Nemesius

FL. c.400. Christian philosopher and bishop of Emesa in Syria. Despite chronological coincidence, this Nemesius, author of a remarkable Christian philosophical work On the Nature of Man, is probably not identical with the pagan governor of Cappadocia (386) and friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. Beyond his treatise nothing is known of his life. Eclectically incorporating or rejecting Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Neoplatonic thought including Porphyry, and relying on Galen's medical theories, the work of this highly cultured man embodied that Helleno-Christian intellectual synthesis of the fourth century and was a source for medieval knowledge of classical philosophies. Discounting his belief in the soul's preexistence, his treatise provided an early articulation of Scholastic views on the soul's nature, its relation to the body, and free will as a natural concomitant of reason and basis of human acts.