Transformation of Aristotelian categories in the theology and cosmology of Maximus the Confessor

Abstract

This article deals with the reception of Aristotle's logical and metaphysical concepts in the theology and cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662). The author examines the view both thinkers share of God as the prime mover and the Intellect whose substance coincides with the act of thinking; he also traces down how Maximus adopts the Peripatetic doctrine of motion and its four kinds and investigates the Aristotelian origins of the ontological triad of essence, potentiality and actuality in Maximus' writings, as well as its other possible sources. It can be shown that the Byzantine theologian reconsiders the ten Aristotelian categories in an ideal mode, reshaping them in pure incorporeal logoi, the combination of which generates every individual thing and establishes all possible relations in the created world. Particular attention is given to the genus-species hierarchy of logoi in its relation to Aristotelian logic and the Neo-Platonic commentators of Aristotle. The transformation Peripatetic concepts undergo in Maximus finds its explanation above all in the difference of religious beliefs.