Pagan Philosophy Research Articles

A Pastoral Theology of Desire. Reading Augustine’s Theology of Desire in A Broader Corpus

The Enarrationes in Psalmos are an important source for understanding the Augustinian theology of desire, linking it to his systematic theology and his pastoral practice. In this paper I illustrate by overviewing the expositions on Psalms 11 (12), 12 (13), 23 (24), and 26 (27). These Psalms teach us to love, trust, and seek God only, a failure to do which marks the Donatist schism. Augustine mingles ideas from pagan philosophy’s quest for eudaimonia or beata vita—the good, happy, and blessed life—with biblical ideas. We want a stable happiness, and we must pursue wisdom; we can find stability in the rock that is Christ, to follow whom is to pursue wisdom rightly. Our desires must be converted to God, the only complete and perfect good and the source of eternal happiness, whom we must single-mindedly pursue with prayer and faith. While we must desire the eschaton and look to no earthly satisfaction, earthly goods may be received as gifts from God. One thing we can learn from studying the Enarrationes is how closely connected are the ideas of right love, the right church, and the right end; all three go together in Augustine’s theology.

The politics of Thomas More's A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation

Thomas More's early writings provide both a defense of his vocation in politics and a political theory for a Christian polity, attempting to harmonize Christendom with the best practicable political order. But More's A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation reflects upon this vocation in light of the anti-Christian political order. He uses the specter of Turkish tyranny sweeping into Hungary to reflect on the open persecution of Christians. Where other scholars have focused on the pedagogy, history, and theology of More's Dialogue, this paper focuses on its political teachings. More shows his readers the essence of political tribulation, the necessity of supplementing pagan philosophy and virtue with a distinctly Christian courage, and how the Christian citizen should behave in the face of death. The Christian's virtue is the source of his comfort and the bulwark for Christendom's final victory.

Диалектическое движение философской мысли: генезис Системы Знания в философии Александра Кожева. Статья вторая: синтез дискурсов

The article delves into the historical-philosophical framework developed by Alexandre Kojève, a French Neo-Hegelian thinker, known as The Knowledge System. This project is rooted in Hegelian inspiration and seeks to comprehensively elucidate the historical trajectory of philosophical discourse. The subsequent segment of the article serves to encapsulate and evaluate Kojève’s scheme of philosophical evolution. Central to this analysis is the examination of the interconnectedness and fusion of theological, scientific, and moral discourses within Kojève’s historical-philosophical milieu. This exploration sheds light on Kojève’s conception of Hegelian anthropotheism. Kojève’s methodological approach to the history of philosophy stands out for its departure from the conventional narrative of uninterrupted intellectual lineage from ancient Greece. Instead, he highlights a pivotal shift catalyzed by the advent of Christianity, which amalgamates elements from Hellenic pagan philosophy and Jewish monotheism. To underscore the divergence between Kojève’s perspectives on ancient philosophy (as well as subsequent periods) and those of established scholars, we draw upon Richard Rorty’s framework of the four genres of historiography in contemporary philosophy. According to Rorty, Kojève’s historical-philosophical framework aligns with Geistesgeschichte, or the «history of the human spirit».

Giovanni Pico’s warning against pantheistic implications in Ficino’s Neoplatonism

ABSTRACT The famous controversy between Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is known to regard the proper use of Platonism in humanist and Christian context. With special attention to Pico’s Commentary on a Canzone, the point of disagreement with Ficino, which is not at all obvious, is examined through a close reading. The result is that Pico sees the temptation of a pantheistic and anthropocentric understanding of the relationship between the human realm and God. Whereas Ficino engaged in making pagan philosophy amenable to Christian theology, Pico was concerned with upholding the otherness of the divine. For the humanist agenda, Ficino made plausible that the human world is divinized, while Pico called for the ascent to God. In Pico’s view the Neoplatonists secularized the divine, as was evident in Ficino’s philosophical theology.

True Faith and Philosophy as a Way to Overcome Religious Prejudices according to 1st and 2nd Century Christian Sources

The authors explore religious prejudices in early Christianity, Judaism, and paganism using 1st and 2nd-century sources. During that era, ethnic and religious biases affected various societal levels. The first section examines biases among Gentiles and Christians toward Jews, followed by biases between Gentiles and Jews toward Christians, and the prejudices of Christians and Jews toward Gentiles. The second section delves into prejudices between Christians and Jews, focusing on how society reacted to Christians’ distinctiveness from Jews, hindering their integration due to pagan religiosity. In response, Christians presented their faith as a bridge, emphasizing its universality for all people, not solely for the Jewish community. They offered a pathway for communion and reconciliation, asserting the superiority and broader interpretative nature of Christian faith over Judaism. Jesus Christ’s life, St. Paul’s teachings, and events from the Acts of the Apostles affirmed the faith’s universal significance. The third section centers on ‘barbarian philosophy’ as an attempt to unify Christians and pagans amid growing societal tensions in the 2nd century. Christian apologists, once pagan philosophers, aimed to alleviate prejudices by aligning their received faith with their society, employing ‘barbarian philosophy.’ This approach viewed Christianity through rationality, rooted in the universal divine Logos, appealing to all people as the creator and advocate.

Two Mediterranean Church Mothers: Their Presence and Importance in Patristic Philosophy

There are many debates concerning the existence and possibility of Christian philosophy, as well as Jewish and Islamic philosophy. Starting from the debates in France in the 1930s, some philosophers, such as Bréhier, have argued that Christian philosophy, especially in the patristic era, did not operate through reason, as philosophy requires, for religion is a system full of dogmas, interpretations based on strict approaches and alleged facts. However, patristic philosophers, especially some pro-philosophy apologetic writers, suggested that pagan philosophy, which is assumed to operate through reason, took its doctrines from Christianity and distorted them. Thus, for them, Christianity was the true philosophy. If one takes the patristic philosophers’ view and considers Christianity a philosophy through their writings, one should acknowledge that, at the basis of their views, lies the meaning of φιλοσοφία, that is, the love of wisdom. Our consideration of early Christian philosophy as a way of life is best understood through the lens of the Church mothers since they are portrayed as the best examples among Christians. In this study, we aim to discuss patristic philosophy as the basic form of philosophizing and then go on to specify prominent female Christian philosophers from the Mediterranean Region, the crucible for many long-lasting civilizations, and finally examine the ways they were philosophizing. Our method of research is mainly based on document and content analysis since it is qualitative research in the philosophical literature. Based on the findings of this research, we demonstrate the core endeavor of philosophy as the love of wisdom through the ideas of two of the prominent women in early Christian philosophy.

Почему Петр Абеляр был признан еретиком?

The article deals with the origin, identification, and judgment (discussion) of philosophical heresy in the Christian Middle Ages (late 11th – 12th centuries), associated with the names of John Roscelin and Peter Abelard. The concepts of heresy, religion, and right – their not only philosophical and historical foundations but also etymological ones – are analyzed. Based on the original meaning of "heresy" as a "school of thought" and "choice", the author sees the similarity of these meanings with the term "religion", which Augustine understood as "re-election". "Right, ius" and "law, lex", which are closely connected with the divine world order (respectively, with religion and its rational-mystical foundation, i.e., with "schools of thought"), create together with them a kind of fundamental complex for the human community. However, the legal framework of this hostel creates opportunities for mutual understanding and interconnection of all these concepts, their internal intentions, and their external expressions. Since Christianity was understood as freedom of speech, equivalent to a natural divine and therefore unchangeable right, determined through a naturally inherent reason that contradicts a positive human changeable right, it is in Christianity that what was considered heresy as a deviation from the doctrinal establishment arises. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the teachings on the unity of the Trinity, i.e., the unity of the multitude, both by philosophers John Roscelin and Peter Abelard, were discussed at church councils as heretical because they were seen as an attempt to establish either degrees in the Trinity or the incarnation of all divine hypostases due to their absolute identity. In addition, Abelard made efforts to reconcile with the pagan philosophy of Plato, seeing in the world soul a similarity with the Holy Spirit, explaining such a scholastic duality of expression. The desire to see the world develop according to one scenario led to the adjustment of different concepts to each other.

Interconnection and Separation: Medieval Perspectives on the Modern Problem of the “Global Middle Ages”

Abstact This article argues that “global” is both too vague and too misleading a term to help conceptualize the Middle Ages. It is used for too many diverse phenomena, and criticism of the term by modernists has not been taken on board. Instead of borrowing and distorting this concept to make it fit, we should look at the nature and range of both interconnection and separation in our period, and create concepts based on our source-material. The medieval evidence shows that through the narrow channels, through the segmented and broken-up chains of communication, knowledge and objects can still flow. Superficial similarities to modern connectivity (for example trade) may hide real divergence, such as the motivation for the spice trade, which was related to searching for earthly paradise. Remoteness and separation were seen and described by medieval authors, but in reality both separation and connection were more ambiguous phenomena. Limited interconnection between areas of the globe did not dampen universal aspirations for the spread of Christianity. Finally, the mechanism of declared Christian religious superiority contrasted with the way in which Christianity gobbled up other traditions, ingesting and transforming them in its own image, while refusing to acknowledge this incorporation. This creophagous attitude characterized Christian relations to Judaism, Arabic science and pagan philosophy: strong interconnection coexisted with explicitly stated separateness.

Civil society, “civil theology” and Augustine’s political morality: a comparative analysis with ancient teachings

The study is devoted to a comparative analysis of the concepts of “civil society”, “civil theology” in relation to the political morality of Blessed Augustine Aurelius with ancient teachings. The article attempts a hermeneutic analysis of the concept of civil society often used in the theory of state-legal doctrines. The differences are established between the pagan Roman understanding of justice and the proposed by Blessed Augustine, based on Holy Scripture as the basis of state-legal relations in ancient society: according to Augustine, the real reason why classical philosophy makes it impossible to raise virtuous people and leads to self-destruction is not because it is irreligious, but because it expresses itself in a wrong and wrong conception of a deity. And this is most evident in pagan polytheism. It is therefore clear that Augustine, in his attempt to define civil society, follows the classical tradition, emphasizing its essential agreement with Scripture. His main opposition to the ancient pagan philosophers concerns not so much their teaching about the natural ideals of civil society and the need for the existence of justice within it, but their inability to achieve a single just society.

Pagan Otherness in the Christian Church Iconography of Ancient Philosophers and Intellectuals in Russia and the Balkans

The Russian Orthodox iconography of ancient philosophers and thinkers has long attracted Western and Russian researchers. Greek and Roman philosophers depicted in Russian churches and in other visual sources have almost nothing in common with real historical philosophers: their images were based on Byzantine Apocrypha, in which philosophers were presented as righteous pagans, proclaiming the coming of Christ long before his birth. The author introduces for the first time three new sources, two of which - tempera paintings from the 18th century with Hermes and Aphrodite, and frescoes from the 17th century carved from the walls of the Moscow Novospassky monastery with images of Aristotle, Solon, Plutarch, and Anacharsis - are kept in the State Historical Museum in Moscow, and another illustrated 17th-century collection of aphorisms of the Hellenic sages named Melissa, is in the collections of the Russian National Library in St Petersburg. The author establishes a typology of all the ancient philosophers (as they were called in sources) found in Russian Orthodox iconography, dividing them into four groups: historical philosophers, historical intellectuals, sibyls, and gods. Thereafter, the text analyses the meaning of visual markers of Otherness that are present in all samples of the studied array of iconography. It is assumed that the meaning of such visual markers was that they showed the viewer the Hellenic sages as the Other. Ancient philosophers and intellectuals were presented as pagans from the East, since it was necessary to visually separate them from the real saints recognized by the Orthodox Church. Even though all of them were credited with prophecies about the rise of Christianity, the primary role of the above attributes was the visual differentiation of pagan philosophers from Orthodox saints.

The Philosophy of Happiness: A Comparative Study between Western and Islamic Thought

The concept of happiness is an equally important topic of discussion in both Islamic and Western philosophy. This article presents a comparative analysis of happiness concepts from Islamic as well as Western points of view. The article aims at discovering the influence of al-Ghazali (a medieval Muslim scholar of Sufi persuasion) upon Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, a present-day Malaysian Muslim philosopher, concerning the philosophy of happiness. It also focuses on the Aristotelian philosophy of happiness, underscoring the discussion from his seminal book The Nichomachean Ethics, and includes an in-depth study of happiness as discussed by modern Western philosophers like Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. The study follows a qualitative, non-empirical, textual and contextual analytical approach, which comprises several texts and journal archives composed by the aforementioned scholars and philosophers from the ancient medieval period to the present. The analysis reveals that Islamic philosophy always underscores happiness in this present life and the eternal life after death, while Aristotelian pagan philosophy stresses happiness only in this sublunary life. The study also argues that virtue is a predominant aspect necessary to attain happiness in the worldly life and in the afterlife.

The Political Theology of Origen of Alexandria

According to the prevailing view to date, early Christians showed no particular interest in politics. In this respect, the work of George Karamanolis, devoted to pre-Christian philosophical thought, is highly symptomatic. Although the author breaks down many stereotypical views of early Christian thinkers and presents a rather rich intellectual culture of these thinkers when Jerry approaches their political views, he notes: , As well as their modern pagan philosophers. "

The Use of Aristotle’s Biology in Nemesius’ On Human Nature

Towards the end of the fourth century CE Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in Syria, composed his treatise On Human Nature (Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου). The nature of the soul and its relation to the body are central to Nemesius’ treatment. In developing his argument, he draws not only on Christian authors but on a variety of pagan philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the great physician-cum-philosopher Galen of Pergamum. This paper examines Nemesius’ references to Aristotle’s biology in particular, focusing on a few passages in the light of Aristotle’s Generation of Animals and History of Animals as well as the doxographic tradition. The themes in question are: the status of the intellect, the scale of nature and the respective roles of the male and female in reproduction. Central questions are: Exactly which impact did Aristotle make on his thinking? Was it mediated or direct? Why does Nemesius cite Aristotle and how? Long used as a source for earlier works now lost, Nemesius’ work may provide intriguing glimpses of the intellectual culture of his time. This paper is designed to contribute to this new approach to his work.

Incorporeals in the Ontology of Created Beings in the Byzantine Philosophy of Michael Psellos

"In this contribution I tried to show that Psellos has a complex understanding of the ontology of the being of incorporeal entities that is shaped mainly from a Christian position but also supplemented by the methodological use of positions from ancient philosophy. There is surely a lot more to say about this problem, but I think the classical notions of soul or forms cannot be very easily included into Psellos philosophical framework. His discussion with the pagan philosophy is not only complex but depends also on the circumstance and context of the problems he is discussing in specific texts. Regarding incorporeal beings, he seems to advocate the existence of angels and souls while forms do not seem to have an own ontological realm between God and sensible cosmos. The question of Platonic forms as the thoughts of gods is tricky. On the one side Psellos points to God as direct cause of creation, on the other side he holds back on characterizing God’s thoughts. Keywords: forms, incorporeals, creation, ontology, Platonism. "

Rethinking Knowledge through Early English Translations of Zhu Xi’s Study of Li 理

The English translations of Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) study of li 理 by James Legge (1815–1897), Thomas McClatchie (1812–1885) and Joseph Percy Bruce (1861–1934) are analyzed in this essay. A central figure in Chinese history, Zhu established the li system and contributed to the renewal of Confucianism and Chinese intellectual tradition. English translators of Zhu’s thought over time have used various words to translate li. This essay presents the perspective shared by Arthur Schopenhauer and related discussions by George Steiner and Robert J. C. Young to determine the key role of translation in producing meaning, developing the field of philosophy, and creating knowledge. Using an overview of Zhu’s philosophical framework of li as a background to highlight translation as the agent for transforming this framework, this essay examines how the translations by Legge, McClatchie and Bruce have stimulated readers to rethink knowledge from different angles. Legge, who translated li as “principle”, engaged with Zhu’s related ideas and Christian teachings comparatively to reflect on children’s education as well as the meaning of God and knowledge acquisition, in an attempt to integrate Zhu’s li system and Christianity through his translational exploration. McClatchie, who translated li as “Fate”, indicated that Zhu’s li system vastly differed from Christianity and emphasized the demarcation between Christianity and pagan philosophy. Bruce used rich vocabulary to translate li, and thus created a highly nuanced and meaningful comprehension of religion and philosophy by appreciating the differences in Zhu’s thought. By analyzing the aforementioned translations, this essay will illuminate the under-discussed process of knowledge creation through translation across cultures.

Аксиологические установки в интерпретации рационального и иррационального в трудах представителей латинской апологетики

The article aims at demonstrating significant differences in the perception of rationality and irrationality in the works of ancient Greek philosophers and philosophers of the period of Latin apologetics. The authors conducted a comparative analysis of the works of ancient and Latin philosophers. The analysis revealed that the Greeks solved the problem of the ratio of the rational and the irrational in an ontological way, while the Latins shifted the focus on the problem to the axiological dimension. The article presents the correlation of three examples of ontological orientation of pagan philosophy with three examples of axiological orientation of Latin theology of the apologetic period. The research methodology is based on the combination of historical-functional and comparative analyses. The works of N. S. Mudragey, where the validity of the use of the concepts "rational" and "irrational" in relation to ancient philosophy was proved, provided the methodological basis of the study, as well as the works of G. G. Mayorov, who actually was the first to consider Latin apologetics as a system with a clear tendency from hellenophilia to hellenophobia. The works of ancient Greek philosophers provided the theoretical basis of the study, as well as the works of Lactantius, Arnobius, Tertullian, and Minucius.

The specificity of early Christian ideas about divine providence in the context of ancient philosophy (from the 1st to the 3rd centuries)

This article outlines the key features of the Christian understanding of divine providence in comparison with the philosophical trends of Antiquity from the 1st to the 3rd centuries (before Neoplatonism). The author identifies three paradigms of understanding divine providence in the ancient pagan philosophy of this period (atheistic, pantheistic and deistic) and in this context defines the Christian paradigm as “dialogical panentheism”. According to the author, Christianity at its core offers a worldview, which is uncharacteristic for paganism: the cosmos is focused on the implementation of a dialogue between man and God and the achievement of existential intimacy between the Creator and creation. It is also noted that Christianity, in contrast to ancient thought, placed an emphasis on the fact that the fundamental property of the higher Deity is His openness in relation to the Other, and not just self-contemplating or self-contained calmness. This, in turn, determines two other aspects in the Christian doctrine of providence: the all-pervading participation of God in the life of the world and His concern for the individual and those who are flawed. The author also says that the Orthodox understanding of providence is a harmonious middle between the extremes of pantheism and deism.

Female Christian prose today: A failed search for new women’s subjectivity?

In her analysis of books by Maya Kucherskaya, Olesya Nikolaeva, and Yulia Voznesenskaya, the author investigates the history of female Christian prose from the 1990s until the present day. According to the author, it was in the 1990s, the period of crisis and transformation of the social system, that female Christian writers were more vocal, than today, on the issues of the new post-Soviet female subjectivity, drawing on folklore imagery and contrasting the folk, pagan philosophy with the Christian one, defined by an established set of rules and limitations for the principal female roles. Thus, the folklore elements in Kucherskaya’s early works are considered as an attempt to represent female subjectivity. However, the author argues that, in their current work, Kucherskaya and other representatives of the so-called female Christian prose tend to choose different, objectivizing methods to represent female characters. This new and conservative approach may have come from a wider social context, including the state-imposed ‘family values’ program.

Treatment of psychiatric disorders in the middle ages

The article shows that medicine in the Middle Ages was based on the principles of scholasticism, which rejected any scientific discoveries and contrasted faith and science, which made its development impossible in general. Methods of treatment, used in medieval medicine, based on gross superstitions, reduced to the belief in the healing power of amulets and talismans; attributing to human health the location of stars; the role of conspiracies and the healing power of crushed stones and minerals. The medieval church linked the causes of disease with two main factors: illness, as God's punishment for human sins, and illness, as an obsession with evil forces. It is established that the basis of medieval medicine was primarily the teachings of the medieval church on the immortality of the soul, saints, diseases, which were dominated by gross pagan beliefs and philosophy, which made not only impossible the development of medicine as such, but also led to mass epidemics, unsanitary conditions, the growth of neuropsychiatric diseases, reducing the duration and quality of life. People with mental disorders have historically been either ignored or institutionalized. Their disorders were not easy to understand and therefore treat. Society often feared and carried out superstitions about people with mental illness that were based on culture and religious beliefs. Those who demonstrated evidence of mental illness were accused of committing sinful crimes and wrongdoings under the influence of the devil. Throughout history, the disease has been associated with demon possession or as punishment for some wrongdoing. Terrible surgeries aimed at freeing demons or healing the brain from disorders have been unsuccessful. Short periods of humane treatment have occurred throughout history. The very concept of disease, adopted in medieval medicine, according to the teachings of the papacy, reduced the disease either to God's punishment or to obsession. In both cases, no real medical understanding of the disease, and, consequently, the development of methods for diagnosis and treatment of diseases in principle was not necessary.

Влияние православной богословской мысли на философию ранних славянофилов на примере письма игумена Антония (Бочкова) И.В. Киреевскому

In the first half of the 19th century, two religious and philosophical movements, diametrically opposite in their views, emerged in Russia, later called “Westernizers” and “Slavophiles”. Both worldviews, based on the foundations of the Western Christian and Eastern Christian under-standing of the structure of church and state, public relations, the influence of tradition on the his-torical choice of the state development vector, led to heated discussions between their founders, and subsequently their supporters. In support of the representatives of the philosophical and social thought of the “Westernizers” “Slavophiles” on theological issues, as well as the reviewing of particular articles, both Catholic and Orthodox clergymen were involved. We reveal the influence of the Orthodox theological thought of the 19th century on the religious philosophy development of one of the founders of “Slavophilism” in terms of posing and solving the problem of historical tradition. The relevance of the study is due to the increased interest in the issue of the spiritual life of society and church-state relations. The work contains for the first time introduced into scientific circulation a handwritten letter from hegumen Anthony (Bochkov) to I.V. Kireyevsky from the funds of the Russian State Library with author’s comments and explanations. The problems of religious and philosophical thought of this period are revealed, that is the influence of Roman (pagan) philosophy on the formation and development of Western theology, opposing the development paths of Russia and Europe, recognition of the negative influence of ritualism on the formation of a true Orthodox worldview, understanding of Peter I reforms as a “Russian reformation”. The analysis of the epistolary source made it possible to reveal the direct impact of the arguments of hegumen Anthony on the views of I.V. Kireyevsky, reflected in his works.