Kathleen Gibbons, PhD Religious Studies, University of Toronto
'Evagrius, Memory, and Interiority'
Among the topics considered by Stephen Mitchell in A History of the Later Roman Empire are the Roman world’s transition into Christianity and the political and cultural dynamics of the formation of Christian identity. Yet the role of philosophy, a major feature of this transition, is left untreated. The developments within the philosophical tradition of the later Greco-Roman world were an important locus for ancient Christian self-definition. Yet when historians of ancient philosophy have considered how the philosophical tradition of the Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic period shifted from one most closely in conversation with pagan religions to one more heavily influenced by Christianity, they have tended to limit their studies to the transition from Plotinus to Augustine. As a result, the transformation of Greco-Roman philosophy by Christian philosophers prior to Augustine remains comparative underappreciated.
Evagrius of Pontus is one example of a Christian philosopher whose thought represents a significant moment in the development of concepts of subjectivity in late antiquity. His discussions of the role of memory in moral progress offer a particularly salient occasion for considering how Christian reinterpretations of classical philosophical concepts contributed to Western theories of the self. While Evagrius inherited an understanding of the significance of memory from Plato and Aristotle, the influence of his monastic environment contributed to the emergence of a notion of self-consciousness in his writings – an idea that is at best implicit in his major philosophical sources. In considering how Evagrius transforms the classical concept of memory, I will suggest that his thought illustrates how the Greek patristic philosophers explored alternative theories of volition.