This is the outline : I - Quelques étapes aux avancées significatives II - La pensée chrétienne et le hasard d’ignorance III - De quelques difficultés de raisonner sur le probable IV - Téléologie et évolutionnisme V - Où est l’« étage » qui permette de parler d’indépendance ? VI. Qu’y a-t-il à la base de nos concepts d’ordre ? VII - Quelle place pour le hasard ? VIII. Le hasard appréhendé de dos ?

On one reading, twentieth century Christian personalists such as Max Scheler, Dietrich von Hildebrand, or Edith Stein merely translate into Christian terms a set of modern concerns that arise apart from and are at odds with the historical Christian tradition. According to this reading, modern philosophy makes a fundamental break with previous thinking when it turns inward to examine the interior, personal dimension of existence. A person who favors this inward turn will see the Christian personalists as vainly attempting to (...) salvage traditional Christian categories while trying to keep up with the times. For example, someone who favors twentieth century existentialism or psychoanalysis may sympathize with a Christian personalist account of the interiority and irreplaceable uniqueness of each person but despise the larger religious framework of grace and salvation. Someone who favors traditional metaphysics, by contrast, may see these personalists as falling prey to modern errors when they should have kept the faith. Such a traditionalist may think, for example, that an emphasis on the personal is an infiltration into Christianity from secular political philosophies of individualism and that this has been thinly covered over with traditional Christian language. -/- Both perspectives, however, ignore the historical roots of personalism much further back in the history of philosophy than Descartes and Kant. Central to this history is the idea that each person uniquely realizes an incommunicable dimension of his existence, irreducible to the category of nature or essence. While we are in nature and while we *are* a nature, our nature as nature remains purely general, describing *what* we are in common with every other member of our species. As particular persons exercising our freedom and spiritual existence, however, each of us concretizes that purely general nature in a unique, personal way. For many centuries, Christians have called the dimension that concretizes nature ὑπόστασις: each ὑπόστασις is a distinct realization of a general nature. When this notion is first introduced into Christian discourse during the second half of the fourth century, the uniqueness of persons as opposed to the uniqueness of individual pebbles or horses does not come fully into focus. Nevertheless, a thick conception of ὑπόστασις develops in order to speak precisely about Trinitarian and Christological theology, and this context gives it a distinctly personalist character, especially when it is translated into Latin as *persona*. In order to speak of God as three ὑποστάσεις or *personae* in one essence and to speak of Christ as one ὑπόστασις or *persona* in two natures, the category of ὑπόστασις must be irreducible to the category of nature. Along this irreducible dimension persons are irreplaceable *someones* in relationship with other someones rather than merely *somethings*, specimens of a kind more or less interchangeable with any other such specimen. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all (...) the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Kant’s view that reason’s hypostasis of the idea of a sum-total of reality is dogmatic and illegitimate. In the section on the ‘Transcendental Ideal’, the second section of the Ideal of Pure Reason chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant starts by describing reason’s procedure from the affirmation of the principle of thoroughgoing determination to the hypostasis in question. According to the interpretation I defend, the argument for hypostasis (...) deployed in this section constitutes an improvement upon an argument defended by the pre-critical Kant himself in his 1673 essay “The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God”. By making reference to the concept of omnitudo realitatis, the argument in the ‘Transcendental Ideal’ section presents a much more radical and convincing interpretation of the thesis that ‘possibility presupposes actuality’. Second, I present transcendental idealism and its related distinction between objects of sense and objects in general as the main dissuasive argument of the critical philosopher against hypostasis. Finally, I consider an argument against hypostasis that is independent of transcendental idealism: the threat of set-theoretical paradoxes if we hypostatize the relevant idea, intended as the concept of an absolutely comprehensive totality. (shrink)

The theological teachings of John Philoponus are important for several reasons: a) to see the real achievements and influences of Aristotelian logic in regard to theology, b) to see the real consequences of not accepting hypostasis as relational and ontologically based and c) to assess the real consequences of such teachings for Triadology and Christology.

본 논문의 목적은 플로티누스의 휘포스타시스 개념을 규명하는 것이다. ‘휘포스타시스’는 플로티누스의 소위 ‘세 가지 휘포스타시스 이론’에서 세 가지 형이상학적원리들인 하나, 정신, 영혼을 지시하는 전문 용어로 알려져 있다. 이 세 원리들은신성으로 간주된 점에서 그리스도교의 성삼위(Trinty)에 비교되었다. 실제로, ‘휘포스타시스’는 성삼위의 ‘위격’(位格)을 가리키는 말이기도 하다. 아래에서 우리는우선 플로티누스가 ‘세 가지 휘포스타시스 이론’을 제시한 적이 없음을 보일 것이다. 다음으로 우리는 플로티누스 이전까지 ‘휘포스타시스’ 용어의 역사를 간략히 소개할 것이다. 특히, 포세이도니오스와 아프로디시아스의 알렉산드로스의 용법에주목할 것이다. 이어서 플로티누스의 원문에 나타난 어휘 분석을 통해 휘포스타시스개념을 규명하길 시도할 것이다. 이를 (...) 통해, 플로티누스의 ‘휘포스타시스’는 존재의의미 가운데 본질(esentia)이 아니라, 그와 대비되는 의미에서 존재 내지 실존(existenia)에 해당하며, 관념상의 존재에 대비되는 실재(reality)로 드러날 것이다. 요컨대, 플로티누스의 ‘휘포스타시스’는 실제로 있음 또는 실제로 있는 것을 의미한다. 마지막으로, ‘존재의 저 너머에’ 자리하고 ‘실재에 앞서는’ 것으로 제시된플로티누스의 최고신에 대한 반성과 함께 글을 맺을 것이다. (shrink)

Aquinas distinguishes four types of part included in a hypostasis (’suppositum’): (1) kind-nature; (2) individuating feature(s); (3) accidents; (4) concrete parts. (1) - (3) in some sense contribute ’esse’ to the ’suppositum’. Usually Aquinas holds that Christ’s human nature does not contribute ’esse’ to its divine ’suppositum’, since it is analogous to a concrete part of its ’suppositum’. This effectively commits Aquinas to the Monophysite heresy. In ’De Unione’ Aquinas argues instead that Christ’s human nature contributes ’secondary ’esse‘ to (...) its divine ’suppositum’. This account is coherent and orthodox, but sacrifices explanatory power. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 2 Seiten: 206-228.

RECENT studies on the philosophy of Plotinus have drawn attention to the complex problems interpreters face when discussing the number of hypostases, or what the term means in the case of the One, the Nous, and the Soul. The full exploration of these broad topics, especially in the light of Plotinus’ theory of "production" and his critique of the alternative views other Neoplatonists held, falls outside the scope of this paper. Since Plotinus’ answer to the question "What criteria must X (...) satisfy to qualify as a hypostasis?" is given in the relevant texts, and as such may be treated as a separate issue, the present paper assumes familiarity with the related doctrines in order to consider in some detail certain logical aspects of the One qua hypostasis. (shrink)

In their chapter, “In What Sense Does the One Exist? Existence and Hypostasis in Plotinus,” Paul DiRado and Michael Wiitala consider the problem of the One’s existence. Starting with the modern philosophical distinction between the “is” of predication and the “is” of existence, they show that Plotinus does not make such a distinction. The reason for this, they argue, is that Plotinus does not share with modern philosophers a univocal notion of existence. For Plotinus, both the verb “einai” and (...) the word “hypostasis” have variable meanings. Thus Plotinus can, in some contexts, say that “the One is” without being committed to the view that the One is or exists in the same way that other entities lower in the metaphysical hierarchy (Forms, say) exist. To say that “the One is” is to say that the One is the basis for the being of other entities; the Forms, on the other hand, truly “are,” in that they are the subjects of necessary and unchanging real predication. (shrink)

In the section “Validity and Existence in Logik, Book III,” I explain Lotze’s famous distinction between existence and validity in Book III of Logik. In the following section, “Lotze’s Platonism,” I put this famous distinction in the context of Lotze’s attempt to distinguish his own position from hypostatic Platonism and consider one way of drawing the distinction: the hypostatic Platonist accepts that there are propositions, whereas Lotze rejects this. In the section “Two Perspectives on Frege’s Platonism,” I argue that this (...) is an unsatisfactory way of reading Lotze’s Platonism and that the Ricketts-Reck reading of Frege is in fact the correct way of thinking about Lotze’s Platonism. (shrink)

코기토 철학의 전통에 맞서 자아의 문제를 새롭게 사유하려는 공통된 목적 아래, 레비나스의 침전(hypostase)론과 라깡의 거울단계론은 여러 지점에서 서로 깊이 소통한다. 그럼에도 불구하고 우리가 알기로는 양자의 밀접한 연관성은 이제까지 전혀 조명된 바 없다. 이는 아마도 양자가 서로 다른 학문분과에서 독립적으로 수행되었던 사정 때문일 것이다. 본 논문은 그러한 공백을 메우기 위한 첫 단계의 작업이다. 본 작업이 보여주고자 하는 바, 두 자아론은 자아 발생의 배경을 인간 존재의 근원적 정황에 대한 공통된 이해에 입각하여 조명하고 있으며, 충동에너지의 유동(流動)과 정체(停滯) 및 이 두 위상의 상호 변환을 (...) 추적하는 에너지론의 관점에서 자아 사건을 해명하고 있다. (shrink)

Theory in the traditional sense of the word comprises a deductive system in which hypotheses and their logical consequences are compared with empirical observations. Such comparison is usually regarded as a verification of the theory. The ideal for this conception of theory is a universal scientific system in which the theories of the different scientific disciplines are brought together under the head of a few fundamental principles.Traditional theory and reality belong to two distinct and separate provinces. Insofar as men make (...) forecasts with the help of theory and attempt to change reality, they do not act as theoreticians. Theory remains in the realm of contemplation. Philosophers have frequently made something absolute out of this aspect of theory and, under the title of,logosf or.spirit', have deified the subject of these intellectual activities. It appears in their systems as the creator of the world. What they are really doing, however, is treating the scholar’s activity, which is based on the division of labor in modern society, as an dbjective and independent substance. The real subject of theory in its traditional aspect is not pure spirit but the scholar who performs definite and necessary functions in modem society.If such an analysis is accepted, the philosophical naiveté of the theoretician disappears. He perceives that not only thinking as such, but also its task, its direction, and the structure of the objective world are ultimately connected with human activity and work. Out of the historical process by which men wrest their living from nature, there emerges the separation of material and intellectual work, as well as the structure and the content of the latter. The dogmatic differentiation between the logical and historical premises of science cannot be maintained. The theoretician is himself part and parcel of the subject which forms the real objective world. To take an active part in the direction of the social life of humanity, therefore, becomes a function and a requirement of science.So it is as theory, in the critical sense of the word, that the author regards the type of reasoning which attempts to impart to social life in its totality a rational form and which does not limit itself to working within the framework of the given system of the division of labor. The history of different scientific theories shows theory, with its unity and clarity, in contrast and opposition to the heterogeneity and disharmony of the real world. In the attempts to achieve harmony in society, thought may play an important role.The author analyses the logical structure of critical theory in the performance of such a function. Its content is the description of present society in terms of a development towards a rational form. Critical theory, therefore, always remains intimately linked up with the reality of existence. It needs for its development in each and every instance the existence and assistance of the various scientific disciplines. Its logical structure, however, is more complicated than that of theory in the traditional sense, because it does not regard its objectives as a separate and foreign province. Science, in the traditional sense, even where it formulates developments in nature and human history, regards interests and purposes as given facts and guideposts that are foreign to its own structure. It has a utilitarian character in a directly understandable sense. Critical theory, however, is confronted with the task of justifying its own problems and their differentiation and has to adjust its internal structure accordingly. It does not set up an unchanging system but sees as its purpose the attempt to apply the knowledge that has been accumulated in the traditional theories to the social totality in the direction that critical theory itself indicates.La théorie, au sens traditionnel, est un système déductif. La confrontation des connaissances obtenues par voie déductive avec les faits constatés permet la vérification de la théorie. L'idéal est un système universel de la science dans lequel les théories des différentes disciplines, toutes ensemble, sont rattachées à un petit nombre de propositions premières.La réalité demeure extérieure à une théorie ainsi conçue. Dans la mesure où les hommes utilisent la théorie pour faire des prévisions et pour modifier la réalité, ils ne sont plus des théoriciens. En ce sens, la théorie est purement contemplative. Les philosophes qui ont analysé la connaissance ont souvent porté à l'absolu cet aspect de la théorie et ont fait du sujet des opérations intellectuelles, sous les noms de,Logos4 ou de,Esprit4, le démiurge du monde. En vérité, ils ont ainsi hypostasié l'activité, qui dans la société moderne revient au savant du fait de la division du travail. Le sujet réel de la théorie sous sa forme traditionnelle, loin d'être l'esprit pur, est le savant qui remplit dans la société bourgeoise une fonction nécessaire, bien déterminée.Après cette prise de conscience, la naïveté philosophique du théoricien doit disparaître. Il comprend que la pensée, ses tâches et son orientation, l'organisation du monde qui lui est donné, se ramènent en dernière analyse au travail humain. Le combat de l'homme avec la nature est la condition de l’évolution historique, dans laquelle le travail matériel se sépare du travail intellectuel, il détermine la structure et le contenu de ce dernier. La séparation rigide des hypothèses logiques et historiques de la science est impossible à maintenir. L'activité du théoricien exprime le sujet concret qui ne donne pas forme à la seule théorie, mais aussi au monde réel. Prendre position dans la vie sociale, l'influencer consciemment devient une tâche immanente à la science.Par théorie au sens critique, H. entend la connaissance qui ne se contente pas de construire ses systèmes en respectant les cadres de la division du travail existante, mais qui s'efforce de donner à la totalité sociale une forme raisonnable. Dans l'histoire, la cohérence logique et comme transparente qui caractérise les théories traditionnelles, était en contradiction avec les rapports réels. Dans les tentatives pour rendre la société conforme à l'harmonie de la pensée, celle-ci peut jouer un rôle important.H. étudie la structure logique que présente la pensée lorsqu'elle exerce une telle fonction. Elle a pour contenu la représentation de la société actuelle, envisagée par rapport à révolution vers la raison. La théorie critique forme par conséquent un jugement existentiel unique. Pour développer et justifier celui-ci, elle a besoin, à chaque instant, de la science spéciale. Mais comme la théorie ne conçoit pas les buts qu'elle s'assigne comme extérieurs à elle, elle est logiquement plus compliquée que la théorie traditionnelle. Même lorsque la discipline spéciale construit des évolutions comme dans l'histoire naturelle et humaine, elle est orientée par des objectifs et des intérêts. Elle est, en un sens immédiatement compréhensible, utile. La théorie critique, au contraire, doit justifier elle-même la manière dont elle pose les problèmes, qui d'ailleurs sans cesse se transforment, elle doit modifier en conséquence l'ordre de son développement. Elle ne travaille pas en vue d'un système fixe, mais se comprend elle-même comme une tentative pour appliquer le savoir accumulé par les théories traditionnelles, à la marche historique de l'ensemble social, afin d'exercer une action dans un sens bien déterminé.Aussi bien, cette fonction de la théorie est-elle la réalisation des intentions authentiques de la philosophie idéaliste classique. (shrink)

Plotinus on the Soul is a study of Plotinus' psychology, which is arguably the most sophisticated Platonist theory of the soul in antiquity. Plotinus offers a Platonist response to Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of the soul that is at the same time an innovative interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. He considers the notion of the soul to be crucial for explaining the rational order of the world. To this end, he discusses not only different types of individual soul but also an (...) entity that he was the first to introduce into philosophy: the so-called hypostasis Soul. This is the first study to provide a detailed explanation of this entity, but it also discusses the other types of soul, with an emphasis on the human soul, and explains Plotinus' original views on rational thought and its relation to experience. (shrink)

Unconsciousness and quasiconsciousness in Plotinus -- The significance of practical ethics for Plotinus -- Action and contemplation in Plotinus -- Eternity and time -- Soul and time in Plotinus -- Reason and experience in Plotinus -- Plotinus on fate and free will -- Potentiality and the problem of plurality in the intelligible world -- Dunamis in Plotinus and Porphyry -- Plotinus and the myth of love -- The object of perception in Plotinus -- Plotinus on ideas between Plato and Aristotle (...) -- The Neoplatonic Socrates -- Porphyrian studies since 1913 -- Porphyry: scope for a reassessment -- A Porphyrian treatise against Aristotle? -- Did Porphyry reject the transmigration of human souls into animals -- Porphyry and pagan religious practice -- Religion, magic and theurgy in Porphyry -- Porphyry and the Platonic theology -- More Neoplatonic ethics -- Hypostasis and hyparxis in Porphyry -- Philosophical objections to Christianity on the eve of the Great Persecution -- Iamblichus' views on the relationship of philosophy to religion in De Mysteriis -- Further thoughts on Iamblichus as the first philosopher of religion. (shrink)

In this chapter, the arguably most complex and most important part of Proclus’ metaphysics is under scrutiny: the One, the Henads, and the principles. The author discusses the transcendence and knowability of the One/Good, and how it can be a cause; the Iamblichean principles Limit and Unlimited, as the first coupling of unity and multiplicity, and how they invert the Aristotelian notion of dunamis. Together these principles produce ‘the mixture’, and all beings result from the triad Limit-Unlimited-Mixture. The author then (...) moves on to analysing the structure of the intelligible world in detail as an accumulation of determinations derived from these principles and the second hypothesis of the Parmenides, and to showing how the fourteen layers of the intelligible allow a rationalization of the controversial Henads, as participated forms of unity: they do not form a hypostasis in their own right, but they are all supra-essential. (shrink)

As it stands, Derrida’s protest is deficient in any sense of how the discourses of South African racism have been at once historically constituted and politically constitutive. For to begin to investigate how the representation of racial difference has functioned in South Africa’s political and economic life, it is necessary to recognize and track the shifting character of these discourses. Derrida, however, blurs historical differences by conferring on the single term apartheid a spurious autonomy and agency: “The word concentrates separation…. (...) By isolating being apart in some sort of essence or hypostasis, the word corrupts it into a quasi-ontological segregation” . Is it indeed the word, apartheid, or is it Derrida himself, operating here in “another regime of abstraction” , removing the word from its place in the discourse of South African racism, raising it to another power, and setting separation itself apart? Derrida is repelled by the word, yet seduced by its divisiveness, the division in the inner structure of the term itself which he elevates to a state of being.The essay’s opening analysis of the word apartheid is, then, symptomatic of a severance of word from history. When Derrida asks, “Hasn’t apartheid always been the archival record of the unnameable?” , the answer is a straightforward no. Despite its notoriety and currency overseas, the term apartheid has not always been the “watchword” of the Nationalist regime. . It has its own history, and that history is closely entwined with a developing ideology of race which has not only been created to deliberately rationalize and temper South Africa’s image at home and abroad, but can also be seen to be intimately allied to different stages of the country’s political and economic development. Because he views apartheid as a “unique appellation” , Derrida has little to say about the politically persuasive function that successive racist lexicons have served in South Africa. To face the challenge of investigating the strategic role of representation, one would have to part ways with him by releasing that pariah of a word, apartheid, from its quarantine from historical process, examining it instead in the context of developing discourses of racial difference. Anne McClintock is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Columbia University. She is working on a dissertation on race and gender in British imperial culture and is the author of a monograph on Simon de Beauvoir. Rob Nixon, in the same program at Columbia, is working on the topic of exile and Third World-metropolitan relations in the writing of V. S. and Shiva Naipaul. (shrink)

I argue that Goethe’s philosophy of nature can be presented in a vertical order of stages. By reading his natural philosophy as a system of hypostases, Goethe’s accentuation of a divine ground can be taken seriously. Related to the Neoplatonic hypostasis models, for Goethe the living organisms rest on a divine and metaphysical entity. It is a guiding argument of this article that the enigmatic and inexhaustible ‘Bildungstrieb’ (nisus formativus) of all-nature expresses itself in the respective primordial phenomena (Urphänomene). (...) For this purpose, the ‘Bildungstrieb’ uses the two authoritative laws of polarity (Polarität) and increase (Steigerung). These laws form the second level of the graduaded order. The sphere of the diverse Urphänomene can thus be marked as the third level. They are themselves dependent on the Bildungstrieb and the principles of increase and polarity. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is a (...) particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

The role and precise significance of Intelligible Matter in the philosophy of Plotinus has been neglected or dismissed with many questions unanswered. In view of the fact that, unless this role can be properly understood, the whole doctrine of the procession of the Second Hypostasis must remain mysterious, this paper is intended to shed light on two important aspects of that Hypostasis: the nature of Intelligible Matter itself and the relation of that Matter to the Forms.

The role and precise significance of Intelligible Matter in the philosophy of Plotinus has been neglected or dismissed with many questions unanswered. In view of the fact that, unless this role can be properly understood, the whole doctrine of the procession of the Second Hypostasis must remain mysterious, this paper is intended to shed light on two important aspects of that Hypostasis: the nature of Intelligible Matter itself and the relation of that Matter to the Forms.

Theodore the Studite resolved the logical problem posed by the second Iconoclasm in an explicitly paraconsistent way, when he applied to Jesus the definition of the human hypostasis while stating that there is no human hypostasis in Jesus. Methodologically he was following, albeit without knowing, Eulogius of Alexandria. He, in turn, was apparently followed by Photius, but in a confused manner.

Determinism is the view that any event is determined by previous events and the laws of nature. My claim is that Plotinus's, Leibniz's and Berkeley's rejection of determinism is structurally similar. Indeed, while determinism holds that phenomenal changes (ontologically) depend only on the way the laws of Nature apply to the previous conditions of the states of the world, the three philosophers all argues for the claim that the laws of Nature are not independent on the mind (the Hypostasis (...) of Soul or the Divine Mind). That is to say: laws of nature are not mechanisms producing the succeeding of one event to the others, namely are not properties of a non mental substance. Rather, they are regularities (ontologically dependent on the mind, since) established by a Mind. Plotinus, Leibniz and Berkeley hold a two steps argument: a) laws of nature aren't properties of a material substance accounting for phenomenal changes, since undifferentiated matter doesn't exist; b) even if regularities in phenomenal changes could be refer to properties of a substance, these regularities couldn't be construed as non mental mechanisms, because any transition from, say, event A to event B, lacks causal power. (shrink)

The relation between the abyss of death and the human identity is constitutive for the thought of the dialogical thinkers Rosenzweig and Levinas. For Rosenzweig, the Nothing is the end-point of Kantian thinking. Death, as existential experience of this nothingness, was the reality of everyman during the violent decades at the turn of the century. Rosenzweig took this nothingness as starting-point for rethinking and safeguarding human identity. Human identity is a dam against nothingness. But human identity is also open to (...) alterity. In his early texts, Levinas makes a similar move. The there is is the starting point of human identity. Levinas develops a dialectical phenomenology starting from death. Human identity is interpreted as hypostasis. But in Totalité et Infini, an important shift takes place. The starting point is now found in human identity as desire. The there is comes to the center as flip side of the elementale and human identity is interpreted as separation. (shrink)

The subject of the paper, Plotinus’ theory of the One, is situated on the intersection of a systematic investigation and a text analysis and interpretation belonging to the area of the history of philosophy. The motif to work on this issue was the absence of a systema- tic analysis of the specificity of Plotinus’ philosophical theory and its unique mode of expression. The aim of the study is the presentation, analysis and critical evaluation of the forms of expression, fundamental statements (...) and consequences of Plotinus’ concept of the One. The structure of the text resulted from discussing the general character of Plotinus’ language , the explanation of terms „One“ and „hypostasis“ to and presentation and criticism of its own statements and philosophical consequences of the theory of the One. (shrink)

Obviously, it is about the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. I, the author of the article, suggest looking at her, taking into account all her hypostasis, its ritual and organizational peculiarities, but to focus on how this Church performs one of the functions that are inherent in religious systems and organizations: a value-controlling function, and how this performance correlates with the national interests of Ukrainians.

John of Scythopolis, the first scholiast of the Corpus Dionysiacum, played a role in the debates that took place after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and contributed in an original way to the development of Christological dogma in preparation for the Council of Constantinople II in 553. In particular, he uses the theopaschite formula both in its so-called “Alexandrian” version as well as in that attributed to the Scythian monks. Several instances of the formula occur in three of his (...) Scholia on Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus and show both his concentration upon the hypostasis of the Word as well as his identification of Christ with the Lovgoç. In this way, he looks for a new via media within Christological doctrine that truly can be called “Neo-chalcedonian.”. (shrink)

Italian Abstract: Il testo propone una rilettura critica della filosofia di Croce, articolata attorno ai quei due snodi che la teoria degli «pseudoconcetti» mira a trattare unitariamente: il finzionale e l’istituzionale. Tentando di rinnovare il nominalismo e contro ogni ipostatizzazione metafisica, lo pseudoconcetto si incarica di rendere conto della logica dell’astratto e dell’‘empirico’: le leggi, i tipi, i modelli e gli schemi delle scienze sociali, ma anche le istituzioni e le leggi degli ordinamenti giuridici, politici ed economici. Donde la riconfigurazione, (...) elaborata congiuntamente con la costruzione della filosofia della pratica, del rapporto tra filosofia e scienze, finzione e realtà, vero e utile, conoscere e volere, legge e libertà. Muovendo dal dibattito epistemologico con Pareto sino ad arrivare al dibattito su liberismo e liberalismo con Einaudi, il testo problematizza il senso del nesso crociano tra finzioni-istituzioni e Realtà-Spirito-Libertà, onde tentare di ripensare, con Croce ma oltre Croce, l’istituzionale e il finzionale come strutture dogmatiche (istituite e istituenti), dove la posta in gioco, nel bene e nel male, è la libertà umana nella sua contingente e indeducibile concretezza. -/- English Abstract: This book provides a critical analysis of Croce’s epistemology and practical philosophy, articulated around the two pillars that the theory of “pseudo-concepts” aims to treat as a unit: the fictional and the institutional. Trying to renew nominalism and against any metaphysical hypostasis, the theory of pseudo-concepts is committed to account for the logic of the abstract and the empirical: laws, types and models of social sciences, but also legal political and economic institutions and laws, in an attempts to reconfigure the relationship between philosophy and science, fiction and reality, knowledge and will, law and liberty. Moving from the epistemological debate with Pareto on the foundation of Economics up to the debate with Einaudi on the nexus between Liberism and Liberalism, the text aims, with and beyond Croce’s philosophy, to rethink the fictional and the institutional as dogmatic structures, “instituted and instituting”, where the stakes are ultimately, for better or for worse, human freedom in its contingent and non-deductible concreteness. (shrink)

Plotinus claims that Intellect, the second hypostasis, is an image of the transcendent One or Good. While this is certainly an application of the paradeigmatist language inherited from the Platonic theory of Forms, it is not obvious how this claim squares with the Neoplatonic axiom that the One transcends Being and Thought and is absolutely formless. I argue that Plotinus solves this dilemma by interpreting Plato’s characterization of Intellect and Being as “Good-like” in such a way as to refer, (...) not to the eidetic properties of Intellect, but to the goodness, desirability and unifying power it receives from the One. While these are not reducible to Intellect’s essence, they are nevertheless an integral part of its being insofar as Intellect is fully real and intelligible only through the First Principle’s presence in it. It may be said, then, that Intellect is an image of the One in a non-paradigmatic sense. (shrink)

This article develops an argument in defense of the claim that Aquinas holds that there are some kinds of activities which can be performed only by persons. In particular, it is argued that Aquinas holds that only persons can engage in the activities proper to a rational nature, e.g., the activities of intellect and will. Next, the article turns to discuss two implications of this thesis concerning Aquinas’s concept of a person. First, the thesis can be used to resolve a (...) prominent scholarly debate concerning Aquinas’s views on the possibility of human persons surviving their bodily deaths. Second, it also points to a problem with a leading interpretation of Aquinas’ account of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. Finally, the article concludes by discussing how a correct interpretation of Aquinas’s views on these matters is related to a broader scholarly debate concerning the history of the Western concept of a person. (shrink)

A down-to-earth admission of abstract objects can be based on detailed explanation of where the objectivity of mathematics comes from, and how a ‘thin’ notion of object emerges from objective mathematical discourse or practices. We offer a sketch of arguments concerning both points, as a basis for critical scrutiny of the idea that mathematical and social objects are essentially of the same kind—which is criticized. Some authors have proposed that mathematical entities are indeed institutional objects, a product of our collective (...) imposition of function onto reality (the phrase comes from Searle) and of surrogation or hypostasis. Yet there are significant disanalogies between the typical social objects and mathemata, on which basis I argue that one should make a clear distinction between both. The comparison of mathematical with social objects helps understanding how non-physical objects can figure prominently in our explanations of reality. Yet mathematical objects have a different kind of cognitive grounding, and the more elementary of them emerge under relatively very simple sociocultural conditions. The differences are also reflected in the wide scope of use of mathematical concepts, and the much higher degree of variation found among social objects. On the basis of all of these features, I defend the thesis that one can significantly distinguish degrees of objectivity, and I use the distinction to articulate a graded ontology where one can locate the different kinds of mathematical and social objects. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship accents incipient theurgical practice for Plotinus; this lends a certain urgency to the question of his acceptance of magic. While use of magic recorded in Porphyry's Vita Plotini has received considerable attention, far less has been done to analyze actual discussion in the Enneads. Examination of key passages brings to light the context for discussion of magic, particularly issues of sympathy, prayer, astrology and divination. Equally important is Plotinus' understanding of the cosmos and role of the heavenly bodies. (...) Plotinus' affirmation of the highest part of the soul as undescended, together with the claim that our soul has a common origin with the World Soul in Soul-Hypostasis, is significant for the relative unimportance he attributes to the role and effect of magic. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on Proclus’ concept of the instrumental cause in his commentary on the Timaeus (In Tim.). Unlike earlier Neoplatonists who do not make much use of this type of causality, Proclus relates the instrumental cause to the hypostasis of nature (φύσις). The Demiurge uses nature as an instrument in his ordering and creation of the cosmos. How does Proclus arrive at this understanding of nature? I argue that the definition of nature as an instrumental cause (...) is in part based on his critical reception of Aristotle who identifies nature with the formal, efficient, and/or final cause. That is, Proclus did not develop his views on the causality of nature only by looking at the Timaeus (and other Platonic sources), but also by engaging with Aristotle’s rich – and, to a certain extent, authoritative – reflections on this issue. (shrink)

The role and precise significance of Intelligible Matter in the philosophy of Plotinus has been neglected or dismissed with many questions unanswered. In view of the fact that, unless this role can be properly understood, the whole doctrine of the procession of the Second Hypostasis must remain mysterious, this paper is intended to shed light on two important aspects of that Hypostasis: the nature of Intelligible Matter itself and the relation of that Matter to the Forms.