Thought

Apart from few theological orations, the majority of Choumnos’ writings concern rhetoric and philosophy. Of his nine philosophical treatises, one has to do with ontology and metaphysics (That Matter Does Not Preexist Bodies, and That Forms Do Not Exist Separately, But

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They Both Coexist), one with anthropology (On the Soul, Against Plotinus), one with psychology and epistemology (On the Nutritive and Sensitive Soul and Their Activities), and six with natural philosophy and cosmology (On the World and Its Nature; On the Primary and Simple Bodies; That the Earth Stands at the Middle of the Universe and That Nothing Lies Beneath It, Since All Other Things Stand Above It; That It Is Not at All Impossible, Even According to the Natural Order, That Some Water Was Placed Separately Above the Firmament, Still Remains There and Will Remain There Forever; On the Air, Why, in Spite of Its Being by Nature Warm, It Gets Cold When Blowing; Further, on the Generation of Hail, and on the Nature of the Winds and Their Oblique Blowing and Movement).

Choumnos’ treatment of the nature of the ‘‘universals’’ places him in the minority of the Byzantine thinkers who took an anti-“realist’’ (not only anti-Platonic but also anti-Aristotelian) stand. Probably elaborating some ideas from Plotinus’ Ennead II,1,1-2, he states that a ‘‘universal,’’ for example, man, exists in the realm of sensibles only inasmuch as (and as long as) it is instantiated by particular men, that is not in virtue of its being an eternal entity (‘‘being’’) reflected on the sensibles, but in virtue of the ‘‘generation’’ of the sensibles, which renders the ‘‘universal’’ not eternal but just perpetual. He thinks that Plato’s doctrine that the sensible and mutable things were made after some intelligible and unchangeable patterns collapses in view of the very fact that the copy is so radically different from the original. In other words, he rejects the Platonic doctrine of the relation between time and eternity. He also implicitly rejects Aristotle’s immanent ‘‘forms’’ by stating that a ‘‘form’’ is just the result of a conception (‘‘epinenoemenon’’) of some similarities noticed in the world. He attributes the power of the “particulars” to reproduce themselves to God’s will; this, though sounding as a Christian idea, roots also in a similar doctrine of Plotinus (Ennead II.1, 2-3; 7), according to whom the natural world cannot be explained in purely natural terms. Still, Choumnos’ position is not extremely nominalistic since he stresses that the similarity between the individuals of a certain species is not imposed by our mind on the particulars, but is real. Choumnos’ position looks, therefore, as an attack on metaphysics as a way of explaining the structure of the world.

Choumnos also rejects what he explicitly recognizes as the anthropological implication of the Platonic theory of ideas, that is, the preexistence of the human soul. Whereas he praises Plato’s and Plotinus’ description of the human soul as immaterial, simple, and immortal, he objects that this does not entail eternal preexistence and he refutes especially Plotinus’ arguments for that. He also tries to ridicule a corollary of this doctrine, namely, the transmigration of the souls, his main argument being that transmigration clashes with the rationality of the human soul as well as with the order of the created beings. Many of his arguments on this topic derive from Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogus de anima et resurrectione. Although he explicitly states that he combats Platonic anthropology because of its being anti-Christian, he argues not ex auctoritate but philosophically.

In the first and second Treatise, Choumnos lays down some thoughts on the way one should philosophise in his age. Turning what the Sceptics called rather negatively dissensio philosophorum and ‘‘perpetual seeking after truth’’ into a positive starting point, he states that there is still room for progress in philosophy; for it is false that the oldest an idea is, the closest to the truth it lies. He warns, however, that critically treating the doctrines of one’s predecessors must not spring out of a contentious spirit but should be carried out soberly and on purely rational grounds. This looks like an implicit adoption of some Neoplatonists’ critique of Aristotle’s anti-Platonism as the result of his arrogance. With regard to his subject matter, he states that bodies have by nature both a temporal and a natural ‘‘limit,’’ that is, on the one hand, a temporal beginning and an end, and on the other, some ultimate constituents or ‘‘principles.’’ Stressing that the heaven, too, is a body he argues, on Plotinian grounds, against Aristotle’s doctrine of the ‘‘quintessence’’ or ‘‘aether’’ and states that the ‘‘principles’’ both of the sublunar and of the superlunar world are the four primary qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist), which are perpetually and multifariously combined to produce the four natural elements (air, earth, water, and fire). He argues that the hypothesis of ‘‘quintessence’’ contradicts Aristotle’s doctrine of ‘‘natural places’’ as well as his doctrine of the various kinds of locomotion. As for the nature of heaven, he adheres to Plotinus’ view that it consists of ‘‘fire,’’ whose essence is ‘‘light,’’ which, if existing in itself (not in any other ‘‘subject’’), does not cause combustion. The cause ofthe existence as well as of the nature and the order of the world is the ‘‘will of God,’’ who lies beyond time, change, and limit.

In the third Treatise, he argues that the world is not the result of an automatic process or of chance but was created by God, whose will and wisdom arranged matters so that the earth be placed at the center and surrounded by air, water, and fire. This can be shown by means of carefully using both one’s senses and reasoning. Contrary to the world, however, the nature, essence, and power of its Creator are incomprehensible.

In the seventh Treatise, Choumnos defends the traditional doctrine of Christian cosmology (Gen. 1,7) that there is some “water above the firmament,’’ which he describes as ‘‘extremely thin.’’

In the eighth and ninth Treatises, Choumnos offers a tentative solution for one of the problems posed by Aristotle (Problems 945b8-34), that is, the air is getting cold in spite of one of its natural qualities, i. e., warmness. To him, air does not really turn into a cold element; air, when blown, goes away, and leaves its place to the water with which it is always mixed, which is by nature cold. He stresses that this explanation goes against the traditional views and that it should be judged impartially, that is, on the basis not of this or that old ‘‘authority’’ but of ‘‘reason’’ alone.

In the sixth Treatise, Choumnos treats of the two constitutional faculties of the living beings, that is, the nutritive and the sensitive, as well as with the higher cognitive ones (representative faculty or imagination; ‘‘common sense’’; reason; intellect), emphasis laid on the sensitive, which Choumnos deems as inadequately treated by Aristotle. In the course of his lengthy exposition of the function of the five senses, he tries to elaborate a theory of vision standing midway between this of Plato and that of Aristotle. Each cognitive faculty, to make his contribution to knowledge properly, stands in need of its superior. The highest of them, that is, the intellect, which is divine in nature, is the only infallible one; it can function only when the remaining faculties rest, in which case man enjoys full happiness.

Choumnos’ claims for originality should be tested against his sources, which have not as yet been adequately explored. His writings must be reedited.

See also: > Metaphysics, Byzantine > Philosophy, Byzantine > Theodore Metochites