Vice and Self Examination in the Christian Desert: An Intellectual Historical Reading of Evagrius Ponticus By Kathleen Siobhan MacInnes Gibbons A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for the Study of Religion University of Toronto © Copyright by Kathleen Gibbons 2011 Kathleen Gibbons Vice and Self-Examination in the Christian Desert: An Intellectual Historical Reading of Evagrius Ponticus Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Religion This thesis offers an analysis of the vice tradition of the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus. While Evagrius, like others before him, understands that virtue and vice have an affective component, and that these affections are reactions to mental images, for Evagrius these images are veridically thinner than what we find in earlier discussions of passion in ancient philosophy. As a result, vice is less a matter of false reasoning and false perception than it is a matter of the excessive dwelling on representations connected with events of one’s personal history, to the point that the passions aroused at the time of those events become globalized dispositions. Evagrius’s concern with how memories lead us to dwell on these “bad thoughts” proves to be point of contact with psychoanaly which many modern authors, including Michel Foucault, have detected; yet a close analysis of what Evagrius takes to be involved in self-examination reveals that Foucault’s account of the “technologies of the self” fails to take into account Evagrius’s interest in the distinction between the endowed self, that self which is examined, and the ideal self, the goal of the ascetic activity. i In Memoriam Conor P. Barry (1982-2007) and Alan J. Biszko (1982-2011) I’ll wait and I’ll wait. And if it all ends. What will be is. Is is. - James Joyce ii Acknowledgments My greatest debt is, of course, to my advisor and gnôstikos, Robert Sinkewicz, whose deep knowledge of Evagrius and the desert tradition, careful attention to dubious arguments, and kind attention were essential to bringing this work to whatever degree of fruition it currently has. I also thank the other members of my committee, Lloyd Gerson and John Kloppenborg, for their help and support throughout the writing process. My external readers, Brad Inwood and David Brakke, both provided extensive illuminating criticisms of my thesis which will no doubt improve the work as it continues. I also thank John Marshall, who served on my examination committee and has been supportive during my doctoral studies. The support of my friends and colleagues, both intellectual and otherwise, has been indispensible. Ian Drummond was a crucial sounding board for many of the ideas contained herein. I also thank in particular Jennifer Bright, Aldea Mulhern, Elizabeth Klaiber, Emily Fletcher, Maria Dasios, Nicholas Schoenhoffer, Adrienne Prettyman, Heidi Deipstra, Janine Riviere, Regina Hoëschele, Brian Carwana, Edith Szanto, Alexandra Guerson, and Alan Bell. Farther in distance, but no less close to my heart, the wit and wisdom of Alexander Lavy, Miranda Routh, Jasmine Klatt and Christopher Holmes remain a support and comfort, always. Finally, my family has been unfailing in their support for my long and circuitous educational route. I thank my parents, Michael and Carol, my sister Heather and her husband Brent, and my two young nephews, Cobie and Conor. The present work, however, is dedicated to two family members we lost during the time I was a graduate student, my sweet and playful cousins Conor and Alan. Their brilliant lives and early deaths serve as sweet and bitter reminders to all who knew and loved them that the happy life ought not to be lived for its own sake alone. iii Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Mental Representations in Plato and Epictetus ......................................................6 1.1 Plato on False Beliefs and False Images ................................................................................7 1.1.1 The Elenchus and False Belief ........................................................................................8 1.1.2 Images and the Division of the Soul in the Republic ....................................................12 1.1.3 Images in Late Plato: The Timaeus and the Philebus....................................................18 1.2 Epictetus on Phantasia .........................................................................................................24 1.2.1 Chrysippus of Soli: The Moral Psychology of Early Stoicism .....................................27 1.2.2 Prohairesis and Moral Responsibility ...........................................................................33 1.2.3 Moral Virtue and Human Prosopa ................................................................................40 1.2.4 Moral Struggle and Impetuous Action ..........................................................................44 1.2.5 Representation and Self-Awareness ..............................................................................47 1.2.6 Adopting a God’s-eye View ..........................................................................................59 Chapter 2: Origen on Representation and Human Freedom ..................................................66 2.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................66 2.2 The Role of Freedom in Origen’s Anthropology .................................................................69 2.3 Freedom and Origen’s Tripartite Division of the Human Person ........................................80 2.3.1 Pneuma in Greek Philosophy and in Origen .................................................................81 2.3.2 Origen and the Hermetica ..............................................................................................86 2.3.3 Origen Against Valentinus .............................................................................................90 2.3.4 Psuchê as Sheer Volition ...............................................................................................98 2.4 Temptation and Origen’s Reappropriation of Stoic Theories of Passion ...........................101 2.4.1 Origen on Pre-passion ..................................................................................................101 2.4.2 Affect and Self-Examination .......................................................................................113 2.5 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................115 Chapter 3: Demonic Pleasures and the Brute Passions ..........................................................117 3.1 Anatomy of a Vice ............................................................................................................119 3.1.1 The Eight Bad Thoughts ..............................................................................................119 3.1.2 A Brief History of Virtues and Vices ..........................................................................121 3.1.3 Virtues and Vices in Evagrius .....................................................................................126 3.2 Sense Perception and the Imagination in the Arousal of the Passions ..............................128 3.2.1 Sense Perception and the Passions...............................................................................129 3.2.2 The Perversion of Perception .......................................................................................135 3.2.3 The Exploitation of Perception by the Demons ...........................................................139 3.3 Passion and Imagination ...................................................................................................143 3.4 Non-rational Passions and Ascetic Practice ......................................................................149 Chapter 4: Memory, Imagination, and Evagrius’s Hermeneutics of the Soul .....................153 4.1 Memory and Imagination as Occasions for Introspection ................................................154 4.1.1 Memory in Ancient Philosophy ...................................................................................154 4.1.2 Evagrius on Memory ...................................................................................................160 4.2 Imagination and Dreams ...................................................................................................165 4.2.1 Dreams in Antiquity.....................................................................................................165 4.2.2 Evagrius on Dreams .....................................................................................................169 4.3 Self-Deception and Impetuous action ...............................................................................174 iv 4.4 Evagrius and the Varieties of Psychological Privacy .......................................................182 4.5 Evagrian Têrêsis and the Elenchus ...................................................................................185 Chapter 5: A Closer Look at Anger .........................................................................................187 5.1 Ambivalence Toward Anger in the Ancient Period ..........................................................189