In his esteemed philosophical treatise Dialectica, John of Damascus (7th–8th century) reiterates the Aristotelian contention that logic constitutes merely an instrument (organon) of philosophy, rather than a philosophical discipline in its own right. By contrast, in his Encomium to St Gregory the Theologian, composed in the latter half of the ninth century, Nicetas David of Paphlagonia asserts that logic occupies a central position within the philosophical enterprise. This revaluation of logic’s epistemological status emerges as a commonplace within the intellectual milieu of late ninth-century Byzantium. What accounts for this paradigmatic shift in the conceptualisation of logic? How might it be situated within the broader trajectory of early Byzantine logical inquiry? Furthermore, to what extent can this transformation be attributed to the influence of extra-Byzantine traditions of logical education—particularly those cultivated in Armenian, Syriac, and Arabic intellectual contexts? Additionally, how did theological polemics with Manichaeans, Miaphysites, and Muslims shape or recalibrate the study and application of logic within Byzantine thought? This round table seeks to address these questions by exploring the development of logic from Late Antiquity through the early Byzantine period. Contributors will examine diverse dimensions of the multifaceted and hitherto underexplored logical discourse of early Byzantium. Particular attention will be given to the reception and adaptation of Late Antique logical models, as well as to emerging indications that logic had begun to assume novel methodological functions within philosophical and theological frameworks. Drawing upon intertextual analysis, the discussion will also outline the contours of a prospective research agenda dedicated to the study of early Byzantine logic.
We know about Gregory Palamas’ interest in logic during the years of his study in Constantinople from the biographical book of Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos. Later, already as a monk, he began his debate with Barlaam first on the question of the applicability of apodictic syllogism in theology, and we have the correspondence between the two…
My paper revisits the transmission and reshaping of the short (brevior) and long (fusior) Greek recensions of John of Damascus’s Dialectica in Arabic Christianity. Starting with the eleventh-century Antiochene translation attributed to Antonios Abbot of Saint Simeon, we demonstrate that the Arabic Philosophical Chapters primarily reflect the brevior while maintaining a distinctive 53-chapter structure. We…
One persistent ambiguity in post-Chalcedonian Christology concerns the ontological status of Christ’s human nature: is it a singular entity akin to that of other human beings, or does it constitute a common essence? To examine this question, Photius and Nicetas of Byzantium—both active during the ninth century—propose a novel logical framework. Their model centres on…
In this paper, I will trace the development of anti-Manichaean polemics around the Mediterranean as influenced by the development of logic in Byzantium and its various receptions in Armenian, Arabic and Syriac traditions in the 8th to 9th centuries.