La acedia y Evagrio Póntico. Entre ángeles y demonios (original) (raw)
Related papers
2024
Knowledge of God, empowerment of the mind and transformation of the subject in Spinoza, in: «Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Filosofie», nr. 51 (1/2023)», pp. 30-70. https://cis01.central.ucv.ro/analele\_universitatii/filosofie/2023/Contents51\_1.pdf https://cis01.central.ucv.ro/analele\_universitatii/filosofie/ A central theme of Spinoza’s Ethica is the description of the individual’s exposition to the emergence of passions. Passions bring the individual to a condition of mental enslavement. Spinoza tries to find a way out of the passions: through the analysis of the structure of reality and through the inquiry into the structure of the individual’s mind, Spinoza shows that the development of knowledge of reality in the mind is the solution to the process of liberation of the mind. The possibility, for the individual, to reach an authentic power of mind consists in the acquisition of the knowledge of reality. This acquisition needs to be developed through the appropriate education. The knowledge of the whole reality increases the power of the individual’s mind, thus contemporarily diminishing the influence of passions on the individual’s mind. Through the knowledge the individual can emendate his mind: thereby the individual becomes able to eliminate in his mind the already present confused ideas on reality, on the one hand, and to oppose the formation of new confused ideas, on the other hand. The main text of our investigation will be Spinoza’s Ethica; we shall refer also to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and to the Tractatus Politicus.
In the last years of his life, between 1292 and 1298, the Franciscan Peter of John Olivi wrote a series of short devotional texts, known as Opuscula, aimed at the religious edification of the laity. Olivi’s perspective was strongly eschatological: in his opinion, the imminence of the end of time made lay religious experience more authentic than that of the clergy, which would eventually oppose the final evangelical renewal. Among the twelve surviving Opuscula, the most eschatologically oriented is titled Remedia contra temptationes spirituales. The Remedia are characterized by a cautious and rigorous judgment on spiritual gifts, such as visions and raptures. According to Olivi, these phenomena are particularly difficult to discern when the Antichrist is approaching and “some will renounce the faith by paying heed to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons” (I Tim 4, 1). Following this apocalyptic perspective of discretio spirituum, the Remedia are divided into two parts: the first includes twelve remedies against spiritual temptations, whereas the second puts forward four remedies against corrupt teachers and their doctrines. This structure, however, is not fixed. The work is transmitted by a huge number of manuscripts, is often attributed, as we will see, to other authors (Bonaventure, Venturino of Bergamo), or forms part of larger works (such as Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi or Vincent Ferrer’s Tractatus de vita spirituali). Accordingly, its structure remains fluid from version to version. By focusing on the Latin and Italian vernacular traditions of the Remedia, this paper will identify two ways of reading Olivi’s work: one more radical, which emphasizes the eschatological orientation of the text; the other more focused on erasing or blurring its apocalyptic implications.
L’ombra di Spinoza nei Balcani del Settecento. Il caso della Vera Felicità di Athanasios Psalidas
2018
This article deals with the spread of Spinoza’s thought in the Eighteenth century Balkans with special regards to Psalidas’ True Happiness. Psalidas’ book presents the first translation of some key parts of Spinoza's Ethics in the context of a theist approach. The analysis presents the hermeneutic comprehension of this document bearing in mind Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment and the debate of Greek scholars about Psalidas. The final aim is to furnish a first view on the reception of the Ethics in the Balkans and on how this reception influenced the structure of a seminal work such as True Happiness.
AUGUSTINE ON ANGELIC KNOWLEDGE
Warszawskie Studia Teologiczne, 2021
Angelic beings are spiritual intellectual beings. They possess knowledge; however, they are not omniscient. They are spiritual beings with limited knowledge in comparison to God, which means they are not like God who is the fullness of knowledge, they acquire knowledge. So, how do angelic beings acquire knowledge? What is the source of their knowledge? What is the nature of the angelic beings’ knowledge? What can angelic beings know and not know? What do these spiritual beings do with their angelic knowledge? Is there any difference between the fallen angels’ knowledge and the upright angels’ knowledge? What is the object of these spiritual intellectual beings’ knowledge? Augustine answered these questions in his theology of angelic knowledge. Augustine treated the nature of the knowledge the angels can acquire with their natural angelic faculty and the nature of the knowledge they acquire through the grace of God. Divine illumination is equally enjoyed by the angels and even more than humans do. The angels are lovers of the truth and they seek the truth either with the appropriate or inappropriate use of their will. The kind of knowledge they pursue determines their relationship with the creator. Augustine outlined how knowledge separates the good angels from the bad angels. These and more are what this paper seeks to explore.