The Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Philosophia Antiqua)

232 Pages·2006·0.77 MB·English

by  Christian Schafer

PHILOSOPHY OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE
PHILOSOPHIA ANTIQUA
A SERIES OF STUDIES
ON ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
PREVIOUS EDITORS
† †
J.H. WASZINK , W.J. VERDENIUS , J.C.M. VAN WINDEN
EDITED BY
K.A. ALGRA, F.A.J. DE HAAS
J. MANSFELD, D.T. RUNIA
VOLUME XCIX
CHRISTIAN SCHÄFER
PHILOSOPHY OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE
PHILOSOPHY OF
DIONYSIUS THE
AREOPAGITE
an introduction to the structure and the
content of the treatise on the divine names
BY
CHRISTIAN SCHÄFER
BRILL
LEIDEN•BOSTON
2006
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available.
ISSN 0079-1687
ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15094-2
ISBN-10: 90-04-15094-3
© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
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printed in the netherlands
tÕn me\n oân poihth;n kaˆ pate/ra toàde toà pantÕj eØre‹n te œrgon
kaˆ eØrÒnta e„j p£ntaj ¢dÚnaton le/gein
(Timaeus 28c)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ........................................................................ ix
Glossary .......................................................................................... xi
Foreword (by Paul Rorem) .......................................................... xiii
PART I
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM
§1. The ‘Churching’ of Platonism as a Philosophical
Challenge .............................................................................. 3
§2. The Phantom Author .......................................................... 11
a. The Man and the Myth .................................................. 11
b. A Saint turned Forger (and What to do about It) .... 14
§3. The Status Quaestionis .......................................................... 23
a. Naming the Names ........................................................ 24
b. Von Ivánka’s Analysis ...................................................... 26
c. Aquinas’ Layout of DN .................................................. 28
d. Defence of the Interpretive Pattern ............................ 31
e. Von Ivánka’s Interpretation — Merits and Problems 31
f. Von Balthasar’s Interpretation. What It Tries to
Accomplish and Where It is Found Wanting .............. 35
g. Abolishing Monopolies .................................................. 42
h. The Way of the Mystic .................................................. 44
i. Associative Composing .................................................. 50
PART II
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DN
§4. A Summary on the Philosophical Concern of DN .......... 55
§5. Structural Analysis of DN .................................................... 75
1. Chapters 1-3: The Theo-Methodological Basics ........... 76
2. Chapters 4-7: Levelled Extroversion ............................ 80
viii CONTENTS
a. Being, Life, Wisdom (chs. 5, 6, 7) .......................... 84
b. A Summary on Procession and Differentiation ...... 88
3. Chapters 8-11: Dynamic Steadying ................................ 89
a. A Question of Justice ................................................ 94
b. Opus iustitiae pax ...................................................... 100
4. Chapters 12 and 13: e pluribus unum ............................ 111
a. Subsumption .............................................................. 116
b. SomeConclusionstoBeDrawnfromthe
Analysis ...................................................................... 120
§6. The Philosophical Perspective ............................................ 123
PART III
THE TOUCH-STONE OF DIONYSIAN ONTOLOGY
§7. The Problem of Evil ............................................................ 133
§8. What Evils are, and Whence .............................................. 137
§9. After ‘Evil’: The Structure of DN Reassessed .................. 155
Conclusion .................................................................................... 163
Appendix 1: Diagrams .................................................................. 175
Appendix 2: Concordance............................................................. 181
Bibliography .................................................................................. 187
Indices ............................................................................................ 205
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present book owes much to the help and support of many per-
sons and institutions. My first serious interest in Dionysius and the plan
for this book ripened some eight years ago in Quito, Ecuador where
I was teaching philosophy at the Universidad Católica at the time. I
finally began writing the book some years later at the Universität
Regensburg, and the half-finished draft accompanied me through a
lectureship in Bogotá, Colombia sponsored by the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD) in 2001 and a subsequent sabbatical replace-
ment at the Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen, before I could take it
with me to my present position at the Ludwig-Maximilinas-Universität
München. A research fellowship at Princeton University’s Program in
Hellenic Studies in 2003-2004 and a generous scholarship of the Fritz
Thyssen Foundation enabled me to finish my work on the yellowing
manuscript. My thanks go to all the aforementioned institutions, their
staff and faculties for their support, financial and other.
During all these years, I benefited greatly from the good advice and
encouragement from many scholars, whom I met at different stages of
this academic odyssey and many of whom I am proud to call my friends
now. But it is above all to Paul Rorem of the Princeton Theological
Seminary that I wish to express my debt. I learned much about Dionysius
from his publications and our long conversations about theological
and philosophical matters. Like Dionysius, I therefore would like to
consider myself ‘Paul’s disciple’ in these matters. I feel honoured that
Paul consented to write a foreword to this book.
I have profited from the observations and suggestions of Philosophia
Antiqua’s knowledgeable anonymous reader, whose advice to rearrange
the order of chapters I followed (pages 28-51 of §3 having originally
been conceived as succeeding §5), and from the kind assistance of
Brill’s Assistant Editor of Classical Studies, the gracious Regine Reincke,
who took interest in publishing the book from the moment we met at
a crowded Classics conference in Boston.
Finally, I must not forget to thank Joseph Hampel of the Catholic
University of America at Washington D.C. and Angela Lehner, who
corrected the penultimate and ultimate drafts respectively, gave good
counsel and helped me with the English, and Eleni Gaitanu for her