As a young philosopher Gilbert Simondon identified technology as a site of obsession, anxiety, and misunderstanding within contemporary culture. “Culture,” he wrote, “has become a system of defense designed to safeguard man from technics” (Mode of Existence, 1). According to Simondon, technique and technology ubiquitously structured thought and practice, especially in the contemporary world, yet philosophical tradition relegated the technical to an obscure zone of conceptual neglect. Simondon took the intimacy and obscurity that surrounded our relation to the technical as (...) a clarion call to philosophy. Over the course of thirty-odd years of philosophizing, he examined the relation of the technical to the cultural .. (shrink)

This article situates the emergence of cybernetic concepts in postwar French thought within a longer history of struggles surrounding the technocratic reform of French universities, including Marcel Mauss’s failed efforts to establish a large-scale centre for social-scientific research with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the intellectual and administrative endeavours of Claude Lévi-Strauss during the 1940s and 1950s, and the rise of communications research in connection with the Centre d’Études des Communications de Masse (CECMAS). Although semioticians and poststructuralists used cybernetic discourse (...) critically and ironically, I argue that their embrace of a ‘textocratic’ perspective – that is, a theory of power and epistemology as tied to technical inscription – sustained elements of the technocratic reasoning dating back to these 1920s efforts to reform French universities. (shrink)

World War II research into cryptography and computing produced methods, instruments and research communities that informed early research into artificial intelligence and semi-autonomous computing. Alan Turing and Claude Shannon in particular adapted this research into early theories and demonstrations of AI based on computers’ abilities to track, predict and compete with opponents. This formed a loosely bound collection of techniques, paradigms, and practices I call crypto-intelligence. Subsequent researchers such as Joseph Weizenbaum adapted crypto-intelligence but also reproduced aspects of its antagonistic (...) precepts. This was particularly true in the design and testing of chat bots. Here the ability to trick, fool, and deceive human and machine opponents was a premium, and practices of agent abuse were admired and rewarded. Recognizing the historical genesis of this particular variety of abuse can help researchers develop less antagonistic methodologies. (shrink)

This paper offers a brief introduction and interpretation of recent research on cultural techniques (or Kulturtechnikforschung) in German media studies. The analysis considers three sites of conceptual dislocations that have shaped the development and legacy of media research often associated with theorist Friedrich Kittler: first, the displacement of 1980s and 1990s Kittlerian media theory towards a more praxeological style of analysis in the early 2000s; second, the philological background that allowed the antiquated German appellation for agricultural engineering, Kulturtechniken, to migrate (...) into media and cultural studies; and third, the role of these conceptual dislocations in enriching media-genealogical inquiries into topics such as life, biopolitics, and practice. (shrink)

Pseudo-Dionysius’ first principle is hyperousios. By definition, that concept is not theistic. In his oeuvre, however, Pseudo-Dionysius promotes Trinitarianism. A majority of Pseudo-Dionysius’ interpreters have maintained that these concepts are compatible. This article makes a case for the incoherence of that position.

Should one use philosophy in service of religion? I argue that Dionysius the Areopagite gives a negative answer to this question. The relevant text is Dionysius’ Letter 7, in which he explains why he does not use philosophy to attack Greco-Roman paganism. Philosophy, according to Dionysius, is something divine. In fact, in Letter 7 he goes so far as to identify philosophy with what St. Paul calls the “wisdom of God.” As a result, philosophy should not be (...) treated as a tool to be used in service of anything, even the true religion, which Dionysius of course identifies with Christianity. In order to elucidate Dionysius’ position, I provide a detailed account of how he understands philosophy, religion (thrêskeia), and use (chraô). (shrink)

One of the few studies to date which considers in a comprehensive way the relation between these remarkable thinkers. By concrete example and continual reference it illustrates both the pervasive influence of Pseudo-Dionysius and the profound originality of Aquinas.

For Bernd Niebling and his colleagues at the Lesesaal Altes Buch of the Universitätsbibliothek MünchenWhile the earliest complete manuscripts of Catullus to survive today were written in the fourteenth century, it is well known that poem 62 already appears in an anthology from the ninth century, the Codex Thuaneus (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Parisinus lat. 8071). However, the Thuaneus may once have contained one more poem of Catullus. In his commentary on the poet, which appeared in 1684 but had (...) been written decades earlier, the Dutch scholar Isaac Vossius makes the following comment on the last two lines of poem 11:Praetereunte postquam Tactus aratro est] Vetustissimum exemplar Thuanæum in quo hoc Catulli carmen variorum epigrammatis subjungitur, legitfractus, nontactus. Et hoc probo, nisi malisstratus, nam in quibusdam libristractuslegebatur.It is surprising to find a reference to a lost part of such a well-known manuscript in a source from the seventeenth century. One may well ask whether Vossius really read this poem in the Codex Thuaneus. Could he have seen this manuscript? Can he be relied on to report its contents truthfully? And could a part of the volume have been lost since the seventeenth century? I will argue that the answer to all these questions is yes, and that it is very likely that the Thuaneus once contained Catullus 11 as well as 62. I will set out the consequences of this for our understanding of Catullus' manuscript tradition. Next, I will discuss another ancient manuscript of Catullus that Vossius claims to have read, namely his ‘vetus liber Mediolanensis’. The article will close with an appendix on the history of the Thuaneus before it was studied by Vossius. (shrink)

Longinus' On the Sublime (date unknown) presents itself as a response to the work of the Augustan critic Caecilius of Caleacte. Recent attempts to reconstruct Longinus' intellectual context have largely ignored the works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Caecilius' contemporary colleague (active in Rome between 30 and 8 B.C.E. ). This article investigates the concept of hupsos ("the sublime") and its religious aspects in Longinus and Dionysius, and reveals a remarkable continuity between the discourse of both authors. Dionysius' (...) works inform us about an Augustan debate on Plato and the sublime, and thereby provide us with an important context for Longinus' treatise. (shrink)

Dionysius Cha1cus fr. 3 West contains an elaborate metaphor for the cottabus game in which the dining room and the symposiasts are compared to a gymnasium in which young pugilists are training. The author suggests that the visual force of the central part of the metaphor lies in the actual way in which "sphairai" (used as a kind of boxing gloves) were wrapped around the hand and forearm. In the problematic v. 4, "ékeinon" is identified as the symposiarch, and (...) the verse is seen to function as another part of this complex metaphor of the symposium as agon. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of the fifth-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Denys) on the twentieth-century philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. I argue that the later Feyerabend took from Denys a metaphysical claim—the ‘doctrine of ineffability’—intended to support epistemic pluralism. The paper has five parts. Part one introduces Denys and Feyerabend’s common epistemological concern to deny the possibility of human knowledge of ultimate reality. Part two examines Denys’ arguments for the ‘ineffability’ of God as presented in On the (...) Divine Names . Part three then explores how Feyerabend imported Denys’ account of divine ineffability into his own metaphysics to provide a novel argument for epistemic pluralism. Part four explains the significance of an appreciation of Dionyius’ influence for our understanding of Feyerabend. I conclude that Denys was a significant and neglected influence upon the later Feyerabend. (shrink)

Assembling a distinctive genealogy of cybernetic thought situated in relation to Progressive Era technocracy, industrial capitalism, (de)colonial relations, and eugenic machinery, Code uncovers the vital interdependence of informatics, the humanities, and the human sciences in the 20th century. Rather than figuring cybernetics as emerging from Second World War military technologies and post-war digital computing, Code argues that liberal technocrats’ inter-war visions of social welfare delivered via ‘neutral’ communication techniques shaped the informatic interventions of both the Second World War and the (...) Cold War. Tracing how an organizing concept of code linked the work of diverse structurally-minded thinkers, such as Norbert Wiener, Warren Weaver, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan reconstructs the cybernetic apparatus that spawned new fields, including structural anthropology, family therapy, and literary semiology – and grapples with the unfolding implications of such socio-technical dynamics for 21st-century critical theory, digital media, and data analytics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: God beyond being Creation as theophany Goodness, beauty, and love Evil Hierarchy Knowledge Symbolism Christological consummation.

As a reader of Dionysius the Areopagite’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, John Colet encountered a theology, liturgy, and social framework that seemed absent from the rites and doctrines of the Tudor church. Dionysius’s orderly ecclesia embodied a social perfection that Colet idealized as a Christian "republic." He reacted to ecclesiastical lapses from this model by writing with passionate indignation and, in public venues, by pronouncing bold challenges to clerical misbehavior. Writing for a small audience and adhering to an increasingly doubted (...) authority, Colet responds to Dionysius with a sense of tragically changed historical circumstances, and he assumes the role of an admonishing prophet. (shrink)

456 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY or PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 of reflection about rhetorical practices that I suspect Aristotle was trying to elicit in his own time and that Garver is trying to elicit in his. DAVID J. DEPEW California State University, FuUerton Fran O'Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. Pp. xvi + 3oo. Cloth, $8o.oo. The importance of doctrines found in the Latin translations of the late fifth-century Greek works of pseudo-Dionysius the (...) Areopagite for the formation of the theologi- cal and philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas is obvious to anyone well-versed in the texts of Aquinas. However, it is by no means obvious how Aquinas read, under- stood, and transformed the Christian Neoplatonic theology of this apparent disciple of Proclus or Damascius so as to make it an integral part of his understanding of God and creation. O'Rourke rightly conceived his task as twofold: first, the texts of Dionysius must be properly understood; second, the interpretation and use of these by Aquinas can itself be assessed and appreciated in its own thirteenth-century con- text. In the first part of the book he examines the question of knowledge of God, with one chapter devoted to Dionysius and a second devoted to Aquinas's use of "Dionysian Elements" in discovering God. Part Two examines their teachings on the "Transcendence of Being and Good" in chapters 3 and 4. Part Three contains three chapters on the "Unity.. (shrink)

In this well-known passage of his Antiquitates Romanae, Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes how Romulus and his companions seized and married the Sabine virgins. Romulus justifies his actions by stating that this method of acquiring wives was a Greek custom:Dionysius' report of a Greek tradition adopted by Romulus is rather enigmatic. It has previously been noted that this passage bears similarity to passages of Plutarch and in particular his description of the Spartan marriage ceremony. This Spartan marriage ceremony does (...) bear some relation to the situation being described by Dionysius in that the women are captured before being married, but other elements of the ceremony—the bride having her hair cut off and being taken in a darkened room—are quite out of place here and would appear to be a peculiarly Spartan tradition. As Plutarch was writing some time after Dionysius, it is not possible for Dionysius to be making a parallel with the ceremony as decribed by Plutarch, but he may have had access to a common source about that ceremony, now lost. However, I would like to suggest that there is another well-known source which may have been the source of the Greek tradition referred to in Dionysius 2.30 that is connected to neither Plutarch nor marriage. (shrink)

Neoplatonism takes a significant turn when Iamblichus integrates a mystical perspective based on the Chaldean Oracles into his doctrine. This compilation of fragments, which can be traced back to Babylonian Zoroastrianism, emerged in Hellenistic civilization and gained prominence as hermetic texts among philosophers from the 2nd century onward. For Iamblichus, the Neoplatonic concern regarding the feasibility of a return to the One is addressed not primarily through abstract theoretical philosophy, but rather through a philosophical wisdom illuminated by theurgic practice. Iamblichus (...) affirms the legitimacy of the rites detailed in these hieratic texts by asserting that they were divinely inspired by God to Julian. Syrianus and Proclus play crucial roles in preserving and transmitting this legacy. By inheriting Iamblichus’ teachings, they not only regarded this theurgical approach as a quasi-refoundational element of Neoplatonism but also introduced their own contributions to its development. Moreover, they served as the intermediaries through whom these doctrines reached the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum. At this point, Dionysius the Areopagite enters the narrative. He revitalizes the concept of theurgy, though –as this work will endeavor to demonstrate– his effort to integrate Neoplatonism with Christianity reflects a return to Iamblichus’ original interpretation of theurgy. Dionysius’ doctrines provide a robust foundation for him to argue that the Christian rites instituted by Jesus –being performed by God himself, in and through his very person– are doubly true. Therefore, these rites assuredly lead to theosis, the sole means of achieving the union of the soul with the Christian God. (shrink)

This book proposes a reading of Dionysius the Areopagite's longest and most important treatise 'On the Divine Names' from a philosophical point of view, rather than from a theological point of view which dominates the secondary literature. At the same time, it can serve as an introduction to the entire philosophy of Dionysius.

In their debate on whether or not the young should be allowed to study history, Degory Wheare and Gerhardus Vossius quote Bartholomäus Keckermann and state that he wants to exclude the young from studying history, Wheare arguing for Keckermann’s purported position, Vossius opposing it. Their disagreement is part of a larger controversy on the relevance of history for moral instruction in general, contemplating the question whether or not history is best understood as ‘philosophy teaching by example.’ But the (...) interpretation of Keckermann’s position presupposed by both Wheare and Vossius is wrong. Keckermann’s Ramist predecessors argued against a central presupposition of Wheare’s views, i.e., the exclusion of the young from studying moral philosophy. Keckermann’s own position in this regard is not fully clear. But a closer analysis of his distinction between methods for writing and for reading history shows that Keckermann did want the young to study history. If Keckermann had believed that such exclusion were necessary, it could only have been related to reading historical texts, not to writing them: writing texts about historical figures or events does not require moral precepts, but only the application of certain logical tools. A view that implies that writing a historical text should be possible for students, whereas reading such a text would go beyond their capabilities, is absurd. Hence, we can assume that Keckermann expected the young to study both history and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 485-512.

In a 1997 paper, Salvatore Lilla pinpointed multiple textual parallels between Damascius and the Pseudo-Dionysius, showing certain conceptual parallels. For instance, both Ps.-Dionysius and Damascius speak of the first cause, or God, as being all things, i.e. as “encompassing” (περιληπτική) or as “anticipating” (προληπτική) all things, at the same time that God transcends all things. In my chapter I expand on Lilla’s findings by showing how Ps.-Dionysius’ conception of God fits more closely with Damascius’ framework for the (...) One, especially Damascius' description of the triad of principles (i.e. the One-All, All-One, and Unified) at the One’s level which closely parallels Ps.-Dionysius’ description of the Christian Trinitarian persons (i.e. the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). The chapter also shows striking parallels between Damascius and Ps.-Dionysius elevating divine revelation as a primary means of communicating knowledge about the first cause’s mode of being (correcting certain claims of Lilla), while it also shows how the parallels drawn between Proclus’ henadology and Ps.-Dionysius make more sense when looking at Damascius’ own adaptation of Proclus’ henadology with his conception of the One’s triad of principles. (shrink)

This paper considers the date and authorship of chapters 8-11 of the Art of Rhetoric‚ falsely attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Analysis of the two chapters on "figured speech" suggests that chapter 9 is an unfinished attempt by the author of chapter 8 to rework the material into a more radical (but, in fact, conceptually flawed) refutation of those who rejected the concept. Distinctive common features indicate that chapters 10-11, on declamation and criticism, are by the same author. The (...) texts probably date to the early second century A.D.; the author was perhaps the Aelius Sarapion attested in the Suda. (shrink)

A growing number of scholars claim that the significance of the Corpus Areopagiticum is determined by an ecclesiastical context. When Dionysius demands the negation of every symbol in The Mystical Theology, Andrew Louth and Alexander Golitzin argue that this simply refers to the Christian liturgy. Yet although this reading has helped correct the tendency to reduce the Corpus to a manual for abstracted dogmatics, it obscures Dionysius's often radical negativity. On the one hand, Dionysius sometimes suggests that (...) union with God may be achieved through liturgical ceremonies, and the language of liturgy resonates throughout the Corpus. On the other hand, however, he states that divine transcendence requires "an undivided and absolute abandonment of yourself and everything," which implies that even ecclesial life is not ultimate. Since nothing can capture the transcendent God, Dionysius argues that all theology must fail, and yet his argument is itself theological. It is this paradoxical ambivalence which ensures that the significance of the Corpus is not exhausted by a liturgical reading: Although Dionysius advocates liturgical practice and a robustly affirmative theology, he indicates that "the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence" wherein lies union with God is an eschatological reality which remains yet to come. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes’ dispute with Dionysius of Halicarnassus over the study of Thucydides’ history allows us to understand both the ancient case for an ennobled public rhetoric and Hobbes’ case against it. Dionysius, concerned with cultivating healthy civic oratory, faced a situation in which Roman rhetoricians were emulating shocking attacks on divine justice such as that found in Thucydides’ Melian dialogue; he attempted to steer orators away from such arguments even as he acknowledged their truth. Hobbes, however, recommends the (...) study of Thucydides’ work for a new kind of political education, one that will benefit from Thucydides’ private, even ‘secret’, instruction, which permits the reader to admit to himself what vanity would otherwise hide from him. (shrink)

The 1970s were marked by a resurgence of interest in the enigmatic figure known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite. Yet the accessibility of his works, in readable and accurate translations, continues to be a problem. Jones's translation is therefore welcome.

The problem of evil is a much-debated issue and is as old as human history itself. Evil is a universal and the most common experience of humans, in the sense it functions as a common denominator and no one escapes. Evil causes a sense of isolation. This is evident in the lives of theists. Evil isolates humans from God. Evil is also one such experience that is personal and existential. Evil brings along a lot of meaninglessness. Here it expresses itself (...) as victimization. (shrink)