L’ekphrasis del discorso: una lezione neoplatonica sul miglior artefatto

This paper aims to discuss a particular paideutic instance of ekphrasis in order to show that in the Neoplatonic scholastic milieu the aesthetics reflection is a way to teach the students how to look away from the sensible and to guide towards the intelligible. In the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic philosophy, the ekphrasis of the work of literature, fashioned by Plato through biological and cosmic images, reveals the connection between literature and truth, visible and invisible, sensible and intelligible. The maker of the most beautiful dialogic universe is the divine philosopher, poet and demiurge of images, who brings a figurative message able to connect, making evident, the different levels of metaphysical reality. The description of every component of the dialogic universe makes it clear that the Platonic dialogue, a philosophic eikon, is the reflection of the intelligible beauty