Maximus the Confessor: ontology and method in Byzantine philosophy of the 7th century

The subject of this study is the ontology and dialectical methods of Maximus the Confessor (d. 662), one of the most significant and complex Byzantine thinkers. The first part of the book is an introduction to Maxim's conceptual system. The need for a special terminological analysis is due to the fact that many important concepts of Maximus’s metaphysics, epistemology and anthropology - for example, “nature”, “hypostasis”, “logos”, “gnosis”, “existence”, “experience”, “sensation” - have in his system a meaning different from what is put into them now, and in many cases different from what his immediate predecessors and contemporaries put into them. Because of this, the key concepts of the Maxim system are interpreted differently. In addition, despite the impressive number of publications dedicated to Maxim, there are practically no works in which his conceptual system would be analyzed systematically and with sufficient completeness 1. The second part of the work examines the content, main ideas and sources of Chapter XLI of Maxim's treatise On Various Difficult Passages in Saints Dionysius and Gregory (PG 91, 1304D – 1316A). This short text condenses in a condensed form the key themes of Maximus’ philosophical and theological system. To understand and adequately interpret Difficulty XLI requires knowledge of almost all aspects of Maximus' teachings, and therefore consideration of it requires a consistent discussion of his ontology, cosmology, psychology and epistemology. On the other hand, understanding this text greatly clarifies the teaching of Maximus as a whole. The third part of the book is devoted to the study of the features of diaeresis as a method of dialectics contemporary to Maximus the Confessor. It is diaeresis (along with its reverse synthesis) that is a distinctive feature of Maximus’s reasoning in Difficulty XLI. At the same time, the scope of application of dieretic procedures goes far beyond the limits of logic itself. Divisions are not only a universal method of research, but also the most important characteristic of created existence. Their sequence forms a quasilogical tree, outwardly reminiscent of Porfirievo, but essentially not such. The opposite of division is not analysis, as in the philosophical systems contemporary to Maxim, but synthesis (addition), understood as the reunification of what was divided. Maxim uses all types of synthesis known to him: the removal of opposites through a transition to a higher form, connection through a third term, connection as addition into a single hypostasis, etc. The importance Maxim attached to universal divisions and connections is evidenced by the fact that the elimination of world divisions is postulated by him as the main task of man; for this reason he was created and brought into being. One of the goals of the study was to show that Maximus’s constructions, for all their originality, were formed in the bosom of a rich tradition, which is characterized by the interpenetration of classical philosophy and Christian theology. In this, the direct predecessors of Maximus are the most philosophical of Christian theologians - Origen, Nemesius of Emesa, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, John of Scythopolis. Through them (and it is possible that in some cases directly), Maxim assimilated and transformed for his own purposes many ideas of Platonism, Aristotelianism and Stoicism. Often, Maxim’s reasoning and concepts cannot be unambiguously interpreted by means of logic and rational philosophy. In such cases, we have tried to place them in the context of similar reasoning in other writings of the Confessor or in other authors. This method, if it does not completely clarify Maxim’s thought, does bring us closer to understanding this or that passage. The importance of identifying relevant contexts for a work from another era cannot be overestimated. An adequate reading of a work is possible only if we know the intellectual tradition in which it was formed, if we are aware of the author's intention or the circumstances that influenced it. Ideally, both what the author wanted to say and what he actually said is significant; what he kept silent about; what he kept in mind while working on this or that passage; what he agreed with and what he argued with; what he perceived from his predecessors; what creatively developed; in what place was it limited to formal borrowing; where he misinterprets his source; where clarity is deliberately avoided and unambiguity, etc. All this, to the extent possible, is revealed not from the text itself, but from the numerous intellectual, cultural, historical contexts in which it is woven. The more ΠΕΡΙΟΧΑΙ (boundary conditions) we know, the more accurately we position the text when reading. Taking into account the above, individual fragments and arguments of Maxim are considered and interpreted by us both in the context of the entire system of views of Maxim himself, and against the broader background of his contemporary philosophical and theological tradition. In relation to Difficulty XLI, our goal was to reduce the number of possible interpretations of the text to a minimum: starting from a potentially large number of possible meanings, we tried to get closer to a meaning that, if not adequate, then at least not too different from that assumed in the author's SKOPOS, as Maximus' contemporaries said 3, or from the author's intention, as they now say 4. In a number of cases, only knowledge of one or another source allows one to understand the meaning of what Maxim said. The non-randomness of the discovered parallels is proven by the fact that they clarify the text in question. In this study, the philological component is significant and this is not accidental. Only a clear understanding of why this or that concept is used in a given passage, what its role and meaning is, allows one to claim the validity of its interpretation. Hermeneutic procedures become a necessary means of achieving understanding 5 . Maxim’s language requires close attention for another reason. The Confessor is characterized by a complicated style (the Byzantine encyclopedist of the 9th century, Patriarch Photius, already complained about its “closedness”), when the relationships between the parts of complex syntactic periods are unclear 6 . At the same time, the form of presentation is congenial to the content, which is characterized by the interpenetration of plans and meanings. Just as in linguistic terms it is often impossible to separate chains of words, since it is unclear where to draw the dividing line (put a comma), so in terms of meaning, one or another period sometimes prevents dissection by means of logical analysis. In this way, balance and harmony are achieved between form and content. The author's style of writing is characterized by verbosity, stringing subordinate clauses, an abundance of repetitions, so that the reader seems to be seeing the same detail again and again, and only after looking more closely does he begin to discern subtle changes and variations in drawing, presentation, and emphasis. Sometimes the pictures that Maxim builds cannot be separated into elements. There is no place for Aristotelian logic here; it is too straightforward for that. The author melts heterogeneous teachings together, giving birth to bizarre hybrids. Philosophemes, theologumen, vivid images and dogmatic formulas merge into a single organism, convincing with its vital energy and intellectual courage, which opposes, but rather exceeds the capabilities of rational analytics. It is not surprising that different translations of the Difficulties sometimes differ so widely. In such cases, a painstaking philological and conceptual analysis of the corpus of the Rev.’s texts is required. Sometimes the only opportunity to prefer one reading of a passage to another is a similar usage in another work of Maxim. In addition, the work of clarifying Maximus's terminology and the emphasis on tracing chains of correspondences and interactions between a large number of texts necessitated the incorporation of a large number of Greek words into translations and our own reasoning. Their number may seem excessive, however, as we have repeatedly seen from our own experience, only in this way can subtle terminological nuances that are significant for the correctness of our understanding be recorded. In addition, the sample of texts provided by our study can serve as a good starting point for further research. When quoting Greek authors, we used already existing translations (they are listed in the bibliography). All of them were checked against the Greek original and often edited or corrected. Texts missing in the Russian translation have been translated by us. A special feature of this study is the extensive use of electronic text databases for Greek texts. Thus, in the terminological search, when establishing conceptual and lexical correspondences, when choosing reading options, we built our conclusions based not on an arbitrary and limited selection of texts, but based on the analysis of all relevant Greek texts included in Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (disc E), and also took into account the entire corpus of works of Maximus the Confessor and all scholia to the Areopagite Corpus (not included in TLG E). Various parts of this work have previously been published as separate articles and discussed in 2005 and 2006. at the meetings of the seminar “Philosophy and Theology of Antiquity and the Middle Ages” at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this regard, I would like to express my gratitude to V.P. Gaidenko, A.G. Dunaev, S.V. Mesyats, A.V. Seregin, A.R. Fokin and Yu.A. Shichalin, whose comments and corrections were extremely useful for me. The only exception is, perhaps, Thunberg 1965. Difficulty XLI fully includes the words of John Rist, said about Plotinus: “When reading the Enneads, one involuntarily comes to the conviction that the whole philosophy of Plotinus can be deduced from each of his individual phrases, and at the same time, in order to understand the Enneads, it is necessary to read them to the end,” see: John M. Rear, Plotinus: the path to reality, trans. E.V. Afonasina, I.V. Berestova (1967; St. Petersburg: Oleg Abyshko Publishing House, 2005), p. 272. ΠΕΡΙΟΧΑΙ and SKOPOS are terms of rhetoric. Ancient and Byzantine commentators began their hermeneutical works by listing the “circumstances” of writing the work being commented on and defining the purpose that the author set in it. Compare: Leontyev D.A. Psychology of meaning (Moscow: Smysl, 2003), p. 26: “Meaning (whether it is the meaning of texts, fragments of the world, images of consciousness, mental phenomena or actions) is determined, firstly, through a broader context, and, secondly, through intention or entelechy (goal orientation, purpose or direction of movement). Apparently, we should consider these two characteristics—contextuality and intentionality—as two fundamental attributes of meaning, invariant with respect to its specific understandings, definitions and concepts.” “The hermeneutic problem... received its systematic significance due to the fact that romanticism revealed the internal unity of the concepts of intelligere (“to understand”) and exsplicare (“to interpret”). Interpretation is not some separate act that retroactively and occasionally supplements understanding; understanding is always interpretation, and this latter, accordingly, is an explicit form of understanding. Awareness of this is also associated with the awareness of language and the system of concepts in which interpretation is carried out as an internal structural moment of understanding, which means that language comes out of its occasional marginal position and becomes the center of philosophy,” H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (1960, Russian translation. M.: Progress, 1988), p. 364. Lara Thunberg expressively writes about the language of Maxim’s writings: “As for the literary style, Maxim never resorted to hints, but, on the contrary, was straightforward, even remaining a Byzantine author in all respects. Of course, he knew all the rhetorical extravagances of the tradition that educated him, but he does not resort to them only to impress his listeners or readers - his own situation was too serious for this kind of empty sophistication. Maximus was an ardent admirer of Gregory of Nazianzus, the great Rhetoric among the Fathers, and yet did not follow him in games with synonyms, rhetorical figures, etc. He loved clarity, and therefore always strived for precision of formulation: his definitions and aphorisms are delightful. But he also knew all the intricacies of Christian theological thought. He often constructs sentences like Chinese boxes that must be opened slowly, with concentration and without distraction, in order to ultimately get to the precious truth that the author wants to convey to readers” (Thunberg 1985, pp. 28–29).