Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Chapter 1 Introductory
- Part 1 GREEK PHILOSOPHY FROM PLATO TO PLOTINUS
- Part II PHILO AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
- Part III PLOTINUS
- Part IV THE LATER NEOPLATONISTS
- Part V MARIUS VICTORINUS AND AUGUSTINE
- Part VI THE GREEK CHRISTIAN PLATONIST TRADITION FROM THE CAPPADOCIANS TO MAXIMUS AND ERIUGENA
- Chapter 28 Introduction: Greek Christian Platonism
- Chapter 29 The Cappadocians
- Chapter 30 The pseudo-Dionysius
- Chapter 31 The reaction against Proclus
- Chapter 32 St Maximus the Confessor
- Chapter 33 The Philosophy of Icons
- Chapter 34 Johannes Scottus Eriugena
- Part VII WESTERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FROM BOETHIUS TO ANSELM
- Part VIII EARLY ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
- Select Bibliography
- Additional Notes and Bibliography
- Index of ancient and medieval works referred to in the text
- General Index
- Index of Greek terms
- References
Chapter 33 - The Philosophy of Icons
from Part VI - THE GREEK CHRISTIAN PLATONIST TRADITION FROM THE CAPPADOCIANS TO MAXIMUS AND ERIUGENA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Chapter 1 Introductory
- Part 1 GREEK PHILOSOPHY FROM PLATO TO PLOTINUS
- Part II PHILO AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
- Part III PLOTINUS
- Part IV THE LATER NEOPLATONISTS
- Part V MARIUS VICTORINUS AND AUGUSTINE
- Part VI THE GREEK CHRISTIAN PLATONIST TRADITION FROM THE CAPPADOCIANS TO MAXIMUS AND ERIUGENA
- Chapter 28 Introduction: Greek Christian Platonism
- Chapter 29 The Cappadocians
- Chapter 30 The pseudo-Dionysius
- Chapter 31 The reaction against Proclus
- Chapter 32 St Maximus the Confessor
- Chapter 33 The Philosophy of Icons
- Chapter 34 Johannes Scottus Eriugena
- Part VII WESTERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FROM BOETHIUS TO ANSELM
- Part VIII EARLY ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
- Select Bibliography
- Additional Notes and Bibliography
- Index of ancient and medieval works referred to in the text
- General Index
- Index of Greek terms
- References
Summary
The Natural Image
It was said at the outset that Platonism and Christianism adopted different attitudes towards corporeal nature, the one regarding it as an obstacle to the soul's perfection, the other as an aid, and itself perfectible. The statement requires modification on both sides. Plato in his later works taught that the sensible world, being a copy of the intelligible, was a guide to the understanding of it, and his successors, under the influence of the Asiatic cults, adopted the same attitude to man-made images; while the early Christians, inheriting the Jewish abhorrence of idolatry, regarded as sacrilegious the representation of spiritual things through the medium of matter. Paganism and Christianism reacted to the same stimulus in contrary ways: the pagan cults which infected Platonism with theurgy stiffened the resistance of the Christians and turned their monotheism, for a time, into iconoclasm.
In the sensible world natural images are distinguished from artificial images by their causes. The causes of the former are the Forms: ‘ The Idea’, says Xenocrates, ‘is the exemplary cause of things which subsist naturally (κατα φυσιν).’ The causes of the latter are concepts in the mind of the artist: ‘Every artist possesses wholly the paradeigma in himself, and confers its shape upon matter.’ But if the Forms are themselves concepts in the Divine Mind, then both kinds of cause are concepts or thoughts, and the difference lies in the thinker, in the one case divine, in the other human.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1967