ADRIAN PODARU: Michael Psellos' Philosophical Opuscula on the Soul. Their Sources, their Relevance and their Impact in the eleventh Century Byzantium

The second volume of "Michaelis Pselli Philosophica Minora", which was edited and published in Leipzig, in 1989, contains a large number of opuscula dealing with the soul. It is a rather complex analysis and, even if Michael Psellos was a Christian monk of the eleventh Century who lived in Byzantium and who was a contemporary of Saint Symeon the New Theologian, this analysis is done mostly by using classical philosophical authors (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus) or Christian authors who were interested in a philosophical approach of such topics, as for example Nemesius, bishop of Emessa, who wrote On the Nature of Man, and John Philoponus, the great Christian Aristotelian commentator of the sixth Century. Since I have a research project dealing with these opuscula on the soul - which I also translate into Romanian language - and since these opuscula have been never translated into any modern language until now, I think it is of some interest for scholars to present these short texts, pointing out their sources, their content, their relevance and their impact in the eleventh Century Byzantium.