TOPIC: PSEUDO DIONYSIUS AND MOSES MAIMONIDES
TOPIC: PSEUDO DIONYSIUS AND MOSES MAIMONIDES
Moses Maimonides
Moses Maimonides had a great influence
upon the succeeding generations of Christian’s thinkers because he shared with
them a common belief in the Old Testament.[1] Maimonides attempted to harmonise Old
Testament thought with Greek philosophy and science served as a model for
Thomas Aquinas in reconciling Biblical and secular learning. Moses Maimonides
was born born in 1135 AD at Cordova and was a contemporary of Averroes. His
principal work was the one tilted the Guide
of the perplexed. In it he set out to prove that the teachings of Judaism
harmonise with philosophic thought and, in addition, that Biblical thought
offers certain valid insights that reason alone cannot discover. To accomplish
this end, Maimonides drew on an astonishing amount of literature. Being
dominated, however by the works of Aristotle. Again, that he had so effectively
utilized Aristotle as a rational foundation for Jewish theology had a great
influence upon others. Notably, Aquinas would undertake the similar task of
harmonising Christian thought with philosophy.
However, apart from expressing the ideas
of Aristotle, which others like Aquinas had also learned and taught. Maimonides
anticipated three of Aquinas’s proof for the existence of God. Using portions
of Aristotle’s Metaphysic and physics, he proved the existence of a
prime Mover; the existence of a necessary Being, Maimonides thought
influence the enterprise of natural
theology. But having proven the existence of God, Maimonides, unlike Aquinas,
rejected the possibility of saying what God is like. No positive attribute can
be ascribe to God but only negative once, by saying what God is not like.[2]
Furthermore, the goal of human life is to
achieve humanity’s appropriate perfection. The philosophers, says Maimonides,
have made it clear there are four kinds of perfections that a person can
attain; there are, in ascending order, the perfection of possessions, the
perfection of the bodily constitution and shape the perfection of the moral
virtues, and finally, the highest which is the acquisition of the rational
virtues. By rational virtues, says Maimonides,[3] “I
refer to the conception of intelligible, which teaches true opinions concerning
the divine things. That is true reality that ultimate end; thus what gives the
individual true perfection... through it man is man”. This rational account of
a person’s perfection had its counterpart also in faith, for Maimonides
concluded by saying that “the prophets too have explained the self-same notions
–just as the philosophers have interpreted.” Faith and reason are in harmony.
Pseudo Dionysius
The influence of pseudo Dionysius was very
great throughout the middle Ages.[4]
Philosophers and theologians concerned with quiet different problems made
considerable made use of his writings. The mystics drew heavily upon his
elaborate theory of the hierarchy of beings as it afforded a rich source of
describing the ascent of the soul to God.[5]
Aquinas used his theory in accounting for the great chain of being and the
analogical relation between humanity and God. Above all, he was one of the most
powerful sources of Neo-Platonism, influencing philosophical thought regarding
the origin of the world, the knowledge of God, and the nature of evil.
Pseudo-Dionysius gave an account of the
relation of the world to God in which he combined the Neo-Platonism theory of
emanation and the the Christian doctrine of creation. He wanted to avoid the
pantheism latent in the theory that says that all things are emanations from
God. At the same time he wanted to establish that whatever exists comes from
God, though he apparently had no clear conception of God’s creative act as of
free will. The world nevertheless, is the object of God’s providence. God has
placed between Himself and humanity a virtual ladder or hierarchy of beings
called heavenly spirits from the lowest level of being to the highest, where
God is at the summit. Dionysius maintained a pluralistic view of things. God is
the goal of all created things. He attracts all things to Himself by His
goodness and the love He inspires.
The knowledge of God, says Dionysius, can be
approached in two ways, a positive and a negative way. When the mind takes the
positive way, it ascribes to God all the perfect attributes discovered by the study of
creatures, in this way the divine can be given such names as goodness, light,
being, unity, wisdom, and life. Dionysius indicates that these belong in their
perfection to God and only in derivative sense humanity, depending upon the
degree to which the creature participates in these perfections. God and
humanity are more alike than God and a stone, about which it cannot be said
that it is good, wise and alive.
Dionysius was
aware that people unavoidably develop anthropomorphic conceptions of God, and
for this reason he undertook to remove from God all the attributes of finite
creatures, because God is no object, He is beyond the knowable. This view
became a paramount influence among the later mystics, who believe that as
humanity ascend closer to God; the ordinary forms of human knowledge were
annihilated by the blindness caused by the excess of God’s light.
In Neo-Platonism terms, Dionysius denied the positive
existence of evil, if evil were[6]
something positive, had some substantial being, it would have to be traced back
to God as its cause, for all being is from God. For Dionysius, being and
goodness were identical terms, for whatever is, is good, and something that is
good, certainly is. In God goodness and being are one, and therefore whatever
comes from God (and everything that is does come from God) is therefore
good. All three doctrines refined by
pseudo Dionysius in an attempt to combine Neo-Platonism and Christian were to
play a strong role in the rest of medieval philosophy, as writers continue to
speculate about the origin of the world, about what can be known of God’s
nature, and about how to account for the presence of evil.
Reference
Stumpf Enoch Samuel Philosophy History and Problems.USA:
Library of Congress, 1994.
[1]
Samuel Enoch Stumpf Philosophy History and Problems (USA:
Library of Congress, 1994) p, 172- 174
[4]
See Samuel Enoch Stumpf Philosophy History and Problems (USA:
Library of Congress, 1994) p152-154
Comments
Post a Comment