Can These Bones Live?: Gregory of Nyssa's Appropriation of Aristotelian Psychology in "On the Soul and the Resurrection"
Late ancient scholarly trends have downplayed or outright ignored the role Aristotelian philosophy played in the formation of the Greek Christian intellectual identity, focusing instead on its Platonic aspects. This essay challenges these trends by arguing that Gregory of Nyssa appropriated and tran...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brepols
[2017]
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| In: |
Sacris erudiri
Year: 2017, Volume: 56, Pages: 33-63 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Gregorius, Nyssenus 335-394, Dialogus de anima et resurrectione
/ Aristoteles 384 BC-322 BC
/ Psychology
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| RelBib Classification: | KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity NBE Anthropology VA Philosophy ZD Psychology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Late ancient scholarly trends have downplayed or outright ignored the role Aristotelian philosophy played in the formation of the Greek Christian intellectual identity, focusing instead on its Platonic aspects. This essay challenges these trends by arguing that Gregory of Nyssa appropriated and transformed Aristotelian psychology extensively in order to present a rigorous Christian defense of the doctrine of the bodily resurrection from the dead. The argument is largely confined to the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection, where Gregory presents his most elaborate defense of the resurrection. Specifically, this essay elucidates two main regards where the Cappadocian's adaptation of Peripatetic material is most salient. First, the article explores the relationship between virtue and the emotions, where Gregory defends the notion of the virtuous mean and the constitutive role the emotions play in becoming virtuous; similarly, how the soul functions as a mediator between one's morality on earth and one's experience of the divine in the afterlife. Second, the essay demonstrates that according to Gregory death is not - contra Plato - the separation of body and soul; rather, Gregory holds that the soul is the form of the body and can thus function as the principle of the body’s reconstitution at the resurrection. |
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| ISSN: | 2295-9025 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sacris erudiri
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1484/J.SE.5.114770 |