret; ecumenism in practice: the convertibility of ancient deities; the case of the cult of Isis-Artemis and other personifications of Our Lady Nature; different approaches to the notion of modesty; the misunderstandings around the opposition between ‘paganisms’ and ‘monotheisms’; a little-known example of iconoclasm against a statue of Diana- Artemis and the decline of the old nature religions; Neo-Platonism and an apology for the ‘genius of paganism’; an appeal for religious tolerance; Orphic or Promethean approaches to unveiling the secrets of nature, with a reference to Roger Caillois, founder of Diogenes; and bioethics and the genesis of the modern technosciences.

Type
Review
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 107 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

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References

Notes

1. Henceforth abbreviated to PHI.

2. PHI, p. 19; n. 1, p. 323: Diogenes Laertius, IX, 6, p. 1050.

3. Genesis 18, 1-2.

4. PHI, p. 61; n. 20, p. 329: Philo, Quaestiones in Genesim, IV, 1 (pp. 144-5 in French trans. by Mercier and Petit).

5. PHI, p. 79, n. 19, 20; E. Panofsky (1939) Studies in Iconology; Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, p. 332 (French trans. 1967, pp. 223-33). E. Wind (1958) Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (French trans. 1992, pp. 157-66).

6. PHI, p. 86; n. 13, p. 333: Prudentius, Contra Symmachum: §10, Relatio Symmachi (French trans. by M. Lavarenne, 1992: Psychomachie. Contre Symmaque, Paris, p. 110).

7. Acts of the Apostles 19, 23-40. Referring to this passage Goethe is supposed to have posed ironically as a worshipper of Artemis of Ephesus. See PHI, p. 262.

8. Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum (partial French trans. by C. Clerc, 1980: Calamités et Miracles. Récits tirés de l’Histoire des Francs, Paris, p. 122).

9. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, De origine et situ Germanorum Liber, chap. 9.

10. Ibid., p. 124.

11. PHI, pp. 89-90.

12. Ibid., pp. 241-2; note 17, p. 359: Macrobius, I, 20, 18.

13. Ibid., pp. 165, 223, 227, 355; n. 22-5, 356; n. 46, 47.

14. Ibid., p. 224.

15. Ibid., pp. 241-2; note 17, p. 359: Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, 20, 18.

16. Ibid., p. 14.