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This analysis aims to explore the philosophical implications of fragmentation in Gregory Palamas’ work, asserting its role in articulating unity and totality.

June 19, 2026Open Access

Fragment and Totality

Key Points

This analysis aims to explore the philosophical implications of fragmentation in Gregory Palamas’ work, asserting its role in articulating unity and totality.
Analyzed Gregory Palamas’ 'One Hundred and Fifty Chapters' within the context of ancient and late antique philosophy and Neoplatonism.
Argued that the fragmentary structure functions as a constitutive philosophical approach rather than a mere vehicle for doctrine.
Investigated how relations among fragments contribute to a model of unity that avoids reduction to systematic totality.
Demonstrated that coherence in Palamas' Capita arises from resonance and repetition among fragments rather than linear argumentation.
Highlighting the interpretation of totality as an operative horizon of intelligibility without the closure of a constructed system.
Proposed the concept of 'totality without system' as an alternative to modern totalizing metaphysical models.

Abstract

This article offers a philosophical analysis of Gregory Palamas’ One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, focusing on the philosophical form through which the text articulates unity and totality. Rather than treating the fragmentary structure of the Capita as a secondary vehicle for doctrinal content, the study argues that fragmentation performs a constitutive philosophical function. Situated within the context of ancient and late antique philosophy, particularly Neoplatonism and the Pseudo‑Dionysian corpus, the analysis explores how fragmentary articulation safeguards unity from reduction to a conceptual system. In these traditions, such a mode of ontological articulation affirms totality without totalisation. Against this background, Palamas’ work is interpreted as enacting a model of unity that resists discursive synthesis. The article demonstrates that the coherence of the Capita arises not from linear argumentation or deductive order, but from relations of resonance, repetition, and mutual illumination among autonomous fragments. Totality remains operative as a real horizon of intelligibility without being constructed or closed. Ultimately, the philosophical form of the Chapters is presented as an instance of “totality without system,” offering a significant alternative to modern totalising models of metaphysical thought.

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