Individuality, foreknowledge, and the gift of creation in late antiquity

Thesis

In this thesis, I examine the way in which three Byzantine thinkers—Proclus, John Philoponus, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (henceforth simply “Dionysius”)—characterize the relationship between the “divine ideas,” or the antecedent principles according to which God knows and makes things, and the things made according to those ideas. I contend that all three thinkers appeal to the divine ideas to solve, at least implicitly, a philosophical problem, namely how God can (a) know and intend creatures before creating them (b) without having to logically presuppose the very creatures to be explained. All three want the ideas to be in some sense about the creature, able to serve as the grip by which God knows and intends to create that creature before making it. At the same time, they want the ideas to be logically prior to the creature so that the ideas can serve to explain how God knows the creature (logically) before the creature comes to be. They face this difficulty, I suggest, because they assume that the creature is individual, having a basic subjecthood enabling it to stand in relations to the divine idea as copy to paradigm and to God as creature to creator or effect to cause. If the creature is, in its very individuality, wholly itself and hence other than the idea, it is difficult to see how the idea could stand in for the creature except by a relation to that same creature, compromising its logical and explanatory priority.

Each thinker, I argue, offers a distinct option in logical space. I also, secondarily, suggest that, in considering this problem at all, these thinkers represent a shift in the so-called “divine ideas tradition.”

Authors: Quinn, PH

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-go26208ge
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: hypostasis; providence; ipseity; divine ideas; John Philoponus; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; individuality; foreknowledge; Proclus Diadochus
• Subjects: Ancient philosopy; Patristic philosophy