Damascius

Damascius (/dəˈmæʃəs/; Greek: Δαμάσκιος, c. 458 – after 538), known as "the last of the Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the School of Athens. He was one of the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the Empire. His surviving works consist of three commentaries on the works of Plato, and a metaphysical text entitled Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles.

Life

Damascius was born in Damascus in Syria, whence he derived his name: his Syrian name is unknown. In his early youth he went to Alexandria, where he spent twelve years partly as a pupil of Theon, a rhetorician, and partly as a professor of rhetoric. He was then convinced by his teacher Isidore to shift his focus to philosophy and science, and studied under Hermias and his sons, Ammonius and Heliodorus. Later on in life he migrated to Athens and continued his studies under Marinus, the mathematician, Zenodotus, and Isidore, the dialectician. He became a close friend of Isidore, succeeded him as head of the School of Athens in ca. 515, and wrote his biography, part of which is preserved in the Bibliotheca of Photius.[1]

In 529 Justinian I closed the school, and Damascius with six of his colleagues sought an asylum, probably in 532, at the court of Khosrau I of Persia. They found the conditions intolerable, and when the following year Justinian and Khosrau concluded a peace treaty, it was provided that the philosophers should be allowed to return.[2] It is believed that Damascius returned to Alexandria and there devoted himself to the writing of his works.[1]

Among the disciples of Damascius the most important are Simplicius, the celebrated commentator on Aristotle, Epictetus, and Eulamius. We have no further particulars of the life of Damascius; we only know that he did not found any new school, and thus Neoplatonist philosophy ended its external existence. But Neoplatonist ideas were preserved in the Christian church down to the later times of the Middle Ages, notably by means of the tremendous influence exerted by the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus. Mazzucchi (2006) identifies Damascius himself as the author of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings, the "last counter-offensive of the pagan" (l'ultima controffensiva del paganesimo).

Writings

His chief treatise is entitled Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles (ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις περὶ τῶν πρώτων ἀρχῶν). It examines the nature and attributes of God and the human soul. This examination is, in two respects, in striking contrast to that of certain other Neoplatonist writers. It is conspicuously free from Oriental mysticism, and it contains no polemic against Christianity, to the doctrines of which, in fact, there is no allusion. Hence the charge of impiety which Photius brings against him. In this treatise Damascius inquires into the first principle of all things, which he finds to be an unfathomable and unspeakable divine depth, being all in one, but undivided. His main result is that God is infinite, and as such, incomprehensible; that his attributes of goodness, knowledge and power are credited to him only by inference from their effects; that this inference is logically valid and sufficient for human thought. He insists throughout on the unity and the indivisibility of God.[1] This work is, moreover, of great importance for the history of philosophy, because of the great number of accounts which it contains concerning former philosophers.

The rest of Damascius's writings are for the most part commentaries on works of Aristotle and Plato. The surviving commentaries are:

Among the lost works there were:

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Damascius". Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 783–784.
  2. ↑ Agathias, Scholast. ii. 30
  3. 1 2 Giovanni Reale, John R. Catan, 1989, A History of Ancient Philosophy: The Schools of the Imperial Age, page 546. SUNY Press.
  4. ↑ Simplicius, fol. 189, b., 153, a., 183, b.
  5. ↑ Photius, Cod. 242, comp. 181; in volume 6 of the edition by Rene Henry.
  6. ↑ Polymnia Athanassiadi (ed.), Damascius. The Philosophical History. Athens: Apamea Cultural Association, 1999. Pp. 403. ISBN 960-85325-2-3.BMCR review
  7. ↑ Photius, Cod. 130

Sources

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