Відео

Gerson is brilliant. Loved his trilogy (those who know him will know what I am talking about). I hope I can get this but gosh the costs of academic books are prohibitive! Keep up the good work.

The idea of the good, greatest of teachings - ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα μέγιστον μάθημα (Republic 505a). A scholar who wrote all his commentary on Plato in the same vein as this conversation was Enrico Turolla (1896-1985), a Venetian. He translated the entire Platonic Corpus into Italian and was an amazing scholar. Cannot recommend him highly enough, especially his ''biography'' of Plato! There are more ''continental'' (lol) scholars who wrote within this line of interpretation, but I cannot help but notice that scholars tend to live within their own language-ecosystem, which is only natural... Makes one wish we returned to Latin, or some language on which no one in particular can have a claim ;-]. Because it is nobody's language, it is everybody's language. The medievals were up to something. I noticed that many contemporary Plato scholars get very annoyed with a lot of secondary literature, because they find it ''too reverend'' in nature, or ''too airy-fairy''. They tend to get more analytical with Plato and lose sight of the gist of his writings.

The more I study 'Dionysius' and Proclus, the more problems I find in the 'Dionysian' adaptation of the Proclean ontology. In DN 5.8 'Dionysius' refers to the paradigmatic reason principles of God, an attempt on his part to incorporate the Platonic forms/ideas into his ontology of divine procession. However, by relocating them in the mind of the Supreme God and away from Primary Intellect, while preserving the Proclean notions of Primary Beings and of God as Hypostates of the Primary Beings, while also teaching that the divine processions are powers (DN 11.6) and energies (DN 9.9) of God, he has thrown his theology into insoluble paradoxes. In addition to the problem of positing the existence of ontic energies, as I mentioned in my other posts, he has further introduced the problem that inasmuch as the logoi transcendentally and unitedly pre-exist in the supra-mind of the Supreme God, while holding that God is Hypostates/Creator of the Primary Beings (Being itself, Life itself, etc.), it follows that God is Designer and Creator of His very own powers and energies! Is it any wonder that 'Dionysius' says little about the ontological status of the divine processions/Primary Beings themselves, and almost nothing about the ontological status of the logoi, and nothing at all about their relation to the divine processions? The problems outlined here further undercut the dogmatic claims of the Palamite theology, and yet again demonstrates the foolhardiness of the Eastern Christian attempt to wed pagan polytheistic Neoplatonic ontology to Judeo-Christian monotheism.

I love how Vasilikis is so interested and almost amazed when he talks, very refreshing

Love Tollefsen

amazing conversation. thank you.

Is this an Orthodox channel?

Omg this is funny. Can you just go to India and wander about. Enough in the head, more in the heart. Too much thinking, not enough knowing.

at 10:32 great quote

Such a fantastic discussion. I have come back to this many times.

Another comment again. First I want to say that this video has been very helpful to me in trying to engage the question of what in fact is the ontological status of the divine processions. As far as Heide's interpretation that 'Dionysius' says in DN 2.5 that the processions or gifts are 'imparticipably participated', I don't believe that is what 'Dionysius' is saying here. I think the meaning is that God the imparticipable according to essence is participated through His gifts, which is precisely his meaning in DN 11.6. Aquinas' Commentary on the DN C.2., L.3, 160 makes the same point: "And he shows what those traditions are, adding, substantifications, according as He gives being to all subsistent things; vivifications, according as He gives life; sapientifications, according as He gives wisdom; and other gifts of the divine goodness, which is the cause of all things, according to which divine gifts participated through likeness, not participably, inasmuch as the essence remains unparticipated, are praised from participations, that is, from participated gifts, as are being, wisdom, and life, and participatings, namely by which those are communicated. Yet he speaks plurally of divine things either on account of the plurality of persons or on account of the plurality of names which are attributed to God himself; and this is common to the whole divinity." If we look at Proclus' On the Theology of Plato 3.1-3.3, he teaches that the Supreme God is the Substantiator of all deity, and of all things whatsoever. That means that God is Supreme Creator of all outside of the One. Then we have the idea of the Limited holding all together, and of the Unlimited exercising power to manifest the realm of Being. Then at each level of existence there is the imparticiple, the participle being/existence as images of the imparticiple, and these exercise power to manifest the level of existence below them, which participate in what is higher through the participle beings/existences. Thus 'Dionysius' adapts Proclus and states that God is the (Hypostates - Substantiator) of the Primary Beings, as well as of angels and men and all other things, with no discriminating principle. This would indicate that God substantiates/creates the processions themselves, which is further supported by the fact that in DN 11.6 'Dionysius' cites Proclus, who definitely had in mind that the One as Hypostates created Goodness Itself and Deity Itself (cf. On the Theology of Plato 2.7 + 3.3). Thus the divine processions of 'Dionysius' represent both the substantiated deities of Proclus falling under the unifying principle of the Limited, as well as the creative powers which fall under the principle of the Unlimited, subsisting at the level of Being, since the processions are Being itself, Life itself, Deity itself, which all reside within the domain of Being, and not that of the superessential, where the Henads are said to reside (although here there may be another amalgamation besides that of mediating and creating terms, where Henads and Primary Beings (viz., Being, Life, etc.) are conjoined into one principle by 'Dionysius'). To sum up then, it appears that the divine processions as taught by 'Dionysius' are both onta (beings) as well as powers and energies of God. I think the idea is that those who participate in them must in some way image that in which they participate. And it is to be observed here that 'Dionysius' differs from Palamas and his followers. As a 'disciple' and adapter of Proclus, 'Dionysius' seems to believe that if all that was meant by "participation" is that beings (men, angels, etc.) participate in the divine energies, as the Palamites are fond of telling us, this would mean that they would simply exist as energy, since energy would be the sum of what they participate in. Therefore for 'Dionysius', who takes the Proclean processions seriously, the processions themselves must constitute true Being, or pure onta themselves, in order for men and angels and plants and animals and the heavens and the earth to actually participate in them. However, I believe that what 'Dionysius' is doing here in combining the Proclean onta and energies into a single metaphysical or 'ontological' principle in hopes of avoiding the charge of polytheism, is positing the existence of an ontic energy, which I submit is a logically indemonstrable and therefore logically impossible object, and which furthermore is wholly at variance with Biblical and patristic teaching, for St. Paul teaches that God's energy/energizing is an activation of His innate power (cf. Eph 1:19, 3:7; Phil 3:21), and not a substantiated form whatsoever, while John of Damascus refers to energy as the efficient motion of nature and the effect of power (Orth. Fath 3.15), while Gregory of Nyssa is quite emphatic in stating that energy is neither essence, image nor hypostasis (Ag. Eunomius 2.12). 'Dionysius' commentators are at variance as to whether the divine processions are created (Aquinas), or the superessential projected as essence (WJS Simpson), or principles constitutive of the world (Von Balthasar), or windows opening onto the sense-and reality-of God present in his powers or energies (Alaexander Golitzin). The fault, in my estimation, lies not in the commentators, who are trying to make some kind of sense of what 'Dionysius' is saying in respect to these metaphysical supposita, but lies rather in 'Dionysius' himself, for positing the existence of a logically indemonstrable and therefore logically impossible object, in an attempt o his part to have his theological cake and eat it too. Aquinas in the end relies upon 'Dionysius' reputed authority as an associate and minister of an esoteric wisdom tradition taught by the apostles and advises that we not question further into what he is teaching in regard to the divine processions in DN 11.6, which suggests that he harbored certain doubts about the theological soundness of what 'Dionyius' was teaching in regard to the ontological status of the divine processions but suppressed whatever doubts he might have had in the belief that 'Dionysius' was teaching apostolic doctrine. The Palamite theology itself, then, being founded upon a logical impossibility in respect to the ontological determinations of 'Dionysius' relating to the divine processions, stands on far less firm ground than its proponents would have us believe, especially as representing a teaching which arrogates to itself the imprimatur of Church dogma.

Does the essence energy distinction make it necessary for God to Create because he has the energies to do so and that therefore is not free not to?

This was great. Perl is such a fantastic communicator of these complex topics

Another comment. The fact that 'Dionysius' posits the existence of Primary Beings, who are simultaneously onta and energeia, does not mean that such a thing is ontologically even possible, for assertion does not constitute logical demonstration. If they are multiple, they cannot be the one God, for then there would be many 'beings' in God. All of this points to the folly of the EO Church having dogmatized the Palamite theology, which is based upon the pseudo science of Neoplatonism as modified by the Cappadocians and the Pseudo Dionysius. Better to have affirmed Palamism to be acceptable theologoumenon and left it at that. Modern scholarship has revealed that the dogma of the EO Church is modified Neoplatonist pseudo science, how embarrassing. At least the RC Church did not elevate Thomism to dogmatic status, despite its elevated position within the Church, which suffers from all of the same metaphysical baggage that Palamism does.

10:51 Lossky and Bogakov 11:17 bookmark 31:37 bookmark

The teachings of the Cappadocians and 'Dionysius' that the Divine Names refer to God's providential activities in creation or His energies contradict the arguments which St. Athanasius used to defeat the Arians in his Four Discourses Against the Arians, and the teaching of the Council of Nicea itself. Athanasius argued that Christ as the Wisdom and Power of God (cf. 1 Cor 1:24) and as Light from Light (cf. Heb 1:3) shows that He is proper to the Father's essence (Discourse 1.9, 11), that the Son as "brightness of glory" (Heb 1:3) demonstrates that He is 'the brightness of the Father's own essence' (Discourse 3.65), and that 'the essence of the Word is the same as the Light which is in Him from the Father' (De Decretis 24). Athanasius approvingly quotes Pope Dionysius of Alexandria to the effect that the Son is 'brightness ever begotten' - it being impossible that an energy can be begotten. Indeed the Son is declared in Sacred Scripture to be Hypostatic Wisdom (Prov 8:22; Wis 7:22-27). The Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. states that the Son is 'only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light consubstantial with the Father'. So I prefer the Alexandrine - Roman theology to that of the Byzantines, which is clearly rooted in Neoplatonism and a Neoplatonic reading of Sacred Scripture, and not Sacred Scripture itself. Inasmuch as the Son was dogmatically defined at Nicea to be only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light, that is the dogmatic teaching of the Universal Church, and the modification of that teaching by the Cappadocians and 'Dionysius' and by Gregory Palamas has no standing whatsoever in the face of that conciliar dogmatic definition. St. Basil himself concurred that this was the intended teaching of the Council of Nicea: "For after saying that the Son was light out of light, and begotten of the essence of the Father, but was not made, they went on to add the homoousion, thereby showing that whatever proportion of light any one would attribute in the case of the Father will obtain also in that of the Son. For very light in relation to very light, according to the actual sense of light, will have no variation. Since then the Father is light without beginning, and the Son begotten light, but each of Them light and light; they rightly said of one essence, in order to set forth the equal dignity of the nature." (Letter 52 to the Canonicae, Ch 2). On further reflection, it seems to me that severe difficulties come to the fore when contemplating what 'Dionysius' has to say in Divine Names 11.6. There he refers to the Triune Godhead as the "hypostates" of the primaries (i.e. the processions), as well as those who participate in the processions. First 'Dionysius' misrepresents, yea even lies about, himself to his readers in this chapter in pretending that he is corresponding with the New Testament figure Titus. Then he lies by stating that he learnt this doctrine about God as the 'hypostasen" of both the processions and their participants from "divine instructors" (i.e. Proclus), but that "superficial people have named them both gods, and creators of existing things" (again, Proclus) - for the one who taught 'Dionysius' about the divine processions was the same one who taught 'Dionysius' that these processions were gods and creators of beings in their own right. Bad enough as the lies and distortions are here on the part of the Pseudo Dionysius, we must look at the implications of what he teaches here. A "hypostases" signifies either an underlying principle of existence or one who gives subsistence to others (viz. a creator). If God is the hypostasen who is the underlying principle of both the divine processions and those who participate in them, either this means that the divine processions themselves are created (as in Proclus), OR, God is the subsistence of both the uncreated divine processions and the created beings who participate in these processions. But if God is the hypostasen of His proceeding energies, as CAUSE, then the Father is the hypostasen of the Son and the Holy Spirit, as CAUSE of these as well, and we are right back to the teaching of Origen, who restricted true Godhead to the Father alone, as the Ingenerate cause of all generated existences (Commentary On the Gospel of John 2.2; On Prayer Ch 15), which argument was seized upon by the Arians in their attempt to remove the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Godhead. Indeed the Son the life everlasting that was in the beginning with the Father (1 Jn 1:2) tells us that He Himself lives by the Father (Jn 6:57) the life everlasting (cf. 1 Jn 5:20). Since the Son (Jn 8:42) and the Holy Spirit (Jn 15:26) proceed from the Father, once again this would mean that the Father is the hypostasen of the Son and the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as they themselves exist to the extent that the Father subsists in them (cf. Jn 10:30, 14:10, 23-26). Therefore the explanation put forward by 'Dionysius' which seeks to define God as the hypostates of the divine processions as well as the beings who participate in them fails the test of Christian orthodoxy.

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Very helpful, thank you!

I am who I am

After 2 world wars and the 2 atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the holocaust and what can philosophers make any sense of it all; even Bertrand Russell failed despite his logical mathematical brain.

Seems to be the case that 9/10 of those who comment on Plato. Do not understand Plato. But of those, who do not comment on Plato. 9/10 understand Plato.

Hi guys, I agree with Perl. My question is, why do people constantly say that Aristotle taught against Plato's essential teaching on the forms? Is this an issue of translation? Texts being misattributed to Aristotle? Something else?

God is not an intentional object, not an object of experience or consciousness - nor experience or consciousness ’as such’ (as if there ever could be experience or consciousness without content!)

What about the good of the employee who is getting paid wages below what is seen as the minimum wage? Working a full time job and not able to survive is not a good, surely? Is avaricious moral states of individuals a good? I think David Bentley Hart has a good discussion on oscillating the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty depending on the situation.

Could someone point out exactly where Aquinas says to deny even esse? I'm confident that he would but I can't find it said explicitly.

Recently read Platonism and Naturalism, amazing book and I wish you'd do an interview with him on that one

Really enjoyed Gerson's book on Plotinus and his book on Aristotle

I’m looking forward to reading Gerson’s book! DC Schindler’s “Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason” also focuses on the central importance of Plato’s idea of the Good and I hope to be able to compare them

Hi, would you be able to interview professor Sajjad Rizvi on Mulla Sadra? This channel is great and very useful for my studies :)

Lol, the rage against the machine of most analytical philosophy. Even physicists can't deal with this honestly as in all their accounts of something from nothing, nothing is never nothing but always something!

I've read some of Professor Gerson's books and took a course with him as an undergrad, he is a first-rate philosopher and scholar of ancient philosophy. Was a pleasure listening to this discussion, and I look forward to reading the new book!

Woah😮.How did you get an interview with Lloyd Gerson?? Excited for this book📖, I had it pre-ordered 💪.

Thank you for sharing this interesting presentation and subsequent dialogue. If I had to add something, I would say that Proclus never fails to raise the One as the direct and unmediated cause of everything. The only thing he adds is that that which mediates generates in turn, and in a 'synchronous' way, mediated effects. That is, the One and the henads operate through their pronoia in everything down to matter, the nous obviously extends from itself to the inanimate, and the psyché to the animate. All at once, because they are beyond time per se. That is, the complex entities are not the effect only of their direct cause, but are 'more the effect' of the first cause than of any intermediate cause. Secondly, I would say that often the arguments being used are not the same as those that a Proclus would use. Proclus does not 'decide' to rationally propose 'henads' to solve a problem. That is, the problem of the one and the many is not given as a premise. Rather, by the principle of 'essence' and dispersion Proclus tells us that the production of a cause generates the like, first of all, while after that an ever wider dispersion is generated as one descends into the effective (of the effects). Hence the One generates 'ones' before 'generating' the nous (or being, tò ón). Again, thank you for this very interesting conversation.

Hello, I have recently joined your youtube group. I liked the interview with Eric Perl. Can you recommend a way for me as a beginner to read and understand Dionysius. I am well read in philosophy and in the last five years the rich Catholic Western tradition. I have Mystagogy a Monastic Reading of Dionysius by Golitzin. It’s ok. but I would like a book with longer passages of important texts sorted by subjects and then some commentary and analysis. any thoughts? Thanks Richard ludlow

As Damascius noted however, we can go further even than the first principle, by considering the whole, the all, which encompasses the principle and what is from it. This is ultimately an aporia at the core of the notion of principle itself.

I'd love to hear how Father Loudovikos thinks and acts toward animals, in light of his profound theology. It seems they do not have quite the same freedom as humans. Are they made in the image of God? How do they participate in dialogical extasy with God?

Thanks for uploading

I would really have wanted Loudovikos to adress eventual criticisms from him about Woods understanding of hypostasis as Bieler mentioned. I hope he writes a review. Does anyone know if he will?

Learning is fun too

This was a fantastic conversation, thank you for setting it up! I’ve read a lot of Fr Loudovikos’ work and Im excited to get into Dr Wood’s

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Nice

1:15:23 - Might be able to signify this in translation by rendering the pronoun “THAT” similarly to the Tetragrammaton in English translations of Scripture.

Would God be able to be or to be not insofar as he chose to create or to not create? In the first case, he would be the negative principle, in the second, he would be itself (and in itself), as there would be no being conditioned by him.

It would have been so interesting to have Dr. Perl's opinion on the concept of "causa-sui" in Spinoza which perhaps makes thinkable a God which is not "a first principle" nor "an origin". I think we cannot dismiss self-causation as incoherent and unintelligible in our time without taking the ontology expressed in Ethics into consideration. It may also be that the "self-caused" God of Spinoza is more soothing to the mind , as looking for the "uncaused" God seems , according to Dr. Perl , to "lead into the dark" in an infinite regress !

Just as the classic Platonic "move" is to contemplate several beautiful things, and then to up-level one's consciousness to the intuition of Beauty Itself, in which the beautiful things all participate, but which none of them ARE; in the same way one can consider several determinate things, all of which "exist" (determinately), and then move to the intuition of generalized, undetermined Existence Itself in which they participate, but which none of them are. *This Existence Itself is not determinate, not limited, and therefore does not "exist" in the same sense that determinate things do. To think that it does, is a category error, or a confusion of levels-of-abstraction; this is directly relevant to the issue of "univocity of being."* (So, following on Parmenides, not only does non-existence not exist, but neither does existence!!) I take this to be Aquinas' procedure in speaking of ipsum esse. IOW first let's consider, sequentially, the "what-it-is" of a roller skate, a pope, and a porn star, and then see that they all share the predicate of "existing as some determinate thing (what-it-is) or other", and then graduate to the intuition of *"what" existence (the general property, common to the pope and the roller skate, of existing as a what-it-is) ITSELF is*, or the sheer "THAT-it-is"-NESS (wow! what a nominalization!) of each of those instances. I think the core intuition of the (neo-)Platonic tradition is that "THAT-it-is-ness" is not itself a determinate thing, is not itself "an" existent, is not some"thing" of which we can specify "WHAT-it-is." (This is tautologically apparent to thoughtful intuition, is it not? And is not this, in turn, a triumph for so-called "rationalism"?) (Actually, I take this to be the meaning of Heidegger's critique of substance ontology: there is no such "thing", no such "existent," as "that-it-is-NESS.") This is IMHO the key to apophaticism as well as to Aquinas' positing of "ipsum esse," or being-itself, or G-d, which is not itself an existing, determinate thing, or (one could say more startlingly) which does not exist. *God does not exist in the sense that beings exist*; that's the denial of Scotistic univocity. He is not the Greatest Being who rules over other beings, for he is not a being among beings but rather the un-thinged, indeterminate or pan-determinate, source (or condition) of being; "Deus non est in genere" (as Karl Barth said, quoting Aquinas). What's interesting to me is to juxtapose this with Heidegger, who believed that the entire western tradition failed to grasp unthinged being as such, but only beings. I believe, per contra, that the western tradition at its best (and as pellucidly described by Perl) DID understand this, and therefore escapes H's critique of "onto-theology."

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