Date of Graduation
5-2013
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Philosophy
Advisor/Mentor
Lynne Spellman
Committee Member
Edward Minar
Second Committee Member
Jacob Adler
Keywords
Dionysius the Areopagite, Eastern Christianity, Greek philosophy, Neoplatonism, Ontology, Plotinus
Abstract
My dissertation research addresses the relationship between the One and everything else in Neoplatonic metaphysics. Plato is vague in describing this distinction and thus much of late antiquity attempts to fill in the gaps, as it were. The potential difficulty, however, is that the hierarchy of existence in late antiquity is susceptible to being understood as postulating a being that is "beyond being." To avoid this difficulty, I propose an interpretation of Dionysius the Areopagite to show that being is, by definition, intelligible and thus finite and limited. Since the first principle is that which is infinite it therefore cannot be a being. I argue that the essence/energies distinction in Eastern Christianity helps to alleviate any worries of not postulating the first principle as a being.
Citation
Packwood, J. (2013). Everything is Flat: The Transcendence of the One in Neoplatonic Ontology. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/679