Transcript
Speaker: Hey, welcome back to the Dionysus Circle Podcast. I'm Dr. Sam Bennett, and in this episode, I'm joined by German philosopher Max Roestock to discuss Dionysius the Areopagite and how Dionysius understands the origin or realization of evil in this world. So Max argues that for Dionysius, evil arises when human freedom turns away from the good itself and becomes fixated or fixed on finite goods, wealth, power, pleasure, as though they were the ultimate goods.
Speaker: Yet the good, it never ceases to sustain us or call us back to itself. So in that sense, even our return to the good begins from a grace that is already present. So I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Speaker: Could you just start off by introducing yourself, ah maybe like where you grew up and how you first got interested in philosophy? Of course, Sam. I would describe myself as something of a die-hard scholar of Platonism and Neoplatonism. For decades now, I have been working on Plato's philosophy and its impact throughout the history of philosophy, with a particular focus on the tradition usually referred to as Neoplatonism.
Speaker: There is a good reason why I begin my introduction in this way. What I am, at least in my own eyes, is to a very large extent shaped by my passion for Platonism and Neoplatonism.
Speaker: But perhaps I should answer your question a little more directly. i was born and raised in a small town in a German region jokingly known as Hessian Siberia because the climate here there is quite cold and wet and well not in this summer of course and it was also also there that I first encountered philosophy because my a Latin teachers introduced me to philosophy.
Speaker: and their passion was contagious. By the age of 13, I already knew that I wanted to study philosophy. The fact that I found my way to Platonism and Neoplatonism is largely due to my doctoral supervisor, Professor Jens Seifassen,
Speaker: and he awakened my passion for this tradition and that passion remains undiminished to this day. Sadly, Professor Halfwassen passed away shortly before I submitted my habilitation thesis.
Speaker: ah His death was a profound loss for philosophy as a whole. For the philosophy in Germany, I would go so far as to call it a catastrophe. Perhaps I should add a few words about my current situation.
Speaker: I'm married to Anna Lamberts-Rostock, who is pursuing her doctorate within the Platonic tradition. And together, Anna and I also teach philosophy courses as outside university. Our project is called Inspiration Philosophy.
Speaker: And I have to say it, what is truly remarkable is the degree of interest we encounter. There is, in my experience, a profound public interest in platonic and neoplatonic philosophy and spirituality.
Speaker: Wonderful. And that's kind of where your research is focused. You know, you've you've focused on figures like Plotinus, Proclus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Nicholas of Cousa as well. And, you know, these aren't exactly mainstream philosophers today. So I'm curious, what draws you to them? Or maybe another way of putting it, ah you know, what do you think is philosophically um significant about the tradition that they represent? Yes, I focus on the Platonic tradition from its beginnings all the way to the present.
Speaker: This tradition is a recurring presence throughout the entire history of philosophy and moreover Western culture in general. I would even say that it constitutes the true mainstream of Western philosophy.
Speaker: well, alongside Aristotelism, but I think Platonism is much more important. Of course, today a new tradition, and we have to call it a tradition, is in charge, the so-called analytic philosophy.
Speaker: Within this tradition, Platonism no longer plays a significant role as a living form of philosophy or as a way of life. and Even so, I am convinced that Plato and his tradition still have a great deal to say to us, or to put it in Karl Jaspers' terms, technically we may have advanced enormously since Plato's times,
Speaker: Philosophically, however, we have not. What fascinates me about Platonism is that Platonism asks the big questions. What is the meaning of life? What is happiness? How can we achieve it? What are the principles of reality and our thinking?
Speaker: And these questions are just as urgent today as they were in Plato's time. Plutinus, Proclos, our Dionysius, and Nikolaus of Cusa are thinkers whose philosophies revolve constantly around questions of this kind.
Speaker: I believe that they still have something to say to us today. Their thinking and answers will never become obsolete. Wonderful. And so today, you know, we're going to focus on your ah recent article, How Evil Happens to Be, Dionysius the Pseudo-Eriopagite on the Origin of Evil. And so maybe we can start just by asking, um you know, how did this piece in broad strokes come about? um Yeah, what motivated you to write this this article?
Speaker: Yeah, um my motivation was to return once more to the first part principal function of the absolute, a topic on which I've already published several articles and books. And still, I'm simply fascinated by the way major thinkers have conceived the absolute and by how they succeeded in presenting it as a principle despite its transcendence.
Speaker: For if transcendence is taken with full force, the question arises how the absolute can still function as a principle at all. This question concerns mainly the pagan Neoplatonists, Plutinus, Proclos and Damascus, but also Christian philosophers such as Dionysius.
Speaker: And this problem has often led scholars to weaken transcendence and to interpret the first principle function of the absolute in a more affirmative theological way.
Speaker: I think that in doing so, many scholars fail to do justice, both to the concept of transcendence and to negative theology.
Speaker: Against this background, it is... in my eyes hardly surprising that there is confusion concerning the first principle function of the of the absolute in Dionysius one first has to understand how the absolute um as principle actually works only from there can one begin to address the question of how kakon that is bad or evil enters the world so my approach is to begin with a simple question
Speaker: How exactly does the absolute function? Once this is clear, we can ask so the question at hand, how can that what Dionysus calls cacon arise from this function? um There is another point of interest. Scholarly discussions often fail to distinguish between evil and badness.
Speaker: Dionysius uses the term kakon, which can be, of course, translated both as evil and as bad. But these meanings are not simply interchangeable.
Speaker: My questions are, which of them is decisive for Dionysius? Does he work with both or with only one? My view is that for him, kakon can only mean bad or badness.
Speaker: And I think we should speak less of evil. One of the key dimensions of your interpretation of Dionysius is that you describe him as having a monistic spirit.
Speaker: metaphysics. So maybe we could kind of unpack that for listeners. you know um On the one hand, you know what is monism with respect to metaphysics? And then you know what motivates metaphysical monism? um Why would a thinker adopt that view? what What might push them to adopt that kind of metaphysics?
Speaker: yeah um This is a very good and a very big question indeed. Strictly speaking, I would need an entire lecture series to answer it properly. properly ah Let me try to put it very short.
Speaker: um Monistic me metaphysics is a form of metaphysics that posits at its summit a single principle. This principle is the absolute.
Speaker: Plato was already familiar with it. He calls it the unhypotheon and the idea of the good. um The unhypotheon is that which conditions everything while itself remaining unconditioned.
Speaker: And for me, it is very interesting that this principle conditions are right. acts. Once this principle has been identified, everything can be traced back to it.
Speaker: Now, um this principle is not simply simply postulated. One does not begin with it and then deduce everything else from it. that Platonism, and especially Neoplatonism, proceeds in a very different way.
Speaker: Its point of departure is what is given. and That is what lies immediately before us. And what we encounter is the manifold diversity of the world and the multiplicity that can be found within our thinking itself.
Speaker: What I mean is this. Thinking is always directed toward different objects. It is always embedded in structures of multiplicity.
Speaker: More than that, thinking is itself a multiplicity because it consists of three essential constituents. The thinking subject,
Speaker: the object of thought, and the act of thinking that relates the two. It is this multiplicity that the Neoplatonists encounter, and from there they search for the principle that sustains the multiplicity of thinking.
Speaker: Their aim is to show that no multiplicity subsists through itself, but depends upon a higher principle that is no longer itself multiple.
Speaker: and In this way, they trace multiplicity back to absolute unity. And the search for for this ultimately metaphysical anchor of our cognitive acts and of our own very existence is the fundamental motivation behind monistic metaphysics.
Speaker: Now, would you say that Dionysius inherited monism from Proclus or, um or not or, but if he did inherit it from Proclus, would you say that he modified it or departed from ah Proclus in any crucial ways?
Speaker: Okay. Yes, Dionysius adopted this form of metaphysical reflection from Proclus, that is Sutter. um And yes, he conceives the first principle much as Broclus does, as absolute unity.
Speaker: In his work on the divine names, chapter 13, God is described as the one in Greek tohen. This tohen is the standard term for the absolute in late antique pagan Neoplatanism.
Speaker: um Dionysius, however, departs from Broklos at a crucial point. Broklos conceived the absolute principle in terms of complete transcendence.
Speaker: For him, the absolute is beyond being, life and intellect. and so radically transcendent that it does not even think of its own.
Speaker: Dionysius likewise maintains that the absolute transcends our cognitive capacities entirely and lies beyond every conceptual attempt to grasp or comprehend it.
Speaker: But unlike Proclus, he is unwilling to deny thought to the absolute world. altogether. We must remember that the Christian God does indeed to think, even if in a manner that human beings cannot comprehend. um So Dionysius weakens Broclo's radical formula of transcendence and in doing so develops something quite distinctive, a conception of the absolute defined on the one hand by transcendence and on the other by the triad of being, life and intellect. This also allows Dionysus to preserve an inner relation within the Absolute.
Speaker: And for a Christian thinker, this is decisive, since Trinity constitutes an internal structure of the Absolute. A radically transcendent Absolute, on the other hand, as as um in Brockler's theory, cannot itself possess Trinitarian structure.
Speaker: One might say that Dionysius transformed Brockler's metaphysics through the lens of his Christian commitments. Wonderful. So let's now move a little bit more toward the problem or the puzzle that motivates um your work, or at least the work we're talking about today. And that really has to do with evil. So um it seems that in your work, you know, you have this thought that it, at least on the face of it, evil
Speaker: would seem to challenge Dionysus' system, so his monistic system. So could you kind of walk us through that? you know How does in what respect does evil appear to challenge Dionysus' system? And then maybe um in relation to that, maybe you could kind of distinguish for us um evil in terms of the idea of like villainy. you know So villainy would be like evil in this in the sense of like murdering an innocent person. um So there's that kind of evil, but then there's also ah evil or ah ca on as a negative evaluation, so a poorly made desk. So um i guess
Speaker: so distinguishing those two, you know could you talk about um do both forms of ah bad or evil, do both forms seem to challenge Dionysius' system? or yes So could you just kind of walk us through that kind of? Yeah. okay um The basic problem is this.
Speaker: ah If there is only one highest principle, then surely this principle must in some sense be responsible for everything that follows from it.
Speaker: But in that case, God would be also responsible for the evil in the world. From both a Christian and a platon a Platonic perspective, this is excluded.
Speaker: One could put the but the problem as follows. God wills the good and is the good itself. And he is omnipotent.
Speaker: But then the question arises, how can anything bad or evil exist at all? And I think we will arrive at a solution to this problem later on. Now to the question of whether evil actions and bad performances both pose a challenge to monistic metaphysics.
Speaker: The short answer is yes. One reason it is quite simple. Both are meanings of one and the same term, namely kakon. Moreover, Dionysius wants to bring these two forms of kakon back together.
Speaker: As I mentioned earlier, what we call evil is in Dionysius translated back into the category of badness. Now, as you bring up in your work, you know, the kind of question that you are pursuing here that you're raising, it's one that Dionysius himself asks and raises in ah in in the work that you mentioned before, the divine names. Specifically, chapter four, Dionysius asks, you know, given the fact of providence, how can there be evil? So, and you point out in your work that, you know, Dionysus' treatment of this question has, of course, attracted considerable scholarly attention.
Speaker: um But so I guess my question is, you know, why nevertheless did you feel it was necessary to consider again this question and consider again Dionysus' answer to this question?
Speaker: The problem, as I see it, is that the first principal function of the absolute on the one hand and human freedom on the other have not been adequately related to one another. Of course, almost everything has already been said in the scholarly literature. and There are some truly outstanding studies on the question of where Cacon comes from.
Speaker: um Christian Schäfer's Unde Malum is still the best study concerning this question, but there are also more recent and highly readable contributions.
Speaker: um The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius from 2022, for example. um Now, almost all the building blocks for a solution may be in place.
Speaker: Nevertheless, the problem is that the individual building blocks have been produced without ever being being assembled into a system. I often have the impression that many scholars assume the building blocks are enough.
Speaker: that they will somehow fit together. But that is not sufficient. In our case, one has to show how the path of the Absolute and our own path intersect and what follows from that intersection.
Speaker: And this is precisely the point. The Absolute has an activity and we have an activity. The question is, how are these two activities related.
Speaker: What is clear is that the absolute surpasses us in power and force and this raises an interesting but problem. God is omnipotent and acts of course, but if God is omnipotent does that mean that divine activity dominates our own actions?
Speaker: Are we God's puppets? I think we have to look much more closely at this point And this is exactly where human freedom enters the picture. um Paul Roram, indeed a well-known scholar, scholarla once suggested that Dionysius does not really reflect on human freedom.
Speaker: In my view, this is a mistake. Without freedom, the emergence of Cacon cannot be explained. Once more, the real problem lies in the interplay between the first principle function of the absolute and human freedom. The question is, how do the two interact in such a way that the absolute retains primacy without being directly directly responsible for cacau?
Speaker: So would it be fair to say that for you, um it is clear that Dionysius thinks the source of evil and badness is ultimately human freedom. And yet, ah the lacuna the apps the the the thing that needs to be rectified is that in scholarship, we've yet to find an explanation of how exactly human freedom gives rise to evil and badness. with Is that a fair way to characterize your position here?
Speaker: Yes, exactly. That is what scholarship has to do. um I still think that despite decades of research, the interpretation of Dionysius' metaphysics is far from complete.
Speaker: And so is the issue that scholarship doesn't explain um how it is possible for us to use our freedom such that evil and badness arise? Or is the issue that scholarship hasn't clarified how human freedom could be the source of every evil and badness we see? So for example, ah you know how could humans be responsible for predation among animals, let's say?
Speaker: I think the two questions should not be connected by an Or, but rather by an end. um Both issues have to be clarified.
Speaker: I do not think, however, that we can arrive at a satisfactory solution to either question just yet. We still need a few more conceptual premises before we can answer them properly.
Speaker: Okay, okay, fair. Yeah, so maybe moving a little bit closer toward those further premises. um You know, you suggest that in your work, you you suggest that that to answer the question of how precisely kakan becomes a reality in this world, how precisely badness becomes a reality in this world, we must consider, ah we kind of have to go back to Proclus and consider how pranoia and its power, its dunamis,
Speaker: um We have to, sorry, we have to consider those concepts ah within Proclus. Pronoia being providence and then the other concept being power or dunamis. So yeah, can you maybe just ah unpack that for us? You know, why are these two concepts in Proclus so important ah for dealing with this question of of of how kakon or how evil badness is realized?
Speaker: Yeah, okay, this is again a very difficult question ah to answer it very, very short. One can say that the two concepts, Bohrneuer and dynamis, form a unit in Brockler's metaphysics.
Speaker: um Dynamis is the Greek term for power or force. Dynamis can also mean possibility, but this meaning is not relevant here. A proneuer, which may be translated as providential care, is itself a power, a power exercised by the gods, whom Broclus calls hennans.
Speaker: Proneuer is therefore the caring or providential power of the gods. We now have to take one further step. that The gods are the transcendent principles of all beings and of all acts of thought.
Speaker: They constitute the sustaining foundation, for example, of our own existence and of our cognitive acts. um How can this be understood most easily is the very big question.
Speaker: I like to use the image of intelligible light. This image is frequently frequently employed in the Neoplatonic tradition in order to illustrate and clarify the sustaining function of the absolute principle.
Speaker: I think it can be helpful here. um Now, the Neoplatonists use sensible light that surrounds us as a metaphor for the first principle function of transcendence.
Speaker: Light surrounds us and is the condition that enables our eyes to perceive objects. It gives objects their shape and makes them visible.
Speaker: In a certain sense, we look through the light toward the objects. The Neoplatonists take precisely this function and transfer it to the absolute principle.
Speaker: They conceive it as intelligible light, as a purely intellectual principle. This intelligible light gives shape to intelligible determinations. And by intelligible determinations, we may think above all of Plato's ideas.
Speaker: Most importantly, these include the so-called Megistergene. These are the highest kinds of categories. I will mention only two of them here, identity and difference.
Speaker: um These are two, of I would say, are two fundamental two fundamental structures of thought without which our thinking can't. could not function.
Speaker: The absolute light now makes these determinations visible. It gives them their intelligible shapes. In this context, light is, that's important, the condition of the possibility of cognition.
Speaker: Light itself, however, is not perceived as an object. It transcends the dimension of objecthood. It is transparent. We look through it toward intelligible objects.
Speaker: In a certain sense, it is what is known first or seen first, what encounters us before anything else, because it stands between us and the object.
Speaker: Yet precisely because it is transparent, and does not appear as an object It transcends the dimension of objecthood. Its transparency is its transcendence.
Speaker: And for that very reason, we can overlook it. We do not always or necessarily become conscious of what it accomplishes. Only when we direct concentrated attention toward the condition of the possibility of concrete determinations... Can it become evident to us as a principle?
Speaker: um Against this very background, the concepts of dynamism and boronoya must be understood. With these concepts, we have identified and described the this sustaining principle in Proglos and Dionysius.
Speaker: We might even say we have uncovered the foundation of the world. Every further investigation must rest upon this foundation. Every following question builds upon it.
Speaker: The question of how what is bad enters the world likewise depends upon this foundation. Good. And maybe as we kind of um plumb deeper into your thinking here, maybe we could also just kind of lay on the table another very interesting claim, an interesting idea within your work that I'd like to just ah yeah get on the table for listeners. and it's It's this idea that you... You describe Dionysius' metaphysics as having an almost existential ah philosophical impetus. okay and And I was, yeah, I'm just hoping maybe you could unpack this idea for us. you know How does his metaphysics have ah a kind of existential orientation to it?
Speaker: um Excellent question. I will make the answer as brief as possible. We may ask, once we have found God through metaphysical reflection, ah what happens to us?
Speaker: At first, we are struck by a dazzling ray of light and we are inwardly transformed. If we have truly encountered the foundation of our existence, then we may feel sustained, sheltered and secure.
Speaker: This is precisely the theme and aim of philosophy and metaphysics within the Neoplatonic tradition. They are meant to lead us to the inside that we are sustained by an absolute principle.
Speaker: It is always with us and will never abandon us. Indeed, it is our innermost core, our true self behind the facade of individuality.
Speaker: For the Neoplatonists, this insight is the point at which oedeaemonia is ignited. That is a happiness within this world or within um or within this worldly life.
Speaker: Whoever has found the absolute will no longer be easily disturbed by anyone or any anything. And this insight directly concerns the way we exist in the world.
Speaker: Now for Dionysius Kakan, so again, evil, badness is not a substance, very famous position. And... And yet, I guess you could say it's also not simply non-existent, absolute nothingness. So, yeah, maybe we can just kind of enter this question of, you know, what is it? If it's neither a substance nor pure nothingness or total privation, what exactly... um is kakon?
Speaker: It is what womanman yeah we can call it in German an Eikness. That is an event or occurrence.
Speaker: Kakon happens. It takes place. It is therefore not an eternal substance. Yet neither, it is simply nothing, since something does in fact happen.
Speaker: This event requires a bearer, that is a substance or in Greek a hypochaemenon, something underlying. ah human Human beings are the primary bearers in this sense.
Speaker: It is in or upon such a bearer that kakon appears. Yet it does not belong to that bearer by necessity. We may therefore say that KACON is an accidental event.
Speaker: And so if it's, if, if Kakan evil badness is purely accidental and, you know, and therefore needs a host to exist, um, at all, um, does this already solve the problem of evil for Dionysius? I mean, is that, could, could that be said, could that be said to be the the whole solution that, you know, Hey, Kakan is purely accidental and needs a host. Does that solve the problem or or do we need something more?
Speaker: Well, this already resolves the problem to a certain extent. However, my central question is this. How exactly does this event come about?
Speaker: Is the Absolute responsible for it? No, that cannot be the case. Human beings then must be responsible. But how are human and divine responsibility related to one another?
Speaker: Again, this is the decisive question. We have to bring the activity of the absolute and human activity into relation in order to understand how kakon arises.
Speaker: Namely, in such a way that the monistic principle, despite its omnipotency, is not responsible for it and at the same time in such a way that human beings need not always be assumed to act from an evil will.
Speaker: Dionysius himself says in On Divine Names, chapter 4, that no human being intends evil. Is is this related to this something else that you emphasize in your work that ah for Dionysius, evil, it's not only not a substance, but it also has no power. um Is that connected to this? Or maybe you could just, yeah, what what is it what is meant by saying it has no power? And and and maybe what would Dionysius say if we said, in contrast, that evil, let's say, you know has the power to corrupt us or to harm us or to damage us? Would that be um going against Dionysius' position or would that be consistent? Yeah.
Speaker: um Yes, if cacón occurs, um then it is merely a product and possesses no power of its own. It did not exist beforehand in order to bring something about, nor did it realize itself.
Speaker: We must must ask instead, who is responsible for the emergence of what is bad? For Dionysius, the answer is clear. Above all, the human being is responsible.
Speaker: That's clear. This also raises the question of what exactly corrupts us. um Evil is not some externally existing thing.
Speaker: and There is no substantial evil that corrupts us. ah Rather, we are corrupted by other things. oh What things, we can ask? First, other human beings can corrupt us by putting foolish ideas into our heads or by manipulating us.
Speaker: This happens constantly. It is not the evil that Dath does this, but human beings who act badly. Second, and more importantly, we can be corrupted by concepts and goals that we pursue with narrow-minded fixation.
Speaker: If, for example, we strive for wealth, we may end up subordinating everything else to that goal. in In doing so, we may harm other people, for instance by um exploiting them.
Speaker: Or consider a person obsessed with worldly power, such as autocratic figures like Duce or Der Führer, Adolf Hitler.
Speaker: They wanted power at any price. Anyone who stood in their way had to be eliminated. They sacrificed everything to their goal, even their humanity.
Speaker: They elevated their goals into gods and worshipped these false gods. We may say the murder of their opponents became their form of worship.
Speaker: it It seems like um this kind of doves dovetails into another kind of key idea in your work, which is that Kakan, evil, badness is a purely ethical category in Dionysius. Could you kind of unpack that idea for us that Kakan is a purely ethical category for Dionysius?
Speaker: Of course. um As I just said, what is bad enters the world through human freedom. For human beings can make almost anything into their god.
Speaker: They can choose what they want to worship. And once they create a god of their own, for example, worldly power or wealth, terrible things can happen. The question of the emergence of what is bad is therefore a question about human actions and human action is the proper subject matter of the philosophical discipline of ethics.
Speaker: Now, if we think of Kekon as connected to our own activity, our own behavior, um ultimately our own soul, ah does this imply that we have to regard all natural evils like ah disease or predation among animals as not genuine evils? um Are they only evil you know in first appearance but not genuinely evil at all? Yeah.
Speaker: Difficult question for Dionysius. I think the answer would be something like this. Illnesses are not intrinsically bad or evil um or predation um among ah animals, of course.
Speaker: ah Human beings may suffer from illnesses, certainly, but they belong to the nature of this world. They are built into the very structure of the world in which we live.
Speaker: And whatever occurs naturally within this world is precisely that, natural. We human beings are the ones who judge what happens to us as bad.
Speaker: And of course, we suffer from illness and from the loss of people we love. Ultimately, however, we cannot prevent death. we will never become immortal.
Speaker: Of course, recently theories have emerged that aim at precisely this, immortality within this world. One such theory is the so-called transhumanism.
Speaker: Transhumanism is, in my view, utterly absurd. Mind uploading, for example, will not work because the human mind cannot simply be transferred into the machine. And sooner or later, every hard drive, insofar as it is made of matter, will itself disintegrate.
Speaker: What I mean is this. Death, however painful and sorrowful it may be for us, belongs to life. It is not evil or bad.
Speaker: we merely experience it as bad or evil because we tend to identify what is bad or evil with what is unpleasant. But ancient Platonism already challenged the identification of the good with the pleasant.
Speaker: And from a Platonic perspective, we must likewise call into question the identification of what is bad or evil with what is unpleasant. And you bringing up Platonism here makes me think of, you know, another position in Dionysius that has a ah platonic origin, ah certainly, which which is that humans always intend what they perceive to be good. um In other words, whenever we intend something, we're always and intending it under the guise of it being good. Now, think a
Speaker: If that's true, is there really any genuine evil in human action? I mean, i was just thinking, you know, when someone acts from ignorance, from error, ah you might think that they're ah pursuing a mistaken good rather than evil itself. And and And, you know, there's a very common idea, you know, it's it's part of our sort of ah common sense, I would say. But, you know, you could also cite like, you know, ah for example, like just the Catechism of the Catholic Church, right? It teaches that ignorance can diminish or even remove responsibility. um
Speaker: Yet it also insists that, you know, evil acts remain objectively disordered, uh, even when committed in ignorance. But at any rate, I guess what I want to get at is this, like, how does Dionysius reconcile, you know, if all willing is directed towards some good, how can there be truly evil acts rather than just misdirected, um, misdirected acts misdirected at the good, if that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker: According to dis Dionysius, human actions are never directed toward evil as such. That's for so for sure. Strictly speaking, truly evil acts would presuppose an evil principle.
Speaker: And given that, what I have said so far, such a principle simply cannot exist for Dionysius. and Let us return once more to the example I mentioned earlier. Certain autocrats in this world strive for worldly power.
Speaker: Power over others appears to them as something good. It becomes their god. The fact that they are willing to walk over dead bodies in order to attain power appears to them as a kind of collateral damage.
Speaker: From their own perspective, these people die for a good cause, which is of course repulsive and disgusting. But the point I want to make is this.
Speaker: Evil can be interpreted in terms of some personal goal that is regarded as good and worth pursuing. This does not relativize the evil that is done.
Speaker: It simply makes clear that the person did not originally set out to do something evil as such. Rather, they sought to realize what they themselves regarded as good.
Speaker: and And now imagine some someone who says, Today i want to do something evil and then goes out and kills someone precisely because of this desire.
Speaker: Dionysius would probably respond that this too is something that person regards as desirable. and therefore in some sense as good.
Speaker: Perhaps the person wants to prove something to themselves or perhaps to demonstrate to others that they are completely free in their decisions, that their mind can turn in any direction whatsoever.
Speaker: Yet they still have to concede that for whatever reason this act appeared desirable to them. In other words, from their own perspective,
Speaker: The act presented itself as something good. so So yes, I think it is correct to say that for Dionysius there are only misdirected acts. But this does not make such acts any less terrible and neither does it deminish diminish the human responsibility. um At most it makes visible what we are always responsible for, namely acquiring the kind of insight that enables us to to distinguish that which appears to be good from the real good. This kind of insight is, in the Platonic sense, philosophical insight and it possesses an immediately transformative power.
Speaker: It helps us become upright personalities. and You quoted the Catechism, of course. One qualification is important here. Not every mistake or failure must immediately fall fully within our responsibility.
Speaker: Suppose, for instance, that someone is restoring a very old painting and because of a sudden movement, their hand slips and damages it.
Speaker: that person is, I think, responsible only in a very limited sense, such mistakes happen. In this case, it is simply a weakness or a limitation of of the body.
Speaker: But I do not think that catechism is concerned with such venial errors. At this point, a more fundamental social and political problem arises.
Speaker: We know that some human beings are born into circumstances that are much worse than those of us who have grown up in a secure and protected environment.
Speaker: and If someone grows up under the most terrible conditions, for example in a war zone, they may have no access to paideia, that is to education and personal formation.
Speaker: from such a state of existential ignorance, they may end up acting badly. Are these people now still responsible for what they do?
Speaker: um At this point, another bearer of responsibility comes into view, society, as the framework of conditions under which human beings act.
Speaker: Yet I think Dionysius would still maintain the following distinction. The person who performs a bad act bears responsibility in the most direct sense. But indirectly, responsibility also extends extends to those who created, maintained or tolerated the conditions under which that person grew up.
Speaker: For me, two scenarios are important here. First, history offers many examples of people who attained genuine insight even in times of profound transformation, such as the changes of what we now call late antiquity. In other words, it is possible even under terrible conditions, but much more important is the second point.
Speaker: Even in the best possible circumstances, do not, or even the best possible circumstances, I'm sorry, again. um Second point, even the best possible circumstances do not automatically lead to the heart to the highest insight or to true paideia.
Speaker: um This case is, of course, much far far more common. So the responsibility we ourselves bear for attaining philosophical insight and thereby avoiding the realization of bad actions cannot simply be erased.
Speaker: At the same time, those who have already attained a certain degree of insight bear a responsibility to work on the conditions under which others live so that these conditions become as encouraging as possible to attain fields of philosophical insight.
Speaker: And what concerns Dionysius is the general intelligible structure through which something bad comes to be realized. He is interested in the truly fundamental question of human action.
Speaker: How must I act so that my actions do not cause harm to myself, my soul, or to others? His answer stated as briefly as possible.
Speaker: is this. Turn away from all finite goals, wealth, worldly power and the like, and turn toward the absolute. Maybe this would be a good point to return to a point or an issue or an idea that you brought up earlier, namely ah this idea of light. So um you emphasize that providence in Dionysus is expressed or conveyed or discussed through the metaphor of light. um So, yeah, could you maybe...
Speaker: let's go back to this metaphor of light. Could you explain it a little bit more for us? Maybe give a few examples of how Dionysius uses it. And yeah, and then just ultimately how ah does the metaphor of light help us to understand the question we're looking at, you know, the um the realization of evil despite this monistic metaphysical system?
Speaker: Of course, um to repeat the central point, for Dionysius and the Neoplatonists, the metaphor of light provides an image through which we can understand more easily the first principle function together with with its transcendence.
Speaker: um There are modern equivalents to this metaphor. Wolfram Ruhkrebel, a German philosopher, has proposed the concept of a dimension of distinction.
Speaker: Distinctionsdimension in German. It is the horizon upon which everything that appears can appear. It does not itself appear as one appearance among others.
Speaker: Rather, it is recognized as the condition of the possibility for anything appearing at all. Dionysius frequently frequently speaks of a ray in Greek terms aktis.
Speaker: Everything appears in the light of this ray. Interestingly, he develops this idea through the concepts of dynamis and brunoia, adopted from Broncos.
Speaker: They mean a transcendent power which sustains us and is the contentment.
Speaker: The decisive decisive question then is this. How is light related to Karkon? The answer? It is related to Karkon only indirectly.
Speaker: One might formulate the point as follows. For Dionysius, the absolute opens the space within which all human acts become possible.
Speaker: At this point, the epistemological image of light must be extended into the ethical sphere. In Dionysius, this transition is almost seamless.
Speaker: There is no hard distinction between epistemology and ethics. In any case, by opening a space for us, the absolute provides the horizon within which we are able to act.
Speaker: In this sense, the absolute is also the condition of the possibility for bad actions. Or, to put the point differently, the absolute permits bad actions.
Speaker: so So it sounds like the absolute it conditions all being an action for Dionysius, and yet it's not determining our concrete choices. So, yeah, maybe you could just elaborate a little bit more on Dionysius.
Speaker: the how human freedom operates within this framework. And you use a really helpful image that I thought maybe we could ah discuss a little bit, this image of the eye closing itself to the light. So um yeah, that image of the eye closing itself to the light, it seems like that that's a good way of you know or it's it It seems pretty helpful for helping us to understand how evil Kakan arises as a deficiency within a reality still grounded in divine providence.
Speaker: um As I have already suggested, the first principle function of the Absolute with regard to our own intellectual acts consists in opening up and providing the space within which we are able to move and act.
Speaker: Within this space or framework we can indeed move freely within our own dimension we can go wherever we choose.
Speaker: um To take an example from the shaping of one's life we can choose philosophy and theology or we can choose high finance. We can support or reject a particular political orientation For Dionysius, one might it put one might put it this way, human beings are not predetermined in their actions.
Speaker: What they do lies within their own decision. Dionysius does, of course, distinguish between better and worse forms of life, For him, the life worth striving for is a life oriented toward the absolute good.
Speaker: If we close ourselves off from the absolute, we may simply fail to discover the foundation of our own existence. Whoever fails to discover this foundation does not know where they come from.
Speaker: To borrow an image from Plotinus, such a person no longer knows their own homeland. has lost their rules and becomes disoriented.
Speaker: and For the Neoplatonists, the light of the absolute is the only true adequate source of orientation. Every other point of orientation falls short.
Speaker: What this means is that only in the light of the absolute can we see and understand what right action is. If we close ourselves off from the task of seeking and investigating our truths self and our intelligible homeland, we can go astray.
Speaker: The absolute offers us orientation, but it does not compel us to accept its guidance. Good. So it seems like for Dionysius then, our turning toward the good begins with us.
Speaker: That is, it's it's up to to the soul to open its own eyes to the divine light. Now, ah within a Christian context, people are going to think that sounds you know close to maybe Pelagianism or at least semi-Pelagianism, the idea that the first movement toward God comes from human effort rather than from grace. So um would you say that Dionysus' view leans in this direction of semi-Pelagianism? And if not, um How should we understand his account of our first turning to God? um Well, the concepts of Pelagianism or even semi-Pelagianism go too far.
Speaker: Yes, the human being must do something, namely turn toward the Absolute. But the first step has already been taken by the Absolute itself. For the Absolute is sheer presence.
Speaker: It is, as I have said, immediately present. It is here and it never abandons us. um So the grace of the Absolute consists precisely in this, in being always present as the sustaining foundation of our existence.
Speaker: This is decisive, which is why I want to repeat it. um The caring presence of the Absolute is already the gift of grace. and We need only to discover it, of course.
Speaker: It may appear as though the absolute were turning toward us when we turn toward it. Strictly speaking, however, the absolute has always already preceded us because it is nothing other than presence itself.
Speaker: Now, if our freedom um allows us to turn toward the good or to close ourselves off from it, What does Denise see um as the as the task of the human person in avoiding evil?
Speaker: you know Does he think our failure lies mainly in ignorance, weakness, or the misuse of freedom? or yeah so so where Where does our failure mainly lie?
Speaker: um Yeah, that's a difficult question. Above all, because Dionysius does not work out the the issue in every last detail. um The basic tendency of his thought, however, um is, I think, clear. Ignorance.
Speaker: Weakness and the misuse of freedom need not to be understood as entirely separate aspects. In fact, they form a kind of unity and for Dionysius it is relatively unimportant, no, I think it is unimportant, which of them is prior to the others.
Speaker: ah one might perhaps say that the misuse of freedom can re result from ignorance or weakness. Ignorance and weakness in turn, especially if we understand weakness as a deficit of concentration, can hardly be separated from one another in their effects.
Speaker: um Whoever wishes to live a good life must, according to Dionysius, devote themselves to the process of self-becoming.
Speaker: Germany it is Selbstwertung. That means one must analyze one's own self and learn to understand it. We must investigate the conditions of one's own existence.
Speaker: In the course of this search the seeker can come to recognize the absolute as the sustaining foundation of their being. The person who lives in awareness of their own self and of their intelligible homeland who knows what they are and where they come from, will for Dionysius attain a state of Gelassenheit.
Speaker: It's a German term that is inner composure. And they will be filled with a deep sense of inward contentment. And someone who has gained this attitude of Gelassenheit will in turn choose to pose a danger to others.
Speaker: In this respect, self-becoming has a social significance. And there is more. Because the absolute is always present while leaving our freedom intact.
Speaker: Human beings who have taken a bad path can turn back at any moment. The absolute is always there. We need only reach out and touch it.
Speaker: so So it seems like Dionysius thinks that we can open ourselves to the divine light, but we can't produce that light or or command the moment at which it illuminates us. So ah yeah so maybe we can just talk a little bit about how... um this process of becoming open can lead to a personal transformation. And and maybe here we could also talk a little bit about the role of negative theology. you know um
Speaker: How does negating or letting go of finite objects, finite goals, and even our ordinary conception of ourselves, how does that open us to the absolute?
Speaker: Yeah, that is ah an extremely difficult quick question. um I have been working on this question for years now and I think I would need years to answer it responsibly. So I can only sketch the basic idea.
Speaker: Everything depends on our turning away from what is ordinary and surrounds us. um By the ordinary, I mean all kinds of objects.
Speaker: Not only bodily things, but also the goals by which we orient our lives and which remain bound to our world. Strictly speaking, almost all conventional life projects would count as ordinary for Dionysus.
Speaker: And it makes no difference whether people belong to the western, eastern or southern hemisphere. and But how does this turning away from the ordinary and turning toward the good actually take place?
Speaker: In short, through transcending negation. This is where the method of negative theology or negative philosophy enters the picture. ah We negate ordinary goals and we actively negate the seductive power that worldly aims can exert upon us.
Speaker: We free ourselves um by means of negation, from the pull of what is merrily pleasant and commit ourselves to an extremely demanding existential path. and Ultimately, the point is to let go of everything.
Speaker: For example, Plotinus, his magical formula is afelepantha, that is take away everything or let go. of everything um Dionysius agrees here.
Speaker: At some point, even one's own self must be released. This letting go by the way, points ahead to Master Eckhart's philosophy. um Well, am this letting go is accompanied by an opening up.
Speaker: how a m Within this letting go lies a kind of opening up. One opens oneself to the dazzling light that is God and this God is immediately present. If then we open ourselves sufficiently, if we have sufficiently let go of of the ah of the ordinary and left it behind, this light can stream into us.
Speaker: and this influx marks the summit of transformation, inner transformation of course. At this moment we are completely inspired, indeed divinely possessed.
Speaker: Proclos for example speaks of enthusiasm. The English word enthusiasm hardly conveys what he means. What is at stake is an intoxicating state of divine possession and this experience somehow inscribes itself into our consciousness.
Speaker: The idea is that whoever has undergone such an experience can then act within the world from an attitude of gelassenheit, composure.
Speaker: But one final point should be mentioned because I think it raises an important research question. and It is conceivable that this attitude need not be permanent. I want to ask,
Speaker: Even after the successful act of letting go, could we fall under the spell of the ordinary again if we turn too strongly toward it and become ordinary people once more?
Speaker: and The reason we are always in danger of surrendering ourselves to the ordinary lies in the dynamic structure of ourself or our soul.
Speaker: Because if we are not predetermined, then, structurally speaking, we remain permanently open. But precisely this openness may also mean that we can forget insights we have already obtained.
Speaker: So perhaps the following holds. Even someone who has ascended to the good can corrupt themselves again by returning to an ordinary focus upon ordinary things.
Speaker: But this would need to be investigated much more fundamentally and across the entire Neoplatonic tradition from Plotinus and Proclos through Dionysius and Meister Eckhart all the way to Karl Jaspers and recent phenomenologists.
Speaker: Wonderful. So maybe at this point, it would be helpful if um I could just try to attempt to give a kind of summary of what I understand to be sort of the core of your interpretation. And you can kind of just, you know, give me feedback. Feel free to correct me if I'm um if if I'm misunderstanding. um So. It seems like what you want to say is that in Dionysius' strict monism, providence it is not it's not simply the opposite of kakon or evil. it Providence, um as the transcendent condition of all actuality, it opens the space in which both good and bad human actions are possible,
Speaker: without determining which action we perform. And you know how Kakan becomes actual is the free human being failing to orient and ah realize itself in relation to the good.
Speaker: And and you know this is why Dionysus' treatment, um you would say, of Kakan ultimately has an existential flavor to it because it becomes an existential call to responsible self becoming rather than merely an abstract solution ah to a metaphysical problem. um Would you say that's a ah fair statement of your view?
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. thiss That is exactly right. i um would only emphasize even more strongly that metaphysics, metaphysical speculation, should not be understood as as a purely theoretical discipline.
Speaker: and It is always and immediately permeated and shaped by an existential and also an ethical dimension. ah Metaphysics in its fullest sense, that is, Neoplatonic and Dionysian metaphysics, is existential metaphysics, a form of metaphysics whose task is to provide human beings with orientation in an unpredictable world.
Speaker: Great, and I know we already, I wanna bring up, go kind of go back to something we already discussed a little bit earlier, but I just think it's such an important issue that it bears kind of returning to just ah briefly as we you know draw to a close here. So someone hearing all this might still say, you know look, this provides a really powerful account of ethical evil, ethical badness.
Speaker: But what about everything we ordinarily call natural evil? You know, the the suffering involved in disease, in death, predation, destruction in nature. you know, what about that? I mean, would Dionysius' answer be that these things belong to the natural order and are not evil in the strict sense at all, even though we understandably experience them as painful or bad? um And then maybe, yeah, how does this...
Speaker: this kind of Neoplatonic ideal of glossinite, recognizing both the order of the world and our own limits, ah how can that maybe shape our response to these to these events?
Speaker: Yeah, okay. First, lions, wolfing lamps, is simply part of nature. And there is nothing we can do about that.
Speaker: I think Dionysius would even want to tell us, except... the order of the world which you did not establish yourself. We must remain humble before an order that we are not able to dominate. And second, when it comes to the dangers that threaten us as human beings, we possess only modest means of moderating their severity.
Speaker: We may be able to cure some diseases, but certainly not all of them above all despite every advance The reality remains untouched.
Speaker: We will all die and no form of transhumanism will save us from that. One cannot escape death by responding to it with material and technological solutions.
Speaker: Everything material will perish. Only the intelligible is imperishable and eternal. So i I think that Dionysius' central message is this.
Speaker: Recognize the full extent of your limit of our limitations and become fully conscious of them. And composure, Gelassenheit, will follow.
Speaker: And more than that, according to Dionysius, the contemplation of the Absolute fills us with enthusiasm, passion and joy. The joy of beholding the Absolute and engaging with it makes up for much of the hardship we we encounter.
Speaker: Wonderful. So this has really been ah fascinating discussion. I mean, I guess to close, yeah, I'm just kind of curious, so would you mind sharing what you're working on on now? um First of all, I'm indeed continuing to work on Dionysius' metaphysics. At the moment, I am investigating investigating the extent to which his metaphysics influenced the art of mosaics.
Speaker: especially in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. and There are already some very interesting studies on this, for example by Ernesto Mainoldi, but here again I'm interested in the role of the Absolute, its transcendence and its first principle function. How can the first principle function of transcendence be expressed in the medium of a mosaic?
Speaker: Indeed, How can transcendence as such be represented <unk> in an image? um I will certainly continue working on the question of whether and how transcendence can be represented and made the object of philosophical reflection.
Speaker: At present, I'm writing a new article on Plotinus, Concept of Radical Transcendence. I have already written written quite a bit on this topic.
Speaker: But the concept of transcendence is so rich and fruitful that it continually calls for new endeavors. Great. Well, thanks again so much for coming on, Max.
Speaker: Thank you, Sam.
