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Nevena Dimitrova
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Art Studies, Sofia, Bulgaria;
nevenaddimitrova@gmail.com
Desire and Practical Part of the Soul According to Maximus the Confessor
Maximus transforms the opposition between the practical and theoretical (πρακτικός and
θεωρητικός) spheres that Plato and Aristotle introduced. According to Aristotle, the practical
and theoretical minds have different goals:
In contemplative reasoning, “the good state” is truth,
whereas in practical reasoning, it is “truth in agreement with right desire.” This means that desire
is decisive for— is at the very core of—practical knowledge. In Aristotle’s assessment, ct, it differs
from theoretical knowledge. Maximus also distinguishes these two realms, and even links practical
reasoning to inclination and desire—despite the fact that he unites the soul’s practical and theoretical
activities in a unified process of moving toward knowledge of God.
Practical reasoning provides us with reasons to desire and choose. Therefore, it is significant
that practical wisdom presupposes not only the
ability to reason correctly, but also the capacity
to reason correctly with a view to the right end. Thus, it presupposes the ability to truly envision
the end. Desire spurs the soul’s motion within the context of the telos. Thus, all practical activity
exists within the framework of the general principle that is known as the Logos. As Paul Blowers
asserts, the rational and conceptual knowledge of God in Maximus feeds desire (έφεσης), which
in turn motivates the urge toward a higher, experiential and participative knowledge of God in
deification. At this level, in concert with faith and hope, love (ἀγάπη),
as the ultimate theological
virtue, prepares the mind to become sublimely immovable in God’s loving affection, affixing the
mind’s entire faculty of longing to the desire for God.
The distinction between merely having knowledge and experiencing knowledge represents
the difference between potentiality and actuality, or in other words, between having a capacity and
exercising that capability. Thus, Aristotle’s theory of practical and theoretical knowledge maintains
that these modes of knowing are an acquired capability, or habit (hexis).
Theoretical knowledge is
the capacity to disclose truth, while practical knowledge is the capacity to act. Furthermore, for
Aristotle, “philosophic wisdom” is a capacity for contemplation, and practical wisdom involves
reasoning and acting according to whether something is good or evil.
Mind (νοῦς) and reason (λόγος) are two different motions by which the soul moves toward
knowledge, but they are connected insofar as reason is perceived to be the source of the mind’s energy
and activity. Reason is the energy, actuality, and occurrence of the mind. Unlike irrational beings,
creatures who are endowed with reason can consciously know and participate in God. Thus,
knowledge
of God leads rational creatures to experience conscious ekstasis in God, while irrational beings act
instinctively. Moreover, reason is a characteristic by means of which rational creatures are able to
assess and define existing things and the reality in which they exist. Reason (λόγος) signifies both the
sum of things and the logical order of the relationship between them. This definition demonstrates the
influence that the Greek tradition had on Maximus. In the biblical sense of revelation, logos is a way of
knowing God.
In Greek thought, the word “logos” is used to refer to the human capacity to order the
things that the senses perceive. However, these two aspects of the Logos constitute a single unity since
human beings are connected to the whole of creation through the senses in the Greek understanding,
while the Logos is related to the transcendent dimension in the biblical sense.
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Reason (λόγος) is usually considered in relation to the mind (νοῦς). Prudence is reason’s
potency (δύναμις). Reason’s habit, or state (ἕξις), is praxis and action, and its energy is virtue. The
last stage of reason’s movement is faith, which Maximus describes as “the inward and unchangeable
concretization of prudence, action, and virtue (i.e., of potency, habit, and act)…. Its final term is
the good, where,
ceasing its movement, the reason rests. It is God, precisely, who is the good at
which ever potency of every reason is meant to end.” Once again, this citation shows that reason’s
various qualities are successive stages through which human beings arrive at perfect knowledge
of true being. This process should be regarded as a sequential expansion of the spectrum of that
which can be known and as evidence of the dynamic progress that may characterize the path of
knowledge which leads human beings toward God. Every quality introduces reason to new aspects
of the revealed reality.
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