Nogovitsin O.N. Synonymy and homonymy in the concept of being: the ontological doctrine of George Gemistus Plethon. In: Byzantium, Europe, Russia: social practices and the interconnection of spiritual traditions. Collection of scientific articles. Iss. 4 ...

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Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the dialectical relationship between the synonymous and homonymous concept of being in the philosophy of George Gemistus Plethon (c. 1360–1452). The study is based on the material of his treatises “Wherein Aristotle disagrees with Plato” (“De Differentiis”) (1439) and “Against the Writing of Scholarios in Defense of Aristotle” (between 1449 and 1452), which was written in response to the objections of George Scholarios (the future Patriarch of Constantinople Gennadius II) to the first of them. In these treatises, Plethon offers his own version of the Platonic solution to the most important philosophical problem about the unity of the concept of being. Plethon considers this key ontological problem on the basis of the difference between Aristotle’s position, who affirmed the being to be spoken out as a predicate in homonymic way (in different senses) and Plato’s view, whom Plethon reckons as the core supporter of the thesis on the unity of being, that the being is spoken out as a predicate in synonymic way (in a single sense). For Plethon, such synonymy appears a consequence of creationist directive that God is a creator of all entities, thus the order of creation in its categorical ligaments contains principal unity of what is regularized within the design of all the created whole of parts. On the contrary, Aristotle proceeds from the concept of God as a principle of arranging the multitude of entities that are independent in their private being. And though he admits the synonymy in the case of determination by genera and species, i. e. under the category of “substance”, in the thought of Plethon, he does it only on an occasional basis. The Plethon’s own discourse is set on an attempt to criticize Aristotle by the conceptual means of the very Aristotle’s doctrine. This is determined by the scholarly tradition of Neo-Platonist comments on Aristotle which has prevailed in the philosophical school of Plethon. However, he does not accommodate the Aristotle’s notions to Plato’s teaching. He rather provides in his treatise a specimen of how to originally treat the conceptual content of some of them, which allows Plethon to apply these concepts in polemics with Aristotle himself and the medieval peripatetic tradition.