“To encourage, promote and assist the flowering of philosophy as the living love of wisdom”

The Prometheus Trust, a registered charity, seeks to encourage true philosophy – the love of wisdom. This philosophy, wrote Thomas Taylor, “may be compared to a luminous pyramid, terminating in Deity, and having for its basis the rational soul of man and its spontaneous unperverted conceptions.” It is a path open to all men and women who seek those living truths which are so marked by stability, creative power and perfective energy – truths whose beauty is so attractive to the human soul.

The Trust strongly affirms the idea that the whole universe is a divine drama, and that each individual soul is a part of this joyful play.

For further details of the Trust, its history, aims, and approach to philosophy click here

The Trust is launching an appeal for funds in order to set up the Athena Academy of Philosophy: for further details click here

The Prometheus Trust runs regular meetings in London at Cecil Sharp House, near Regent’s Park: these are run on the last Monday of every month. Click here for details. Similar sessions run on the last Tuesday of every month in Bristol: click here for details. These were suspended during the covid crisis, but will restart in September 2022. We now also run virtual events (on Zoom) click here.
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The Prometheus Trust has three main activities:
Publishing  Education  Events
Click on each of these to go to their general description

This website also has information about the Trust, interesting links to other websites, biographical details of Thomas Taylor, a philosophic glossary, some interesting links, and an occasional web journal - please see the sidebar to the left for navigation to these areas. Or use these links to go to The Meadow, issue 1 issue 2 or issue 3

Publishing

Publications from the Trust include the 33 volume Thomas Taylor Series; an expanding series of Platonic Texts and Translations (editions of modern scholarly texts in parallel Greek and English translations); a Students’ Edition Series, which seeks to introduce the basics of Platonic philosophy to newcomers; and also a wide range of books on many different aspects of philosophy. Our books are offered at very reasonable prices, in order to encourage the discovery and study of the best of the written Platonic tradition.

The Thomas Taylor Series: The Trust has republished the entire works of Thomas Taylor, the great English Platonist, in a uniform edition of thirty-three volumes.  This Thomas Taylor Series represents the most comprehensive survey of the Platonic mystical philosophy in the English language: it not only includes the complete works of Plato and Aristotle, but also most of the surviving works of the  late Platonic commentators who revealed the hidden symbology within Plato's writings.  The series presents the Orphic hymns, Pythagorean writings, works by such authors as Proclus, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Julian, Apuleius, Maximus Tyrius, and Pausanias among many others. The Series is presented in hardback cases, bound in purple buckram, with gold blocking to the spine. (A few of the titles in the series are additionally available in paperback).

Click here to go to the Thomas Taylor Series Catalogue:

Platonic Texts and Translations: This is a new series of books, begun in 2009 and which is continuing to expand. The aim of this series is to make available works which although of the highest standard of late twentieth century scholarship, have been allowed to go out of print. All the books in this series are new editions with updated material from their translators. Again, this series is in hardback.

Click here to go to the Platonic Texts and Translations Catalogue: 

Other books include our Students Edition Series paperbacks - designed to introduce the newcomer to the Platonic tradition - as well as a range of books by academic and non-academic authors covering many aspects of the Platonic tradition.

Click here to go to details of our other books. 

To see the full Prometheus Trust Catalogue click here: 

Education

We are building up a number of videos concerning
Platonic Philosophy - click here.

The Prometheus Trust runs a course in philosophy under the banner of “Philosophy as the Love of Wisdom.” The course is divided into two modules a year, which are designed to be as self-contained as possible so that relative newcomers can integrate into the course whenever a new module starts. The module for the winter of 2023 is entitled “The Gorgias, with help from Olympiodorus” Details here.

We are also run a short introductory course every winter so that some basic concepts can be explored and a general overview of Platonic philosophy as understood by the Trust can be gained.

Click here for further details of the course:

The Trust also runs monthly seminars in London at Cecil Sharp House, near Regents Park, on the last Monday evenings of each month. These seminars are free (although donations are welcome) and are run on fairly informal lines - no advanced booking is required. For further details, including a syllabus of subjects and texts to be studied, click here - similar evenings are run monthly in Bristol (at St Werburg’s Community Centre, Horley Road, BS2 9TJ) usually on the penultimate Monday of each month - click here for details.

We run online courses of study - introductory, intermediate and advanced - for details see here.

Study weeks in Italy are arranged on an annual basis: again these have been suspended during the covid crisis, but we expect to restart in the summer of 2023. Details can be found here.

Events

Conference: The Trust has held an annual conference in midsummer since 2006: these conferences are primarily for those who love wisdom, whether from an academic background or not. Our conferences are a blend of the relaxed and the intense, with a wide variety of papers and lectures, some formal and in varying degrees academic, and others more personal. We always allow plenty of time after each presentation, for audience participation, and we aim to encourage a lively participation from all in these sessions.

Our next conference is planned for June 2023 - click here for details.

Click here for details: 

Lectures: The Trust offers lectures on various Platonic subjects around the UK, and very occasionally elsewhere. Lectures under the direct aegis of the Trust tend to be given in the autumn and spring, but lectures by Prometheus Trustees and officers for other organizations are ad hoc.

Click here for details: 

Workshops: The Trust holds regular workshops in London. The workshops are usually on accessible Platonic dialogues, but will eventually move on to cover particular late (“neoplatonic”) texts.

Click here for details of workshops and seminars: 

The Trust is developing a series of virtual seminars in order meet the challenge of the restrictions in place during the covid-19 crisis. For details click here.