Eric D. Perl

St. Augustine’s tremendous influence on Western thought continues to provide scholars from all fields with fresh insights and new connections to the philosophical and theological questions posed by modernity. The twenty essays collected here attempt not only to discuss perennial problems as found in Augustine—human willing, the nature of time, sin and free will, the soul’s relationship to the body—but also bring Augustine’s mind to bear on many post-Patristic concerns such as the alliance between theology and philosophy, linguistic analysis, the insights of various ethical systems, as well as the fundamental tenets of modern liberal thought.

The dissertation examines Maximus' doctrine of participation philosophically as the solution to the metaphysical problem of the One and the many, the relation between the world and its ground. The theory is briefly studied in Parmenides, Plato, and Plotinus, and at greater length in Proclus. It culminates in Pseudo-Dionysius' antinomic doctrine of participation as total identity and difference between God and the world , and of creation as the self-impartation and self-creation of God and the deification of the world. Gregory of Nyssa's idea of creation as participation embodies similar ontological principles. ;Maximus understands participation, in both creation and deification, in the same way, and adopts the Neoplatonic pattern of procession and reversion. His theory of "logoi" expresses the same metaphysics. Through neo-Chalcedonian Christology he understands the incarnation of the Word and the deification of his human nature in the same terms, as mutually implicative identity and difference between God and the creature. Thus participation, that is, creation and deification, is seen as the mystery of Christ. "Always and in all the Word of God and God wills to effect the mystery of his embodiment." ;But the world can be both other than and identical with God, and so be, only by its own choice to participate in him. The alternative is the fall, which is therefore a fall toward non-being. Since the creature's choice is necessary for its being, it is self-created, and this is not inconsistent, but rather mutually implicative, with its being created by God. This is comparable to the Neoplatonic doctrine of self-constituted beings, which also derive from their causes. ;Participation is thus realized only in Christ, and the world can exist only by being his body in a "realized eschatology." This takes place in the Church and the Liturgy, where the world becomes the Body of Christ. Here the world is created and deified by the joint activities of God and man in the person of the incarnate Word

Recent continental philosophy often seeks to retrieve Neoplatonic transcendence, or the Good, while ignoring the place of intellect in classical and medieval Neoplatonism. Instead, it attempts to articulate an encounter with radical transcendence in the immediacy of temporality, individuality, and affectivity.On the assumption that there is no intellectual intuition (Kant), intellectual consciousness is reduced to ratiocination and is taken to be “poor in intuition” (Marion). In this context, the present paper expounds Plotinus’ phenomenology of intellectual experience to show how intellect, for Plotinus, is rather the richest mode of intuition, coinciding with the intelligible content of reality. This content, however, cannot be ultimate, but is the manifestation and apprehension of the transcendent Good as the condition of intelligibility. The Good, therefore, can be encountered only through the ascent to intellectual apprehension, and the visionof the Good is a transcendent moment within the intellectual apprehension of being, not a repudiation of or alternative to it.

Recent continental philosophy often seeks to retrieve Neoplatonic transcendence, or the Good, while ignoring the place of intellect in classical and medieval Neoplatonism. Instead, it attempts to articulate an encounter with radical transcendence in the immediacy of temporality, individuality, and affectivity.On the assumption that there is no intellectual intuition (Kant), intellectual consciousness is reduced to ratiocination and is taken to be “poor in intuition” (Marion). In this context, the present paper expounds Plotinus’ phenomenology of intellectual experience to show how intellect, for Plotinus, is rather the richest mode of intuition, coinciding with the intelligible content of reality. This content, however, cannot be ultimate, but is the manifestation and apprehension of the transcendent Good as the condition of intelligibility. The Good, therefore, can be encountered only through the ascent to intellectual apprehension, and the visionof the Good is a transcendent moment within the intellectual apprehension of being, not a repudiation of or alternative to it.

This is a translation of the third edition of Hadot's Plotin ou la simplicité du regard. As the translator explains, Hadot "did not wish his Plotinus to be a work of scholarship". It is rather "a spiritual biography of Plotinus--not an analysis of all the details of Plotinus' system--and it is as a spiritual biography that it should be read". Chapters 1-5 present Plotinus' spiritual teachings, and chapters 6-7 discuss his biography in their light. The work is not primarily philosophical in nature, and describes Plotinus' vision of human experience without presenting the rational grounds which establish its truth. Hence it is most valuable to those who are already familiar with Plotinus' philosophical argumentation.

The distinction between persons and things reflects the opposition between reason and nature that is characteristic of modern thought: persons are constituted by rationality, self-consciousness, free will, and moral agency; things are taken to be merely natural or material beings, devoid of reason and the products of entirely mechanistic forces. Persons, as ends in themselves, alone deserve moral consideration; things (including all plants and animals) deserve no moral consideration. Accordingly in much modern thought, nature, including the human body, becomes a mere object to be manipulated for human use. This paper challenges this narrowly anthropocentric idea by outlining a view, grounded in classical philosophical and Christian thought, called the “analogy of personhood.” This view offers a hierarchical but non-dichotomous approach to reality that rejects any radical opposition between reason and nature. The philosophical basis of this approach is developed as found in Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, and finally, the Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius.

This paper defends Plotinus’ reading ofSophist248e-249d as an expression of the togetherness or unity-in-duality of intellect and intelligible being. Throughout the dialogues Plato consistently presents knowledge as a togetherness of knower and known, expressing this through the myth of recollection and through metaphors of grasping, eating, and sexual union. He indicates that an intelligible paradigm is in the thought that apprehends it, and regularly regards the forms not as extrinsic “objects” but as the contents of living intelligence. A meticulous reading ofSophist248e-249d shows that the “motion” attributed to intelligible being is not temporal change but the activity of intellectual apprehension. Aristotle’s doctrines of knowledge as identity of intellect and the intelligible, and of divine intellect as thinking itself, are therefore in continuity with Plato, and Plotinus’ doctrine of intellect and being is continuous with both Plato and Aristotle.