INTRODUCTION TO PART I

In this section, we aim to provide a survey of philosophy as it was generally understood and practised around 200 ce. One may imagine the array of material confronting an advanced student of philosophy in, say, Rome or Alexandria at this time. We assume that the student would already be acquainted with what were then thought to be the major works of the founders of the great philosophical schools of antiquity – Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno. In any case, he or she would have available various doxographical accounts of the ancient practitioners of philosophy. With this acquaintance must have come a considerable degree of perplexity, not the least owing to the apparent conflicts among the conclusions of these giants and the obscurity of many of their writings. Our student, however, would soon discover that these conflicts and obscurities had in fact been the subject of intense philosophical reflection and commentary for the intervening 500 years since the early days of the philosophical schools. Depending on the master whom the student chose to follow, he or she would encounter a complex tradition of defensive explication of one school’s positions against those of opponents. The student would also encounter various philosophical strategies employed to demonstrate that philosophical positions that seemed to be at odds were in fact in harmony. This approach, which certainly antedates our starting point by at least 300 years, will eventually take on an increasing urgency in the minds of Greek philosophers when faced with the growing dominance of Christianity.

LIFE AND WORK

There are no reasons to doubt that Philoponus bore the Christian name of John from birth, and that he was born in Alexandria. Simplicius informs us that John called himself ‘the Grammarian’ (Simpl. In Cael. 119.7). As regards the surname ‘Philoponus’ (literally ‘the lover of labour’), it is often considered to mean that John was at a certain moment a member of a group of philoponoi, i.e., a militant Christian brotherhood. Probably, however, it only refers to the author’s diligence as a writer. He was born c. 490 or a few years earlier, and first studied philology before engaging in philosophy. His master in philosophy was Ammonius. Somehow Philoponus succeeded in becoming the principal editor of Ammonius’ commentaries on Aristotle, and we may assume that this was his main philosophical activity before 529. In 529, the year of Justinian’s decree prohibiting the teaching of pagan philosophy, Philoponus published De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum, a violent attack against the Platonic (and his own earlier) doctrine of the eternity of the world. After 529 he probably taught philosophy for some time, without, however, being the head of the Alexandrian school himself. In this period he revised his earlier commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, the Physics and the Meteorology in the light of his new Christian philosophy. Philoponus’ Christian about-turn, however, did not involve the Alexandrian school in its entirety. Even before 529, the scholarch Ammonius had been succeeded by the mathematician Eutocius, and Eutocius himself was later succeeded by Olympiodorus, who made no secret of his paganism.

The work of Maximus the Confessor (580–662) presents the philosophical world view of the Greek-speaking Christian tradition in its most fully developed form. It is comprehensive both in the extent to which it draws upon earlier authors – including Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Nemesius of Emesa, Evagrius of Pontus, Cyril of Alexandria, and Pseudo-Dionysius, among others – and in its far-ranging scope. Pride of place among the influences on Maximus must undoubtedly go to Pseudo-Dionysius. Like the Areopagite, Maximus regards ‘good’ as the pre-eminent divine name, and he welcomes the Platonic description of the Good as ‘beyond being’ as appropriate to the Christian God. He is also like Pseudo-Dionysius in his vision of the cosmos as fundamentally theophanic, a manifestation of intelligible or spiritual reality in sensible form. However, Maximus is more explicit than Pseudo-Dionysius about the role of the divine will in creation, and he gives a more prominent role to the Incarnation as the central act by which the divine is made manifest. Accordingly, whereas Pseudo-Dionysius can be (and often has been) read as implicitly denying that God is a personal being, for Maximus the personal character of God is never in question.

Any attempt to situate Maximus within the history of philosophy must begin with some disclaimers. Maximus writes as a theologian rather than a philosopher, and many of his most interesting ideas are presented through elaborate allegorical interpretations of Scripture. To winnow out the philosophical elements, as we shall do here, can inevitably present only a partial picture of his thought.

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAMASCIUS (AROUND 462 – AFTER 538)

Biographical data

The chronology of the Platonic Academy in later ancient times is relatively well known, owing to the description Damascius furnishes in his Vita Isidori (a biography of Damascius’ beloved teacher, who was probably also one of his predecessors as the head of the Academy). Concerning Damascius’ own life, however, we do not have very detailed knowledge. One of the few facts that are known with certainty is that he originated from Damascus (as we know from Simplicius, In Phys. 624.38 Diels, and from Damascius’ own Vita Isidori 200 Photius). The only dates that are certain are circumstantial to Damascius’ life: the closing down of the pagan schools by the Emperor Justinian in 529, which led to Damascius’ exile; and the date of a stele, found in Homs (Emesa, Syria) in 1925 and dated 538 ce. It bears an epitaph that was known from another literary tradition (the Anthologia Palatina), to be attributed to Damascius:

Zosime, who has been a slave only in body, has now found freedom even from her body.

(Anthologia Palatina VII, 553)

The stele quotes the verse in the first person (‘I, Zosime …’), which suggests that this is the original version of the text, written for this occasion. If that is true, then it is more than probable that Damascius was living in Syria around 538 ce.

According to his own Vita Isidori, Damascius had been in Athens already before 485, when Proclus died. He had been studying rhetoric in Alexandria, and then came to Athens as a teacher of rhetoric.

From the second half of the fourth century ce until the death of Augustine in 430 Christian theology fully matured. The fact that Marius Victorinus and Augustine wrote in Latin hardly suffices to justify our setting them outside of the dialogue of Christians and pagans within the ancient Greek philosophical world. Even when Latin speakers learned their philosophy from the books of Latin authors like Cicero, what they learned was ancient Greek philosophy. The refined vocabulary of ancient Greek philosophy was the starting point for the expression of theological doctrine. The well-known example of the controversy over how to express the relation between the persons of the Trinity turns upon the understanding of one of the central terms of Greek philosophy – ousia. As theologically motivated students of philosophy learned almost immediately, the Greek philosophers differed in their understanding of ousia. Plato in his Republic has Socrates state that the Good is ‘above’ ousia, primarily owing to the absolute simplicity of the first principle of all. Aristotle in his Metaphysics states that the question ‘what is being?’ is just the question ‘what is ousia?’ He goes on to argue that the primary referent of ousia is the thinking of a divine mind ‘beyond’ which there is nothing. This fundamental disagreement is reflected in the philosophical schools throughout period. So, the question of whether the first person of the Trinity was in any way ‘beyond’ the second and the third is inseparable from the question of whether the first principle must be absolutely simple.