HIERARCHY AND THE DEFINITION OF ORDER IN THE LETTERS OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS HIERARCHY AND THE DEFINITION OF ORDER IN THE LETTERS OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS A Study in the Form and meaning of the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings by RONALD F. HA THA WAY University of California at Santa Barbara II MAR TINUS NIJHOFF - THE HAGUE - 1969 to 1969 by Marlinus Nijhott. The Hague, Netherlands AIl1'ights reurved. including the right to translate or to reproduce th is book 01' paris thereof in any f01'm ISBN 978-94-011-8468-7 ISBN 978-94-011-9183-8 (cBook) DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-9183-8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A debt of gratitude is owed by the author to Professor Heiko Oberman, in whose seminar this monograph was conceived in embryo, to Profes­ sors Herbert Marcuse and Peter Diamandopoulos for their assistance, and to Professor Alexander Altmann for his advice and guidance. Thanks are due to the officials of Brandeis University who allowed the author to transfer a graduate Fellowship in order to pursue research in the British Museum. Special words of gratitude are owing to both the staff and Fellows of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library. Several persons, including Professors Jean Meyendorff, Romily Jenkins, Alfred Bellinger, and Donald Nicol, have read either the translation or the text or both and have offered many helpful suggestions. For advice and other kindnesses along the way the author would also like to offer up oblations to Professor Seth Benardete, and to Professors Richard Walzer and E. R. Dodds at Oxford. The author also thanks Mr. Charles Whitt for preparing the Index. The author regrets that work on the monograph was too far advanced to permit him to use the recent edition of Damascius' Lile 01 the Philo­ sopher I sodore by Dr. Zintzen. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V LIST OF TABLES IX ABBREVIATIONS XI GENERAL INTRODUCTION XIII I . General Argument XIII 2. A Note on Recent Research XIX 3. The Philosophic Interpretation of Ps.-Dionysius XX 4. A Note on the Meaning of the Term "Hierarchy" XXI 5. A Note on Pseudo-Dionysius' Literary Techniques XXIII 6. General Significance of Ps.-Dionysius XXIV PART ONE CHAPTER I. THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LETTERS 3 A. General Remarks 3 B. The Consistency of the Letters within the Corpus 6 C. The Authority of the Letters 9 I. Traditional Apostolicity 9 2 . Authorship 12 3. Proc1us and the Dating of the "Corpus" 13 4. The Author of the "Letters" as a Philosopher 21 D. Summary 30 CHAPTER II. THE METAPHYSICS OF HIERARCHY 37 A. Hierarchic Order Based on Law 38 B. Hierarchic Order Based on Logos 48 C. Hierarchic Order based on Eros 51 CHAPTER III. THE HIERARCHIC DESIGN OF THE LETTERS 61 A. Overall Unity and Minor Inconsistencies 61 B. Fixed Hierarchic Ranks and the Problematic Eighth Letter 64 C. The two Subject Titles 67 D. The Settings and the Hierarchic Order of the Letters 69 E. The Significance of the Hierarchic Order of the Letters 76 VIII TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER IV. THE MODELS OF ORDER IN THE EIGHTH AND NINTH LETTERS 85 A. The Eighth Letter 86 I. Peculiarities of Terminology 86 2. Philosophical Sources 93 3. The Practical Model of Order 100 B. The Ninth Letter 104 I. The Platonic Critique of "Theologia" 104 2 . The Theoretical Model of Order 1I5 PART TWO THE LETTERS OF PS.-DIONYSIUS THE LETTERS OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS 129 BIBLIOGRAPHY 162 LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER I A. Principal Conjectures for the Identity of Ps.-Dionysius in Chrono- logical Order 3 I B. List of Important Dates 35 CHAPTER II C. The Pattern of Meanings of the Term A6yoc, in Ps.-Dionysius 47 CHAPTER IV D. Hapaxlegomena in the Eighth Letter 88 E. The Bipartition of Theologia in the Ninth Letter II6 ABBREVIA TIONS CA Corpus Areopagiticum (The four treatises and ten letters of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite. All references to Ps.-Dionysius are to the column numbers in S . Dionysii Areopagitae Opera Omnia quae exstant, studio et opera B. Corderii, gen. ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, I857) , Patrologia Graeca III.) CH De coelestia hierarchia (On the Celestial Hier­ archy.) EH De ecclesiastica hierarchia (On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.) DN De divinis nominibus (On Divine Names). MT De mystica theologia (On Mystical Theology.) Proclus, in lAIc. Proclus Diadochus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades 0/ Plato, Critical text and indices by L. G. Westerink (Amsterdam, I954). Cited by page and line number. - , in Crat. Procli Diadochi in Platonis Cratylum commen­ taria, ed. G. Pasquali (Leipzig, I908). -, in Parm. Commentarii in Parmenidem, Procli philo­ sophi platonici Opera, ed. V. Cousin (Paris, I82I), Vois. 4-5. -, in Parm. (7) Commentarium in Parmenidem, pars ultima adhuc inedita, interprete Guillelmo de Moer­ beka, ed. R. Klibansky and C. Labowsky (Warburg: London, I953). - , in Rem pub. Procli Diadochi in Platonis rem publicam com­ mentaria, ed. G. Kroll (Leipzig, I899) . Cited by volume, page, and line number. XIl ABBREVIATIONS Proclus, in Tim. Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum Com­ mentaria, ed. E. Diehl (Leipzig, 1903). Cited by volume, page, and line number. -, EI. Theol. The Elements 0/ Theology, A revised text with translation, introduction and commentary by E. R. Dodds (Oxford, 1963). Cited by proposi­ tion, page, and line number. -, Plat. Theol. Procli Successoris Platonici in Platonis Theolo­ giam libri sex, ed. Aemilius Port us (Hamburg, 1618, repr. Minerva, G.m.b.H.: Frankfurt am Main, 1960J). Cited by book and section; arabic numerals in parentheses are the pages of the Portus edition. Damascius, Pro Princ. De primis principiis, ed. C. A. Ruelle (Paris, 1889). Indices Indices pseudo-Dionysiani, auct. Alb. van den Daele (Louvain, 1941). B. A.-G. A Greek-English Lexicon 0/ the New Testament and other early Christian Literature, Trans­ lated and edited by W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich from W. Bauer's "Griechisch- deut­ sches Worterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der iibrigen Urchristlichen Literatur," fourth edition, 1949-52 (Chicago, 1960). L.-S.-J. A Greek-English Lexicon, compo by H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, a new edition rev. and augmented throughout by H. S. Jones (Ox­ ford, ninth edition, 1953). Lampe A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Fasc. 1-3 (Oxford, 1961f.) . GENERAL INTRODUCTION N eoplatonism begins explicitly with Plotinus in the third century of our era. The later Neoplatonism of the fifth and six century schools at Athens and Alexandria was both the continuation of the philosophy of Plotinus and also a pagan ideology. When these schools were closed, despite attempts at compromise at Alexandria and as a result of direct and indirect political pressures and actions, pagan ideology died. Many philosophers, such as Isidore, Asclepiodotus, Damascius, and Olym­ piodorus, must have foreseen the danger to philosophy, and their extant writings are sprinkled with forebodings. Would the death of pagan ideology, in the form of pagan worship and the Homeric and Orphic traditions, bring about the death of all genuine philosophy as well? One answer to this great question is found in the enigmatic writings of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite. Purposing to be the writings of the Athenian convert of St. Paul, they fall within the province of a multitude of so-called "pseudepigraphic" Christian writings. 1. GENERAL ARGUMENT I embarked on the study of Ps.-Dionysius' Letters with two goals in mind: (r) to grasp in clear detail the unknown author's philosophic intentions in writing his famous Corpus and the way in which he set about writing, and (2) to attempt to see with precision the reason for the absence of a political philosophy in Christian Platonism. The Letters provided a richness of detail and information bearing on the first subject which was wholly unexpected. Not only do the Letters reveal the author's precise techniques in using later Neoplatonism, but they also reveal how the author's use of Neoplatonism leads to adap­ tations of Christian faith. The Letters contain much of immediate relevance to the second subject, although they pose difficult problems XIV GENERAL INTRODUCTION of interpretation. The Eighth Letter, Ps.-Dionysius' explicit pronoun­ cement on secular or political things, retains the core of classical politi­ cal philosophy, the doctrine of virtues and in particular the virtues of justice and generosity (or kindness). Yet the politeia in which the exer­ cise of those virtues is explained, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, is made to rest on the laws of a Neoplatonist metaphysics, laws which are re­ garded as by themselves sufficient for ordering our life and actions. The Letters, no less than the treatises of Ps.-Dionysius, in their attempt to marry Neoplatonism and Christian faith, are devoid of the attempt to understand the political as political, and are in this respect an im­ portant document for grasping the nature of the Dionysian metaphy­ sics of hierarchy which, with Stoic natural law teachings, constituted the residual form in which western tradition received and tried to comprehend classical political philosophy. I have approached the Letters of Ps.-Dionysius with no fixed convic­ tions about the identity or the intentions of the author, but have en­ deavored to allow the material to speak for itself. It seems appropriate to state in general terms what, in my opinion, the material argues. The Letters prove to be important for understanding the author's four treatises. The symbolic theology in which the Letters culminate is in­ separable from the affirmative and negative theologies expounded in the four treatises (d. 105),1 and the Letters were composed on a hierarchic plan, which elaborates in many details on the obscure dis­ cursive treatment of hierarchy in the treatises, a subject of which this unknown Neoplatonist is the discoverer and master.