This book makes accessible, to a wide audience, the thought of Evagrius and Gregory on the soul, in the context of ancient philosophy/theology and the Cappadocians generally. Corrigan argues that in these two figures we witness the birth of new forms of thought and of empirical science in a new key. Evagrius and Gregory are no mere receivers of a monolithic pagan and Christian tradition, but innovative, critical interpreters on the range and limits of cognitive psychology, the soul-body relation, reflexive self-knowledge, personal and human identity and the soul's practical relation to goodness in the context of human experience and divine self-disclosure. This book provides a critical evaluation of their thought on these major issues and argues that in Evagrius and Gregory we see the important integration of many different concerns that later Christian thought was not always able to balance including: mysticism, asceticism, cognitive science, philosophy, and theology.

Kevin Corrigan is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities and Director of the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. His most recent book publications are: Plato's Dialectic at Play: Structure, Argument and Myth in the Symposium, (with Elena Glazov-Corrigan) University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004; Reading Plotinus: a practical introduction to Neoplatonism, West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2004; Platonisms: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern, edited with John D. Turner, Brill: Leiden, 2007; two volumes: Reading Ancient Texts: The Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honor of Denis O'Brien; Volume 1: The Presocratics and Plato. Volume 2: Aristotle and Neoplatonism, edited with Suzanne Stern-Gillet, Brill: Leiden, 2007; and with John D. Turner two volumes on Plato's Parmenides and its heritage, SBL Press: Atlanta, 2009: Volume 1: Plato's Parmenides: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism; and Volume 2: Plato's Parmenides: Its Reception in Neoplatonic, Jewish and Christian Texts.

Contents: Preface; Evagrius and Gregory: ascetic master, pastoral father; Christian upheavals; Mind, soul, body; an overview of Evagrius' and Gregory's thought; The meaning and scope of impassibility or purity of heart in Evagrius and Gregory; Uncovering the origins and structure of the 7 deadly sins tradition: Evagrius and the 8 'reasonings'; Gregory and the fall of intellect; Body into mind: the scientific eye in Evagrius; Gregory's anthropology: Trinity, humanity and body-soul formation; The human in the divine: the dialogical expansion of mind and heart in Evagrius; Pathways into infinity: Gregory of Nyssa and the mystical life; General conclusion; Bibliography; Index.