Holy Beauty: Prolegomena to an Orthodox Philokalic Aesthetics

261 Pages·2022·9.034 MB·English

by  Chrysostomos A. Stamoulis, Norman Russell (translator)

Holy Beauty

Holy Beauty
Prolegomena to an Orthodox
Philokalic Aesthetics
Chrysostomos A. Stamoulis
Translated by Norman Russell
James Clarke & Co.
James Clarke & Co.
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
United Kingdom
www.jamesclarke.co
[email protected]
Hardback ISBN: 978 0 227 17813 3
Paperback ISBN: 978 0 227 17810 2
PDF ISBN: 978 0 227 17811 9
ePUB ISBN: 978 0 227 17812 6
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A record is available from the British Library
First published as Kallos to hagion by Akritas, 2004
English translation fi rst published by James Clarke and Co., 2022
Copyright © Chrysostomos A. Stamoulis, 2022
English Translation, 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced,
stored electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
prior written permission from the Publisher
([email protected]).
To Th anasakis and Alexandroula

Contents
Translator’s Introduction ix
Author’s Preface xiii
Part I. Philokalia or Aesthetics? Th e ‘Dilemma’ of
Contemporary Orthodoxy 1
Chapter 1. Kostas Zouraris: ‘What We Call “Philokalia”
Is Not the Same as Western Good Taste’ 3
Chapter 2. Father Alexander Schmemann: ‘One Cannot
Banish the Senses’ 25
Chapter 3. Nikos Matsoukas: ‘Aesthetics Is a Lasting Victory
over Distraction and Fragmentation’ 60
Part II. Orthodoxy’s Philokalic Aesthetics:
Th e ‘Both Together’ of Patristic Teaching 81
Chapter 4. ‘Supra-Substantial Good’: Dionysius the
Areopagite and the Church Fathers on the
Holy Trinity 83
Chapter 5. ‘Where Has Your Beauty Gone?’: Anthropological
Notes on the Beauty Lost by the Fall 102
Chapter 6. ‘Th e Heavens Tell of the Glory of God’:
Th e Orthodox Doctrine of Creation and the
Problem of the Environment 147
viii Holy Beauty
Part III. ‘Unutterable Beauty’: Examples of a Philokalic
Reading of Ecclesial Life 165
Chapter 7. Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis: A Walk ‘by the Seashore’
and the Boundaries of the Church 167
Chapter 8. Th e Elder Sophrony of Essex: Th e Remembrance
of Death and the ‘Confl ict’ with a Passion
for Painting 180
Chapter 9. Th e Elder Porphyrios, the Nightingale and the
Current Debate on Aesthetics: Parallel Readings
of the Elder’s Discourses and Th eodor W. Adorno’s
Aesthetic Th eory 200
Aft erword: Saints and Poets Perhaps … 219
Who’s Who 223
Select Bibliography 227
Index 231
Translator’s Introduction
During the last century aesthetics became an autonomous discipline
with its own technical vocabulary and, as such, detached the beautiful
from the good. It was not always so. In the ancient and medieval worlds
aesthetic experience pointed to a transcendent reality beyond this world.
Plato posited an absolute beauty and goodness which is the eternal form
that makes all things beautiful in our sensible transitory world. Th e
aesthetic draws one towards this absolute. Morever, the aesthetic is not
only visual; it also has a moral dimension that elevates the soul towards
the source of beauty. Plato’s philosophical successors built on these
convictions. For Plotinus beauty is coterminous with ultimate reality, so
that ugliness, which is the negation of beauty and goodness, is not just
what is aesthetically displeasing but is the negation of reality itself. Th e
beauty and goodness of the primary level of reality is not immediately
accessible to us, but descends to us through the secondary and tertiary
levels of Intellect and Soul. Our task in this life is to ‘ascend again to the
good, which every soul desires’ and to become united with it.1 Th e identity
of the good with the beautiful cannot be demonstrated dialectically, says
Plotinus. It can only be grasped intuitively through direct experience:
‘Anyone who has seen [the good] knows what I mean when I say that it is
beautiful.’2 It marks the fi rst step towards the vision of God.
Th is aesthetic was adopted by some of the Church Fathers, notably,
Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa,3 who expressed it by
1. Plotinus, Ennead I.6.7, in Plotinus, Ennead, Volume I: Porphyry on the Life
of Plotinus. Ennead I, trans. A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library 440
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 253.
2. Ibid.
3. In the West Augustine was also deeply impressed by Plotinus’ treatise ‘On
Beauty’, which he read in Latin translation and quotes anonymously in De
Civitate Dei IX.17 and Confessions I.18 and VIII.8.