Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Mai/2022 |
Spalte: | 482–484 |
Kategorie: | Philosophie, Religionsphilosophie |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Brouwer, René, and Emmanuele Vimercati [Eds.] |
Titel/Untertitel: | Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age. |
Verlag: | Leiden u. a.: Brill 2020. VIII, 335 S. = Ancient Philosophy and Religion, 4. Geb. EUR 134,00. ISBN 9789004435667. |
Rezensent: | Dylan M. Burns |
This volume publishes revisions of papers originally given at two joint conferences in Italy in 2017, at Pontifical Lateran University (Rome) and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, organized by Emmanuele Vimercati and Maria Luisa Gatti (2). In their introduction, the editors – Vimercarti and René Brouwer – ably survey both the terminology and some key sources regarding fate, providence, and free will in Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and early Imperial Greek thought (3–8). They note that discussion of these issues changed in a number of important ways during the Imperial Period (8): one was the entry of Platonists and Aristotelians into a discussion where the Stoa had been dominant for centuries. The other was that religious writers, such as Jews, Christians, Hermetists, and Gnostics, picked up on philosophical discussions of these issues and utilized philosophical terminology for their own ends – a central theme of the opening essay, by John Rist. Thus, while the volume begins with essays on the Stoa (by René Brouwer and Ricardo Salles), it also offers articles on Middle and Neo-Platonism, by Emmanuele Vimercarti, Enrico Peroli, Maria Luisa Gatti, and Pia de Simone, while Alexander of Aphrodisias is covered by Carlo Natali and Péter Lautner. There is also considerable focus on writers making use of biblical and other religious prooftexts beyond the Greek philo-sophical tradition: Ludovica De Luca and Roberto Radice dis-cuss Philo; Troels Engberg-Pedersen analyzes Paul’s Epistle to the Romans; Aldo Magris and Claudio Moreschini treat the Gnostics and the Hermetica, respectively; George Karamonolis surveys free will in early Christianity, and Mark Edwards closes the volume with a meditation on Origen.
While the context of this review does not permit overview of the contents of every single paper, some particularly insightful readings are worth noting for the reader. Rist presents us with one right at the start: »according to Plotinus […] our failure [to consis-tently do what we ought to do – D. M. B.] is a mark not of inevitable moral weakness, but of moral laziness. And that insistence on our moral capacity […] points to a substantial disagreement in anti-quity between pagans and Christians« (20). For Rist, Plotinus is the final ancient representative of an old Hellenic »humanist« thinking about responsibility where people really are capable of choosing what is right all the time – like the Stoic sage – even if most of us fail to do so. In his contribution, Salles convincingly demonstrates that Epictetan freedom has an epistemic element that is concerned with perceiving the flow of divine providence and one’s own place in it (57). Peroli, borrowing the phrase »the sovereignty of the good« from Iris Murdoch, shows that Plotinus does not only assert the sovereignty of the (good) Forms, but also builds »the intrinsic value of the Form into the very structure of divine causality,« which may, he adds, be precisely the venue by which our own minds can escape the web of corporeal causes (240–245).
Further examples could be adduced. Brouwer and Vimercarti then present us with a volume of substantive and creative essays whose authors comprise a genuine »who’s who« of historians of ancient philosophy and theology. While fate, providence, and free will are each taken up with vigor throughout the volume, it is the latter – will and »what is up to us« – that is the focus of two-thirds of the chapters, while fate and divine care are really secondary themes. The volume has thus earned a place next to volumes such as the Carlos Steel Festschrift as necessary supplemental reading for scholars interested in fate and free will in Roman antiquity, and who seek to move deepen and move beyond the paradigms explored by philosophers such as Susanne Bobzien and Michael Frede.
This reviewer found little to quibble about: typos are very rare and always insubstantial, and the index locorum and general index (very useful) both passed a random check of references with flying colors. Many historical treatments of free will tend to focus on prooftexts in Classical and Hellenistic philosophy, mostly bypassing the first four centuries of Roman Imperial philosophy and proceeding straight to Augustine, perhaps stopping at Epictetus and/ or Origen along the way. By focusing entirely on the philosophy of roughly the first two and a half centuries CE, this volume, happily, seeks to break the mold. Even so, one does sense that the old model still exerts some hold over the structure of the book: while the chapters on Philo and Paul offer genuinely penetrating close readings, many of the discussions of the more »religious/theological« evidence in the volume are conducted on the scale of the survey. This can give the deeply misleading impression that »there is not enough philosophy« in Irenaeus or Valentinian sources (etc.) to merit sustained, close engagements like those the volume devotes to Epic-tetus and Alexander of Aphrodisias.
Conversely, much other important ancient Jewish and Chris-tian is left out: Josephus enjoys only the briefest of mentions (76) while Basilides (whose remarks on pronoia, if genuine, are the oldest preserved of any Christian philosopher) does not appear at all. Still other sources are mentioned and then zoomed past; these include the Bardaisanite Book of the Laws of the Countries (arguably the earliest Christian De fato treatise) and the Nag Hammadi evidence (massive, difficult, and badly in need of informed presentation to the philosophically-inclined), both of which rumble about in Magris’s footnotes without managing to surface much in the main text. Early Christian authors’ critiques of Marcion and Marcionism, to say nothing of Manichaeism – trajectories of argument that comprise a sub-genre of reflection on providence in late antiquity (witness Alexander of Lycopolis or Titus of Bostra) – are nowhere to be found.
A similar dynamic can be envisioned in the volume’s handling of the question of trajectories of influence. In their introduction, the editors at first describe the influence of thinking about providence and free will as unidirectional, proceeding from philosophers to religious authors, who appropriate and transform philosophical ideas for their own ends (1). To their credit, Brouwer and Vimercarti later show themselves to be open to the Platonists coming under the influence of writers from the religious (i. e., biblicizing and/or gnosto-theosophical) wings (11). This ambivalence as to what extent writing by Jews, Christians, Gnostics, and Hermetists may be said to be representative of ancient »philosophy« or even to have impacted the history of putative »secular« or »pagan« philosophy is reflected throughout the volume. The notion that early Christian philosophy is worth treating as philosophy in its own right is happily represented in the volume by three of its champions – Engberg-Pedersen, Karamanolis, and Edwards – but nonetheless could have been explored with greater vigor.
Fazit: The editors state in their introduction that they seek to provide a »compact introduction to the topic« of fate, providence and free will in Imperial-era Roman philosophy and religion with these papers (3), and they succeed. Fate, Providence and Free Will more than exceeds the sum of its parts, amounting to a set of focused, original essays that together significantly advance philoso-phical reflection on individual responsibility, fate, and divine care during the Roman Empire.