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The ''Book of the 24 Philosophers'' (in Latin ''Liber XXIV philosophorum'') is an influential philosophical and theological medieval text of uncertain authorship. It consists of twenty-four “sentences”, “aphorisms” or “definitions” of “God”, attributed to as many philosophers attending a fictional gathering, each an attempt to answer their only remaining question, “what is God?” (''quid Deus?''). The first textual witness is from a 12th-century French manuscript currently at Laon.〔Lucentini: 2001〕 The definitions where often accompanied by a scholastic commentary in either of two redactions, the “shorter” and the “longer” commentary. Both definitions and commentary echo and weave numerous late ancient and medieval views on the First Cause and the nature of divinity.〔Hudry, Françoise (ed.), ''Le Livre des XXIV Philosophes'' (Latin text and French translation), Millon, Grenoble, 1989.〕 During the Middle Ages, the ''Liber'' was variously attributed to Hermes Trismegistos, Aristotle or simply quoted anonymously by theologians and philosophers. Contemporary scholarship is yet inconclusive about the origin and authorship of the text. French scholar Françoise Hudry has argued for the attribution to Marius Victorinus (fl. 4th century).〔Hudry: 2009. See also the (review by Jeremy M. Schott ).〕 According to others, the text would belong to a lost work by Aristotle, the ''De philosophia'', known to medieval Europe through the Arab translators of the Toledo School. There are notably German, French and Italian studies of the text available,〔See Bibliography below.〕 with no English translation yet in print, although online editions exist.〔One by Prof. (Markus Vinzent ) and (one by The Matheson Trust ).〕 ==Influence== The influence of this work on medieval scholarship and literature has revealed traces of its ideas among the works of Jean de Meung, Dante, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd, Pascal, Leibniz.〔 In particular, the second definition gained wide currency from early on in the Middle Ages: “God is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere” (''Deus est sphaera infinita cuius centrum est ubique, circumferentia nusquam'').〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Book of the 24 Philosophers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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