As a locus for the study of the self and individuality, the late ancient world has received an increasing amount of attention since the seminal work of Michel Foucault, Le souci de soi (1984). More recent stimulus for thought in this area has been supplied by R. Sorabji, Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life and Death (2006). In addition, since 2008, several relevant publications have appeared from an international multi-year research project, ‘Religious Individualization in Historical Perspective’, located at the Max Weber Centre at Erfurt. The volume under review, however, involves a different set of scholars and originated from a conference at Trinity College, Oxford in 2010. Situating their specific interest in individuality in Late Antiquity as part of a broader ‘genealogy of the modern self’, the editors begin by helpfully distinguishing the key terms: ‘The human self … is both defined by and in continuity with social, ethnic or religious groups and independent from them to varying extents. Asking about individuality, then, is looking at the self precisely insofar as it is the latter. It means asking for the self as non-identical with other members of its community’ (p. 5). The contributors approach this topic with studies focusing on several different late ancient contexts. Space permits only a brief summary of the essays.
The first chapter is C. Markschies' ‘Individuality in some Gnostic Authors, with a Few Remarks on the Interpretation of Ptolemy's Epistula ad Floram’. Examining Irenaeus' account of ‘Gnostic’ followers of Valentinus, Markschies explores notions of individuality in the protological and eschatological mythology current among Valentinians in late-second century Rome, concluding that they largely adapted a Platonic view that individuality existed ‘only as a short-lived momentum in the process of self-perception of the Divine and, upon its culmination, [dissolved] again into the higher unity of the one God’ (p. 17). This insight helps to clarify the somewhat ambiguous relationship between the saviour and the demiurge in Ptolemy's letter to Flora.
In Chapter 2, ‘Astrology and Freedom: The Case of Firmicus Maternus’, M. Edwards chronicles philosophical critiques of astrology from academic sceptics, Neoplatonists and Christians before turning to the defence of astrology in the Mathesis of Firmicus Maternus. The account highlights the problems associated with notions of divine providence, but the specific issue of individuality is not addressed, and the exact relevance of the chapter to the topic of the volume is not immediately clear. The editors propose a connection by stating that astrology ‘can be seen as a systematic attempt to align human existence precisely in its individual dimension to the eternal continuity of the celestial bodies’ (p. 6).
R. Chiaradonna, ‘Plotinus on Sensible Particulars and Individual Essences’, walks us through Plotinus' reflections on the traditional Platonic question of whether there exist ideas of particular things (especially of particular human beings). Through an exegesis of Enn. 5.7, Chiaradonna argues that Plotinus answers the question with regard to human beings ‘by assuming: (i) that there is an intelligible “part” of each human being (his/her highest “self”); (ii) that the overall structure of each empirical individual or person associated with this ineligible counterpart in the cycle of reincarnations should be traced back to the causal power of intelligible formative principles (the logoi)’ (p. 50). Whether this view extends beyond humans to all particulars is ambiguous and stands in some tension with the views laid out in Enn. 2.6.2.
J. Brumberg-Chaumont's ‘Logico-grammatical Reflections about Individuality in Antiquity’, highlights an intersection of the discourses of philosophy and grammar by focusing on the grammarians' understanding of the ‘peculiar quality’. After tracing the notion from its origin among ancient Stoics through Platonic and Peripatetic authors and Porphyry, Brumberg-Chaumont discusses theories of individuality in the grammarians Apollonius Dyscolus and Priscian. She concludes with a brief discussion of Boethius's notion of platonity (the idea that there is a unique ‘incommunicable property of Plato’), only to show that this platonity exists only for the sake of argument as a ‘function without content’ and ‘an empty shell’ (p. 89).
The next contribution, from one of the editors, Z., ‘Individuality and the Theological Debate about “Hypostasis”’, addresses the question of how exactly arguments about the nature of the Trinity affected late-antique conceptions of individuality. His answer is that the Cappodocian settlement of the Trinitarian debate did not itself have the influence in this area that some have claimed. Rather, the notion that the three divine persons shared a single substance but were distinct in their separate existence (hypostasis) set the stage for Christological debates that ultimately had greater impact on later thinking about individuality.
The other editor, T., discusses ‘Individuality and Identity-formation in Late Antique Monasticism’. Drawing on Greek monastic texts from the fourth to seventh centuries, T. highlights tensions between the monk as isolated ascetic individual and the monk as an ongoing (as least partially) communally formed self that is subject to transformation through interaction with scripture, obedience to authority and constant repentance. He further points out that monks had a wider impact within the Church: ‘monasticism provided a basis for the formation of Christian identity not only among its own adherents, but among an increasingly aware and attentive lay audience’ (p. 125).
In Chapter 7, Y. Papadogiannakis treats ‘Individuality and Resurrection in Some Late Antique Texts’. The writers of interest to Papadogiannakis are Pseudo-Justin (the author of Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos), Anastasios of Sinai and Pseudo-Athanasios (the author of Quaestiones ad ducem Antiochum). The genre of questions-and-answers provides a fruitful source for investigating how some late-antique Christians wrestled with the problems that resurrection of a pneumatikon body posed for the continuity of identity. Papadogiannakis asks us to ponder a fascinating question: in an age when the body was not something a person has (as in many modern conceptions) but something a person is, how does one understand individuality to function amidst the profound corporeal transformations implied in the concept of bodily resurrection?
Chapter 8, C. Erismann's ‘John Philoponus on Individuality and Particularity’, uses the notion of ontological particularism (nature makes particulars; perceived commonalities and universals are posterior) to trace a coherent continuity of thought from the early career of John of Philoponus (commentaries on Aristotle) to his later theological works. The upshot for the question of individuality is ‘the idea that the posteriority of the universal implies the priority of the individual. Far from being considered as a degraded version of a superior principle, the individual is taken to be the true and only reality’ (p. 156).
The book concludes with W. Gräb's ‘The Religious Constitution of Individuality: One Motif of Augustine's Confessions in Modern Intellectual History and Theology’. In broad strokes, Gräb traces a concept of ‘religious individuality’ across the centuries through the writings of Augustine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Ernst Troeltsch before finishing with a reading of Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Those with an interest in the history of individuality will find much to appreciate in these chapters, though some discussions of philosophical authors verge on the technical and will be challenging for those without a prior grounding in ancient philosophy.
