Peter Lautner, born in Györ, Hungary, in 1959. Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. Fellow of the Research Group for Classical Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
Magyar Fellow (1 September 1995 – 30 June 1996)
This year at NIAS was exceptionally productive and stimulating to me. I continued working on the Neoplatonic theories of phantasia, memoria and sensus communis by concentrating on the rational or conceptual aspects of these capacities and sense-perception in general. Involvement of concepts in sense-perception shows how the rational faculties of the soul were supposed to permeate the whole human soul and rule it. Though they have a notion of rationality that is very different from ours, the late Neoplatonists still offer us insights which are taken to be of some relevance when we treat the problem of e.g. how sense-perception and concepts are related. Although I had to make brief or not so brief digressions when responding to requests to contribute to volumes on different aspects of later Greek philosophy, I made considerable progress in pursuing my own studies.
During my stay here I have finished my part in two books, one on the theory of soul by a Neoplatonists of the 6th century AD, the other on the theory of change, a paper and reviews on four books.