Cassiano ed Evagrio Pontico sul vedere non rappresentativo dell’asceta

Aim of this paper is to analyse some passages taken from the writings of Evagrius Ponticus and Cassian where, for the one who chooses the ascetic form of life, there is an insistence on the necessity to see things, material and immaterial, in a different way than the one who does not live ascetically. More precisely, the set of texts mentioned here would like to show how the act of seeing the things we see through the eye and the things we imagine with the mind are matters of capital importance for ascetics in late antiquity. The ascetic must, in fact, put aside the habitus of being in the world, because only in this way - that is, by becoming aware of the limitation imposed by what he considers external - can he devote himself fully to prayer. To do this, the ascetic must avoid not intentional perception, which means letting the mind create conceptual descriptions (νοήματα) and mental representations (φαντασίαι). By interrupting this process, the ascetic achieves a different way of seeing, which we can call non-representative, and consequently true knowledge.