Possible Selves in Late Antiquity: Ideal Selfhood and Embodied Selves in Evagrian Anthropology (original) (raw)

Whereas a soul and body dualism has proven too simple a model by which to understand early monastic notions of selfhood, a distinction between ideal or normative selfhood and the constitution of embodied selves can lend an important insight into the ways in which such notions were formed and employed in late antiquity. This paper seeks to probe early monastic notions of selfhood by tracing a tension between normative notions of a "perfect mind" in Alexandrian and Evagrian anthropology and the actual constitution of embodied selves. The analysis of the latter mode of self-constitution is informed by cognitive research on mind wandering, which helps to bring out the tension between the ideal self-model prescribed by monastic theologians and the constitution and experiences of monastic selves.