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Plotinus on Divine Simplicity

Gavrilyuk attends to divine simplicity according to the third‐century AD pagan philosopher Plotinus. He shows that Plotinus draws his doctrine of divine simplicity from the earlier Greco‐Roman philosophical tradition, in which the nature of the “first principle” was highly contested. Aristotle offers a history of the early debate, with Anaxagoras being the first to glimpse the first principle’s simplicity. The Platonist philosophers conceived of the first principle as incorporeal, and on these grounds linked the first principle to simplicity. For his part, Aristotle associated simplicity with the absoluteness of pure actuality. The Stoics, with their essentially material understanding of the divine, ignored or denied divine simplicity. Plotinus draws upon the reception of Aristotle that is found in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Numenius, and Ammonius. According to Gavrilyuk, the signal contribution of Plotinus consists in setting forth the strongest possible doctrine of divine simplicity. Indeed, for Plotinus God’s utter simplicity means that God cannot even be thought, because thinking requires the duality of subject‐object. Plotinus conceives of the divine One as above divine Mind (nous), since the latter contains a unified plurality but not the perfect simplicity that marks the unknowable One. Gavilyuk ends his essay with an account of the qualifications made to divine simplicity by philosophers and theologians who are less radical in their doctrine than is Plotinus. He emphasizes that the Enneads’s key metaphysical insight, utterly ruling out any kind of composition from the One, has the benefit of being supremely intellectually coherent and elegant.     

Plotinus on the Inner Sense

Recently, there has been a growing interest in ancient views on consciousness and particularly in their influence on medieval and early modern philosophers. Here I suggest a new interpretation of Plotinus’s account of consciousness which, if correct, may help us to reconsider his role in the history of the notion of the inner sense. I argue that, while explaining how our divided soul can be a unitary subject of the states and activities of its parts, Plotinus develops an original account of consciousness that appeals to an inner sense. In contrast to ‘the outer senses’, which perceive sensible things out there in the world, this sense, for him, perceives the activities of the parts of our soul, thus enabling us to be conscious of them as a single subject. I suggest that Plotinus devises his account of this psychic power in the light of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation of the Aristotelian ‘common sense’. Since in Alexander the ‘common sense’ enables us to be conscious as a single subject of sensations from different modalities, Plotinus uses it as a model to explain how we can be the conscious subject of all the states and activities of our soul.     

Desire and the Good in Plotinus

Plotinus calls the first principle the One and the Good. According to Plotinus, ‘Good’ is an appropriate name for the One because the One is that which all things desire. Since he says that the One is beyond knowledge, beyond language, beyond intellect, and beyond being, however, what philosophical evidence can he provide for his claim that the One is that which all desire? In this article I offer some philosophical evidence, aside from mystical union with the One, for why ‘the Good’ is an appropriate name for the One, and for why calling the One ‘Good’ is not at odds with the fact that it is beyond knowledge, but rather entails it. To this end, after an initial consideration of the relationship between the good and desire in Plato and Aristotle, I focus on the role that desire plays in relation to the Good in Plotinus' thought.     

Patrides,Plotinus and the Cambridge Platonists

ABSTRACT

Discussion of the Cambridge Platonists, by Constantinos Patrides and others, is often vitiated by the mistaken contrasts drawn between those philosophers and late antique Platonists such as Plotinus. I draw attention especially to Patrides’s errors, and argue in particular that Plotinus and his immediate followers were as concerned about this world and our immediate duties to our neighbours as the Cambridge Platonists. Even the doctrine of deification is one shared by all Platonists, though it is also here that genuine differences between pre-Christian and Christian exegesis can be found. All, it can be said, hope and expect to join ‘the dance of immortal love’, but Christian Platonists had a deeper sense of God’s ‘humility’ in His Word’s material and temporal manifestation. Not Olympian Zeus but the Crucified Christ was their preferred image of divine involvement, and their better guide to heaven.     

Der ganze Mensch

Gerade in den letzten Jahren hat sich die Psychiatrie rasant weiterentwickelt. Die biologische Psychiatrie erlebt einen Aufschwung, aber auch die Verhaltenstherapie wird, dank der Erkenntnisse der modernen Gehirnforschung, mit neuen Augen betrachtet. Em. Univ-Prof. Dr. Hans Georg Zapotoczky beschreibt im Gespr?ch die Entwicklung der ?sterreichischen Psychiatrie, die enormen Fortschritte, spannenden Forschungsergebnisse und deren Bedeutung für die Zukunft der Therapie. Dabei pl?diert Zapotoczky für einen neuen, positiven Blick nicht nur auf den Patienten in seiner Gesamtheit als Mensch, sondern auch auf seine F?higkeiten.     

Der bewegliche Mensch

Zusammenfassung. Diese Arbeit unterscheidet drei Konzepte der Identit?t (substanzielle, formale und qualifizierte Identit?t) und ordnet sie verschiedenen intellektuellen Traditionen zu. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit verdient der systematisch wichtigste Identit?tsbegriff, die „qualifizierte Identit?t.” Hingewiesen wird auf die Schwierigkeiten, die sich aus einer rein „narrativen” Fundierung dieser Identit?t ergeben; im Kontrast hierzu wird die Notwendigkeit betont, Identit?t in einem „dramatischen” Kontext zu sehen. Von dort her ergeben sich wichtige Vorgaben zur Ausrichtung therapeutischer Intervention. Die Vernachl?ssigung jenes dramatischen Kontexts führt zu einer Einengung des Identit?tsbegriffs, die besonders deutlich bei den Aporien der „Selbstverwirklichung” zutage tritt. Abschlie?end wird auf einige Gefahren hingewiesen, die sich aus der individualistischen Verzerrung des Identit?tsbegriffs in modernen Gesellschaften ergeben; von besonderer Bedeutung sind hier die soziale Erosion, aus der sich eine Krise im Verh?ltnis zwischen den Generationen ableitet, sowie – in engem Zusammenhang damit – das K?rperbild, das dem modernen Jugendkult zugrunde liegt.

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The human being in movement. Modern identity from a philosophical point of view

Summary. This paper draws a distinction between „substantive”, „formal”, and „qualified” identity, and gives hints at the intellectual traditions linked to these different accounts. The systematically most advanced concept of identity, i.e., „qualified identity”, deserves particular attention. With regard to the „making” of this identity, both its „narrative” foundation and its „dramatic” contextualization need to be discussed. The author hints at systematic problems involved in a merely „narrative” (re-)construction of identity and pleads for a „dramatic” contextualization of identity. Following this „dramatic” turn, the focus for therapeutic intervention is to be elucidated in a new way. Whereas a „dramatic” approach to identity allows to encompass the social context, an individualistic approach leads to serious distortions; this becomes evident in the aporetic figure of „self-realization”, which is reflected in the erosion of social relations, the struggle between generations, and the modern body-image of „youthfulness.”

     

Selbstpathologie und der post-moderne Mensch

The author describes the difficult situation of client-centered therapy in continental Europe. The formulas which arised to its rescue are provisionally signalized: person-centeredness, process differentiation and integrative psychotherapy. In addressing these themes the narcissistic defense is proposed as the big challenge of our time and the role of process differentiation and person-centeredness is discussed in respect to this development. Successively, the changing language of psychopathology, the rise of self-pathology, the broader nosological and sociological perspectives on the loss of identity and the development of a postmodern human type are discussed. Further, the treatment of this new challenge by a person-centered approach, especially in its process oriented form, is proposed. Finally, the magic formulas are revisited more precisely: Person-centeredness and process differentiation are considered to be inseperable, needing each other in the treatment of the narcissistic defense.     

Der Mensch in der Masse

Ohne ZusammenfassungPrivaat docent aan de Gemeente Universiteit van Amsterdam     

Beyond the Polemics: Freedom and Necessity in Plotinus and St Maximus Confessor

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to challenge the prevailing polemic between ‘necessary’ emanation and ‘free’ creation. I begin by arguing for the presence of freedom and volition in the emanationism of Plotinus. I then move on to explore the role of necessity in the creationism of Maximus. In both cases, I rely upon a twofold schematisation of freedom and necessity to dissolve the dichotomy between them effectively. Having levelled the playing field, so to speak, I conclude that, all things being equal, one does find in Maximus (and Christian thinkers generally) a heightened sense of divine volition and relationality beyond that of the pagan Neoplatonists. This greater emphasis upon the freedom of the divine will, however, has little bearing on whether Maximus's doctrine of creation is ‘emanationist’ or ‘creationist’. Instead, it stems from a biblically inspired sense of the One God as intimately involved in His creation which, though derived from God, is crucially other than God.