From the Contemplation of the One to the Ontology of Politics: The Doctrine of Unanimity in Theodore Metochites’ Sententious Notes, Ch. 67–72

Abstract

In Ch. 67–72 of his Sententious Notes, Byzantine fourteenth-century scholar Theodore Metochites developed a rather traditional Neoplatonic doctrine on the ascension towards the contemplation of the One Beginning of all the beings as the aim of that contemplative life which had to be led by philosophers and scientists (geometers, mechanics, and architects featuring among the latter). The naming of the One, i. e. the Single in its kind, goes back to Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, while revealing also some parallels with Plotinus’ Enneads (6. 9. 5). According to Metochites, philosophers and scientists were those leading the highest (according to Aristotle), i. e. contemplative way of life, who present themselves as a paragon for politicians, the goal of the latter being by having acquired themselves the contemplation of the One to lead their subjects to the same “place,” through summoning them to virtue and unanimity. As for politicians, they live a middle, “moderately passionate” life, as Georges Pachymeres had underlined a bit earlier than Metochites. However, the Megas Logothete’s ontology of politics in general is rather unambiguously antique in its character, whereas he specially underlines that political as such is a part and parcel of being as a fundamental and all-embracing whole. This antique character of Metochites’ doctrine makes itself manifest in a rather untypical for a Byzantine thinker lack of Christocentrism as well as of any attention at the theological component of Byzantine world outlook.