1) Prehistory: Hypostasis in platonic tradition of the 1st – 3d centuries AD. From Hypostasis as a single sensible thing to Hypostasis as immaterial intelligible substance by Alcinonous, Atticus, Plutarch and Philo. Hypostases as different levels of reality, related to each other as causes and effects. Subsequent expanding of the term on everything, that somehow participates in an idea. Identity of “hypostasis” and “substance” (ousia). Meaning of the terms “anypostaton” and “parhupostaton”.
2) The system of immaterial hypostases in Plotinus. Has the One a hypostasis? Discussion of the corresponding fragments of the treatise VI 8 “On the will of the One”. Hypostasis as a manifestation and realization of the First Principle outside itself. Intellect, Soul and Cosmos as external activities of the One, coming into a separate existence. The One as transcending hypostasis. Intelligible being (idea) as hypostasis in the strict sense of the word.
3) Differentiation between substance and hypostasis in Christian theology of the 4th cent. AD. First traces of similar differentiation in Neoplatonism. Porphyry’s distinction between universal and divisible hypostases and the following approximation of them to Aristotle’s “second” and “first” essences respectively.
4) The term “Hypostasis” by Proclus. Definitive abandonment of the earlier identification of hypostasis and substance and ascribing ontological priority to hypostasis as compared with substance and essence. Henads and matter as having hypostases but exceeding the bounds of being. The possibility of ascribing hypostasis to the supraessential One.
5) Dionysius the Areopagite about the relationship between the divine Hypostases within the Holy Trinity. The Hypostases as ontologically prior to the common divine substance. God-Father as a source of divine essence in the Divine Names 645B. Discussion of the possible influence of the Christian theology on the change of the Hypostasis-concept in the late platonic tradition.
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