Early Byzantine philosophy

Abstract

PRELIMINARY ISSUES The study of early Byzantine philosophy raises certain preliminary issues that one needs to bear in mind from the start, for they concern the very definition of this field of scholarly research. It is only sixty years ago, when Basil Tatakis’ La philosophie byzantine (1949) appeared as a supplement in Emile Bréhier’s Histoire de la philosophie , that Byzantine philosophy emerged as a subject matter worth investigating in the history of philosophy. There is no doubt that the attitude towards Byzantine philosophy and its different periods has in the meantime changed considerably, but it is still helpful to first investigate its credentials as a legitimate part of the history of philosophy, and thus to justify the inclusion of its early period at the end of a narrative on the philosophy of late antiquity. Let us, therefore, begin by commenting on the nature and status of our subject matter. Is there Byzantine philosophy? The question regarding the very existence of something that can be called ‘Byzantine philosophy’ is raised even in recent contributions, although not in the same terms as in Tatakis’ book. Sixty years ago the discussion was primarily focused on the possibility of and the conditions for the existence of a Christian philosophy, a more general issue that during the 1930s occupied principally the French historians of philosophy. The outcome of this discussion was to establish the study of a western medieval Christian philosophy, which had originated from the writings of the Christian Fathers and centred on the works of Thomas Aquinas.

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