Transformation of the ancient philosophical concepts νοῦς and πνεῦμα in the early period of hellenistic era: idealization, convergence, ethization and theologization

Abstract

In written form, the term νοῦς (in its morphological form νόος) is first found in the Homeric epic, while πνεῦμα appears in Aeschylus (in particular, πνεῦμα βίου, «breath of life»). From the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, Greek philosophers filled the literary and epic concepts of νοῦς and πνεῦμα with ontological and philosophical-psychological meanings. There is a transition from the archaic and immanentalist concepts of νοῦς and πνεῦμα to meanings that denote the «presence» of the eternal «rational» divine principle in man (in the case of νοῦς, also the transcendent). The purpose of the study is to analyze the changes in perception and interpretation of the concepts of νοῦς/λόγος and πνεῦμα (i.e. mind/mind and spirit) in Hellenistic philosophy, as well as to evaluate the synergetic effect of the intertwining of the ideas of Greek Stoicism and Hellenistic Judaism in the period from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD, manifested by the end of the period under review in the form of convergence the meanings of Vοῦς/λόγος and πνεῦμα (i.e. mind/mind and spirit) in parallel with their dematerialization. In the study, based on a historical and categorical analysis, it is shown that from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD in the environment of Greek Stoicism and Hellenistic Judaism, firstly, the concepts of νοῦς (λόγος in case of Philo) and πνεῦμα continue to transform to-wards their dematerialization and idealization/transcendentalization (with the exception of the early Stoicism of Zeno and Chrysippus) with the simultaneous convergence of their semantic fields; secondly, in this period these concepts are being filled with the ethical and theological meanings; thirdly, in the tradition of Posidonius–Philo, the entities denoted by the concepts νοῦς/λόγος and πνεῦμα, in fact (but not always in form) are combined into a single dihedral entity, which can be called «πνεῦμα-νοῦς» (respectively, «πνεῦμα νοερὸν» by Posidonius and «πνεῦμα θεῖον» according to Philo).