Ivan Surkov

This dissertation examines the Christian metaphysics of Maximus the Confessor within the philosophical and theological tradition of Late Antiquity and early Byzantium. It focuses on the doctrine of participated divine activity and its relation to the ways in which Iamblichus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite address the aporia of a transcendent first principle. The dissertation aims to reconstruct Maximus’ ontology through the concept of participated divine activity, understood as the mediating link between God’s transcendent essence and the created world. Its methodology combines the history of philosophy, terminological and philological analysis, rational reconstruction, and comparative analysis. The study reconstructs a three-level model of Maximus’ ontology; clarifies the status of the “participated divine” and its relation to the logoi of beings; and describes the forms or modes of divine activity—Being, Goodness, Truth, Beauty, and others—as transcendental characteristics of being. It also proposes an account of the structure of participation and offers a typological comparison of the ontological models of Iamblichus, Proclus, Dionysius, and Maximus, thereby identifying both lines of continuity and distinctively Byzantine innovations.

The article addresses one of the central issues in Late Antique and Byzantine metaphysics: the relationship between the simple and transcendent First Principle (or God) and the multiple and complex world. A typological comparison is undertaken of four models proposed to resolve this aporia. Two Neoplatonic models are analyzed: the doctrine of the two Ones and the teaching on “henads” (ἑνάδες) in Iamblichus, as well as the systematic development of the theory of henads in the metaphysics of Proclus. Two Christian models are also examined: the doctrine of the “Divine processions” (πρόοδοι) in the corpus of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the teaching on the “Divine Activities” (ἐνέργειαι) in Maximus the Confessor. The article concludes that while Dionysius and Maximus adopt the structural function of the henads as a way of addressing The First-Principle Aporia, they radically reinterpret it, eliminating from their metaphysical systems any ontologically independent mediating entities between God and the world.

The article examines the medieval doctrine of transcendentals, ultimate convertible concepts: being, goodness, truth, unity, beauty; and suggests the possibility of searching for and explicating transcendental ontology in Byzantine philosophy. The second part of the article describes four contemporary projects of actualizing this doctrine within philosophy and theology: (1) in the context of logic and formal ontology (Jan Wolensky); (2) to solve the problem of evil and theodicy (A.M. Gaginsky, K.V. Karpov); (3) as an actual philosophical project and as a key to the history of Western metaphysics (A.M. Gaginsky); (4) as the basis of “theoesthetics”, theological aesthetics (H.W. von Balthasar, D.B. Hart, A.S. Filonenko, O.B. Davydov).

In classical European metaphysics, and after it in anthropology derived from it, preference was given to the category of essence (substance) over the category of relation. At the end of the 19th – early 20th centuries this situation has drastically changed due to the “turn to relationality” that took place in the fields of philosophy. As a result, recognising the constitutive role of relativity, the category of being – what it means to be – was reassessed. If before to be (being real) meant being substantial, then after the «turn» to be means to be in relation above all. The formation of the substantial language of describing the world and man began in classical antiquity, in the process of which Aristotle played a key role. At this stage relation is accidental and it doesn’t affect the identity of things. The ontology of substance had a number of consequences in the thinking about man that appeared to be autonomous, intelligible, disembodied, predetermined and static. In the 20th century such a conceptual complex turned out to be unsuitable for understanding the modern anthropological experience. Moreover, it evoked a whole range of socio-political restrictions and injustices from the very beginning.

Th e article discusses the latest research on the ontology of St. Maximus the Confessor, carried out in the perspective of the history of philosophy. Th e works of G. Kapriev, C. Moreschini, B. Lourié, V.V. Petroff , T.T. Tollefsen, N. Loudovikos, D. Skliris, S. Mitraleksis, J. Greig and other researchers are analyzed. We divide researchers into two directions: the study of Maximus’ philosophical and theological system in the intellectual context of late Antiquity and Byzantium, and the “actualization” of the thought of St. Maximus through the study of his legacy in dialogue with contemporary philosophical thought.

In classical European metaphysics and anthropology based on it, since Antiquity, the cat­egory of essence has been preferred over the category of relation. This marked the begin­ning of the tradition of autonomy, which meant that for things and, most importantly, for a person, any relationships are contingent. The essence is inseparable from the onto­logy of the One, which resulted in the diminution of the individual and its subordination to the common whole. For a long time, this way of thinking was quite productive, but in the history of philosophy there are a number of attempts to overcome these limitations, in particular, in Christian theology and philosophy of the patristic era. In this tradition, relativity still remains in the shadow of substantialism, but it receives much more atten­tion and development in the teaching about God, the world and man. We can trace the theo­logians’ use of the category of relation in triadology since the age of the apologists, but the more thoroughly relational language and character of Christian ontology were devel­oped by the great Cappadocians in the fourth century. Relativity in the ontology of the created world is especially vividly revealed in the thought of the Maximus the Confessor: in the doctrine of the participation of the world of divine energy, as well as in the doctrine of the logoi, in the movement and relation to which the created reaches perfection. The Christian revelation demanded that a more important place at all levels of meta­physics should be given to the relation and the Other. This allows us to take a step for­ward in solving such issues as the philosophical description of the individual, the ques­tion of free will and create a more dynamic ontology.

The review introduces readers to a new monograph by the Norwegian historian of philosophy T.T. Tollefsen. In the new book, the author summarizes his many years of research into the legacy of St. Maximus the Confessor, one of the most important and sophisticated Byzantine thinkers. The metaphysics of St. Maximus is described as a large philosophical system, as coherent and rational as other systems of late Antiquity. Its distinctive feature is its emphasized dynamism, which consists in the movement of the entire sensual and intelligible cosmos towards the goal of comprehensive actualization and deification. Tollefsen describes the philosophical system of Maximus the Confessor in the following topics: epistemology, the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of logoi, divine activity (energy), the problem of universals, and the question of Incarnation and deification. In addition, the scholar makes an attempt to apply the metaphysics of St. Maximus to the philosophical problems of our time.