Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 (hardback), 2007 (paperback)

In “Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom,” David Bradshaw offers a comparative study of thought about the nature of God in the Greek-speaking East and Latin-speaking West during the Middle Ages. Winner of the Forkosch prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas, the book focuses on the concept of energeia, a term variously translated as activity, actuality or energy, and one central to ancient and medieval metaphysics. 

The book begins with Aristotle and the pagan Neoplatonists, and then proceeds through thinkers such as Augustine, Boethius and Aquinas in the West, and Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas in the East. Whereas the West followed Aristotle in understanding the divine energeia as identical to the divine essence, in the East the two were distinguished, leading to the “essence-energies distinction” which is characteristic of Greek patristic thought.  The book argues that the Greek Fathers achieved a more viable synthesis of Biblical revelation with classical philosophy than did Latin scholasticism, and that the subsequent history of philosophy needs to be rethought in light of this neglected alternative. 

David Bradshaw is an associate professor of philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky.  He received his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin.  He specializes in ancient and medieval philosophy and has written extensively in journals such as “Review of Metaphysics,” “Journal of the History of Philosophy,” “Ancient Philosophy” and “The Thomist.”