John the Grammarian and Photius. A Ninth-Century Byzantine Debate on Depiction, Visual Perception and Verbal Description

This article proposes a study of a major philosophical claim made by the great figure of the second period of Iconoclasm, John the Grammarian. According to John, since the essential properties as well as many of the accidental properties of a given individual cannot be represented in visual form, an accurate depiction of that individual is impossible. The in-depth analysis of this claim allows a re-evaluation of John’s logical culture, which turns out to be much more well developed than has been argued to date. The second part of the article defends the hypothesis that Photius’s Homily XVII is, in part, a response to the position of John the Grammarian. The question of visual perception according to Photius is also revisited.