The Philokalia, Volume 1

The Philokalia, Volume 1 is a work by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trs.) (1979).

Core claims

• The Philokalia Volume 1 constructs a complete phenomenology of psychic fragmentation — through its taxonomy of passions, demons, and logismoi — that predates and structurally parallels the depth-psychological mapping of complexes, shadow, and autonomous psychic contents by roughly fifteen centuries.
• The hesychast practice of “guarding the intellect” (nepsis) constitutes not a withdrawal from experience but a systematic discipline of intrapsychic observation that functions as the contemplative equivalent of what Jung would later call active imagination: a willed, sustained attention to the spontaneous movements of the inner world.
• The translators’ decision to relocate the pseudo-Antonian Stoic text to an appendix reveals the central editorial problem of the entire Philokalia tradition — distinguishing authentic transformative praxis from philosophical self-sufficiency — and mirrors the perennial tension in depth psychology between ego-driven self-improvement and genuine encounter with the unconscious.

Related questions

• How does Evagrios’ taxonomy of the eight logismoi in the Philokalia compare to Jung’s theory of complexes in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, particularly regarding the question of whether autonomous psychic contents possess intentionality?
• In what ways does Mark the Ascetic’s insistence on baptismal grace as the precondition for genuine inner work challenge or complement Edinger’s account of the ego-Self axis in Ego and Archetype, where the Self is understood as an intrapsychic reality rather than a transcendent one?
• How might James Hillman’s critique of monotheistic psychology in Re-Visioning Psychology apply to the Philokalia’s insistence on a single telos of theosis — and where does Hillman’s polytheistic alternative break down when confronted with the hesychast phenomenology of demonic assault?

See also

• Library page: /library/ancient-roots/philokalia-volume-1/

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