Alfonso Ganem
Promovierende/-r - Kohorte 1
1 - 2023
Lateinische und mittelalterliche Philosophie
Forschungsprojekt
My doctoral research, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Mathias Perkams, aims to study Philoponus' use of logic and mereology in his philosophical, polemical and Christological texts. In particular, I am interested in exploring how Philoponus adapted these tools of analysis to elaborate a novel miaphysite Christology against the diophysite Christology of the Chalcedonians. In these texts, Philoponus incorporates many philosophical arguments into the theological debates of his time and also demonstrates new applications of his criticisms of Neoplatonic philosophy.
Although the theology of Philoponus has attracted increasing interest in various scholarly circles, it has not been sufficiently studied in contemporary scholarship. I hope that my doctoral research will shed some light on the role of Philoponus' Christological treatises within the rest of his philosophy and his disruptive criticism against Aristotle and Proclus.
Curriculum Vitae
My research on Arabic philosophy led me to Syriac philosophy. Syriac Christians had previously translated and cultivated Greek philosophy and served as an important link between Late Antiquity and Islamic culture. Through the process of Greek-Syriac translation, many works, now lost in their original Greek, are preserved in this Semitic language. This is the case with the Christological and theological treatises of John Philoponus, the author and texts I am now working on as part of my PhD.