What is it about?
In conversation with Charles Taylor, this essay discusses how Christians have developed views of the human "self" based on differing philosophical and theological foundations. Focusing on their understandings of the demonic and their theories of knowledge, the essay argues that Thomas Aquinas has a view of the self that rests on the mediation of the material world whereas Maximus the Confessor's view emphasizes the ability of the self to access immaterial realities more directly.
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Why is it important?
A perrenial question that people ask is "Who am I?" Christians have developed complex traditions to answer this question, usually resting on a conviction that people are beings that think and choose. But disagreements have also persisted: How do we know things? How do we choose? How do other conscious agents in the world influence our choices? What makes me different from those influences? Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas represent centrally important Christian approaches to these questions.
Perspectives
This essay is an outgrowth of a question that the author left unresolved in his first book, Salvation Through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ's Victory over the Devil. That book did not directly address the fact that Maximus suggests that the devil and demons can directly influence a person's reasoning capacities. Without further explanation, that influence would call into question the foundation of human knowledge in Maximus's thought. This essay seeks to establish this foundation more clearly.
Benjamin Heidgerken
University of Saint Thomas
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Porous and Buffered Selves in Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas: a Critical Appreciation of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, January 2026, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004749955_016.
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