2002/2003

Aesthetics and Cognition

Humanities

Principal investigators

Jostein Børtnes

Professor
University of Bergen (UiB)
Year at CAS
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Tomas Hägg

Professor Em.
University of Bergen (UiB)
Year at CAS

Abstract

The aim of the project was to study the development of a specific anthropology and aesthetic within Christian Orthodox theology. The project was centred on the Cappadocian Church Fathers (4th century AD), in particular Gregory of Nazianzus, and their impact on subsequent Byzantine theologians, such as Dionysios the Areopagite (ca. AD 500) and Maximus the Confessor (7th century AD).

Cappadocian anthropology represented something new: it was based on the mystery of the Incarnation and on the theology of the Trinity as it was worked out by the Cappadocians. A central concern of the project was the role of the Cappadocians for Byzantine aesthetics and the theology of the icon, an aspect of Orthodox tradition that sets it apart form Judaism and Islam as well as from Western theology. The Orthodox doctrine of the deification of man has left deep traces in the anthropology of all Orthodox peoples, not least in Russia; in the novels of Dostoevsky and Pasternak, for instance, this idea still determines the representation of the characters. By studying key texts of these leading Greek thinkers, the project set out to illuminate the relationship between anthropology and aesthetics in the early Orthodox tradition. For this purpose, we brought together an international group of experts on various aspects of the period from the mid-fourth to the mid-seventh century AD: history, literature, philosophy, and theology. Each of us singled out for study a limited set of Greek texts central to our aims - with the three Cappadocians as the key authors - and worked intensively with these texts, both individually and in interaction with the other members of the group, studying the constitutive concepts and their background and development. Our work was thus first and foremost based on the study of texts. Our stated ambition was not to arrive at a totally new and comprehensive picture of this creative phase in the history of Orthodox theology, but rather to amplify, differentiate, and put into perspective the picture outlined briefly above.

Fellows

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Andrew Louth

Professor
University of Durham
Year at CAS
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Hugo Jesias Carl Montgomery

Professor Em.
University of Oslo (UiO)
Year at CAS
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Edgars Narkevics

Lecturer
University of Latvia
Year at CAS
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Frederik W. Norris

Professor
Emmanuel School of Religion
Year at CAS

Eustratios Papaioannou

Assistant Professor
Brown University
Year at CAS
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Philip Henry Rousseau

Professor
Catholic University of America
Year at CAS

Samuel Rubenson

Professor
Lund University
Year at CAS

Torstein Theodor Tollefsen

Associate Professor
University of Oslo (UiO)
Year at CAS