International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Rev. Demetrios Harper
University of Winchester, Winchester, United Kingdom;
[e-mail]
Moral Judgment in Maximus the Confessor
The point of departure for this paper will be an explication of Maximus the Confessor’s 
approach to moral judgment in light of the ancient tension between Stoic and Platonic/Aristotelian 
threads of thought regarding incontinence (
ἀκράτεια
) and the determination of the good. As both 
Lars Thunberg and Paul Blowers have noted, despite the ancient conflict, the representatives of the 
Greek Patristic Tradition and especially Maximus have liberally appropriated and deployed elements 
from both ancient schools of thought. In his essay “Aligning and Reorienting the Passible Self,” 
Blowers observes that Maximus and his patristic forbearers considered both the Stoic and Platonic/
Aristotelian approaches to the passions to be instructive, regarding them as both misjudgments of 
mind and diseases of the soul. This paper shall seek, on the one hand, to account for the way in which 
these sometimes incongruous elements are utilized by the Confessor, and on the other, examine the 
consequences of his approach for moral theory at large. Of critical importance will be the attempt 
to better understand how Maximus considers the determination of universal moral goods to be 
epistemically possible in the face of diverse human experience and natural circumstances, as well as 
the various levels of moral training. As such, this essay will attempt to derive a Maximian answer to 
Rousseau’s dilemma regarding the common good and the apparent human tendency to disregard it.
Rev. Nikolaos Loudovikos
University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece;
[e-mail]
Maximus and the Unconscious
In this paper I examine the possible meaning of the Maximian concept of “natural otherness” 
for a holistic ontology of human person, connecting it with a possible explanation of the notion of 
“consubstantiality” as the whole thing can be understood in the perspective of an ecclesial ontology 
of creation, on the one hand, and the concept of the “natural will”, on the other. In the light of the 
above conceptual tools I venture a theological understanding of the Unconscious as it is articulated
in modern Psychoanalysis.

---

46