Fragility in the Encounter with the Divine: from Plato to Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine

This paper investigates the epistemic fragility in different renderings of the ascension to the divine, starting from Plato’s simile of the cave (Republic 514a–520a), and Plotinus’s ascension to the One (Enn. VI.9.2 – VI.9.4), which will be compared with the descriptions of visions in Gregory of Nyssa (The Life of Moses 373B-377C) and Augustine (Confessions VII.10.16 and IX.10.23-24). I focus on images of human weakness, failure and instability before the overwhelming and blinding light, and on the difficulty of communicating such an experience. I question how the epistemic fallibility is grounded in anthropological fragility and relates to moral impurity or imperfection; and compare and contrast the individual or communitarian aspects of these “ascensions” and their respective influence on the failure or stability of the vision.