Christian and Islamic Philosophies of Time 9781622735136, 1622735137

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Christian and Islamic Philosophies of Time Edited by Sotiris Mitralexis City University of Istanbul, Turkey University of Winchester, UK

Marcin Podbielski Jesuit University Ignatianum, Kraków, Poland

Series in Philosophy

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Table of Contents Introduction

i

Contributors

v

Abbreviations

vii

Chapter 1

Iamblichus’ Response to Aristotle’s and Pseudo-Archytas’ Theories of Time

1

Sergey Trostyanskiy

Chapter 2

The Byzantine Concept of Historical Time: Origin and Development

27

Smilen Markov

Chapter 3

Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time: A Christianization of the Aristotelian Legacy?

47

Sotiris Mitralexis

Chapter 4

Syn-odical Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Proposition for Ontology, within History and in the Eschaton

87

Dionysios Skliris

Chapter 5

Time in Islamic Kalām

121

Mohamed Basil Altaie

Chapter 6

Al-Fārābi on the Role of Philosophy of History in the History of Civilization

137

Georgios Steiris

Chapter 7

Zeno’s Paradoxes and the Reality of Motion According to Ibn al-Arabi’s Single Monad Model of the Cosmos

147

Mohamed Ali Haj Yousef

Index

179

Introduction This volume constitutes an attempt to bring together philosophies of time—or more precisely philosophies on time and, in a concomitant way, history—emerging from Christianity’s and Islam’s intellectual history. Starting from the Neoplatonic heritage and the voice of classical philosophy, we will enter the Byzantine and Arabic intellectual worlds up to Ibn Al-Arabi’s times. A conscious choice in this volume is not to engage with, perhaps, the most prominent figures of Christian and Arabic philosophy, i.e., Augustine on the one hand (whose views of time are so often quoted) and Avicenna/Ibn Sina on the other, precisely because these have attracted so much attention due to their prominence in their respective traditions— and beyond. Such a treatment would eclipse the variety of voices represented here. In a certain way, Maximus the Confessor and Ibn Al-Arabi emerge in this volume as alternative representatives of their two traditions, offering two axes for our endeavor. The book begins with Sergey Trostyanskiy; his chapter “Iamblichus’ Response to Aristotle’s and Pseudo-Archytas’ Theory of Time” offers, as already noted, a view of certain aspects of the common Neoplatonic—and thus, in an indirect way, classical and Aristotelian—legacy that forms a basis for the philosophical “language” of both traditions. We then move to the Byzantine Christian side of this book’s inquiry with Smilen Markov’s “The Byzantine Concept of Historical Time: Origin and Development.” According to Markov, the formation of the Byzantine concept of historical time took place through the reception and transformation of Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic concepts of time. The Byzantine model differs from the ancient and classical ones not merely due to its structure, but most of all due to its epistemological prerequisites and premises, for it relies on the anthropological dimensions of the experience of temporality, and not on the intellectual transcending of the flux of time. This is followed by Sotiris Mitralexis’ “Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time: A Christianisation of the Aristotelian Legacy?”; Maximus implicitly bases himself on a mediated Aristotelian legacy and arrives at a threefold theory of temporality, distinguishing between time (χρόνος), the Aeon (αἰών), which is to be distinguished from the notion of eternity as this is usually understood, and a distinct third mode of temporality, for which we will use Maximus’ of-

ii

Introduction

ten-cited concept of the ever-moving repose (στάσις ἀεικίνητος). The Confessor uses a number of elements from the thought of his predecessors and contemporaries as stepping-stones in order to arrive at his unique synthesis, with Plato, Aristotle and Gregory of Nyssa being some of them— the crucial differentiating element, however, being that Maximus’ understanding of time is dependent upon his ideas on deification and eschatology. After this treatment of Maximus’ theory of time, the Maximian Byzantine focus is concluded with Dionysios Skliris’ “Syn-odical Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Proposition for Ontology within History and in the Eschaton,” focusing on time as history. Skliris claims that the point of Maximus’ departure is an apophatic theology, in which God (in-Himself) is beyond not only essence but also being in general. The other side of this apophatic theology is a cosmology in which created being is presented as lacking ontology, since it is perpetually threatened by non-being. Consequently, in the Maximian Christian perspective, the locus of ontology is Christology, because Christ unites God who is beyond being with created existence which is not “yet” being. This Christological ontology cannot but be eschatological in character, since it is in the eschaton that created existence, which is not “yet” being, finally acquires an ontological character through the full manifestation of the consequences of the hypostatical union. We enter the domain of the Islamic perspective with Mohamed Basil Altaie’s introductory chapter entitled “Time in Islamic Kalām.” Altaie examines the ideas of two leading Islamic thinkers about time, Ibn Ḥazm Al-Ẓāhirī and Al-Ghazālī. Both thinkers, who may be considered good representatives of kalām, refuted the notion of absolute space and absolute time, always considering space and time to be interrelated. Al-Ghazālī talked specifically about the “time-dimension” and considered it to be on equal footing with the spatial dimensions. In fact, many of the properties of time in Islamic kalām agree conceptually with the description of time in relativity theory. Furthermore, Islamic kalām assumes that time (like space) came into being with the creation of the universe, and therefore they consider the question on “what was God doing before the creation of the universe?” meaningless. Most of the mutakallimūn considered time (and space) to be distinct, being composed of finite, non-divisible moments called anah. Altaie proceeds to compare these insights with modern physics’ understanding of time and space. Once again moving from a treatment of time to a treatment of history, in Chapter Six Georgios Steiris expounds the teachings of “Al-Fārābi on the Role of Philosophy of History in the History of Civilization”—and, together with that, on the relationship and at times tension between philosophy and theology in Al-Fārābi’s

Introduction

iii

thought. The volume concludes with Mohamed Ali Haj Yousef’s “Zeno’s Paradoxes and the Reality of Motion According to Ibn al-Arabi’s Single Monad Model of the Cosmos.” According to this close look into Ibn alArabi’s work, the Re-creation Principle is one of the main notions of Ibn alArabi’s Single Monad Model of Creation which postulates that the cosmos is perpetually being re-created by the Single Monad that continuously and successively scans all possible states of creation to complete a comprehensive instance of space, just to start over a new instance to produce the flow of time and all associated phenomena of motion and change. Accordingly, there is no actual infinitesimal motion, or transmutation; rather than that, the observed objects are always at rest in the different positions that they appear in. This new concept of motion is used to explain Zeno’s paradoxes of motion and plurality, and can lead to interesting implications if brought in conversation with modern physics, something which forms part of the author’s project and intentions. The synthesis of those approaches on time and history, their comparison rather than their mere co-existence in the same book, is left to the reader, i.e., the reader’s critical inquiry and philosophical investigation. This is but the first step of a comparative project that awaits its realization; and the first step consists in the very formulation of the possibility of juxtaposing Christian and Islamic philosophies on time directly This forms part of a project under TÜBITAK’s Research Fellowship Programme for International Researchers (2216) at the City University of Istanbul, Istanbul Şehir University: I herewith express my gratitude to TÜBITAK and to City University of Istanbul for making this collaboration possible. Sotiris Mitralexis

Contributors Mohammad Basil Altaie is a Professor of Theoretical Physics (General Relativity and Cosmology) at Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan. Smilen Markov is Assistant Professor of Christian Philosophy at the St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria. Sotiris Mitralexis is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the City University of Istanbul and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Winchester, UK. He received his doctorate in Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin (2014) and his degree in Classics from the University of Athens. Marcin Podbielski is Editor-in-Chief of Forum Philosophicum, an international journal for philosophy, and teaches philosophy at the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Cracow, Poland. Dionysios Skliris is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Athens. He received a doctorate from the Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines of the University of Paris (Sorbonne-Paris IV). He studied Classics and Theology at the University of Athens and completed a Master’s degree in Late Antique Philosophy at the University of London (King’s College) and a Master’s degree in Byzantine Literature at the University of Paris (Sorbonne—Paris IV). Georgios Steiris is Assistant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Psychology of the Faculty of Philosophy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Sergey Trostyanskiy is a Research Fellow of the Sophia Institute of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox studies, New York and Union Theological Seminary, New York. He holds a PhD from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Mohamed Haj Yousef holds a doctorate from the University of Exeter, where he studied the concept of time in Ibn Arabi’s cosmology and compared it with modern theories of physics and cosmology, and currently works at the Physics Department of the United Arab Emirates University. His publications include Ibn ‘Arabî — Time and Cosmology (Routledge, 2011).

Abbreviations CCSG

Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca

PG

Patrologia Graeca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne

KaḤ

Kitāb al-Ḥuruf [The Book of Letters]

Cat

Categoriae [Categories] De generatione et corruption [On Generation and Corruption ] Physica [Physics]

Al-Fārābi, Aristotle,

Gen. Corr. Phys. Damascius, In Parm.

In Platonis Parmenidem [On Plato’s Parmenides]

Doucet

“Dispute de Maxime le Confesseur avec Pyrrhus. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes.”

Futûhât

al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya [The Meccan Revelations]

Fisal

Kitāb al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal wa al-Ahwʾwa al-Niḥal.

Marcel Doucet,

Ibn alArabi,

Ibn Ḥazm, Maximus the Confessor, AI

Ambigua ad Iohannem [Ambigua II]

AT

Ambigua ad Thomam [Ambigua I]

CChar

Capita de caritate [Four Centuries on Charity] Capita theologica et oeconomica [Gnostic Chapters / 200 Chapters on Theology and Incarnation] On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor, trans. Paul Marion Blowers and Robert L. Wilken On Difficulties in the Church Fathers,, ed. and transl. Nicholas P. Constas

CGn CMofJCh Difficulties

viii

Abbreviations

DP

Disputatio cum Pyrrho [Dispute with Pyrrhus]

LA

Liber asceticus [On the Ascetical Life]

Myst

Mystagogia [Mystagogy]

QD

Quaestiones et dubia [Questions and Doubts] Quaestiones ad Thalassium [Quaestions to Thalassios] Opuscula theologica et polemica, followed by number of the opusculum

QThal TP Origen, Princp.

De principiis [On first principles]

Tim.

Timaeus

Enn.

Enneades [Enneads]

El. theol.

Institutio theologica [Elements of Theology]

Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, DN EH

De diuinis nominibus [Divine Names] De ecclesiastica hierarchia [Ecclesiastical Hierarchy]

Seneca, Ep.

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium [Letters]

Simplicius, In Cat. In Phys.

In Aristotelis Categorias commentarium [On Aristotle’s Categories] In Aristotelis Physicorum libros commentaria [On Aristotle’s Physics]

Chapter 1

Iamblichus’ Response to Aristotle’s and Pseudo-Archytas’ Theories of Time Sergey Trostyanskiy 1. Preamble Time has proved to be an enigmatic subject for scholars. Its nature, mode of existence, and so on, is by no means easily discernible. In the fourth century BC, Aristotle, in his various treatises on nature and logic, took great pains to spell out the issues pertaining to time, with the aim of furnishing philosophically plausible solutions to the various challenges it posed. His account, along with his entire discourse on nature, went on to become amongst the most influential in the history of philosophy and science. Ever since, this subtle and persuasive theory of time has continued to fascinate, and at times perplex, scholars. During the late Roman / Byzantine Empire (250–1453 CE), Aristotle’s physics had become part of the standard philosophy curriculum in both the Athenian and the Alexandrian academies. Voluminous commentaries on Aristotle were produced at that time, carefully commenting on and elucidating the meaning of each and every detail of his treatises. In the third century CE, the “Divine” Iamblichus wrote his own scholia on Aristotle’s Physics (and Categories), aiming to expound the intricacies of the subject of time. In his work he followed the tradition of the commentators from his own Neoplatonic School, in particular Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as the Neopythagorean school represented by Pseudo-Archytas, synthesizing in this way various distinct exegetical threads. His “intellectual interpretation” of Aristotle’s philosophical themes sought to disclose the deeper metaphysical significance of each topic under consideration. In the course of this, and while attempting to resolve the aporiai generated by Aristotle’s conception of time, Iamblichus produced an account that paved the way for subsequent generations of Neoplatonic thinkers, including Proclus and

2

Chapter 1

Damascius, where philosophical endeavors were concerned. Iamblichus’ response to Aristotle’s and Pseudo-Archytas’ theories of time will form the subject of this article. Aristotle had structured his own theory of time around the paradoxes of time discussed in the antecedently existing philosophical literature. Apparently, though, he was not able to fully resolve those paradoxes. The main temporal aporiai that have kept on puzzling philosophers ever since are those that cluster around the twin paradoxes of the non-existence of time and the constantly changing instant. At the same time, the many and varied attempts to resolve them have produced what is by now a quite well-defined field of studies. Where the present topic is concerned, these paradoxes, together with the questions they entail, have preoccupied the tradition of commentators and modern scholars. Such questions may be set out as follows: What is the nature of time? Do motion and time entail one another? Is there some kind of timeless motion? Is there a form of motionless but time-bound process? What, ultimately, is motion? Can procession and reversion on the part of self-constituted beings be classified as motion? What are the status and scope of applicability of the category “when?” And finally: does time itself move? Issues relating to time also perhaps lay at the very core of the agenda of Neopythagorean philosophy. The enigmatic philosopher Pseudo-Archytas in some sense may be said to have paved the way for the exegetical directions explored by Iamblichus with respect to the topic. The idea of conflicting characteristics that define the subject of time, already explicit in Aristotle, was brought to the forefront of philosophical investigations by this somewhat mysterious thinker, and seems to have greatly stimulated the development of Iamblichus’ own conception.

2. Preparing the Ground: Iamblichus and the Issue of Time As Shmuel Sambursky and Salomon Pines rightly note, in the eyes of the Neoplatonists generally and Iamblichus in particular, [t]he intelligible world has still something of the statics characterizing the One, but it already contains the multiplicity of ideas. The intellectual world is characterized by an ambivalent state, which is partly static and partly dynamic.1

1 Shmuel Sambursky and Salomon Pines, The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism: Texts with Translation, Introduction, and Notes (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Section of Humanities, 1971), 13.

Iamblichus’ Response

3

Sambursky, following Arthur H. Armstrong,2 suggests that since the intelligible world, in the eyes of the Neoplatonists, exhibited differentiation, and since a certain dynamism characterized the “behaviour” of its hypostases, issues of time, eternity, perpetuity, etc., had of necessity come to the forefront of philosophical and theological developments over the course of the philosophical discussions of late antiquity. A debate over whether it was possible to philosophize—or rather engage in theological reflection— about intellectual beings conceived as partaking of motion (and rest) certainly took place in Neoplatonist circles. Indeed, the Neoplatonist conceptions of procession and reversion presented the intellectual realm as experiencing some sort of dynamism. However, it was by no means clear what this might entail. The precise connection between these ideas and that of motion was left unspecified, and what complicated the situation, moreover, was that the notions capable of expressing the dynamic character of the intellectual realm (e.g., procession and reversion) had not featured in Aristotle’s treatises. In addition, they did not correspond to the types of motion found in the standard Aristotelian classification of motion. What, then, is motion (κίνησις)? How does it relate to becoming or “coming-to-be” (γένεσις)? According to Aristotle, becoming concerns in the first instance change of place (i.e., locomotion), and only then qualitative and quantitative changes (alteration, increase and diminution). In the Physics, at certain points, he classifies these types of coming-to-be as species of motion—albeit that becoming is here predicated of the subject with qualifications, since the subject that moves preserves its essential form while replacing certain non-essential characteristics. The subject thus comes-to-be “such and such.” For instance, it comes-to-be tired, altering a characteristic that previously defined its state (i.e., that of being rested). A formal change, on the other hand, that is coming-to-be without qualification, and an unqualified passing-away, is just another type of change wherein the subject undergoes essential transformation. As a result, a new form is introduced. Aristotle classified this type of change as mutation (μεταβολή).3 However, in the context of his discourse on time he used the two terms (i.e., “κίνησις” and “μεταβολή”) interchangeably.4

2

Arthur H. Armstrong, “Eternity, Life, and Movement in Plotinus’ Accounts of Nous,” in Le néoplatonisme: [Actes du Colloque de] Royaumont, 9–13 Juin 1969, Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sciences Humaines (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971). 3 To sum up: “Ὅταν μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὸ ποσὸν ᾖ ἡ μεταβολὴ τῆς ἐναντιώσεως, αὔξη καὶ φθίσις, ὅταν δὲ κατὰ τόπον, φορά, ὅταν δὲ κατὰ πάθος καὶ τὸ ποιόν, ἀλλοίωσις, ὅταν

4

Chapter 1

What is time? Aristotle, attempting to make sense of time, defined it as “the number of motion” in respect of before and after.5 This definition tied time to motion by classifying it as a property of motion. According to Aristotle, time does not exist on its own right but is one of the characteristics of motion, and being in time—of moving things. Time places limits in respect of existence on things that come to be, change, and pass away.6 It measures the extent of their motion and determines the order of motion (their relation to one another as prior or posterior, or “before and after”). Aristotle further nuanced his argument by specifying the kind of number he had in mind. He tells us that this number (pertaining to motion) is not one but “the many,” its most basic unit being two, similar to the two extreme points that mark off a line.7 This reiteration now presents that which is countable in moving things as responsible for establishing the limits of motion. Hence, number here is the limit of motion, or rather, of some particular duration of the moving thing. He notes, however, that setting out the limit does not indicate an actual division of the continuum of our sublunar realm—one that is in a state of motion. By indicating duration, we intellectually delimit (or potentially divide)8 the continuum in order to delineate the starting point and end point of motion: a state where a new motion begins and a state where it comes to rest, arriving at immobility. The two “nows” initiate and terminate our counting. Whatever lies in between is number as it pertains to that motion. Hence the latter is a “concrete” and composite number—one that fixes the limits of motion relating to the moving thing.

δὲ μηδὲν ὑπομένῃ οὗ θάτερον πάθος ἢ συμβεβηκὸς ὅλως, γένεσις, τὸ δὲ φθορά.” Aristotle, Gen. corr. 319b31–320a2. Text following the edition Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, ed. and transl. Charles Mugler, in De la génération et de la corruption, Collection des universités de France, Série grecque 444 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1966). 4

Thus, “μηδὲν δὲ διαφερέτω λέγειν ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ παρόντι κίνησιν ἢ μεταβολήν.” Aris-

totle, Phys. 218b19. All passages quoted from the Physics follow the edition Aristotle, Physics, ed. William D. Ross, in Aristotelis Physica, corrected edition, Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966). 5

“ὅτι μὲν τοίνυν ὁ χρόνος ἀριθμός ἐστιν κινήσεως κατὰ τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον.”

Ibid., 220a24–5. 6

Aristotle, Cael. 281a28–31, cf. Phys. 221b30–31.

7

“ἐλάχιστος γὰρ κατὰ μὲν ἀριθμόν ἐστιν ὁ εἷς ἢ οἱ δύο, κατὰ μέγεθος δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν.”

Aristotle, Phys. 220a31–2. 8

Ibid., 222a10–21.

Iamblichus’ Response

5

Number as it pertains to motion is a continuous quantity, and whatever is continuous should, by virtue of this, be infinitely divisible. However, we learn from Aristotle that one aspect of time, namely the “now,” is an extensionless instant—one that, as such, is discrete and indivisible. This extensionless instant divides the present from the past. Aristotle tells us, in the first place, that an instant is not a composite number. Rather, it is an abstract number, the numerical monad (“οἷον μονὰς ἀριθμοῦ”).9 Hence, its nature and the nature of the “proper” parts of time are heterogeneous, and as such, the “now,” according to Aristotle, cannot be a part of time. Again, he holds that the parts are the measure of the whole and insists that they should be homogeneous. Nevertheless, if looked at from a different perspective, the “now” is an element of time of some sort. In that case, then, time is apparently both divisible and indivisible. This paradox tells us something about a key aspect of Aristotle’s theory of time: “Time, like a line, is continuous and the now, like a point, is indivisible.”10 The “now” is a potential divider and actual unifier of time, an extensionless instant that, nevertheless, secures the continuity of a temporal series. This dual impact of the “now” both divides and unites the continuum framing such a series within the schema of what precedes and what follows. The now is always the same and ever different. In general, according to Aristotle, becoming entails motion and mutation, while motion (or change) is something measurable, and is ordered according to the schema “before and after.” Time measures the duration of existence of sensible particulars. And the category of “when” assigns temporal predicates to moving subjects. It should be noted in this context that Aristotle’s categorial schema has been an enduring subject of contention among commentators. Its critical reassessment, for the most part, was commenced in the third century by Plotinus, who launched a massive attack on it, endeavoring to reassess Aristotle’s accounts so as to properly delineate the sphere of application of the categories. He rejected Aristotle’s categorial schema, arguing that it lacks coherence because homonymy creeps into the discourse and makes the application of the schema unviable. Iamblichus, taking Plotinus’ critique of these categories along with Porphyry’s attempted defense as his starting point, elevated the process of critical appropriation of Aristotle’s schema to its highest level so far. A significant innovation was his “intel-

9

Ibid., 220a4.

10

Ursula C. M. Coope, Time for Aristotle: Physics IV. 10–14, Oxford Aristotle Studies 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 18.

6

Chapter 1

lectual interpretation” (νοερὰ θεωρία) of the categories.11 In his commentaries on the Categories,12 he argued that the area of application of the categories is not exclusively concerned with perceptible things—thus ruling invalid Aristotle’s and Porphyry’s view of the subject. Hence, things designated through the medium of concepts by irreducibly simple significant expressions are not perceptible things alone: he extended the usefulness of the categories to include things from that other realm “there” too. And so the scope of the categories was redefined, and now also embraced some intellectual things (τὰ νοερά). In this way, Iamblichus refused to confine the utility of the categories to within the sphere of sensible things. Moreover, various Neoplatonist thinkers, while seeking to instigate a project of reconciling Plato with Aristotle, endeavored to make sense both of Aristotle’s conception of time, and of his notion of “when,” so as to extend their application beyond the world of perceptible things. As a result of this line of philosophical development, a certain readjustment of the categorial schema of Aristotle to make the category of “when” applicable to intellectual beings assumed paramount significance. Even within the boundaries of the logical investigations emerging from the Neoplatonic attempt to make sense of Aristotle’s theory of predication, the subject of time was thus extensively discussed. According to Aristotle, that which is “in” time (or exists in time) must be measured in terms of time, since its existence is encompassed by time. To such an existence we may apply the category of “when.” Consequently, temporal characteristics predicated of sensible particulars exhibit the duration of their motion/s or of their existence in general. However, as far as things in the realm of intellect are concerned, the proper measure of their existence is not time but eternity.

11

For instance, analyzing the category of substance, Iamblichus, as John Dillon rightly notes, “professes, by the employment of analogical reasoning, to discern the co-existence of contraries at the level of intelligible substance as well—to wit, Motion and Rest, Sameness and Otherness, the very μέγιστα γένη of the Sophist

which Plotinus in Ennead 6.2 adopted as the ‘categories’ of the intelligible world. The only difference, Iamblichus maintains, is that on the intelligible plane the contraries are present, not successively, but simultaneously. … At the lowest level, which is the physical, the opposites can be present only alternately.” John M. Dillon, “Iamblichus’ noera theōria of Aristotle’s Categories,” in “Iamblichus: The Philosopher,” ed. Henry J. Blumenthal and John F. Finamore, special issue, Syllecta Classica 8 (1997): 71, doi:10.1353/syl.1997.0013. Hence, Iamblichus distinguished between intelligible and physical substances and delineated their characteristics. The same method is applied to other categories as well. 12 Which are be found in Simplicius’ commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories.

Iamblichus’ Response

7

Therefore, the category of “when,” according to Aristotle, is not applicable to the intellectual subjects. The question one may wish to ask in response to this, concerns how we should classify these dynamic characteristics of the intellectual realm. Are they kinds of motion? If so, then can this “intellectual motion” be consistently framed in terms of the schema “before and after”? We will review the answers provided by Iamblichus shortly.13 For now, we should just note that it is indisputable that since the dynamic aspects of the intellectual realm are not the same as those that belong to the realm of sensible particulars, their mode of participation in time must also differ.14 In general, the idea that intellectual beings, in one way or another, exhibit certain dynamic aspects necessitated an explanatory account of how, precisely, this could be possible—and, if it were indeed possible, what the mode of participation would consist in. Moreover, the question of whether the time-bound predicates belonging to the category of “when” can be said of the intellectual subject remained open. Indeed, we must note in this context that the Neoplatonists reassessed Aristotle’s conception of motion and becoming, so as to extend the application of these to the categories of relation, of acting, and of being-acted-upon.15 A more general construal of becoming was then introduced: in the words of Simplicius, it “is a kind of unfolding, unwinding out of being … an unfolding of permanence in being.”16 This rendering of becoming allows one to apprehend certain intellectual beings as subject to becoming, since they indeed unfold their being so as to extend their efficacy to all participants. Did these developments signify steps in preparing the path to the Neoplatonists’ grand vision of an intelligible universe unravelling itself in a series of processions that can be framed within the “before and after” schema? Not immediately. A traditional pre-Iamblichian approach was to measure “intellectual motion” by the standard of eternity. At times the notion of perpetuity was also used. Even so, a set of questions revolving around those dynamic aspects of the intellectual perhaps led some Neoplatonists to reassess the notion of time and all related conceptions. Another reason for a critical re-evaluation of Aristotle’s theory of time came from the fact that Aristotle himself was unclear about how to resolve the 13

See Proclus, In Parm. 1217.13–1219.9. Iamblichus would describe this motion as the downward tendency of issuing from being to becoming. For an excellent analysis of the subject in hand, see Stephen E. Gersh, Kinēsis akinētos: A Study of Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of Proclus, Philosophia antiqua 26 (Leiden: Brill, 1973). 15 This is the subject of Book 3 of Simplicius’ In Phys. 16 Ibid. 775.29–31. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 67. 14

8

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aporiai of time—in particular, the paradoxes of the non-existence of time and of the constantly ceasing instant. It should be noted, however, that Iamblichus’ inclusion of the hypostatic soul and its activities under the ordering domain of a higher time proved more than adequate to express certain dynamic aspects of the intellectual.

3. The Homonymy of Time: The Hypostatic Monad and the Flow of Existence According to Pseudo-Archytas, a Neopythagorean philosopher of whom we know little, but whose authority (as an authentic ancient philosopher of the late-fifth-to-early-fourth century BC) Iamblichus took to be beyond question, there are two properties of time: (1) the unhypostatic, and (2) the indivisible.17 Let us consider the former right now. What does “τὸ ἀνυπόστατον” (“unhypostatic”) mean? Modern scholars at times render it as having the highly specific meaning of “non-existent” (perhaps following Aristotle’s arguments pertaining to the first paradox of time), or as “unreal,”18 “transient,”19 or “insubstantial.”20 Hence as regards “the unhypostatic” a range of possible meanings would seem to be discernible. In order to become clear about the meaning of the “hypostatic,” we may need to look at the literature formative for the philosophical discourse of the time. Within late antique thought, “hypostatic” could stand for “subsisting” or “self-subsisting.” On the other hand, that which is unhypostatic lacks in the first instance subsistence of its own kind. This may indicate that an unhypostatic being is attached to, or dependent for its existence on, the being of some primary existents (hypostases or substances). In contrast, that which is hypostatic can subsist in its own right. This meaning roughly corresponds to that of Aristotle’s “primary substance.” However, within the scope of Neoplatonist thought, we may also see similar terms being used (e.g., “τὸ αὐθυπόστατον”) to indicate that which is in-

17

“τὸ δὲ ποκὰ καὶ ὁ χρόνος καθόλου μὲν ἴδιον ἔχει τὸ ἀμερὲς καὶ τὸ ἀνυπόστατον.”

Pseudo-Archytas, Fragmenta, 29.11–12. Text following the edition of PseudoArchytas, Fragments, ed. Holger Thesleff, in Holger Thesleff, The Pythagorean Τexts of the Hellenistic Period, Acta Academiae Aboensis. Series A, Humaniora 30, no. 1 (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1965), 3–48. 18 Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 29. 19 Ibid.,14. 20 Simplicius, In Cat. 353.16–354.5. Cf. the translation in Simplicius, On Aristotle, Categories 9–15, ed. and trans. Richard Gaskin, The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (London: Duckworth, 2000), 86.

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generate (ἀγένητον)21 and thus indestructible (ἄφθαρτον).22 These and other characteristics, predicated of the self-constituted, indicate its intellectual origin. The hypostatic and self-constituted transcend things measured by time in respect of their existence.23 The unhypostatic, by contrast, is generated and destructible, being subject to time, etc. The indivisible (τὸ ἀμερές), meanwhile, exhibits certain features similar to the ingenerate, thus also pointing to its intellectual origin. Iamblichus, it seems, held that these opposing characteristics are incompatible. One way of resolving this paradox was to argue that since these characteristics of time (i.e., its being un-hypostatic and indivisible) are incompatible, they are not to be predicated of the same entity.24 In this context, he argued that the indivisible, being a property of time, cannot be unhypostatic. To present it as unhypostatic would amount to introducing a self-contradictory entity. Neither can we apprehend the unhypostatic as indivisible. However, if our unitive conception of time—one that embraces both incompatible characteristics—is to appear cogent, these characteristics are not to be predicated of the subject without qualifications. Perhaps these characteristics, while not being in themselves absolutely copredicable, could still be predicated of time when accompanied by certain explanatory notes such as would serve to rule out impossible and selfcontradictory conclusions. Iamblichus’ resolution of this paradox (implicit in Pseudo-Archytas’ theory of time) consisted, in my view, in his proceeding via a unitive conception of time. Even so, this unitive conception exhibited a certain complexity, in that it sought to separate out and explicate various theoretical levels within the unitive conception itself. Each level was defined by its primary characteristic: i.e., as either indivisible or unhypostatic, and each described a particular ontological realm that fell under it. Hence, we may say that the starting point of Iamblichus’ investigations was in fact the homonymy of time. According to Sambursky and Pines, with Iamblichus there began “a radically new conception [of time], substantializing time as a hypostatic entity of its own in a way that differed from anything said before of the nature of

21

“Πᾶν τὸ αὐθυπόστατον ἀγένητόν ἐστιν.” Proclus, El. theol. prop. 45. Text following

the edition of Proclus, The Elements of Theology, 2nd revised ed., ed. and transl. Eric R. Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). 22 Ibid., prop. 46. 23 Ibid., prop. 51. 24 Simplicius, In Cat. 353.19–20.

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time.”25 Indeed, Iamblichus had introduced the monad of time as subsisting in the intellectual. He classified it as transcendent, above generation, and subsistent in itself.26 This transcendent time (ὁ ἐξῃρημένος χρόνος) contains and orders the measures of some intellectual and all “immanent” (within the cosmos) motion. As such, indeed, “it would be different from the time which is the object of observation by the physical philosophers.”27 Iamblichus classified this intellectual monad of time by means of the following expressions: “ὁ γενεσιουργὸς χρόνος,” “ὁ ἐξῃρημένος χρόνος,” “ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ἀμέθεκτος χρόνος,” “ὁ χωριστὸς χρόνος,” “μονὰς χρόνου,” “ὁ σύμπας τῷ ὄντι χρόνος.”28 In so doing, he was breaking with an old convention that distinguished between time and eternity and their proper objects (sensible and intelligible / intellectual) by introducing a “time” whose seat was in the intellectual itself. Iamblichus apparently distinguished between the two “times”—the higher time, represented by the transcendent monad, and the lower one, described as flowing and shifting. Even so, as Richard Sorabji has rightly indicated, certain quotes from Iamblichus (passed on to us by Proclus and Simplicius) may also create the impression that what is at stake is a single time, and the things that participate in it.29 In this respect, John Dillon has pointed out that the characteristic of the intellectual monad of time is “to comprehend as a whole, statically, and from above in the intellectual realm, all the flux of physical events,”30 whereas the characteristics of the lower time are that it is immanent within and inseparable from particulars. Thus there appears to be one single intelligible monad, and the things that participate in it. Indeed, there exist various quotes suggesting that the flow of time occurs in the participants themselves: these are always coming into being and “cannot receive the indivisible essence (οὐσία) [of time] motionlessly, but … they partake of it at different times with different parts of themselves.”31 Or rather, following Sambursky’s translation— 25

Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 12. Simplicius, In Phys. 794.20. 27 Ibid., 793.28–9. English translation in Iamblichus, Iamblichi Chalcidensis in Platonis dialogos commentariorum fragmenta, ed. and transl. John M. Dillon, revised second ed., Platonic Texts and Translations, vol. 1 (Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire: The Prometheus Trust, 2009), 173. 28 Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 107. 29 Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 37. 30 Dillon, “Iamblichus’ noera theōria,” 76. 31 Simplicius, In Cat. 354.21–3. English translation by Gaskin in Simplicius, On Aristotle, 26

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which remains faithful to the text (by properly explicating the original geometrical analogy)—“a different part of them touches (ἐφαπτόμενα) this essence.”32 Sensible particulars, according to Iamblichus, share in their intelligible paradigm and acquire their essential integrity: it is added to them when they themselves come to be a unitary whole in virtue of having attained their ultimate end. There are, indeed, various passages in Simplicius’ exposition of Iamblichus’ conception of time that suggest that Iamblichus had a rather divisive conception of time—one that carefully distinguished between the two ontologically heterogeneous and conceptually distinct times. Even so, there are also multiple passages that point to a rather unitive notion of time, conceived as an intermediate entity situated between eternity and the cosmos. Thus, instead of positing two causally determined and conceptually distinct times, Iamblichus perhaps just meant to introduce the idea of there being two aspects of time: namely, the indivisible (where this indivisibility again pointed to its intellectual origins), characterized by the actuality and perfection of its essence,33 and the unhypostatic— characterized by the downward tendency of the subject which issues from being into becoming. Taking into account Iamblichus’ theory of participation and its phases, the compresence of the two times may also thus be apprehended as the two modes of a single time. Perhaps this also reflects “Iamblichus’ principle of combining every antithesis into one ‘idea,’ as it were, and one notion.”34 What does the above analogy tell us? What are the meanings of “participation” and “touch” in the above passage? To be sure, the mere notion of participation does not of itself entail any geometrical allusions, such as might tie the subject to the sphere of extended magnitudes. However, the analogy of touch immediately creates an impression that some sort of tangent, a contact at a single point, is what we are dealing with here. Sambursky, elaborating on the meaning of the passage, would argue that: [t]he time of the sensible world flows along the sides of the angle like a conveyor belt, touching the static time of the intellectual world only at the vertex, at the point of its flowing Now. But the vertex also glides and passes along this static time from the earlier to the later in such a way that, consecutively, a different Now coincides with a different point of static time.

Categories 9–15, 87. 32 Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 29 and 35. 33 Simplicius would add to this, “immobile essence” (“ἀκίνητον οὐσίαν,” In Cat. 353.23). 34 Damascius, In Parm. 166.24–5, transl. Dillon, in Iamblichus, in Platonis dialogos, 399.

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Chapter 1 Thus we experience in succession the co-existing points of intellectual time.35

Such an analogy may then entail that sensible particulars move and touch the static time with different parts, the monad of time itself being inextended, unmoved, and not serially ordered. However, it could also mean that such static time offers a blueprint for flowing time, which can thus be apprehended as extended, and as itself consisting of an ordered series. Under this latter scenario, the time that flows, and the things / motions that are “in” it, would move along the line of, and “touch,” some point situated on this ordering paradigm. However, the paradigm itself would be an extended matrix, in the sense of some sort of line with multiple (inextended) points on it. Sambursky’s conveyor-belt analogy fully sustains this latter rendering of how the time generated, and the things in that time, would touch the static time. But what kind of entity would this static / transcendent time then amount to? Would it, too, have parts? Would it consist of an ordered series, and would it itself move? Simplicius’ report indicates that time, for Iamblichus, as that which is intermediate between eternity and the cosmos, has a dual nature. On the one hand, it is ordered in relation to eternity. On the other hand, it coexists with the cosmos and orders its activities. It is extended in the cosmos, but lacks extension in the realm of the intellectual.36 According to Iamblichus, “an intellectual time which transcends the cosmos and governs the psychic world … is placed in the noeric world.”37 This entity is the number of self-moving movement [regarded] as a time-like monad. … [I]t is the extension in regards to the pre-existing order of movement, in which earlier and later are arranged beforehand and provide the actions and movements with order. For one cannot infer the earlier and later of things without the pre-existence of time per se, to which also the order of actions is referred.38 Iamblichus, in this passage, tells us first about the ontological position and function of this monad. However, the monad of time also appears to be internally differentiated. Proceeding still further, he tells us that it is extended in regard to the pre-existing order of movement. This may be visualized as a number (either finite or infinite) of inextended points 35

Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 15. Simplicius, In Phys. 794.35–795.3. 37 Sarah Klitenic Wear, “Syrianus the Platonist on Eternity and Time,” Classical Quarterly, new series, 58, no. 2 (2008): 648, doi:10.1017/s0009838808000694. 38 Simplicius, In Cat. 352.14–21, transl. Gaskin, in Simplicius, On Aristotle, Categories 9– 15, 85. 36

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situated on a line that is extended. The passage may indeed be regarded, then, as lending support to Sambursky’s conveyor-belt analogy. Moreover, the analogy seems to become even more isomorphic to the abovementioned rendering of the process of temporal ordering, once we learn that the monad itself is, in some ways, in motion. Yet even so, there may also be a different rendering of the section in question, presenting both extension and temporal order (earlier and later) as properly belonging to moving things that touch the pattern with different parts while the pattern itself simply remains static and inextended. In this way, the meaning ascribed to the analogy earlier also finds textual support in Iamblichus’ fragments. We may then conclude that the usefulness of the analogy of “touch” is apparently limited, since one can arrive at contrary, but equally valid, interpretations concerning its meaning.39 Indeed, Iamblichus’ discourse, supported as it is by the drawing of various analogies, at times seems to leave space for diverging interpretations of the same subject. In this context, the ordering function of the monad of time is clearly stressed by Iamblichus. Perhaps he had in mind something like the following: the order of temporal things cannot be merely accidental. As we learn from Plato, the ordering of all motions within the cosmos is the key function of the Demiurge, who structures all activities in it according to a preexisting pattern. This also means that an unorganized multitude is transformed into an ordered and beautiful body. Here, Peter Manchester’s suggestion of the Pythagorean idea of a musical scale as the organizing pattern seems more than appropriate: the musical scale defines the sequence of sounds that are either sung simultaneously, or one after another, or in combination.40 Similarly, the structuring pattern of all motions arranges them synchronically or diachronically, or rather as a combination of both, just as if the motions were mimicking the notations on a sheet of music (structured according to the harmonic scale). And likewise, a temporal series will be a combination of synchronic and diachronic motions, arranged in the schema of before and after, or prior and posterior, or of being simultaneous with. A page of notated music necessarily contains a pre-ordained order. In much the same fashion, Iamblichus argued, the ordering paradigm must be pre-existent, essential, and necessary. Indeed, a unique feature of Iamblichus’ conception was his imposition of the monad of time as an ordering matrix for the cosmos. Hence, 39

Simplicius, In Phys. 774.35–781.13. Peter Manchester, The Syntax of Time: The Phenomenology of Time in Greek Physics and Speculative Logic from Iamblichus to Anaximander, Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts, Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 25. 40

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then, Iamblichus introduced time as the ordering principle here in place of eternity—but this time, and the time of physical philosophers, show up as mere homonyms. The time described metaphorically by Iamblichus as flowing and shifting, and which is an integral part of the flux of existence (that is typical of sensible particulars), can by no means be thought of as pre-existent, ontologically stable, etc. This time, also classified as generated (ὁ γενητὸς χρόνος), exhibits similarities with Aristotle’s talk of “the number of motion.” It is tied to the flux of existence. As such, this time, according to Iamblichus, is not a good candidate to perform the intended ordering function. That function can only be performed by Iamblichus’ “higher” time—one that resembles eternity. Such time transcends generation, thus being uniform with itself. As we learn from Aristotle, the schema of before and after (or earlier and later, or prior and posterior) firstly belongs to time, and secondly—to number. However, it also has another meaning, which involves exhibiting order of a non-specific kind, as well as the further significance of indicating what is more or less “honorable according to nature”—that is, what has natural priority or posteriority in respect of value and the commanding of respect. Finally, there is also the additional meaning of “before and after” that points to a causal relation between things wherein the existence of one necessitates the existence of the other.41 Apparently, Iamblichus took into account all these meanings so as to combine them into one concept of time. He presented the higher time as an ordering principle that has a measuring scale (i.e., number) and exhibits a preordained dependence of that which is posterior upon that which is prior. This order or ordering principle, he argued, is not “an order which is ordered, but one which orders, nor one which follows upon principles which lead it, but which is a leader of, and senior to, things perfected by it.”42 A flowing and shifting time, on the other hand, is ordered and posterior. It is less honorable and is causally dependent upon the higher time. It can, according to Aristotle’s conjecture, be classified as “the number of motion”—where this is construed as being inseparable from moving things. So the lower time is contingent on motion, while the higher—i.e. hypostatic—time makes things that fall under it ordered according to the pre-existing paradigm in a necessary way. This time then sets out the preexisting order of motion and determines the extension of the existence of moving things. 41 42

Aristotle, Cat. 14a35–14b22. Iamblichus, In Timaeum fr. 63, in In Platonis Dialogos, 173.

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But how is the order pre-ordained? How does the part through which a motion can touch the matrix come to be defined? This does indeed concern the order and direction of motion, and then of time. Recently, Ursula Coope and John Bowing, among others, have pointed out that the idea of the order and direction of motion and time in Aristotle leaves room for various interpretations, and that ultimately Aristotle does not provide a viable solution to the issue in question.43 If we follow Aristotle’s treatment of the subject, it may appear that motion should define the order and direction of time. However, Iamblichus’ depiction of time as an ordering paradigm seems to reverse the order. It is the pre-existing paradigm of time that orders motions. But how is that possible? We may suggest the following analogy: motions seem to “ascend to” or “participate in” the paradigm, so as to receive their order. At any rate it is, once again, the preexisting paradigm that determines the sequence of motions according to some kind of pre-ordained schema. Accordingly, the order and direction of motion is not contingent but necessary. It seems that Iamblichus offered a viable solution to the issue of how order is possible, thus resolving one of the aporiai that had not been properly addressed by Aristotle.

4. Iamblichus’ Solution to Aristotle’s Paradoxes of the Non-Existence of Time and of the Ceasing Instant More importantly, as regards the general contours of Iamblichus’ discourse on the “nature” or being of time, he has provided us, I would suggest, with the solution to some of the major paradoxes of time—those that were apparently left unresolved by Aristotle. For instance, in investigating Aristotle’s conception of time, inquiring into its strong and weak points, and, ultimately, formulating his own theory, Iamblichus provided a solution to the issue of the non-existence of time.44

43

Coope, Time for Aristotle; John Bowin, “Aristotle on the Order and Direction of Time,” Apeiron 42, no. 1 (2009), doi:10.1515/apeiron.2009.42.1.33. 44 Aristotle, in his Physics 4.10, noted that there is reason to believe either that it does not exist, or that its existence is quite obscure. Why so? Because, first of all, the existence of time which belongs to the past no longer exists, and secondly, because that of time which belongs to the future does not yet exist. Hence, time, if looked at from this perspective, is composed of non-existents: of those that are no longer, and those that are not yet. Hence, time apparently does not exist. Moreover, time as a continuous quantity is divisible into parts. Some of those parts are in the past and some of them will be in the future, whereas the present now is not a part of time, since time is not made up of “nows.” However, if something is in existence, all or at least some of its parts must exist. Contrary to this, that which is composed of nonexistent parts cannot exist.

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Iamblichus’ argument seems to be the following: time and its elements / parts in one sense do not exist, and in another do. The homonymy of time thus needs to be taken into account. As far as the lower time is concerned, all or some of its parts indeed do not exist. The meaning of existence, according to Sorabji, can be rendered as “being present in the now.”45 Hence, they are not present (i.e., in the “now”) simultaneously. Even so, as far as the higher time is concerned, it is a simultaneous whole. It is a being of its own kind, a hypostatic entity which has its own place within the schema of beings. It is not itself subject to motion (without qualifications) or serial ordering. However, if we look at the topic in hand from a different perspective, pursuing a unitive approach (thus combining all types or aspects of time into one conception), we may also recognize that time, or its parts, both exist and do not exist—so long as we take due account of the fact that all of the appropriate qualifications to this statement necessary to make such a unitive conception cogent must then also be furnished. Hence, Iamblichus’ solution was that time in its higher phase, so to say, is hypostatic, existing as a simultaneous whole. It is not itself chopped into temporal bits. All its parts (if there are such) are inextended. However, its lower phase is such as to be inseparable from moving things. It is a part of the flow of “becoming.” As such, it is not present as a whole simultaneously, but is framed into a serial order according to the schema of before and after. Hence, we may predicate non-existence, unreality or nonsubstantiality of the lower time. Even so, the unitive conception of time does allow us to say that time (or parts of time) does and does not exist— that it is and is not real or substantial. For this reason, the being of time is blurry or non-existent only where its lower phase is concerned. The paradox of the non-existence of time is resolved by Iamblichus via the imposition of the phases of time, by tracking the homonymy of time and distinguishing proper characteristics that define particular phases of time. This also allowed Iamblichus to properly distinguish the characteristics of time, including its non-existence, in a way that restored overall coherence to the conception of time. Iamblichus, moreover, offered a very intriguing solution to the paradox of the constantly ceasing instant, approaching the latter via his exegesis of Pseudo-Archytas.46 In his commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, PseudoArchytas asserted that

45 46

Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, 15. Aristotle set out the paradox of the ceasing instant by questioning whether the

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every now is a partless and indivisible limit of the former time and a beginning of the future, like the point of a straight line which is broken, [namely the point] at which the breaking occurs and which becomes the beginning of one straight line and the end of another.47

He continued by saying that the now “is continuously becoming and is never preserved according to number, yet it is indeed so according to its form.”48 Hence, that which is partless and indivisible was spoken of by Pseudo-Archytas as always becoming. But how is that possible? How can that which is inextended and partless move, unless incidentally? One possible answer would be to follow Aristotle’s lead and assert that the now, while preserving the unity of its being, nevertheless, accepts contrary characteristics.49 However, Aristotle’s answer did not seem persuasive to Iamblichus, while Pseudo-Archytas’ conjecture did not appear convincing to him either. So how does the now feature in Iamblichus’ account? Trying to solve the issues clustering around the notion of the now, Iamblichus, following Pseudo-Archytas, maintained that the now holds together and makes continuous the whole of time. He agreed with the latter that “to hold together and to make continuous is a property of the indivisible only.”50 Meanwhile, “to become one thing after another and to perish and always to flow is most characteristic of the participation of the Now in becoming.”51 He thus distinguished between the two nows, or the two phases of the now, one participated by and inseparable from the things that come-

now which marks the boundary of the past and the future always remains one and the same, or is always different. His argument was as follows: on the face of things, the now should always be different, since none of the parts of time (i.e., past and future) are simultaneous. Then the prior now would have to cease-to-exist at some time. However, it could neither cease-to-exist in itself, nor could it cease-to-exist giving way to another now, since the nows do not exist one next to another. Then, they would have to exist simultaneously, which is impossible. On the other hand, the now cannot be the same since (i) no determinate divisible thing has a single termination, and (ii) if both what is before and what is after are in this same now, things happened long ago would be simultaneous with what has happened today. Then there would be no before or after. 47 Pseudo-Archytas, Fragmenta 29.19–22. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 25. 48 Ibid., 29.13–15. 49 Aristotle, Physics 190a15–22. 50 Simplicius, In Cat. 355.6–7. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 31. 51 Ibid., In Cat. 355.7–8. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 31.

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to-be, and the other separate from such participants and always remaining at rest. Iamblichus then proffered some further qualifications to his argument by saying that indivisibility cannot be predicated of moving objects since every motion is continuous and thus divisible.52 On the contrary, the indivisible is static in respect of its being. Otherwise, if it were always in the process of becoming, it could not preserve its form. Once again following in the footsteps of Pseudo-Archytas, Iamblichus distinguished between the formal and numerical unities, arguing that it is the form that constitutes the identity of the indivisible now, whereas its changing numerical otherness indicates the mutability of participating things. This would seem to mean that the formal, i.e., intelligible, aspect of the now belongs to the higher time (or aspect of time), whereas its numerical aspect, one that defines the being of moving things, is always different, characterizing as it does the lower and ever-changing now. Such a distinction would resolve Aristotle’s paradox of the ceasing instant and remove Pseudo-Archytas’ tension between the two nows, or the two aspects / phases of the now, by reallocating them to their proper places in the schema of beings (taking into account the grades of reality that fall under the same conception) so as to restore coherence. Here, again, the homonymy of the now finds its coherence within the same unitive conception of time. The paradox of the constantly ceasing instant is, then, resolved in the following way: the now, according to Iamblichus, is both the same and not the same. It is the same as far as its essence or form is concerned, yet it is not the same insofar it divides the past and the future from one another, since at the instant of dividing it branches out and becomes two: one marking off the end of the series and being “the last,” the other setting out the starting point for the new series and thus being “the first.”53 He would, then, say again that the ever-changing numerical otherness indicated the mutability of the participants, whereas the formal sameness is the marker of the indivisible now.54 In the words of Iamblichus, the form remains the same and indicates the identity of the indivisible Now. And this could well be expressed, if we could grasp in one thought that which is static within the flux of becoming.55

52

Simplicius, In Cat. 54.15–17. Ibid., 8.354.21–22. 54 Ibid., 354.24–6, cf. In Phys. 787.24–6. 55 Simplicius, In Cat. 354.26–7, trans. Gaskin, in Simplicius, On Aristotle, Categories 9–15, 87. 53

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The now then “holds together in itself the whole of time and makes it continuous,” but in the participants becomes different and serially ordered through division. The same conjecture applies to the whole of time, which is one and the same in its form, but many and ever changing insofar as it becomes immanent to the participants. Here, too, the homonymy of time at first indicates multiplicity, but later this multiplicity is reabsorbed into a single and unified conception.

5. Does Time Itself Move? According to Plato, time is the image of eternity moving according to number. However, the number that makes motion quantifiable can move only incidentally. So what, then, is the meaning of this motion? Iamblichus will indeed present time as both moving and being at rest. It is moving as compared with eternity. This hypostatic intelligible paradigm is then said to move. How so? Has it not been classified as immobile? Apparently, its immobility is not the same as the eternal stasis. In order to illustrate this theory Iamblichus offers us the analogy of the soul in the body. The soul, if compared with the Intellect, appears divisible, since indivisibility belongs more properly to the Intellect. Even so, when compared to the divisible essence of sensible particulars, the soul is said to be indivisible. Again, the grades of reality, and an appropriate allocation of certain (at times opposite) characteristics to the subject in hand, demands that one and the same thing shall be classified as both divisible and indivisible, moving and motionless, depending on the particular angle from which it is viewed. Similarly, Iamblichus’ generating time moves only with respect to eternity. The meaning of motion here indicates metaphorically, I assume, a lesser degree of ontological stability compared to that of the Intellect. The ontologically stable Intellect is frozen in eternal repose. A less ontologically stable monad of time, on the contrary, can be thought of as a being in motion. A metaphor is indeed at the service of metaphysics here. However, time also appears to move insofar as it is participated in, measuring movements and moving incidentally with them. And, finally, time is also said to move in respect of the activities that proceed from it, being now in the participants and co-extending with them. However, in all other ways it will be at rest.56 Hence, the meaning of motion varies according to context, at times approximating the original Aristotelian meaning of incidentally moving time, at other times marking off the phases open to participation (those that exhibit features that properly belong to the participants), and

56

Proclus, In Tim. 3, 30.30–32.6.

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at still others metaphorically delineating the schema of beings in respect of ontological stability.

6. The Kind of Motion that Time Measures It has been pointed out in various settings that, in respect of his imposition of a higher time, Iamblichus was indebted to Plato’s two-world metaphysics wherein sensible particulars participate in intelligible patterns so as to receive their share of the order and beauty of the intelligible. That paradigmatic image, taken as a model, in some ways necessitated in this instance Iamblichus’ bifurcating picture of time, bearing in mind that eternity was no longer the paradigm for fluid time and the things it encompassed, but only for the higher time. Even so, Iamblichus’ conception of time was also largely indebted to the results that came out of his scholia on the Parmenides. There Plato, while deducing the notions of younger, older, of the same age with itself, and others, had clearly delineated the two aspects of time: one flowing and shifting, the other statically unitive.57 Now, if the rationale of Iamblichus’ account was to make sense of the place of motion and time in the Parmenides, would the higher time quantify the motion of intellectual things? How did he handle this Platonic challenge? It is one that comes from the fact that intellectual things, according to the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato’s grand dialogue, move, being thus qualified by such time-bound characteristics as first, last, younger, older, etc. We can also rephrase the question and ask about the kind of motion that time measures. Is it only the motions of sensible particulars (within the cosmos)? What about the “motion” of self-constituted entities? Is it measured by eternity? One thread in the philosophy of the commentators was to present the (higher) time as an ideal pattern that measures exclusively the motion of sensible particulars. Iamblichus indeed agreed that, while participating in intelligible paradigms, sensible particulars also participate in the hypostatic time, so as to be ordered. They cannot receive the “static essence of time” in its entirety (i.e., all at once), but, instead, receive it through being in motion (i.e., part by part). They “touch” the essence of time with different parts at different moments, but what would that mean 57 As Richard Sorabji has rightly pointed out, “in the Parmenides Plato describes time as traveling, and talks of something (the One) traveling with it from the past via the now to the future, which implies that the now stands still and is overtaken. On the other hand, Plato also says that the now is always present to the One, which implies that the now travels along with it. It looks as if Plato needs a static and traveling now.” Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, 43.

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in this new context? First of all, this statement indicates that sensible particulars cannot encompass the whole of time in respect of their existence. Neither can they encompass an entire extension of their existence all at once. They extend their existence by being in motion, their existence being chopped into temporal bits. These bits are framed in series. Therefore, this statement tells us that the intelligible pattern of time does not merely preordain the movements (or flow) of sensible particulars, and nor does it confine the notion of order within the schema of logical relations (similar to that of a proposition to a theorem). It also determines the order of their temporal bits. Can static time also delineate the mode of existence (or measure the becoming) of intellectual beings, in the sense of those that preserve their essential integrity? And if so, what kind of beings are they? There were different opinions regarding the issue at stake, one of which was reported by Damascius. Sarah Klitenic Wear has given us a lucid description of these opinions, and noted that [t]he fourth opinion (1216.37) appears to be that of Iamblichus, who postulates an archetypal Time. He argues that the One is not Eternity, and is not established with Time. Time is, instead, the causal principle of the intellectual order—terms such as “older,” “younger,” and “the same age” reflect relative levels of intellect.58 Iamblichus’ response was quite extraordinary: he opted for the inclusion of some intellectual beings into the realm of things measured by the higher time. Firstly, he mentioned the (hypostatic) soul, and then the becoming that proceeds from it. Thus, the soul and the energy that proceeds from it come first. Then the participants follow. Iamblichus’ position was indeed innovative. Plotinus’ influential conjecture was that time originates with the soul,59 and this conjecture seems to have played a guiding role for the entire field of studies (also as it entered Christian discourse). According to Iamblichus, and contrary to Plotinus, the higher time controls and measures the “movements” of the soul. So how, we may ask, does the generative time measure the motion of the soul? Iamblichus’ response was that since the motion of the soul is not the same as that of sensible things, time orders its activities without chopping it up into temporal bits and framing them in series. The notion of order in this context extends, we may infer, only to the “measurements” of “honor”—i.e., of superior vs. inferior phases of an entity in the schema of be58 59

Klitenic Wear, “Syrianus the Platonist on Eternity and Time,” 653. Plotinus, Enn. 3.7[45].

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ings. It may also “measure” or define the causal and / or logical relation between these entities. But does it mean that it measures “motionless motions?” This, we may respond, again depends on the classification of such motions: they will be motionless as far as the Aristotelian classification is concerned, but viewed from a different angle may be thought of once again as experiencing a certain dynamism, proceeding forwards and reverting back, extending their energy to the participants, etc. What is important in this context is that Iamblichus’ time measures this “intellectual motion” without chopping it up into temporal bits. It arranges the activities of intellectual beings—those that give birth to all other things. And what, then, of the “motion” (i.e., order of “before and after”) of the higher hypostases? According to Iamblichus’ exegesis of Plato’s Parmenides, the language of “older” and “younger,” attributed to the One-being refers to the order of intellectual things.60 They are thus ordered as being inferior, superior or located on the same level in the schema of beings. However, he would insist that these terms, if applied to the higher objects, should not be confused with temporally ordered series. Moreover, the intellectual order of causes does not entail motion per se (in its Aristotelian sense, construed as including generation and corruption, alteration, increase and diminishing, and locomotion). He would tell us that the notion of “before” and “after” in this order [i.e., the intellectual setting-in-order proceeding from the Demiurge] we do not understand in the sense of changes involving movements, nor in any other sense, but we define it as the sequence of causes and the continuous combination of generations and primary activity and power which brings motions to fulfilment and as all things of this sort.61

A motionless activity that generates motion is thus depicted metaphorically through the invoking of these characteristics. However, what these predicates really intend to communicate is the order of beings and their causal efficacy. It should also be noted that the Neoplatonists tried to clear away Aristotle’s rigid distinction between actuality and potentiality (δύναμις). They spoke of actuality and its δύναμις, in the sense of the power of intellectual

60

As Sambursky and Pines rightly note, “Time is the earlier and later in the intellectual order, the first cause of all secondary causes in the different hypostatic levels.” Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 16. Hence, there is the earlier and later in the intellectual order. 61 Simplicius, In Phys. 793.22–6. English translation by Dillon, in Iamblichus, In Platonis dialogos, 175.

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beings. “Powers” stands here for something like a capacity to have efficacy, to be participated in, etc. Hence, intellectual entities do not move by changing and mutating. They rather extend their power to the participants. Their dynamic aspect does not consist in motion per se (which would once again correspond to motion according to Aristotle’s schema), but in their capacity to extend their power to the lower levels of being. In other words, a type of motion that is quite different (from the Aristotelian one)—a “spiritual motion” (if we may use this analogy after Stephen T. Gersh)—is in play. This “motionless motion,” as far as the soul is concerned, is embraced and ordered by the higher time. However, time no longer orders the motion of the higher hypostasis. Instead, the being of the higher hypostases is measured by eternity alone.

7. The Significance of Iamblichus’ Theory of Time and Its Reception in Late Neoplatonism Iamblichus conceptualized time as an intermediate entity situated between eternity and the cosmos. Where its higher phase is concerned, this entity is akin to eternity, but its lower phase, by contrast, is immanent to and inseparable from motion and moving things. It is hypostatic in regards to its higher phase as represented by the ingenerate monad of time, while it is insubstantial insofar as its lower phase is concerned. However, both phases of time represent parts of a unitive conception of time. The monad of time functions as the ordering paradigm of the motion of the soul, of the energy that proceeds from it, and of all sensible particulars that participate in time and motion. It is pre-existent, essential, and necessary. It thus controls and orders the activities of the soul and the motions within the cosmos. The lower (i.e., flowing and shifting) time, being inseparable from motion, shares certain characteristics intrinsic to moving things. It also, we may assume, measures particular motions by indicating their duration (the number of motion in respect of before and after). Iamblichus started his investigation with a critical reassessment of the prior tradition as represented by Aristotle and Pseudo-Archytas (and, to a lesser degree, Plato). His response to this tradition sought to restore the coherence of Aristotle’s and Pseudo-Archytas’ conceptions of time, wherein certain conflicting characteristics had been attributed to the subject in hand. Iamblichus’ innovative approach seemed to successfully resolve the paradoxes of time—those, that is, that Aristotle had reported in his Physics. Indeed, his conception of time was capable of better accentuating the ordering function of time. His re-evaluation of the sphere of application of the “when” resulted in the inclusion of some intellectual beings within the

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schema of the category corresponding to this term. His account gained wide philosophical recognition from amongst commentators, with a significant portion of Simplicius’ commentaries revolving around Iamblichus’ account of time. Iamblichus’ theory of time was fully supported by Proclus. As Simplicius noted, Proclus philosophized “about separate time in a similar way to Iamblichus.”62 In his commentary on the Timaeus, Proclus fully endorsed Iamblichus’ idea of ingenerate time.63 In a purely Iamblichian fashion he insisted that the time participated in is not separated from becoming. He then classified this aspect of time “in the same way as Aristotle and assumed that Aristotle has said that time exists only with respect to the Now.”64 Hence, the higher phase of time, according to Proclus, precisely matches Iamblichus’ rendering of the generating time, whereas the lower phase, again following Iamblichus’ lead, corresponds perfectly with Aristotle’s account of time. Thus, Proclus fully accepted Iamblichus’ theses about the nature and function of time, and he also endorsed Iamblichus’ conjecture regarding the monad of time as ordering movements of certain intellectual beings.65 So the generating time measures the motion and activities of the soul—and, he would argue, “the first number itself … governs the intellectual things in an analogous way to the One Being that governs the intelligible things.”66 On the other hand, we also learn of Damascius’ appreciation of Iamblichus’ theory. Yet Simplicius adds that “because of his … sympathy with Iamblichus, Damascius did not hesitate to attack many of Proclus’ doctrines.”67 Even so, the key concern of Damascius was with generated 62

Simplicius, In Phys. 795.5–6. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 48. 63 There he argued that “time by its essence and through the activity resting in itself is thus eternal and a monad and a center, and simultaneously it is continuous and number and circle, in respect of that which is proceeding and participating.” Proclus, In Tim. 3, 36.30–37.3. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 53. 64 Simplicius, In Phys. 795.9–11. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 49. 65 “[b]eing full of potency for measurement and desirous to measure the movements of the essence of the soul, and the being, activities and affections of the physical and corporeal [essence], it [time] proceeded according to number.” Proclus, In Tim. 3, 19.3–6. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 51. 66 Proclus, In Tim. 3, 19.3–6. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 51. 67 Simplicius, In Phys. 795.16–17. English translation in Sambursky and Pines, The Concept of Time, 49.

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time and the physical motion that it measures. In this respect, Damascius’ innovative teaching went way beyond Iamblichus’ theory, which paid little attention to issues pertaining to the time that is inseparable from moving things. Arguably, we may also trace some influences associated with Iamblichus’ theory of time in the Christian discourse of that time—in particular in Cyril of Alexandria. However, the precise origins and conceptual underpinnings of some Christian authorities cannot be easily detected. It is perhaps not an impossible endeavor to measure the extent of Iamblichus’ influence beyond the lifespan of Neoplatonism, especially beyond the sixth century, marked by Justinian’s closure of the Athenian Academy. However, the scarcity that obtains in respect of scholarly sources does not allow us to proceed further and make any definitive statements in this respect.

Bibliography Gen. Corr.

Phys.

Aristotle. On Generation and Corruption. Edited and translated by Charles Mugler. In De la génération et de la corruption, 1–74. Collection des universités de France. Série Grecque 444. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1966. ———. Physics. Edited by William D. Ross. In Aristotelis Physica, corrected edition. Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Armstrong, Arthur H. “Eternity, Life. and Movement in Plotinus’ Accounts of νοῦς.” In Le néoplatonisme: [Actes du Colloque de] Royaumont, 9–13 juin 1969, 67–76. Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Sciences humaines. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971. Bowin, John. “Aristotle on the Order and Direction of Time.” Apeiron 42, no. 1 (2009): 33–62. doi:10.1515/apeiron.2009.42.1.33. Coope, Ursula C. M. Time for Aristotle: Physics IV. 10–14. Oxford Aristotle Studies 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Dillon, John M. “Iamblichus’ νοερὰ θεωρία of Aristotle’s Categories.” In “Iamblichus: The Philosopher,” edited by Henry J. Blumenthal and John F. Finamore, Syllecta classica 8 (1997): 65–77. doi:10.1353/syl.1997.0013. Gersh, Stephen E. Κίνησις ἀκίνητος: A Study of Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of Proclus. Philosophia antiqua 26. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Iamblichus. Iamblichi Chalcidensis in Platonis dialogos commentariorum fragmenta. Edited and translated by John M. Dillon. Revised second edition. Platonic Texts and Translations 1. Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire: The Prometheus Trust, 2009.

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Klitenic Wear, Sarah. “Syrianus the Platonist on Eternity and Time.” Classical Quarterly 58 new series, no. 2 (2008): 648–60. doi:10.1017/s0009838808000694. Manchester, Peter. The Syntax of Time: The Phenomenology of Time in Greek Physics and Speculative Logic from Iamblichus to Anaximander. Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts. Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the PlatonicTradition 2. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Proclus. Institutio theologica. Edited and translated by Eric R. Dodds. In The Elements of Theology, 2nd, revised ed., 2–184. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. Pseudo-Archytas. Fragments. Edited by Holger Thesleff. In Holger Thesleff, The Pythagorean Τexts of the Hellenistic Period, 3–48. Acta Academiae Aboensis. Series A, Humaniora 30, nr 1. Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1965. Sambursky, Shmuel and Salomon Pines. The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism: Texts with Translation, Introduction, and Notes. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Section of Humanities, 1971. Simplicius. On Aristotle, Categories 9–15. Edited and translated by Richard Gaskin. The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. London: Duckworth, 2000. Sorabji, Richard. Time, Creation, and the Continuum. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Chapter 2

The Byzantine Concept of Historical Time: Origin and Development Smilen Markov The purpose of this chapter is not to present a comprehensive overview of the concept of time developed in Byzantium.∗ The scope is much narrower—to show how the specific model of historical time crystallized in Byzantine philosophy. This model relies on two basic intuitions: that the world is created, and that creation is ultimately reconciled with God in and through Jesus Christ. One of the dominant approaches towards time, which was quite common in Ancient thought, is the intellectual transcending of time. This method seeks a way out of the perceived interruptibility and finiteness of time, in order that the compatibility of the latter with the cognitive powers of man is manifested. Unlike the intellectual approach, the concept of the historicity of time takes for granted that temporality is cognitively accessible to the human mind and perception without the mediation of any noetic structure. Historical time is neither a consequence of a blind, physical causality, nor is it the construct of an intellectual intention; it is an element of human experience and, as such, can be the object of volitional and axiological judgment. The irreversibly teleological and soteriological character of the Byzantine concept of time does not lead to the totality of the historical process, violating the dynamism of the personal existential and volitional disposition. Thus Byzantine philosophy differs from the classical ontotheological systems,1 as well as from Chris-

I am thankful to Dr. Scott Ables who polished the English of this article and gave valuable advice – S.M. 1 According to Wolfhart Pannengebrg, the most representative among the ontotheological systems are these of Hegel and Marx. He denotes them as explicitly anti-Christian. Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley, 3 vols., Twentieth Century Religious Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1997), 3:636. ∗

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tian Neoplatonic models that see transient time as the projection of a created realm of perpetuity.2

1. The Ancient Tradition The formation of the Byzantine concept of time took place through the reception and transformation of concepts from Ancient Greek philosophy. For this purpose the first part of this chapter deals with the basic tendencies of the Greek philosophical conceptualization of time. For people in Antiquity, the flux of time and its transience causes intellectual anxiety. It infuses finiteness, fragmentariness, and instability in existence, thus making the apprehension of the true being problematic. Commenting on the unpredictability of the flux of time, Heraclitus notes that time (αἰών) is like a child that plays with the draughts.3 Parmenides, rather, completely denies that the sequential movement of time has any ontological status.4 Existence in the sphere of visible things is determined by time: according to Seneca we do not really possess anything in this world, except time, but time is the most evasive and elusive thing.5 Byzantine authors were confronted with the attempts of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic views to solve the problem of the transience of time. The Platonic approach aims at harmonizing the notions of time and eternity, the latter being conceived as a transcendent entity superior to time. Common to Plato and the Neoplatonists is that the temporality of the world is seen as a dissimilar ontological manifestation of eternity. At the same time the world, precisely because it is temporal, has access to eternity.6 For Plato “that to which we have given the name Time” is “the moving 2

A characteristic example of a Christian Neoplatonic model of historical time is that of

John Scott Eriugena. Cf. Smilen Markov, “Мястото и времето в метафизичната програма на Джон Скот Ериугена” [The Categories “Place’ and “Time” in the Metaphysical Program of John Scott Eriugena], Архив за средновековна философия и култура / Archive for Medieval Philosophy and Culture 13 (2007), https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=192595. 3 Heraclitus, B 52. Translation from John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1892), 102 (fr. 79). Cf. John Marshall, A Short History of Greek Philosophy (London: Percival and Co., 1891), Kindle Edition, 2016. 4 Panagiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 1. 5 Seneca, Ep. 1. 6 Carlos Steel, “The Neoplatonic Doctrine of Time and Eternity and Its Influence on Medieval Philosophy,” in The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pasquale Porro, Studien und Texte zur

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image (εἰκών) of eternity, … an everlasting likeness moving according to number.”7 The image-concept of time is the reason why even those Neoplatonic authors who deny that the world has a real ontological value, such as Plotinus, would nevertheless plead for the possibility that time can be cured of its transience, i.e., that it can return to the eternal source of being. Thus the doctrine of apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις) occurs, according to which time is subject to the universal restoration towards repose, unity, and continuity.8 Plotinus is very eloquent, when explaining that eternity is the sphere of truth and existential completeness: “always” is applied to “existing”, that is “aei” to “on”, so that we say “aei on [aion],”, so the “always” must be taken as saying “truly existing”; it must be included in the undivided power which in no way needs anything beyond what it already possesses; but it possesses the whole.9

Thus time is a vague analogy of the truth of perpetual being. Plotinus focuses on the intellectual perception of the stream of time. Commenting on the concept of “happiness,” he notices that the happiness available “now” and “until now” cannot be complete, since the future is still to come. Indeed, in the future either happiness could turn to unhappiness or there would be more happiness to come: the longer the temporal period of happiness, the greater the happiness (Enn. 1.5[36].8–10). This means that the stream of time is cumulative in terms of the existential dimension of one’s experience of it. The identity of essence, which is the optimal form of essential existence, is realized not in the stream of time itself, but in the perpetuity, coming when the time has lapsed. The temporal perpetuity (τὸ χρονικὸν ἀεί) contains the element of always (τὸ ἀεί), unity (ἐν ἑνί) and continuity (ἀδιάστατον, Enn. 3.7[45].2–3). This concept of perpetuity presupposes completion of movement, but not repose Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 75 (Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2001). 7 Plato, Tim. 37c–d. Translation by Steel, in ibid., 4. 8 Plotinus, Enn. 3.7[45].2. Translation in Plotinus, [Complete works] in Seven Volumes, trans. Arthur H. Armstrong, ed. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, 7 vols, Loeb Classical Library 440–446 (London; Cambridge MA: Heinemann; Harvard University Press, 1966–1988), 3:315. The idea of apokatastasis is rooted in Stoic cosmology, in which the eons (αἰώνες), or great years, return again and again in an infinite series and remain identical to each other. Cf. Ilaria Ramelli, “Proclus and Christian Neoplatonism: Two Case Studies,” in The Ways of Byzantine Philosophy, ed. Mikonja Kneźević, Contemporary Christian Thought Series 32 (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2015), 38. 9 Plotinus, Enn. 3.7[45].6. Cf. Michael Chase, “Time and Eternity from Plotinus and Boethius to Einstein,” Σχολή 8, no. 1 (2014): 77.

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(στάσιμος, Enn. 3.7[45].2). This “Plotinian eternity” is the intelligible base of time, which men perceive through the “elements of eternity,” engraved in themselves (Enn. 3.7[45].5). The intellectual impulse towards existential perpetuity is realized in man’s experiencing time, when human intellect achieves the endless restoration of the identity of things, which are in constant change and becoming. Whereas eternity is out of all time (Enn. 1.5[36].7.23–30), the sensible world is completely in time. However, the beginning of the sensible world is not in time, but in the intellect (νοῦς).10 Time originates in the life of the soul and through the soul it is communicated to the physical world. According to Plotinus there is no one coherent cosmic time (one continuum), but a multitude of times, corresponding to the different extensions of eternity, constituting the cosmic movement. So, the world-soul functions as a mediator between eternity and physical time and, in order to fulfill this function, it applies a special gnoseological mode of cognizing time— namely as the plentitude of the continuity of each of the temporal cycles. Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, on the contrary, consider time as one continuum infinite in both directions.11 For Aristotle time is the number or measure of movement; nothing in time transcends movement. Since according to him time is never defined by time, it is constant: it does not have any periodicity, nor does it return or change its speed. The ontological pillar of time, according to Aristotle, is a “νῦν” (now), located on the vector constituted by the categories “later” and “earlier” (Phys. 219b1, 219b32). Time bears the location of a “now,” which moves from “already non-being” to “still non-being.” It should be noted that this physical interpretation of Aristotle relies on the intuitions of locality, connected with the category “place” (Phys. 217b33–218a3). The ramifications of this theory pose the question of the nature of duration: now is a border between “before” and “after,” which has no temporal duration and is entirely transient. Aristotle formulates the thesis that νῦν is a non-continual, beyondtime border between past and future. There is a paradox here, since νῦν is a tenseless measure, applied to time. To which point of the flow of time will we apply this measure, depends on factors external to time. Nothing

10

José Carlos Baracat Júnior, “Soul’s Desire and the Origin of Time in the Philosophy of Plotinus,” in Literary, Philosophical, and Religious Studies in the Platonic Tradition: Papers from the 7th Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, ed. John F. Finamore and John F. Phillips (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2013), 29. 11 Tzamalikos, Origen, 190.

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in it suggests a starting moment. Every temporal now depends on another now, which is atemporal. A separate conceptual trajectory in ancient philosophy is the Stoic concept of time as an extension or duration (διάστημα), characterized by speed and direction of movement. The speed is the numerical characteristic of the moving of natures and the form of movement is that of a cycle. The extensions are repeated infinitely. They are autonomous ontological entities.12 The Stoic approach is that of a serial continuum. All these ancient approaches to time try to solve the problem of its tenseness: Aristotle through the aporia of the now, Plato and the Neoplatonists through the perpetuity of apocatastatic movement, and the Stoics by regarding time as duration of cyclic repeatedness. Be they physical or intellectual, immanentistic or transcendentalist all these approaches rely on the intentionality of the intellect, rather than on the human experience of perceiving time. This is clearly admitted by Aristotle himself, according to whom time cannot exist if there is no soul at all, since if there is no one to count, there can be nothing to be counted—hence there would be no number.13 Plotinus notes that time can be properly apprehended by what is eternal in human cognition (Enn. 3.7[45].7). In all three lines of thought there is a certain break between how time appears to us and the structures that allow the intellect to perceive time either as a physical, cosmological or noetic phenomenon. By proposing a metaphysical model of time that is anti-aesthetic,14 i.e., which confronts and corrects the human perception of time, these philosophical models fail to conceptualize time as a real object of human experience, i.e. as human time proper.

2. Origen’s Concept of Time as Cycle The Christian notion of time stems from the createdness of the world. This idea precludes the conceptualizing of time as an ever-existing temporal continuum or as a mere projection of eternity. An important source for this concept of time in Byzantine philosophy is the speculation of Origen. Although Origen does not formulate a special doctrine of time, he does

12

Ibid., 187. Ibid., 188. Tzamalikos refers here to Aristotle, Phys. 223a25–35. 14 Here I follow the observation of John Manoussakis concerning Kant’s understanding of representational aesthetics as opposed to the transcendental aesthetics. See John Panteleimon Manoussakis, God after Metaphysics: A Theological Aesthetic, Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), 21. 13

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occasionally expose theses concerning temporality, mostly in a cosmological context. It may seem at first that Origen is not far from the Stoic concept of extension. Indeed, he defines time as “temporal extension” (τὸ χρονικὸν τοῦτο διάστημα), denoting that time is both an interval and a series of moments.15 The reason for Origen’s preference for the term “extension” is revealed by the metaphor of the road, which he applies to Christ’s saving work, to the life of each man, and to the processual development of the cosmos. Each road is limited by a beginning and an end and has a certain goal. As for the road of time, the beginning, the end, and the goal are set by the Creator. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Origen clarifies the different meanings of the word “beginning” in the Prologue and points out that it refers not only to the birth of the Son in divine eternity, but also to the beginning of worldly time. Regarding the time of the world, beginning has to do with change, which happens along a road with a certain length. In other words, the beginning implies a task and a direction towards its realization. The task set by the Logos to the world is the contemplation of God, whereas the road towards it is “doing justice.”16 Thus Origen reactivates Plotinus’ idea of cosmic return (apokatastasis), but deprives it of the periodicity, implied by Stoic concept of time. A more systematic concept of time is given in On First Principles, where the metaphor of the road, with its diastimatic, processual, and serial implications, is given metaphysical argumentation. The first principle of Origen’s ontology of time is that time is an ontological dimension of created being, since it implies circumscribability. Everything created is by necessity in time, since created being is not part of divine eternity. All other characteristics of creation have a chronological projection. So the beginning of the world was “at a definite time” (Princp. 3.5.1). Since what once began is inevitably susceptible to change, the beginning at one moment presupposes a second moment in time, corresponding to a second state of the world, and so on.17 Furthermore, the created world is comprehensible for God only as a finite one, which is why there must be an end of time, a complete apokatastasis (Princp. 1.9.1). The number of returns is not limited, there could be numerous apokatastases. But the tenseness of creation determines the scope of human freedom. The different intensity, form, and meaning of individual time depend on the ability of the rational

15

Tzamalikos, Origen, 207. Ibid. 17 Jay Lampert, “Origen on Time,” Laval théologique et philosophique 52, no. 3 (1996): 655, doi:10.7202/401016ar. 16

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will to bring humanity closer to the divine unity. The disposition of the will is a personal disposition towards the cyclical movement of time. Origen’s concept, based on his profound knowledge of ancient philosophy, influenced the temporal concept of St. Basil the Great; the latter had a great impact on Maximus the Confessor. On the other hand Origen’s approach shows the insufficiency of the ancient philosophical concepts of time, notwithstanding their precise sifting, to express the Christian creationist and soteriological intuitions. Symptomatic in this respect is that Origen adopts the apocatastatic theory, thus associating time with change. But the ability to make the right assessment and the right choice requires a conceptual regress towards the past, towards the beginning of time. The volitional attitude towards time is constructed through a conceptual procedure which is not only retroactive, but simply contrary to the vector of time. This causes inconsistency.18 The different individual regressions within the temporal cycle are inconsistent among each other too. Origen does not give a clear answer as to whether and in what way the difference in terms of the chronological cycle corresponds to the difference initially introduced by God among the intellects created by him. Origen’s theory of time implies a historicity of regress according to which the moments of time and the temporal events have their meaning in a-temporal perspective. When commenting on 1 Cor 15:28, where Apostle Paul says that “God will be all in all,” Origen reflects on a super-world, uniting all single worlds that have undergone apokatastasis. He maintains that this will be a state “when all things are no longer in an age” (Princp. 2.3.5). Here he uses the term αἰών, meaning “tenseness,” i.e., the susceptibility of being to be concentrated in moments and to change in a process. And he implies that there must be an overcoming of this tenseness, if God were to accomplish his plan for the world. The super-temporal continuum not only transcends time, but it overcomes tenseness (αἰών) in general. Provided that God created beings apt for temporal becoming, such a super-temporal continuum renders the very reason of divine will problematic. The age superior to time remains an open question in Origen’s speculation, which provokes the speculation of Basil. It is exactly St. Basil who lays the real foundation of the Byzantine understanding of historical time.

18

Ibid., 660.

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3. St. Basil – the historicity of created time As Ramelli points out,19 Basil’s understanding of the nature of tenseness is very close to that of Origen, seeing time as an extension, parallel and corresponding to that of the moving cosmos (“τὸ συμπαρακτεινόμενον τῇ συστάσει τοῦ κόσμου διάστημα”).20 It neither fully coincides with movement, nor is it a mere numerical characteristic of it. At the same time Basil makes two important corrections of Origen’s theory, concerning the beginning of time and its finiteness. In his first Homilia in Hexaemeron, Basil the Great denotes the time in which created beings exist as a dynamic projection of the divine plan for the world; this plan has a beginning, a direction and an end: Everything which started in a certain moment of time should necessarily end in time. If it has a beginning in time, it will undoubtedly have an end in time too.21

The thesis that the end in time results necessarily from the beginning in time is formulated by Aristotle, when he contradicts Plato’s thesis in the De caelo.22 The beginning and the end of time correspond to the changeable existence of things: in other words, time—according to Basil—does not have a specific duration, different from the movement of the cosmos And when this world was due to start existing … as an appropriate dwelling of everything, which is between birth and death, the motion of time appeared; this motion shares one and the same nature with the world, with the animals and plants, it is constantly hurrying, flowing and passing away and its rush never stops.23

Time manifests the change and movement, but its principle does not lie in change. This is a major difference from Origen and has to do with the very metaphysical scheme of creation. For Origen divine intellect contains the eternal archetypes of all creatures as noetic entities. Their appearance as self-dependent essences in time is merely a modification of the archetypes. The world and its history is a concrete expression of the difference between the eternal intellects and God himself.24 In this sense according to 19

Ramelli, “Proclus and Christian Neoplatonism: Two Case Studies,” 348. Basil of Caesarea, Aduersus Eunomium 1.21 (PG 29, 560B) 21 Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron 1.3 (PG 29, 9C), my translation (S.M.). 22 Cf. Aristotle, De caelo, I, XII, 288. 23 Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron 1.5 (MPG 29, 13B), my translation (S.M.). 24 Charlotte Köckert, Christliche Kosmologie und kaiserzeitliche Philosophie. Die Auslegung des Schöpfungsberichtes bei Origenes, Basilius und Gregor von Nyssa vor dem Hintergrund 20

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Origen the beginning of time is transcendental and it is manifested through the return to the initial state of the intellect, namely, to eternity. Insisting that time is a created entity, Basil means that it has a separate ontological base, which is independent of any correspondence between time and change or time and movement. Thus the ontological principle of time itself is deprived of any temporal intuition. The beginning of time, claims Basil, is outside time25 and therefore there is no need of trying to find a starting moment within time; any primary and privileged “now,” from which time begins, is untenable. At the same time any cyclical structure of time as a return towards an initial state or as reactivating a series of cyclical movements is irrelevant. For Basil time does undergo a transformation. At stake is not a return to a structure superior or transcendent to time, but a manifestation of a new mode of time. In fact, Basil does allude to a return of time—a return not to an initial point, but to the initial plan of God for it. In any case, the comparison between the lost paradise and the expected αἰών in the treatise On the Holy Spirit is only an analogy, not identification. He maintains that according to the experience of faith the stream of time itself has indications, which point to its unity and fullness. In Genesis the initial day of creation is not called “first day,” but “one day”; this day structures the experience of time itself as an endless and unbroken temporal extension. The same structure of time is experienced, notes Basil, within the liturgical life of the church, which actualizes the so called “eighth day.” This day is unceasing (ἄπαυστον), without eventide (ἀνέσπερος) and perpetual (ἀδιάδοχος). The liturgical eighth day reminds of the αἰών to come, which will not end or grow old. The eighth day is initiated by Christ’s resurrection—an event which took place in time and which enables a renewal of time. In this sense the αἰών is not a return to eternity, as some interpreters claim, nor is it the perpetuity of Plotinus. At stake is a transformative return to the very core of earthly time: a special mode of time is implied, which is unceasing (ἄληκτος), ageless (ἀγήρως), and comes after proccessual time (“τὴν μετὰ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτο κατάστασιν”). The manifestation of the αἰών and the return to it take place in time and through the Divine Liturgy of the Church, which teaches us to recognize the αἴων and to orientate our life towards it. Every Eucharistic office is an image of the eighth day of the kaiserzeitlicher Timaeus-Interpretationen, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 56 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 299–302. 25 Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in Hexaemeron 1.6 (PG 29, 13C).

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αἰών; the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost constitute one liturgical day, which is an icon of the αἰών. Therefore the services in these days are alike.26 The αἰών of Plotinus reverses the tenseness, which is understood as chronological process and as a series of moments, and which establishes perpetuity. Basil’s αἰών is a transformation of time, which does not eliminate the moments and the movement of the χρόνος. In Plotinus the cumulative aspect of the temporal process is necessarily subsumed in the perpetuity of the return, whereas for Basil the αἰών is completed within the progressive movement of time. However, more than a mere substitution of a cyclic concept of time with a linear one is at stake here. Basil’s αἰών is an existential mode of partaking in divine life. Thus another ontological factor for the temporal process is constructed, namely the rational human nature with its powers: knowledge and will. The ontological state of the αἰών is determined by the way humanity perceives time. The mode of perceiving depends on the existential disposition of humanity. Human nature comes in to dialogue with time and thus transforms it. It is exactly due to the human factor that the transformation of time into the new αἰών of the eighth day may take two alternative forms. Those who experience the accomplishment of time as participation in the Kingdom of God are said to be partakers of eternal life (ἀίδιος). In other words, for them the αἰών to come provides access to the uncreated eternity of God. Those who are expelled from the Kingdom also experience the future αἰών, but they are deprived of the participation of divine eternity. For this reason Basil speaks of eternal life, but not of eternal punishment in the αἰών. The metaphysical ground for analyzing time on the basis of the experience of faith is the implied but not developed Christocentrism of Basil. The conceptual differentiations between eternity (ἀιδιότης), αἰών, and time (χρόνος), established by Basil, remain valid for the Byzantine authors after Maximus the Confessor. “Eternity” means everlastingness and is a characteristic of the life of God. “Aἰών” and “time” are both forms of created temporality. The αἰών is a perpetual and unfragmentary mode of time, which accomplishes the process of time and whose content is an existential dynamics without movement. As for time, it has three important ele26

Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto 17.66 (PG 32, 192A–C).

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ments in Basil’s speculation: (1) it is created and its principle is neither in itself, nor in a transcendent entity; (2) the unity and perpetuity of created time is not achieved through returning to a certain moment of time—be it an initial or a last moment; (3) the transition from time to αἰών has a meaning and a relevance for human existence. These three characteristics construct the concept of historical time in Byzantium.

4. Pseudo-Dionysius the Arееopagite The first attempt at integrating this concept of historical time into a coherent metaphysical model is undertaken in the Corpus Dionysiacum. In the ontological hierarchy of Dionysius, God is the beginning and the principle of every being, every movement, and every becoming. Time is neither an expression of the status of certain beings in the hierarchy, nor is it an individual deviation from eternity. In De diuinis nominibus, time is a projection of the Good, which inevitably returns to its source, as the ontological manifestation of God implies exitus and reditus. Therefore, the earthly time is measured by cyclical movements, such as the one of celestial bodies around the earth. Time is a fluctuation around an axis, established by the Creator. Dionysius clearly differentiates αἰών from the divine eternity. As infinite (ἀπεριόριστος), God is the principle and the measure of the aions (ἀρχὴ καὶ μέτρον αἰώνων), as well as the reality of times (χρόνων ὀντότης, DN 5.4, PG 3, 817C). Further on he states that the aionic aspect of time could be acquired when the rational creatures come to communion with God and to divine eternity according to their ontological capacity. Thus time itself is a process of divinization, of entering into communion with God. Dionysius revitalizes Plotinus’ motif of return, but this model does not refer here to the curing of time of its ontological deficit; rather it denotes the fulfillment of the goal of time. The difference in the mode of movement in time, characteristic of the different essences, does not cause any incoherence, as is the case with Origen’s theory. This difference is the principle of the ontological hierarchy, as created and maintained by God, and it reflects the relationship of beings with themselves and with God. Indeed, the Dionysian hierarchy is not constructed according to the ontological deficit of each level, but according to its capacity to partake of the divine life. The historical return suggested here is in contradistinction to the concept of the corrective return in Plato, Plotinus, or Origen. For Dionysius the general movement of time towards eternity must be realized within personal existence. This is not simply an intellectual or solipsistic proce-

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dure. On the contrary, the dynamism of this historical movement is based on the relationship of the human being with all other hypostases. Humanity is able to take part in this return through the sacramental life of the Church in which the contingent relations lived in are transformed into a new pattern of interpersonal relations according to the principle of true being (EH 2.5, PG 3, 401B). Thus time is conceptualized as the container of historical events and is charged with eschatological meaning—in it creation is brought to the truth of its being. The example and paradigm of this is Jesus Christ. Historic time is thus interhypostatic. Time is a key element in the ontology of Dionysius. It provides a principle of personal return according to the divinizing activity of God bringing creation to its original goal. The processual, momentary, and cyclical aspects of time express the structure of the hierarchy of created being.

5. Time in Maximus the Confessor Maximus the Confessor develops the ontological principle of Christocentrism of historical time, hinted at by Dionysius. Maximus offers a model of historical time, putting Christ in the center of the metaphysical system. The Confessor underlines that the cause (αἰτία) of time is divine will (θέλησις) and action (ἐνέργεια).27 By cause Maximus means creative and providential (ποιοτική, προνοητική) action.28 God planned both the being and the movement of all created things. This divine plan is carried by his eternal λόγοι (AI 41, PG 91, 1164B–C). The ontological status of time is the result of a primary divine intention, which is not dependent on any successive contingent event; neither is time an effect ensuing from the existence in the contingent. The divine intention imprinted in the λόγοι aims at unity of all things in God. This unity is achieved through a historical process, which presupposes the transition from being to well-being and eternal being.29 But the purpose of God was not simply to make a creation, which would return to him. He acts out of love and His attitude to the world is dialogical. This is why the well-being, which entails the overcoming of the divisions in creation, was realized historically in and through Jesus Christ, i.e., in the hypostasis of the Son of God, who exists as a man since the Incarnation. Thus the Incarnation is the core of the divine plan for creation. Man has the task of actualizing this Christological event

27

TP26a (Fragmenta duo e Quaestionibus a Theodosio Gangrensi Maximo Confessori propositis), PG 91, 276C. 28 Ibid. 29 Maximus the Confessor, DP, PG 91, 352A.

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throughout history by acquiring a Christ-similar mode of existence (τρόπος τῆς ὑπάρξεως).30 This Christocentrism leads to a twofold concept of time: (1) a return to the perpetuity, which was engraved in time by the creation of the world, and (2) participation in the new Christological mode of existence. These two aspects of time are personified by the figure of Moses. In Ambiguum 41 Maximus states that Moses is an image of time (χρόνος), as he is (i) the teacher of time and its calculation—as he was the first to calculate the time from the generation of the world; and (ii) the one who tutored his people towards the worship of Jesus Christ, who is the successor of all being, time and αἰών (AI 41, PG 91, 1164C). The αἰών, explains Maximus further, is time, when its movement pauses, and time is αἰών, when measured by movement (ibid.). The reciprocity between flux and perpetuity proclaimed here solves the tension, which is present in the Neoplatonic tradition. For Proclus, for example, perpetuity and time, even if interconnected, pertain to two different ontological levels. The gap betwееn being and becoming is not to be bridged, since eternity is not on the same ontological order as time.31 Maximus shows that becoming in time has an ontological meaning not merely because the dynamics of existence will be solved in another form of tenseness, but because the very nature of temporal becoming bears the ontological content of the communion with Christ. Every single moment in time points to the Christological event: [H]is Providence binds both intelligible and sensible beings to himself and to one another. Maintaining himself as cause, beginning and end of all which are by nature distant from one another, he makes them converge towards each other by the singular force of their relationship to him as origin.32

30 Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Myst 1, PG 91, 665A; 24, PG 91, 701A; AI 23, PG 91, 1136C); 67, 1401A). 31 Proclus, Institutio theologica [Elements of Theology] 54, cited following Steel, “The Neoplatonic Doctrine,” 8. 32 Maximus the Confessor, Myst 1.2, quoted following Vladimir Cvetković, “The Transformation of Neoplatonic Philosophical Notions of Procession (proodos) and Conversion (epistrophe) in the Thought of St. Maximus the Confessor,” in Kneźević, The Ways of Byzantine Philosophy, 175. Translation from Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Irénée-Henri Dalmais, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York; Mahwah; Toronto: Paulist Press, 1985), 186.

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Due to the Christocentric interconnection between time and αἰών, the reciprocity between the two is not subordinate to the antinomy “pluralityunity”; plurality is a priori present in the perpetuity of the current, as well of the future αἰών. The dynamic of existing is not the reason for a deteriorating pluralization. Historical time has an aeonic character. As Vladimir Cvetković notices, the movement towards the beginning and cause is performed by rational beings through their will and logos.33 This movement takes place for the purpose of gaining knowledge. There is however another vector of movement—movement towards God by nature. This movement is realized through the mind out of love. The movement of reason is retroactive, whereas the movement of the mind is orientated towards the future (DP, PG 91, 325A). These movements are not alternative to one another, rather they are complementary, because they both coincide in the Person of Jesus Christ (ibid.). In that sense for Maximus God is the giver of both being and well-being (AI 7, PG 91, 1073C). Time neither forestalls, nor accompanies the movement of created beings. It is rather a law that escorts (παραπέμπειν) created beings according to Christ’s saving work, that is, at least in two directions: towards the beginning of time and towards the end of time. The synthesis of these directions of historical time produces the “future αἰών.” At stake is not merely a Christian metaphysical alternative to the (Neo-)Platonic dichotomy “flux-perpetuity.” Now, time, whose λόγος is in Christ, is revealed in two vectors—retroactive and eschatological. All the extremes of being, determined by the λόγοι, are gathered together and bridged in and by the hypostasis of Jesus Christ. This gathering started in the earthly life of Christ, and especially in his suffering, and it evolves throughout the existence of the Church. So the perpetuation of time in αἰών is a movement, but it is not a return; it is a process of assimilation of all things in the existential trajectory of Christ. This is not a cyclical, and not merely a processual, but a transformative movement. And it is intertwined with a change of the ontological state of humanity. Maximus insists that time is a law for the human γνώμη. Γνώμη is a disposition of the two discursive powers reason and will. It is the domain in which humanity takes the metaphysical risk of entering the well-being or of falling into non-being (AT 3, PG 91, 293C). Non-being is the immanent

33

Cvetković, “The Transformation,” 176.

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existential boundary of every creature being, as created being is on the edge of annihilation. Noetic beings are stabilized in a certain mode of essential existence; for them the boundary of non-being is realized not as a possibility, but as a realized option. Noetic beings do not experience χρόνος. For them temporality, while implying change, does not entail processuality. The material beings on the other hand experience the rush of time and it is exactly through the reason and will that man can grasp the sense of time and react to it. The reaction to time is exemplified by the prophetic activity of the prophet Moses. Αἰών on the other hand is likened to the prophet Elijah; it is a finished trajectory with some specific form, which is confirmed in terms of divine eternity (dynamic repose).34 Through his complex speculation on the historicity of time, Maximus demonstrates that the metaphysical content of time is deeply intertwined with human freedom.

6. Time and Space in John Damascene John Damascene adapts this historical concept of time, making even more active use of the Aristotelian approach. For him a key characteristic of temporal being is circumscription (περίγραπτος), which shows that a thing has a beginning. The energy of created things is limited in a certain scope, which the Damascene calls “place.” God is present everywhere, in other words, his essential activity has no limits. Angels, men and all other created beings have specific limits for their activity; their presence is localized.35 The form of this localization can be modified according to the rational will; in other words, the modification of temporal being takes place in the domain of freedom. Whereas angels can change the form of their localization with no effort, for men, occupying a certain place, movement has a certain lag, a certain duration. It is precisely this duration that we perceive as the flow of time. The non-durable dynamism of angelic movement is called αἰών in the proper sense, whereas the prοcessual movement with the boundaries of being is named χρόνος or αἰών.

34

Georgi Kapriev, Максим Изповедник—Въведение в мисловната му система [Maxi-

mus the Confessor: Introduction to his Thought System] (Sofia: Iztok–Zapad, 2010), 161. 35 John of Damascus, Expositio fidei 13.

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Unlike Maximus, for whom αἰών is an instance of finished movement, a movement that arrived to its end, the Damascene conceives it as a movement which is spreading in certain limits and is perpetuated as a reality, similar to, but not identical with, divine eternity. The emphasis is not on the result, but on the dynamics of conforming to the hypostatic presence. Here is how the Damascene defines angelic time: The angel, although not contained in place with figured form as its body, yet is spoken of as being in place because he has a mental presence and energizes in accordance with his nature, and he is not elsewhere but has his mental limitations there where he energizes. For it is impossible to energize at the same time in different places. For the power of energizing everywhere at the same time belongs to God alone. The angel energizes in different places by the quickness of his nature and the promptness and speed by which he can change his place: but the Deity, Who is everywhere and above all, energizes at the same time in diverse ways and with one simple energy.36

In this passage the Damascene gives a topological explanation of the difference between the αἰών of human time (χρόνος) and the angelic αἰών. They both are manifestations of the intensity of existence, which implies change— in this case of place and re-orientation of the existential energy accordingly. John explains that angelic being has a temporal component; the angel is also circumscribed in time for his being had commencement. It is noteworthy that John Damascene introduces the concept of natural energy in the speculation on time. Whereas for the angels the change of place and the corresponding re-orientation of existential energy takes place immediately, for men who live in time it needs some interval. “Aἰών” in general is the realization of the movement towards the ontological end. Hence each completed period of time of the hypostasis is also an aἰών according to the Damascene. The hypostatic αἰών is a synthesis of all changes and reorientations of the existential energy. By virtue of the topological connotation John Damascene reverses the semantics of historical time as a journey and renders it into a model of pulsation between limits. The topological conceptualization of the link between time and αἰών by Damascene implies that at one single point the orientation of the existential energy could be decisively altered. This transformation culminates into another aspect of temporality, beside 36

Ibid. Translation by S. Salmond, in St Hilary of Poitiers. John of Damascus, trans. Leighton Pullan, James L. Salmond, S. D. F. Salmond, et al., vol. 9 of Second Series of Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Oxford: James Parker / New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894), 522.

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χρόνος and αἰών. In his Dialectics, after having reproduced the Aristotelian explanation of the category “when” (πότε), John Damascene gives a definition of καιρός. This is the time of success (κατόρθωμα) in the sense of succeeding in virtue, optimal self-realization, as opposed to ἁμαρτία, meaning omission or sin. The concept of καιρός encompasses the criteria for the Christian experiencing of time, as well as for giving historical significance to it. The concept of historical time elaborated by Damascene is not of its transcending, but of its curing due to Christ’s victory over death. This is an intentional and volitional process and it enables us, as the Damascene puts it, to taste the bread of the life to come. This happens in the Church as the place of gods, where people meet their neighbors in unity of mind.37 Whereas for Maximus the ultimate eschatological sense of time is in bringing together what is divided, in bridging the gap between the extremes, by moving to the beginning and to the end of time (and this is realized by Jesus Christ), for John the dynamic of time is the effort to keep the authenticity of the hypostatic presence in the communion of grace. For the angels the authenticity of temporal presence is guaranteed and its intensity is unalterable, whereas for men achieving authentic presence in time is a task.

7. Conclusion The study of the reception of ancient Greek philosophy, which took place in the process of working out the core of Byzantine philosophical concepts, is an important task of the contemporary study of Byzantine philosophy. However, it is important to be clear about the starting point from which Byzantine authors confront certain ancient philosophical models. Unlike the studying of the ancient philosophical heritage for educational purposes, the theological discourse in Byzantium was very selective in choosing the philosophical material. One notices that different authors use and transform philosophical material from different branches of ancient philosophy. Thus in Origen’s speculation of time one reconstructs the concepts of the Stoics and of Plotinus of extension and return. Basil adopts and transforms Origen’s idea of αἰών, but at the same time makes use of Plotinus’ notion of perpetuity. Maximus’ concept of historical time continues the line of Dionysius and turns Proclus’ model of eternity upside down. In John Damascene the concept of the category “place,” developed

37

Ibid., 86.

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by Aristotle, as well as by the Aristotelian commentary tradition, is used to illustrate the metaphysical dimensions of the concept of καιρός. These and similar parallels might be of historical interest, but they do not exhaust the relevance of the Byzantine concept of historical time to the history of philosophy. The analysis reveals that every time when an ancient philosophical model is referred to—regardless whether this model is adopted or deconstructed—a more profound clash of ideas is at stake. As we have seen, the Byzantine concept of historical time differs from the ancient ones not simply according to its structure, but most of all according to its epistemological prerequisites. It relies on the anthropological dimensions of temporal experience, and not on the intellectual transcending of time. The anthropological structural moment in conceptualizing time reflects the borderline situation of the experience of the life in Christ in which time is revealed as having a beginning, a direction, and an end, given by the Creator. The key elements of the Byzantine concept of historical time are: the created αἰών and the καιρός. Both these elements point to Jesus Christ as the personal dimension of God-in-time. The αἰών shows that the phenomenological approach to time is rooted in the fact that the center of historical time is Jesus Christ. He is its Head – its principle and its ultimate goal. Therefore, time is in no way contradictory to true being. Its flux is an indication of the partaking of creation in divine energy. In that sense the dynamics of historical time is a dialogical relation between creation and Christ. The καιρός has to do with the role of every human being in the historical modification of time. At a certain point of human life the interpersonal communion with God could modify the entire domain of the personal existence. Furthermore, the soteriological meaning of time as gateway towards a new state of being-with-God implies a sublime reversibility of human history. Humans are entrusted with the responsibility to be the shepherds of history, leading the latter to Christ or diverting it from him. And this metaphysical risk is a great source of hope too. Human freedom guarantees that there is always hope of entering into a new mode of living, which is a gift from God and enables perfect communion with other human beings. Thus the role of man in history is based on the metaphysical content of freedom.

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St Hilary of Poitiers. John of Damascus. Translated by Leighton Pullan, James L. Salmond, S. D. F. Salmond, et al. Vol. 9 of Second Series of Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Oxford: James Parker / New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894. Reprinted, among others, in Edinburgh by T&T Clark; in New York by Charles Scribner’s Sons; in Grand Rapids, MI by Eerdmans. Steel, Carlos. “The Neoplatonic Doctrine of Time and Eternity and Its Influence on Medieval Philosophy.” In The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Pasquale Porro, 3–11. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 75. Leiden; Boston, MA: Brill, 2001.

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Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time: A Christianization of the Aristotelian Legacy? Sotiris Mitralexis In this chapter1 I will investigate Maximus the Confessor’s understanding of time and temporality, in the hope of demonstrating the philosopher and Church Father has a more complex and original theory of time than originally thought. I argue, using many ancient and contemporary sources as stepping-stones, that Maximus arrives at a threefold theory of temporality, distinguishing between time (χρόνος), the Aeon (αἰών), which is to be distinguished from the notion of eternity as this is usually understood, and a distinct third mode of temporality, for which we will use Maximus’ often-cited concept of the ever-moving repose (στάσις ἀεικίνητος). While not having been exhaustively researched, several aspects of Maximus’ understanding of time have been repeatedly engaged. Pascal Mueller-Jourdan’s 2005 monograph Typologie spatio-temporelle de l’Ecclesia byzantine. La Mystagogie de Maxime le Confesseur dans la culture philosophique de l’Antiquité tardive2 examines space and time in the context of the liturgy as expounded by Maximus in his Mystagogia. While this monograph is not quite an exposition of Maximus’ hermeneutic approach to time per se due to its specific focus on liturgical spatiotemporality, it is certainly the work

1

I am grateful to TÜBITAK for providing me with the funds that enabled me to write this chapter. It is, in essence, a distillate of the research results in my book EverMoving Repose. A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor's Theory of Time (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade/ Wipf & Stock, 2017), appropriated for this book due to its subject. 2 Pascal Mueller-Jourdan, Typologie spatio-temporelle de l’Ecclesia byzantine. La Mystagogie de Maxime le Confesseur dans la culture philosophique de l’Antiquité tardive, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 74 (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

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that stands nearest to what is attempted here. Another relevant monograph is Vasilios Betsakos’ Στάσις ἀεικίνητος,3 which approaches Maximus’ theory of motion as a thorough and radical renewal of Aristotle’s theory in a new, ecclesial context. An account of the Greek Fathers’ understanding of temporality in general and a comparison to theories of time developed in the Christian West is to be found in David Bradshaw’s article “Time and Eternity in the Greek Fathers.”4 Paul Plass has published a most noteworthy article treating Maximus the Confessor’s approach to transcendent time,5 while Edward Epsen’s article “Eternity Is a Present, Time Is Its Unwrapping”6 makes a number of references to Maximus. Though not primarily concerned with the subject of time, Paul M. Blowers’ “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress’ ”7 offers valuable insights on subjects both directly and indirectly related to Maximus’ notion of temporality. In this article I will not trace the trajectory of the concept of time through Late Antiquity and up to Maximus the Confessor’s contemporaries,8 but I will rather highlight the classical influ-

3

Vasilios Betsakos, Στάσις ἀεικίνητος. Ἡ ἀνακαίνιση τῆς Ἀριστοτελικῆς κινήσεως στὴ

θεολογία Μαξίμου τοῦ Ὁμολογητοῦ [Ever-Moving Repose: The Renewal of Aristotelian Movement in the Theology of Maximus the Confessor] (Athens: Armos, 2006). 4 David Houston Bradshaw, “Time and Eternity in the Greek Fathers,” The Thomist 70 (2006), doi:10.1353/tho.2006.0006. In his important contribution, Bradshaw analyzes Maximus in 346–52 and is one of the first to elaborate on his understanding of time, providing illuminating comments. I and others have been led to partly (but substantially) different conclusions in our engagement with Maximus’ understanding of temporality, particularly on the concept of eternity, concerning which a different reading will be attempted here. 5 Paul C. Plass, “Transcendent Time in Maximus the Confessor,” The Thomist 44, no. 2 (1980), doi:10.1353/tho.1980.0029. See also his “Transcendent Time and Eternity in Gregory of Nyssa,” Vigiliae Christianae 34, no. 2 (1980), doi:10.1163/157007280x00064; as well as his account of Maximus’ στάσις ἀεικίνητος, “ ‘Moving Rest’ in Maximus the Confessor,” Classica et mediaevalia 35 (1984). 6 Edward Epsen, “Eternity Is a Present, Time Is Its Unwrapping,” The Heythrop Journal 51, no. 3 (2010), doi:10.1111/j.1468-2265.2009.00498.x. Apart from these, Andrew Louth had presented a paper entitled “Time and Space in Maximos the Confessor” at the “Neoplatonism and St Maximus the Confessor” conference in 2008 in Athens, but this paper hasn’t been published yet. It contains valuable remarks on διάστημα as distance, a notion that will play a key role in my analysis. Paul Marion Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress,’ ” Vigiliae Christianae 46, no. 2 (1992), 7

doi:10.1163/157007292x00052. 8 Part of this has indeed been done by Mueller-Jourdan in his Typologie spatio-

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ence, Aristotle and Plato in particular, that can be traced in his thought. However, I would nevertheless like to draw the reader’s attention to Gregory of Nyssa’s use of the concept of διάστημα,9 as this will prove to be of substantial importance for the Maximian synthesis. As will become evident, an elaboration on the Aristotelian roots of Maximus’ basic definition of χρόνος will be necessary. My central claim is that a comprehensive theory of temporality, and not merely a number of observations concerning time, can be reconstructed from Maximus the Confessor’s works.

Time (χρ χρό χρόνος) νος and Motion: The Aristotelian Legacy as a Starting Point As is customary with Maximus (see, for example, his multifaceted refutation of Origenism10), the Confessor uses the language and schemas of other thinkers as a toolbox in order to formulate his own synthesis, a synthesis proving to be philosophically distinct from that of his source, in spite of its apparent similarity. This seems to be the case with his use of the Aristotelian definition of χρόνος and the Platonic notion of αἰών, both of which he uses as raw materials in order to compile a distinct vision of temporality. For Maximus, “time, having its motion measured, is circumscribed by number.”11 As he repeats in another passage, time is circumscribed motion.12 Of course, this is an almost word-by-word repetition of Aristotle’s definition of time in the Physics: “time is a number of motion in respect of

temporelle. 9 I will indicatively cite Vladimir Cvetković’s “St Gregory’s Argument Concerning the Lack of διάστημα in the Divine Activities from Ad Ablabium,” in Gregory of Nyssa: The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism; Proceedings of the 11th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Tübingen, 17–20 September 2008), ed. Volker Henning Drecoll and Margitta Berghaus, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 10 The most authoritative piece of scholarship on which continues to be Polycarp Sherwood’s The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism, Studia Anselmiana, philosophica theologica (Rome: “Orbis Catholicus” / Herder, 1955). 11

CGn 1085 A, 1.5: “ὁ μὲν γὰρ χρόνος, μετρουμένην ἔχων τὴν κίνησιν, ἀριθμῷ

περιγράφεται.” Bibliographical entries for all editions of Maximus’ works quoted in this article are shown in the bibliography. If no translation is cited, translations are mine. 12

QThal 65.533–4: “ὁ δὲ χρόνος, περιγραφομένη καθέστηκε κίνησις.”

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the before and after.”13 Seeing that this definition emerges more than once in Maximus’ texts and can be seen as forming the basis of Maximus’ understanding of χρόνος, a closer look at its Aristotelian roots would be necessary.14 (a) Aristotle’s Theory of Motion and Time For Aristotle, motion is one of the fundamental principles of nature, one of the basic attributes of the world: “nature is (the cause and) the beginning of motion and change” (Phys. 200b12). With the term motion15 (κίνησις) and change (μεταβολή) he signifies every kind of change, transformation, transition, and motion (not only locomotion or some limited understanding of the term) and in it he sees the manifestation of nature and the world.16 Motion does not exist by itself, independently from the existing beings and things, but is a trait of the existing beings and is manifested through them. Motion does not exist without specific manifestations, but only when it is realized in its specific manifestations (Phys. 200b32–201a 9), being “the fulfillment of what exists potentially” (201a10–15). It is a flexible term, as “there are as many kinds of change as there are categories of existence.”17 Ultimately and by definition, motion is the general transition

13

Aristotle, Phys. 219b1. It is to be noted that the survival of the Aristotelian idea of time as the measurement of motion is not uncommon in Christian contexts (for example, see Basil the Great, Aduersus Eunomium 1.21); however, Maximus renews it fundamentally, as will be shown. 15 The classic definition of motion derives from the third book of the Physics (201a10): “motion is the actuality of what exists potentially, as such.” On Aristotle’s 14

notion of κίνησις and its problems, see Aryeh L. Kosman’s article “Aristotle’s Definition of Motion,” Phronesis 14, no. 1 (1969), doi:10.1163/156852869x00037; Daniel W. Graham’s “Aristotle’s Definition of Motion,” Ancient Philosophy 8, no. 2 (1988), doi:10.5840/ancientphil1988824; Rémi Brague’s Rémi Brague, “Aristotle’s Definition of Motion and its Ontological Implications,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13, no. 2 (1990), doi:10.5840/gfpj19901321; and Friedrich Kaulbach’s monograph Der philosophische Begriff der Bewegung. Studien zu Aristoteles, Leibniz und Kant, Münstersche Forschungen 16 (Köln; Wien: Böhlau, 1965), 1–29. 16 See also Phys. 200b12–25. 17 Phys. 201a 8–9. Transl. from the edition Aristotle, The Physics, ed. and transl. Philip H. Wicksteed and Francis Macdonald Cornford, Loeb Classical Library 228, 255 (London: W. Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1929). In Metaphysics 1068a9–10, Aristotle defines three categories of κίνησις: “There must be three kinds of motion, in respect to quality, quantity and place.”

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from what exists potentially (δυνάμει ὂν) to the fulfillment and realization thereof (ἐντελέχεια), from that which is not fully realized to its realization and perfection, and any such motion / movement / change constitutes the motion that manifests nature.18 According to Aristotle, “time is a number of motion with respect to the before and after.”19 Time is not motion in itself, but a number, a measurement of motion in respect to the before and after, to the transition from past to future.20 He states while with the term “number” (ἀριθμός) two realities could be understood, both the object that is numbered / measured and the measuring tool or unit itself, time is what is numbered / measured, not the measuring tool or merely the unit.21 In the same way that Aristotle excludes the identification of time with movement itself, he also excludes the possibility of the existence of time or of any sort of temporality without motion, movement, change (Phys. 219a1–2). The perception of motion 18

Let it be noted that φύσις in Greek, otherwise a blank term, does not etymologi-

cally denote a static, unchanging reality, but a dynamic event, the eternal becoming of a φύεσθαι: φύσις “acquires a dynamic meaning, manifests not primarily a being, but a becoming,” Betsakos, Στάσις ἀεικίνητος, 36 n. 29, where also Heidegger’s similar perspective is noted. Phys. 219b1–2. Aristotle analyses his understanding of time mainly in Phys. 217b– 224a. The Aristotelian theory of time has also been extensively researched; here we will attempt a very short summary. Apart from Paul F. Conen’s classic doctoral thesis Paul F. Conen, Die Zeittheorie des Aristoteles, Zetemata 35 (München: Beck, 1964), we note here the following studies: Ursula C. M. Coope, Time for Aristotle: Physics IV.10–14, Oxford Aristotle Studies 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); Pekka Leiss, Die aristotelische Lehre von der Zeit. Ihre Aporien und deren Auflösung, AKANEinzelschriften 5 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2004); and Michael F. Wagner, The Enigmatic Reality of Time: Aristotle, Plotinus, and Today, Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts 7 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), see “Part II. Aristotle’s real account of time,” 149–271. 20 See also David Bostock, Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s Physics, Oxford Aristotle Studies (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 2006), 137: “Time is defined as a quantity of motion either (i) in respect of the before and after in time (i.e., in respect of temporal instants), or (ii) in respect of the before and after in movement (i.e., in respect of the momentary status of moving bodies), or finally (iii) in respect of the before and after in place.” 21 Phys. 219b5–8: “But now, since ‘number’ has two meanings (for we speak of the ‘numbers’ that are counted in the things in question, and also of the ‘numbers’ by which we count than and in which we calculate), we are to note that time is the countable thing that we are counting, not the numbers we count in—which two things are different.” 19

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is inevitably linked to the perception of time: the one implies the other (3– 4). However, time does not truly exist. The parts of time, of any sort of temporality according to Aristotle, are the “before” (πρότερον) and the “after” (ὕστερον), past and future. However, the boundary between them, the ‘now’ (νῦν)22 is not a part of time,23 being essentially dimensionless.24 The past and the future do not exist now, they do not exist in the present—the past has ceased to exist, and the future does not exist yet. So, when something is constituted by parts that do not exist (Phys. 217b33– 218a3), one cannot but conclude that it does not exist as well. Aristotle does not theorize further on the existence or non-existence of time, does not revise or repeat his assessment that time “either does not exist at all or barely exists” (Phys. 217b32–33). We could say that for Aristotle, time is the measurement of an existing reality, i.e., motion, and therefore as real as the reality that it measures—albeit not having an existence of its own. It counts,25 it measures something real, something existing, but it is not real in itself, in the full sense of the word. Having just examined what it means for someone or something to be “in time” (Phys. 221a26–30), Aristotle remarks (or, to be more precise, consents to the general assertion) that time is directly related to φθορά, i.e., decay, corruption of life and the path to inexistence; that time is the cause of corruption, and as such that time measures corruption. “Everything grows old under the power of time and is forgotten through the lapse of time. … Time is the cause of corruption” (Phys. 221a30–b3). The interdependence of the existence (or the measuring) of time by the subject and of the subject’s corruption by time constitutes an interesting nexus 22

See also Hartmut Kuhlmann, “ ‘Jetzt’? Zur Konzeption des νῦν in der

Zeitabhandlung des Aristoteles (Physik IV 10–14),” in Zeit, Bewegung, Handlung: Studien zur Zeitabhandlung des Aristoteles, ed. Enno Rudolph, Forschungen und Berichte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft 42 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988). See also “Das Jetzt,” chapter 3 in Conen, Die Zeittheorie des Aristoteles, 62–116. 23 Aristotle uses it: in Phys. 231b9–10 he notes that between two points there is a line, as between two “nows” there is time. However, the notion of two or more “nows” is problematic and slightly abusing, as for a “now” to really be a “now,” a point that manifests the present time in an absolute and explicit way, it must be dimensionless. A calculable “now” would imply a “motion in respect to the before and after,” a dimension in time, and as such would not really be a “now.” This constraints the dimensionless “now” in being each time unique, and as far as it literally is a “now,” one in number. 24

Phys. 218a3–8. However, exactly as the “sum of many ‘nows’ ” does not constitute

time, so can there be no existence of time without the “now.” 25 I.e., it is the soul that counts, as Aristotle notes. See Phys. 219a23–25, a4–6, and the chapter “Time and the Soul” in Coope, Time for Aristotle, 159–72.

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that naturally occurs from Aristotle’s thought, which is particularly tragic in nature. The subject measures motion as time, and thus in a sense gives time its existence, however, the subject being in time, measured time relentlessly measures the decay and corruption of the measuring subject, which is subjugated to time, and ultimately its inevitable path to nothingness and inexistence.26 There is a crucial detail in the comparison of Aristotle’s understanding of time with Maximus’: Aristotle makes clear that if we perceive and experience νῦν simply as present and as one, without any conception of motion or transition with respect to the before and after, then we cannot speak of neither time nor movement (Phys. 219a30–33). Aristotle excludes the possibility of experiencing time as a dimensionless present, he thinks of it as merely a mistake showing there is no motion or time. Maximus the Confessor’s perspective on the subject of time and νῦν differs greatly from this, as we will see.

2. Maximus the Confessor’s Notion of Motion Seeing Maximus also defines time as the measuring of motion, it is important to understand what exactly is motion in the context of his thought.27 As is not uncommon—to say the least—during Late Antiquity, a form of the theory of motion is also very prominent in Maximus the Confessor’s thought.28 Following Aristotle, Maximus interprets existence as an 26

Coope writes that Aristotle sees the relation between time and corruption as causal, i.e., that time is the cause of corruption (chapter “Time as a cause” in Coope, Time for Aristotle, 154–158). Cf. Phys. 221b. However, we will prefer to also state that time measures corruption, or even that the numbering of time discloses existence as a gradual corruption, for the purposes of contrasting it with Maximus the Confessor’s perspective. For it is the motion that primarily causes decay, that “dislodges whatever it affects from its present state” (Phys. 221b), and it is time that is the numbering of this motion that ultimately causes decay. As such, time is both the cause of corruption and the numbering of the motion that causes the changes that result in corruption: apart from causing decay, time measures decay as well. 27 As has been stated earlier, Betsakos’ Στάσις ἀεικίνητος is a monograph dedicated to exploring this subject and to comparing Maximus’ motion to Aristotle’s. 28 On various aspects of Maximus’ theory of motion, see Torstein T. Tollefsen, “Causality and Movement in St. Maximus’ Ambiguum 7,” Studia Patristica 48 (2010); and Vlаdimir Cvetković, “St Maximus on πάθος and κίνησις in Ambiguum 7,” Studia Patristica 48 (2010). See also Sotiris Mitralexis, “Maximus’ Theory of Motion: Motion κατὰ φύσιν, Returning Motion, Motion παρὰ φύσιν,” in Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher, ed. Sotiris Mitralexis, Georgios Steiris, Marcin Podbielski, et al.

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aggregate of continuous changes that are recapitulated in the word κίνησις. For Maximus’ philosophy of motion,29 to exist is to be in motion.30 Everything in creation is in motion, nothing can be described as motionless, beyond movement, change, and alteration: “nothing that has come into being is motionless, not even something inanimate and tangible.”31 This motion is not opposing the true nature of things, it is not to be interpreted as a consequence of the Fall, as theological language would formulate it. The source and cause of this motion resides beyond createdness: “[God is] the principle of the becoming of things that move, the author of their existence” (AI 15, 1217C). “Everything that comes from God and is subsequent to him undergoes motion, inasmuch as these things are not in themselves motion or power. So they do not move in opposition [to their nature], as it has been said, but through the λόγος creatively placed within them by the cause which framed the universe.”32

(Eugene, OR: Cascade / Wipf & Stock, 2017, forthcoming), in which this subject is dealt with more extensively and in greater detail in comparison to the summary provided here. 29 The phrase is Polycarp Sherwood’s. 30 How can this be correct, since God is, properly speaking, not in motion, but exists? Existing, being, has different meanings for God and creation due to their fundamental otherness (see Maximus’ QD 2.14.4–6., or his Myst proem. 109). As such, we are here referring to created existents. 31 Maximus the Confessor, AI 7, 1072B, 80 in translation. The text and translation of the Ambigua used henceforth in the article are drawn from the critical edition Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, ed. and transl. Nicholas P. Constas, vol. 1, Ambigua to Thomas; Ambigua to John 1–22, vol. 2, Ambigua to John, 23– 71, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29 (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2014), hereafter cited as Difficulties. Since Constas’ critical edition names Migne’s Patrologia Graeca column of each respective passage, while many scholars still depend on PG’s Ambigua, we will use Constas’ critically edited text while simply citing AI with PG 91 columns for the readers’ convenience, as PG columns can be easily traced back to Constas’ pages, while the opposite is naturally not the case. 32 DP 352AB. Translation from Nikolaos Loudovikos, A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity, trans. Elisabeth Theokritoff (Brookline: Brookline Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010), 165.

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Motion, an ontological property of beings, is a result of relation: by themselves, creatures would be otherwise “absolutely stable and motionless” (ΑΙ 15, 1217AB). However, it is from the beings’ relation to one another that their motion emerges—which, in turn, signifies the presence of God’s dispensation for the universe: “by virtue of the λόγος of what is contemplated around them, they [the beings] are all in motion and unstable, and it is on this level that God’s dispensation of the universe wisely unfolds and is played out to the end.”33 The relationality of beings is a prerequisite for the emergence of motion, this most fundamental ontological property of theirs: without this relationality, they are “stable” and “motionless,” they do not participate in being. Motion is the signifier of a being’s existence, and this signifier emerges in the beings’ relationship to other beings, to “the λόγος of what is contemplated around them,” as has been actively willed by God. Here, the very notion of λόγος contains this relationality, it is the λόγος of something to something else. Maximus reverses the order of the Origenist triad of fixity—motion— generation (στάσις—κίνησις—γένεσις) into origination—motion—fixity (γένεσις—κίνησις—στάσις), which he sees as the only possible order.34 According to this substantial revision, which changes the Origenist triad completely, (a) birth and origination also mean the setting-in-motion, the beginning of motion; (b) the whole of existence and life, as well as each particular existence, is characterized by motion from the moment it exists up to its definitive end; and (c) everything moves towards an end, the motion of everything aspires towards its end and repose. (a) Motion κατὰ αρὰ κατὰ φύσιν, φύσιν Returning Motion, Motion παρ αρὰ φύσιν However, motion is not only and always of the aforementioned type. Motion has two “directions” or “tendencies,”35 one “according to nature” (κατὰ φύσιν) and, secondly, its deviation and failure, i.e., motion “contrary to nature” (παρὰ φύσιν).36 Note that the word “nature” is here used with 33

AI 15, 1217AB, Difficulties 1:367. For example, see AI 15, 1217D. 35 We are not referring here to the three motions of the soul in AI 10, 1112D–17A. 36 Cf. AI 8, 1104 Α, on the movement towards passions, corruption, and death, as well 34

as AI 10, 1112 AB and 1112 C. Note that these two tendencies / directions of motion correspond to man’s two wills, his natural will (θέλημα φυσικόν) towards motion according to nature and his gnomic will (θέλημα γνωμικόν) towards motion contra-

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the meaning it bears in the context of the λόγοι τῶν ὄντων:37 “according to nature” means according to the end and purpose (τέλος) of nature and in God, according to “pre-fallen” nature, and “contrary to nature” means contrary to this end and purpose, according to the mode of existence of nature in its “fallen” state.38 Motion “according to nature” is motion towards the fuller communion with the uncreated person of God, the returning motion39 to the Creator and the source of creation: “for the whole world [the] cause is God, in relation to whom it naturally moves.”40 This returning motion is not described as an automatically actualized tendency, but as an intense longing for communion with the Creator, as an ἔρως for him that must be affirmed freely and willingly—an ἔρως that constitutes the answer to God’s ἔρως for the world, the answer to God’s call for communion.41 For Maximus, to know God is to be in communion with God and vice versa; knowledge signifies a personal encounter, not a transmission of information; knowledge equals participation42—and relationship and communion grants and constitutes the knowledge of the Other’s otherness. This returning motion to God is described as the fullness of hope and the created beings’ driving force for striving forward (QThal 49.48–51). Fragmented reality, the many, are summoned back to the one, and this union with the one, this communion-in-otherness, this participation in the cause, constitutes the true and primary knowledge.

ry to nature: TP14 153Α; TP16 192BC. 37

For an introduction to Maximus’ doctrine of the λόγοι, see Sotiris Mitralexis,

“Maximus’ ‘Logical’ Ontology: An Introduction and Interpretative Approach to Maximus the Confessor’ Notion of the λόγοι,” Sobornost 37, no. 1 (2015). 38

I.e., “according to nature” means “according to the λόγος of nature,” according to

God’s intention for his creature. See AI 42, 1329AB. 39

AI 10, 1188C. Note that the Neoplatonic notion of return / conversion (ἐπιστροφὴ)

is substantially different from Maximus’ ἐπιστρεπτικὴ ἀναφορά. Cf. Vladimir Cvetković’s “St Maximus on Πάθος,” 99. 40

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, A Communio Book (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 38. 41 Myst 11.2–4. See also QThal 54.154–63. 42 This knowledge-through-participation is a standard theme in Maximus’ mentions of a cognitive becoming. See, e.g., AI 7, 1077B.

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(b) Creative Motion The existence of creatures denotes simultaneously their being in motion and their birth and origination is the beginning of this motion. Precisely because God is beyond both motion and motionlessness for Maximus (AI 15, 1221Α), in speaking relatively he attributes both motion and motionlessness to God in different (and not quite literal, from an apophatic point of view) contexts. Apart from God’s “internal motion,” i.e., the interpenetration of the divine hypostases, God’s creative activity is his “external motion”: the creation of the world can be described as God’s motion, and it is this motion that grants life and existence. Maximus does not describe this as a movement that occurs once, at the generation of the world or of each being: God’s motion to the world is a continuous one, and to be separated from this motion, from this perpetual becoming, is to risk returning to the state of non-being, to risk perfect inexistence (Myst 1.67–72). As far as creative motion is concerned, beings exist insofar as they are moved by God,43 irrespective of whether they will then actualize their own motion according to nature or contrary to it; nothing moves from non-being into being on its own, everything receives the movement from God (AI 7, 1073B). Being and being in motion are identical; the cause of being is also the cause of motion. Everything that exists and is in motion has a cause for moving and existing, a cause that is inherent in its origination and which is also its purpose and end (AI 23, 1257CD): God is the beginning, end, origination and motion of created beings44; they are in motion due to him and thanks to him, and it is in him that they will be in repose. “The end and purpose of the activities according to nature is the repose at the cause of the created beings’ motion.”45 We see here that the crucial difference of Maximus’ understanding of motion to that of Aristotle’s is that motion, according to Maximus, is primarily and ideally a returning motion, a motion of creation and created

43

And this motion constitutes a relation, meaning that beings exist insofar as they are in relation with God. To say that God is the source of motion (that the origin of motion lies beyond createdness) and that everything that exists is in motion (and, of course, that everything that is in motion exists, participates in being) is to define existing as being in some sort of relation, either a fuller relation or an inadequate one, with God, with the person(s) that is the uncreated source of being. Therefore, to sever this relationship completely is to cease to exist. 44 For example, see the interrelationship of cause, end, motion, repose and God in AI 15, 1217B–D. 45 AI 15, 1220A, as well as AI 7, 1073C.

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beings back to their Creator, back to their source.46 Motion itself has an end and purpose (τέλος) beyond createdness: creation’s returning motion towards its uncreated Creator (himself beyond motion and motionlessness) transcends the cycle of motion and is the end and purpose (τέλος) of motion itself, not only of beings-in-motion. Motion does not only lead beings towards their consummation, towards their end and purpose (τέλος), but motion itself has an end and purpose to be attained, namely the full communion of creation and Creator.47 Apart from Maximus’ obvious references to Aristotle, the influence of Gregory of Nyssa is very evident in his works. The subject of the relationship between Maximus’ motion and Gregory of Nyssa’s thought cannot be dealt with extensively here, but the reader is asked to note Hans Urs von Balthasar’s remarks: Maximus took up Gregory of Nyssa’s axiom that finite being is essentially characterized by spatial intervals (διάστημα) and, therefore, by motion. (Cosmic Liturgy, 138) Time and space are, for Maximus and Gregory of Nyssa, the expression of finitude itself; they are pure limitation. Space is not fundamentally a physical or astronomical reality but an ontological category: “the limitation of the world through itself. (139) The ontology of created being is a study of motion. More precisely, it is the study of the relationship between rest and motion, whose balance is what defines the essence of finite being.” (154)

It is to be noted, while Maximus draws from diverse sources in order to achieve his unique synthesis and considers himself a natural continuator of the Patristic tradition, Gregory of Nyssa must truly have been a particularly strong influence on his thought, especially on matters concerning motion and time. Maximus’ explicit and implicit use of the notion of spatial, temporal, and generally ontological distance48 (διάστημα, often trans-

46

Elements of the returning character of motion (albeit of a mechanistic, automatic, and inanimate nature) can be found in Aristotle as well, but these are here transformed radically in the context of Maximus’ relational understanding.

47

See Betsakos, Στάσις ἀεικίνητος, 282–3.

48

Lars Thunberg offers a concise and short account of the Maximian understanding

of διάστημα and διάστασις in Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 57–60. von Balthasar explains the relationship between διάστημα, motion, and ontological identity in speaking of “a fundamental nonidentity of the existing thing within its own being, in an extension [διάστημα, διάστασις] that finds its expression is momentum [φορά], and more specifically in the triad of coming to be, movement, and coming to rest

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lated as interval or extension), which among other things is a key difference between creation (which possesses it and which is defined by it) and the uncreated (where there is no distance), is based on Gregory of Nyssa’s conception thereof. While there are a number of paradoxical phrases concerning motion prior to Maximus’ στάσις ἀεικίνητος (such as Proclus’ κίνησις ἀκίνητος49), it is also on this matter that Gregory’s influence (whom Maximus had certainly read) must have been most decisive.50 Prior to the section explaining that notion with respect to motion and temporality, we ought to approach it as a word. We face here a pair of seemingly contradictory formulations: the στάσις ἀεικίνητος (“evermoving repose”) and the στάσιμος ταυτοκινησία (“stationary movement”), which are also not merely rhetorical devices void of meaning and substance, but signify a potentiality crucial for Maximus, i.e., the possibility of participating in a state (i.e., deification, as will be examined later in this paper) beyond the confines of createdness. Maximus writes that when the nature / substance resides in God, it acquires “an ever-moving repose and a stationary movement” (QThal 65.544–546), eternally moving around God, joining God “in all directness.”51 The immediacy of the relationship between uncreated divinity and the created human person nullifies motion and space, as the distance that constitutes space is being abolished. However, the absence of motion, transition or change in the fullness of the relationship’s immediacy, in the interpenetration of deification, cannot be characterized as stillness: deification is not a blissful repose, and the encounter of God with his beloved human person is not to be signified as an eternal pause and stillness, but more as a restlessness (ἀεικινησία), a present in a perpetual becoming. The limitations of language are exhausted in the effort to signify such possibilities, but Maximus attempts it with those

[γένεσις, κίνησις, στάσις]” (von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 137). 49

Stephen E. Gersh, Κίνησις ἀκίνητος: A Study of Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of

Proclus, Philosophia antiqua 26 (Leiden: Brill, 1973). 50 For Gregory of Nyssa’s eschatological identification of eternal movement with fixity (“This is the most marvelous thing of all: how the same thing is both a standing still [στάσις] and a moving [κίνησις]”), which must have served as a predecessor and influence for Maximus’ “ever-moving repose,” see Paul M. Blowers’ “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa,” 157–65, where this is demonstrated. See also Paul Plass’ account of the Maximian στάσις ἀεικίνητος in his “Moving Rest,” as well as Vladimir Cvetković’s aforementioned articles. 51

QThal 65.538–539: “ἀμέσως συναφθῇ τῇ προνοίᾳ.”

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seemingly contradictory notions, meaning that the repose of reaching the end and purpose in God is ever-moving, thereby signifying a reality beyond motion and repose, movement and stillness as we know them empirically. These issues will be examined more closely in the respective sections of this paper.

3. The Spatiotemporality of “Whenness” Now we are entering our subject proper.52 Apart from Maximus’ definition of χρόνος as the numbering of motion, the Confessor offers valuable reflections on the nature of temporality and spatiality in sections 35–40 (following Eriugena’s index) of the tenth Ambiguum (1176D–1188C).53 There, Maximus offers an in-depth analysis of time, space (i.e., place), infinity, and motion. He formulates a quite unique “space-time continuum,” as we would call it today, referring to spatiality and temporality as “the where” and “the where” (or, “whereness” and “whenness”) which he considers as entirely and completely interconnected. In Maximus’ words, “a ‘where’ cannot be thought of separately from a ‘when’ (for they belong to those things that are simultaneous, and do not exist apart from their mutual conditioning).”54 Nothing that is not in space and in time, that has not a “where” (τὸ ποῦ) and also a “when” (τὸ πότε) can exist at all: “neither substance, nor quantity, nor quality, nor relation, nor action, nor passion, nor motion, nor habit” (AI 10, 1181B). Each created being, be it sensible or intelligible, is necessarily located in a place/position and time/temporality, “in a concomitant way.”55 Even the substances of beings 52

What follows in this chapter is largely based on an earlier version of my paper “Rethinking Maximus the Confessor’s Understanding of Temporality,” Ancient Philosophy 38, no. 2 (2018). A crucial difference is that the paper in question does not trace Maximian temporality through Aristotle and Plato and while taking his renovation of the theory of motion into account: these elements are provided here in the preceding subchapters, giving a fuller picture. 53 While Mueller-Jourdan’s Typologie spatio-temporelle focuses primarily on the Myst, the author has employed these and other parts of the tenth Difficulty as a basis in order to expound Maximus’ understanding of spatiotemporality; a synopsis of his conclusions are to be found in his paper “Where and When as Metaphysical Prerequisites for Creation in Ambiguum 10,” in Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection: Proceedings of the Symposium on St Maximus the Confessor, Belgrade, October 18–21, 2012, ed. Maksim Vasiljević [Bishop Maxim] (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press & Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade, 2013); and an analysis in 39–71 of his Typologie spatio-temporelle. 54

AI 10, 1180Β. Transl. Constas, Difficulties, 1:293.

55

Mueller-Jourdan, “Where and When,” 289. My use of the terms “whereness” and

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(οὐσίαι), being created and having been originated, possess a spatiotemporal status—in contrast to God’s uncreated intentions and wills, the being’s λόγοι. Maximus is quite explicit on this in his argument aptly entitled “Demonstration that all things except God exist completely in a particular place, and thus by necessity they exist in time, and that whatever is in a place has the beginning of its existence completely in time” (1180B–81A),56 and, as Pascal Mueller-Jourdan notes, “such a status conferred on ‘beingwhen’ and ‘being-where’ is extremely rare in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”57 In particular, Maximus asserts that “everything whatsoever apart from the Creator “presupposes the concept of a ‘where,’ which in absolutely every instance necessarily requires the related concept of a ‘when,’ for it is not possible for a ‘where’ to be thought of separately from a ‘when’ (for they belong to those things that are simultaneous, and do not exist apart from their mutual conditioning).”58 Stating that all created existents have had a beginning in time is one thing; necessarily conjoining this to a particular position in place is a markedly Maximian innovation, which sounds less scandalous if we understand the spatiality of intelligibles as ontological distance rather than mere spatiality, as we will see.59 Interestingly enough, the Confessor links in his line of thought the “whenness” and “whereness” of beings with their “howness,” he handles these questions as dimensions of the “howness” of things, further intensifying his focus on the mode of existence, and not the “whatness” of beings, as the locus of ontological enquiry. Maximus’ interrelation of motion, space, and time does not only apply to motion in our given reality and beings in general, but to the coming-to-be of this reality as well, to the creation of existence, of being itself.60 We “whenness” as translations of τὸ ποῦ and τὸ πότε respectively derives from Jourdan’s article. Those Maximian arguments are extensively presented and analyzed in Sotiris Mitralexis, “A Coherent Maximian Spatiotemporality: Attempting a Close Reading of Sections Thirty-Six to Thirty-Nine from the Tenth Ambiguum,” in “The Fountain and the Flood: Maximus the Confessor and Philosophical Enquiry,” ed. Sotiris Mitralexis, Studia Patristica 88 (2017, forthcoming). 57 Mueller-Jourdan, “Where and When,” 289. 58 AI 10, 1180B, transl. Constas, Difficulties, 1:293. 59 On the implications of the intelligible realm being created in Maximus’ thought, see Sotiris Mitralexis, “Maximus the Confessor’s ‘Intelligible Creation’: Solving Contradictions on Imperishability and Corruptibility,” Forum Philosophicum 19, no. 2 (2014), doi:10.5840/forphil20141925. 60 In Maximus’ terminology, “being” does not include God, for he is beyond being. God exists but is not part of being, as he is not one of the beings. Cf. AI 10, 1180D. 56

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could say, in creating the world, God generates motion (as the creative motion is the first motion), which in turn discloses time and space as its dimensions and coordinates; not vice versa. Creative motion does not take place in a space; it is the motion that reveals space as a reality, it is motion that actualizes distance, which is the “unit” of space. Creative motion has not a duration in time; it is the motion that generates temporal distance, the difference of the “before” from the “after,” and this distance / difference is measured and numbered as time. Time and space emerge as coordinates of motion, which has an ontological priority over them. Of course, space and time is thought of prior to each particular being (AI 10, 1180B). Beings are integrated in time and space does not mean that spatiotemporality has an ontological priority over beings, where it acts as an a priori transcendental reality. Rather than that, it is “the hypostases of beings that offer the existential basis for time and space to preexist them,”61 as time and space cannot be thought of as independent from the beings and their motion. For Maximus, it is not nature that is integrated in spatiotemporality; rather than that, it is the beings that are integrated into a continuum of nature, time and space62—“everything [i.e., every created thing] exists in space and time” (AI 10, 1180B). A close reading of the tenth Ambiguum’s sections 35–40 reveals Maximus’ thought on spatiotemporality in great detail; for the purposes of this article, I will merely refer to a number of conclusions to be drawn therefrom: (a) Creation has had a temporal beginning, a beginning in time (and of time).63 (b) Everything that is in motion has started being in motion at a certain, for there is a first cause for every motion, and the presence of a cause also means that there is also a temporal beginning (AI 10, 1177A). (c) All created beings have had a temporal beginning and are in motion, including intelligible realities like substances or qualities, which expand and contract (AI 10, 1177B–1180 A). (d) Every created being necessarily has a spatial and temporal status. Maximus is quite adamant on that, repeating four times the inescapable character of the correlation of every kind of existence with a spatial and a temporal status in one paragraph: “every kind of being whatever,” “in every case” and “certainly,” “necessarily” (παντὸς τοῦ ὁπωσοῦν ὄντος—πάντῃ τε καὶ πάντως—ἐξ ἀνάγκης). Not only particular beings, but also the substances themselves have originated in

61

Betsakos, Στάσις ἀεικίνητος, 109.

62

Ibid. AI 10, 1176D–77B.

63

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time, having had a temporal beginning and existing within temporality.64 (e) The conjunction of spatiality and temporality is not just a matter of coexistence; the one is a precondition for the other. These are “simultaneous” (ἅμα) dimensions of reality, which would not be conceivable without them. It is the very nature of spatiality and temporality to coexist; it would not be possible to separate them or to deprive the one of the other (AI 10, 1180BC). (f) There can be no infinity (both spatial, temporal, or otherwise) and beginninglessness / causelessness within creation; the absence of finiteness and of an origination or an originator, i.e., a prior cause, is to be attributed only to the uncreated God. The finitude of created existence is an implication of it having a beginning and cause, being in motion and possessing modality, spatiality, and temporality (AI 10, 1181A–84A). (g) By definition, matter cannot be beginingless and eternal; were it to be beginingless, it would also be uncreated, and were it to be uncreated, it would be God (AI 10, 1184BC). To recapitulate on Maximus’ notion of time as χρόνος and of “whenness”: Time is the measurement of motion, and does not exist independently but insofar as motion exists. However, time also measures corruption (QThal 65.534–5), just like in Aristotle’s theory of time. Temporality characterizes everything within creation (AI 67, 1397AB). Every created thing is in some kind of motion, and thus every created being has had a temporal beginning and is in motion. There is a necessary correlation between being in time and being in space (or, in the case of intelligible beings, the intelligible spatiality of distance) for every created being, a spatiotemporal status and a coherent spatiotemporality. Thus, time and place / space are the coordinates, the dimensions of motion, stemming from the mode of existence, the “howness” of each and every being that is in motion.

4. Τhe Τ Aeon: A Second Form of Temporality Maximus is not content with the temporality of χρόνος, i.e., time as the number of motion: his ontology and cosmology require another form of temporality as well, the Aeon (αἰών). The Confessor offers a unicursal definition for both χρόνος and αἰών, a joint definition of both terms:

64

AI 10, 1180B and the whole of its corresponding section.

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Chapter 3 Aeon is time, when its motion ceases, and time is the Aeon, when it is measured in its motion. So the Aeon, to formulate a definition, is time deprived of motion, and time is the Aeon when it is measured while in motion. (AI 10, 1164BC)

Continuing Aristotle, Maximus relates time (and Aeon) with motion: however, in contrast with the Stagirite, time in Maximus is not merely the measuring of a given motion (“a number of motion, a measuring of movement”) but also “the Aeon, when it is measured in its motion” (while Aeon has no motion, as it is “time without motion”). The Aeon, a reality that is otherwise foreign to the sequence of the “before” and “after,” constitutes time when it is integrated in these constrains, when it is dislocated by motion. However, here it is not Aristotle that is echoed, but rather Plato’s Timaeus.65 (a) Plato’s Moving Image In collecting fragments of earlier philosophers’ thought without necessarily accepting their ontology and cosmology, and in order to construct his own, Maximus employs Plato’s concept of Aeon as it appears in his dialogue Timaeus as well (and especially Tim. 37d). It is highly probable that Maximus had this concept of Aeon in mind when forming his own definition, but his modifications and overall context result in a substantially different approach, as is to be expected, given their radically different ontologies and cosmologies. A similarity in certain formulations or an influence in their articulation does not necessarily entail a substantial similarity in philosophical and ontological content. Plato’s theory of time has been extensively studied66 and as such we will not fare beyond the examination of the passage in the Timaeus concerning the Aeon. In discussing the creation of the universe by the Demiurge—“the father”—and the temporality of eternity, the following is remarked in Plato’s text: 65

Apart from Plato, predecessors to this distinction between αἰὼν and χρόνος are

also to be located in Plotinus’ Enneads (3.7[45].2) and the Areopagite corpus’ DN 10.3), as Andrew Louth remarks in his Maximus the Confessor, The Early Church Fathers (London; New York: Routledge, 1996), 207 n. 85. 66 As a minimum example of the rich bibliography, see, e.g., Ernst August Schmidt, Platons Zeittheorie: Kosmos, Seele, Zahl und Ewigkeit im Timaios, Philosophische Abhandlungen 105 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2012); Walter Mesch, Reflektierte Gegenwart. Eine Studie über Zeit und Ewigkeit bei Platon, Aristoteles, Plotin und Augustinus, Philosophische Abhandlungen 86 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003), chapter “Platon über Zeit als Abbild der Ewigkeit,” 133–94.

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Now so it was that the nature of the ideal was eternal. But to bestow this attribute altogether upon a created thing was impossible; so he bethought him to make a moving image of eternity [αἰών], and while he was ordering the universe he made of eternity that abides in unity an eternal image moving according to number, even that which we have named time.67

In Plato’s cosmology, eternity and eternal life cannot be the mode of temporality of created beings (γεννητά). So God, the Demiurge,68 devised another mode of temporality besides the already existing Aeon: a moving image of the Aeon, an eternal image moving according to number, which we have named time. That is to mean that time, as it is perceived by us humans, is merely an image, an icon and reflection, of an eternal temporality that is not “moving,” is not characterized by motion. Eternity, the Aeon, is seemingly motionless; time is in accordance with the motion, and as such it is merely an image of its eternal condition. The need for (i.e., the creation of) time appears due to the emergence of motion and is actualized at the emergence of motion, not being able to be identified with the Aeon, but still iconizing the Aeon, constituting “a moving image” thereof. The relationship between time and Aeon is one pertaining at the same time to motion and the iconizing function. It is interesting to note that the word αἰών did not explicitly mean “eternity” before Plato. Its primary meanings were lifetime, life, a long time, age, generation etc.; αἰώνιος was not synonymous with ἀίδιος. Here, Plato defines the Aeon not as prolonged time or even as time without ending, but introduces a mode of temporality beyond duration, of which normal temporality, time, is but an “image,” an incomplete reflection in motion. Maximus seems to be merely “borrowing” this Platonic definition in order to construct a peculiar kind of second temporality, a temporality seemingly without motion, a temporality belonging to the (or measuring the) created intelligible realm.

67

Tim. 37d. Translation used is that of Plato, The Timaeus of Plato, trans. Richard Dakre Archer-Hind, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (Salem, NH: Ayer, 1988), 119– 21. 68 The reader should be aware that we are here using the word “God” in the Platonic context of the Creator-God i.e., the Demiurge, not in the Christian context, and it is used without further elucidations in order to preserve the briefness of our summary.

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(b) Singling out the Ontological terminus technicus Unfortunately, the word αἰὼν has a certain polysemy in Maximus’ works as well—even though we are well past the times when John of Scythopolis’ Scholia to the Areopagite Corpus were considered to be Maximus’, producing much confusion in many attempts to approach Maximus’ αἰών. While Maximus’ notion of the Aeon69 as a distinct, second form of temporality is clearly expounded in specific passages of his work, the reader is faced with the problem of Maximus’ different usage of the term αἰών in different contexts throughout the Maximian corpus.70 In the reading I am proposing here,71 only one of those alternative meanings of αἰών is the ontological terminus technicus denoting the Confessor’s second mode of temporality, i.e., the temporality of the intelligible realm or “time, when its motion ceases.” Apart from this meaning as illustrated in the dual definition of χρόνος and αἰών in AI 10, 1164BC, which we hold as the primary definition of the Aeon, and in other passages which will be referred to here, Maximus also uses the term in different contexts in order to signify eternity as unlimited duration,72 or a great amount of time / a century,73 or history, or God’s (absence of any) temporality in contrast to our own temporality74

69

A problem with many scholarly accounts of Maximus’ understanding of the Aeon is the lack of differentiation between the “eternity” of the Aeon and the “eternity” of the ever-moving repose, resulting in an erroneous and incomplete reading of the Confessor. 70 Which, to different degrees, is also the case with almost any important term Maximus employs, making it exceedingly difficult for the reader to squarely systematize the Confessor’s understanding of core notions such as λόγοι, τρόπος (mode), etc. Throughout the secondary literature concerning Maximus, an abundance of attempts at systematizing Maximian terminology can be found (instead, for example, of accepting the fact that only approaches to Maximus’ thought can be attempted, without claims of definitive answers), often yielding unsatisfactory results and leading to misunderstandings of the Confessor’s teachings—a tendency that is gradually being corrected. 71 The reader may find an elaboration of this proposed reading and its textual basis Sotiris Mitralexis, “Maximus the Confessor's ‘Aeon’ as a Distinct Mode of Temporality,” The Heythrop Journal early view (2016), doi:10.1111/heyj.12319. In presenting Maximus’ “Aeon” here as part of a threefold theory of temporality, some repetition has been proven unavoidable, but a more or less complete treatment of the subject is located in the aforementioned article. 72 E.g., QThal 38.52. 73 E.g., QThal 56.140–2. 74 AI 10, 1188B. Quite logically, due to the numerous different commentators that

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etc. This becomes quite pronounced in instances where Maximus uses the word Aeon meaning eternity in the sense of unlimited time by employing the word in its plural form αἰῶνες, i.e., the ages.75 Maximus differentiates between the singular, αἰών, and the plural, αἰῶνες, in a way suggestive of this by employing both forms in the same sentence with different meanings (AI 65, 1389D)—but again, this is not characteristic of the whole of his work and cannot be systematized in such a way. When speaking of the “temporality” of God in contrast to our own, Maximus sometimes refers to it as Aeon or aeonic and sometimes as ἀίδιος, ἀίδιον, ἀιδιότης,76 in order to contrast God’s “temporality” to the Aeon as well77—however, as we have noted earlier, the Confessor does not adopt a systematized distinction of χρόνος / αἰὼν / ἀιδιότης, whereas he often clarifies that no kind of temporality whatsoever can be applicable to God. And (to make things worse) there are passages in which Maximus refers to ἀιδιότης simply as eternity without change and alteration,78 practically equating it with the Aeon (as the state of temporality of intelligible realities and “time without motion”) and eradicating any hope of a solid χρόνος / αἰὼν / ἀϊδιότης distinction. However, and apart from this variety in the use of terms, Maximus does propose a second form of temporality beyond normal time (χρόνος) and its extensions in duration (extensions that reach up to the “ages of the ages”). A form of temporality that is inverted time, as it is time seemingly without motion—whereas the main characteristic of time is that it is the very numbering of motion.

authored the Scholia, the differences in the use of the terms αἰών and αἰῶνες throughout the Scholia can be profound, often offering contradictory illustrations thereof. 75 76

E.g., AI 21, 1252Β. E.g., CChar 2.27.3, as well as 4.3.1. As mentioned earlier, Maximus attributes

ἀιδιότης to the uncreated λόγοι (CChar. 1.100, 2.27), thus differentiating ἀιδιότης from the Aeon, the beings in whom had had a beginning and a generation, while the λόγοι had not. 77

In CGn 1.6, 1086B, we find a clear example of the ἀίδιον attributed to God and the

Aeon attributed to the creatures that are not under time. See also AI 10, 1188B. 78 E.g., AI 10, 1169D.

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(c) Examining the Dual Definition The first element that strikes the reader of the above mentioned unicursal definition (AI 10, 1164BC) is the interdependence and interconnectedness of χρόνος and αἰών: none of these two terms can be defined without taking into account the other one, and we could say that by defining the one, Maximus is voiding the other. As far as the dual definition is concerned, they describe philosophical terms and realities in a way that they cannot be conceived individually, but only in relation of the one to the other. Χρόνος presupposes αἰών and vice versa, thereby voiding them of individual meaning that is independent from one another. And either in the context of a contradistinction between sensible and intelligible or between created and uncreated, this conjoined distinction between χρόνος and αἰών implies the interdependence of the broader realities in which they are integrated. Thus, time is defined as “inverted Aeon” (“the Aeon, when measured in its movement”) and the Aeon is defined as “inverted time,” the definition of the one referring to the definition of the other—and inverting it. But why does the need arise to incorporate the definition of the Aeon, “time deprived of motion, time without movement,” in the definition of time, making it an essential part of the definition of time itself? This means for Maximus, the absence or cessation of a being’s motion after it has received its first creative motion from non-being to being does not necessarily entail inexistence; it could also signify the attainment of perfection, of freedom from the cycle of motion. We cannot conclude that Maximus’ Aeon is the temporality of the uncreated79 or something similar: the Aeon “has a beginning,” Maximus says, it is “not ἄναρχος, not without a beginning” as well as everything “included in it”—however, it cannot be “circumscribed by a number” (CGn 1.5, 1085A). Despite the lack of identification of the Aeon with the uncreated, or of the Aeon in the uncreated, the very distinction between time and Aeon as Maximus formulates it analogically stems from and is implied in the contradistinction between the created and the uncreated.80 This explains why 79 80

There is no temporality of the uncreated whatsoever: CGn 1.1, 1084A. The Aristotelian “prime unmoved mover” (πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον) could be

erroneously understood as “uncreated” if we equate the notions of “moved” (κινητόν) and “born / existing” (γενητόν) to the notion of “createdness,” and as a result understand the “unmoved” Mover as “uncreated.” However, this would not be accurate. The Aristotelian “prime unmoved mover” does not necessarily reside

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the Aristotelian definition of time could not have been merely repeated by Maximus in the context of his ecclesial ontology without change, but only with the inclusion of the Aeon, a temporality that is seemingly deprived of any motion. The fact that the end and purpose of the κατὰ φύσιν motion is the cessation of motion (the completion of the returning motion) accounts for the second part of the Confessor’s definition: “Time is the Aeon, when it is measured in its motion” (AI 10, 1164BC). It is not only the cessation of motion that turns time into the Aeon, into a distinct form of temporality: it is time itself that is an actualization of the Aeon in radically different circumstances, when extended in the world of motion and measured within the cycle of motion. The sensible world’s motion, and the numbering thereof that is time, are also a faint icon of a world without motion and without the distance (διάστημα / διάστασις) that presupposes it. The sensible world in its motion and its temporality embodies a reference to that world without the incompleteness that is implied by distance. This reference, iconizing function and allusion, is articulated in the distinction of two different, in a sense antithetical but simultaneously interconnected types of temporality. If the Aeon were in motion, it would be time: the Aeon’s analogous temporal reality in the plane of our sensible world is χρόνος, “time is the Aeon, when it is measured in its motion.” In this context, time indeed is, as Plato would say, “a moving image of the Aeon.” (d) A Temporality of the Intelligible Realm While the dimension of spatiality itself, as it is to be encountered within sensible creation, is not a trait of the intelligible (νοητά, νοητὴ κτίσις), the intelligible are bound by a form of temporality as well. Not time, not temporality “measured by motion,” but another mode of temporality (AI 67, 1397AB), the Aeon. Everything that is created, both sensible and intelligible, is subject to nature and temporality: “to the one on account of its existence, and to the other on account of its motion” (ibid.). Apart from being “time without motion,” the Aeon signifies also the temporality of the intelligible plane—e.g. the world of substances, qualities, etc.—in contrast to the created sensible world, i.e., creation as perceived solely through the senses (AI 10, 1153Α). While that which is sensible has been made “in time,” in the temporality of the motion’s numberoutside of the world, he is within being / existence and should not be confused with the Christian notion of uncreatedness, which presupposes a creatio ex nihilo.

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ing, that which is intelligible has not “received the beginning of its being” within the cycle of numbered motion but in the Aeon and “is eternal” in the sense of Aeonic, αἰώνια (ibid). Maximus clarifies both the sensible and the intelligible realm are different sides of the same created reality and that they are related to each other “through an indissoluble power”: they embody different accesses to the same created reality, one access defined by sense-perception and the other by the intellect (ibid.). We should here clarify that, while the intelligible plane is usually presented as the abode of angels in late antique theological writings, such a conception thereof will not aid us in tracing Maximus’ conjunction of intelligible creation with the Aeon. To understand the ontological and cosmological implications of such a vocabulary and for the convenience of this discussion, we are to approach the intelligible realm as primarily the domain of universals / substances, qualities, and other non-sensible existents, as Maximus himself does e.g. in AI 10, 1177B–1180Α, where he speaks of the expansion and contraction of substance and the motion of quantity and quality in the intelligible realm. The intelligible world is also created and finite. It did have a beginning, and it will have an end—as well as everything in it—while it is subject to διάστασις (CGn 1.5, 1085A). The presence of beginning, middle, and end signifies the subjection of creatures to temporality—and by temporality we mean both time and the Aeon. Created beings, be they “distinguished by time” or “comprehended in the Aeon,” possess these definitive marks, which act as criteria for createdness: beginning, middle, and end.81 In short, everything that is created does also have a beginning and is subject to temporality (AI 10, 1141B), the Aeon being the temporality of the intelligible and time the temporality of the sensible. While not constituting the (inexistent) temporality of the uncreated, but of beings that had, had a beginning and generation, the Aeon does in fact function as the equivalent of the uncreated in temporality; it does iconize uncreatedness on the level of temporality. The Aeon is described as “time deprived of motion” and as the temporality of existing and created but intelligible realities. However, in Maximus’ understanding everything that exists within creation is in motion, sensible and intelligible realities alike— for example, substances or qualities, which are in motion as has been examined earlier. How are we to understand such an apparent incon81 CGn 1.5, 1085A. Note that this beginning, middle, and end of beings does not only signify the difference from the uncreated, but also God’s indirect presence in them by virtue of being their Creator: CGn 1.10, 1086 D.

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sistency on the Confessor’s part? If that which is “comprehended in the Aeon” is in motion, then how can the Aeon be “time deprived of motion”? The Aeon is indicative of true motionlessness and yet, at the same time, absolute motionlessness is reserved solely for the uncreated—without contradicting the former proposition. Created beings can achieve a motionlessness beyond nature, but not natural motionlessness, for they are not uncreated by nature. In Maximus’ mindset, this does not undermine the reality of the achieved motionlessness—but neither does it undermine the reality of the distinction between natural, “uncreated motionlessness” and the achievable motionlessness attributed to created beings. The Confessor provides us with another hint in this direction. He attests that the intelligible creation has had a generation and beginning, as it has passed from nonbeing to being. However, this beginning and generation of the intelligible creation is not manifest to human beings: from the perspective of humanity (the only perspective that we can have), the intelligible creation seems beginningless (AI 10, 1165A)—and, as such, motionless. Humanity is endowed with the ability to participate in the Aeon, in this second and exalted form of temporality. The human person’s gradually fuller participation in the intelligible realm and in a fuller, deeper perception of creation is also a gradual entering into the temporality of the Aeon. In this context, entering the temporality of the Aeon would signify having achieved a significant but not final step in the gradual restoration of the fullness of communion, the gradual cessation of motion, the gradual annihilation of distance—having progressed from the practical philosophy to the natural contemplation of the λόγοι to the paving the way for the ultimate step in Maximus’ triad, i.e., the theological mystagogy or theological philosophy (AI 37, 1296D). A passage from the Confessor is suggestive of this gradualness: according to it, time does not suffice to serve as the temporality of “those whom it is accustomed to escort to the divine life,” time is “not overtaking or accompanying them in their motion.” (AI 10, 1164B). On their way to “the divine life,” their temporality becomes the temporality of the Aeon, an Aeon which is a distinct form of temporality but which seems to reside in the future due to it being attainable, but not yet attained.82 If that is the case, we are to understand the Aeon not only as “time deprived of motion,” but also as one’s (gradual) “deprivation of motion” (and distance), the temporality of one’s gradual liberation from the limitations and necessities of createdness. 82 I.e., this “divine life of the Aeon to come” is not to be exclusively understood as a common cosmic eschatological future, but as the temporality of one’s way towards deification as well.

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However, the participation in the atemporality of the uncreated is beyond time and the Aeon, beyond any conception of temporality, which is in itself a delimitation of createdness. In speaking about deification, Maximus introduces the notion of the ever-moving repose (στάσις ἀεικίνητος) which, being the end and perfection of motion beyond motionlessness itself, will be expounded here as the third mode of temporality, i.e., the transcension and annihilation of any temporality.

(5) Ever-Moving Repose, the Temporality of Deification As has been examined, time is the temporality of the created sensible realm and Aeon the temporality of the created intelligible realm, which is also subject to διάστασις. The third mode of temporality cannot be the temporality of God, the temporality of the uncreated, as this resides beyond motion and motionlessness, beyond both temporality and timelessness. However, the question that remains is what happens to temporality in the case of deification, or what is the temporality of eschatology: “Then God will also completely fulfill the goal of his mystical work of deifying humanity in every respect, of course, short of an identity of substance with God; and he will assimilate humanity to himself.”83 For Maximus, man “becomes God by deification”84; the Confessor testifies that it is possible for the human person to be deified, that it is possible for created human beings to actualize in themselves the mode of the uncreated, the mode of freedom from every and any limitation of createdness, being fully deified as far as their particular existence is concerned, save from an identification in substance, i.e., in the universal. In this state, a person belonging to the species of humans, a person possessing a human nature, would realize this nature in a divine way, in a divine mode of existence.85 Deification 83 QThal 22.40–4. Translation from Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor, trans. Paul Marion Blowers and Robert L. Wilken, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 116 (henceforth CMofJCh). 84 AI 10, 1076C, 1084C, and see also 1088C, QThal 22.35–6. 85 The subject of deification in general and the notion of deification in Maximus the Confessor in particular is too big of a subject to be exhaustively examined and analyzed here. An excellent monograph on the subject is Norman Russell’s The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), which dedicates a chapter to Maximus the Confessor’s understanding of deification (262–95)—while more or less every major scholar engaged with Maximus has contributed to the subject as well. See also Jean-Claude Larchet’s Jean-Claude

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does not reflect the restoration of the κατὰ φύσιν; it is not man’s restored and perfected nature, but is beyond nature, ὑπὲρ φύσιν (cf. AI 20, 1237AB). In this we have the entrance of created beings in the mode of the uncreated, and the question of their temporality persists. What happens to temporality in deification, what is the state of temporality in θέωσις? The deified person is accounted as being “beyond the Aeon, time, and space, having God as his space.”86 The human person does not merely enter the Aeon in deification; deification indicates a transcension of motionlessness and the Aeon, both of which are categories stemming from the perspective of createdness. The notion of στάσις ἀεικίνητος emerges primarily in two questions of Maximus’ Ad Thalassium,87 in passages concerning deification or the process towards deification. In both cases, it is explicitly related not only to motion, a state of which (or rather a state beyond which) it primarily denotes, but to temporality as well. Maximus’ reasoning unfolds with the ascertainment that motion is changing the beings that are in motion, and that this change is a fundamental trait of createdness. However, when nature will be conjoined with the Λόγος in motionlessness, this change will cease along with the motion that is causing it (QThal 65.522–4). The relative and finite repose that signifies the completion of the beings’ motion is to take place within the “presence of the boundless fixity” signifying the uncreated; it is within this fixity that the beings’ repose naturally occurs (525–8). The difference between the motionlessness of creatures and the motionlessness of the uncreated is that creatures, i.e., beings that are finite by nature, possess a motion that changes what they are, and it is the cessation of that motion that results in their kind of motionlessness— while we cannot know any changing motion in the uncreated (for it is not Larchet, La divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur, Cogitatio fidei 194 (Paris: Cerf, 1996); and Lars Thunberg’s Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 427–32. 86 CGn 1.68, 1108C: “The Aeon, time, and place belong in the category of the relative [τῶν πρός τι]. Without them nothing of what is included in them exists. God is not of the category of the relative because he does not have anything at all included in him. If, then, the inheritance of those who are worthy is God himself, the one who is rendered worthy of this grace will be above the Aeon, time, and place. He will have God himself as a place.” Translation from Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Irénée-Henri Dalmais, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York; Mahwah; Toronto: Paulist Press, 1985), 140. 87

QThal 59.122–59 and 65.509–53. The στάσις ἀεικίνητος is also mentioned in TP16

185Α., as the state following the motionlessness resulting from the completion of yearning, a state in which death is conquered.

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finite), resulting in an “absolute” motionlessness or rather a kind of motionlessness beyond the mere cessation of motion (528–32). It is in this context that Maximus formulates his definition of time, according to which life’s motion changes the beings that are subjected to it (532–5), thereby linking life, motion and time to change, which can either be the change of corruption or the change of transformation. Up to this point, Maximus describes the state of motion and time within creation and as subjected to createdness; however, he goes on to describe the ὑπὲρ φύσιν state and the transformation that it effects on motion and temporality. Maximus writes that when nature transcends space (τόπον) and time (χρόνον), i.e., the dimensions of createdness comprised of the finite motion and repose by activity (κατ’ ἐνέργειαν), it will be joined with divinity (“the Providence”) in all immediacy and directness (“ἀμέσως συναφθῇ τῇ προνοίᾳ”). In doing so, divinity (the πρόνοια, Providence) will be encountered and disclosed as a naturally simple, single and motionless λόγος, completely devoid of any circumscription and motion (535–41). The first thing to be noted here is that the absolute immediacy and directness of the described union, as well as the disclosure of divinity as devoid of any motion and delimitation whatsoever, point to the annihilation of distance.88 The absence of any delimitation whatsoever and the absence of motion beyond its mere cessation do not merely signify an annulment of distance, but an existential annihilation thereof, transforming both motion and temporality. Neither motionless nor the Aeon are applicable signifiers for this state, for it transcends their constitutive definitions and delimitations. Maximus proceeds to make this distinction himself: “Because of that, as long as nature exists in time (ὑπάρχουσα χρονικῶς) within creation, it possesses a motion capable of effecting change due to the finite fixity of creation and the corruption that is caused by the passage of time” (541–4). However, “when nature arrives at God, because of the natural singularity of the One in whom it was created, it will acquire an ever-moving repose and a stationary movement eternally actualized in conjunction with the One and Single and Same. This ever-moving repose and stationary movement is known by the Λόγος as a direct and permanent firmness around the first cause of everything that has been created by the first cause” (544–9)—the

88

The annihilation of distance is described by Maximus in CGn 2.86, 1165B, in which “they will require no further time or Aeon to go through,” arriving at God “who is before all Aeons and whom the nature of time itself cannot approach.”

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use of πεποιημένων89 indicating a personal first cause, a person that creates. Maximus clarifies this notion of the infinity around God in another passage, in which he notes that “infinity is around God, but it is not God himself, for he incomparably transcends even this” (AI 15, 1220C): describing the ones united with God as being around God can be understood as describing their non-dissolution in divinity, i.e., the fact that they retain their otherness even when enjoying the fullness of communion with divinity. Back in Ad Thalassium, the Confessor goes on to clarify that in this union of created nature with the Λόγος and divine Providence in all immediacy and directness “there is nothing at all that manifests generation and time” (QThal 65.549–53). The beings that are conjoined with the uncreated and thereby transformed are not merely liberated from time, but also from something that has already happened, i.e., their generation: while retaining their otherness and not dissolving into divinity, they become liberated even from the fact that they have had a generation (a trait that Maximus ascribes to Melchizedek). In another passage (QThal 59.122–59), Maximus describes this transformation beyond the limits of language with a torrent of descriptions and definitions, which he equates with one another, literally trying to “circumscribe” and point towards what cannot be defined. In doing this, the interrelation of his descriptions and definitions is truly revealing, with the concept of the ever-moving repose and stationary movement providing the basis of an understanding of deification in the context of motion as a primary characteristic of existence. Maximus begins by writing that the salvation and fulfillment (σωτηρία) of the souls is the end, goal, and completion of faith, which in turn is the true disclosure of the object of faith (122–4). The true disclosure of the object of faith is the ineffable interpenetration of the believer by the object of faith, according to the measure of the believer’s faith (124–6). This interpenetration is the return of the believer to his cause and beginning at the end and goal of his journey90— which, in turn, is described as the fulfillment of desire (126–30). And the fulfillment of desire is the ever-moving repose of those that desire around the object of desire (130–31). This ever-moving repose is the perpetual, eternal, dimensionless (and, as such, devoid of distance) enjoyment of the object of desire, which in turn is the participation in divinity beyond nature (131–4). This participation constitutes the likeness of the ones that participate to

89 90

Participle stemming the verb ποιέω-ποιῶ, “I create.”

Which in itself has connotations concerning temporality, as it signifies the liberation from the flow and progression of time and from the flow and progression of events as well.

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the one that is participated, i.e., the attainable identification of the ones that participate with the one that is participated through the activities (κατ’ ἐνέργειαν) due to this likeness (134–8). This is the deification of those that are worthy thereof (138–41). Maximus hastens to link this to temporality: he goes on to say that deification is, “and let me stress my words,” the completion of all “times” and all “Aeons,” of all years and all ages (πάντων τῶν χρόνων καὶ τῶν αἰώνων) and of everything that is included in them (141–3). This completion of all χρόνοι and αἰῶνες and of everything that is included in them constitutes the unceasing and dimensionless (i.e., devoid of distance) unity of the true cause and beginning of those that are saved, completed, fulfilled and deified, with their purpose and end (143–6). And so on—concluding that this union of the uncreated God with the created human nature by far transcends any conceivable thought or formulation that can be arrived at within createdness (156–9). The third and ultimate mode of motion and temporality is the very transcension and completion thereof. This ever-moving repose in deification is described as the completion of every possible mode of motion and temporality, “completing time and the Aeon and everything that is included in them.” The whole of creation is recapitulated in the deified person that embodies the completion of communion: the totality of existence is returned to its uncreated source, completing, recapitulating and transcending the fundamental components of createdness: beginning, end, motion, and temporality. Humanity’s mediating task is to annihilate all existential divisions (distances) and to restore communion “so that they all may be one” (John 17:21): Maximus notes that the human person “would have made the sensible creation absolutely identical and indivisible with itself [ταυτότητα μίαν ποιήσειεν ἀδιαίρετον], not in any way dividing it into places separated by distances [τοῖς διαστήμασι].”91 The Confessor does not describe this as a subjective and mystical event that is contained and exhausted in the individual, but as a distinct possibility for reality’s mode of existence apart from the mode of the uncreated and the mode of createdness. The possibility of created nature’s actualization in the mode of the uncreated is not merely a “merging” of existential modalities, but a third, distinct mode of being. By its very definition, it does not take place within time i.e., at a certain time, for it transforms time: as such, both the “individual” ever-moving repose of the deified person and the “collective” ever-moving repose of creation itself, i.e., the eighth

91

AI 41, 1305D. (transl. Constas, Difficulties, 2:107).

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day,92 are not wholly different,93 but nonetheless seemingly situated in a distant and eschatological future94—for such a mode of temporality cannot be perceived as time’s “now” by those who do not participate in it. For all intends and purposes, it takes place at the end of time itself—i.e., beyond temporality. However, to encounter a deified person is to participate in the presence of this “future” in the present—and to suspect that this “future” is the expected dimensionless present that, in absence of an existential distance between the related othernesses in communion, actualizes the νῦν as the hidden reality of temporality by annihilating the transition from the “before” to the “after.”95 (By definition, these explication can be as concise as phrases like “stationary movement” and “ever-moving re92

See, e.g., AI 65, 1392CD. The eighth day can refer to both the eschatological state and deification, e.g., in CGn. 1.55, 1104BC, it refers to deification. 93 Maximus notes in AI 50, 1368 C–69A, that human persons are actualized in three different states: the present life, the state after death, and the future age to come. The difference is that in this last state “we will partake without any mediation of the most sublime Λόγος of Wisdom, and being transformed in accordance with Him, we will become Gods by grace.” Each of these states can be seen as an icon of the other and a referral to it. 94 Cf. Plass, “Transcendent Time in Maximus,” 268: “In the incarnation of the timeless Λόγος the perfecting of human nature which lies in the future is also present. … But ‘future’ also means the cessation of time, and Maximus can also see the future as the divine plan complete and present as a whole.” 95 Note also Maximus’ reference to the whole of time and history as “God’s year,” as a singular temporal unit which is only actualized in its completion. Cf. AI 46, 1357AB: “The year acceptable to the Lord (as Scripture calls it), when understood allegorically, is the entire extension of the ages, beginning from the moment when God was pleased to give substance to beings, and existence to what did not exist” (transl. Constas, Difficulties, 2:203) up to the “completion of the ages,” the “end of the λόγος of everything that is in motion” and the granting of the promised deification, as Maximus goes on to say. In QThal 9.8–12, Maximus notes—referring to John the Evangelist—that we do not know the exact mode of this future deification (“τὸν τρόπον τῆς μελλούσης θεώσεως ἠγνοηκέναι λέγει”). However, even this distant future, this completion of all ages is already present, simultaneously expected and already here—a typical Christian notion on eschatological time, as Oscar Cullmann has demonstrated in his Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Concept of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950). Cf. QThal 22.60–65: “Or rather, since our Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning [ἀρχή], middle [μεσότης] and the end [τέλος] of all ages, past and future, [it would be fair to say that] the end of the ages—pecifically that end which will actually come about by grace for the deification of those who are worthy—has come upon us in potency through faith” (transl. CMofJCh, 117).

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pose,” for they are attempts at signifying that which cannot be delimited, residing outside the limits of our world and language. They can only function as hints and indications). My conclusion is that in the light of the ever-moving repose, the world’s overall motion is disclosed not as an impersonal cosmological process and function, but as a relationship (between the uncreated and creation in all its “logical” manifestations) that can be either affirmed as returning motion or rejected in a deviation thereof. Temporality measures this relationship, the completion of which is the transformation of temporality into an ever-moving repose (the fullness of communion) and the refutation of which is measured as gradual corruption leading to death and inexistence. The complete affirmation of the returning motion, the full actualization of motion as κατὰ φύσιν, cannot be understood as resulting in a static motionlessness: this does not describe our experiences of its faint reflections accurately. The fullness of communion96 and the proximity of the related “logical” othernesses, while presupposing the annihilation of distance and, as such, the ceasing of motion, catapults motion beyond nature and nature beyond motion, ὑπὲρ φύσιν: this can only be circumscribed in language as a motion beyond fixity and a fixity beyond motion, as an “ever-moving repose” and a “stationary movement.” I have noted motion is the primary ontological characteristic of creatures together with their createdness. However, motion is manifested as a component of relation and distance, and it is motion that counts / discloses / actualizes this relation and distance, time being the number, numbering, circumscription and delimitation thereof. Time measures either communion or distance, which are disclosed as motion: but the consummation of communion cannot be described as mere timelessness or motionlessness, for it cannot but be, in a sense, active. An ever-moving repose that is a stationary movement. The dimensionless present of the fullness of communion: a radically transformed νῦν, eternal by the very fact that it does not possess duration, i.e., temporal distance. Maximus the Confessor’s theory of time, as it has been reconstructed here, constitutes a conception of temporality that is beyond the usual contradistinction between presentism, possibilism, and eternalism97 and 96

Maximus employs a language of ἔρως when describing this union. Cf. AI 7, 1073C–

76A, QThal 10.92–5 and 54.145–9. 97 Eternalism holds that the past, present and future are all real, possibilism holds that the past and the present is real, but not the future, and presentism is the belief that only the present is real. See Craig Callender, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, ed. Craig Callender (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199298204.003.0001.

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substantially different from other theories of time that have been developed in late antiquity—notwithstanding, of course, the presence of similarities, which however do not lead to an identical or similar vision of temporality. Were we compelled to include Maximus’ theory in one of these three categories, i.e., presentism, possibilism, and eternalism, we would be compelled to propose a fourth one: futurism, or rather eschatological futurism. The reason for this is that the true state of beings resides in their eschatological future, not in the present or the past (cf. for example AI 50, 1368C–1369A and numerous other passages). This future state will be a new state, but it is only in this that creatures will be disclosed in their real state: we face here an ontology that comes from the future. As such, what is truly real is only this eschatological future that has not arrived yet, constituting this fourth category among theories of time, i.e., futurism. This threefold exposition of temporality (as χρόνος, αἰὼν, and στάσις ἀεικίνητος) completes our understanding of temporality as measuring a relationship between Creator and all of creation through humanity, rather than simply motion. Temporality measures this relationship either as existential failure, refusal, and distance, i.e., as corruption, death and inexistence, or as communion, nearness and immediacy. In annihilating all distances in a “union with the Providence in all directness and immediacy,” in liberating temporality from its transition from the past to the future, deification discloses temporality as a dimensionless present, as the transcendence of division and dualities, as the completion of a relationship— that actualizes otherness as communion and not difference as division. This is not merely described by Maximus as our return to the κατὰ φύσιν, but as our attainment of the ὑπὲρ φύσιν—and it cannot be delimited as an idle rest and fixity, but as a vibrant ever-moving repose. Temporality is not annihilated; it is transformed and liberated from distance, without annulling the beings’ otherness. This can be considered as an original, albeit drawing inspiration from diverse sources, contribution of Maximus’ to the history of the philosophy of time.

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AI

CChar

CGn TP16

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Kuhlmann, Hartmut. “ ‘Jetzt’? Zur Konzeption des νῦν in der Zeitabhandlung des Aristoteles (Physik IV 10–14).” In Zeit, Bewegung, Handlung: Studien zur Zeitabhandlung des Aristoteles, edited by Enno Rudolph, 63–96. Forschungen und Berichte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft 42. Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1988. Larchet, Jean-Claude. La divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur. Cogitatio fidei 194. Paris: Cerf, 1996. Leiss, Pekka. Die aristotelische Lehre von der Zeit. Ihre Aporien und deren Auflösung. AKAN-Einzelschriften 5. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2004. Loudovikos, Nikolaos. A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity. Translated by Elisabeth Theokritoff. Brookline: Brookline Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010. Louth, Andrew. Maximus the Confessor. The Early Church Fathers. London; New York: Routledge, 1996. Louth, Andrew and Sotiris Mitralexis. “Time and Space in Maximos the Confessor.” Paper presented at the “Neoplatonism and St Maximus the Confessor” conference, Athens, 2008. Maximus the Confessor. Ambigua ad Iohannem. Edited and translated by Nicholas P. Constas. In Difficulties, 1:62–450; 2:2–330. ———. Capita de caritate [Four Centuries on Charity]. In Capitoli sulla carità, edited by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo: 48–238. Rome: Editrice Studium, 1963. ———. Capita theologica et oeconomica [Gnostic Chapters]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 90: 1084A–173A. ———. De duabus unius Christi Dei nostri uoluntatibus (Theologica et polemica xvi) [On the Two Wills of the One Christ our God]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 184C–212B. ———. Disputatio cum Pyrrho [Dispute with Pyrrhus]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 288A–353B. ———. Maximi Confessoris Opera Omnia, Tomus primus. Edited by François Combefis. Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca 90, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1865.

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———. Mystagogia. In S. Massimo Confessore, La mistagogia ed altri scritti, edited by Raffaelle Cantarella: 122–214. Testi cristiani con versione italiana. Florence: Libraria Edititrice Fiorentina, 1931. Difficulties ———. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers. Edited and translated by Nicholas P. Constas. Vol. 1, Ambigua to Thomas; Ambigua to John 1–22, vol. 2, Ambigua to John, 23–71. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2014. CMofJCh ———. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor. Translated by Paul Marion Blowers and Robert L. Wilken. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press Popular Patristics Series. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003. QThal ———. Quaestiones ad Thalassium. In Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium una cum Latina interpretatione Joannis Scotti Eriugenae iuxta posita, edited by Carl Laga and Carlos Steel: 7:3–539; 22:3–325. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 7, 22. Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1980–1990. QD ———. Quaestiones et dubia [Questions and Doubts]. In Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones et dubia, edited by José H. Declerck: 3– 170. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 10. Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1982. ———. Selected Writings. Translated by George C. Berthold. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Irénée-Henri Dalmais. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York; Mahwah; Toronto: Paulist Press, 1985. TP14 ———. Variae definitiones (Theologica et polemica xiv) [Various Definitions]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 149B–53B. PG 91 Maximus the Confessor, Thalassius, and Theodore Raïthu. Maximi Confessoris Opera Omnia, Tomus secundus, Thalassi Abatis, Theodori Raithuensis Opera. Edited by François Combefis, Franz Oehler, and André Galland. Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca 91, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1863. Mesch, Walter. Reflektierte Gegenwart. Eine Studie über Zeit und Ewigkeit bei Platon, Aristoteles, Plotin und Augustinus. Philosophische Abhandlungen 86. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003. Mitralexis, Sotiris. Ever-Moving Repose. A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor's Theory of Time. Eugene, OR: Cascade/Wipf & Stock, 2017. ———. “A Coherent Maximian Spatiotemporality: Attempting a Close Reading of Sections Thirty-Six to Thirty-Nine from the Tenth Ambiguum.” In The Fountain and the Flood: Maximus the Confessor and Philosophical Enquiry, edited by Sotiris Mi-

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tralexis, Studia Patristica 88 (2017, forthcoming). ———. “Ever-moving Repose: The Notion of Time in Maximus the Confessor’s Philosophy through the Perspective of a Relational Ontology.” PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 2014. ———. “Maximus the Confessor’s ‘Intelligible Creation’: Solving Contradictions on Imperishability and Corruptibility.” Forum Philosophicum 19, no. 2 (2014): 241–9. doi:10.5840/forphil20141925. ———. “Maximus the Confessor's ‘Aeon’ as a Distinct Mode of Temporality.” The Heythrop Journal early view (2 February 2016). doi:10.1111/heyj.12319. ———. “Maximus’ ‘Logical’ Ontology: An Introduction and Interpretative Approach to Maximus the Confessor’ Notion of the λόγοι.” Sobornost 37, no. 1 (2015): 65–82. ———. “Maximus’ Theory of Motion: Motion κατὰ φύσιν, Returning Motion, Motion παρὰ φύσιν.” In Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher, edited by Sotiris Mitralexis, Georgios Steiris, Marcin Podbielski, et al. Eugene, OR: Cascade / Wipf & Stock, 2017, forthcoming. ———. “Rethinking Maximus the Confessor’s Understanding of Temporality.” Forthcoming in Ancient Philosophy 38, no. 2 (2018). Mueller-Jourdan, Pascal. Typologie spatio-temporelle de l’Ecclesia byzantine. La Mystagogie de Maxime le Confesseur dans la culture philosophique de l’Antiquité tardive. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 74. Leiden: Brill, 2005. ———. “Where and When as Metaphysical Prerequisites for Creation in Ambiguum 10.” In Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection: Proceedings of the Symposium on St Maximus the Confessor, Belgrade, October 18–21, 2012, edited by Maksim Vasiljević [Bishop Maxim], 287–96. Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press & Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade, 2013. Plass, Paul C. “ ‘Moving Rest’ in Maximus the Confessor.” Classica et mediaevalia 35 (1984): 177–90. ———. “Transcendent Time and Eternity in Gregory of Nyssa.” Vigiliae Christianae 34, no. 2 (1980): 180–92. doi:10.1163/157007280x00064. ———. “Transcendent Time in Maximus the Confessor.” The Thomist 44, no. 2 (1980): 259–77. doi:10.1353/tho.1980.0029. Plato. The Timaeus of Plato. Translated by Richard Dakre Archer-Hind. Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Salem, NH: Ayer, 1988. Originally published 1888 in London by Macmillan. Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic

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Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Schmidt, Ernst August. Platons Zeittheorie: Kosmos, Seele, Zahl und Ewigkeit im Timaios. Philosophische Abhandlungen 105. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2012. Sherwood, Polycarp. The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism. Studia Anselmiana, philosophica theologica. Rome: “Orbis Catholicus” / Herder, 1955. Thunberg, Lars. Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor. 2nd ed. Chicago: Open Court, 1995. Tollefsen, Torstein T. “Causality and Movement in St. Maximus’ Ambiguum 7.” Studia Patristica 48 (2010): 85–93. Wagner, Michael F. The Enigmatic Reality of Time: Aristotle, Plotinus, and Today. Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval Texts and Contexts 7. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008.

Chapter 4

Syn-odical Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Proposition for Ontology, within History and in the Eschaton Dionysios Skliris Ontology might be considered as the noblest philosophical endeavor. What could possibly be noblest for a great spirit, what could be more tempting for an ambitious thinker, what could be more particularly human, than thinking the being qua being? Can this noble endeavor tolerate the dust of time that is History? The frustrations of meaning, the absurdity, or the inertia that History comprises? I will attempt to examine here the concrete philosophical proposition of Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662) for a connection between Ontology and History, in which Ontology is considered as having a historical character in an eschatological perspective. I will condense the Maximian proposition in ten points, trying to develop them by showing their internal logical coherence.

1. Introduction: Some Crucial Moments of the Ontological Endeavor from Aristotle to Heidegger and a Positioning of Maximus in this Philosophical Quest An initial issue is the particularity of Maximus’ position in the ontological quest. That is, before the Ontology of History, we should take a brief glance at some crucial moments in the History of Ontology. Among them will necessarily be Aristotle’s endeavor to study being qua being which led his posterity to the noblest philosophy “after the Physics” (“μετὰ τὰ Φυσικά”). One could say that from Aristotle onwards, ontology is metaphysical in character: We examine being qua being, in its purity, in order to be able to explain the multitude of concrete beings after having first

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solved the fundamental ontological question. The movement of thought in metaphysical ontology is something like the following: We ascertain the existence of empirical beings. Then, taking them as our points of departure, we are elevated to being qua being. And it is only after having “solved” or at least “contemplated” this noblest problem of being qua being that we come back to the multitude of physical beings in order to examine how they are posed inside the amplest question of being qua being and how they are thus explained. Nevertheless, Neoplatonism has later posed the problem whether the “Being” which explains beings has in fact to be above being if it is to really explain them.1 In other words, the question is whether a being that explains beings can share their character of being-ness or whether it has to transcend being if it is meant to account for them. This problem was connected to the Neoplatonic demand—which could also been seen as a Hellenic demand in general—to exalt simplicity as the character par excellence of divinity. The result is a Theology where God is the absolutely Simple, the One, even if this is to mean that He is above personhood, above consciousness or even above ontology. In other words, if a “divine” One is to really explain the Many, then as One it has to be above the Being that will explain beings. Being and ontology are considered as including a fundamentally dual or schizoid character, since contemplating the One involves breaking it into subject and object.2 In this view, for example in Plotinus, a radical metaphysical explanation of the existent will have to be elevated beyond being in a supreme simplicity which will explain being and ontology by “being situated” above them. This simplest One might be considered as Good in an eminent way, but not as Being, since the latter emanates from the One and is explained by it. Christian thought has rather brought “down to earth” this elevated Neoplatonic way of thinking—not only through the Theology of the Incarnation, where God becomes History, but also through a Trinitarian Theology, with which the Incarnation is intrinsically linked at least in the economical revelation of the Trinity. The Christian Trinitarian God is simple in His essence, but He is also a Trinity of Persons who hypostatize their essence in being personally willing and operating (ὑφιστῶντες, θέλοντες, 1

See, for example, Dominic J. O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); John Bussanich, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics of the One,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 2 Maximus the Confessor is also feeling the need to respond to this line of argumentation. In Capitum de Theologia et Œconomia Centuria (henceforth CGn) 1.82, 1116Β–17A, he is trying to explain in what sense we should understand divine intellection in order to avoid a loss of divine simplicity.

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ἐνεργοῦντες). There is a certain Christian revalorization of ontology after its positioning in the “second” realm, that of the Intellect, by Neoplatonists. What is more, this revalorized Ontology enters History and becomes History. This is the perpetual contribution of Christianity in human spirit. The connection of Ontology and History, which constitutes the subject of our volume, is, in many ways, a particularly Christian achievement. It is a consequence of Incarnation, i.e., the faith on the one hand that God as Trinity has ontology, and, on the other hand, that One of the Trinity enters History and offers Ontology also to the latter. Or, what is more, that One of the Trinity becomes History and thus offers History from the inside the possibility to become Ontology. The Christian connection between Ontology and History has had a different evolution in the East and in the West. In modernity, it was posed in a new way by Immanuel Kant, who has reformulated in an original way the demands of René Descartes’ rationalistic subjectivism as well as of British empiricism in the direction of an interpretation of Ontology as Phenomenology. The object perceived is but a phenomenon above which lies the Thing in Itself. The posterior German idealism with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel will put aside the unknowable Thing in Itself and will be restricted in the phenomenon. Ontology will thus be rather associated with a certain type of phenomenology. By Hegel it will also be immersed in History, as the Spirit which is developed inside the life of the subject will be considered as the same with the one which is developed inside History. In some sense, the Hegelian view constitutes an extreme consequence of the Christian association between Ontology and History.3 Due exactly to its extreme radicalization, the Hegelian view could also be considered as postChristian. In Hegel it is the whole Trinity that enters History and not just the One of the Trinity. In other words, nothing is left in Ontology which is not already History. The Christian Trinitarian God enters History in all His trishypostatic ontology and by doing so He transfers His Trinitarian ontological structure to it, i.e., History itself becomes a Trinity of position, negation and negation of negation or Aufhebung, echoing the three hypostases of the Father, the Son (as incarnation and sacrifice) and the Spirit (as communion and unity). In Hegel, the two categories that we discuss, namely History and Ontology, find their most radical identification since Trinitarian Ontology becomes Trinitarian History, i.e., dialectical History. Marx will follow such a (post-)Christian identification of Ontology with History, but he will re3 See for example, Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

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verse it. For him it is matter that proceeds through History from an (abstract) position to negation and through it to a negation of negation. The Christian theme of the sacrifice of the Son will be turned into the one of the revolution and the theme of the unity in the Spirit will be transformed into the goal of future classless society.4 The conflict between idealism and materialism has led in the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century into the demand to undermine this dualism that led to two different kinds of totalitarianism, that is, on the one hand, the domination of the Hegelian idealistic subject, and of Marxist materialism, on the other. The demand is to reformulate the ontological question so that it would not be necessary to absolutize either spirit or matter and thus lead to a sort of idealistic or materialistic domination. We principally owe to Martin Heidegger such a reformulation of the ontological question in the twentieth century, i.e., the question of what is the significance of Being beyond special beings and beyond a subsumption of it either to spirit or to matter. Heidegger has posed the question by distinguishing the ontological from the ontic — what concerns Being qua Being from what concerns any given concrete being. This contrast between the ontological and the ontic leads to a denunciation of the metaphysical tradition or to what he has termed “ontotheology.” Heidegger denunciates a European philosophical tradition, where God is considered as one “privileged” being which explains other beings by forming a unique series with them as if He were the first in a sequence, either temporal (in a very crude version), or causal, teleological or metaphysical (in more elaborate versions). Such an integration of God in a unique sequence with other beings could be considered as a “debasement” of God or Being and it is very interesting that it was an “atheist” philosopher (or rather a non-theist one) who has revolted against the trivialization of God committed by Christian thinkers. The acuteness of Heidegger’s denunciation has led to reformulate the ontological question in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in avoiding naïve types of metaphysics.5 In what regards the question of the rela4

For the relation between Marxism and Christian Trinitarian Theology, see for example, Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute; or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for?, Wo Es war (London; New York: Verso, 2000); Slavoj Žižek, On Belief, Thinking in Action (London; New York: Routledge, 2001); Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, Short Circuits (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 5 However, this is not the whole story. It should be noted that much could be said of the postmodern turn toward transcendence in the thought of Heideggerians like Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, or Jean-Luc Marion. Besides, we witness recent (and not-so-recent) philosophical and theological re-evaluations of religious or,

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tion between Ontology and History, this issue seems open. On the one hand, Heidegger seems to strip History off the immense carriage of meanings that were attributed to it, e.g., by Hegel or Marx. What is more, Heidegger seems to conflate Being and Nothingness, and thus ontology and nihilism. On the other hand, it is in the horizon of time and the Dasein that beings emerge from Being, thus leading to an existential urgency to assume one’s historical responsibility. A certain emphasis on History is thus present in a different manner. The keenness of Heidegger’s denunciation of all the previous metaphysical tradition has led theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries to search for a mode of theology and ontology beyond metaphysics.6 Theologians after Heidegger tend to reexamine their proper traditions in the light of the ontological question. The latter was put in the transitory period of Modernism, one borderline age after the collapse of modern ideals in the two World wars and before an eventual shift of paradigm that is still expected. The initial question about the actuality of Maximus can therefore be answered thus: Maximus has also lived in a borderline period, at the end of Late Antiquity, where the Graeco-Roman ecumene had collapsed after the Persan and Arab invasions. Maximus has thematized History after having experienced the frustration of its meanings, and after having traversed a great part of the Mediterranean as a nomad and a refugee.7 This experience of deception of the meanings in the world of GraecoRoman Late Antiquity could only be compared to an analogous deception of the modern ideals that humanity has experienced during the two world wars through which the ontological question was raised in a new and more existential form. It is also timely in the actual age where the current crisis rather designates a general loss of orientation. In his own age, Maximus has tried to contemplate its proper historical trauma through the categories offered by the fusion of Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism that took place in the East after Porphyry, while trying at the same time to more concretely, Christian faith that reject the ground of metaphysical ontology while retaining theology and faith. An elaborate engagement of these developments would be outside the scope of the present chapter. 6 See for example, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, God after Metaphysics: A Theological Aesthetic, Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007). 7 For a possible influence of the events of Maximus’ life in his thinking see JeanMiguel Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur. La charité, avenir divin de l’homme, Théologie historique 38 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1976), 35–82. For a criticism to this line of interpretation, see Marc Doucet, “Vues récentes sur les métamorphoses de la pensée de saint Maxime le Confesseur,” Science et Esprit 31, no. 3 (1979).

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formulate the particularity of faith in Christ who has become History, but also saves History by His resurrection. Maximus is thus receiving the problematic of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist metaphysics, but he historicizes it drastically or even integrates it in a dialectical structure. Maximus will open metaphysics to Resurrection and teleology to eschatology. In the following chapters, Ι shall try to examine the particular points of Maximus’ ontological proposition in the light of contemporary problems posed by the question of the association between Ontology and History as it was formulated in Modernity or in the unchartered age where we now live, between a frustrated late Modernity and a perpetually adjourned PostModernity.

2. Is God the True Being? Or is He beyond Being? The post-Heideggerian demand of the theologians is thus to avoid considering God as one more being among many even if He is to be considered the first one in a series that can be temporal, causal, teleological, or metaphysical. In regard to this demand, there are many different modes of theologizing. Such modes could be considered as original, since the keenness of the Heideggerian criterion has led to a radicalization of Theology. But they are not altogether new, since the great mystics in the East, but also in the West, have always grasped God’s radical otherness in relation to the world. One of such modes of theologizing consists in attributing being to the world and considering God as beyond being, that is as “supraessential,” or even as beyond ontology in general. This way could perhaps somehow schematically be termed “apophatic,”8 even though apophaticism is mostly a question of gnosiology and less of ontology per se. One different way of theologizing is to attribute being to God and deprive it of the world. The latter would thus be considered as not sufficiently being but rather having a sort of “iconic” being, or a being according to participation or grace. If we are to put this post-Heideggerian question to Maximus, we would remark that his answer, which is in no way “ontotheological,” could reserve some fascinating surprises, which present an actuality even for our age. 8

For a very interesting attempt to link the apophaticism of the Fathers to postHeideggerian thought, see Christos Yannaras, Christos Yannaras, De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu, d’après les écrits aréopagitiques et Martin Heidegger, trans. Jacques Touraille, Théologie sans frontières 21 (Paris: Cerf, 1971); Christos Yannaras, Philosophie sans rupture, trans. André Borrély, Perspective orthodoxe 7 (Genève: Labor et fides, 1981); Christos Yannaras, Person and Eros, trans. Norman Russell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2007).

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Maximus begins by exalting God’s absolute transcendence and alterity. This transcendence is connected to a very radical simplicity.9 Insistence on simplicity could reach up to the conclusion that there is nothing opposite (“ἐναντίον”10 or “ἀντικείμενον”11) to God. But what is more radical is that Maximus even inverses this position and declares that what could possibly have an opposite is not God in Himself but is “around God” (“περὶ Θεόν”).12 But this means that if Being does have an opposite (ἐναντίον), namely “non-Being”, then Being is not God-in-Himself but is “around God” (“περὶ Θεόν”). The same is valid not only for Being which has non-being as its opposite, but also for Goodness as opposed to evil, Truth as opposed to falsehood, Immortality as opposed to mortality, Beauty as opposed to ugliness etc. God “in Himself” is beyond any characterization that could have an opposite (“ἀντικείμενον”). “Realities” such as Being, and in consequence Truth, Goodness, or Immortality and Unchangeability etc. are “around God,” whereas God as absolutely transcendent is beyond them. In order to understand this Maximian insistence we have to examine his thought in relation to the modes of thinking that were dominant in his own age—as well as in the preceding centuries—such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and various forms of Gnosticism. Maximus’ position constitutes an explicit opposition to the relevant position of Aristotle that substance (οὐσία) has no opposite. According to Aristotle, there are various qualities in each “first substance” (or “hypostasis,” as it would later be termed), which are susceptible of opposite qualities. For example, a man, like Peter, can be white or black, tall or short etc., the latter being qualities. At the same time, he has a first substance, his “Peter-hood,” as well as a 9 Maximus is treating the question of divine simplicity and transcendence mostly in the following passages: CGn 1.48, 1100C–1101A; 1.82–3, 1116–17; 2.3, 1125D, 2.74, 1157D–60A; 2.81–2, 1164A; TP9 128A; Myst 437–85 (PG 91,680A–81C); AI 10, 1112D– 13Β, 1153Β, 1180D–81A, 1196AΒ, 1205C; AI 15, 1216A–Β, 1220ΑΒ; AI 16, 1221C–24A; AI

21, 1249C. Since Constas’ critical edition names Migne’s Patrologia Graeca column of each respective passage, while many scholars still depend on PG’s Ambigua, we will use Constas’ critically edited text while simply citing AI and AT with PG 91 columns for the readers’ convenience, as PG columns can be easily traced back to Constas’ pages, while the opposite is naturally not the case. 10

For the notion of ἐναντίον see CChar 3.28; TP17 212C–D.

11

AI 37, 1296B–C. For the notion of περὶ (τὸν) Θεόν in Maximus see the passages: CChar 4.7; CGn 2.73,

12

1157ΒC; AI 15, 1220C (“Περὶ Θεὸν γάρ, ἀλλ’ οὐ Θεὸς, ἡ ἀπειρία, ὅτι καὶ ταύτης ἀσυγκρίτως ὑπέρκειται”); AI 34, 1288Β.

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second substance, his humanity, which make him be what he is. His “substance” or “essence” (οὐσία), namely his humanity that constitutes him as Peter, is not susceptible of an opposite. Maximus does acknowledge the philosophical advantages of such a position, for distinguishing for example between substance and qualities or between substance and accidents. At the same time, he is deeply aware that this Aristotelian position is linked with the belief in the eternity of the (created) substance and thus with the eternity of the world. But Maximus does not want to admit the latter, since he believes as a Christian in the creation of the world ex nihilo (as part of his Christian faith in the freedom of both God and humans). For this reason, Maximus insists that substance does have after all an opposite, namely non-being, due to the createdness of the world (CChar 3.28). Consequently, whatever is created, including created substances and essences, is “inside” an ontological “domain,” where takes place a wrestling between being and non-being. Such a wrestling does not take place in God, who does not have any opposite. The point of Maximus’ argument is deeply anti-Gnostic and anti-Manicheist, i.e., anti-dualist. Maximus absolutely wants to assure that there be nothing “besides” God (“μηδὲν ἔχειν ἀντικείμενον συνθεωρούμενον,” AI 37, 1296C). Consequently, God is not an essence, but supra-essential (ὑπερούσιος, AT 5, 1048D–49A), and in a similar way God is considered as “hyper-good” (ὑπεράγαθος) and “hyper-true” (ὑπεραλήθης).13 God is even considered “hyper-god” (ὑπέρ-θεος) in an extreme apophaticism that is very characteristic of the Areopagitic and Maximian tradition.14 God is beyond even simplicity itself (TP9 128A). He is also beyond the future, which has a certain significance for eschatology, since we should bear in mind that God in Himself is even beyond eschatology.15 Whenever we speak of an essence or of a logos of essence in God, that is possibly contrasted to His existence or to His personal mode of existence, this is done in an abusive way and Maximus sometimes adds that as a matter of fact this is a “supra-essential essence.” At the same time, it is not only the term “essence” (οὐσία) that presents this particular problem, but also the term “being” (ὄν, εἶναι), since all of them have non-being as an opposite (ἀντικείμενον). In this way, Maximus formulates a hyper-ontology,

13

See AI 37, 1296C, where it is stated that God is beyond truth (“ὑπὲρ ἀλήθειαν”).

14

For the meaning of apophaticism in Maximus, see the passages: QThal 55.41–7;

Myst 103–26; AI 10, 1144A, 1165ΒC; AI 15, 1216Β; AI 16, 1221CD; AI 17, 1229C; AI 20, 1240CD; AI 34, 1288Β–89A; AI 71, 1409C. 15

See AI 37, 1296BC.

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which brings him in a sharp contrast to Aristotelianism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism, while bringing him closer to a modernist denunciation of ontotheology. At the same time, the Maximian project should not be viewed as a version of Neoplatonism. In the latter, the main enjeu is the relation between the One and the many, the latter emanating from the One. By contrast, in Maximus, who is following a Biblical theology, the fundamental enjeu is to be able to reject convincingly any ontological “reality” “besides” God. Of course, after the creation of the world there is in a certain sense an “ob-ject” vis-à-vis God, but this ob-ject is contingent, i.e., not ontologically necessary, and is a product of the will and energy of God who is also present inside it through His logoi and energies (the latter could be termed as “pan-en-theism” in contrast to “pan-theism”). The world that is created ex nihilo is not therefore a real opposite (ἀντικείμενον) to God, even though it might be regarded as having an otherness due to the free action of creation and, what is more, due to the free offering of freedom and personhood by God to some of His creatures, like men and angels. In any case, Maximus and Neoplatonists do share the demand for an apophatic hyper-ontology. But the philosophical landscape in the two cases is quite different. Neoplatonists focus on the production of the many by the One. Maximus focuses on the need that there be no opposite (ἀντικείμενον) to God, whereas any otherness to God is created freely and contingently. One last but most crucial point that needs to be made is that personal otherness inside God is not considered by Maximus as forming an “opposite” (contrast). The Son and the Spirit are persons in relation but not in opposition to the Father. This is a very important difference of Maximus and the Eastern tradition from the Western one, where personal relations were sometimes conceived as oppositiones relationis, reaching up to the Hegelian dialectic. The above-mentioned differences do not exhaust the differences of Maximus from Neoplatonists. In the exposition Ι have made so far, there are still some blind-spots in the Maximian doctrine which we will have to develop in the next sections. Until now it is claimed that God in Himself does not have an opposite. On the other hand, the created world, which does have an opposite, namely non-being, is in its historical mode in a state of continuous wrestling between being and non-being, due to which it cannot be qualified as being properly speaking. The question arises if there is any sense in which Maximus has an ontology and where should one search for it. Despite what we have exposed so far, the answer is a positive one. Maximus does have an ontology in his thinking and it is to be found in Christ.

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3. The Locus of Ontology is Christology Jacques Lacan has defined love as “giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.”16 We could say something similar, though also different, for Being in Maximus’ thought: Being is what is offered by God, while He himself transcends it, to a world which does not have it, but strives for it. The latter constitutes of course Maximus’ difference from Lacan. This gift of Being is Christ.17 Christ unites in His hypostasis God who transcends Being and the created being which is not yet being. Maximus has written about God that he can be qualified more as non being than as being due to His transcending “being” (“Θεὸς … τὸ μὴ εἶναι μᾶλλον, διὰ τὸ ὑπερεῖναι ὡς οἰκειότερον ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ λεγόμενον, προσιέμενος,” Myst 110– 11). God is thus so transcendent that He even transcends the categories of Being and non-being.18 On the other hand, created being is so immersed in non-being that it too cannot be qualified as being. Being thus arises from the meeting of the two, namely of God-above-being and of created being which is not-yet-being. Consequently, the “locus” of ontology is Christology. In any case, one has to admit that different positions of Maximus in different points of his work make his thought difficult to grasp. I shall nevertheless try to examine some of these points. Firstly, Maximus seems to distinguish between on the one hand God in Himself who does not have an 16

Jacques Lacan, “Problèmes cruciaux pour la psychanalyse. Séminaire [XII,] 1964– 1965,” ed. Michel Roussan (Paris: Editions de l’Association Freudienne Internationnal, 2000), seminar of March 17, 1965. 17 The Christocentric character of Maximian ontology is stressed in John Zizioulas, “Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor,” in Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection: Proceedings of the Symposium on St Maximus the Confessor, Belgrade, October 18–21, 2012, ed. Maksim Vasiljević [Bishop Maxim] (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press & Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade, 2013), 85–113. 18 See AI 10, 1180D–81A: “Πᾶν γὰρ ὅπερ καθ᾿ ὁτιοῦν τὸν τοῦ ‘πῶς’ ἐπιδέχεται λόγον, κἂν εἰ ἔστιν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἦν. Ὅθεν τὸ θεῖον ‘εἶναι’ λέγοντες, οὐ τὸ πῶς εἶναι λέγομεν· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὸ ‘ἔστι’ καὶ τὸ ‘ἦν’ ἁπλῶς καὶ ἀορίστως καὶ ἀπολελυμένως ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῦ λέγομεν. Ἀνεπίδεκτον γὰρ παντὸς λόγου καὶ νοήματος τὸ θεῖόν ἐστι, καθ᾿ ὃ οὔτε κατηγοροῦντες αὐτοῦ τὸ ‘εἶναι’ λέγομεν αὐτὸ εἶναι. Ἐξ αὐτοῦ γὰρ τὸ εἶναι, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ αὐτὸ τὸ ‘εἶναι.’ Ὑπὲρ γάρ ἐστι καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ εἶναι, τοῦ τε πῶς καὶ ἁπλῶς λεγομένου τε καὶ νοουμένου. Εἰ δὲ ‘πῶς.’ ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ἁπλῶς, ἔχει τὰ ὄντα τὸ εἶναι, ὥσπερ ὑπὸ τὸ ‘ποῦ’ εἶναι διὰ τὴν θέσιν καὶ τὸ πέρας τῶν ἐπ᾿ αὐτοῖς κατὰ φύσιν λόγων, καὶ ὑπὸ τὸ ‘ποτέ’ πάντως εἶναι διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐπιδέξεται.”

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opposite, and, on the other hand, realities “around God” (“περὶ τὸν Θεόν”), where one can detect Being, Truth and Goodness as originating from God. The expression “περὶ τὸν Θεόν” should rather be linked to its Cappadocian understanding, for example in Basil of Caesarea (in an anti-Arian and antiEunomian direction), studied by Maximus, and less to the posterior theology of the uncreated divine energies as formulated by saint Gregory Palamas. The latter was in his own turn influenced by Maximus but elaborated on this topic in order to correspond to posterior theological needs (such as the need to qualify grace and the Thaborian Light as uncreated, i.e., not created).19 What is characteristic of Maximus is that he has a very personal / hypostatic approach in what concerns the interaction between Theology and Economy. Before all ages the Son is begotten by the Father and the Spirit proceeds from Him. But in the Economy too there are some distinct hypostatic roles: The Father-Intellect (Πατὴρ Νοῦς) has the initial good will (εὐδοκεῖ) of creation, the Son-Logos (Υἱὸς Λόγος) is as the Incarnated Word the author par excellence of creation (αὐτουργῶν), and the Spirit (Πνεῦμα) cooperates in bringing it to eschatological completion (συνεργεῖ / τελοιοῖ).20 The order of Economy is not absolutely identified to the order of Theology ad intra, but it is not independent or irrelevant to it. In a similar sense, the logoi of beings through which the world is created and eschatologically perfected constitute a good will of the Father-Nous (εὐδοκία), but they are ontologically situated mostly inside the Son-Logos who is the Author par excellence of Creation21 (αὐτουργῶν) and who is the

19

For the relation between the Cappadocian / Maximian expression “περὶ τὸν Θεόν”

and the Palamite theology of uncreated divine energies, see Vasilios Karayiannis, Maxime le Confesseur. Essence et énergies de Dieu, Théologie historique 93 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1993). 20

For the notions of εὐδοκία, αὐτουργία, and συνεργία / τελείωσις / συμπλήρωσις as

characterizing the three distinct divine Hypostases, see the passages: PN 87–96; AT 2, 1037C; AT 5, 1049D; AI 7, 1081C, 1128–9; AI 40, 1304C; AI 61, 1385D–88A; QThal 2.22– 30, 19, 40.12–18, 60; TP6 68D; TP20 237D–40Β. 21

See AI 7, 1081C; AI 10, 1128–9); AI 40, 1304C (“Θεός … ἐν τρισὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις ἵσταται,

αἰτίῳ καὶ δημιουργῷ καὶ τελειοποιῷ· τῷ Πατρὶ, λέγω, καὶ τῷ Υἱῷ καὶ τῷ ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι”). In the latter, Maximus is following Gregory of Nazianzus. Nevertheless, in other passages, Maximus rather stresses the commonality of the divine energy of creation in which all the Three Hypostases participate. See for example, QThal

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only One Who is incarnated,22 whereas the Spirit cooperates (συνεργεῖ) in their eschatological accomplishment (τελοιοῖ). What we want to say is that the logoi are not just a “reality” “between” God and the world, which just “is there” in an impersonal way. The logoi too should be seen as having a personal structure, namely being the good will of the Father (εὐδοκία), being situated in the Son the Logos as their “accomplisher” par excellence (αὐτουργῶν), and being brought to eschatological completion by the Spirit (συμπληροῖ).23 The fact that the logoi are “situated” in the Son is related to the Son being the Logos, while the Father is compared by Maximus to the Nous-Intellect Who has the good will exactly by being the Nous, the Spirit being the cooperator of the Logos.24 We could assert that Maximian ontol-

28.70–83. It seems then that there is a certain tension in Maximus’ thought. The energy of creation is common but at the same time the αὐτουργῶν is the Logos. The creation of the world by the Logos seems to be linked to the fact that He is the only one Who was incarnated: QThal 60.117–120: “Ἔδει γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς τὸν κατὰ φύσιν τῆς τῶν ὄντων οὐσίας δημιουργὸν καὶ τῆς κατὰ χάριν αὐτουργὸν γενέσθαι τῶν γεγονότων θεώσεως, ἵνα ὁ τοῦ εὖ εἶναι δοτὴρ φανῇ καὶ τοῦ ἀεὶ εὖ εἶναι χαριστικός.” 22

See QThal 60.94–105 (PG 90,624Β–C):

“Τοῦτο τὸ μυστήριον προεγνώσθη πρὸ

πάντων τῶν αἰώνων μόνῳ τῷ Πατρὶ καὶ τῷ Υἱῷ καὶ τῷ ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι, τῷ μὲν κατ᾿ εὐδοκίαν, τῷ δὲ κατ᾿ αὐτουργίαν, τῷ δὲ κατὰ συνεργίαν· μία γὰρ ἡ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ καὶ ἁγίου Πνεύματος γνῶσις, ὅτι καὶ μία οὐσία καὶ δύναμις. Οὐ γὰρ ἠγνόει τοῦ Υἱοῦ τὴν σάρκωσιν ὁ Πατήρ ἢ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ὅτι ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ Υἱῷ τὸ μυστήριον αὐτουργοῦντι τῆς ἡμῶν σωτηρίας διὰ σαρκώσεως ὅλος κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ὁ Πατήρ, οὐ σαρκούμενος ἀλλ᾿ εὐδοκῶν τοῦ Υἱοῦ τὴν σάρκωσιν, καὶ ὅλον ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ Υἱῷ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ὑπῆρχεν, οὐ σαρκούμενον ἀλλὰ συνεργοῦν τῷ Υἱῷ τὴν δι᾿ ἡμᾶς ἀπόρρητον σάρκωσιν.” See also QThal 60.117–130 and AI 61, 1385D: “Σκηνὴ τοιγαροῦν τοῦ μαρτυρίου ἡ μυστηριώδης ἐστὶν οἰκονομία τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου σαρκώσεως, ἣν ὁ Θεὸς καὶ Πατὴρ εὐδοκήσας ‘παρέδειξε,’ καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον διὰ τοῦ σοφοῦ Βεσελεὴλ προτυπούμενον συνεργῆσαν ‘ἐτελείωσε,’ καὶ ὁ νοητὸς Μωϋσῆς ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς μονογενὴς Υἱὸς αὐτούργησε, τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ‘πηξάμενος‘ ἑνώσει τῇ καθ᾿ ὑπόστασιν.” 23

QThal 2.23–6: “Ὁ Πατήρ μου ἕως ἄρτι ἐργάζεται, κἀγὼ ἐργάζομαι, ὁ μέν εὐδοκῶν, ὁ

δέ αὐτουργῶν, καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου Πνεύματος οὐσιωδῶς τήν τε τοῦ Πατρός ἐπὶ πᾶσιν εὐδοκίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτουργίαν τοῦ Υἱοῦ συμπληροῦντος.” 24

See AI 61, 1385D–88Α: “Πλὴν ὅτι καὶ τῆς ὅλης κτίσεως, νοητῆς τε καὶ αἰσθητῆς,

ἐστὶν εἰκὼν ἡ σκηνή, ἣν ὁ Θεὸς καὶ Πατὴρ, οἷα Νοῦς, ἐνενόησε, καὶ ὁ Υἱὸς, οἷα Λόγος,

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ogy is also structured in a personal way. The ontology “around God” is not just “something” between God and the world that is just “there.” Being is originated by the “good will” (εὐδοκία) of the Father- “Intellect”; the ontological “locus” of being is par excellence the Son; whereas the Spirit is the co-operator (συνεργῶν) and the completer (συμπληρῶν). A thinker (either late medieval or modern) posterior to the debate between Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus (or, in general, to the relative debates between intellectualism and voluntarism or realism and nominalism in the West) might want to pose some philosophical questions to Maximus, e.g. whether the logoi of beings are contingent or necessary. Hans-Urs von Balthasar, for example, has indeed posed this question.25 We should note here that the question of the contingency or not of the logoi is not posed by Maximus himself. Maximus’ own view is that the logoi are wills of God26 which are situated in the Logos. In a similar sense we could say that the “Being” of God is a “supra-essential Being,” because God in Himself transcends Being. At the same time, Being is initiated by God and this initiation of Being in God has a hypostatical / personal structure as a “good will” of the Father, an “authorship” of the Son and a “co-operation” of the Spirit (εὐδοκία—αὐτουργία—συνεργία / συμπλήρωσις”).

4. The “Locus” of Christological Ontology is History If the “locus” of Ontology is Christ the Logos, this means that the “locus” of Ontology is also History. Christ is the Person Who is begotten from the Father “before all ages.” He is the Author par excellence (αὐτουργῶν) of the logoi-wills of God. Consequently, He is the Author par excellence (αὐτουργῶν) of the Creation and the Incarnation (through the “good will” of the Father and the “completion” of the Spirit). Maximus’ position is very subtle and should not be misunderstood: On the one hand, there is no necessary production of the world by God as in Neoplatonism. The creation of the world could be considered as contingent. On the other hand, the logoi-wills of God are uncreated. And, what is more, these logoi-wills are personal, because they are “situated” in the Logos who is the “Author” of their “logic” character in a similar sense to His being the ἐδημιούργησε, καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον ἐτελείωσε.” 25

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, A Communio Book (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 163–4. 26 QThal 13.8; AI 7, 1085A.

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“Author” of creation and the One to be incarnated. This hypostatic / personal glance of Maximus at ontology could arguably lead to an interpretative conclusion that in a similar way Son the Logos is the “Author” (αὐτουργός) of ontology with the “good will” of the Father and the co-operation of the Spirit. It could be pointed out that the world is contingent, as created ex nihilo, and that it could have not existed. Nevertheless, the logoi are uncreated and in a similar sense ontology too is uncreated and “around God.” Therefore, in the post-Heideggerian question whether ontology is “on the side” of God or “on the side” of the world, if I am allowed to put this question a bit too schematically, a (perhaps equally) schematic answer would be that ontology is “on the side” of God. But ontology is something more. It is personally structured and “situated” in Son the Logos. In other words, ontology is not “just out there” as a heavenly “around God.” Ontology is the affirmation of Being by God the Father in His Son with the co-operation or completion of the Spirit. Ontology is personal in its very character. But Son the Logos is the One who becomes History. This means that History becomes the locus par excellence of Ontology. If we find in Hegel the most radical association of Ontology with History, we could say that Maximus does not fall short of Hegel in such a connection. On the other hand, Maximian thought presents antidotes to some of the Hegelian shortcomings. For example, Maximus is avoiding a sort of historical pantheism by insisting in the contingency of world in itself.27 Even though there is a certain dialectic in Maximus, this dialectic is absolutely free and does not necessarily include evil as part of the internal evolution of the Spirit.28 For Maximus, evil is contingent, even if it can enter a posteriori in the divine “Economy”29 mostly through the results of sin and not sin in itself. History 27

For the contingency of the creation in Maximus, see the passages: TP25 272C; Myst 103–26. See also the Disputatio cum Pyrrho, which is probably not by the hand of Maximus but reflects his thought: Maximus the Confessor, DP 293ΒC; also in Marcel

Doucet, “Dispute de Maxime le Confesseur avec Pyrrhus. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes” (Ph.D. thesis, Université de Montréal, Institut d’Études Mediévales, 1972), 548–9; DP 332A (Doucet 587), 340D (Doucet 596–7). 28 Maximus expresses an anti-dialectical view in QThal 44.43–54; AI 7, 1069C. See also DP 349CD (Doucet 606–7). 29 According to Maximus, God has three modes of willing. The first is the good will (εὐδοκία) which is closer to the notion of logos. The other two are the “economical will” and the will “according to concession” (κατὰ συγχώρησιν), which are closer to the notion of economical mode since they are making use of evil inside History in order to save man from the fallen state he has reached: QD 83.2–7, “Τρία θελήματα

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is thus a place of free dialogue between God and man. We do not find in Maximus an ontologization of History or a turning of History into totalitarian historicism.30 The connection between History and Ontology takes place in the Person of Son the Logos who is the hypostatic “author” of ontology and who makes Ontology become History, by becoming History Himself.

5. History as “Iconic” Ontology, The Eschaton as the Truth of History The world does not possess being in itself, as we have seen, since it is indissolubly intermingled with non-being. It is the incarnated Christ who is the author of Ontology and who is turning it into an Ontology-in-thebecoming inside History. But this means that Maximus’ view of History is dynamical and in a sense dialectical (hence the comparison to Hegel). It is a “historical” view of History and by this we mean that it is a view of History that leaves space for surprises, frustrations of meaning, suspense, unexpected interventions of grace. History is not just a static field for domination by structures that come from outside History and that are contemplated sub specie aeternitatis. The dynamic character of History is expressed by Maximus mainly by the distinction of Pauline inspiration between shadow, icon, and truth (Heb 10:1). The Old Testament, where the Logos is not incarnated yet, is a “shadow,” where one can “hear” the “voice” of God without seeing Him. The New Testament, where the Logos is incarnated and becomes flesh, is an “image,” as we can now “see” the Incarnated Logos. But the truth lies in the resurrection of Christ Who introduces the eschatological mode of existence.31 The truth of ontology and History is situated after the Second Coming in the eschaton, where the Christological mode of existence will be ἐπὶ Θεοῦ χρὴ ὑπολαμβάνειν, κατ᾿ εὐδοκίαν, κατ᾿ οἰκονομίαν, κατὰ συγχώρησιν. Καὶ τὸ μὲν κατ᾿ εὐδοκίαν δηλοῖ τὰ κατὰ τὸν Ἀβραάμ, λέγοντα πρὸς αὐτὸν, ‘ἔξελθε ἐκ τῆς γῆς σου’· τὸ δὲ κατ᾿ οἰκονομίαν δηλοῖ τὰ κατὰ τὸν Ἰωσὴφ οἰκονομηθέντα πρὸς τὴν τῶν μελλόντων ἔκβασιν· τὸ δὲ κατὰ συγχώρησιν δηλοῖ τὰ κατὰ τὸν Ἰὼβ γενόμενα.” 30

For a use of Maximian thought on History as a means to avoid totalitarian historicism, see Nicholas Loudovikos, Ὀρθοδοξία καὶ ἐκσυγχρονισμός. Βυζαντινὴ ἐξατομίκευση, κράτος καὶ ἱστορία, στὴν προοπτικὴ τοῦ εὐρωπαϊκοῦ μέλλοντος [Orthodoxy and Modernization: Byzantine Individualization, State and History, in the perspective of the European Future] (Athens: Armos, 2006). 31 For the distinction between shadow, image, and truth, see CGn 1.90, 1120C; AI 21, 1253CD; AI 37, 1293–6.

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manifested and realized in all its ontological consequences. For this reason, inside History we only have Ontology as an “icon,” whereas ontology proper is situated in the eschatological Christology.32 This is also manifested through the triple schema “being”—“well-being”—“eternal-(well)being” (εἶναι—εὖ εἶναι—ἀεὶ εὖ εἶναι).33 “Being” refers to creation, “wellbeing” to History, and “eternal-(well)-being” to eschatology. The meaning of this triple schema is that true being is the eternal eschatological being in view of which being was created. Nevertheless, the passage to eschatology is mediated by History as an endeavor of well-being, meaning an effort to actualize the potentialities of natural creation (being) in view of the eschatological future (eternal well-being).

6. A Dromic Ontology The distinction between shadow, image and truth at the end of History poses us with a view of History as a way, a “dromos,” where being is not settled and achieved at the beginning but demands a certain itinerary until the end when it will become true.34 The connection between ontology and History in Maximus means that ontology is dromic, that being is “on the way” (“καθ’ὁδόν”). In the next sections, I shall try to examine the different dimensions of this dromic ontology through some particularly Maximian triple schemas or double contrasts.

32 For an ontology based on an eschatological Christology, see John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. Paul McPartlan (London; New York: T & T Clark, 2006). 33 For this triple schema see mostly the following passages: QThal 2, 60.115–30, 61.328–40, 64.755–812; AI 7, 1073D; AI 65, 1392D; CChar 3.24, 4.11, 4.13; CGn 1.35, 1096C; 1.51–67, 1101C–8B; 2.88, 1165D. 34 For the notion of dromos or odos in Maximus, see QThal 30.37–45, 47.68–227, 48.21, 51.16, 59.255–83, 64.745–754, 65.476; PN 721–54; LA 1023–33; CGn 2.25, 1136C; 2.68–9,

1156Β; AI 7, 1084; AI 10, 1105A, 1113A, 1128CD, 1141Β; AI 21–22, 1256; AI 37, 1292C, 1296D; AI 41, 1308A; AI 42, 1329.

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7. Dimensions of the Dromos: λόγος—τρό λόγος τρόπος τρό ος—τέλος ος τέλος, τέλος εἰκὼν—ὁ ὁμοίωσις, μοίωσις αὐτεξούσιον—ἐ τεξούσιον ἐλεύθερον The dromos has a beginning: It’s God’s logoi-wills for beings, which are “situated” in God the Logos.35 It has a middle: The historical realization of logoi by concrete historical tropoi (modes). And it has an end: The goal for which the world was created and which is the assumption of the world by Christ and its hypostatic union with divinity. The three “concepts” of logos, tropos and telos are dialectical, as they are not defined ontically, i.e., independently from one another.36 On the contrary, they are in a way “breaking” the one into the other. For example, logos means for Maximus a will of God for one being which is not identified with the created and fluid nature of this being, but is a “signpost” for the future. The fact that the logoi of beings are “situated” inside Son the Logos could also mean that the logoi are wills of God which disclose how God the Father wills a being or attribute to be incorporated in the incarnated Christ. For example, the logos of body and materiality that man shares with all other bodily and material beings is their reception in Christ thanks to the Incarnation. The same is true about the soul that man shares with animate beings. More concretely, the logos of the irascible part of the soul is the love of God,37 the logos of desire is divine eros (QThal 55.313), whereas the logos of intellection, which man shares with angels, is the intellectual prayer (νοερὰ προσευχή, CChar 1.79) of Christ to His Father etc. In this sense, the “concept” of logos breaks into that of the telos, since the logos does not have an independent existence but exists merely as a sign to the end. But it also “breaks” in the notion of tropos because it does not have an existential value, unless it receives a concrete historical realization by the tropos. The end is the hypostatical union between the created and the uncreated in Christ, the “mystery” for which the whole universe is willed before the ages in order to be recapitulated in Christ, according to Pauline theology.38 This end is not merely the last episode in a linear evolution of History. The telos is present already in the beginning inside the logos which is a signpost to it.39 35

For the relation of the many logoi with the One Logos see: QThal 35.6–24, 40.87–102;

AT 2, 1037AΒ; AI 6, 1068AΒ, AI 7, 1077C–80A; AI 10, 1156AΒ, 1205C; AI 33, 1285C–88; PN 521–38; CGn 2.10, 1129AB; Μyst 486–95, 682–91; 997–1009. 36

For the terms logos, tropos, and telos, see, for example, Μyst 1134–65.

37

CChar 3.3, 4.15, 4.44, 4.80. QThal 60.1–62. For the relevant Pauline expression see Col 1:26.

38 39

See AI 42, 1345A–C: “πᾶσα φύσις τῷ οἰκείῳ λόγῳ διαπαντὸς ἔχει τὸ τέλος.”

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Besides, the telos is identified to a certain mode of existence that is the filial existence by which the created being enters by grace and in the Spirit the filial relationship between the Son and the Father. The end is thus referring to eschatology, i.e., to the eschatological mode of existence, but it is also present inside History, not only through the logos, but also through the resurrection that inaugurates the eschaton. The mode is conceived in the same way as a historical modification that is in dialogue with the divine logos in view of the telos. If the end is the divine filial mode of existing eschatologically as sons by grace,40 then the historical modes are different modes through which each personal hypostasis is negotiating the call of the adoption. Inside History, modes might be tragic. For example, among the modes of sonship, one may find that of the “prodigal son,” or the one of a son who is trying to deny his sonship or his call, like Jonas. But, in the end, the logoi are integrated in the Logos, and in the same way the many tropoi of the different hypostases will be incorporated in the mode of existence of the Son, without denying the freedom and contingency of History.41 The fact that there are many modes inside History means that in the eschaton as well, there will be different modes not of good and evil, but of a disposition (διά-θεσις)42 towards the good omnipresence of God, as well as different modes of participation or not in this presence (QD 19.5–21), which in the Maximian idiom are termed modes of “eternally-well-being” or “eternally-ill-being”. Logos, tropos, and telos start in History, but are confirmed only in the eschaton. In the latter, the many logoi, i.e., the different logoi of the existence of beings, are integrated inside Son the Logos Who reveals the logical meaning of all creatures, whereas the multiple modes of the negotiation of this call to sonship will be incorporated in the unique mode of existence of the Son as modes of sonship by grace, bearing at the same time the contingent human disposition towards that call. Through this triple schema we could also understand better the characteristic Maximian contrasts between image and likeness or freedom 40

For the soteriology of adoption by grace in Maximus, see QThal 15.28–40, 23.66–84, 61.216–44, 64.155–7; AI 10, 1140Β, 1156A; AI 31, 1280D–81B; AI 42, 1348A; PN 97–106, 258–69; CGn 1.77, 1112Β; Myst 685–91, 752–9, 868, 928–9, 1048–56. 41

Inside History, there is a dialogue between man and God. When man denies the divine will, then God might “modify” His own plan in order to save man by taking into account this denial and its results. The primordial will of God, which is also a sort of divine logos, is termed “θέλησις κατ’ εὐδοκίαν.” The economic modes of the

divine will which do not annul but simply modify the primordial divine will are called “θέλησις κατ’ οἰκονομίαν καὶ κατὰ συγχώρησιν.” See QD 83.2–7. 42

See QThal 59.165–170.

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and liberation (αὐτεξούσιον—ἐλεύθερον). The biblical theme of the creation of man according to the image and the resemblance of God takes an interesting Maximian twist: the image is a logos at the beginning of the way (dromos), whereas the resemblance is a mode inside the dromos of History towards its eschatological end.43 In the same way, the αὐτεξούσιον is the logos of human nature and this means that man can participate consciously in his movement inside the historical dromos, as well as that he has this possibility as a divine gift from the very beginning.44 The ἐλεύθερον is, on the contrary, a liberation of man by the grace of God who comes to find and assume him inside the historical dromos.

(8) The Five Dimensions of Being inside a Dromic Ontology: δύναμις—ἕ δύναμις ἕξις—ἐ ξις ἐνέργεια—ἀ νέργεια ἀργία—στάσις ργία στάσις The fact that Ontology is dromic means exactly that being is not given in its starting point, but traverses a certain trajectory until its eschatological accomplishment. Maximus receives from Aristotle a certain metaphysics of motion, where being is moved from potentiality (δύναμις) to actuality (ἐνέργεια) in order to be realized as well as to realize its ontology. Nevertheless, Maximus transforms this metaphysics in the direction of a historical and eschatological character. The field of this trajectory from potentiality to actuality is not natural teleology and a sort of physical time measuring the movement provoked by it, neither is biological maturation its goal. On the contrary, teleology opens up to eschatology, in the sense that any finality of nature is realized historically in an itinerary towards its eschatological truth. Nature with its logical finalities is saved and confirmed, but it is realized and assumed by History. In other words, it is History that constitutes the horizon or even the goal of nature and not the opposite. Dynamis means something else as well, namely the fact that in the beginning nature is not given as accomplished. It is absolutely fluid and fashionable. A being in its starting point has on the one hand a created nature which is in a state of potentiality and is fashionable, being able to

43

For the Maximian treatment of the relation between image and resemblance, see AI 7, 1092Β, 1096A; AI 10, 1140Β; CChar 3.25; CGn 1.11, 1088A; TP1 9A–12A. See also the DP, which is probably not by the hand of Maximus but reflects his teachings, 304C (Doucet 561), 324D (Doucet 581). 44

See TP15 157A; TP25 276Β–77B. See also the DP 301Β–4C (Doucet 558–61).

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develop historically,45 and, on the other, a logos of God for this nature as a sign-post for how is this nature called to become in the future. If there is a certain anti-essentialism in Maximus, it is not an anti-essentialism of a voluntarist type, where man is called to counter an already given nature. It is rather an anti-essentialism in the sense that such a given nature never in fact existed. What does exist in the beginning is, on the one hand, an absolutely fluid nature, and, on the other, the dialogue with God’s logos who directs us towards the future through propositions,46 man’s modal responses and God’s counter-responses through His grace. Aristotelian teleology insisted mainly on the passage from potentiality to actuality (δύναμις—ἐνέργεια). Maximus completes this schema by ἕξις and στάσις, which are terms borrowed from Aristotelianism and Greek philosophy in general but conceived in a very particular way by Maximus.47 Stasis is the eschatological end, where the dromos of History comes to a halt, because it has arrived at its destination, which is the hypostatical unity of the created and the uncreated in Christ. Stasis is thus beyond energeia. In modifying Aristotle, Maximus conceives that the goal of being is not its actualization, but its accomplishment inside a goal (QThal 60.49– 62) which presents a natural gap in relation to the actualization of nature inside History. Hexis is a relative station inside History. Hexis, or habitus in its Latin translation, means that History is not a continuous flux, an unattainable sequence of ungraspable moments, like a Heraclitean river, a Cratylean flux, or a Post-Modern sequence of alterities. Hexis is a sort of mediation between dynamis and energeia.48 Maximus admits the element of

45

CGn 1.3, 1084ΒC; AI 65, 1392AΒ.

46

For a comprehension of God’s logoi as God’s propositions for nature, see Nikolaos

Loudovikos, Ἡ κλειστὴ πνευματικότητα καὶ τὸ νόημα τοῦ ἐαυτού. Ὁ μυστικισμὸς τῆς ἰσχύος καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια φύσεως καὶ προσώπου [Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of the Self: Christian Mysticism of Power and the Truth of Personhood and Nature] (Athens: Ellinika Grammata, 1999), 191. 47 For this subject see the excellent works: Philipp Gabriel Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme. Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur, Cogitatio fidei 229 (Paris: Cerf, 2003); David Houston Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Torstein T. Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Torstein T. Tollefsen, Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 48 An interesting example of the relation between hexis and energeia in the domain of human will is given in TP1, 17C.

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dynamis, that is of fluidity, but he also wants to introduce in his thought the element of hexis determined by the person as a stance inside History.49 If dynamis is the changeability (τροπή) in the departure of History, hexis is a personal historical mode, which stabilizes for a while this flux in order to express a personal disposition or stance like a crystallization of the historical dynamic (possibly reminding the view of art by Arthur Schopenhauer as a representation that crystallizes will’s vain hunting). Hexis is a mode of disposition of a person towards what is happening in History. It could thus be considered as a mediation between dynamis and energeia in the sense that in order to arrive at the actualization of nature, that is in order for nature to become something, it needs to pass from a personal modal and historical disposition. If dynamis and energeia mostly concern nature respectively in the departure of its trajectory and in its actualization, hexis is a personal dimension of being. At the same time, hexis can be considered as an anticipation of the eschatological stasis, in the sense that it is a relative stasis that dawns inside History before the final stasis in the eschaton. The position of energy in Maximus’ ontology means that on the one hand it is the person that actualizes nature and thus has a responsibility for its accomplishment. At the beginning of the dromos nature is a dynamis, but through the intervention of the person it is not only enhypostasized but also actualized, i.e., accomplished.50 The person is thus in dialogue with the divine logos of nature and proceeds to a historical negotiation of this logical call. Maximus sometimes uses a couple of terms “logos of nature”—“tropos of energy,” which together with the Cappadocian couple “logos of nature”—“tropos of existence” means that the person makes nature not only to sub-sist (ὑπό-στασις) but also to ek-sist (ἔκ-στασις) and to be actualized. It is exactly this combination of hypostasis, ekstasis and accomplishment / actualization that one could term a “dromic ontology.” But the energeia is distinguished from the stasis and this difference is very important. Inside History “takes place” a first actualization of nature through the hypostatical mode of existence, but this happens in view of the eschatological stasis. The distinction between energeia and stasis means exactly that as Christians we are not content with a simple actualization of nature, but our goal is beyond that in the eschatological enhypostatization of nature in the person of Christ and its consequent divinization. This eschatological mode of enhypostatization is inaugurated by the historical Res49 50

See, for example, QThal 29.21, 59.28–66. For the relation between essence, movement, and energeia see, for example, CGn

1.3, 1084ΒC.

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urrection, but will be manifested in all its ontological fullness in the eschaton, when it will be shown that human nature in its catholicity is received and actualized by the hypostasis of the Logos, including the multiple human persons. Every historical actualization of nature thus happens in view of the eschatological stasis. The distinction between energeia and stasis is also formulated through the term argia (rest). This means that the actualization of nature by the energeia is no guarantee that this particular actualization will survive in the eschaton as it is. After the actualization there is a put to rest by death. This death is not only a mystery that shows the otherness of mortal creation from the Immortal God. After the Crucifixion of Christ death is also something we could assume deliberately (ἑκούσιον πάθος), not of course in an absolute sense like Christ Who is absolutely free, but by the grace of martyrdom. By this voluntary death we put to rest the historical actualization of nature. The stasis of the eschaton is a new actualization after the resurrection. Nevertheless, it is not a creatio ex nihilo but a creatio ex vetere. This means that the historical energeia might survive, even though we should remain apophatic about that and not wish to impose our conceptions on God’s freedom. What we mean is that Maximus has formulated his eschatological hope by the term “διάθεσις” (disposition), which means that each person in the eschaton will retain a formation of her hypostatic receptivity according to her historical mode (TP1 21D–8A). The historical energeia is thus not something that will be thrown to rubbish by death. We have a very serious responsibility for our historical energeia, since according to Maximus nature is waiting for us as persons to actualize it, even if we hope that in the end it will be actualized by Christ and thus saved by Him. The relation between energeia, argia and stasis is expressed through the biblical image of the sixth, the seventh and the eighth day.51 The sixth day corresponds to the energeia—actualization of being inside History as a preparation (Παρασκευή in its etymological sense). The seventh day corresponds to the repose of Sabbath,52 where the world is crucified and buried with Christ, since, as insists Maximus, “all the phenomena need crucifixion, … and all the intelligibles need burial.”53 The eighth day is the stasis in

51

See, for example, CGn 1.35, 1096C–7A. For the particularly Christian conception of the Judaic Sabbath by Maximus, see CGn 1.35. 53 CGn 1.67, 1108B: “Τὰ φαινόμενα πάντα δεῖται σταυροῦ, … τὰ δὲ νοούμενα πάντα 52

χρῄζει ταφῆς.”

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the ana-stasis, where being is resurrected in another form (“ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ,” Mark 16:12). The fact that Maximus integrates rest (ἀργία) in his dromic ontology shows that he wants to provoke a break in a closed Greek ontology through a biblical Judeo-Christian element. The goal of being is not only to be fulfilled like in the Aristotelian trajectory from potentiality to actuality, but also to be crucified so that it be resurrected only through crucifixion. The characteristic example that helps us understand this dialectic is the Christ’s prayer at Gethsemane.54 The prayer as is exposed by Maximus contains three ontological moments. (i) Christ as a man expresses and affirms His natural will to live. In this way Christ actualizes the will for life (the importance of which was conceived by Maximus much before Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) in a kind of sixth day. (ii) This will for life does not take the form of an egoistic survival at all costs of the sort of a “live and let die.” On the contrary, the will for life is put at “rest” through the crucifixion of its natural self-sufficiency and is referred to the divine will of the Father. (iii) It is only though this argia that the human will of Christ (as well as of all of us) for life will be eschatologically fulfilled as a communion of life through the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. There is thus a certain dialectic between energeia, argia, and stasis that is expressed somehow poetically as a dialectic between the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth day. The seventh day means that very often God’s will does not consist of a one-sided celebration of nature, but also of its frustration, of its limitation, at least in its lapsarian claim for self-sufficiency, so that it may be accomplished in an eschatological stasis that comes after the argia of the seventh day. A similar triple schema is that of the historical time (χρόνος), the eon (αἰών), and the eschatological ever-moving stasis (ἀεικίνητος στάσις).55 54

See the analysis in: François-Marie Léthel, Théologie de l’agonie du Christ. La liberté humaine du Fils de Dieu et son importance sotériologique mises en lumière par saint Maxime le Confesseur, Théologie historique 52 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1979); Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor, The Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 140–7. 55 See Vasilios Betsakos, Στάσις ἀεικίνητος. Ἡ ἀνακαίνιση τῆς Ἀριστοτελικῆς κινήσεως στὴ θεολογία Μαξίμου τοῦ Ὁμολογητοῦ [Ever-Moving Repose: The Renewal of Aristotelian Movement in the Theology of Maximus the Confessor] (Athens: Armos, 2006); Sotiris Mitralexis, Ever-moving Repose: A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time (Eugene, OR: Cascade / Wipf &

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The time of the sixth day is when beings are actualized. In the eon, we have a sort of crystallization of the finalities, which are activated through History, in a seventh day of rest. And in the eighth day, beings are resurrected in another mode of temporality, i.e., in a stasis where being and nature are inside God the Logos, but also in another mode of motion, since God cannot be exhausted in this stasis and hence dawns another mode of temporality. We could understand this Maximian vision of the stasis, or rather the ever-moving stasis, through the expression that Christ is the “Locus of the Living” (“Χώρα τῶν Ζώντων”). The nature that is assumed and resurrected by Christ is not an individual nature, but the catholic nature of all of us. “Christ is Risen” means that we are all risen, something that can already be seen in the experience of the saints but will completely be manifested in the eschaton. By having entered the human nature of Christ as many filial modes inside the One Filiality, we continue to move in the eschaton, yet in another way, consisting of a coexistence of stasis and motion: Stasis, because the hypostatic union is a sort of Christian “unmoved prime mover,” to put it in an Aristotelian manner.56 That is the hypostatic union is an eschatological end, which moves History from its end, according to an eschatological teleology. Maximus receives but also transforms Aristotelianism, since in the end the ideal is not only the stasis, but also a sort of eternal movement which shows that the transcendent God cannot be exhausted. Though God has offered union with Him, he continues to set off a movement towards Him. As we have observed, God is in Himself beyond Being. Nevertheless, in the stasis of eschatological Christology, God offers Being. Eschatological Christology is in the end an Ontology, but an Ontology of a Being that is at the same time in rest and in movement. One could say that created nature, after having received ontology by grace, is at the same time at rest, exactly because it has received ontology, and in movement, because it moves towards a God that is in Himself beyond ontology. In this sense, even eschatological ontology is somehow a dromic ontology. With the important difference that is a dromos where we have already reached the terminus, but continue nevertheless to move “from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18)57 as the whole of humanity is united in an eschatological ecclesial mode.

Stock, 2017). 56 For an eschatological twist of Aristotelian teleology, see QThal 60.1–62; AI 7, 1069D. 57 See CGn 1.35, 1096C: “Ὅσα δὲ κατ’ ἀρετὴν ἐπιστήμη Θεοῦ κατεργάζεται, τελειωθέντα πάλιν κινεῖται πρὸς αὔξησιν. Τὰ γὰρ τέλη αὐτῶν ἑτέρων ἀρχαὶ

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(9) The Historical Responsibility of Ontology The fact that Maximus is using all these terms and concepts in order to formulate his Ontology might be exhausting for his reader or it might be difficult for an “exegete” to grasp his thought in a definite way. But this is exactly what dromic ontology is all about. It is an ontology “on the way,” where “concepts” that try to grasp it cannot fossilize it in static schemas. Hence the polysemy, the tension, and the poetic openness that are so characteristic of Maximus. By focusing on this dromic ontology we have tried to show the rhythm and the intensity of the Maximian vision rather than give final ontological answers. Another dimension of this complexity and of the tensions of Maximian thought is what we would call the “responsibility” of ontology. Maximus could be viewed as a very responsible thinker who tries to do justice to very different dimensions and moments of the human experience. For example, with the dynamis he is trying to express the fluidity of nature in its departure as well as the intensity in the dialogue with the divine logos for it. With the hexis, he is endeavoring to designate how the person who is hypostasizing nature takes a stance in this dialogue in a relative historical stability before the stasis par excellence at the eschatοn. With the energeia, his effort is to indicate the responsibility of human persons for the actualization of nature which is awaiting from us to be accomplished. With the argia, he stresses that this accomplishment might be a frustration of nature in its lapsarian demand for selfsufficiency. Consequently, the truth might be saved inside History not by the successful of this world, but by the defeated, by the “stones that are rejected” (1 Pet 2:7) in the buildings of History. With the stasis, he is trying to express the eschatological end of the hypostatic union between the created and the uncreated in Christ Who, as the final cause of creation, does not constitute merely a final episode, but is present already in the beginning of History. In order to understand this ontology of responsibility and the consequent responsibility of ontology, that is the responsibility of Maximus as a thinker when he is ontologizing, one should think what would be the case if one of the five dimensions of this ontology (δύναμις—ἕξις—ἐνέργεια— ἀργία—στάσις) was missing. An ontology without dynamis would be an ontology where nature would be accomplished and given in the beginning and where consequently the person could do nothing in regard to it than adopt an escapist attitude towards its necessity. In other words, it would

καθεστήκασιν.”

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entail a deterministic ontology, which would provoke the tendency of an imaginary flight out of it and into a voluntarist personal freedom. If, on the other hand, we had an ontology of energeia, without having at the same time an ontology of dynamis, then the result would be an ontology without tension between protology and eschatology, where historicity with all its adventure would be lost inside a tropos of the energy, which would be repeated again and again in a sort of automatic unhistorical ethos. In this case, the energeia would be one-dimensional and it could not become the same a dynamis for another energeia. Consequently, whoever is not coordinated with such an energeia, would be excluded as a sort of pariah condemned in an ontological anathema. In other words, an ontology of energeia without dynamis would be an ontology of tradition at the detriment of radical originality. An ontology without hexis would be a sort of Cratylean or Post-Modern (for example, Deleuzian) (non-)ontology of a perpetual historical flux, which would entail an unloving (ἀνέραστος) stance, since one cannot fall in love with a flux or relate to a river. An ontology without (historical) energeia would be a mutilated ontology, where the nature would remain non actualized. Thus the nature could but receive passively as a sort of platonic chora the forms that would come to dominate it from the outside, i.e., either from a platonic past or from the future of eschatological stasis in a sort of inverted Platonism. An ontology without historical energeia would mean that the History would be but a passive field where decisions outside History would come to be imposed upon it, or where static structures either from the protological past or from the eschatological future would come to dominate it. It would be an ontology where a sort of fearful structuralism would try to kill or at least repress the vigor and the unpredictability inherent in historicity. Inversely, an ontology without argia would be a moralist ontology that would celebrate moral achievements in a one-sided way. It would be an ontology of the winners, of petty-bourgeois families, where there would be no room for the defeated, for the foolishness for Christ, or even for monasticism in general, for what Giorgio Agamben terms “inoperativity” (inoperosità). It would be an ontological Kaiadas for all the stones that have been rejected, but will become the cornerstone (1 Pet 2:7). An ontology without argia would be an ontology without the Macarisms of the Sermon on the Mount, an ontology that would disregard the fact that God “has chosen the nonbeings in order to abolish the beings” (1 Cor 1:28), an ontology without the Cross (and possibly without Judgment). Finally, an ontology without stasis, that is without ever-moving stasis, would be an eternal world of Platonic souls, an ontology of immortality maybe, but not of historical incarnation and eschatological resurrection. It would be an ontology without Christ,

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or, if we are to admit the equation of Christology with Ontology, an Ontology without Ontology. It is exactly the great responsibility that Maximus shows as a thinker that makes him formulate a very elaborate, balanced and multidimensional ontological vision in order to do justice to all the tensions that exist in Christian spiritual life.

(10) Dromic Ontology as an Ontology of the Syn-od When developing Maximus’ ontology, I have not exposed the significance of the Judeo-Christian conception of the “Fall.” The reason is that I did not want to give a misleading impression that there are two ontologies, one before and one after the Fall. I believe that Maximian ontology is uniform, for the additional reason that the Fall has happened “simultaneously to the coming into being” (“ἅμα τῷ γενέσθαι,” AI 42, 1321B). There is thus no ideal pre-lapsarian state that has lasted in time. What is crucial is that most of the schemas of Maximian ontology such as logos—tropos—telos, being—well being—eternal well being, image—resemblance, αὐτεξούσιον— ἐλεύθερον, sixth—seventh—eighth day, dynamis—hexis—energeia—argia— stasis etc., which I have examined, are absolutely valid even after the Fall. Nevertheless, the Fall was for Maximus a historical event. If we are to evaluate the Fall inside a dromic ontology, we would say, borrowing an expression of the Metropolitan of Pergamon John (Zizioulas), that the Fall is a fall not from a perfect past where the perfection of man would have already been accomplished, but a Fall from the future, i.e., from what man might have achieved had he not fallen. In such a view, we can understand the meaning of Adam’s Fall only a posteriori by examining what was the case in Christ. In his dromic ontology, Maximus is also using the triple schema “according to nature”—“contrary to nature”—“beyond nature,” where the “according to nature” (κατὰ φύσιν) is the point of departure of a dromos which will eventually either fall into the “contrary to nature” (παρὰ φύσιν) or be assumed by the supernatural (ὑπὲρ φύσιν). To take one example that is already given, if the will for life is according to nature, this point of departure cannot stay as it is, but it will either fall in the egoism of survival at all costs, which is “contrary to nature,” or it will be assumed by the supernatural sharing of life through the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. What is then the difference between a lapsarian and a non-lapsarian mode of the dromos? One could put it in a very simple way that the Fall means having to make this dromos for one’s own, whereas the non-

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lapsarian mode would be to make this ontological dromos of History all together. For this reason the Fall has according to Maximus three components, namely egoism, pleasure, and gnome. Gnome means an initial disposition (διά-θεσις), which is initially connected to createdness and not to the Fall and which after the Fall has turned into a conflict (διά-στασις)58 inside nature and was tantamount to a very tragic fragmentation of it. The gnome means that in a fallen world the dromos takes place separately for each person. And exactly what the Church is trying to do is to cure this fragmentation by calling us to an ascetic coordination of our gnomic wills59 so that the ontological trajectory of History take place by all of us together.60 In the eschaton the gnomic will is conceded (AI 7, 1076ΒC) and it is therefore manifested that we are all members of a unique humanity that is received and resurrected by Christ as the “Locus of the Living” (Χώρα τῶν Ζώντων).61 The gnome ceases then to be a conflict (διάστασις) and survives after having been conceded as a sort of “post-gnomic” will that is termed διάθεσις (disposition). The latter does not entail fragmentation like the historical gnome, but does entail the possibility of a distinction between the “saved” and the “damned,” in the sense that each person has a particular disposition (διάθεσις)62 towards the omnipresence of God in Christ and in the Spirit. In the eschaton we expect thus the manifestation of what was inaugurated by the resurrection of the catholic human nature by Christ which we now anticipate in the Eucharist. The Maximian vision is that movement is continued in the eschaton as an ever-moving repose. Therefore, we hope that there will be some sort of movement in the eschaton, which will be different, and thus maybe some other mode of temporality, which would be entirely different from the diastematic time of History. There will be in the eschaton, we could hope, a sort of another ontology of the dromos, in another form, since we will have reached then the end of 58

See TP8 92Β; TP14 152C; PN 721–54.

59

Myst 919–921, 950–59.

60

This ideal is expressed in QThal 64.747–54: “ὧν δὲ διάθεσις ἡ αὐτή, καὶ ὁ κατ᾿ ἦθος

τρόπος καὶ ὁ τοῦ βίου δρόμος εἷς ὑπάρχειν προδήλως πέφυκεν· ὧν δὲ τρόπος ἠθῶν καὶ βίου δρόμος ἐστίν ὁ αὐτός, εἷς δηλονότι καὶ ὁ αὐτὸς κατὰ τὴν γνώμην τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους σχέσεως ὑπάρχει δεσμός, κατὰ μίαν τὴν γνώμην ἄγων τοὺς πάντας πρὸς τὸν ἕνα λόγον τῆς φύσεως, ἐν ᾧ παντελῶς οὐκ ἔστιν ἡ νῦν κρατοῦσα τῆς φύσεως διὰ τὴν φιλαυτίαν διαίρεσις.” 61 62

For the relevant eschatological vision of Maximus, see, for example, Myst 729–37. See, for example, QThal 59.159–70.

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the trajectory, but we will nevertheless continue to move. It will thus be a dromos made by all of us together, that is a syn-od. Thus, if the ontology of History is an ontology of the way (ὁδός), the ontology of the eschaton is an ontology of the syn-od (σύν-οδος). The latter means that we are all on the way together, inside the catholic human nature assumed by Christ as the “Locus of the Living” (Χώρα τῶν Ζώντων), i.e., as many sons by grace in the Spirit inside the hypostasis of the One Son Who is referring us to the Father. This etymological meaning of the syn-od could be seen as a Maximian version of the Heideggerian Mit-sein, i.e., not only being together, but moving together both in the historical dromos and in the eschatological ever-moving stasis. And it is this eschatological ontology of the syn-od that we anticipate in the syn-odicity of the Church inside History, not only in the Eucharist as an Ex-od and an Entrance (εἴσ-οδος), but also in the synods by which local Churches gather in order to manifest the synodical character of the Ec-clesia. Today, in an age where the synodical consciousness of the Orthodox Church is actively revived through the summoning of a Panorthodox Synod, our hope is that this dromic character of Christian ontology will be manifested anew. It is thus timely to formulate again our faith as to what we expect of the Church and its ontology: that is, we believe in the Ec-clesia as a syn-od, a being-together on the same way.

Bibliography von Balthasar, Hans Urs. Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor. Translated by Brian E. Daley. A Communio Book. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003. Bathrellos, Demetrios. The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor. The Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Betsakos, Vasilios. Στάσις ἀεικίνητος. Ἡ ἀνακαίνιση τῆς Ἀριστοτελικῆς κινήσεως στὴ θεολογία Μαξίμου τοῦ Ὁμολογητοῦ [Ever-Moving Repose: The Renewal of Aristotelian Movement in the Theology of Maximus the Confessor]. Athens: Armos, 2006. Bradshaw, David Houston. Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Bussanich, John. “Plotinus’s Metaphysics of the One.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, 38–65. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press,

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1996. Doucet, Marc. “Vues récentes sur les métamorphoses de la pensée de saint Maxime le Confesseur.” Science et Esprit 31, no. 3 (1979): 269–302. Doucet, Marcel. “Dispute de Maxime le Confesseur avec Pyrrhus. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes.” Ph.D. thesis, Université de Montréal, Institut d’Études Mediévales, 1972. Garrigues, Jean-Miguel. Maxime le Confesseur. La charité, avenir divin de l’homme. Théologie historique 38. Paris: Beauchesne, 1976. Karayiannis, Vasilios. Maxime le Confesseur. Essence et énergies de Dieu. Théologie historique 93. Paris: Beauchesne, 1993. Lacan, Jacques. “Problèmes cruciaux pour la psychanalyse. Séminaire [XII,] 1964–1965.” Edited by Michel Roussan. Paris: Editions de l’Association Freudienne Internationnal, 2000. Unofficial edition, commercially not available. Léthel, François-Marie. Théologie de l’agonie du Christ. La liberté humaine du Fils de Dieu et son importance sotériologique mises en lumière par saint Maxime le Confesseur. Théologie historique 52. Paris: Beauchesne, 1979. Loudovikos, Nicholas. Ὀρθοδοξία καὶ ἐκσυγχρονισμός. Βυζαντινὴ ἐξατομίκευση, κράτος καὶ ἱστορία, στὴν προοπτικὴ τοῦ εὐρωπαϊκοῦ μέλλοντος [Orthodoxy and Modernization: Byzantine Individualization, State and History, in the perspective of the European Future]. Athens: Armos, 2006.

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P. Constas. In Difficulties, 1:2–58. ———. Capita de caritate [Four Centuries on Charity]. In Capitoli sulla carità, edited by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo: 48–238. Rome: Editrice Studium, 1963. ———. Capita theologica et oeconomica [Gnostic Chapters]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 90: 1084A–173A. ———. Capita x de duplici uoluntate Domini (Theologica et polemica xxv) [Ten Chapters on the Two Wills of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 269D–73D. ———. De eo quod scriptum est, « Pater, si fieri potest, transeat a me calix » (Theologica et polemica vi) [A Comment on the Passage of Matthew, “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 65A–9A. ———. Disputatio cum Pyrrho [Dispute with Pyrrhus]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 288A–353B. ———. Distinctionum quibus res dirimuntur definitiones (Theologica et polemica xvii) [On Defining Distinctions]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 212C–3A. ———. Exemplum epistulae ad episcopum Nicandrum de duabus in Christo operationibus (Theologica et polemica viii) [Copy of an Epistle Addressed to the most Sacred Bishop, sir Nikander by Saint Maximus, on Two Operations in Christ]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 89C–112C. ———. Liber asceticus [On the Ascetical Life]. In Maximi Confessoris Liber asceticus, edited by Peter Van Deun and Steven Gysens: 4–123. CCSG 40. Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000. ———. Maximi Confessoris Opera Omnia, Tomus primus. Edited by François Combefis. Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca 90, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1865. ———. Maximi Confessoris Opuscula exegetica duo. Edited by Peter Van Deun. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 23. Turnhout: Brepols / Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991.

———. Mystagogia. In Maximi Confessoris Mystagogia: una cum latina interpretatione Anastasii bibliothecarii, edited by Christian Boudignon: 3–74. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 69. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Difficulties ———. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers. Edited and translated by Nicholas P. Constas. Vol. 1, Ambigua to Thomas; Ambigua to John 1–22, vol. 2, Ambigua to John, 23–71. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2014. PN ———. Orationis dominicae expositio [On the Our Father]. Edited

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by Peter Van Deun. CCSG 23: 27–73. ———. Quaestiones ad Thalassium. In Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium una cum Latina interpretatione Joannis Scotti Eriugenae iuxta posita, edited by Carl Laga and Carlos Steel: 7:3–539; 22:3–325. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 7, 22. Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1980–1990. ———. Quaestiones et dubia [Questions and Doubts]. In Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones et dubia, edited by José H. Declerck: 3– 170. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 10. Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1982. ———. Spiritualis tomus ac dogmaticus … ad sanctissimum Dorensem episcopum Stephanum (Theologica et polemica xv) [Spiritual and Dogmatic Tome … Addressed to Stephen the Most Holy Bishop of Dora]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 153B–84C. ———. Tomus dogmaticus ad Marinum presbyterum (Theologica et polemica xx) [Dogmatic Tome to the Priest Marinus]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 228A–45D. ———. Variae definitiones (Theologica et polemica xiv) [Various Definitions]. Edited by François Combefis. PG 91: 149B–53B. Maximus the Confessor, Thalassius, and Theodore Raïthu. Maximi Confessoris Opera Omnia, Tomus secundus, Thalassi Abatis, Theodori Raithuensis Opera. Edited by François Combefis, Franz Oehler, and André Galland. Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca 91, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. Paris: Migne, 1863. Mitralexis, Sotiris. Ever-moving Repose: A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time. Eugene, OR: Cascade / Wipf & Stock, 2017. O’Meara, Dominic J. Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Renczes, Philipp Gabriel. Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme. Recherches sur l’anthropologie théologique de saint Maxime le Confesseur. Cogitatio fidei 229. Paris: Cerf, 2003. Taylor, Charles. Hegel. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Tollefsen, Torstein T. Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ———. The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Yannaras, Christos. De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu, d’après les écrits aréopagitiques et Martin Heidegger. Translated by Jacques Touraille. Théologie sans frontières 21. Paris:

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Cerf, 1971. ———. Person and Eros. Translated by Norman Russell. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2007. ———. Philosophie sans rupture. Translated by André Borrély. Perspective orthodoxe 7. Genève: Labor et fides, 1981. Žižek, Slavoj. On Belief. Thinking in Action. London; New York: Routledge, 2001. ———. The Fragile Absolute; or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting for? Wo Es war. London; New York: Verso, 2000. ———. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. Short Circuits. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Zizioulas, John. Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church. Edited by Paul McPartlan. London; New York: T & T Clark, 2006.

Chapter 5

Time in Islamic Kalām Mohamed Basil Altaie 1. Introduction In Arabic “kalām” means speech (or a collection of words).1 However, it also means “dialogue” or “discourse,” and this is the meaning which was intended for Islamic kalām. In its philosophical content, kalām is a collection of concepts, assumptions, principles and problems that attempt to explain the relationship between God and the physical world following the basics of the Islamic creed. Kalām was classified into Jaleel al-Kalām and Daqīq al-Kalām. The former is the part dealing with problems related to the divine attributes, the resurrection of the dead, and questions related to the divine knowledge, will, and power. On the other hand, Daqīq al-Kalām deals with problems of natural philosophy, most prominent of which is the question of the temporality or eternity of the world and the question of causality. This led to discussions of the concepts of space, time, motion and many other aspects of the physical world. Using Ian Barbour’s terminology,2 Jaleel al-Kalām may be called “natural theology,” whereas Daqīq al-Kalām is the “theology of nature.” Despite the fact that the subject of kalām has been largely ignored, I feel that Daqīq al-Kalām has much to offer for philosophical and scientific interest, particularly to contemporary philosophy of physics.3 Indeed, “The 1

This chapter is a revised version of the original version which was presented in a conference about Einstein, God and Time held at Ian Ramsey Center of Oxford University, 12–15 September 2005. 2 Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science (London: SCM Press, 1998), 100. 3 Mohammed B. Altaie, “Daqīq al-Kalām: The Islamic Approach to the Philosophy of Nature,” paper presented at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, January 2005. Also see Alnoor Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalām: Atoms, Space, and Time in Basrian Muʻtazili Cosmology (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Alnoor Dhanani, “Problems in Eleventh Century Kalām Physics,” paper delivered at the Conference on Science and Islam, the Royal Institute of Inter-Faith Studies, Amman-Jordan,

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Kalām Cosmological Argument” devised by William Craig4 is just one contemporary example in a whole field of ideas, concepts, and arguments that can be utilized by the modern philosophy of science. However, the subject is in such a state now that it cannot lend itself to an effective role without being purified, reformulated and harmonized with modern philosophy. A great deal of painstaking work needs to be done in order to qualify Daqīq al-Kalām for a contemporary role. Much of the contemporary debates about the existence of God and the philosophical implications of a universe that has a beginning in time5 were subject matter of hot discussions among the mutakallimūn during the eight–eleventh centuries. Sometimes one can spot similarities between the old arguments of the mutakallimūn and contemporary arguments advanced by opponents and proponents of God’s existence. The aim of this limited study is to expose some of the original thoughts of Muslims, namely the mutakallimūn, about the notion of time in the hope that it may provoke more detailed and fully accounted studies.

2. The Two Main Schools of Kalām Mutakallimūn formed two main schools, the Muʻtazilites who were the first to be formed, and the Ashʻarites. The main pioneers of the Muʻtazilites were Wasil Ibn Atta’ (d. 748), Amr Ibn ʻUbaed (d. 762), Abul-Huthail al-Allaf (d. 841), Ibrahim al-Naẓẓām (d. 835), and al-Jaḥiẓ (d. 868). Later generations of Muʻtazilites include Abu Al-Hussein Al-Khayyāṭ (d. 912) and Abu al-Kāssim al-Balkhī (sometimes called al-Kabī, d. 931), Abu Ali al-Jubba’ī (d. 915) and his Son Abu Hāshim al-Jubbā’ī (d. 933). Some of the original works of these prominent Muʻtazilites were preserved through the monographs written by Qaḍī Abdul-Jabbār al-Hamadānī (d. 1024), who wrote an extensive monograph about Muʻtazilites that preserved much of their original thought, and his students Abu Rashīd al-Naysabūrī (d. 1048) and al-Hasan ibn Mattaweyh (d. 1060), who wrote books preserving a good deal of the opinions of early Muʻtazilites on the subjects of Daqīq al-Kalām.

August 2001. 4 William L. Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument (London;Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979). 5 See for example: Quentin Smith, “Quantum Cosmology’s Implication of Atheism,” Analysis 57, no. 4 (1997): 295–304 and the references therein, doi:10.1093/analys/ 57.4.295.

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The Ashʻarites school was formed by Abu al-Hasan al-Ashʻarī (d. 935) who broke away from the Muʻtazilites and formed a new school of thought within the trends of Kalām. Beside al-Ashʻari the most prominent contributors to Ashʻarites kalām was Abu Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 1012), and later Abu alMaʻālī al-Jūaynī (d. 1085) who wrote some excellent monographs on Daqīq al-Kalām and Jaleel al-Kalām. In later times, the Ashʻarite kalām was reformulated by Azud al-dīn al-Ijī (d. 1355) who can be considered the last of the classical Mutakallimūn. Ibn Ḥazm al-Zāhirī (988-1063) was one of the Islamic thinkers who summarized some of the most fundamental opinions and views of Daqīq alKalām in the first volume of his treatise Al-fisal fi Al-Milal wa Al-Ahwa’ wa AlNihal,6 in which he reviewed the different Islamic factions and religious groups. Abu Hamid Al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), a most prominent Islamic thinker, disputed the views of philosophers in his famous book Tahāfut al-Falāsifa, i.e., The Incoherence of the Philosophers.7 In this he discussed at length the propositions of philosophers and countered them mostly with the views other mutakallimūn. In this paper I will draw chiefly from these two thinkers.

3. Resources of Kalām The resources of kalām are quite different from those of classical natural philosophy, including the philosophy of the Greeks. Mutakallimūn considered the Qur’an to be the prime source for their knowledge of the world, and accordingly they sought to achieve an understanding of the world based on the stipulations of the Qur’an. Richard Walzer summarized this by saying that “Mutakallimūn followed a methodology that is distinct from that of the philosophers in that they take the truth of Islam as their starting point.”8 This is the main reason why we find that kalām concepts are different in meaning and implication from their counterpart in the Greek and Indian philosophies. The approach of the mutakallimūn to understand the world can be presented as follows: 6 7

Ibn Ḥazm, Kitāb al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal wa al-Ahwʾwa al-Niḥal, Cairo, 1964.

Al-Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. Michael Marmura (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1997). 8 Richard Walzer, “Early Islamic Philosophy,” in The Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. Arthur H. Armstrong (Cambridge University Press, 1970), 648.

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God → Reason → the World This is just opposite to the approach of the Greek philosophers, which can be presented by the sequence The World → Reason → God Effectively, the same difference applies to Muslim philosophers as opposed to the mutakallimūn, except in that the Muslim philosophers adopted a more compromising approach. William Craig recognized this point clearly by saying that The main difference between a Mutakallim (practitioner of kalām) and a Failasūf (philosopher) lies in the methodological approach to the object of their study: while the practitioner of kalām takes the truth of Islam as his starting-point, the man of philosophy, though he may take pleasure in the rediscovery of Qur’anic principles, does not make them his starting-point, but follows a method of research independent of dogma, without, however, rejecting the dogma or ignoring it in its sources.9

Obviously this does not rule out the possibility that some of the mutakallimūn, especially those appearing at later times, i.e., after the twelfth century and after, were probably influenced one way or another by Greek and Indian philosophies. Original studies, however, show that the Greek influence in kalām is very minor and only speculative10. As to the methodology which was followed by the mutakallimūn, one finds that they used rational argumentation in defense of their propositions and reasoning. None of them was concerned with any sort of mathematical proof, although most of them used profound geometric and physical realization of the world as one main argument in presenting their views. An example of this can be seen in the argument presented by alGhazālī in Tahāfut.11

9

Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument, 17 and references therein. Shlomo Pines, Beitrage zur Islamischen Atomenlehre (Berlin: Heine, 1939). Arabic translation by Muhammad Aburida, (Cairo: Nanda, 1946), 120. It is notable that Wolfson, for example, failed to trace any Greek or Indian origin for Islamic atomism despite the fact that the concept of Atomism was already present with the Greek and Indians before kalām, so he had no choice but to resort to some speculative and unsound assumption that Muslims may have picked up their ideas “from spurious doxographies, either translated from the Greek or originally composed Arabic.” Ibid., 474. 11 Al-Ghazālī, Incoherence, 24–7. 10

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4. The Main Principles of Daqīq al-Kalām Despite the differing views expressed by the mutakallimūn who followed different schools, we find that almost all of them have subscribed to certain common basic principles, which they proposed in order to understand nature. I will proceed to distinguish five main principles:12 (a) Temporality The mutakallimūn proposed that the world is not eternal but was created some finite time in the past.13 Space and time had no meaning and never existed before the creation of the world.14 They defended this view using many logical and demonstrative arguments. Despite the fact that some of the mutakallimūn believed that the original creation took place out of a pre-existing form of matter, the dominant view of the mutakallimūn in this respect is that creation took place ex nihilo, i.e., out of nothing.15 (b) Discretenes The mutakallimūn assumed that all entities in the world are composed of a finite number of fundamental elements which are called Jawhar (essence),16 each of which is a non-divisible entity that has no parts. Although it is sometimes called “substance,” jawhar is rather an abstract entity that does not acquire its physical properties unless occupied by an ʻaraḍ (i.e.,

12

Mohammed B. Altaie, “The Scientific Value of Dakik al-Kalām,” The Journal of Islamic Thought and Scientific Creativity, 4 (1994),. Maimonides in his book The Guide to the Perplexed calls these principles propositions. He mentions twelve of them. Here I summarize these in five principles articulated in a modern more economic form. 13 The best available account of this principle was given by Al-Ghazālī in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. 14 Craig, The Kalām Cosmological argument, 63. 15 Husam M. Al-Alousī, The Problem of Creation in Islamic Thought: Qur'ān, Hadith, and Kalām (Baghdad: The National Printing and Publishing Co., 1965); also his A Dialogue between Philosophers and Mutakallimūn (Beirut: Arab Foundation for Studies, 1980), 59. Also, see Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām (Harvard University Press, 1976), 359–72. 16 The term “Jawhar” and “al-Jawhar” are the same, however the term “al-Jawhar alfard” is the term given to the non-divisible entity out of which all things of the world are composed. See S. Pines, Beitrage zur Islamischen Atomenlebre for a detailed account on this terminology. It is also of importance to point that the term atom (as originally defined within the Greek philosophy) does not accurately correspond to the Islamic atom. There are some basic differences between the Greek atom and the Islamic atom (see Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, 471–72).

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attribute).17 These are ever-changing attributes. This was expressed by saying that no attribute can be maintained for two successive instants. Discreteness applies not only to material bodies but also to space, time, motion, energy (heat), and all other properties of matter. (c) Continuous Creation The mutakallimūn assumed that the world has to be re-created every moment;18 they say “the ʻaraḍ do not stay two moments.” They accommodated this idea by proposing that the world is in a state of continuous creation, i.e., that once it is created, it is immediately annihilated, and so forth. For some reason or another, the mutakallimūn associated this action of recreation with ʻaraḍ rather than with the jawhar. But once we know that the jawhar cannot stand without ʻaraḍ, we realize that the process of recreation is for both. By such a process God stands as the sustainer of the world. (d) Indeterminism The mutakallimūn considered the laws of nature (the natural phenomena) to be contingent and undetermined.19 Consequently they considered events taking place in nature to be probabilistic rather than deterministic. This resulted in rejecting the existence of natural deterministic causality.20 The mutakallimūn also rejected the Greek four basic elements.21

17

It is sometimes claimed that the Jawhar is a magnitudeless entity (see Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, 472), but in fact this identification is not unanimous since, although Muʻtazilites have considered the Jawhar to be magnitudeless. Ashʻarites

consider it to have some magnitude, see Al-Juwayni, Al-Shāmil Fi Usul Addīn (Cairo, 1969), 159. 18 Apart from Al-Juwayni’s Al-Shamil Fi Usul Addīn, see also Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalām, 392–409. 19 This view echoes with the philosophy of quantum theory viewed according to the interpretation of the Copenhagen school; see Max Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Theory (New York: Wiley, 1974). 20 However, this does not mean that that the mutakallimūn rejected causal relation or the existence of cause and effect, rather they believed in such relations but only to the extent that it would reflect our own logic rather than having to play the role of full control of nature by itself. This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood problems of kalām. 21 See, for example, Al-Bāqillānī, Kitāb Tamhīd al-Awāil, ed. ʻImad Aldīn Hayder (Beirut: Mūʻssasat al-Kutub al-Thaqafiyyah, 1987.

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(e) Integrated Space-time The mutakallimūn had the understanding that space has no meaning on its own; without having a body we cannot realize the existence of space. So is the case with time, which cannot be realized without the existence of motion which, in turn, needs a body to be affected. This means that space, time, and the body are interconnected to form a composed entity. This is the main point that will be investigated in this paper. The fact that different schools of kalām presented different details of these general principles has sometimes given an undue appearance of contradiction. However, the main trend of their works fell on the opposite side to the views of Islamic philosophers like Avicenna, al-Fārābī and Averroes. On the other hand, it should be pointed out that some of alKindī's propositions concerning space and time agree, to large extent, with those of the mutakallimūn, especially the views of Ibn Ḥazm and alGhazālī.22 I will not take this point any further in this paper since I will be limiting its scope to an examination and discussion of Ibn Ḥazm and alGhazālī.

5. The Definition of Time First let us briefly discuss the definitions of time according to the mutakallimūn. Al- Ashʻarī quotes Abul-Huthaīl saying that “time is the duration between one action and another,”23 while Al-Jurjānī (d. 1413) in his short dictionary of kalām and philosophical terms defines time as “a known renewable that is used to specify another which is unknown.”24 This may be explained by saying that time is always defined to mean “timing” so that it is always connected with an event. This meaning was pointed to by al-Ashʻari when he said: “some [Mutakallimūn] considered time to be the timing of a thing; if you say I will come when Zaid comes then you have timed your coming with that of Zaid.”25 Obviously this kind of definition is very condensed and would be more readily understood in the original Arabic. However, according to Ibn Ḥazm, time is defined to be “the duration within which a particle would exist motionless or in motion, and if it 22

Husam Al-Alousī, Time in Ancient Religious and Philosophical Thought (Beirut, 1980), 144.

23

Al-Ashʻarī, Maqālāt al-Islamiyyīn wa Ikhtilaf al-Muṣallīn, ed. Helmut Ritter

(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980), Maqālāt, 443. 24 Al-Jurjānī, Kitab Al-Ta'reefat, ed. G ustav Flügel (Leipzig: Vogell, 1845), 19. 25

Al-Ashʻarī, Maqālāt al-Islamiyyīn wa Ikhtilaf al-Muṣallīn, ed. Helmut Ritter

(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980), Maqālāt, 443.

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(the time) is separated from the body, then the body will cease to exist and the time will cease to exist too.”26 In this definition time is directly connected with motion and the existence of a body that is the subject of the motion. This is why Ibn Ḥazm repeatedly referred to this definition of time throughout his discussion of the creation of the world.

6. The Main Aspects of Time in Kalām The problem of time was discussed in Islamic kalām within the context of the subject of the creation of the universe. I can specify the main aspects of time in Islamic kalām by the followings27: (a) Space-time Integrity In Arabic the term space means: the surface that confines a body from all or part of its sides. They used this term to describe the volume occupied by the body. Mutakallimūn considered space and time always to be co-existing, and that neither space nor time can exist independently. On the other hand, both space and time were considered to be a property of the physical world that would not exist in the absence of bodies. Ibn Ḥazm says, Time is the duration through which an object stays at rest or in motion, and if the object is to be deprived of this [rest or motion] then that object will cease to exist and time will cease to exist too. Since the object and the time both do exist, therefore they both co-exist.28

Bodies themselves would not exist without motion; rest itself was considered by some of the mutakallimūn to be a kind of simultaneous motion in two opposite directions. al-Ashʻarī, who is famous for his collection of the kalām heritage, says that he read a book of al-Naẓẓām in which he says, “I cannot understand rest except that the body has moved there in two instants.”29 This I understand to be successive movements in two opposite directions.

26

Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 61. Mohammed B. Altaie, Daqīq al-Kalām (Amman: 2009). An English translation of this book is in press. 28 Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 61. 27

29

Al-Ashʻarī, Maqālāt, 318.

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(b) The Relativity of Time Space and time were both considered to be dependent on the relative position of the observer: forward and backward, “above” and “below” are all considered to be spatial assignments that depend on the reference; likewise “before” and “after” were considered to be relative. Al-Ghazālī expressing his views on this point said: All this is due to the inability of the estimative [faculty] to comprehend an existence that has a beginning except by supposing a (before) for it. This (before) from which the estimation does not detach itself is believed to be a thing realized and existing, namely, time. This is similar to the inability of the estimation to suppose the finitude of body overhead, for example, except in terms of a surface that has an above, thereby imagining that beyond the world there is no place, either filled or void. Thus, if it is said that there is no “above” above the surface of the world and no distance more distant than it, the estimation holds back from acquiescing to it, just as if it is said that before the world’s existence there is no (before) which is realized in existence, [and the estimation] shies away from accepting it.30 All this is due to the inability of the estimative [faculty] to comprehend an existence that has a beginning except by supposing a (before) for it. This (before) from which the estimation does not detach itself is believed to be a thing realized and existing, namely, time. This is similar to the inability of the estimation to suppose the finitude of body overhead, for example, except in terms of a surface that has an above, thereby imagining that beyond the world there is no place, either filled or void. Thus, if it is said that there is no “above” above the surface of the world and no distance more distant than it, the estimation holds back from acquiescing to it, just as if it is said that before the world’s existence there is no (before) which is realized in existence, [and the estimation] shies away from accepting it.31

Mutakallimūn rejected the notion of absolute space and absolute time. When discussing the notion of absolute space and absolute time according to the understanding of the philosophers, Ibn Ḥazm says, And their time and space is not the space that we know, nor it is the time that we know, because the space that we know is the one that surrounds the localized [body] from all or some of its sides, … and the time that we know is the duration through which an object would stay at rest or in motion or the duration of the existence of the accident in a body, or in general we would say the duration of an orbit, … and they say that absolute time

30 31

Al-Ghazālī, Incoherence, 32–33. Al-Ghazālī, Incoherence, 32–33.

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Chapter 5 and absolute space are something else other than what we have defined by space and time and those are independent.32

Ibn Ḥazm rejected the independence of absolute space and absolute time that was adopted by philosophers. Beside his basic objection to the notion of absoluteness, he says And they say that this [absolute] space and absolute time are independent of each other, so we ask if they are as such what then separated them apart? Then if they claim that something separated them apart, they have to admit some composition to them of their genus which would have separated them.33

Al-Ghazālī treated space and time on an equal footing in respect of being both relative in extension, and being observer dependent, he said: Similarly, it will be said that just as spatial extension34 is a concomitant of body; temporal extension35 is a concomitant of motion. And just as the proof for the finitude of the dimensions of the body prohibits affirming a spatial dimension beyond it, the proof for the finitude of motion at both ends prohibits affirming a temporal extension before it, even though the estimation clings to its imagining it and its supposing it, not desisting from [this]. There is no difference between temporal extension that in relation [to us] divides verbally into “before” and “after” and spatial extension that in relation [to us] divides into “above” and “below.” If, then, it is legitimate to affirm an “above” that has no above, it is legitimate to affirm a “before” that has no real before, except an estimative imaginary [one] as with the “above.”36

(c) Time Finiteness and Discreteness Discreteness was one main principle, among several others, that Mutakallimūn proposed as being a basic feature of the physical world. The discrete structure was applied to everything in nature. Specifically time was thought to be composed of tiny units, each of which was called “ānah.” Mutakallimūn, believing that the age of the universe was finite, assumed that the number of instants is denumerable. Ibn Ḥazm says: Any object in the world and every accident in an object and every time are all finite and have a beginning. We see this sensibly and objectively because the finiteness of an object is obvious through its size and through the time of its existence. The finiteness of time happens though what comes next to the past, and the exhaustion of every time [period] after its existence, as now is the limit of it, and it is this [now] which separates the two times; the

32

Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 72. Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 75. 34 In the original Arabic text it is called “spatial dimension.” 35 In the original Arabic text it is called “time dimension.” 36 Al-Ghazālī, Incoherence, 31. 33

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past and the future and it is as such that one time ends and another would start.37

He also says: “And every period of time is composed of finite instants that have beginnings.”38 While other mutakallimūn contributed to the concept of discrete time,39 it seems that al-Ghazālī did not have much to say on this point, perhaps because overall he had little interest in the principle of discreteness. Today physical time is considered to be continuous; however, the known laws of physics are valid only to a limit defined by the so-called Planck time of about 10-43 seconds. Moreover, unifying quantum theory with general relativity may require some sort of time quantization. This is very much expected in the light of new theories of quantum gravity.40

7. The Concept of Motion From their conception of space and time the mutakallimūn formulated their understanding of motion as being discrete, and asserted that the trajectory of motion is composed of successive “stationary instants.”41 Accordingly they maintain that a body is seen moving faster than another only because the number of “stationary points” along its trajectory is small compared to that along the trajectory of the other slower body.42 However, the famous Muʻtazilite al-Naẓẓām believed that motion on the microscopic level takes place in discrete jumps called “tafra.” According to my understanding, al-Naẓẓām was driven to this conclusion because although he believed in a non-discrete space, he believed in discrete time, so he had to explain motion by assuming that the particle is covering space through jumps or leaps.43 Max Jammer held this understanding of al-

37

Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 57. Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 57. 39 See Ibn Matawayh, Altathkira Fi al-Jawaher wa al-A'radh, ed. Samī Naṣr Lutf, Fayṣal Bader ʽŪn and Ibrahīm Madkor (Cairo, 1973). 38

40

Arkady Kheyfets and Warner A. Miller, “Geometrodynamic Quantization and Time Evolution in Quantum Gravity,” 1994, arXiv:gr-qc/9412037v1. 41 The different views of Mutakallimūn of this concept of motion is presented in more details in the book of Al-Ashʻarī (see Kitab Makalat, 21–5). 42

Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedländer, 2nd ed. (Lon-

don: Routledge  / New York: Dutton,, 1904), 202. 43 This idea of Al-Naẓẓām and the motivations behind it need to be studied in much more details. Unfortunately we have no original documents of Al-Naẓẓām and whatever we know about him is drawn from books of his followers or critiques.

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Naẓẓām to be the oldest realization of a quantum motion. According to him, “in fact al-Naẓẓām’s notion of leap, his designation of an analyzable inter-phenomenon, may be regarded as an early forerunner of Bohr’s conception of quantum jumps.”44

8. What can be Outside the Universe? Starting from their original concept that space, time, and matter do exist simultaneously, are inter-dependent, and would not exist without the existence of matter, the mutakallimūn asserted that there is no outside to the world. Al-Ghazālī discussed this point at length in his book Tahāfut alFalāsifa while trying to refute the philosopher’s views in respect to their claim that the world is eternal. After a somewhat lengthy argumentation, al-Ghazālī says, “It is thus established that beyond the world there is neither void nor filled space, even though the estimation does not acquiesce to accepting [this].”45 In fact this point was already raised by Ibn Ḥazm while discussing the notion of absolute space.46

9. Time and God before the Creation of the Universe Because space, time, and motion do not exist without the matter that is given its existence in the physical universe, the mutakallimūn did not see any meaning in the idea of space and time before the creation of the universe. As for the presence of God before the creation of the universe, they assumed that God exists outside the effect of space and time. This, in fact, is an essential part of the basic Islamic creed. God is not a physical entity, so it would be logical not to assign any physical existence to him. This is why believing in God in Islamic faith is actually a matter of “surrender” or “submission” rather than a rational problem that can be analyzed, proved or disproved by reasoning. And although the pioneering mutakallimūn discussed the existence of God in much detail, they considered the rational approach to be a sort of guide to believers rather than a path to solid proof. “Proving” or “disproving” the existence of God are by definition futile enterprises: the matter is best left to faith. Al-Ghazālī was a prominent thinker who discussed the question of the existence of time before the creation of the universe. He first discusses the question of the meaning of “before” and “after” to show that these two terms are relative and observer-dependent, similar to the terms “above”

44

Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Theory, 259. Al-Ghazālī , Incoherence, 33. 46 Ibn Ḥazm, Fisal, 73–75. 45

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and “below.” Al-Ghazālī further discusses the possibility for the universe to have been created smaller or larger and he concludes that there is nothing against this possibility47; consequently he asks whether such an outside is void or full. His answer was that it can be neither void nor full, as in such a case it would be part of our universe. Therefore he concluded that there should be no outside to the universe. Analogously, he argued that there is no time before the creation of the universe. Al-Ghazālī says: “When one means by outside the world something other than its surface, then one should say there is no exterior to the world.”48 This agrees very well with the up to date vision of spacetime as viewed by the general theory of relativity.

10. Summary The notion of time in Islamic kalām can be summarized with the following aspects: 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

Time is the measurable duration between events. It has no meaning without events and without the existence of the universe. Time is interconnected with space. Time is discrete, being composed of individual nondivisible tiny instances. Time is observer-dependent in respect of the definition of priorities, like space. Absolute time and absolute space do not exist.

Substantiated studies in this topic are needed in order to establish broader and more precisely focused views on this subject.

Bibliography Al-Alousī, Husām Muhī Eldīn. A Dialogue between Philosophers and Mutakallimūn. Beirut: Arab Foundation for Studies, 1980. ———. The Problem of Creation in Islamic Thought: Qur'ān, Hadith and Kalām, Baghdad: The National Printing and Publishing Co., 1965. ———. Time in Ancient Religious and Philosophical Thought. Beirut, 1980. Al-Ashʻarī, Abul-Hasan. Kitab Makalat al-Islamiyin wa-Ikhtilaf al-Musallin. Edited by Helmut Ritter. Constantinople, 1929–1930. ———. Maqālāt al-Islamiyyīn wa Ikhtilaf al-Muṣallīn. Edited by Helmut Ritter. 47

Mohammed B. Altaie, “The Size of the Universe between Al-Ghazālī and Averroes” [in Arabic], Abhath Al-Yarmouk 22, no. 1 (2006). 48 Al-Ghazālī, Incoherence, 35.

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Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. Al-Bāqillānī, Abu Bakr. Kitāb Tamhīd al-Awāil wa Talkhīṣ al-Dalaʻl. Edited by Aldīn Hayder. Beirut: Mūʻssasat al-Kutub al-Thaqafiyyah, 1987. ———. Kitab Tamhīd al-Awāil. Edited by Aldīn Hayder. Beirut, 1987. Al-Ghazālī. The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Translated by Michael Marmura. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1997. Al-Jurjānī. Kitab Al-Ta'reefat. Edited by Gustav Flügel. Leipzig: Vogell, 1845. Al-Juwayni, Abu al-Ma’ali. Al-Shāmil Fi Usul Addīn. Cairo, 1969. Altaie, Mohammed B. Daqīq al-Kalām. Amman: 2009. ———. “Daqīq al-Kalām: The Islamic Approach to the Philosophy of Nature.” Paper presented at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, January 2005. ———. “The Scientific value of Dakik al-Kalām.” The Journal of Islamic Thought and Scientific Creativity 4 (1994): 7–18. ———. “The Size of the Universe between Al-Ghazālī and Averroes” [In Arabic]. Abhath Al-Yarmouk 22, no 1 (2006). Barbour, Ian G. Religion and Science. London: SCM Press, 1998. Craig, William L. The Kalām Cosmological Argument. London; Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979. Dhanani, Alnoor. “Problems in Eleventh Century Kalām Physics.” Paper delivered at the Conference on Science and Islam, the Royal Institute of Inter-Faith Studies, Amman-Jordan, August 2001. ———. The Physical Theory of Kalām: Atoms, Space, and time in Basrian Muʻtazili Cosmology. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Ibn Ḥazm. Kitāb al-Fiṣal fī al-Milal wa al-Ahwʾwa al-Niḥal. Cairo, 1964. Ibn Matawayh. Altathkira Fi al-Jawaher wa al-A'radh. Edited by Samī Naṣr Lutf, Fayṣal Bader ʽŪn and Ibrahīm Madkor. Cairo, 1973. Jammer, Max. The Philosophy of Quantum Theory. New York: Wiley, 1974. Kheyfets, Arkady and Warner A. Miller. “Geometrodynamic Quantization and Time Evolution in Quantum Gravity.” 1994. arXiv:gr-qc/9412037v1. Maimonides. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by M. Friedländer. 2nd edition. London: Routledge  / New York: Dutton, 1904. http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/. Pines, Shlomo. Beitrage zur Islamischen Atomenlehre. Berlin: Heine, 1939. Translation into Arabic by M. Abudira, published in Cairo by Nanda in 1946. Smith, Quentin. “Quantum Cosmology’s Implication of Atheism.” Analysis

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57, no 4 (1997): 295-304. doi:10.1093/analys/57.4.295. Walzer, Richard. “Early Islamic Philosophy.” In The Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. Arthur H. Armstrong, 641–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Wolfson, Harry. The Philosophy of the Kalām. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Chapter 6

Al-Fārābi on the Role of Philosophy of History in the History of Civilization Georgios Steiris Abu Nasr Muhammad b. Muhammad, commonly known as al-Fārābi (c. 870–950), was one of the first genuine philosophers of the Arabic world. The main roots of his philosophical thought should be traced back to the classical Greek tradition, in the original works of Plato and Aristotle, in Neoplatonism, and the Alexandrian Aristotelianism.1 Al-Fārābi’s reception of the Alexandrian tradition was a novel element in Arabic philosophy, as his predecessors al-Kindī and al-Rāzī were not influenced by this school of thought.2 In fact, al-Kindī was orientated towards the Platonist Athenian School. Al-Fārābi saw himself as successor to the Alexandrian tradition, as he eloquently states in his works. Al-Fārābi was a philosopher in the true sense of the word, which is affirmed by his insisting upon the priority of philosophy over theology. His work was diverse, extending to almost all traditional philosophical domains. The chaotic nature of historical events had intrigued philosophers since antiquity. Despite the initial seeming lack of plan or pattern, they refused to admit events were only matter of coincidence, and developed the theory that there was a feasible philosophical explanation that would reveal

1 Majid Fakhry, “Al-Fārābi and the Reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle,” Journal of the History of Ideas 26, no. 4 (1965); Dimitri Gutas, “Fārābī iv: Fārābī and Greek Philosophy,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, vol. IX, fasc. 2:219–23. London; New York: Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation. Last updated January 24, 2012. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/farabi-iv; Muhsin Mahdi, “The Editio Princeps of Fārābī’s Compendium Legum Platonis,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 20 (1961): 3, doi:10.1086/371600; Muhsin Mahdi, Al-Fārābi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 2; Philippe Vallat, Al Farabi et l’école d’Alexandrie. Des prémisses de la connaissance à la philosophie politique, Études musulmanes 38 (Paris: Vrin, 2004), 41–83. 2 Richard Walzer, “The Rise of Islamic Philosophy,” Oriens 3. no. 1 (1950), doi:10.2307/1578791.

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the underlying rationale in the succession of historical events. Hesiod offered the first presentation of such an integrated outline of the course of humanity’s history in his didactic epic Works and Days. According to Hesiod, evolution follows a path of degeneration, towards an inferior age, through the succession of five generations of mankind. Hesiod’s theory is the first theological-eschatological view that sees the course of mankind’s history as decadent, moving from a period of eudaimonia to one of utter misery.3 Meanwhile, another view that developed in the Greek tradition saw history as constantly evolving and periodically repeating—in other words, a theory of evolution and historical recurrence at the same time. It soon became obvious that an evolutionary course, contrary to a degenerative one, as that suggested by Hesiod, could fit in a cyclical view of the history of mankind. This was mainly expressed in Heraclitus’s works, where he mentions that the upward and downward trajectories form a unity.4 Conversely, the Old Testament and the Christian doctrine see the history of mankind as a course that moves towards the realization of a goal predetermined by Divine Providence, meant to take place sometime in the future. In other words, historical time and human history follow a linear course to reach a state of maturity and fulfillment. This concept is thoroughly described in the Book of Daniel, which presents an outline of world history as a linear progression towards a predetermined goal. Hesiod’s view was also linear, with the difference that at the end of world history humanity perishes, while in the Book of Daniel there is the optimistic prospect of world restoration. As mentioned earlier, al-Fārābi had adequate knowledge of the broad lines of the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions. Although his work does not directly address time as a philosophical problem, it is possible to reconstruct his view about time—in its practical dimensions and implications—through his philosophy of history and civilization. Within Tahsil al-Sa’adah, al-Fārābi sets out to define the relationship between philosophy and religion, through which he attempts to explain it historically, aiming to eventually rationalize political philosophy insofar as possible. According to the Ancients, whom he does not specify, religion

3

Bruno Currie, “Hesiod on Human History,” in Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras: History without Historians, ed. John Marincola et al., Edinburgh Leventis Studies 6 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 37–64. 4 Thomas More Robinson, “Heraclitus: A Tentative Summary of His Beliefs,” in Heraclitus, Fragments, ed. and transl. Thomas More Robinson, 181–5, Phoenix supplementary volume 22 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1987).

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is a mere imitation of philosophy. Although philosophy and religion both concern the same subjects, religion is inferior to philosophy, because it does not rely on the intellect but on imagination and persuasion. Religion gives an account of the essence of the first principle and the essences of the incorporeal, second principles, through mental images borrowed from corporeal principles. Namely, religion imitates divine actions by creating analogies with the political offices. It further imitates natural powers and principles according to their likenesses with voluntary faculties and arts, just as Plato does in the Timaeus (21b–c). After a series of arguments that prove the inferiority of religion, al-Fārābi eventually claims that philosophy even precedes religion historically—unable to support this statement textually or historically, he does not even attempt to substantiate it.5 Despite the different and varied interpretations of his thought,6 al-Fārābi did not incline towards mysticism. He touches on the dimension of a religion that does not rely on revelation but reason. His near-contemporary al-Rāzī had also rejected all revelatory religions, regarding philosophy as the absolute truth and as a path not reserved for a privileged few but for all people alike. Al-Sarakhsī argued along the same lines.7 However, alFārābi distinguishes himself even from al-Kindi, who regarded philosophy as the ancilla of religion. Al-Fārābi’s view is quite simple and comes closer to Plato’s.8 Both religion and philosophy lead humans to the truth, but via different approaches: religion addresses the wide, uneducated public, whereas philosophy addresses the selected few. Religion, which is posterior to philosophy, expresses a logically founded, philosophical truth, through imagery and symbols—and for many modern scholars, this is alFārābi’s greatest innovation.9 Therefore, only philosophy leads directly to 5

Αl-Fārābi, Tahsil al-Sa’adah, iv.55. The edition referred to in this chapter is Al-

Fārābi, Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, ed. and transl. Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 13–50. Cf. also Mustafa Yildiz, “Conceiving Religion: Al-Fârâbî and Averroes on the Concepts of ‘Millah’ and ‘Sharîah,’ ” Journal of Islamic Philosophy 10 (2016), doi:10.5840/islamicphil2016104. 6 Henri Corbin, Histoire de la philosophie islamique, Collection Idées 38 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 1:225. 7 Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 172–3. 8 Richard Walzer, “Fārābi,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 2, C–G, ed. Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat, Joseph Schacht, et al, new edition (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 778–81. 9 Miriam Galston, Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of AlFārābi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 76; Ralph Lerner, “Beating the Neoplatonic Bushes,” Journal of Religion 67, no. 4 (1987), doi:10.1086/487629; Michael M. Marmura, “The Islamic Philosophers’ Conception of Islam,” in Islam’s Understanding of Itself, ed.

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the truth, to certain knowledge, of which the different religions can only offer symbolic representations. Al-Fārābi is convinced that religion is unable to contribute to philosophical knowledge.10 Al-Fārābi seems to be closer to the proto-Byzantine tradition, exemplified in an anonymous Byzantine treatise, according to which salvation of mankind will only be attained through the convergence of philosophy and political science.11 Throughout his work, it is absolutely clear that al-Fārābi’s main concern is collective and not individual salvation.12 In Kitab al-Huruf, al-Fārābi begins by distinguishing between uncertain philosophy and certain philosophy, the latter relying on demonstrative reasoning. Religion, as a human creation is inferior to philosophy, as it aims to instruct the multitude in theoretical and practical matters in a simple, accessible way, which is incompatible with philosophy. Religion achieves this by making philosophical principles and truths accessible by means of persuasion and imagination.13 Furthermore, theology and jurisprudence are posterior to philosophy and are dependent upon it.14 Next, al-Fārābi presents a history of human civilization. Specifically, he recognizes the precedence of the people, as an organized political body. It comes into being and inhabits a specific region and country, and develops definite temperaments. The citizens’ physical bodies and souls develop

Richard G. Hovannisian and Spyros Vryonis (Malibu: Undena Publications, 1983), 87–102. 10 William Montgomery Watt, “Fārābi Al-,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967), 3:179–80. 11 Ernest Barker, ed. transl., Social and Political Thought in Byzantium: From Justinian I to the Last Palaeologus; Passages from Byzantine Writers and Documents (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 72–4; Dominic O’Meara, “The Justinian Dialogue ‘On Political Science’ and its Neoplatonic Sources,” in Byzantine Philosophy and its Sources, ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 49–62; Georgios Steiris, “Politique, religion et hérésie dans le dialogue anonyme protobyzantin Περὶ πολιτικῆς ἐπιστήμης et chez al-Fārābī,” Byzantinische Forschungen 31 (2013). 12

Mahdi, Al-Fārābi, 60.

13

Αl-Fārābi, Kitāb al-Ḥuruf, 108. Hereafter cited in text as KaḤ. Edition referred here

in this chapter is that in Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, ed. trans. Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–26. See also Roger Arnaldez, “Pensée et langage dans la philosophie de Fārābī (à propos du Kitāb alḤuruf),” Studia Islamica 45 (1977), doi:10.2307/1595425. 14 Daniel Arioli, “The First Ruler and the Prophet: On the Identity-in-Difference of Politics, Religion, and Philosophy in the Thought of Alfarabi and Ibn Sina,” Polity 46, no. 4 (2014), doi:10.1057/pol.2014.23; Nelly Lahoud, “Al-Fārābi: On Religion and Philosophy,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 57 (2004); Mahdi, Al-Fārābi, 43.

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similar predispositions (KaḤ, 114). Physical and cognitive predispositions, in the absence of other intervening factors, develop naturally and determine the ways people think and act, resulting in the creation of similar habitual states (KaḤ, 115). After analyzing practical arts, al-Fārābi states that people turn to the exploration of the causes of things. The first approach is through rhetorical methods, through which emerges the investigation of mathematical and natural matters (KaḤ, 140). However, rhetorical methods in these matters will lead to diverse opinions and fierce oppositions. The rising intensity of these debates leads to the discovery of dialectical methods, which are often confused with sophistical methods. Eventually, for the investigation and validation of theoretical matters, people favor dialectical methods and discard sophistical ones, which might only be used again in times of crisis (KaḤ, 141). However, when dialectical methods are perfected, they prove insufficient for the attainment of certain knowledge. This is the point where mathematical and scientific methods emerge. When the difference between dialectical and certain knowledge becomes evident, people turn to the study of the science of political affairs, whose founding principles are will and choice. Political science is then investigated with dialectical methods mixed with methods that lead to certainty—essentially, dialectical methods are almost elevated to a science. This continues until philosophy reaches the status it had in the time of Plato first (KaḤ, 142), and then until it reaches the state it ended up in the time of Aristotle. Theoretical science reaches a peak: mathematical methods excel, and theoretical and practical philosophy is perfected, leaving no room for investigation (KaḤ, 143). Next comes the need for legislation. Laws aim to represent, with the aid of imagination, such theoretical intelligibles the multitude is unable to conceive. What is of critical importance through this process is to enable political activities useful for the attainment of happiness. What is also of major importance is the capacity to use all means of persuasion to teach to the multitude all the appropriate theoretical and practical matters. Religion, as a product of such legislation, is the means through which the multitude must be instructed to attain happiness (KaḤ, 144). Soon after its emergence, a group of people concentrates around religion; they defend it and devote themselves to it. At some point, someone from this group, who takes all the religion founder’s principles and teachings explicitly, seeks to infer from them beliefs about matters the religion’s founder did not state explicitly. This is when jurisprudence emerges. The attempt to infer beliefs on theoretical and practical matters, also

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without deviating from religion’s founding principles, leads to theology. The duty of practitioners of theology is to defend religion and contradict all those who try to refute its founding principles and individual doctrines. These confrontations forge and perfect religion (KaḤ, 145). Nevertheless, as seen in many of his works, al-Fārābi does not outright reject religion. If a religion depends on a perfected philosophy, appropriately based upon the syllogistic arts, it can be considered valid and valuable. For this to happen, philosophy needs to have relied on the most advanced methods of reason. However, if philosophy has been entirely based on rhetorical, dialectical, and sophistical methods, then a large part of it, if not its entirety, would be false. A religion based on such a philosophy will incorporate false and invalid reasonings. And if religion replaces these false reasonings with their similitudes, as religions usually do with matters that the multitude cannot sufficiently conceive, it will be further than philosophy. It will be a corrupt religion then, which will not even be aware of its distance from the truth. The situation will deteriorate with the emergence of a legislator who will not adopt the opinions associated with the philosophy that exists in his own time, but rather adopts the teachings of the earlier religion, assuming they are real. If the next legislator follows the same path with that previous one, then religion will still be further than the truth. Al-Fārābi concludes that a religion, valid or not, always derives from philosophy, and is posterior to philosophy.15 However, al-Fārābi’s conclusion above cannot be applied to all cases. A religion may be transferred from one nation to another. It is also possible for a religion to be somehow changed or improved before it is transferred to another nation. In this case, religion might emerge in a nation before philosophy, or even before dialectical or sophistical methods are developed. As a result, philosophy would emerge and develop in this nation after religion (KaḤ, 148). A religion may depend on a perfected philosophy, although the theoretical core of its matters might differ from the actual philosophy, as religion uses a more simplistic and simplified language. If such a religion is transferred to another nation, it could be passed over without making known that it depends on a philosophy. But religion contains similitudes of matters already validated by philosophy. If the religion 15 KaḤ, 147; Charles Butterworth, “Alfarabi (870–950): Reason, Revelation, and Politics,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 65 (2013–2014); Jules Janssens, “Al-Farabi: la religion comme imitation de la philosophie,” in Orient–Occident. Racines spirituelles de l’Europe; Enjeux et implications de la translatio studiorum dans le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance; Actes du colloque scientifique international 16– 19 novembre 2009, ed. Mariano Delgado, Charles Méla and Frédéric Möri (Paris: Cerf, 2014), 497–512.

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is passed over in silence of this dependence, the nation may accept these similitudes as the truth. Things will take a turn if the philosophy, on which the religion depends and draws prestige from, is also transferred to the nation that has previously accepted this religion. Then, religion and philosophy might be in conflict with each other. If advocates of the philosophy know that this religion contains similitudes of the philosophical truth, they do not oppose the religion fiercely, but rather focus on its adherents. On the other hand, the adherents of the religion still oppose the advocates of the philosophy fiercely, seeing themselves as keepers of truth. At the aftermath of this conflict, the philosophy and its advocates are cast aside, which makes the latter cease their support to the religion. However, since the philosophers’ position worsens and they may even face persecution, they need to oppose religion, not in its entirety but by focusing on those beliefs that go against the philosophy (KaḤ, 149). As Mahdi has pointed out, in Kitāb al-Ḥuruf, from the middle on, al-Fārābi comments on a passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1074a38–b14), where Aristotle mentions the ancient Greek view that celestial bodies are gods and the entire cosmos divine. But people of his time favored anthropocentrism, because it encourages lawfulness. Al-Fārābi draws the conclusion that philosophy is prior to traditional religion and to tradition in general.16 Despite his useful insights, al-Fārābi does not understand that there is a huge gap between reason and certainty in historiography and hermeneutics. He does not realize that the two main sources of data in historical research are text sources and oral tradition. On the contrary, he builds his argument on pure reason, disregarding that reality is sometimes on opposite sides. Human views and behaviors are not the sole product of reason. Consequently, al-Fārābi’s perception of the history of civilization up to his time is rather simplistic and without any reference to historical facts. It is an idealization of the philosophy of history and not an attempt to rationalize the evolution of human situation. I support that this is a deliberate choice, because his main goal is not the interpretation of human history but its projection to the future.

16

Massimo Campanini, “Alfarabi and the Foundation of Political Theology in Islam,” in Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, ed. Asma Afsaruddin (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 35–52; Muhsin Mahdi, “AlFārābi on Philosophy and Religion,” Philosophical Forum 4 (1973); Joshua Parens, Metaphysics as Rhetoric: AlFārābi’s Summary of Plato’s Laws (New York: SUNY Press, 1995), 11–13.

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Therefore, al-Fārābi, by exploring the relationship between philosophy and religion, makes a distinction between a philosophy of history that depends on reason [and therefore certainty] and one attached to mysticism or lack of reason. Al-Fārābi analyses history with the prospect of humanity’s future and the evolution of human civilization in time and space. Thus, he demonstrates that the course of history is not inescapably attached to religion. The desired goal is happiness as a political ideal, rather than as a product of religion or any practices against reason. To reach this conclusion, he draws ideas from the Greek and the classical antiquity, which he transforms so they are more relevant to his time. The cyclical view of history neither suited al-Fārābi’s intentions nor offered the impetus he was after, although he had idealized the philosophers’ city celebrated in Plato’s and Aristotle’s works. The cyclical view of history was unable to offer vision, as the seeds of pessimism are inherent to it. AlFārābi manages to give people the alternative to stand up and fight, not only to delay the inevitable or manage the predetermined fate of the human race, but also—armed with the power of their intellect and the associated philosophical progress—urge humanity to evolve. It is humanity that will determine its fate and the course of history, unobstructed by mysticism.

Bibliography KaḤ

Al-Fārābi, Kitāb al-Ḥuruf. Ιn Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, edited and translated by Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–26. ––––, Tahsil al-Sa’adah. Ιn Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, edited and translated by Muhsin Mahdi , 13–50. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969. Arioli, Daniel. “The First Ruler and the Prophet: On the Identity-inDifference of Politics, Religion, and Philosophy in the Thought of Alfarabi and Ibn Sina.” Polity 46, no. 4 (2014): 547–61. doi:10.1057/pol.2014.23. Arnaldez Roger. “Pensée et langage dans la philosophie de Fārābī (à propos du Kitāb al-Ḥuruf).” Studia Islamica 45 (1977): 57–65. doi:10.2307/1595425. Barker, Ernest ed. and transl. Social and Political Thought in Byzantium: From Justinian I to the Last Palaeologus; Passages from Byzantine Writers and Documents. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Butterworth, Charles. “Alfarabi (870–950): Reason, Revelation, and Politics.” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 65 (2013–2014): 103– 18. Campanini, Massimo. “Alfarabi and the Foundation of Political

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Theology in Islam.” In Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, edited by Asma Afsaruddin, 35–52. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. Corbin, Henri. Histoire de la philosophie islamique. Collection Idées 38. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. Crone, Patricia. Medieval Islamic Political Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Currie, Bruno. “Hesiod on Human History.” In Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras: History without Historians, edited by John Marincola, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, and Calum Alasdair Maciver, 37–64. Edinburgh Leventis Studies 6. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Fakhry, Majid. “Al-Fārābi and the Reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle.” Journal of the History of Ideas 26, no. 4 (1965): 469–78. doi:10.2307/2708494. Galston, Miriam. Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of AlFārābi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Gutas, Dimitri. “Fārābī iv: Fārābī and Greek Philosophy.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, vol. IX, fasc. 2:219–23. London; New York: Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation. Last updated January 24, 2012. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/farabi-iv. Janssens, Jules. “Al-Farabi: la religion comme imitation de la philosophie.” In Orient–Occident. Racines spirituelles de l’Europe; Enjeux et implications de la translatio studiorum dans le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance; Actes du colloque scientifique international 16–19 novembre 2009, edited by Mariano Delgado, Charles Méla and Frédéric Möri, 497–512. Paris: Cerf, 2014. Lahoud, Nelly. “Al-Fārābi: On Religion and Philosophy.” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 57 (2004): 283–301. Lerner, Ralph. “Beating the Neoplatonic Bushes” [Review of Richard Walzer, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State]. Journal of Religion 67, no. 4 (1987): 510–17. doi:10.1086/487629. Marmura, Michael. “The Islamic Philosophers’ Conception of Islam.” In Islam’s Understanding of Itself, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian and Spyros Vryonis, 87–102. Malibu: Undena Publications, 1983. Mahdi, Muhsin. “The Editio Princeps of Fārābī’s Compendium Legum Platonis.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 20 (1961): 1–24. doi:10.1086/371600. ———. “AlFārābi on Philosophy and Religion.” Philosophical Forum 4 (1973): 1–25. ———. Al-Fārābi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. O’Meara, Dominic. “The Justinian Dialogue ‘On Political Science’ and its Neoplatonic Sources.” In Byzantine Philosophy and its

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Sources, edited by Katerina Ierodiakonou, 49–62. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Parens, Joshua. Metaphysics as Rhetoric: AlFārābi’s Summary of Plato’s Laws. New York: SUNY Press, 1995. Robinson, Thomas More. “Heraclitus: A Tentative Summary of His Beliefs.” In Heraclitus, Fragments, edited and translated by Thomas More Robinson, 181–5. Phoenix supplementary volume 22. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1987. Steiris, Georgios. “Politique, religion et hérésie dans le dialogue anonyme protobyzantin Περὶ πολιτικῆς ἐπιστήμης et chez alFārābī.” Byzantinische Forschungen 31 (2013): 121–41. Vallat, Philippe. Al Farabi et l’école d’Alexandrie. Des prémisses de la connaissance à la philosophie politique. Études musulmanes 38. Paris: Vrin, 2004. Walzer, Richard. “The Rise of Islamic Philosophy.” Oriens 3, no. 1 (1950): 1–19. doi:10.2307/1578791. ———. “Fārābi.” In Encyclopedia of Islam, volume 2, C–G, edited by Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat, Joseph Schacht, et al., 778–81. New edition. Leiden: Brill, 1965. Watt, William Montgomery. “Fārābi Al-.” In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards, 3:179–80. New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967. Yildiz, Mustafa. “Conceiving Religion: Al-Fârâbî and Averroes on the Concepts of ‘Millah’ and “Sharîah.’ ” Journal of Islamic Philosophy 10 (2016): 62–103. doi:10.5840/islamicphil2016104.

Chapter 7

Zeno’s Paradoxes and the Reality of Motion According to Ibn al-Arabi’s Single Monad Model of the Cosmos Mohamed Ali Haj Yousef 1. Introduction Unlike most Greek philosophers who tried to understand the cosmos through the motion of different objects and celestial spheres, Zeno alone questioned the mere phenomena of motion and doubted that it has any intrinsic reality. He formulated some “thought experiments” which lead to various kinds of infinity paradoxes, whether we adopt the discrete or the continuum view of space and time. Despite long centuries of research, and despite the evident success of modern mathematics and physics, those paradoxes have never been fully refuted. Zeno composed his arguments in trying to defend his master Parmenides’ monistic philosophy, which postulates that multiplicity and change are mere deceitful phenomena, while reality is one changeless and indivisible entity. In considerably corresponding insights, Ibn al-Arabi has a remarkable and unique view of time and creation that is based on the commonly disputed mystical theory of the Oneness of Being, from which he developed his Single Monad Model (SMM) of the cosmos, which I elucidated in my 2008 book Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology. One of the main principles of this eccentric cosmological model is the “Re-creation Principle,” which postulates that the cosmos is being re-created in every instance of time by the “Single Monad,” which alone may be described by real continuous existence, while everything else consists of various forms, or temporal imagery monads, brought into existence by this Single Monad that takes only one form at a time. Despite the apparent undeniable multiplicity of monads or

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forms, their existence ceases in the second instance after their becoming, and is perpetually replaced by other, usually analogous, forms. This innovative concept may have tremendous consequences for our understanding of many basic natural phenomena and particularly space, time, and motion on which all physics theories and cosmological models are based. Accordingly, many persisting paradoxes and contradictions in current models and theories of physics and cosmology can be resolved, such as the preceding paradoxes of Zeno and the more recent EPR paradox. Moreover, the SMM can provide an explanation of the metaphysical phenomena of mysticism and the supernatural, which so far are still beyond the reach of the laws of physics. At the same time, this model provides a common foundation connecting the fundamental principles of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, since it can explain non-local quantum mechanical phenomena and the strange instantaneous interaction of entangled particles without breaking the rule of the constancy and invariance of the speed of light, all based on the same concept of re-creation.

2. Zeno and Parmenides Zeno of Elea is a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who was prominent member of the Eleatic School, which had been founded by his master Parmenides. He was born around 490 BCE in Elea, now Velia in southern Italy. Plato described him as “tall and fair to look upon,”1 and reported that he has been beloved by Parmenides who took him to Athens, when he was around forty years old, where he also met the twenty-years younger Socrates. Zeno brought with him to Athens his treatise containing about forty arguments to defend the monistic philosophy of his master. Unfortunately, this book is now lost, but some of his arguments managed to reach us through later critics and commentators. Parmenides is the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. In his single renowned work, a poem called On Nature which survives only in fragmentary form, he describes his two-ways view of reality: “the Way of Truth” and “the Way of Opinion.” In the first view he explains that reality is one and unchanging, and existence is timeless and uniform, unlike what we normally observe in the world of appearances where our sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful, leading us to the latter view, “the Way of Opinion.”

1 Plato, Parmenides 127b4–5. Translation from The Republic and Other Works, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Anchor Books, 2012), 370.

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Parmenides attempted to distinguish between the reality of the unity of nature and its unreal variety or multiplicity.2 He was an immense influence on Plato, who named a dialogue after his name, and always spoke of him with veneration. In effect, Parmenides’ monistic views are quite characteristic of important aspects of the whole history of Western philosophy, and he is often seen as its grandfather. Interestingly, in Nature and the Greeks Erwin Schrödinger identified Parmenides’ monad of “the Way of Truth” as being the conscious self,3 an insights which might have played a significant part in the development of Quantum Mechanics during the twentieth century. Zeno’s paradoxes are simply another practical way to express his master’s thesis. This was instantly noted by Socrates and acknowledged by Zeno himself. Plato, on his part, clearly documented this fact in the Parmenides by quoting a conversation between the three: I see Parmenides, said Socrates, that Zeno’s intention is to associate himself with you by means of his treatise no less intimately than by his personal attachment. In a way, his book states the same position as your own; only by varying the form he tries to delude us into thinking that his thesis is a different one. You assert in your poem that the “all” is “one,” and for this you advance admirable proofs. Zeno, for his part, asserts that it is “not a plurality,” and he too has many weighty proofs.

And thus Zeno confirms this claim: Yes, Socrates, Zeno replied, but you have not quite seen the real character of my book. … The book makes no pretense of disguising from the public the fact that it was written with the purpose you describe, as if such deception were something to be proud of.4

3. Zeno’s Paradoxes Zeno’s original book was never found, but in trying to refute them, Aristotle briefly discussed some of his arguments, later to become known as Zeno’s Paradoxes. A more detailed reflection appeared only a thousand years later, in the works of Proclus and Simplicius who seem to have had 2

John Palmer, “Parmenides,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2012 Edition, accessed 5 September 2017, http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2012/entries/parmenides/. 3 Erwin Schrödinger, Nature and the Greeks: Shearman Lectures, Delivered at University College, London on 24, 26, 28, and 31 May 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 26–33. 4 Plato, Parmenides 128a4–b3, b7–8, and c3–5. Translation by Francis M. Cornford, quoted from The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton University Press, 1961), 923.

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access to the original book. Proclus stated in his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides that Zeno produced “not less than forty arguments revealing contradictions.”5 Unfortunately, only ten out of those forty arguments managed to reach us indirectly, after various paraphrasing and reconstruction, mainly through the interpretations of Aristotle, Plato, Proclus, and Simplicius. In total, less than two hundred words can be attributed to Zeno, in the form of direct quotations. Thus we do not know how Zeno actually stated his own arguments, and the names and phrasing of the paradoxes were essentially created by various commentators and critics, and not by Zeno himself. Nevertheless, Zeno’s Paradoxes are considered to be the first examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum, a kind of dialectical syllogism, or proof by contradiction. Although Parmenides himself may have actually been the first to use this style of argument, Zeno became the most famous. In this regard, Aristotle called him the inventor of dialectic, and Bertrand Russell credited him with having laid the foundations of modern logic. Zeno’s arguments are directed against both multiplicity and motion; he maintained that any quantity of space (or time) must either be divisible ad infinitum or composed of ultimate indivisible units. If it is composed of indivisible units, then they must have magnitude, and thus we are faced with the contradiction of a magnitude which cannot be divided. If, however, it is divisible ad infinitum, then we are faced with the different contradictions of supposing that an infinite number of parts can be added up to make a merely finite sum. Aristotle fervently disagreed with Zeno’s arguments, calling them fallacies, and claiming to have disproved them by inventing the concept of “potential infinity” and pointing out that, as the distance decreases, the time needed to cover those distances also decreases. Various other possible solutions have also been offered over the centuries, ranging from Kant, Hume, and Hegel to Newton and Leibniz, who invented mathematical calculus as a method of handling infinite sequences. Nonetheless, Zeno was definitely the first person in history to show that the concept of infinity is deeply problematic.

5 Proclus, In Parmenidem 632.1–3. Translation from Proclus, Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, ed. John M. Dillon, trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 29.

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Zeno’s paradoxes, however, continued to tease and stimulate thinkers, debating over whether they have been really negated. Bertrand Russell has described them as “immeasurably subtle and profound”: The Achilles, the Dichotomy, the Arrow, and the Stadium, out of the ten survived paradoxes, try to attack the phenomena of motion, while the rest are mainly directed against plurality. We shall restrict our discussion here on those four paradoxes of motion and discuss two of the most notable counterarguments.6 Each of the four paradoxes of motion challenge all claims that there is real motion; the first two lead to logical discrepancies if we suppose space and time to be continuous, while the other two do the same if we suppose them to be discrete. In the Achilles and Dichotomy arguments, Zeno is supposing that space and time are infinitely divisible. They can be easily countered by postulating an atomic theory in which matter (or space, and time) is composed of small indivisible elements. However, the Arrow and Stadium paradoxes cause problems only if we consider that space is made up of indivisible elements that may be cut in indivisible durations of time. (a) Achilles and the Tortoise Achilles, who is the fastest runner of antiquity, is racing to catch the Tortoise that is slowly crawling a little ahead of him. In order to catch the Tortoise, Achilles will have to reach the place where it presently is. However, by the time Achilles gets there, the Tortoise will have moved to a new location. Achilles will then have to reach this new location. By the time he reaches that location, the Tortoise will have moved on to yet another location, and so on ad infinitum.7 (b) Dichotomy The Dichotomy paradox concludes that motion could never start because the object must arrive at the middle of its course before arriving at the end. To do this, it must reach the one-fourth point; and to do this, it must reach the one-eighth point, and so on ad infinitum. Hence motion can 6

A more detailed discussion of those four and the other six paradoxes is offered by Nick Huggett, “Zeno’s Paradoxes,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2010 Edition, accessed 5 September 2017, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/paradox-zeno/; and Bradley Dowden, “Zeno’s Paradoxes,” in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, accessed 5 September 2017, http://www.iep.utm.edu/ zeno-par/. 7 Cf. Aristotle, Phys. Book 6.9, 239b14–16 (paraphrase).

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never begin. In addition to that: the sum 1⁄2 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄8 + … equals one only after infinite number of additions, and therefore it actually approaches one, but never reaches it! (c) The Arrow Let us consider the path of an arrow in flight and accept that space and time are discrete: at each instant of its path, the Arrow occupies some position in space—this is what it means to say that space is discrete. But to occupy a certain position in space is to be at rest in this position. Thus, throughout all the points of the entire path of the Arrow through space it is in fact at rest. If in an indivisible instant of time the Arrow moved, then indeed this instant of time would be divisible; for example, in a smaller instant of time the Arrow would have moved half that distance.8 As Russell describes this astounding conclusion: “It is never moving, but in some miraculous way the change of position has to occur between the instants, that is to say, not at any time whatever.”9 The strength of the SMM comes exactly from its innovative explanation of this “miraculous way” of the “change of position” without actual motion. (d) The Stadium Consider three rows of objects arranged in parallel in a staggered formation. Row 1 remains at rest while rows 2 and 3 move in opposite directions until all rows are lined up. Due to the arrangement of the rows of objects and their movement, one object of, e.g., row 3 will pass twice as many objects in row 2 than in row 1. Zeno then concludes that “double is sometimes equal to half,”10 or as Russell puts it, “Half the time may be equal to double the time.”11 This latter paradox is in essence equivalent to the Arrow paradox but it is a little more complicated than the previous ones, and it may need schematic illustration, but we shall not need to discuss it any further, as well as the other six paradoxes that mostly attack plurality, because the previous paradoxes clearly show the main philosophical argument of Zeno, and the SMM totally agrees with him that there is no actual motion or plurality.

8

Cf. Aristotle, Phys. 6.9, 239b30–33. Betrand Russel, “The Problem of Infinity Considered Historically,” in Zeno’s Paradoxes, ed. Wesley C. Salmon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 51. 10 Aristotle, Phys. 6.9, 239b33–240a18. 11 Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World: As a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, (London; Chicago: Open Court, 1914), 175. 9

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The remarkable contribution of the SMM is only in explaining the link between the ultimate ontological unity of nature and the phenomena of plurality and motion.

4. Philosophers’ Response The above four paradoxes not only challenge all methodical theories of motion, but also our everyday experience. For this reason, they have been often dismissed as logical nonsense. Many attempts, however, have also been made to dispose of them by means of mathematical theorems, such as the theory of convergent series or the theory of sets. Some of these philosophical and mathematical treatments have offered convincing arguments that may explain how motion occurs outwardly in space and time, but none was ever really able to even tackle Zeno’s original arguments on the complications that emerge from the mystical and metaphysical relation between the One and the Many. Aristotle did not fully appreciate the significance of Zeno’s arguments, since he called them “fallacies,” without actually being able to refute them. On the other hand, many modern scientists like to believe that axiomatic mathematics has habitually dispelled these paradoxes; now it is possible to talk about limits and infinity without reaching any mathematical contradiction, since it can be proven that the sum of an infinite number of halving intervals is still finite. For the purpose of this discussion, we will concentrate here on the one hand only on the main concepts behind Aristotle’s response and, on the other hand, on the modern mathematical treatment known as the Standard Solution.12 In essence, Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, the Achilles as the most evident example, arise from two main assumptions: 1. 2.

that distances and durations can be divided infinitely, and thus the infinite number of segments become too many for the runner to complete.

Aristotle accepted the second assumption but rejected the first one by inventing “potential infinity,” while the Standard Solution maintained the first assumption and then used complicated mathematical tools to prove that it is possible to complete infinite number of steps in a finite time. Aristotle’s treatment of Zeno’s paradoxes is found in Physics Book 4, chapter 2, and Book 6, chapters 2 and 9. He presented several criticisms of 12

A detailed discussion of the Standard Solution can be found in Huggett, “Zeno’s Paradoxes.”

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Zeno, but his most notable contribution was his concept of “potential infinity.” He says that he agrees that it is impossible for a thing to pass over an actually infinite number of things in a finite time, but that it is possible for a thing to pass over a “potentially infinite” number of things in a finite time.13 Therefore, according to Aristotle, in the Achilles and Dichotomy paradoxes, Zeno made the mistake of discounting the fact that the physical long path from start to finish is finite and exists undivided, but it is the mathematician who is dividing it infinitely and demanding the physical completion of such an infinite process. Similarly, using the same idea of time being divided only into a potential infinity of intervals, Aristotle tried to refute the Arrow Paradox by saying that “time is not composed of indivisible moments any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles.”14 The idea of “potential infinity” was a very clever idea by Aristotle, which convinced philosophers for many centuries, including George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and Henri Poincaré, who were influential defenders of potential infinity. Leibniz and other mathematicians and physicists, on the other hand, did not accept this distinction between actual and potential infinities. Bernard Bolzano and Georg Cantor consider a potentially infinite set as a variable quantity that is dependent on being abstracted from a pre-existing actually infinite set, arguing that “each potential infinite … presupposes an actual infinite.”15 Consequently, after the successful development of mathematics and science in recent centuries, many scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers rejected Aristotle’s treatment, replacing it with what is known as the Standard Solution that is based on the theory of sets that was developed in late nineteenth century. However, many other philosophers of the twentieth century, such as Henri-Louis Bergson, Max Black, Franz Brentano, L. E. J. Brouwer, Solomon Feferman, William James, James Thomson, and Alfred North Whitehead argued in different ways that the standard mathematical account of continuity does not apply to physical processes, or is improper for describing those processes, mainly because it is based

13

Cf. Aristotle, Phys. 8.8, 263a25–7. Aristotle, Phys. 6.9, 239b8–9. 15 Paul Tannery, “Le concept scientifique du continu. Zénon d’Élée et Georg Cantor,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 10, no. 20 (1885), http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k17159s. 14

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on actual infinity that cannot be encountered in experience, and thus is unreal. In conclusion: while mathematics can calculate where and when the moving Achilles will overtake the tortoise, it does not really address the central point in Zeno’s infinity argument that is indispensable if we want to solve his paradoxes. Yet Aristotle’s ingenious idea of “potential infinity” is also not sufficient, since it inevitably presupposes actual infinity. There is no doubt that Zeno has presented a profound problem associated with infinity which, despite centuries of philosophical and scientific efforts to resolve it, still seems to lack a truly satisfactory solution. As Frankel remarked: The human mind, when trying to give itself an accurate account of motion, finds itself confronted with two aspects of the phenomenon. Both are inevitable but at the same time they are mutually exclusive. Either we look at the continuous flow of motion; then it will be impossible for us to think of the object in any particular position. Or we think of the object as occupying any of the positions through which its course is leading it; and while fixing our thought on that particular position we can’t help fixing the object itself and putting it at rest for one short instant.16

Zeno, of course, was not trying to deny motion altogether, because it is clearly occurring after all; objects reach their destinations, Achilles does run faster than the tortoise and the arrows move in their paths. What Zeno was trying to say is that our common understanding of motion and plurality, and hence space and time as containers of events, is completely wrong. Actually, it is this wrong or incomplete understanding of space and time that is now the main obstacle in modern physics preventing any reconciliation between relativity and quantum theories. The human mind is accustomed to classifying quantities as either countable or uncountable, or either discrete or continuous; there is no other way. This is inevitable on the outward level of multiplicity. On the level of oneness, however, there would be no meaning for such terms. The problem is then how to link this apparent physical multiplicity with real metaphysical oneness. Zeno’s arguments lead to paradoxes because they contradict all rational concepts of matter and space-time, as well as our common sense of perceptible motion and plurality. Ibn al-Arabi’s model of creation, and particularly his Re-creation Principle, is therefore capable of explaining those paradoxes by maintaining that, in reality, there is only one single monad 16 Hermann Frankel, “Zeno of Elea’s Attacks on Plurality,” The American Journal of Philology 63, nos 1 and 2 (1942), doi:10.2307/291077.

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that is producing the whole multiplicity and all associated phenomena of motion and change. This cosmological model is in full harmony with Parmenides’ philosophy of oneness, but Ibn al-Arabi provides exciting details on how exactly this apparent multiplicity emerges out of the real One.

5. Ibn al-Arabi’s View of Creation Ibn al-Arabi (560–638 AH / 1165–1240 AD) was a great Sufi thinker of the Middle Ages and one of the most influential authors in Islamic history, whose writings have deeply influenced Islamic civilization for centuries, and have more recently attracted wide interest in the West. His famous and most influential works include al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya (“The Meccan Revelations”),17 a profound discussion of Islamic wisdom that spans more than ten thousand pages available in print and in his own handwriting, and the shorter Fusûs al-Hikam (“The Bezels of Wisdom”), which comprises twenty-seven cryptic chapters named after prophets who characterize different spiritual types. The latter book created unfathomable philosophical debate in the following centuries, and it was followed by more than two hundred extensive commentaries by later scholars and critics. In addition to that, he also wrote several hundred other shorter books and lesser known treatises; many of them are now available in print — though not all.18 It is quite notable that Parmenides’ cosmological conceptions are remarkably similar to Ibn al-Arabi’s doctrine of “the Oneness of Being,” where “the One,” or “the Real” is the only true unchanging existence, while multitude and change are appearances without reality. Parmenides’ philosophy of monism, together with the complex and rigorous adaptation of his hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides—constantly elaborated by the later Neoplatonists—offer even closer analogies to Ibn al-Arabi’s overall ontological system, established in his cosmological model.19 Our knowledge of Parmenides’ philosophy, however, derives mainly from the existing frag17

References from Ibn al-Arabi’s book of al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya are based on the standard old four volumes edition of Bulaq that was published in 1911, widely available and reproduced by many contemporary publishers. The short reference style mentions volume, page, and line numbers after the abridged title, Futûhât. 18 For a detailed study of Ibn al-Arabi’s heritage see Osman Yahya, Histoire et classification de l’œuvre d’Ibn ‘Arabî (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1964). 19 For a full description of Ibn al-Arabi’s model of creation, see Mohamed Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology (London; New York: Routledge, 2008), ch. 6 “The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos”; Mohamed Haj Yousef, The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos: Ibn Arabi’s Concept of Time and Creation (Charleston: CreateSpace, 2014).

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ments of his poem, in addition to later commentaries and interpretations by some of his students, including Zeno and Plato. Were we to have access to his original teachings, which may have been mostly oral, he would surely have explained to us how the false and deceitful multiplicity emerges from the unity of nature. The same can be said regarding Zeno’s lost book of paradoxes. Fortunately, we do have access to the most important works of Ibn al-Arabi, in addition to the various extensive interpretations offered by his direct followers. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Arabi’s outstanding philosophy has not been yet given the required attention, mainly because of the difficult symbolic language he usually used, in addition to the fact that he intentionally scattered his innovative conceptions over his many works and in different contexts within his magnum opus, the Futûhât, and other books. After studying Ibn al-Arabi’s extensive heritage, it can be clearly shown that a true understanding of “time” is the key to realizing and understanding the origin and structure of the world.20 The crucial idea that underlines his eccentric view is the “Re-creation Principle” that alone seems to be capable of providing the connection between the metaphysical One, or the Single Monad, and the multiplicity of forms manifesting in the physical world, and thus explaining many paradoxes in our current view of space and time, including Zeno’s paradoxes and the EPR paradox, and also explaining many fundamental consequences of modern theories, such as “time dilation” and the constancy and invariance of the speed of light, as well as the mysterious nonlocal quantum phenomena.

6. The Single Monad Borrowing his language from the atomist physical theories of earlier kalam theology,21 Ibn al-Arabi refers to the created world as being made of monads and forms, or in his own technical language, of “substances” (jawâhir, s. jawhar) and various changing “accidents” (a’râd, s. ’arad) that inhere in and qualify those substances. The “monad” or “substance” is—as will be discussed further shortly—a physical / metaphysical entity that exists by itself, whereas the “form,” or “accident,” exists only through or by some particular monad. The monad, however, may appear in existence only by “wearing” some form or another (Futûhât II.179.26), so we cannot identify

20

This was fully elaborated in Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî, especially ch. 4, “The Actual Flow of Time,” and ch. 6, “The Single-Monad Model of the Cosmos.” 21 See for example, Tim J. Winter, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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the monads but rather only the forms. Furthermore, Ibn al-Arabi asserts that the monad exists by itself and its existence is constant and invariable, while the form exists only through the monad and its existence is temporal; it only exists at the time of its becoming and then it vanishes instantly and intrinsically, i.e., without any external cause, and the same form may never come back to existence again, though it may be replaced by similar forms, but never the same (Futûhât II.677.30, III.452.24). Like the Neoplatonists, Ibn al-Arabi sometimes uses this term in this higher theological sense to refer to “the one,” “the essence,” “the real,” but not “the Real” as a Name of God; rather than that, he employs the term “Universal Intellect,” who is also called the “Perfect Human Being”; he calls this, with regard to the inferior corporeal creation, “the Single Monad” (al-jawhar al-fard). On the other hand, while in this theological or cosmological sense the term “monad” ordinarily refers to the one real essence of the world (of all creation), Ibn al-Arabi also uses it in the plural form to refer to the essences or souls / spirits —or more precisely, to the “partial intellects,” or more generally, any entity (even inanimate ones) within creation—angels, jinn, humans, animals, plants, or metals. In this latter, more generic sense, he asserts that everything in creation has a substance which is its monad and a particular form which is its appearance. He then argues that all the monads of the world are created by, and are therefore the “images,” “shadows,” or “reflections” of the one Single Monad that in reality may alone be described as having real existence (Futûhât III.452.24). Ibn al-Arabi was aware that there had been a long debate amongst philosophers whether the monad is a physical or metaphysical entity, or whether it is embodied or not (Futûhât I.47.22). Although he mostly favors the second attitude,22 he sometimes does not rule out either case, perhaps because the argument should be meaningless—that is, reality must necessarily encompass all manifestations of creation, both spiritual and manifest, since there is in reality only one Single Monad. Many times, though, he affirms that the monad is “embodied” but “indivisible” (see further below), especially when the manifest world is concerned (Futûhât II.438.2), while the essences of the spirits and souls are not likely to be embodied (Futûhât II.309.25), though both (the manifest and spiritual) are only reflections of the Single Monad that itself can neither be described as (solely)

22

Ibn al-Arabi, Al-Durrat Al-Baydâ, in Rasâ’il Ibn ‘Arabî, ed. Sa‘îd ‘Abd Al-Fattâh (Beirut: Mu’assasat Al-Intishâr Al-‘Arabî, 2004), 2:134.

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physical nor as metaphysical, because it is necessarily the whole of creation. In the very long chapter 198 of the Futûhât, in which Ibn al-Arabi talks in detail about the various aspects of divine creation, he summarizes the various divisions or types of physical and metaphysical entities. He also states the difference between the essences (monads) and their accidents (forms). This eccentric doctrine was well described in a long passage in which he also shows the basis of the SMM. A full translation of this key passage can be found in previous publication,23 but we present here some relevant shorter extracts, that also clearly show the vibrant resemblance between his perception and that of Parmenides and Zeno: You must know that the world is one in substance and many in form [appearance]. So since it is one in substance, it does not transmute [from one thing into another entirely different one, lâ yastahîl] … All generated existents are [only] forms in the [Single] Monad. Hence, [certain] forms are bestowed upon it, and that [process of bestowing forms] is called, with respect to their specific shape, “generation” [takwîn], or [certain] forms are taken off so that a [particular] name [i.e., attribute or property] is removed, and that is [called] “degeneration” [fasâd]. Therefore, there is no transmutation, in the sense that the actual entity of a thing changes into another [entirely different] actual entity, but it is only [by an entirely new recreation] as explained. Therefore, the world is continually being generated and degenerated [destroyed] at every single instant of time [that is the Single Time, zamân fard]. There would be no persistence for the actual entity of the substance [Monad] of the world, were it not for its receptivity to this creative formation (takwîn) in itself. So the world is always continually in need [of the divine creative force]. As for the forms, they are in need [of Allah’s creation] in order to come out from non-existence into existence. And as for the Monad, it [is in need] of preserving its existence through that [creative Act], because its existence is necessarily conditioned upon the existence of the creative formation of that (i.e., the infinite forms) for which it is a substrate. (Futûhât II.454.1)

However, Ibn al-Arabi explains further that although the Single Monad only exists as a whole undivided entity, it is still made up from a more elementary or abstract entity called the “Greatest Element,” on which he gives merely restricted information. This conception is essential to understand how confined and finite multiplicity could emerge from the unconfined One. We shall see further below that this is in fact equivalent to Aristotle’s ingenious notion of potential infinity that influenced philosophers for many centuries. Accordingly, the cosmos is ultimately made up from indivisible monads that are nothing but succeeding images of the Single Monad, and the 23

Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology, 127.

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“abstract” or “conceptual” space and time where and when they appear are potentially infinitely divisible. Therefore, again, the Standard Solution remains a credible mathematical system that can explain the phenomena of motion, but not its reality; because infinity is a property of the One, and whatever the number of forms the Single Monad is manifesting in existence, though extremely enormous, it is still finite in space, and only becomes infinite throughout the Time that is eternal from both ends, i.e., potentially infinite.

7. The Greatest Element In his book ’Uqlat al-Mustawfiz (“the Bolt for the Restless”), Ibn al-Arabi speaks about the “Greatest Element” (al-’unsûr al-a’zam) from which the Creator has created the “Absolute Unseen” which “may not be disclosed to any creature,” and he indicates there that the creation or “origination” of this Greatest Element is all at once, without any intermediate or associated causes.24 So this original metaphysical Greatest Element that is in some mysterious way the substrate of all subsequent manifest creation— whether purely spiritual, imaginal, or physical—is the only thing that in some way underlies, constitutes, or gives rise to the Single Monad, and hence, the Universe. In ’Uqlat al-Mustawfiz also, Ibn al-Arabi mentions that there are 46,656,000 subtle luminous links (raqâ’iq nûraniyya) between the Single Monad and the Greatest Element that is their origin. This number is in fact the cubic power of 360 (3603=46,656,000), which is no doubt naturally associated with the traditional division of the circle into 360 degrees and the historical sexagenarian system attributed to the Babylonians, which is still used in dividing time into minutes and seconds. The resulting relation between the manifest world, the Single Monad and the Greatest Element can be conceived of by analogy to the relation between a building, the bricks and the clay: i.e., the building is made up of similar unit bricks, but the brick itself is made from fine clay. In Ibn alArabi’s own words: The noble Greatest Element in relation to the sphere of the world is like the [abstract] point, and the Pen [another name of the Single Monad] is like its circumference, while the Tablet [i.e., the Universal Soul where the world appears, or the abstract space] is what is in between [the point and the circumference]. So just as the point meets the circumference with its [whole] entity, so does this Greatest Element meet with its [whole] entity all the aspects of the [Universal] Intellect [i.e., the Single Monad], which are the sub-

24

Ibn al-Arabi, ’Uqlat al-Mustawfiz, in ‘Abd Al-Fattâh, Rasâ’il Ibn ‘Arabî, 2:38.

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tle links [i.e., the 46,665,000 raqâ’iq nûraniyya] that we mentioned before. They are unique “one” in the Greatest Element, but in the Intellect they become multiple and manifold, because of the manifold receptivity [of the Intellect] from the Greatest Element. Therefore, there is [only] one close attention [iltifâta] for the [Greatest] Element, but there are many faces of receptivity for the Intellect, that is why this [Greatest] Element is more realized in the unity of its Creator.25

For Ibn al-Arabi, the mysterious metaphysical relations between the ultimate macrocosmic constituents of creation are repeatedly mirrored in many different “microcosmic” dimensions of our own life. In each of these different domains, the initial creation of this higher world and the relation between its elements, such as the Single Monad and the Greatest Element, is subsequently reflected on many different lower planes of existence. One important symbolic analogy between the metaphysical macrocosm and more familiar human realities, which again runs throughout the Futûhât, is the “world of letters,” especially the Arabic alphabet where the first letter alif (corresponding also to A, the first letter in Latin alphabet) is inscribed like a vertical line that is made up from potentially infinite number of (abstract) points. Similarly, other letters are inscribed as various curved or delimited lines. Ibn al-Arabi thus explains that all the letters (like the whole world) may be deconstructed into the alif and constructed from it, because, being a straight line segment, it is the simplest form in inscription. However, the alif itself can be deconstructed “only in estimation,” into its spiritual principle, which is the primordial “Point” (Futûhât I.78.23). This, in fact, is correct both for inscribed as well as verbal letters, because the vocal sound of any letter is again composed by “curving” the sound of alif in the larynx and other vocal organs. In reality, this is also true for all other languages, and even any sound; they are all various forms of the sound “a” that is the simple impressed blow of air through the larynx. This rather concise depiction of this essential analogy, which is broadly elaborated in diverse methods by Ibn al-Arabi throughout his various works, could be the shortest symbolic account of the SMM where the Single Monad manifests itself in all the multiplicity of the world in a similar manner as we can, for example, compose, either by speaking or writing, a story made from chapters, sentences, words and letters; and all are reducible to the simplest letter or sound alif, which itself is indivisible but potentially composed of infinite number of abstract points. For this reason, the Sufis often describe the world as a book inscribed (kitab marqum) in the primordial (and well-preserved) Tablet (lawh mahfouz) that is noth-

25

Ibid., 2:38.

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ing but the abstract space.26 In fact, the analogy between the physical world and the world of letters could be exceptionally useful if we recall that all elementary particles in the Standard Model of Quantum Field Theory are basically elementary vibrations of various fields that extend and propagate in space. Moreover, the number of elementary particles is a little less but comparable to the number of letters and, just like Arabic letters or sounds, they are normally classified in four major categories. This important topic has been briefly described before,27 but it deserves a much deeper separate investigation. Ibn al-Arabi clearly declares in his most famous book of the Fusûs that “the cosmos is only imaginary, though it is—in reality—real.”28 This goes in full agreement with Parmenides’ statements in his poem “On Nature” where he describes the two-ways view of reality: “the Way of Truth” and “the Way of Opinion” as mentioned above. This fundamental view underlines Ibn al-Arabi’s controversial philosophy of the Oneness of Being (wahdat al-wujûd). Although he had never employed this famous term directly, throughout his extensive works, poetry and prose, he explains almost everything based on the concept of ultimate unicity and oneness of the Real. More specifically, the metaphysical structure of the world, how it comes into existence, how it is maintained and its ontological relation with the Creator, can only be explained on the basis of the Oneness of Being that is rooted in his model of creation (the SMM). Ibn al-Arabi himself mentioned in particular a number of key cosmological developments in chapter 371 and in the very detailed chapter 198 of the Futûhât, as well as in other cosmological books such as Inshâ’ al-Dawâ’ir, al-Tadbîrât alIlâhiyya, and ’Uqlat al-Mustawfiz. The Single Monad Model of the cosmos is based on three hypotheses: a. b.

There is only one Single Monad that can be described by real existence at any given time. The “Re-creation Principle”: The form in which the Single Monad manifests intrinsically ceases in the second instance to allow an ever new manifestation.

26 For a concise summary of Ibn al-Arabi’s view of the cosmos see Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology, 5–15. 27 Ibid., 180. 28 Ibn al-Arabi, Fusûs Al-Hikam, ed. Abū al-ʻIlā ‘Affîfî (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Kutub al-

ʻArabīya, 1946), 157.

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The Actual Flow of Time: There are two types or frames of time; the first is the time of the Single Monad (the Time), which is continuous and infinite, and the second is encountered by individual monads, which is discrete and finite, since the existence of each form is interrupted by other forms until it is re-created again.

This complex model of creation was fully explained in the above book, and we have already summarized some of its aspects above. To elaborate it further we may propose that the entire created world, both spiritual and manifest, consists of imaginal forms, or imagery monads, perpetually recreated by the Single Monad which continuously and successively appears in different forms creating the phenomena of the visible and invisible worlds. The successive appearance of the Single Monad eventually creates a comprehensive image, or “still picture,” as one single frame of the entire cosmos. This frame is created in one full Week, or seven Days of the original creative Days, the first six Days, from Sunday to Friday, correspond to the six directions of “space”: up, down, front, back, right, and left, and then comes Saturday that corresponds to “time.”29 This inclusive process of cosmic creation, as a snap of the six directions of space in an instance of time, creates a global event in the world, thus it is called the Day of Event, and it is the shortest day or time, also called the Single Day.30 This Single Day is equal to our normal day, i.e., the twenty-four hours’ day, but for an observer located at any single position in space it is equivalent only to one single moment that is the “atom of time,” which may be connected with Planck’s time,31 and it can initially be thought of as the normal day divided by the number of all possible forms. Thus the observed cosmos is the eternally renewed succession of these frames created by the Single Monad, one frame at a time, and each frame is made up from the successive manifestation of this same Single Monad in different forms of individual monads, also one monad at a time. The analogy mentioned above between the creation of the world, according to this model, and the movie that we can watch on television or computer monitor is fascinating and quite accurate in most of the details, even concerning what happens inside the computer, since the Universal Intellect, or the Higher Pen (another name of the Single Monad), can be considered as a kind of “supercomputer” which creates the world and 29

See chapters 3 and four in Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology. Ibid., 64. 31 The Planck time represents a rough time scale at which quantum gravitational effects are likely to become significant, and it is in the order of 10-44 seconds. 30

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displays it in the “Universal Tablet” (of the Universal Soul) that is the virtual abstract space where the creation eventually appears. Ibn al-Arabi already asserted that the world is created on the “Form”, or “Image” of the Real, the Creator, because it is His divine work, and He said in Quran: “everyone works according to his own type.”32 Similarly, the humans developed the computer as an “image” resembling some specific aspects of their physical and intellectual character. Ibn al-Arabi repeatedly showed that in many respects both the world and the essential human character are some kind of divine images which have many corresponding resemblances. For this reason, the Sufi mystics generally consider the world as a great human being (al-insân al-kabîr) and the human being as microcosm (‘âlam saghîr, Futûhât III.11.18). Our own human internal world is essentially constituted by the meanings, images, and states that are reflected in our spirit, soul, and intellect, in the same manner as the external world also reflects the divine manifestations brought into creation by the Universal Intellect, that is the Single Monad itself; so ultimately the world that is a kind of divine image, exists, quite literally, “in the mind”—albeit a different kind of “Mind” at each level of manifestation; such as the Universal Intellect, the human mind, or the computer processor. The movie that is displayed on the computer screen is composed of a large number of succeeding images, or still pictures, that pass rapidly before the eye at very short intervals, so that the human mind observes (by illusion) as if objects or characters are moving on the screen. Moreover, each frame that is displayed on the screen is created by an electric current that starts by forming a pixel, with specific color and intensity, at the lower left corner, and then make another pixel next to it with its own specific color and intensity, and so on until it completes a horizontal line, just to switch back to the left again and make another line above the first line, and so on until it scans the whole screen (for example 800 horizontal by 600 vertical pixels). When this full frame is displayed on the screen, the beam starts over the same process to make a new frame, and so on, as long as it is running. No matter how fast the processor is running, it can only calculate one pixel at a time, though by itself the pixel is also composed of several primary data that includes for example its color and intensity and which is also treated only one bit of data at a time. Even when it is displaying a blank or blue screen, the image is continuously being refreshed at a high rate that we do not normally feel. The details just stated here for the purpose of this analogy are a summary of a traditional computer system, 32

Quran 17:84, see also Futûhât II.438.19, I.163.20, II.652.25, III.343.25.

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but of course in reality it may be much more complicated and there could be a variety of many other different methods. Therefore, the movie is generated on the screen frame by frame, and each frame is generated pixel by pixel; one pixel at a time. According to Ibn al-Arabi’s model of creation, this is exactly analogous to what happens in the real world. He expressed this symbolically even in his very introduction to the Futûhât: Then He released the Breath, so the water waved because of its vibration and foamed. … Then the water diffidently withdrew and returned back heading for the middle, and it left over its foam on the shore that it produced. So it [the world] is the churning of this water that contains most things. (Futûhât I.4.7)

The observed world is thus nothing but this “foam” or “traces,” or else the “images” of the “forms” left over by the Single Monad that never ceases to appear in ever new forms perpetually and eternally. It is worth mentioning here the same term, “quantum foam,” is now used to describe that space is made of virtual particles that emerge and annihilate at very short intervals.

9. Space-time and Eternity We may notice from the above description that there are actually two types of time, the first is the “Time” that is encountered by the whole allencompassing Single Monad that appears consecutively in the succeeding individual monads, and the second is the time encountered by each of those individual monads. This essential duality of time means that the normal time that we encounter is in fact “imaginary,” while the real time is that in which space and matter are created, which could explain why time is often treated in physics according to complex numbers. As Stephen Hawking put it: “It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?”33 This means that space, as the real flow of time, does not continuously exist in time. For this reason, the Single Monad appears only in one form at a time, while the other forms simply cease to exist in the second instance after their becoming, until they are re-created again. The first type is therefore the “real flow of Time,” and it is infinite and contin-

33 Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1998), 157, see also: Stephen Hawking, The Universe in a Nutshell (New York: Bantam Books, 2001), 59.

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uous, because it is the total Time of all eternal existence or presence, while the second type that is encountered by each individual monad is partial time, and it is discrete and finite, but it is still potentially infinite since it originates from the real Time, or Eternity. These two types of time are intertwined in a complex manner that is fully described in chapter 4 of the above book. The real flow of Time, that is the first type just mentioned here, includes in reality both space and time from pre-eternity to post-eternity, and it is called the Age (al-dahr, also a divine name of God), while the second type that we actually encounter is illusory as it stems from the recurrence of the different forms each of which ceases from existence in the second instant after its becoming. The original Time, or the Age, that includes both space and time as we mentioned, is also not time, but rather Eternity, because time is normally understood as a duration, i.e., it has a beginning and an end. In reality, therefore, time is an illusion that emerges from the memory and anticipation of the existence of the forms that have either ceased or yet to come, both being unreal. What is real of time is only the moment of its current existence that lasts but only for one instance, that, alone, does not make time, but only an abstract point in the imaginary time. The concept of imaginary time is already being used widely in various mathematical formulations in Quantum Mechanics and Cosmology, without any actual justification apart from the fact that it is a quite convenient mathematical trick that is useful in solving a number of problems. Imaginary time was employed in the early formulation of Special Relativity to represent Lorentz boost as a rotation in the imaginary plane. This was employed in the early formulation of Special Relativity by Poincare and even Minkowski, 34 but because there were no substantial reasons to treat time as imaginary, Minkowski had to introduce the four-dimensional space-time, in which time and space are treated equally. According to the Single Monad Model, however, since space is perpetually being re-created in the real time, the normal time itself becomes genuinely imaginary. The concept of the perpetual re-creation of matter and space, and the resulting genuinely imaginary level of time, has been developed recently into the Duality of Time Theory that is based on the split-complex Hyperbolic geometry, which combines together the two contrasting and conclu-

34 Vesselin Petkov, ed, Space, Time, and Spacetime: Physical and Philosophical Implications of Minkowski's Unification of Space and Time (Berlin: Springer, 2010).

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sive views of continuity and discreteness of space and time and explains how they both are emerging from the absolute metaphysical oneness.35 The perceived extension of space and passage of time is also illusory, since what really exists is only the Single Monad while those multiplicities of forms are only its instantaneous traces. Nevertheless, it was shown before36 how each point of this illusory space-time is formed over seven elementary movements, which correspond to the seven cosmic Days of the Week that we essentially perceive as one instance. For the first time in history, the significance of the Week, as the primary unit of space and time together, has been defined. It is now beyond the scope of this chapter to describe this in details, but Ibn al-Arabi showed how the world is being recreated in six Days (of events) of the (original) Week, from Sunday to Friday, which correspond to the six directions of space, and then it is displayed on Saturday that is then called the “Day of Eternity,” which corresponds to time. This act of creation “in one Week” by the Single Monad actually takes place at every moment of our time frame; the observer simply does not feel the creation of space in the six Days as he is located in his local position of this spatial presence. When the observer is re-created he feels the passage of time, and when he looks at the other forms left over by the Single Monad he feels space, but indeed all is time or sheer presence that progress linearly and chronologically. Space is like frozen presence (that exists in memory, or the “Dust” (habâ’) of the divine cosmic Imagination (barzakh, khayâl, etc.) while (the present moment of) time is still liquescent. Both space and time are instances of the existence of the Single Monad, but while space is the locus of the existence of all forms in the current frame, time is the locus of the existence of each individual monad over succeeding frames. In his major book of al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya, Ibn al-Arabi says: “we showed in this book and in our book The Time (al-Zamân) that time is something that has no (real) existence” (Futûhât I.490.17). And he adds: Time and space are also a consequence of natural bodies. Time is something imagined that does not exist (in itself), but is introduced by the motion of orbs and localized things when we ask about them by “when.” So time and space do not exist in reality, but existence is attributed to the things that move and rest. (Futûhât II.458.1)

35

This work is available online as a paper on the Preprint server: M. Haj Yousef, Duality of Time and Perpetual Re-creation of Space (Preprints 2017), 2017080050, and as a book: M. Haj Yousef, Duality of Time: Complex-Time Geometry and Perpetual Creation of Space (Charleston: CreateSpace, 2018). 36 Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology, ch. 3.

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In full accordance with this, Ibn Bâjja says in his commentary to Physics 4.10, 217b29–218a3 that “time consists of two parts, one of which has existed (and gone, i.e., the past), the other does not yet exist (i.e., the future), so how can something exists which is composed of what does not exist?”37 So if there is a real existence to time it will be in the present (the “now”), not the past or the future. Aristotle then gives another argument that also the “now” is not time, but a point in imaginary time, like a point on the line; although the line is composed of points, still each point is not a line. Likewise, time is the sum of all present moments that exist only one by one, and each one present moment (alone) is not time. Time therefore is the mind’s projection on the continuous presence from the future to the past through the present. In Ibn al-Arabi’s words right in the title of chapter 390 of the Futûhât: “the time of a thing is its presence” (Futûhât III.546.16). With these new concepts of time and space, many related notions need to be redefined, such as the meaning of simultaneity and temporality. Moreover, many exciting modern notions of space and time, such as time travel, time dilation, and space contraction, that formulate the fundamentals of the theory of Relativity, can now be easily explained.

10. The Reality of Motion Let us return to the analogy of the movie screen or computer monitor. When the electric current creates them, each pixel on the screen appears in a specific form of different color and intensity that may (slightly) change from one frame to the other. This momentary form, in which the pixel appears every time it is scanned, lasts only during the very short time while the current is in its place. Once the current leaves the pixel to make the next one, the form of the previous pixel vanishes intrinsically; we only see the traces of these forms for a short time until they are scanned again to appear in a new form that may be different or similar to the previous one. Similarly, if the perpetual creative process by the Single Monad is conceptually “stopped” and taken in isolation, it will form a kind of “still picture” of things around us, including ourselves both as bodies (matter) and as spirits or states of realization (meanings). Within this conception, the dynamic manifest world, then, is the instantaneous and continuously

37 Paul Lettinck, Aristotle’s Physics and Its Reception in the Arabic World: With an Edition of the Unpublished Parts of Ibn Bâjja’s Commentary of the Physics (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 348.

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renewed succession of these slightly changing frames. Motion, therefore, is observed because things successively appear in different places, but indeed there is no actual motion, rather: the observed objects are always at rest in the different positions that they appear in. This is the same conclusion of the Arrow argument by Zeno, which Russell described as: “in some miraculous way the change of position has to occur between the instants (without moving)” as mentioned above. To put it in a simple fashion, with Ibn al-Arabi’s Re-creation Principle, there is no real motion in the sense that the object gradually leaves its position to a new place, but rather it is swiftly “re-created” in ever new positions so that we imagine it moving. For example, when we watch a movie on the television or computer monitor, we have no doubt that nothing really moves on the screen, but it is only the succession of different frames that causes us to imagine motion. According to Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmological perspective, the whole world is more like a threedimensional holographic display that exists essentially in our own imagination. As far as motion is concerned, he plainly states that the object that we see moving is actually re-created in the distinct places between its start and destination, one after another, and does not really move between them (Futûhât II.457.31), so there is never any real motion or transmutation in such a way that the object gradually moves along its path. Parmenides argued that movement was impossible because it requires moving into “the void,” that he identified with “nothing.” Similarly, at the end of his short book al-Durrat al-Baydâ’ (“The White Pearl”; another symbolic name of the Single Monad), Ibn al-Arabi wonders how people do not so easily realize the delusion of motion and space. He says that everything that moves does not move in occupied space, thus the thing may not move into a new place until this new place is emptied in advance. So by simple logic, this false assumption would lead to the conclusion that the result of an action would occur before the action itself. This is in fact a supplementary paradox of motion that could be added to the preceding paradoxes of Zeno. Therefore, for Ibn al-Arabi, as well as Parmenides and his follower Zeno, the phenomena of movement and change are simply recurring appearances of a changeless eternal reality. On the other hand, Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity is firmly based on the fact that the speed of light in vacuum is constant in all directions and it is a terminal velocity that cannot be surpassed. Photons and some other elementary particles and waves, such as electromagnetic and gravitational waves, propagate in vacuum at this terminal speed, regardless of the motion of the source or the inertial reference frame of the observer. In

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1905, Albert Einstein showed that this constancy and invariance of the speed of light have many peculiar consequences on the relativity of space and time and other important physical parameters. This was later confirmed by many measurements, but there is yet no philosophical account that may explain these facts apart from the mathematical equations. In the SMM, because of the Re-creation Principle, it is quite obvious why there should be a maximum speed, since nothing can ever go faster than the Single Monad itself, because it is the only one that is bringing everything into existence. In actual life, however, there is no complete vacuum, and hence the speed of light approaches the speed of the Single Monad but is never equal to it. For any individual monad to be able to move exactly with the same speed as the Single Monad, it has to be “released” from its own form or individual entity, which is illusory anyway, and remains attached with the Single Monad or fully “realized” in it. In terms of the Sufi mystic terminology this is what they refer to as spiritual awakening, which may ultimately develop into full “realization” (tahqiq, lit. becoming real) attainable only by the very few mystical elites of the time, especially the Unique (or Single) Pole (al-qutb al-fard). For this reason, the Single Pole is often called “the master of time” (sâhib al-waqt),38 because he is always in “full attention” every “single moment.” The true master of time witnesses everything in the world all the time: that is to say, he witnesses the created world throughout space and time, or eternity. When this full realization with the Single Monad is ever achieved, the individual monad in question literally moves with the Single Monad throughout all the forms that it is exhaustively bringing out into existence. In this case, the sense of time and space will be lost instantaneously, since time and space are conceivable only with regard to other (illusory) forms in relation to this (also illusory) individual monad in question. This is the only true meaning of “Rest,” and it is relatively achieved in the state of deep sleep, or in some high states of spiritual transcendence, but in real life there is always motion, or change, because the monad is always ceasing and becoming in ever new forms, without any repetition whatsoever. The Single Monad, and to a certain extent any individual monad fully realized in it, will see all possible forms throughout all space and time, i.e., eternity, all at once, as one single unchanging metaphysical reality. Multiplicity, with all its physical consequences, such as time, space, and motion, is conceivable only when one falls below this high transcendent state, like

38

See chapter 336 of the Futûhât, III.135.

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what we are in real life; otherwise in reality there is only one unchanging whole existence, as Parmenides explained in his poem. Therefore, to be in or to approach these high transcendent states is like travelling through time, which is an inspirational experience attained frequently by many Sufis. Unlike what is normally anticipated by Relativity, such as what is known as the “twin paradox,”39 a person who undergoes such (spiritual) time travel will simply encounter many more (even real) events than those who stay in the normal physical limits, and maybe sitting next to him. For example, Ibn al-Arabi mentions the story of alJahwari who went to take a bath in the Nile, and when he was looking at the water he saw, like a vision, that he was in Baghdad and he got married and lived with his wife for six years and had children, and then he was returned to himself (from this momentary vision). After few months this same women, whom he saw in the vision that he had married, came looking for his house (in Egypt), and when he met her he knew her and knew his children (Futûhât II.82.22). Moreover, in parallel with the delicate accomplishment of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics started to develop in the early 20th century, when it was discovered that the laws of classical mechanics, including Newton’s theory of Gravity as well as Einstein’s theory of Relativity, that govern macroscopic objects, do not apply correctly on microscopic scales, such as the interactions between atoms and elementary particles. Many famous scientists were genuinely involved in the progress of Quantum Mechanics, including Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schroedinger. Albert Einstein, in particular, raised serious theoretical objections to certain fundamental principles of this new mechanics, and he worked for many years towards disproving or modifying them, because they clearly contradicted his already successful theory, since they apparently lead to accepting the reality motion faster than light. In Classical Mechanics, we could predict the behavior of a system if we exactly knew its initial state. But in Quantum Mechanics, we can only calculate the probability of how the system will evolve, not because of the lack of appropriate tools, but due to Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” which states that not all of the physical parameters of a system can be fully determined at the same time. Moreover, the state of the system that is being measured by the observer is found to be essentially influenced by the measurement itself, i.e., the observer himself affects the observed reality. This latter concept in particular caused some scientists to consider 39

Ray d’Inverno, Introducing Einstein’s Relativity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 38.

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that consciousness can affect the motion and behavior of particles. This, in fact, has its root in the monistic philosophy of the Eleatic School. As already mentioned, at the top Schrödinger himself identified Parmenides’ monad as the conscious self. All these peculiar concepts, which were soon to be supported experimentally, led to many astonishing conclusions such as the wave-particle duality, quantum tunneling, and quantum entanglement, that mostly contradict common views of matter, space, and time, and even the principles of Einstein’s Relativity of the constancy of the speed of light, which was also already experimentally confirmed. As a result, these contradictions triggered many research paths that tried to consolidate the fundamental forces of physics, leading to many differing and intersecting theories, such as Quantum Gravity, Superstring Theory, Quantum Field Theory, Supersymmetry, and the Theory of Everything. None of these theories, however, was ever able to conquer these contradictions. In this regard, the SMM can definitely solve many of these concerns, not the least of that: quantum tunneling and the famous EPR paradox, without ever breaking the rule of the constancy of the speed of light and that it is the maximum speed anything can ever attain. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox is a thought experiment which shows that, under certain conditions, a quantum system of two entangled particles could in theory exchange information instantaneously, in spite of the fact that Einstein showed that the speed of light is the maximum terminal velocity. Recently, quite a few decades since the invention of the EPR thought experiment in 1935, many accurate experiments were performed, all showing that it is as if time stops between the pair of entangled particles and they do interact instantaneously despite the large distance between them. In the SMM, this abnormal instantaneous behavior between the two entangled particles would be natural and very easily explained. This was discussed in greater detail at the end of chapter 7 of my Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology; the key conception is based on the fact that the two entangled particles in these experiments, like any two entities in the world, never existed together at the same time, but the Single Monad creates them one by one as explained above. After it first takes the form of the first particle, the Single Monad goes on through other forms until it comes to take the form of the second particle, no matter where it is in space. But by the moment of this second state of creation, the first particle is out of existence, and therefore it encountered no time. This applies to any two forms or entities in the world, but because

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these two particles in the EPR experiment are “entangled” (in a closed system), any change on the first form that corresponds to the first particle will be kept in the memory of the Single Monad, so that when it comes to appear in the form of the second particle it does so in a way that keeps the total state of the system of the two particles unchanged, since it is a closed system, i.e., it is not subject to external effects. This process is instantaneous; no matter how far apart the two particles are, because only one particle really exists at a time, and during the interval between creating the two particles they were both out of existence, encountering no time. Furthermore, as I have elucidated before,40 Ibn al-Arabi affirmed that all the possible monads in the world have been created within the first six Days, from Sunday to Friday (which correspond to the six directions of space), and then nothing remained to be created on Saturday (which corresponds to time), so the Single Monad is continuously and creatively changing the states of things “from (one) state to (another) state and from (one) station to (another) station” (Futûhât I.61.14). Therefore, the whole world in space is a “closed system” and all changes in it are necessarily internal changes only. Therefore, the above description applies to any (large or small) closed system and not merely to the system of those two entangled particles, but in normal cases the effect of the ongoing process of cosmic re-creation is not noticeable because of the many possible changes that could happen in any part of the complex system and the corresponding distraction of our limited means of attention and perception. In other words: any change in any part of the world will inevitably cause synchronizing change(s) in all other parts.

11. Simultaneity and Temporality In classical theories, space and time were considered as absolute quantities. This persisted confidently with the common concept of comprehensive simultaneity, where events which occur simultaneously in one frame of reference were considered to have occurred simultaneously also in all other frames. With the advent of the Special Relativity, the idea that light travels at a finite speed in all frames of reference changed this piece of common sense. Accordingly, simultaneous events in one frame of reference are not necessarily considered simultaneous with regard to another frame of reference moving at a relatively high speed with regard to the first.

40

Cf. Haj Yousef, Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology, ch. 3.

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In the SMM, however, the concept of simultaneity will have an even more relativistic aspect, since we have noticed the two different types of time as we mentioned above. With regard to any particular observer—an observer considered as an individual monad present at a certain location on the outward level of multiplicity—it is possible to observe simultaneous events; those which are created by the Single Monad at the specific instance of the temporary global “Day of Event.” In other words, at every single moment of re-creation there exists a full frame of space displayed in the whole world, where all events in this frame are considered simultaneous with regard to the observer in question. However, as a matter of reality, there can be no two events actually happening at the same time, of the actual flow of Time, because the Single Monad appears in the forms of individual monads only one monad at a time. Simultaneity, and therefore multiplicity, appears to occur only because of the cessation and re-creation of individual monads. On the other hand, as it is the case with the imaginary perception of time (zaman), temporality (waqt) is also an intellectual estimation of the past, present, and future, as they are momentarily perceived at the present time. As such, the Sufi mystic, who yearns for comprehensive spiritual realization, should always endeavor to get rid of those unreal residuals attached to temporality, i.e., the past and future parts that have either ceased or not come yet, and thus live fully in the present, that is the only real and always-special moment coming forth from the Real, the Creator of the Universe. Any memory of the past or anticipation of the future will inevitably damage the outcome of the temporal moments, since each moment can accommodate only the real event that actually takes place. If the person is occupied by past memories or future anticipation, he or she will not be able to live the present in full. Ibn al-Arabi defines temporality as the state “you are always described by, so you are always under the rule of temporality (al-waqt)” (Futûhât II.538.32). Then he notes that it is what exists “now” between the two nonexistents of the past and the future, not as time but as events that have passed or have not come yet. Therefore, temporality is the present event that each individual encounters at the moment. This event emerges originally from the Real, and the individual monad, or the human being, should live this event in full away from the effect of the past or the future that may result from his or her own desire (Futûhât II.538.35). Failing to live the tirelessly flowing moments in full is falling below the transcendent state of realization, which means plunging deep inside the illusion of time. Consequently, temporality is what induces the essential feeling of time through

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the intellectual estimation of past events and future possibilities, both being unreal. The “intellect,” therefore, is not capable of spiritual realization. On the contrary, it could be the main reason behind its plunging. Spiritual realization can only be achieved through the “heart,” because of its unique inherent aptitude for persisting fluctuation (taqlib), hence the Arabic name for the heart, qalb. In turn, the Arabic name for the intellect is derived from ‘aql, which means “to hold” or “grasp.” The Sufi needs to be “released” from all dispositions in order be able to “fluctuate” with the Single Monad in its instantaneous and enduring process of “Re-creation.” Any genuine success towards achieving this ultimate goal is considered as breaking out of the illusory time and, to some extent, living in the real Time, or Eternity. This is normally attained in a relative manner through comprehensive and daring and extended mystic meditation. However, Ibn al-Arabi adds that: the divine [ontological] basis of temporality is His, the most Exalted, describing Himself as being each day upon one event / task [Quran 50:29]: so temporality is what He is in—in the root—but it appears in the offspring that is the cosmos. So the “task” of the Real appears in the entities of the world [the contingent things]. Temporality, therefore, is what you are in, and what you are in is your aptitude itself. What appears in you of the events of the Real that He is in, is only what your aptitude demands: so the task is already designated, because the aptitude of the possible [contingent] thing with its possibility led the task of the Real to bring it into existence. Do you not see that the non-existent does not accept existence [or “the task of the Real”], because it has no aptitude for that! Thus, the [outward, manifest] origin of temporality is from the cosmos, not from the Real, but it is a kind of hypothetical supposition that has no effect on other than the creation [i.e., it has no rule on the Real Himself]. (Futûhât II.539.2)

As far as the “moment” is concerned, Böwering concluded that “[i]n Ibn al-Arabi’s view, there is an infinite cluster of moments, conceived as time atoms without duration, but they are mere instances of preparedness in which are actualized those possibilities that God has ordained to be affected in a human being.”41 However, the issue of whether the moment has or hasn’t a duration is extremely delicate. If we choose to say it has not, then how can the extent of the entire perceived Single Day be composed of 41

Gerald Böwering, “Ibn al-Arabi’s Concept of Time,” in Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit. Festschrift für Annemarie Schimmel zum 7. April 1992 dargebracht von Schülern, Freunden und Kollegen / God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty:

Festschrift in Honour of Annemarie Schimmel, Presented by Students, Friends and Colleagues on April 7, 1992, ed. by Alma Giese and Christoph J. Bürgel (Bern: Peter Lang, 1992), 71–91.

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zero-length moments? We must keep in mind that the number of entities in the world (N), though pretty enormous, is still finite. Therefore, the Single Day equals N multiplied by the duration of the moment. Yet if we choose to assert the actual duration of the “moment,” then what exactly happens during the moment? In fact, the moment corresponds to the creation of the Single Monad; thus it should be outwardly indivisible, yet composed of “sub-moments” that correspond to the creation of the Greatest Element as described above. We may now affirm, according to Ibn al-Arabi, that those submoments are utterly indivisible because, according to him, the Greatest Element is created “at once.” The question whether those sub-moments have non-zero duration remains open, as does the questions whether they are infinite, or whether they are discrete or continuous. It seems that the process is similar to the normal day where the sun rises and sets to define daytime and night. Therefore, the Day of the Single Monad, that is the Single Day, or the “moment” for each observer, is just like the normal day itself: On the outside it is counted as “one day,” while inside it looks smooth and composed of a continuous flow of time, i.e., “potentially infinite.” But it is quite possible that the same sets of questions may be repeated with regard to the “Day of the Greatest Element,” and similar quantization may take place at smaller scales! We have not seen any detailed reference in Ibn al-Arabi’s writings about the exact relation between the Single Monad and the Greatest Element, and thus about the moment and its possible constituents, i.e., the sub-moments. On the contrary, Ibn alArabi affirms that this is a divine secret that he was sworn not to disclose.42

Bibliography Aristotle. Aristotle’s Physics. Translated by Richard Hope. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Böwering, Gerald. “Ibn al-Arabi’s Concept of Time.” In Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit. Festschrift für Annemarie Schimmel zum 7. April 1992 dargebracht von Schülern, Freunden und Kollegen / God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty: Festschrift in Honour of Annemarie Schimmel, Presented by Students, Friends and Colleagues on April 7, 1992, edited by Alma Giese and Christoph J. Bürgel, 71–91. Bern: Peter Lang, 1992. Dowden, Bradley. “Zeno’s Paradoxes.” In The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. Ac-

42

Ibn al-Arabi, ’Uqlat al-Mustawfiz, 38.

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cessed 5 September 2017. http://www.iep.utm.edu/zeno-par. Frankel, Hermann. “Zeno of Elea’s Attacks on Plurality.” The American Journal of Philology 63, nos. 1 and 2 (1942): 1–25, 193– 206. doi:10.2307/291077. Haj Yousef, Mohamed. Ibn ‘Arabî—Time and Cosmology. London; New York: Routledge, 2008. ———. The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos: Ibn Arabi’s Concept of Time and Creation. Charleston: CreateSpace, 2014. ———. Duality of Time and Perpetual Re-creation of Space. Preprints 2017, 2017080050. ———. Duality of Time: Complex-Time Geometry and Perpetual Creation of Space. Charleston: CreateSpace, 2018. Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books, 1998. ———. The Universe in a Nutshell. New York: Bantam Books, 2001. Huggett, Nick. “Zeno’s Paradoxes.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2010 Edition. Accessed 5 September 2017. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/paradoxzeno. Ibn al-Arabi. al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya. Bulaq. 4 volumes. Cairo, 1911. ———. Al-Durrat Al-Baydâ. In ‘Abd Al-Fattâh, Rasâ’il Ibn ‘Arabî, 2. ———. Fusûs Al-Hikam. Edited by Abū al-ʻIlāIlAffîfî. Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Kutub al-ʻArabīya, 1946. ———. Rasâ’il Ibn ‘Arabî. Edited by Sa‘îd ‘Abd Al-Fattâh. Volume 2. Beirut, Mu’assasat Al-Intishâr Al-‘Arabî, 2004. ———. ’Uqlat al-Mustawfiz. In ‘Abd Al-Fattâh, Rasâ’il Ibn ‘Arabî, 2. d’Inverno, Ray. Introducing Einstein’s Relativity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Lettinck, Paul. Aristotle’s Physics and Its Reception in the Arabic World: With an Edition of the Unpublished Parts of Ibn Bâjja’s Commentary of the Physics. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Palmer, John. “Parmenides.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2012 Edition. Accessed 5 September 2017. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/parmeni des. Petkov, Vesselin, ed. Space, Time, and Spacetime: Physical and Philosophical Implications of Minkowski's Unification of Space and Time. Fundamental Theories of Physics 167. Berlin: Springer, 2010. Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

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1961. ———. The Republic and Other Works. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: Anchor Books, 2012. Proclus. Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. Edited by John M. Dillon. Translated by Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Russell, Bertrand. “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians.” In Mysticism and Logic; and Other Essays, 74–96. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1917. ———. Our Knowledge of the External World: As a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. First edition. London; Chicago: Open Court, 1914. ———. “The Problem of Infinity Considered Historically.” In Zeno’s Paradoxes, edited by Wesley C. Salmon, 47–58. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970. Schrödinger, Erwin. Nature and the Greeks: Shearman Lectures, Delivered at University College, London on 24, 26, 28, and 31 May 1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954. Scolnicov, Samuel. Plato’s Parmenides. Berkely: University of California Press, 2003. Tannery, Paul. “Le concept scientifique du continu. Zénon d’Élée et Georg Cantor.” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 10, no. 20 (1885): 385–410. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k17159s. Winter, Tim J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Yahya, Osman. Histoire et classification de l’œuvre d’Ibn ‘Arabî. Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1964.

Index

A Al-Arabi, i, iii, v, 145, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174 Al-Fārābi, ii, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142 Al-Ghazālī, ii, 121, 122, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131 al-Rāzī, 135, 137 alterity, 91 Antiquity, 28, 48, 53, 89 Archytas, 1 Aristotle, i, 1, 30, 31, 34, 43, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 65, 85, 91, 103, 104, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 157, 166

B Basil of Caesarea, ii, v, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 50, 95, 119 Byzantine, i, v, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33, 36, 40, 43, 44, 99, 107, 138 Byzantium, 27, 37, 43, 138

C change, iii, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42, 50, 52, 54, 59, 67, 69,

73, 74, 145, 150, 154, 166, 167, 168, 171 Christology, ii, 94, 100, 107, 108, 111

E Einstein, Albert, 29, 119, 167, 168, 169, 170 eschaton, ii, 99, 102, 105, 106, 108, 112, 113 eternity, i, 28, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 64, 65, 66, 92, 119, 164, 168

G Gregory of Nyssa, ii, 34, 48, 49, 58, 59

H Heisenberg, Werner, 169 Hesiod, 136 hypostatic, 42, 43, 95, 98, 99, 101, 106, 108, 109

I Iamblichus, i, 1 Ibn Ḥazm, ii, 121, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130

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Index

intellectual, i, 27, 28, 29, 44, 101, 162, 172, 173

K kalām, ii, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 131 Kalām, ii, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126

L Late Antiquity, 89 logoi, 93, 95, 97, 101, 104

M Maximus the Confessor, i, ii, 33, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 47, 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 85, 86, 94, 97, 98, 104, 107 motion, iii, 34, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 103, 108, 119, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 158, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170 motionless, 54, 55, 65, 71, 74, 125 Mutakallimūn, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129

N Neoplatonism, 28, 29, 31, 34, 48, 87, 89, 93, 97, 135, 154, 156

Neoplatonic, i, 28, 29, 30, 39, 56, 86, 137, 138

O ontological, ii, 28, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 55, 58, 61, 62, 64, 66, 70, 78, 85, 87, 89, 92, 97, 100, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 151, 154, 160, 173 Origen, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 43

P Parmenides, 28, 145, 146, 147, 148, 154, 157, 160, 167, 169, 170 participation, 36, 39, 56, 71, 72, 76, 90, 102 perpetuity, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43 Plato, ii, 28, 29, 31, 34, 38, 49, 60, 64, 65, 69, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 146, 147, 148, 154 Plotinus, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 43, 51, 64, 86 Porphyry, 89 Proclus, 29, 34, 39, 43, 59, 147, 148 ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, 37, 38, 43

Q quality, 51, 60, 70 quantity, 51, 60, 70, 148, 152 quantum mechanics, 146, 147, 169

Index

179

S Simplicius, 147, 148 Single Monad Model, 145, 146, 150, 151, 154, 157, 159, 160, 168, 170, 172 Socrates, 146, 147 soul, 30, 31, 52, 55, 101, 162 spatiotemporality, 60, 61 substance, 59, 60, 70, 72, 77, 91, 123, 155, 156, 157 synthesis, ii, iii, 40, 42, 49, 58

T temporality, i, 27, 28, 32, 36, 41, 42, 47, 48, 49, 52, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71,

72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 108, 112, 119, 166, 172, 173 transcendence, 79, 91, 168

Z Zeno, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 157, 167

Α αἰών, i, 28, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 107

Χ χρόνος, 49