Numenius of Apamea

Numenius of Apamea ( Apamea ) was a Greek philosopher ( Platonist ). He came from Apamea in the Roman province of Syria and lived around the middle of the 2nd century. Otherwise, his life almost nothing is known. Apparently he lived and taught in his hometown.

Works

The seven works of Numenius, whose title we know, all is lost; obtained are only fragments. The main work, a dialog was over the good. The other titles were: On the turning away of the academics of Plato, about the immortality of the soul, via the Plato unsaid, over the ground, over the numbers and the hoopoe. From the contents of the latter three works is not known.

Teaching

Numenius is committed to the view that there had been an original uniform wisdom teaching that was known to the Greeks as well as among other peoples ( Indians, Egyptians, Persians and Jews ). A variant of this later spread at Neoplatonists and Neupythagoreern idea had already Aristobulus and Philo of Alexandria represented, accepted the influence of Greek philosophy through the Pentateuch. Numenius said that the original true philosophy was taught by Pythagoras and Plato, but were later philosophers deviated from. Therefore, one should return to the original teachings of Plato, as is clear from his writings. Among the heresies Numenios one in particular those of the Peripatetics, the Stoics and the outgoing direction of Arcesilaus skeptical of academics.

Numenios takes three gods ( or otherwise considered three aspects of the Godhead ) to. The first, the supreme god, which he equates with the good as such, he introduces himself as being only and not acting, quite far from the matter, simple and unmoved. Subordinate to him, is the second, the creator god ( demiurge ) who brings forth by the contemplation of God first, the idea of the cosmos. He is good by participation in the good; therefore he is not the good itself, but the good God. In contrast to the first God he is moved; to him becoming due on the first God Being. By the Demiurge about the idea of ​​addition also generates the sensible world, assigns and directs, that is tampering with the matter, it appears as a third God. But that does not mean a temporal beginning of the world; Creation is a beginningless process. The matter considered Numenios as pre-existent, not created, but eternal. For him it is the source of all evil. Because of their defectiveness opposes the matter of ordering divine power, but is still influenced and uplifted by it, and even receives beauty. This means that their wickedness is, however, not fixed. Thus, the philosophy of Numenius proves to be dualistic. He sees in matter an independent principle, which can not be ultimately attributed to the deity, but as original as this.

Because of their self-movement, he wrote the matter to even own soul, which he considers to be evil; it gives matter its active force. An evil soul is for him not in the sense of an interpretation of evil as a lack of something nonexistent, but a real substance. It is immortal and that creates the evil soul area in man, which is additional accidental from outside to good to be single soul, if this goes into the material world. The descent of the human soul in the material world considered Numenios basically as a misfortune.

A key priority for Numenios sets apart with Plato's dialogue Timaeus. The there told Atlantis myth, which he considers to be a poetic fiction without historical background, he interprets allegorically; the struggle of the Ur - Athens against the inhabitants of the mythical kingdom of Atlantis symbolizes for him the confrontation between the crowd of better souls under the guidance of the goddess Athena, the representative of reason, and the numerically superior group of poorer souls who in the world indulge the senses and the impermanence and constant change and are subject to the sea god Poseidon.

From correspondence between views of Numenius and teachings of Plato student Xenocrates Hans Joachim Krämer has derived the hypothesis of an influence.

Aftereffect

The writings of Numenius influenced the Neo-Platonism. The famous thinker Plotinus, the Neoplatonist philosophers in Rome ran a school in the 3rd century, treated in the classroom works of the Syrian Mittelplatonikers, as his pupil Porphyry reported. Plotinus sat so concentrated on the writings of Numenius apart that philosophers in Greece accused him of plagiarizing them. Countering this allegation wrote Amelio, a pupil of Plotinus and excellent knowledge of the teachings of Numenius, a treatise On the difference between the teachings of Plotinus and Numenius, which is not obtained. A major difference is that Plotinus unlike Numenios held the evil is not for real, but for a mere deficiency.

The works About the Good and About averting the academics of Plato have been used by the church father Eusebius of Caesarea, which is why the majority of the resulting fragments is due to Numenius. The Christians were interested in the doctrine of the three gods or aspects of divinity, since this tripling of the first principle could be brought in connection with the doctrine of the Trinity. Also Numenius ' positive rating of the Jewish tradition - he compared Plato with Moses - they paid attention.

Text output

• Édouard des Places (ed.): Numenius: Fragments. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1973 ( Greek and Latin texts with French translation )