Dept. III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge

At the end of the thirteenth century Sophonias the Philosopher wrote a paraphrasis of Aristotle's treatise De Anima [On the Soul]. This exegetical work is accompanied by a methodological preface which presents a discussion on the approaches of previous commentators followed by a description of Sophonias' own method. This preface and its various aspects constitute the core of this study. Through the analysis of this introductory part of Sophonias' paraphrasis I will elucidate puzzling questions concerning the purpose, ...

„Разбивачи на митове“: Пет студии по средновековна философия и култура.” [‘Myth Busters’: Five Essays on Medieval Philosophy and Culture] Review of Georgiev, Oleg. За „плоската“ земя, за дяволите на върха на иглата и други неща. [About the ‘Flat’ Earth, the Devils on the Point of a Needle, and Other Matters] Sofia: Sofia University Press, 2014. Архив за средновековна философия и култура/Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur 21 (2015): 413–420.

The principal objective of the present dissertation is to reconstruct and analyze the discourses of science and philosophy in the letters of the Constantinopolitan scholar Nikephoros Gregoras (d. ca. 1360), a prominent figure on the fourteenth-century Byzantine intellectual scene, well-known to modern scholars as the author of a major work on Byzantine history for the period from 1204 until ca. 1359. The inquiry explores Gregoras’ views on mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy expressed in his letters and, consequently, it reevaluates the existing scholarly perspectives on Gregoras’ intellectual legacy. By means of contextualization, Part I: Nikephoros Gregoras’ Epistolary Collection offers a survey of Gregoras’ biography and works, as well as a detailed reconstruction of his ‘library,’ that is, a survey of the manuscripts (in particular, of those codices which transmit scientific and philosophical content) he, in all likelihood, possessed, annotated, compiled, and copied. Part I concludes with a discussion of the manuscript tradition of Gregoras’ letters and the context of their preservation and circulation accompanied by a critical commentary of their modern editions. The main analytical body of the dissertation consists of two large sections dedicated respectively to astronomy (Part II: Justifications of Astronomy) and to philosophy and letters (Part III: Letters and Philosophy). The principal conceptual motivation behind Parts II and III is the exploration of the dialectical relationship informing Gregoras’ intellectual epistolary discourse, namely the relationship between knowledge (mathematical sciences and philosophy), on the one hand, and rhetoric (letters), on the other. Part II examines the status of the astronomical studies in the early Palaiologan period and discusses various strategies Gregoras employed in order to justify the value of this mathematical science. Gregoras’ programmatic effort to defend astronomy’s worthiness is analyzed in the context of the revival of Ptolemaic astronomy in Palaiologan Byzantium, a scholarly “project” that involved erudites from the two preceding generations, notably Maximos Planoudes and Gregoras’ mentor Theodore Metochites. Importantly, Part II: Justifications of Astronomy discusses for the first time after its edition in 1936 Gregoras’ arithmological treatise On the Number Seven which, among other things, is an important evidence for Gregoras’ readership of Philo and Macrobius. Part III: Letters and Philosophy offers a discussion of philosophical letter-writing in Byzantium as well as an analysis of the philosophical premises of Byzantine epistolography. Importantly, its principal discussion problematizes the question of certainty with respect to the human condition through analysis of three case studies which illustrate Gregoras’ strategies for constructing epistolary friendship. Thus, Part III addresses two of the main problems of the dissertation, namely what are, in Gregoras’ view, the possibilities and limitations of human knowledge and, correspondingly, what is the status of science and philosophy as the acquisition of knowledge is at their core qua disciplines. The dissertation concludes that in his letters Gregoras maintains that while there are limits of mankind’s ability to attain knowledge of the perceptible world, due both to the nature of the studied objects and to the faculties of the inquiring intellect, nevertheless, with the help of the divine providence, it is possible to achieve certainty and comprehension. One such example is the study of the heavenly bodies and their movements. Not only are the planets and the stars created by God as signs for mankind to understand, according to Gregoras, but also the regularity of their motion and its mathematical principles facilitate the use of the astronomical science for the attainment of knowledge. Similarly, the ideal friendship, one that manifests itself in the discursive unity of the correspondents, brings certainty and knowledge of oneself and of the other.

The present paper studies two related emotions, namely the experience of wonder (θαυμάζειν) and awe (ἄγη, θάμβος, σέβας) in relation to philosophy broadly conceived. Instead of examining the role wonder and awe play in an aesthetic or a religious framework, however, it focuses on their function in a cognitive situation, namely in the context of attaining new knowledge. In this framework, wonder and awe relate to intellectual curiosity and exploration, to the joy and surprise of discovery and the hope that there is even more to discover. In a way, they are also related to admiration as, for instance, the admiration the already acquired wisdom inspires in those who witness it. Taking its cue from Plato’s Theaetetus 155c-d, the present contribution surveys, on the one hand, Byzantine theoretical approaches to the relationship between wonder and philosophy and, on the other, examples of the emotional responses to the acquisition of new knowledge recorded by late Byzantine scholars.

Enter the world of the medieval books and their readers! This presentation introduces one of the most important inventions of late antiquity, namely the codex or the bound book that we know today. In particular, the presentation focuses on the medieval Greek book produced, read, and annotated in Byzantium for about one thousand years from the fourth to the fifteenth century. It shows examples of the practices of medieval scribes and readers: for instance, the methods of producing a book that was meant for teaching and learning purposes different techniques of annotation (marginal notes, reading signs and diagrams) book repairs, corrections, and alterations. Finally, the presentation compares the reading and annotating practices of medieval scribes and readers with those of contemporary readers and scholars.

This is an experimental workshop in reading and analysing Byzantine textual culture (literature broadly understood) whose aim is to display and receive feedback on current work in progress. The workshop engages with the concept of λόγοι in Byzantium, that is, with literature and discourse in a very broad sense. The ambiguity and versatility of λόγος when applied to any Byzantine literary product raises issues of rhetorical and generic articulation, of narrative, style and modes of discourse, thus provoking us to continuously question and revise the methodological and theoretical toolkits we apply in our reading and interpreting of Byzantine texts and their place within frameworks of education, patronage, communities of reading and writing, book production, organisation, and transmission of knowledge.