Byzantine Metaphysics: Ens Reale or Fictum?

If by “metaphysics” we mean the systematic “investigation into the nature of reality’’ or the rational attempt to ‘‘uncover what is ultimately real,’’ it may be argued that metaphysics did not exist in Byzantium. Indeed, since almost all Byzantine thinkers were officially Christians and produced more theological than philosophical writings, their quest for the ultimate source of reality came full circle from its very beginning. For, in their minds, the ancient Greek (and Roman) ‘‘reasoned knowledge’’ (episteme) and ‘‘wisdom’’ (sophia), accessible through ‘‘reason’’ (logos) or, at least, not without it, was substituted by ‘‘religious faith’’ (pistis) in Revelation (apokalypsis) and, as a result, metaphysics and philosophy in general was substituted by theology, that is the theoretical elaboration of Christian religion. (This reservation is often kept for the philosophical character of Christian thought in its entirety.)

Further, it has been argued that Byzantine thought failed to do even what its western counterpart is, by some (e. g., It. Gilson) optimistically, supposed to have achieved, that is, to produce some philosophical ideas (such as those by Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus) stimulated by the philosophically unqualified yet potentially fruitful content of Christian Revelation. This seems to a large extent true. Indeed, in the context of these two roughly contemporary Christian civilizations, speculative thought has emerged and developed in different ways. In Europe, Medieval intellectual life succeeded a state of decline bordering on collapse (fifth to seventh centuries) and went on by constantly being stirred up by waves (ninth to thirteenth centuries) of acquaintance with several previously unknown individual pieces or bulks of philosophical, scientific, and theological literature through Latin translations (Greek Patristic authors, parts of the corpus Aristotelicum accompanied by some ancient Greek and Latin as well as Byzantine commentaries on them, Arabic treatises and commentaries on Aristotle, works by Jewish authors, Neoplatonic texts), which provoked Christians to deal with them as well as with the way other Christians were dealing with them. Byzantium, on the contrary, exhibits strong marks of continuity with the intellectual life of Late Antiquity (even though, admittedly, not with its highest figures), and the development of its own intellectual life enjoyed a relative stability, which was nominally and positively called ‘‘tradition’’ and usually resulted in repetition.

Further, most of the Greek Fathers of the Church, whose thought was normative for most of the Byzantine intellectuals, though well acquainted with most aspects of Middle Platonism and some strands ofNeoplatonism, had a predilection for the ‘‘apophatic’’ aspect of these trends. And, in contrast with them, where this aspect acquired metaphysical sense in terms of its being the result of a philosophical investigation where ‘‘reason’’ normally played a central role (though tending to show a way of superseding itself), Greek Patristic thought integrated apophaticism into the context of the Christian belief in the Biblical God whose personal way of act cut off any possibility of constructing a metaphysical concept of Him.

Notwithstanding this discouraging context, however, some texts of Byzantine philosophy do testify to the raise of some specific metaphysical questions, whose fundamental character (philosophy or theology?) still remains to be patiently detected and soberly assessed.