Werner Beierwaltes Chair in Neoplatonism

Brief Portrait of Werner Beierwaltes and His Work

The study of the history of philosophy can be conceived as the task of an antiquarian. Just as one studies a museum piece, texts separated from us by several centuries are reread. Another possibility is to disregard their context and simply focus on the arguments, provided that we can qualify them as rational and capable of generating debate with contemporary philosophy. Without diminishing these perspectives, there is a way of turning the study of the history of philosophy into a philosophical question framed within a context of discussion. This approach seeks a critical and productive appropriation of a thought from another time, offering, moreover, something to think about. In this sense, doing the history of philosophy is doing a type of philosophy in which thought knows itself in time and recognizes itself in the becoming of concepts that adopt new forms. Werner Beierwaltes (1931–2019) enriched the perspective of dozens of historians of philosophy by granting us the audacity to philosophize. The vitality emerging from his texts reveals the pulse of a philosopher who carries out his task by approaching the philosophical tradition through notions understood from a historical point of view. The One, the multiple, relational unity, identity, difference, alterity, dialectic, negation, anagogy are rethought within the framework of reconstructing a philosophical tradition: the Platonic tradition. The chosen path does not focus on presenting thinkers and their periods but rather on the history of concepts. This hermeneutical praxis concerning concepts, which at times does not avoid reference to the Gadamerian notion of horizon, is, for Beierwaltes, philosophy itself.

His first work, produced as a doctoral dissertation in the 1950s, already bears this imprint: a concept, Lux intelligibilis, and a perspective in its subtitle: Untersuchungen zur Lichtmetaphysik der Griechen, investigations demonstrating that among the Greeks what he called a “metaphysics of light” was constituted¹. From then on, significant monographic studies, all thesis-driven, reveal the distinctive mark of his work: presenting a continuity that begins with Plato and reaches, first though not last, his late-antique followers, the so-called “Neoplatonists.” To them he devoted two foundational studies: Proklos. Grundzüge seiner Metaphysik (Frankfurt, 1965), and Plotin. Über Ewigkeit und Zeit (Enneade III 7). Übersetzt, eingeleitet und kommentiert (Frankfurt, 1967). Yet the strength of Beierwaltes’ thought lies precisely in not ending the history of Platonism with Neoplatonism and the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian in 529, but in constructing a Platonism extended and transformed up to the dawn of contemporary thought and beyond. His perspective is not chronological but conceptual. This remarkably powerful thesis finds its first formulation in the foundational Platonismus und Idealismus (Frankfurt, 1972). In this text, he presents both philosophical traditions in continuity, showing that their link would not have been possible without the redefinitions of Christian Platonism by authors such as Augustine of Hippo or Meister Eckhart. Many works followed, some comprehensive, others devoted to particular authors. The list of articles, chapters, books, and translations exceeds one hundred texts. I will limit myself to mentioning those that, in my view, illustrate the spirit animating his entire work. In this paradigmatic list, Identität und Differenz. Zum Prinzip cusanischen Denkens (Frankfurt, 1980) cannot be omitted. The subtitle might mislead us into thinking it concerns only Nicholas of Cusa; however, it is a monumental work in which Beierwaltes reconstructs the history of the concepts of identity and difference from their Greek expressions in Plato, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite; their continuity in the late-antique Latin world (Marius Victorinus and Augustine); in the late Middle Ages (Meister Eckhart); at the hinge between two eras (Cusanus and Giordano Bruno); their transformation in Schelling and Hegel; culminating with identity as negative distinction in Adorno. Nor can one overlook a kind of final chapter or appendix in which Beierwaltes offers a sharp critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of Western metaphysics as the forgetting of Being. The very title evokes Heidegger, yet now it is Beierwaltes who denounces the Heideggerian forgetting: that of the late-antique and medieval Neoplatonic tradition. His examples range from the Plotinian One, considered beyond being, to the Cusan notions of the absolute as idem, non aliud, and possest, concepts that, far from concealing being behind an entity, understand it in its purity as principle, means, and end of every entitative possibility. This masterpiece is complemented by equally fundamental texts focusing specifically on authors within this tradition, always from the perspective of the history of Platonism: again two texts on Nicholas of Cusa (Visio absoluta…, 1978; Visio facialis…, 1988); on Marsilio Ficino (Marsilio Ficinos Theorie des Schönen im Kontext des Platonismus, 1980); on Augustine of Hippo (Regio beatitudinis…, 1981); and later his indispensable monograph on John Scottus Eriugena (Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens, Frankfurt, 1994).

A third comprehensive work concerns what is perhaps the fundamental concept structuring his thought, the One: Denken des Einen. Studien zum Neuplatonismus und dessen Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1985). The so-called Wirkungsgeschichte, that is, the history of effects or influence of Neoplatonism, extends into the twentieth century. Once again, a concept understood across various horizons: the “one” as the key to the relation between identity and difference, insofar as it is first thought in relation to the multiple. According to Beierwaltes, we owe to Plato and his dialogue Parmenides the possibility of thinking the One without relation or difference; and to its Neoplatonic developments a new possibility: thinking difference as the unfolding of the One, and thinking the One itself not only above all but also “within us.” These ideas are revisited in medieval and Renaissance Christian thinkers: Dionysius, Boethius, Eriugena, the School of Chartres, Bonaventure, Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Giordano Bruno. The book closes with a reflection on the Neoplatonic tradition and its contemporary relevance, referring to major twentieth-century philosophers and problems: Adorno and Heidegger reappear, alongside Peirce, Whitehead, Camus, Sartre, philosophy of art, and contemporary dogmatism.

Certainly, these works demonstrate that Beierwaltes understood that Platonism could not have extended in this way without the transformation or transmutation Christianity provided. This is the perspective of Platonismus im Christentum (Frankfurt, 1998), written at the request of Giovanni Reale, who edited almost all his works in Italian. This study emerges in critical dialogue with Endre von Ivánka’s Plato Christianus. Beierwaltes’ thesis shows that the issue is not Christianizing Plato or creating something called “Christian Platonism,” but rather evaluating the presence of Platonism in those Christian thinkers who constructed a true “philosophical theology.” Thus philosophy and theology are not presented as opposing forces but as two movements sharing a single object: the absolute. The Christian theological operation that redefines the One-God in relational and dynamic terms—making it triune—is carried out within the horizon of philosophy. Platonism in Christianity is also philosophy in theology and theology in philosophy as a self-nourishing hermeneutical circle.

Two final books deserve mention: Fussnoten zu Plato (Frankfurt, 2011) and Catena Aurea. Plotin, Augustinus, Eriugena, Thomas, Cusanus (Frankfurt, 2017). Both titles encapsulate the meaning of his entire production.

In the introduction to Fussnoten zu Plato, Beierwaltes evokes Whitehead’s dictum that European philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. Though this must be nuanced—and he himself acknowledges other traditions such as Aristotelianism and Stoicism—he finds in this dictum justification for his path. He writes:

“‘In many of my books and essays, I have addressed the richness of perspectives in the history of the influence (Wirkungsgeschichte) of Platonic thought… The “footnotes” do not disappear; they are mentioned, as it were, beneath the text; they are more like “dwarfs seated or standing on the shoulders of giants”: smaller, yet seeing farther, grasping and understanding—each differently—the original thought…’”²

These words apply not only to the thinkers he studied but also to his own philosophy as part of that golden chain.

It should be added that Beierwaltes’ academic career developed at the Universities of Würzburg, Münster, Freiburg, and Munich. In 1996 he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Ioannina (Greece). His works were translated into several languages. In Spanish, two texts are available: Cusanus. Reflexión metafísica y Espiritualidad (Pamplona, 2005) and Eriúgena. Rasgos fundamentales de su pensamiento (Pamplona, 2009).

Finally, I had the opportunity to hear Beierwaltes at several Cusanus-Gesellschaft congresses. His erudition and wisdom were matched by his kindness and generosity toward young scholars. He was also an excellent musician who found in art a path toward the absolute.

Claudia D’Amico

PhD in Philosophy; Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of La Plata; Principal Researcher, CONICET, Argentina.

—

¹ I will not address its content here, as Dr. Enrico Peroli will develop it in the specific Introduction to this book.
² W. Beierwaltes, Fussnoten zu Plato, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 2011, Vorbemerkung, pp. VIII–IX (own translation).
³ Cf. G. Reale, “Introduzione” in Pensare l’ Uno, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1991, p. 20.