“John Italos on the Eternity of the World.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 111/3 (2018): 659–720 (original) (raw)
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Thomas Aquinas and Boethius of Dacia on the Eternity of the World
Carnival ISHA, 2024
This article deals with the question of the eternity of the world in the works of two authors from the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274) and Boethius of Dacia (d. ca. 1280). It is an analysis of their views in two works which share the same name: De Aeternitate Mundi. The analysis is appropriate because of the chronology and the political circumstances they share. Namely, both works were written around the year 1270, at the time of the debate over the appropriation of the newly introduced Greco-Islamic knowledge, which led to frequent condemnations by the Church. After giving a general introduction about the topic of the paper and the works analysed (including the main historiographical debates), each of them will be given a thorough examination. This examination will take into consideration the text structure, the different arguments presented therein, and the relevant secondary literature. Finally, possible answers to the questions posed in the Introduction: Firstly, can philosophy prove that the world was created in time?, and, secondly, Could God have created the world as eternal? will be given in the Conclusion, according to the views of the aforementioned authors.
Eternity in Early Modern Philosophy
Eternity: A History, 2016
In the current chapter we will trace the history of eternity in the early modern period (roughly, 1550-1750). Modernity seemed to be the autumn of eternity. The secularization of European culture provided little sustenance to the concept of eternity with its heavy theological baggage. Yet, our hero will not leave the stage without an outstanding demonstration of its power and temptation. Indeed, in the two centuries of early modernity, the concept of eternity played important roles in the period’s greatest philosophical systems. The first part of the chapter concentrates on the debate about God’s relation to time. While most of the great metaphysicians of the period – Suarez (1548-1617), Spinoza (1632-1677), Malebranche (1638-1715), and Leibniz (1646-1716) – ascribed non-temporal eternity to God, a growing number of philosophers conceived God as existing in time, and eternity as having everlasting existence. For Newton, Gassendi (1592-1655), Henry More (1614-1687), Samuel Clarke, Isaac Barrow (1630-1677), and John Locke (1632-1704), God’s eternity was simply the fact that he always was, is and will forever be. In the second part of the chapter we will study the concept of eternal truth [aeternae veritates or vérités éternelles]. Though this concept has a long history it became far more central in the early modern period with the emergence of the closely related notion of the “Law of Nature” [lex naturae]. The third and most extensive part of the chapter will present Spinoza’s original understanding of eternity as self-necessitated existence. Various elements of Spinoza’s notion of eternity can be traced back to previous philosophers, but the core of his understanding of eternity is genuine and surprising. For Spinoza, eternity is primarily a modal notion, a unique kind of necessity and necessary existence. The final part of the chapter will address the reception of Spinoza’s concept of eternity in the century following his death. Remarkably, Spinoza’s notion of eternity was received positively by figures who would otherwise sharply criticize his philosophy. Oddly enough the great “atheist” of the early modern period turned out to be the philosophical expert on eternity, namely, the very essence of God.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2014
This study looks at the position of two of the Middle Ages' towering intellectual figures, Avicenna and Aquinas, and their arguments concerning the age of the cosmos. The primary focus is the nature of possibility and whether possibility is such that God can create it or such that its "existence" (shadowy though it might be) has some degree of independence from God's creative act. It is shown how one's answer to this initial question in turn has enormous ramifications on a number of other, core theological topics. These issues include one's position concerning whether the cosmos necessarily existed infinitely into the past or may have been created at some finite point in the past; how one understands divine simplicity; what constitutes omnipotence; and even the place of rhetoric in theological and philosophical discussions.
Matter as a Universal: John Philoponus and Maximus the Confessor on the Eternity of the World
In his Ambigua, St. Maximus the Confessor dedicated some chapters to refuting the conception of eternity of the world. That was a keystone notion for John Philoponus' system, and Maximus partly repeats his proofs in its favor and partly rejects them. The authors converge in being convinced that spatial and temporal limitations, as well as staying in motion, are unalienable features of the creation distinguishing it from the Creator. Nevertheless, in interpreting the notion of the matter they go separately, for while John Philoponus denied the existence of the matter, Maximus Confessor needed the matter concept as a cosmological basis for Christological conclusions.
During the Hellenistic centuries it was taken for granted that, according to Plato, the universe was created. As is well known, this was also Aristotle’s interpretation. In the Early Imperial centuries, on the other side, the dominant view was the opposite: with the remarkable exception of Plutarch and Atticus the majority of Middle Platonists attributed (and therefore endorsed) an eternalist thesis to Plato. The aim of my paper is to reconstruct the arguments advanced in order to defend such a view and the reasons that stimulated it. In particular I will try to show that, along with the exegesis of the dialogues, a major role was played by the polemical confrontation with Aristotle and the Stoics.
Creatio ex nihilio and the eternity of the world in Aquinas and Avicenna
Metafísica y Persona, 2019
Contrary to the claim of some contemporary physicists, according to which there is a certain incompatibility between creation and the eternity of the world (hypothesis assumed, for example, in the theory of multiverses), the present paper analyzes Aquinas and Aviccenna’s concept of creation in order to distinguish it from the concept of motion. To achieve this I do two things: first, I distinguish between these two concepts in order to clarify in which sense all creation is ex nihilio; then, I discuss the compatibility between creation and the eternity of the world, particularly in Saint Thomas Aquinas, who claims that eternity does not necessarily imply the rejection of creation.
Review of Michael Share (trans.), Philoponus. Against Proclus's "On the Eternity of the World 1-5."
The careful and expert scholarship of this well annotated translation, and the judicious argument of its eagerly anticipated introduction, make this volume even more welcome than the importance of the arguments of Philoponus and the influence of this treatise in the subsequent history themselves demand. It consists of the first five of the 18 arguments of Proclus (410-485 AD), one of the Neoplatonic "successors" of Plato as head of the Academy in Athens, for the eternity of the world together with part of the first and the full text of the other four attempted refutations by John Philoponus (c490-570 AD), a Neoplatonic philosopher and Christian from birth (of the Monophysite persuasion) working in Alexandria, where, in contradistinction from Athens, such a combination was possible. In his Preface, Richard Sorabji, the General Editor of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, points to "original arguments and ideas in these chapters" (p. vii). These Sorabji locates 1) in the use by Philoponus against Proclus of Aristotle's concept of infinity, 2) in the notions that an eternal blueprint belonging to the divine mind need not have an eternal effect and that willing a change does not require a change in the divine will (both possible deductions from the general Neoplatonist principle, here associated with Iamblichus, that a thing is known according to the mode of the knower), and 3) in the notion of a "when" without time. There are new ideas in Philoponus as Helen Lang has shown, 1 but whether all the arguments or conceptions Sorabji lists are "original" with Philoponus is doubtful and no demonstration of their originality is given. More importantly, the treatises of Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World 2 and Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World are crucial to Sorabji's great interest, his view that the idea of the temporal beginning of the world is fundamental to the creation of modern natural