The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle and Gregory Nazianzen.pdf

Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle and Gregory Nazianzen: “then shall I know, even as also I am known” (1Cor 13:12) Introduction After a brief excursus into Aristotle’s concept of “actual knowledge”, Charles Taylor, in the first chapter of his book Retrieving Realism, describes what he calls modern contact theories of epistemology which are characterized by an attempt to re-embed thought and knowledge in the bodily and socio-cultural contexts in which they take place.1 Taylor remarks that although these theories were formulated primarily by Heidegger, MerleauPonty, and Wittgenstein, and do not depend on ancient philosophy, one cannot help noticing a certain parallelism between, on the one hand, Aristotelian holistic and multivocal ontology and epistemology broadly applied and developed in the period of late antiquity,2 and, on the other hand, some of the modern epistemological and hermeneutical discourses bringing together textual, historical, philosophical, linguistic, socio-cultural and cognitive frameworks.3 By way of defining a contact theory of epistemology, Taylor contends that: The contact here is not achieved on the level of Ideas, but is rather something primordial, something we never escape. It is the contact of living, active beings, whose life form involves acting in and on a world which also acts on them. These beings are at grips with a world and each other; this original contact provides the sense-making context for all their knowledge constructions, which, however much they are based on mediating depictions, rely for their meaning on this primordial and indissoluble involvement in the surrounding reality.4 A primordial or original biological setting of the process of knowing, understood as an organized, systematic and mediated interaction between the subject and object of thought, was described in great detail by Aristotle. A founder of biological-teleological psychology, 1 Dreyfus, H. / Taylor, Ch., Retrieving Realism. Harvard University Press, 2015, 25. In his recent monograph Edward Feser draws a vivid picture of an Aristotelian revival in modern scholarship, particularly concerning the spheres of epistemology, ontology and scientific and philosophic methodology. Feser, E., Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. Pasadena City College, California, 2013. 3 th In her seminal monograph Elizabeth Clark outlines the key trends of 20 century literary theory and in the last chapter of her survey offers an interesting review of Patristics within the framework of literary theory. Clark, E. A., History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. 4 Dreyfus, H. / Taylor, Ch., Retrieving Realism. Harvard University Press, 2015, 19. 2 1 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen he closely linked his teaching to epistemology. He distinguished the human being throughout the animal kingdom as a thinking animal, in possession of the faculty of nous, which “is in a sense potentially what is thought, although it is actually nothing until it thinks” (De Anima 3.4, 429b30– 31). Thus, Aristotle contended that the process of knowing is mutual, that is to say, it involves a mediated contact between the subject and object of thought and a non-quantitative change in the participants of the process.5 This comprehensive approach to the process of knowing, and a focus on its primordial prerequisites and on its context, featured in the works of Christian thinkers. Thus, Apostle Paul, whose doctrine revolved around such ideas as “renewing of the mind” (Rom 12:2) and having “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16), emphasised the reciprocity of the process of knowing God. In a passage from the 1 Cor 13:12 he famously professed “then shall I know, even as also I am known” (ἐπιγνώσοµαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην), and similarly in Gal 4:9: “now after you have known God, or rather are known by God”. Clearly, these utterances of Paul might have echoed in a saying from the Gospel according to John 10:14 “I know my own and my own know me6”. In this article, I shall not embark on either a historical analysis of the correlative chronology of the Pauline and Johannine writings or a critical examination of Paul’s ideas. Instead, I shall take a look at Paul from the perspective of his fourth-century reader — Gregory Nazianzen, whose perception was vastly complicated by the philosophical education he had and the polemical agenda of his time. With a reference to the cited statements of Paul, and in line with the philosophical epistemology of his time, Gregory Nazianzen in his theological orations characterized the process of knowing as a kind of mutual exchange or collaboration whose settings are inherent in human nature and primordial in the universe. Gregory argued that the primordial likeness between the human and divine natures enables human access to divine knowledge and reveals itself in the reciprocity of the process of knowing: In my opinion, it [sc. what God is in nature and essence, (ὅ τί ποτε µέν ἐστι τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν)] will be discovered when that within us which is godlike and divine, I mean our mind and reason (τὸν ἡµέτερον νοῦν τε καὶ λόγον), shall have mingled with its Like (τῷ οἰκείῳ προσµίξῃ), and the image shall have ascended to the Archetype, of which it has now 5 Jonathan Beere in his insightful investigation of the Metaphysics Theta provided a helpful interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of change: There are not only capacities for change, but also capacities for living, thinking, and other energeiai that are not changes. For instance, any body of theoretical knowledge constitutes such a capacity: it is the capacity to engage in the sort of thinking that is understanding the relevant objects—in the case of geometry, geometrical figures. In no case is such thinking changing. (cf. Beere, J., Doing and Being: An interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta. Oxford 2009, 6, 44, 13). 6 Cf.: “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me” (John 10:14; transl. KJV, corr.). 2 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen the desire. And this I think is the solution of that vexed problem as to “We shall know even as we are known” (Or 28.17). Maximus the Confessor, who was a great connoisseur of Gregorian and Peripatetic teachings, in his Ambigua to John explained and finalized Nazianzen’s epistemological thoughts through Aristotelian doctrine. In this article, I am going to examine a direct and indirect continuity between the Peripatetic and Gregorian epistemological ideas and also to propose an explanation of mediated contact, which according to Aristotle, Paul and Gregory in various ways is intrinsic to the process of knowing. To accomplish these tasks, I shall take the following steps. First, I shall identify Aristotle's understanding of mediated contact which, in his view, was characteristic of the processes of sense-perception and knowing, and shall start by looking at the biological works of Aristotle and trying to explain his epistemology from the viewpoint of his biology. The second objective of my paper is to briefly examine the meaning of 1 Cor 13:12 and Gal 4:9 in the context of philosophic epistemology. My third step is to investigate the contact theory of epistemology of Gregory Nazianzen with the aid of Maximus the Confessor. I shall particularly focus on Gregory’s understanding of the mediating role of Christ in the process of the human acquisition of divine knowledge, and I shall also examine Gregory’s vision of the bodily aspect of the human-divine active cooperation and principle of likeness. Mediated contact and the principle of likeness in Aristotle’s biology and epistemology It is peculiar in Aristotle’s thought that he generally derived his epistemological ideas from the patterns he observed during his biological studies. He established this methodological approach on a conviction that there is an intrinsic unity between the material and ideological strands of the soul.7 In such a way he argued in De anima that the study of the soul must fall within the science of nature because the affections of the soul seem to be a sort of “enmattered forms (τὰ πάθη λόγοι ἔνυλοί εἰσιν)” (DA 403a25-30). Pondering this 7 A sharp functionalist interpretation of Aristotle’s hylomorphism (sc. a coherent unity of matter and form) and its correlation with the theory of mind, which I tend to support, has been given by Marc Cohen. He has argued that although a mental state may be realized by several different physical states or processes, it nonetheless cannot be reduced to physical states. Thus mental states are, rather, “functional states of the physical systems that realize them” (cf. Cohen, S.M., Hylomorphism and Functionalism, in: Nussbaum, M.C. / Rorty, A.O. [eds.], Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima. Oxford / New York 1995, 62). 3 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen peculiar Aristotelian parallelism between biological and philosophical studies, Fernando Moya observed that: Formal and final causes are, in the study of embryology, identified with the attainment of an organisation through the process of development, an organisation which is characteristic of each species. In other words, the “end to be reached” by the developing offspring is the acquisition of an organisation and lifestyle similar in specie to its parents.8 Aristotle contended that an offspring possesses a natural, biological likeness to its parent, which determines the whole life of the offspring, and structures and arranges a fitting environment for its eventual reaching the final goal of its life, i.e. becoming like the perfect sample of its species. A peculiar strand of this biological view of likeness is that it is considered as not just a mediating characteristic linking together two entities (the archetype and its like) but it is viewed as a comprehensive systematic mechanism which regulates: 1) the relationship between the two entities, 2) the whole life of the second entity, and, optionally, 3) the peculiar “final-goal-fitting” life conditions of the second entity. Be this as it may, one might ask how these observations relate to epistemology. I suggest that an understanding of biological likeness may contribute to the interpretation of Aristotle’s parallel between perceptual and noetic likeness coined in a famous slogan familiar from the Timaeus 45c that “like is known by like”. At the beginning of De anima, where Aristotle surveyed the opinions of his predecessors (Platonists and Atomists) on the process of knowing, he argued that the ancients assimilated intellection to perception because for them truth is what appears (DA 404a25–404b5). That is to say, sensual information gives a trustworthy picture of reality and hence everybody is capable of attaining true knowledge about things: it requires only opening your eyes and ears and taking in the desired knowledge. Aristotle attributed this doctrine to Democritus, the Pythagoreans, Anaxagoras and Empedocles and affirmed that the rationale of this approach is the principle of likeness. In such a way Aristotle claimed that similarly to Empedocles “Plato in the Timaeus fashions soul out of the elements; for like, he holds, is known by like (τῷ ὁµοίῳ τὸ ὅµοιον), and things are formed out of the principles or elements (ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων), so that soul must be so too” (DA 404b15–20). Thus, Aristotle asserted that Plato deduced his theory of the soul from the same 8 Moya, F., Epistemology of Living Organisms in Aristotle's Philosophy, in: Theory in Biosciences 119/3–4 (2000), 318–333, 329. 4 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen assumptions as the Atomists, and that he understood the principle of likeness in the same vein with them. This equation of the Platonic concept with the views of Empedocles may seem somewhat problematic because we know from the Theaetetus (160e5–186e12) that in contrast to the Atomists Plato opposed truth to appearances. In his view, it is neither the sensible object, nor the sensible object together with the organ of sense, but the organ of sense alone that determines the result of the sense-perception. In such a way, when in the Timaeus, Plato described the details of the process of seeing, he asserted that the “light-bearing eyes” (φωσφόρα ὄµµατα) see the sensible objects whenever “surrounded by midday light” with the result that “like becomes conjoint with like” (ὅµοιον πρὸς ὅµοιον συµπαγὲς γενόµενον, Plat. Tim 45b–c). In view of this evidence, the question arises why Aristotle associates the doctrines of Empedocles with those of Plato. Themistius in his Paraphrase of De anima gave the following explanation of Aristotle’s argument. He maintained that “both Timaeus in Plato, and Plato himself, explained our grasp of existing things through the soul’s affinity with the first principles” (Paraph 12.28, [DA 404b27–30]), and then concluded that both Empedocles and Plato “posited knowing as belonging to the soul and thereby constituted it out of the first principles”9 (ibid.). In other words, Aristotle and Themistius attested that Empedocles and Plato believed in likeness between the sensible object and the sense organ and granted the leading role in the process of knowing to the soul (i.e. the subject of perception). Later, Plotinus confirmed Plato’s belief in the determinative role of the subject of perception in the process of perception. Thus, he asserted that, contrary to Aristotle, Plato thought that “the vision sees not through some medium but by and through itself alone (οὐ δι' ἑτέρου, ἀλλὰ δι' αὑτῆς, Plotinus, Enn 5.3.8)”. As opposed to the Platonic and Atomistic accounts of sense-perception, Aristotle contended that the mediatory contact and interaction between the cognizing subject and the object of cognition are indispensable in the process of sense-perception. Aristotle argued that sense-perception and cognition are operated by virtue of the principle of likeness, which allows for the sense organ to become like the object of sense by taking on its logos. Thus, Aristotle defined sense-perception as “a sort of alteration” (ἀλλοίωσίς τις, DA 416b33–5) which happens when the sense-organs receive sensible information and become 9 Themistius, In libros Aristotelis de anima paraphrasis, in: Heinze, R. (ed.), Themistii in libros Aristotelis de anima paraphrasis, CAG 5.3. Berlin 1899. Transl.: Themistius, On Aristotle On the Soul, transl., comm. R.B. Todd. London / New York 2014, 27. 5 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen like the objects of sense, because “the perceptive faculty is in potentiality such as the object of perception already is in actuality” (DA 418a3–6). Two points of this theory deserve particular attention. First, is that it understands alteration in the terms of potentiality and actuality, or a mutual non-quantitative change, which affects both subject and object of perception and thereby attests their contact. Second, is that the contact here is conveyed by a sort of medium, identified with the sense organ, working as “a charioteer of logos” of the sensible object. In the second book of De anima, Aristotle gave the following account of the process of sense-perception: For perceiving is a sort of being affected (τὸ γὰρ αἰσθάνεσθαι πάσχειν τι ἐστίν); consequently, the thing which acts makes that which is in potentiality such as it is itself in actuality (ὥστε τὸ ποιοῦν, οἷον αὐτὸ ἐνεργείᾳ, τοιοῦτον ἐκεῖνο ποιεῖ, δυνάµει ὄν). ... since perception is a sort of a mean between the contraries present in perceptible objects (ὡς τῆς αἰσθήσεως οἷον µεσότητός τινος οὔσης τῆς ἐν τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς ἐναντιώσεως). And because of this it discriminates perceptible objects (καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κρίνει τὰ αἰσθητά); for the mean is capable of discriminating (τὸ γὰρ µέσον κριτικόν), since it comes to be, relative to either one or the other, its opposite extreme (γίνεται γὰρ πρὸς ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν θάτερον τῶν ἄκρων) (DA 424a1–7).10 David Bradshaw in his interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of perception followed the line suggested by Jonathan Lear, Julie Ward, and Allan Silverman. These scholars described reception of the sensible form as the transmission of the logos of the sensible form to the sense organ.11 Bradshaw in his turn developed this idea by stating that capable of conveying the logos of the sensible form, the sense organ functions as a medium, that is to say, “a kind of balance or scale that perceives whenever it registers a deviation from its natural state12.” Areyh Kosman contributed to the understanding of this intricate process by delineating two nominal steps of the naturally uniform perceptive process. “To perceive, — he argued, — is not simply to be affected but to perceive that one is affected, or to be 10 Cf. Aristotle. De anima, in: Ross, W.D. (ed.), Aristotle, De anima. Oxford 1961; transl.: Aristotle, De anima, transl., intr., com. C. Shields. Oxford 2016, 47. 11 Cf. Lear, J., Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge, 1988; Silverman, A., Color and Color-Perception in Aristotle's De Anima, in: Ancient Philosophy 9 (1988), 271–292; Ward, J., Perception and Logos in De Anima II 12, in: Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989), 217–233; Bradshaw, D., Aristotle on Perception: The Dual-Logos Theory, in: Apeiron 30 (1997), 143–161, 145. 12 Cf. Bradshaw, D., Aristotle on Perception: The Dual-Logos Theory, in: Apeiron 30 (1997), 143–161, 147. 6 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen affected and perceive that one is affected.13” He identified the action of the first step with the Greek verb “ὀσµᾶσθαι,” which literally means “to sense,” and the second step with the verb “αἰσθάνεσθαι,” which means “to perceive”14. In other words, Kosman defined perception as a form of bodily affection of which the living organism is conscious, hence, as a form of awareness. Importantly Aristotle explicated the mechanism of sense-perception through the metaphor of wax, i.e. through the principle of likeness, which enables the organ of sense to take on the logos of the sensible object (DA 424a20).15 Similarly to sense-perception, the process of intellection, in Aristotle’s view, hinged upon the principle of likeness and operated by the actuality-potentiality mechanism. In the Stagirite’s words, the human mind is nothing in actuality before it thinks (DA 429a22–24), and when thinking it becomes like16 the object of thought with the result that “the actual knowledge (ἡ κατ' ἐνέργειαν ἐπιστήµη) is identical (τὸ δ' αὐτό ἐστιν) with the thing known (τῷ πράγµατι)” (DA 431a1). That is to say, that the active intellect reconstitutes in itself an animated picture of reality, even though it receives from sense-perception nothing but sensible information about the characteristics of things.17 Thus, similarly to sense-perception, which transmits the logos of the sensible object, the human mind thinks the substances of things, i.e. it thinks things as indivisible entities,18 i.e. as they are in reality,19 and not as mere bunches of categorial properties. Remarkably the process of intellection has a twofold aspect that enables the human mind to retain its oneness while thinking many substances. Themistius explained that “the active intellect whenever it thinks other things it thinks itself too: the intellect, when inactive, is said to have the ‘ἕξις’ of thoughts, but when active towards one of its thoughts is at that time identical with what is being thought, and by thinking that thing thinks itself too” (Paraph 95.21).20 13 Cf. Kosman, A., Virtues of thought Essays on Plato and Aristotle. Cambridge, MA, London 2014, 51. Cf. Kosman, A., Virtues of thought Essays on Plato and Aristotle. Cambridge, MA, London 2014, 55. 15 Here is how Themistius expounded this idea: “imagination is [active] towards the form, the imprint of which sense-perception has received. Thus, actual sense-perception becomes for imagination precisely what the object of perception is for sense-perception” (Paraph. 92.4). (Transl. R. Todd, 2014, 115). 16 Here is how Aristotle expounded the concept of ‘knowing like by like’: “it [sense-perception] is affected while being unlike what affects it, but when it has been affected, it has been made like it and is such as what affected it is” (DA 418a5–6). 17 Shields has suggested that if we accept Bywater’s (1888) conjecture to the passage “mind is a form of forms” (432a2) and read it as “mind is a form of intelligible forms,” then “we would come closer to completing the parallel with perception which follows immediately (432a2–3), since perception is said to be a 'form of the objects of perception'” (cf.: Shields 2016, 344). 18 Cf.: “the mind thinks in an indivisible unit of time and by an indivisible mental act” (DA 430b15). 19 Cf.: DA 418a3–6; 424a17–21. 20 Transl. R. Todd, 2014, 119. 14 7 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen In view of the presented evidence, it is clear that Aristotle's understanding of the principle of likeness in the terms of potentiality and actuality was crucial for his biological and cognitive theories. As in the case of biological likeness, a successful exercising of perceptive likeness requires certain internal and external conditions. Neither senseperception nor intellection is possible without a mediated contact between the cognizing subject and object of cognition. Hence, in Aristotle's view, the process of intellection, although considered a final goal of the human being, at the same time has a rather down to earth strand: it must be always active and permanently engaged in the current of the embodied reality. In Martha Nussbaum’s fine phrasing, “by saying ‘goodbye’ to Platonic forms” Aristotle distanced his philosophical position from idealism and turned to internal realism “that articulates very carefully the limits within which any realism must live21.” For many different reasons that I am not going to describe here, though I made such an attempt elsewhere,22 certain of the Christian authors also leaned towards a realistic and sometimes even naturalistic way of philosophizing, which provided them with simple and persuasive arguments. Undoubtedly, this approach was peculiar to different philosophers belonging to different philosophical schools and should not be especially associated with the Peripatetics. Yet, in the rest of the article I am going to show that a tendency of seeing the process of acquiring the knowledge of God as active and reciprocal contact between the human being and God, was enabled by the principle of likeness; the tendency which, as I have shown, goes back to the Apostle Paul, subsequently reappeared in the works of Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus the Confessor, who in the development of their theories borrowed from the Peripatetic doctrine. Gregory Nazianzen on the primordial arrangement of divine and human cooperation Troels Engberg-Petersen has persuasively demonstrated that Apostle Paul in his theory of how to acquire the knowledge of God took advantage of the teaching of Epictetus. He maintained that both thinkers conceived of an overlap between divine agency and human agency, the first associated by him with God’s government of the world, which preconditions the generation of knowledge, the second understood by him as a human reply to the divine agency. Thus, Engberg-Petersen argued that “when human cognition 21 Cf. Nussbaum, M., Saving Aristotle's Appearances, in: M. Schofield / M. Nussbaum (eds.), Language and Logos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 290–291. 22 Cf. Usacheva, A., Knowledge, Language and Intellection from Origen to Gregory Nazianzen. A Selective Survey. Frankfurt am Main 2017, 173–195. 8 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen grasps God’s government of the world, it stretches out towards it, thereby creating the kind of positive overlap just mentioned.23” In light of this approach, the meaning of Paul’s statements cited above from 1 Cor 13:12 and Gal 4:9 becomes clear. Paul was talking about a unique and superb human capacity of knowing God brought about by God himself, who established a principle of likeness between the human and divine natures and himself attained a principal fruit of this likeness — he came all the way down to acquiring the knowledge of man. It follows from this theory that the process of knowing God has an exceptional status of determining the relationship between the human being and God, and the entire life of the human being is aimed at achieving the primordial goal of the human species. Gregory Nazianzen esteemed the noetic teaching of Paul24 and developed it in his polemics with the Eunomians, whose rationalistic epistemology put the responsibility of acquiring knowledge about God entirely on the shoulders of the cognizing subject.25 In his turn, Gregory argued for an interactive method of acquisition of divine knowledge rooted in the nature of the human being. Like many philosophers and theologians before him, Gregory placed the principle of likeness at the foundation of his epistemological theory. He regarded likeness as a mechanism of active cooperation between the human mind and reason, on the one hand, and its divine archetype, on the other (cf. Or 28.17, cited above).26 A mind-oriented understanding of the principle of likeness imparted a cognitive overtone to Gregory’s vision of attaining divine knowledge. Interestingly, his judgement about 23 Cf. Engberg-Pedersen, T., Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul. The Material Spirit. Oxford 2010, 108. Cf. Gregory’s Or 28.17, where he cited 1Cor 13:12 and Gregory’s explicit references to the Apostle Paul as “the one who is not rude in knowledge (Or 28.20: ὁ μὴ ἰδιώτης τὴν γνῶσιν, 2 Cor 11:16) who threatens to give proof of Christ speaking in him (Or 28.20: ὁ δοκιμὴν ἀπειλῶν τοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ λαλοῦντος Χριστοῦ, Phil 2:22), and the great doctor and champion of the truth (Or 28.20: ὁ μέγας τῆς ἀληθείας προαγωνιστὴς καὶ διδάσκαλος)”. 25 This is how Eunomius described the way of inquiring into divine matters in his Apology: “There are two roads (δυεῖν ὁδῶν) marked out for the discovery of what we seek: one is that by which we examine the actual essences (τὰς οὐσίας αὐτὰς ἐπισκοπούμενοι) and with clear and unadulterated reasoning (τῷ περὶ αὐτῶν λόγῳ) about them make a judgement (κρίσιν) on each; the other is an inquiry by means of the actions (τῆς διὰ τῶν ἐνεργείων ἐξετάσεως), whereby we distinguish the essence on the basis of its products and completed works (ἐκ τῶν δημιουργημάτων καὶ τῶν ἀποτελεσμάτων) – and neither of the ways mentioned is able to bring out any apparent similarity of the essence [in Father and Son] (τὴν τῆς οὐσίας ὁμοιότητα)” (A 20.5–10); cited from: Eunomius, Liber Apologeticus, Apologia Apologiae, in: Vaggione, R.P. (Greek text, transl.), Eunomius The Extant Works. Oxford 1987, 59. 26 I am very grateful for Samuel Fernández’ informative remark given in discussion concerning the twofold tradition of Early Christian approach to likeness to God. Thus, some of the Christian authors, like, e.g. Irenaeus of Lyon, believed that likeness to God belongs to the flesh. Origen and his followers argued for the likeness between the human mind and God “of whom the mind is an intellectual image” (Princ. 1.1.6-8). (Cf. Orígenes, Sobre Los Principios, Intr., text. crít., trad. y not. de S. Fernández. Madrid 2015, 159 n. 37). A connoisseur of Origen’s doctrine, Gregory argued that the human mind and reason consist the image of God in man, yet he also emphasised the bodily aspect of the human intellection, hence his position was a compromise between the hitherto established traditions. 24 9 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen sense-perception, mind, reason and soul generally complied with Peripatetic teaching.27 Not only did Gregory reflect Aristotelian psychology in his epistemology and anthropology, but he also applied it to his Christology.28 In other words, he hypothesized about the human nature of Christ relying on the scientific knowledge about the human being that was in his possession. Gregory’s excellent and rather broad education is a well-known fact. Twice in his third theological oration he betrayed his sources: he explicitly mentions two of Aristotle's biological treatises, namely The History of Animals and On Generation (τὰς τῶν ζώων γενέσεις; τῆς περὶ ζώων ἱστορίας, Or 31.10). Gregory’s circle was likewise interested in the natural sciences. His beloved brother Caesarius was a renowned physician, his friend Basil devoted special attention to studies of nature and founded one of the first Christian hospitals near Caesarea,29 and his correspondent Themistius, whom Gregory praised many times in his works, was a Peripatetic philosopher and author of many commentaries on Aristotelian treatises (inter alia, on the Parva naturalia; the Suda also mentions his epitome of the Physics, in eight books). No wonder that in such environment Gregory was himself tolerably well-versed in the contemporary cognitive and anthropological definitions debated by members of the philosophical and medical schools. More interesting, however, is that having taken advantage of philosophical cognitive theories, Gregory modelled his account of the process of knowing Christ on the process of intellection. In such a way, Gregory maintained a primordial likeness between the human mind and body and the mind and body of Christ. Gregory asserted that following the direction of the “νοῦς” of Christ the human being can actualise his potential and take up the path to his final goal, i.e. becoming like God. In the Oration 32, after a brief description of the functions of eye, foot, tongue, ear, nose and hand, Gregory assumed: 27 Gregory gave a brief outline of the chief anthropological and cognitive definitions in his Carmina moralia: “The soul is the nature, which gives and maintains life (Ψυχὴ δὲ, φύσις ζωτικὴ, φέρουσά τε); as for mine soul [sic. the human soul], it is commingled with reason and mind (Λόγος δὲ καὶ νοῦς τῇ γ’ ἐμῇ συνεκράθη); Mind is the internal and indescribable sight (Νοῦς δ’ ἔστιν ὄψις ἔνδον, οὐ περίγραφος); The function of mind is intellection and [the capacity to be] enformed (Νοῦ δ’ ἔργον, ἡ νόησις, ἐκτύπωμά τε); reason is the search for intelligible forms (Λόγος δ’ ἔρευνα τῶν νοὸς τυπωμάτων), which you pronounce by your speech organs (Ὃν ἐκλαλήσεις ὀργάνοις φωνητικοῖς); sense27 perception is a kind of reception of the external (Αἴσθησίς ἐστιν εἰσδοχή τις ἔκτοθεν)” (Moral 947.10–948.1, transl. mine, Greek text from: Migne, J.-P. (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca), MPG 35. Paris 1857–1866). 28 Cf.: Mind (νοῦς) and sense-perception (αἴσθησις), thus distinguished from each other, had held their own definitions (τῶν ἰδίων ὅρων ἐντὸς), and bore in themselves the magnificence of the Creator-Word (Or 38.11); cf: Gregorius Nazianzenus, In theophania (orat. 38), in: J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca), MPG 36, Paris 1857–1866, 312–333. 29 Cf. Nutton, V., Ancient Medicine. London, NY 2004, 307. 10 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen The mind directs them all (νοῦς δὲ τοῖς πᾶσιν ἡγεµὼν) since it is the source of sensory perception (παρ' οὗ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι) and the locus to which sense impressions are channeled (εἰς ὃν ἡ αἴσθησις): so it is with us as well, as with the common body of Christ (οὕτω καὶ παρ' ἡµῖν, τῷ κοινῷ Χριστοῦ σώµατι)30 (Or 32.10). It is clear from this passage that Gregory saw no physiological difference between the cognitive functions and processes of Jesus Christ and those of other men. Remarkably, in his fourth theological oration Gregory explicitly called Christ a mediator (sc. ὁ µεσίτης) between God and man, who “continues to wear the body which he assumed (µετὰ τοῦ σώµατός ἐστιν)” (Or 30.14). We remember that in the Aristotelian account the processes of perception and intellection are mediated, the first by the organ of sense and the second by the human mind, and that the sense organ acts as a charioteer of the logos of the sensible object, while the human mind actualises in itself the form of the thing. This means that whether in the process of perception or in the process of intellection, the act of mediation practically is operated by the human being (in collaboration with the sensible object). Now, if bearing this in mind we look at Gregory’s theory, we see that Christ both theoretically and bodily accomplished the act of mediation, hence it is left to the human being to imitate him and to bodily partake in him thereby realising the final goal of the human species. Gregory argued that as the divine logos Christ bears the nature of God31 and as an embodied human being — he recapitulates in himself all creation as the everactive form of all forms.32 Of course, Gregory did not invent this Christology: it is found already in the Apostle Paul (cf. Eph 1:10). What characterizes Gregory’s concept is that he pinned down 30 Gregorius Nazianzen, De moderatione in disputando (orat. 32), in: Migne, J.-P. (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca), MPG 36. Paris 1857–1866. Transl.: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, transl. M. Vinson. Washington 2003. 31 In such a way, Gregory specified that Christ is fully and essentially God and shares all the basic characteristics of God the Father: “an equality of nature and a union of mind, and an identity of motion, and a convergence of its elements to unity (ἣν φύσεως ὁμοτιμία συνίστησι, καὶ γνώμης σύμπνοια, καὶ ταὐτότης κινήσεως, καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἓν τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ σύννευσις)” (Or 29.2). 32 Gregory argued that every created thing takes its origin and formal cause in Christ; importantly he outlined that “of all these things the Word was given once, but the action is continuous even now (ὧν ἅπαξ μὲν ὁ λόγος ὑπέστη, συνεχὴς δὲ καὶ νῦν ἡ ἐνέργεια)” (Or 30.11). In this context, I cannot help citing Areyh Kosman, whose enlightening interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of “νοῦς ποιητικός” helped me to understand the idea of Gregory. Kosman associated “νοῦς ποιητικός” with the divine mind, i.e. “a being whose ‘οὐσία is ἐνέργεια’ (DA 3.5, 430a18; Met 12.6, 1071b20). For, — Kosman continued, — just as light is (though in a special sense) most visible, and thus the source of seeing and therefore of visibility, so is the divine most thinkable and thus the source of thinking and therefore of thinkability; light is never in the dark, and God is always, as we know, busy thinking” (cf. Kosman, A. Virtues of thought. Essays on Plato and Aristotle. Cambridge, MA, London 2014, 131). 11 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen [meaning?] Pauline theory to Aristotelian teaching about the processes of intellection and perception. Therefore, I believe that when Maximus the Confessor in his Ambigua to John added an unmistakably Aristotelian flavour to Gregory’s theological orations, he was close to the mark set by Gregory. In such a way, in explication of paragraph 17 of the second theological speech, which I cited at the beginning of this article, Maximus made the following observation: For by virtue of the fact that all things have their being from God, they participate in God in a manner appropriate and proportionate to each, whether by intellect, by reason, by sensation, by vital motion, or by some essential faculty or habitual fitness, according to the great theologian, Dionysius the Areopagite.33 … It follows, then, that each of the intellective and rational beings, whether angels or men, insofar as it has been created in accordance with the logos that exists in and with God, is and is called a “portion of God,” precisely because of that logos, which, as we said, pre-exists in God. If such a being moves according to its logos, it comes to be in God in whom its logos of being pre-exists — as its Origin and Cause. As long as it “wishes and yearns to know nothing apart from its own origin, it does not flow” away from God, but rather, in its upward movement towards God, it becomes God and is said to be a “portion” of God through its proper mode of participation in God, because, according to nature, wisely and rationally, and through a properly ordered movement, it attains its own origin and cause, having nowhere else to be moved besides its own beginning, or beyond the ascent and restoration to the logos according to which it was created, nor any other way of being moved, since its movement toward the divine goal clearly takes as its final limit the divine goal itself (AmbJn 7.16–17, 1080b–c).34 What strikes me as most intriguing in this passage is that Maximus clearly viewed the final goal as the determinant of life, which is potentially capable of making a creature function properly, and thereby fulfilling its life-task. In other words, the final goal in this system is something that is always in becoming, rather than something that can be once and forever achieved. This interactive and also, if I may say so, biological vision of the final goal implies 33 In a footnote to this line Constas, the editor and translator of the Ambigua referred to Pseudo-Dionysius, DN 1.5: “All things long for the transcendent goodness: the intelligent and rational long for it by way of knowledge, the things beneath them by way of perception, and the remainder by way of their vital or essential movement, or according to what is habitually fitting for them” (cf.: Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, vol. 1, ed. and transl. by N. Constas. Cambridge, MA, London, 2014, 481). This statement of Dionysius makes me think of the opening paragraph of the Metaphysics, where Aristotle famously affirmed that everybody by nature desires to know, and then classified the intellective and perceptive animals, etc. 34 Cf. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, vol. 1, ed. and transl. by N. Constas. Cambridge, MA, London, 2014, 97–99. 12 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen that all the creatures involved in the stream of life by virtue of their existence are said to be in certain relations with their primordial destination, which fixes the settings of their mind, body and the surrounding environment. As regards the human being, his pursuit of the final goal (i.e. to know God) is considered in this theory as a bodily practice, which requires not only a mental longing for the final goal but also certain particular bodily states and behavior. It is implied in this concept that the “healthy” surrounding environment is almost as important for the process of thinking as preservation of a proper mental and bodily state. Gregory explicitly remarked that the human mind is not limited by the human body, it is “something dwelling in another (τὸν ἐν ἄλλῳ)” (Or 28.13); it thinks the intelligible forms of the things and hence it is stretched outside of its bodily limits to the surrounding environment.35 The theological rationale of this attention to the bodily and environmental strands of the process of intellection is quite obvious. If human likeness to God can be actualized by actual partaking in the mind of Christ, which determines not only the physiology of human cognition but also the formal and final goals of every creature, it seems logical that the human noetic contact with God implies a special interaction with the whole universe. This chain of thoughts points in the direction of monastic literature, where these ideas had been lately developed but I am not going to touch upon it here. Yet, I would like to note in passing that it seems likely that Gregory’s vision of the process of intellection and attaining the knowledge of God was one of the factors that stimulated in certain later Christian authors an interest in the physiology of human cognition.36 As for Gregory himself, his interest in cognitive issues was clearly aroused by the historical necessity of polemics with the Eunomians and with Apollinaris. Thus, in reaction to Apollinaris’ interpretation of the famous Pauline saying from 1 Cor 2:16, “we have the ‘νοῦς’ of Christ”, Gregory in his second letter to Cledonius, affirmed: They who have purified their mind by the imitation of the mind which the Saviour took of us (οἱ τὸν ἑαυτῶν νοῦν καθήραντες µιµήσει τοῦ νοὸς ἐκείνου, ὃν ὑπὲρ ἡµῶν ὁ Σωτὴρ 35 In this respect, it should be noted that Gregory expressed his approval of the concept of an external or separable mind, which is a characteristic Aristotelian notion (cf.: “Χωριστὸς δὲ λέγεται ὁ θύραθεν νοῦς,” Aristocles, Fragm., fr. 4.138). He asserted that some “most theological men amongst Hellenes (Ἑλλήνων δὲ οἱ θεολογικώτεροι)” have rightly denoted the name of God when they called him “the external mind (τὸν θύραθεν νοῦν)” [second quotation marks missing] (Or 31.5). Alexander of Aphrodisias explicated the concept of the external mind by saying that the immortal intellect only comes to be in humans from outside and that it is not itself a part or disposition of the human soul (DA 90.23–91.4; cf. In many cases Gregory attested an agreement even about some crucial matters. For instance, [words missing? Sense unclear] Transl.: Alexander of Aphrodisias, On the Soul, Part 1, transl., intr., comm. V. Caston. London / New York 2012, 108). 36 E.g., Gregory of Nyssa, Nemesius of Emesa, Maximus the Confessor. 13 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen ἀνεδέξατο,), and, as far as may be, have attained conformity with it, are said to have the mind of Christ (πρὸς αὐτὸν ῥυθµίζοντες, ὡς ἐφικτόν, οὗτοι νοῦν Χριστοῦ ἔχειν λέγονται); just as they might be testified to have the flesh of Christ who have trained their flesh, and in this respect have become of the same body and partakers of Christ (ὡς καὶ σάρκα Χριστοῦ µαρτυρηθεῖεν ἂν ἔχειν ἐκεῖνοι οἱ τὴν σάρκα παιδαγωγήσαντες καὶ σύσσωµοι καὶ συµµέτοχοι Χριστοῦ κατὰ τοῦτο γενόµενοι), as so he says “As we have born the image of earth, we shall also bear the image of heaven” (Ὡς ἐφορέσαµεν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ χοϊκοῦ, οὕτω, φησί, φορέσοµεν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ ἐπουρανίου) (Ep 102.10–11=PG 37.332). In a similar vein with Apostle Paul Gregory supported the concept of a permanently interactive attaining of the knowledge of God, which he considered not as an individual achievement but as a collaborative and biologically conditioned process. Maximus the Confessor developed this approach to the extent that in his explanation of Gregory’s assertion that “the image shall ascend to its archetype” (Or 28.17) he claimed that not only does man bear the likeness to God but that: God and man are paradigms of each other, so that as much as man, enabled by love, has divinized himself for God, to that same extent God is humanized for man by His love for mankind; and as much as man has manifested God who is invisible by nature through the virtues (ὁ ἄνθρωπος τὸν ἀόρατον φύσει Θεὸν διὰ τῶν ἀρετῶν ἐφανέρωσεν), to that same extent man is rapt by God in mind to the unknowable (ὑπὸ Θεοῦ τὸν ἄνθρωπον κατὰ νοῦν ἁρπάζεσθαι πρὸς τὸ ἄγνωστον) (AmbJn 10.9, 1113b–c). 37 Maximus’ exegesis of Gregorian theology received a remarkable appreciation in the Byzantine times. Some of the Byzantine manuscripts with Nazianzen’s orations contain anonymous marginal notes taken from the texts of Maximus. For instance, fol. 69v (et al.) of the Vaticanus Greacus 475 (paleographically dated to the 9th century), entitled in the pinax as Γρηγορίυ τοῦ Ναζιάνζου λόγοι µετὰ σχόλιων σποραδίω, has explanations of the oration three (De pace) excerpted from Maximus’ Ambigua ad Thomam 1.10–38. The manuscript contains a curious system of classification of notations. Some of the notes are marked in margins with ΑΝΑΓΚΑΙΟΝ (must know), ΣΗΜΕΙ (note down), ΟΡΑ (see), ΣΥΝΟΙΔΑ (known), ΟΙΜΑΙ (I know), etc. In such a way, several scribes and scholars, who worked with this manuscript left the traces of their profound studies of Gregory’s orations 37 Cf. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, vol. 1, ed. and transl. by N. Constas. Cambridge, MA, London, 2014, 163. 14 Anna Usacheva. The Contact Theories of Epistemology in Aristotle, Apostle Paul and Gregory Nazianzen and the scholia on them. Thus, it is accurate to say that Byzantine readers were inclined to look at Gregory’s theology through the prism of his commentators, which in the case of Maximus had a strong Aristotelian flavour. Conclusion Aristotelian biology and epistemology offered a particular way of looking at the principle of likeness through the prism of potentiality and actuality. In this system, the idea of a mediated contact and cooperation between the subject and object of perception and intellection played a very important role. Whilst I do not claim that Gregory closely followed Aristotelian teaching about perception and intellection to the extent that he had in mind the notion of µεσότης when talking about Christ as µεσίτης, I nevertheless think that there can be no doubt that he made use of Aristotelian concepts of the human soul, mind, reason, imagination and perception, the final goal, and the principle of likeness understood in the terms of potentiality-actuality. Gregory incorporated these notions in his comprehensive theory about the primordially determined process of divine-human cooperation based upon constant and embodied noetic activity. Thus, rooted in the teaching of Apostle Paul, Gregory’s thought contained a number of paradigmatic nuances of Aristotelian epistemology. Later this theory of Gregory received an interesting development in Maximus’ teaching, where attention to the functions and states of the human mind, body and its surrounding environment was particularly animate and practical. Thus, Maximus had no hesitation in applying Aristotelian vocabulary and concepts along with certain other advanced scientific and philosophical sources in his reading of Gregory’s theological orations and in elaborating his views. 15