to bring forth, produce, or make to grow. Evidently, the early Hellenic thinkers conceived of ‘nature’ as a creative power rather than a material environment.49 Heidegger suggests that the Hellenic thinkers did not first experience physis in the natural processes, but in poetry and thought physis disclosed itself to them. Thus, ‘nature’ meant the totality of heaven and earth, animals and plants, humans, and even the gods. This wider meaning of physis comprises “what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway.” Therefore, although physis can be experienced in the processes of nature, such as birth and growth, it is not synonymous with these. Instead, physis indicates Being-itself, through which beings appear.50
Heidegger contends further that by translating physis into Latin as natura, which means ‘birth,’ the realm of nature became reduced to the world of biological phenomena. This Latin term is therefore said to represent the beginning of the alienation of Western thought on nature from its original essence in Hellenic philosophy.51 However, Plotinus recognized an etymological connection between the noun physis and the verb ephy; in other words, between ‘nature’ and ‘was born’ (Enneads VI, 8, 8).52 In the light thereof, we could say that natura is not limited to physis, but that it is embraced by the latter (which also reaches beyond the biological realm).
The traditional Indo-European understanding of Being has been perceptively sketched by Heidegger through an etymological analysis: (i) The oldest stem word in this regard is es, which becomes the noun asus in Sanskrit, meaning ‘life’ or ‘the living,’ and the verb forms esmi, esi, esti and asmi. To these terms are related the Greek eimi and einai (both meaning ‘to be’), and the corresponding Latin terms esum and esse. In this regard the Germanic verb ist is cognate to the Greek estin and the Latin est, meaning ‘it is.’ (ii) Another root is the Sanskrit bhu or bheu and related to the Greek phuō, which for Heidegger means “to emerge, to hold sway, to come to a stand from out of itself and to remain standing.” This is in turn cognate to the Greek terms physis (‘nature’) and phainesthai (‘to show itself’), so that nature is described by Heidegger as “that which emerges into the light, phuein, to illuminate, to shine forth and therefore to appear.” The German verbs bin and bist (‘am/are’) are also derived from this Sanskrit stem. (iii) Finally, the stem wes appears in the Sanskrit vasami and the Germanic wesan, meaning ‘to dwell, to abide, to sojourn,’ which in turn becomes the German verbs wesen and sein, ‘to be’ and ‘being.’ From these three stems, Heidegger concludes, one derives the “vividly definite meanings of living, emerging, and abiding”—i.e., the domain of Being.53
This ‘emergence and abiding of Being’ has been outlined by the South African philosopher Danie Goosen, building on the notion of theurgy (from the Greek theourgia, literally ‘divine-working’) as developed by the Neoplatonic thinkers Iamblichus and Proclus. In terms thereof, Reality expresses itself in and through the ‘actors of being’ serving as mediators between the infinity of being and the finitude of the world. These actors assume roles such as being and beings, esse and essentia, transcendent and immanent, other and self, giver and receiver, subject and object, sublime and beautiful, erōs and agapē, and substantive and accidental.54 Through this dynamic interaction between the One and the many, the cosmos obtains the character of a differentiated unity, or a many-in-One.
19. LSJ, 491, 507.
20. Marlow, “Hinduism and Buddhism,” 45.
21. Dreyer, Wysbegeerte, 44–45.
22. Quoted in Perry, Treasury, 26.
23. Plato founded the Academy in Athens that would function (intermittently) for over 900 years, thereby laying the foundations of the later Western university system. In his book Process and Reality (1929), the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead famously characterized the whole course of European philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato. However, despite his intellectual brilliance, Plato did not lay claim to originality. In his dialogues he builds on cosmological and metaphysical insights by a number of his Hellenic predecessors. What Plato achieved, among others, is to provide this metaphysical tradition with a thoroughgoing theistic foundation, thus affirming God as the beginning and the end of all things.
24. Wikipedia: Neti neti.
25. Perl, Theophany, 12; Dillon and Gerson, Neoplatonic Philosophy, 174.
26. Moore, Plotinus; Camus, Christian Metaphysics, 94.
27. Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 24.
28. Quoted in Schuon, Divine, 21.
29. Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary, 266.
30. Uzdavinys, Golden Chain, xii.
31. Oosthuizen, Plotinus, 83; LSJ, 743.
32. LSJ, 389, 777; Wheelock, Latin, 528.
33. Kalachanis et al., Theory of Big Bang, 36.
34. Perry, Treasury, 773–774.
35. Lossky, Mystical Theology, 108.
36. Wheeler, Latin, 528; Moran, Eriugena, 217–218.
37. Moran, Eriugena, 218.
38. Laos, Metaphysics, 194–195.
39. Berdyaev, Destiny of Man, 65–66.
40. OSB, 1244; Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 51.
41. LSJ, 442; Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 51–54.
42. Lossky, Mystical Theology, 92–93.
43.
