Czystość serca a poznanie prawdy. Pseudo-Dionizy Areopagita i Św. Augustyn wobec filozoficznej nauki o czystości

Abstract

Conviction that a man needs to be purified to be able to see the universal truth appears Very early in ancient philosophy. In Pythagorean School this conviction was related to the teaching of reincarnation, taken from orphic tradition. The proper condition of the human soul is to exist without the body. The human being was understood as a soul which was forced to incarnate, by a superior being. The soul cannot see the universal truth because of me body which pollutes the soul with desires for material things. The philosophical and contemplative life (bios theoretikos) in Pythagorean School was then a life “for the soul” not “for a body” and it was the program of purifying the soul to make it able to contemplate the truth. This teaching was developed by Plato. He discovered the immaterial nature of the subjects of intellectual cognition which were the ideas or forms. The soul has an immaterial nature too so it can see the ideas clearly only when it is separated form the body. The program of philosophical life proposed by Plato was more radical. If the soul can see the truth only if separated from a body, philosophical life can be understood only as a preparation for death or exercises in dying (meditatio mortis). In Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism this way of understanding human nature and philosophical life was even more underlined. Plotin was ashamed of having a body. He never spoke about his earthly life and did not allow himself to have any image. Philosophical life needed a certain kind of ascetical training which was necessary to reach the unity with the One – neoplatonic God. The goal of this training of the soul was an independence from the body or even, in late neoplatonism, the destruction of the human body. Platonic tradition of philosophical life and the purity of the soul testify that there is something wrong with human nature. The natural state of the human being that we can observe is to be composed of a body and a soul but in this natural state the soul cannot act naturally and see the intellectual truth. All explanations of this fact are religious not philosophical, because the cause of the composition of the body and the soul must act before the earthly life of the human being. There must exist a superior being which forces the soul to live its more perfect state and came into the body. Reincarnation cannot be proved and it is rather a proposition of how to solve the problem and this is a proposition taken from pagan religious tradition. A proper explanation to this problem was given by the Fathers of the Church. The pagan religion does not have a conception of sin and grace. For Christian writers the impurity of the soul is not caused by the body but by the original sin and the purification is not the purification “from the body”, which can be made by human efforts. Only possible purification is a gift from God – a grace given by Jesus Christ, to those who have accepted the human nature with the soul and the body. We can clearly see the Christian answer to the platonic problem in a writing of two Christian writers: Pseudo Denys the Areopagite and St Augustine. They were drawn from platonic tradition but they have rejected platonic teaching of body as the cause of impurity the soul. Human nature is composed of body and soul and it is a natural state of the human being. Disorder between the body and the soul causes not only the difficulties in cognition of truth but also illness and death. This disorder can be fully removed only by resurrection of the body, which is a restoration of human nature to its proper state.