Before tackling the Christological dimension of passion/Passion in Maximus the Confessor († 662), the Monothelian quarrel and polemics with Sergius I and Pyrrhus I of Constantinople, the second hour examined the theses of Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea on pathos, passion, sin and evil, the "parhypostatic" existence of evil as a "parasite" on good. We have shown that, for the Cappadocian fathers, sin existed only in the will, as a tendency to evil, and had a name only as the absence of good. For Gregory of Nyssa, sin has no positive definition; it is defined by a double negation: it is "absence ofapatheia ", "absence of absence of passions". The word "passion" itself has two meanings: 1) the proper sense: that which is contrary to virtue; 2) the "catachretic" sense: the properties of human nature, which are in themselves neither good nor bad, and have their source in "natural life". In assuming human nature, Christ assumed only the passions in the catachretic sense of the term. We then analyzed Basil of Caesarea's letter 261 on the three kinds of affections: a) of the flesh, b) of animated flesh, c) of the soul using a body (the "vicious affections", not assumed by Christ), which was an opportunity to re-examine the notion of "user of will and action" in John of Damascus († 749), and the theses of Michel Foucault, commentator onAlcibiades, on usage (" khrêsis ").
18:00 - 19:00
