La Lettera a Temistio di Giuliano Imperatore e il dibattito filosofico nel IV secolo

Building on Julian the Emperor’s Letter to Themistius, the present contribution seeks to interpret the debate between Julian and Themistius on the relation between philosophy and kingship within the philosophical context of the 4th century AD. The disagreement between the two intellectuals may be viewed in the light of the controversies which divided philosophical schools in the years just after Iamblichus. Whereas Julian embraced theurgic Neoplatonism, of which he developed an original political version, Themistius agreed with those intellectuals who opposed the kind of religious and theurgic philosophy promoted by Iamblichus and his followers. Whatever their divergences, Julian and Themistius shared the same refined background rooted in the culture of the philosophical schools of their day, as clearly emerges from their way of interpreting texts by Plato and Aristotle.