Theodore Sabo | North-West University (original) (raw)

Papers by Theodore Sabo

A perusal of Plato's dialogue the Phaedrus sheds much light on Porphyry's Vita Plotini. The simil... more A perusal of Plato's dialogue the Phaedrus sheds much light on Porphyry's Vita Plotini. The similarities between the two works are impressive, and it can be argued that Porphyry wrote his text with the dialogue in mind. These similarities include their use of medicine, their structural disunity, and their cast of characters, among which must be included the impalpable but pervasive entity the supernatural. In its somewhat cavalier attitude toward medicine and its preoccupation with the supernatural the Vita Plotini reveals itself to be a uniquely late antique production. Two of the key themes of the Phaedrus-communication and the godlikeness of the pre-fallen soul-are also reflected by the Vita.

Plotinus inherited the concept of the Nous from the Middle Platonists and ultimately Plato. It wa... more Plotinus inherited the concept of the Nous from the Middle Platonists and ultimately Plato. It was for him both the Demiurge and the abode of the Forms, and his attempts at describing it, often through the use of arresting metaphors, betray substantial eloquence. None of these metaphors is more unusual than that of the globe of faces which is evoked in the sixth Ennead and which is found to possess a notable corollary in the prophet Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures. Plotinus' metaphor reveals that, as in the case of Ezekiel, he was probably granted such a vision, and indeed his encounters with the Nous were not phenomena he considered lightly.

The evidence of the Vita Plotini is that Plotinus held a seminar on Plato's dialogue the Symposiu... more The evidence of the Vita Plotini is that Plotinus held a seminar on Plato's dialogue the Symposium in Rome in the third century. Although he was not himself a speaker at the seminar he owed much to the dialogue in his Enneads, most notably to the speech of Diotima. Ennead 3.5 is his exegesis of Diotima's myth of the union of Poverty and the drunken Plenty, and it displays his typical inconsistency and brilliance. Elsewhere in the Enneads he treats Diotima's final mysteries, largely agreeing with her except for his insistence that the final vision is not of the Form Beauty but of the dwellingplace of the Forms that is the Nous. With only a slight alteration of the facts 2 we can imagine a seminar in Rome on three May days in the 260s, 3 possibly in the house of the lady Gemina. 4 The seminar is devoted to Plato's dialogue on love, the Symposium, and is designed by the philosopher Plotinus. The first address, delivered by his pupil Porphyry, is called "The Sacred Marriage" and concerns the union of Plenty and Poverty, 5 the parents of Eros. It abounds in "mystical and veiled words of ecstasy" and is a speech of almost theosophical extravagance which leads one of the participants to exclaim that Porphyry has gone mad. Plotinus senses the immaturity of the work but sees great promise in it and defends the author as a poet, priest, and philosopher, no small praise. There are less exuberant speeches the following day, but one stands out by virtue of its ability to shock: "A Defense of Alcibiades" by the orator Diophanes. In this skewed interpretation of the Symposium the pupil is urged to advance toward virtue by 1 First published in the Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture (2017). I would like to thank Mark Edwards and Svetla Slaveva-Griffin for their help with this article.

Plotinus' political thought is not an issue that usually crops up in Neoplatonic studies, and in ... more Plotinus' political thought is not an issue that usually crops up in Neoplatonic studies, and in fact not much can be teased out of the Enneads on this score other than to label him a devotee of orderly law and a restrained opponent of tyranny. This makes the Platonopolis project detailed by Porphyry in his Vita Plotini all the more baffling. The present essay notes similarities to the scheme in the lives of Augustine and Bishop Berkeley and concludes that in all three cases the envisioned project was wholly apolitical. Plotinus is revealed as a contrasting figure to Plato in his attitude toward both politics and mathematics, and his sponsorship by the emperor Gallienus is attributed solely to Gallienus' veneration of him and his philosophical ideals. Two often repeated assertions about Plotinus are that he was not interested in mathematics or politics. 2 A recent book has demonstrated his strong attraction to numbers though not necessarily mathematics, 3 but the second theory has not been challenged as seriously as it could be. O'Meara, an expert on Neoplatonic politics, discusses Plato and the later Neoplatonists more than he does Plotinus, 4 yet some unsettling facts remain. Plotinus, after taking part in the emperor Gordian's ill-fated Persian expedition, went to Rome instead of Athens. 5 It is likely that he wanted to avoid any philosophical competition in Athens, 6 but it is also possible he was to some extent drawn to Roman politics. Most troubling of all is the rationale behind his aborted Platonopolis project. 1 First published in Acta Classica (2015). I would like to thank Mark Edwards and the anonymous readers for their help with this article.

The relationship between Plotinus and Buddhism has not been overly studied, in part because of th... more The relationship between Plotinus and Buddhism has not been overly studied, in part because of the paucity of evidence. This article retraces some familiar terrain, enumerating parallels between the philosophy of Plotinus and those of the Yogācārin Vasubandhu and his Indian and Chinese inheritors. Similarities are noted between Plotinus' thought and Zen Buddhism, which was a natural outgrowth of Vasubandhu's philosophy, and, more importantly, between Plotinus and Buddhist Tantra. It is nonetheless conceded that there are more similarities between Tantra and the later Neoplatonists than there are between Tantra and Plotinus. Distinctive to this article are the Plotinian elements descried in the lives of Vasubandhu and the Tibetan Tantrist Ra Lotsāwa. Under the influence of the mysterious Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus (204-270) conceived a desire to learn Persian and Indian philosophy firsthand. This led him to a romantic participation in the emperor Gordian's ill-fated Persian expedition. He managed to escape to Antioch and two years later began teaching in Rome. 2 It is unlikely he was vouchsafed any contact with Hinduism or Buddhism, 3 but the parallels between his thought and especially Buddhist philosophy are striking. The parallels with Buddhism are closer than with Hinduism since Buddhism worked with three rather than two levels or substructures of reality, 4 yet the Hindu connection has been more frequently 1 First published in Philosophy East and West (April 2017). I would like to thank John Dillon, Mark Edwards, and Svetla Slaveva-Griffin for their help with this article. 2 Vit. Plot. 3. Few scholars have noticed that Plotinus' trajectory was from Africa to Asia to Europe. 3 Yet there were Indian yogis in Alexandria in his time, and the Alexandrian Pantaenus is said to have made the trip to India by Eusebius in Hist. Eccl. 5.10. McEvilley believes it is fairly certain Plotinus had limited contact with Indian ideas.

The thinkers from Basil the Great to Symeon the New Theologian were important largely for their r... more The thinkers from Basil the Great to Symeon the New Theologian were important largely for their role in forming the Hesychastic movement in the Eastern church. This conclusion is reached in part by viewing the period from an Orthodox rather than a broadly Christian perspective. There were eight predominant characteristics common to both the Hesychasts and the Proto-Hesychasts: monasticism, dark and light mysticism, an emphasis on the heart, theōsis, the humanity of Christ, penthos, and unceasing prayer. The author finds himself in agreement with Alexander Schmemann for whom Hesychasm was not a novel departure but the completion of a basic tendency of the Orthodox Church. The Hesychasts did not teach a new doctrine but continued and perfected the tradition that immediately preceded them.

The Platonic milieu is the most significant of the possible milieus that can be attributed to the... more The Platonic milieu is the most significant of the possible milieus that can be attributed to the Proto-Hesychast Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. The present article hypothesizes that Dionysius' master Hierotheus was Isidore of Alexandria, a disciple of the Neoplatonist Proclus, and posits that Dionysius' locale was Egyptian rather than Syrian. Certain aspects of Proclus' influence on him are also taken into account, namely his discussion of evil, his imagery of the statues, his system of henads, and his subscription to theurgy. Dionysius' understanding of theurgy was, however, opposed to that of Proclus' ultimate mentor Porphyry for whom theurgy and virtue were mutually exclusive paths. His description of the vision of Carpos tends to underscore this. Of the possible milieus of the Christian philosopher Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite the Platonic is perhaps the only certain one. Dionysius, who posed as St. Paul's convert Dionysius of Athens, was young enough to have studied Proclus and old enough to have been quoted with approval by the Monophysite representatives to the colloquy before the emperor Justinian in 532; the representatives found the quotations in Severus of Antioch's writings. 2 It is difficult to date the writings of both Severus and Damascius, who resembles Dionysius, and this fact plays into the shifty author's hands. Dionysius' influence on Western Christian mysticism has been exaggerated. Aquinas accepted him, balancing his mysticism with his own Scholasticism, but no one fully embraced Dionysius in the West until Meister Eckhart who transformed rather than extensively used his thought and who was at least equally dependent on such female mystics as Hadewijch, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete.

Ezekiel's imagery of the four living creatures being all eye proved to be a useful metaphor for s... more Ezekiel's imagery of the four living creatures being all eye proved to be a useful metaphor for such diverse characters as the desert fathers, the ascetics of Gaza, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Gregory Palamas. This study interposes between these thinkers the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus who used the similar metaphor of all face in his sixth Ennead. In the case of the figures not greatly influenced by Plotinus the metaphor often took on connotations of supersensible glory, dispassion, and watchfulness, but for the figures more affected by him the metaphor referred solely to the first two concepts. This lessening of interpretative riches for Ezekiel's vision was likely due to Plotinus' basic lack of interest in ethical questions. Ezekiel's merkavah or throne-chariot vision of the four living creatures has had an exceedingly long half-life, influencing everything from ufology to the Kabbalah. 2 For the writers of the Talmud the soldiers of Sennacherib were killed when their ears were opened to hear the singing of these creatures. 3 For the anonymous midrashist of the Visions of Ezekiel their wings were equal to the seven firmaments. 4 One of the most interesting aspects of Ezekiel's vision of the creatures, whom he equates with cherubim, is his statement that their entire bodies, including their backs, hands, and wings, were completely full of eyes. 5 This, we may take it, was a predominantly literal description whose non-literal significance was left to the resourcefulness of his readers. It has been

Monks and friars of the later Middle Ages concentrated less on asceticism than scholarship. The a... more Monks and friars of the later Middle Ages concentrated less on asceticism than scholarship. The apostolic life, the simple lifestyle of the medieval friar, came to embrace a thorough knowledge of philosophers like Aristotle and Boethius. The second greatest Dominican thinker of his age, Albertus Magnus, went so far as to engage in

It is said that Søren Kierkegaard is portrayed in the young drunken principal character of Hans C... more It is said that Søren Kierkegaard is portrayed in the young drunken principal character of Hans Christian Andersen's novel Shoes of Fortune; but one cannot blame Andersen who was often the butt of Kierkegaard's wit in the circle they frequented for a time. Walter Lowrie notes that while Andersen was engaged in his short fictional autobiography "The Ugly Duckling" Kierkegaard, whose work always intimates the faery tale, was writing his in the parable of the wild goose who becomes a tame goose in order to teach tame geese to fly. In 1843, the year the second edition of Andersen's faery tales came out, Kierkegaard published his first major work, Either/Or. In it one mourns, as with Coleridge and Arnold, the death of a poet and the birth of a philosopher or, as Kierkegaard himself would have said, the passing from the aesthetic to the ethical and from the ethical to the religious. Each of these succeeding stages he thought of, like Hegel, as a synthesis of the preceding: the aesthetic is indifferent to good and evil; the ethical chooses good; the religious transcends the ethical, a point strikingly illustrated for Kierkegaard in Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. The stages that concerned him most were the aesthetic and the religious. The distinction Nietzsche made between Dionysus and Christ, Kierkegaard made between the aesthetic and the religious. The religious stage is characterized by misery and self-torment, by bearing one's cross, by resigning the joys of earthly existence. The aesthetic stage is characterized by a joy in the temporal world and the cherishing of earthly things; here one is on the same ground as Zarathustra who beseeched his followers to remain faithful to the earth and resist those who spoke of the otherworldly hopes which for him reflected a fundamental hatred of life.

Book Reviews by Theodore Sabo

The desire to push the envelope in Neoplatonic studies has resulted in some strange theories, non... more The desire to push the envelope in Neoplatonic studies has resulted in some strange theories, none more so than the views that Plotinus was an apostate Gnostic or that he was, according to a chapter in Late Antique Epistemology, a lecherous metaphysician. Dylan Burns, by contrast, is a more levelheaded scholar, but his own book is just as exciting as Mazur's chapter. Burns is not unduly enslaved to the new correctness in what used to be called patristics. He is not afraid of using the word "Gnostic" in a broad sense, refusing to restrict it to the Sethian Gnostics who are the subject of his study. He insists, however, in calling them Christians though he distinguishes them from what he terms the proto-orthodox. He reflects the current tendency to view the Gnostics as yet another essentially Christian group like the Melitians. My main terminological fault with him is his employment of "Hellenic" for "pagan," a word I do not find pejorative but one which rather connotes a salutary exuberance. Apocalypse of the Alien God hinges on a treatise in Plotinus' second Ennead and on certain remarks in Porphyry's biography of his master. It is clear that Burns' sympathies are with the Gnostics and not Plotinus who he claims is vicious, angry, and unfair in his attack on them, but the book is more about them than it is about Plotinus.

Together with Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius was one of the most vital figures of the patristic ag... more Together with Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius was one of the most vital figures of the patristic age. While Irenaeus was responsible for distinguishing Christianity from Gnosticism, Athanasius was responsible for ensuring the permanence of the doctrine of Christ's deity in Christendom. Yet he has not been able to escape fierce criticism. In 2000 the patristic scholar David Brakke, basing himself partly on the work of Timothy Barnes and a newly discovered letter of a contemporary of Athanasius, wrote a chapter in which he condemned Athanasius for his tyrannical actions as patriarch of Alexandria and compared him to a modern-day ayatollah. Eleven years after Brakke's chapter interest in this "opaque but complicated figure" was by no means diminished and was seen notably in one evangelical study of him and two translations published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. 2 Peter Leithart's work on Athanasius has the earmarks of an expert in the field. It is more of an evaluation of Athanasius than a biography and is additionally the first installment in the series Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality which, among other objectives, strives to recover patristic exegesis for contemporary theology. Despite this admirable aspiration the series has a major flaw which will presently be considered. Chapter one's description of the shady aspects of Athanasius' personality cannot be improved on, especially since it is applicable not only to him but to his successors in the patriarchal chair of Alexandria. For all his piety, Leithart states, Athanasius was "a

The chief virtue of Grant Bayliss' The Vision of Didymus the Blind is its assertion that the chur... more The chief virtue of Grant Bayliss' The Vision of Didymus the Blind is its assertion that the church father Didymus was an Origenist, not a whitewasher of Origen, and that he was in some respects even bolder than Origen. Whereas the Cappadocians were enthusiastic for Origen, Didymus was his true follower, an Origenist in the sense that Porphyry and Iamblichus were Plotinians. Nothing less could be expected of the author

Theodore of Mopsuestia was a proto-Nestorian; as such he tended to emphasize Christ's humanity th... more Theodore of Mopsuestia was a proto-Nestorian; as such he tended to emphasize Christ's humanity though without denying His deity. He was a close friend of John Chrysostom who bullied him into dropping his engagement with a young woman. The two were disciples of another proto-Nestorian, Diodore of Tarsus. Theodore is best known for his literal interpretation of Scripture, somewhat of an anachronism in his day, though he occasionally employed allegorical interpretation, just as allegorical interpreters occasionally employed literal interpretation. His commentary on the Song of Solomon

Ambrose was a forerunner of the Western Middle Ages. He was a conscientious churchman but above a... more Ambrose was a forerunner of the Western Middle Ages. He was a conscientious churchman but above all else a politician, wholly conversant with compromise, intimidation, money, flattery, economics, and agriculture. This is to be expected of the son of a Roman official who was himself a former governor. Liebeschuetz' introduction and translation were undertaken partly in preparation for his remarkable study Ambrose and John Chrysostom, of which the first half is regrettably much shorter than the second owing to Ambrose' relatively uneventful life. A careful reading of Ambrose' letters, expertly translated by Liebeschuetz, reveals that the usual commonplaces about early Christian viciousness cannot be sustained. It is true that Ambrose strove to bend the young emperors Gratian and Valentinian to the ethos of the religion and that he was not as broad-minded as Pope Damasus, but his influence was often in the direction of sanity and compassion. In Letter 76 he weeps, metaphorically but nonetheless with sincere feeling, at the prospect of even

Ambrose and John Chrysostom examines the attitudes of two church fathers, a Western and an Easter... more Ambrose and John Chrysostom examines the attitudes of two church fathers, a Western and an Eastern, towards asceticism and the political establishment. Liebeschuetz begins the book by examining asceticism and political outspokenness in the pre-Christian classical world. His discussion of asceticism is crippled by his reliance on Michel Foucault, hence his choice of the word "self-cultivation" rather than "self

begins Augustine on the Christian Life, as would be appropriate, with an overview of the philosop... more begins Augustine on the Christian Life, as would be appropriate, with an overview of the philosopher's life. He does not explicitly say it, but Augustine was extremely introspective and even solipsist. It was he, and not a pagan, who wrote the first autobiography, and his self-searching Retractions was also the first work of its kind.