Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth

Late Antique Epistemology Also by Stephen R. L. Clark A PARLIAMENT OF SOULS ANIMALS AND THEIR MORAL STANDING ARISTOTL...

Author: Panayiota Vassilopoulou | Stephen Clark

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Late Antique Epistemology

Also by Stephen R. L. Clark A PARLIAMENT OF SOULS ANIMALS AND THEIR MORAL STANDING ARISTOTLE’S MAN BIOLOGY AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS CIVIL PEACE AND SACRED ORDER FROM ATHENS TO JERUSALEM G. K. CHESTERTON: THINKING BACKWARDS, LOOKING FORWARDS GOD, RELIGION AND REALITY GOD’S WORLD AND THE GREAT AWAKENING HOW TO LIVE FOREVER HOW TO THINK ABOUT THE EARTH: MODELS OF ENVIRONMENTAL THEOLOGY THE MORAL STATUS OF ANIMALS THE MYSTERIES OF RELIGION THE NATURE OF THE BEAST THE POLITICAL ANIMAL

Late Antique Epistemology Other Ways to Truth

Edited by

Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Stephen R. L. Clark University of Liverpool

Selection and editorial matter © Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Stephen R. L. Clark 2009 Chapters © their individual authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–52742–3 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–52742–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Table of Contents Acknowledgments

vii

Abbreviations

viii

Notes on Contributors

x

Introduction Panayiota Vassilopoulou

1

Part I Rituals, Religion and Reality 1.

Porphyry and the Debate Over Traditional Religious Practices Aude Busine

19 21

2.

St John in Amelius’ Seminar John Dillon

3.

Eternal Time and Temporal Expansion: Proclus’ Golden Ratio Emilie F. Kutash

44

Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor Zeke Mazur

67

4.

30

Part II Crossing Boundaries 5.

85

Ibn T ufayl and the Wisdom of the East: On Apprehending the Divine Taneli Kukkonen

6.

Plotinus, Porphyry, and India: A Re-Examination Joachim Lacrosse

7.

Animation of Statues in Ancient Civilizations and Neoplatonism Algis Uzdavinys v

87

103

118

vi

Table of Contents

Part III Art and Poetry

141

8. Platonists and the Teaching of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity Malcolm Heath

143

9. Proclus’ Notion of Poetry Oiva Kuisma

160

10. The Homeric Tradition in Ammonius and Asclepius Christina-Panagiota Manolea

174

Part IV Later Influences

189

11. Nous and Geist: Self-Identity and Methodological Solipsism in Plotinus and Hegel Robert M. Berchman

191

12. Μεστὰ πάντα σημείων. Plotinus, Leibniz, and Berkeley on Determinism Daniele Bertini

211

13. Proclus Americanus Jay Bregman

228

14. Ecology’s Future Debt to Plotinus and Neoplatonism Kevin Corrigan

250

15. Heathen Martyrs or Romish Idolaters: Socrates and Plato in Eighteenth-Century England Carol Poster

273

Conclusion Stephen R.L. Clark

289

Glossary Prepared by Crystal Addey

302

Index of Names

331

Subject Index

339

Acknowledgments This volume has its beginning in the conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies held in Liverpool in the summer of 2004. We are grateful to all those who participated in that event, and to the institutions that made it possible, including the Society itself, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Classical Association, Liverpool’s Department of Philosophy, and the University of Liverpool. The Leverhulme Trust also provided for Dr Vassilopoulou’s eighteen-month appointment first as a Research Fellow and then as Lecturer, and Professor Clark’s three-year appointment as a Research Fellow, without which this volume would have been delayed for even longer. We are also grateful to the Academy of Finland for support for Dr Vassilopoulou’s present research, and to the University of Liverpool for allowing Professor Clark further leave to recover from illness. We also acknowledge the advice, sympathy, and forbearance shown by Gillian Clark and Elias Markolefas, as well as the many scholars who gave their time to reviewing individual papers and the whole volume. We owe special thanks to Eudoxie Delli for her help, to Crystal Addey for producing the Glossary, and to both our publisher and the contributors to this volume for their patience.

The diagram on page 246 from T.M. Johnson’s book Proclus’ Metaphysical Elements (1909) is reproduced with permission and was kindly provided by Karen Witt, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Missouri.

vii

Abbreviations Adv. Haer. Adv. Jov. Ap. Jn. Arist. Rhet. BD Bell. Iud. Bibl. hist CAG Civ. Dei CPR De abstin. De decem. dub. De Myst. Dem. Ep. Diog. Laert., Vit. Diss. El. of Theol. Enn. Ep. Ep. Ad Aneb. FGrH Flor. Geogr. Gorg. Id. IG Il. In Cat. In de Int. In Isag. In Met. In Metaph. In Nic.

Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses Jeronimus, Adversus Jovinianum Apocryphon of John Aristotle, Rhetoric Book of the Dead Flavius Josephus, De Bello Judaico Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca Augustine, De Civitate Dei Critique of Pure Reason Porphyry, De Abstinentia Proclus, De Decem Dubitationes Circa Providentiam Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Demosthenes, Epistulae Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum Epictetus, Dissertationes Proclus, Elements of Theology Plotinus, Enneads Pliny, Epistulae Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Apuleius, Florilegium Strabo, Geographica Plato, Gorgias Hermogenes, Peri Ideon Inscriptiones Graecae Ilias Ammonius, In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarius Ammonius, In Aristotelis Librum de Interpretatione Commentarius In Porphyrii Isagogen Asclepius, In Aristotelis Metaphysicorum Libros A–Z Commentaria Syrianus, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria Asclepius of Tralles, Commentary to Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic. viii

Abbreviations

In Parm. In Phlb. In Remp. In Tim. or In Plat. Tim. Instit. Phys. Jul.Ep. Leid. Lys. Med. Met. Meth. Mor. NHC Od. Or. Chald. Phaedr. Phys. Plat. Th. Plat. Plut. Plut. Dem. Porph., VPlot. Post. An. Prep. Ev. Procl. Prol. PS PT Quint. Quod omn. prob. Rep. RG Sch. Dem. Simpl. Phys. Stas. Stom. SVF Symp. Tac. Dial Tim. Vit. Apoll.

Proclus, In Platonis Parmenidem Commentarii Damascius, In Philebum Proclus, In Rem Publicam Comentarii Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentarii Proclus, Institutio Physica Flavius Claudius Julianus, Epistulae Leiden Papyrus Plato, Lysis Descartes, Meditations Aristotle, Metaphysics Hermogenes, Peri Methodou Plutarchi Moralia Nag Hammadi Codices Odyssea Chaldaean Oracles Hermias, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia Aristotle, Physics Proclus, Platonic Theology Plato Plutarchus Plutarchus, Demosthenes Porphyry, Vita Plotini Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Preparatio Evangelica Proclus David, Prolegomena Philosophiae Prolegomenon Sylloge Pyramid Texts Quintilian Philo, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit Plato, Republic Rhetores Graeci Scholia to Demosthenes Symplicius, Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Commentaria Hermogenes, Peri Staseon Clemens of Alexandria, Stromata Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta Plato, Symposium Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus Plato, Timaeus Philostratus, Vita Apollonii

ix

Notes on Contributors Robert M. Berchman, is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Dowling College and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College, USA. His research interests include the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Continental traditions and he has published on a range of topics in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of art. His most recent work includes Porphyry Against the Christians (2005), and he is the Greco-Roman editor of the Encyclopedia of Religious and Philosophical Writings in Late Antiquity Pagan, Judaic, Christian (2007). Daniele Bertini is a Fellow of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Parma, Italy. His research concerns immaterialism, Platonism, mysticism, the history of early Christianity, and the relation between philosophy and theology. He has recently published Giovanni, Bultmann e la demitizzazione (2007) and Sentire Dio (2007). Jay Bregman is Professor of History and coordinator of the Minor in Religious studies at the University of Maine, USA. He serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies. He has written on the Neoplatonism of Synesius of Cyrene, the emperor Julian, A. H. Armstrong, and Neoplatonism in North America. Aude Busine, is Research Associate of the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique. She has published Les Sept Sages de la Grèce antique (2002) and Paroles d’Apollon (2005). Stephen R. L. Clark is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK. His most recent book publications include Biology and Christian Ethics (2000) and G.K.Chesterton: Thinking Backward, Looking Forward (2006). His most recent papers have sought to develop Plotinian insights in ethics and philosophy of religion, in the light of modern biological discoveries. Kevin Corrigan is Professor of the Liberal Arts in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. His recent books are Reading Plotinus: a Practical Guide to Neoplatonism (2004) and (with Elena Glazov-Corrigan) Plato’s Dialectic at Play: Structure, x


xi

Argument, and Myth in the Symposium (2004). He has written many articles ranging over the history of philosophical and religious thought from the Presocratics, Plato and Aristotle, through Patristics, late antiquity and medieval thought, to Whitehead, Bergson, Levinas, and Derrida in contemporary thought. John Dillon is Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Director of the Dublin Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition. His publications include Iamblichi Chalcidensis in Platonis Dialogos Commentariorum Fragmenta (1973), The Middle Platonists (1977), Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism (1993), The Heirs of Plato (2003), and two collections of articles, The Golden Chain (1990) and The Great Tradition (1997). Malcolm Heath is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Leeds,UK. His publications on ancient rhetoric include Hermogenes on Issues: Strategies of Argument in Later Greek Rhetoric (1995) and Menander: a Rhetor in Context (2004). He has also written on Greek tragedy and comedy, and on ancient literary criticism. He is currently working on Aristotle’s Poetics. Oiva Kuisma is Lecturer in Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki, Institute for Art Research, Finland. He is also Docent in Philosophy and Aesthetics at the University of Turku. His publications include monographs on Proclus (1996), Plotinus (2003), and on the history of Finnish aesthetics (2006). Taneli Kukkonen held the Canada Research Chair in the Aristotelian Tradition from 2003 to 2007, when he became Research Professor in Antiquity at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. He has written extensively on topics in Arabic philosophy. Emilie F. Kutash holds a Research Associate Position at Boston University Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, USA, and also teaches Philosophy at St. Joseph’s College. She has published widely on Plato and Proclus. Joachim Lacrosse is Collaborateur Scientifique at the Centre de Philosophie Ancienne de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. His publications include L’amour chez Plotin (1994), La philosophie de Plotin. Intellect et discursivité (2003) and Philosophie comparée: Grèce, Inde, Chine (2005).

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Christina–Panagiota Manolea Has been a Tutor at the Hellenic Open University, Greece, for the last four years. Her work focuses on later Greek rhetorical theory and the perception of Greek epic tradition. Her publications include, The Homeric Tradition in Syrianus (2004). Zeke Mazur is currently working on a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago His doctoral dissertation is on the Gnostic background of Plotinus’ mysticism. He has published articles on Plotinus’ mysticism and theurgic rituals. Carol Poster is Associate Professor of English at York University, Canada. She recently co-edited (with Linda Mitchell) Letter-Writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the Present (2007) and has published numerous contributions to journals and edited collections on the history of rhetoric, the rhetoric of religion, and the classical tradition. Algis Uzdavinys is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, and Senior Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. His publications in English include, The Golden Chain. An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy, (2004). Panayiota Vassilopoulou is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool,UK, and holds a Research Fellowship with the Academy of Finland. She has published articles on Plotinus’ psychology, aesthetics, and feminism.

Introduction Panayiota Vassilopoulou

In this collection of essays scholars from North America and Europe explore the various ways in which late-antique thinkers sought to gain knowledge about themselves, the divine, and the world.

Historical and philosophical orientations Scholars of late antiquity concern themselves with the historical, cultural, and philosophical developments that occurred in the mediterranean world from the third to the late sixth century AD. During this time Christianity came to dominate the beliefs and practices of the empire, and different traditions of East and West confronted and influenced each other. ‘Late antiquity’ has been variously described as an in-between period, as the decline of the ancient world, as an age of anxiety, or a time of ambition. As Averil Cameron observes, ‘terminology does matter: whether we like it or not, it shapes our perceptions, especially of controversial issues’.1 It was primarily the work of Peter Brown, in the 1970s, that helped establish late antiquity as a distinct and distinctive historical period worth closer examination, and with it a particular historical narrative. This latter incorporates social and economic debates, religious controversies, and philosophical discussions, and so illustrates the ‘transformation’ that took place between the end of ‘classical antiquity’ and the emergence of Islam. One may thus refer to this period, characterized by new awakenings and dramatic change, for an explanation of ‘why Europe became Christian and why the Near East became Muslim’.2 Subsequent studies have dealt with several aspects of the chronological, geographical, and thematic parameters that define late antiquity, and also with the ‘gaps’ that any unified narrative of such a diverse period in 1

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Panayiota Vassilopoulou

human civilization inevitably discloses. Depending on the perspective from which it is approached and the questions that animate each perspective (theological, political, social, philosophical), the chronological boundaries of late antiquity vary. One version sets the beginning of the period in the third century, in 284 AD – the year of Diocletian’s accession. According to another, the beginning of the period is in the fourth century, either in the year 312 AD, when Constantine the Great was converted to Christianity, or a little later, in 395 AD, when Theodosius I died. In the attempt to trace particular changes evidenced in the third and fourth centuries back to their historical source, the ‘beginning’ of late antiquity is occasionally placed much earlier, in the time of Augustus (63 BC–14 AD), since almost all the features deemed ‘characteristic’ of the period actually had their beginnings at least by then. There is also considerable disagreement about its end. Some see the end of late antiquity in the first half of the sixth century, picking as a cut-off point 529 AD, when a decree of Justinian I (against divination) resulted in the closure of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens3 (a year often also chosen to mark the beginning of the Byzantine period), or in the second half of the sixth century, when the Persian empire ceases to exist. Some think that late antiquity concludes at the end of the seventh century, when Islam had undoubtedly prevailed in the Middle East. These disagreements may well indicate that any attempt to mark out distinct cultural and philosophical epochs is artificial, and essentially anachronistic. The ancient Greeks did not think of themselves as ‘ancients’, any more than contemporary inhabitants of the Western world necessarily think of themselves as ‘post-modern’. Neither would late-antique philosophers have identified themselves as ‘late antique’. As Richard Miles remarks, ‘there is no unitary “late antique” identity, just as there is no single “late antique” culture in which these identities are created. Identity and culture are both in a constant state of flux and development’.4 Everyone has always thought they lived in ‘modern times’, whether they have thought those times were just as life had always been, or prided themselves on being ‘up to date’. No doubt both views were as common in ‘late antiquity’ as now – though people perhaps had reason to think that times had changed, whether for better or for worse. Virginia Burrus, for example, in agreement with Brown, claims that ‘what “makes” late antiquity is in large part the collective imaginative construction of a new world, or a new way of imagining the universe’. Philosophers whom we may reckon ‘late antique’ could reasonably think of themselves as making a new beginning, or rebirth (or at any rate maybe

Introduction

3

we can conceive that they made a new beginning). Burrus draws particular attention to the new role ascribed to human beings, as agents who would ‘negotiate the hard boundary between heaven and earth freshly inscribed on the map of the cosmos’.5 Even though human history is not really divided into distinct periods, with distinctive characters, her approach does have advantages. At any rate, it informs the present volume. In those days, everyone could, in principle, declare with the Orphic initiate ‘I am a child of Earth and of starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven alone’6 – and also that they were children both of classical antiquity and of some new revelation. The chapter authors all make some contribution to understanding, from this perspective, the force and validity of late-antique philosophers’ claims to truth. As a whole, the volume attempts a journey into the ‘new’ philosophical world that seems to be characteristic of late-antique philosophical activity, without claiming to offer a comprehensive reconstruction, or a map, of all its aspects. But what are the philosophical coordinates that define this ‘new world’? In the period between 200 and 600 AD, we may identify three distinct, but also interrelated, lines of philosophical development.7 Around 200 AD, in Athens, the Aristotelian Alexander of Aphrodisias wrote, along with his own treatises, a number of commentaries on Aristotle’s works, taking into account the philosophical debates of his time. In this way, he became the first important contributor to the tradition of composing philosophical commentaries on classical authors (that is, Plato and Aristotle), which forms one of the main strands in the philosophical activity of late antiquity (and beyond).8 A little later, Origen (185–254), working in Alexandria and Palestine, developed for the first time a body of thought that could be identified as a Christian philosophy with the ambition to stand on its own against its pagan rivals. Origen’s attempt is clearly based on Platonic foundations and is a significant first act in the strained but productive dialogue between Christianity and Platonism, which is also a dominant strand in the philosophical and spiritual development in the late-antique period.9 Around this time, Plotinus, who, like Origen, studied in Alexandria, established his school in Rome (244) and between 253 and 269 wrote a stream of essays, later edited by his disciple Porphyry into the collection we know as The Enneads, that shaped the leading philosophical movement of the period, namely Neoplatonism.10 These developments, of course, did not come out of nothing. As far as we know, the Platonist Crantor was the first writer to produce a formal philosophical commentary (on Plato’s Timaeus) around 300 BC. Origen’s achievement follows the earlier attempts of writers like Justin or Clement to combine Platonism and Christianity, as well as the even

4


earlier attempt by Philo of Alexandria to combine Greek philosophy with Judaism. Moreover, the Plato that is the reference point of both Origen and Plotinus is not only the author of the familiar dialogues, but also the product of a long philosophical tradition that started right after Plato’s death and went through a stage (the period of Middle Platonism that extends from 80 BC to 220 AD) in which elements of Platonic philosophy were already combined in a variety of ways with aspects of Aristotelianism and Stoicism.11 But it is from around 200 AD, that the ‘new world’ resulting from the dynamic interaction between these strands begins to emerge, and takes shape over the next three centuries.12 A few names and dates may help to make this pattern clear. In the Neoplatonic tradition starting from Plotinus, there is an almost continuous line of philosophers, the majority of whom wrote commentaries as well as other, relatively free-standing, works. Its chief representatives are Plotinus’ student Porphyry (232–309), working mostly in Rome, Iamblichus (c.245–325), working mostly in Alexandria and Syria (the disagreement of these two pivotal figures about the relation between philosophy and religion shaped the development of Neoplatonism), Proclus (c.411–485), a prolific writer working mostly in Athens, and Ammonius (c.440–520, ‘son of Hermeias’), a great teacher working mostly in Alexandria. On the side of Christianity, three important episodes in the history of its interaction with Neoplatonism may be singled out. The first, occurring in the East, was the work of the Cappadocian Fathers (especially of two brothers: Basil of Caesarea, c.330–379 and Gregory of Nyssa, c.335–394). The second, taking place slightly later, in the West, was the work of Augustine of Hippo (354– 430). In both these cases, major developments in Christian doctrine arose from a selective appropriation of the philosophical achievements of the first Neoplatonists, namely, Plotinus and Porphyry. The third episode, happening almost a century later, at the start of the sixth century, was the work of pseudo-Dionysius, an unknown writer who chose to present his books under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite (a convert of Paul of Tarsus, in first-century Athens). He presented his own synthesis of Christianity and Neoplatonism, relying this time on the work of later Neoplatonists, such as Proclus, who, following Iamblichus’ lead, were much more interested in religious practices and rituals than were Plotinus or Porphyry. From him descends the long tradition of apophatic, or negative, theology, that is, the tradition of talking about God, who is ineffable, in terms of what God is not. In the sixth century, we witness the last great intellectual products of this historical period. In 523–4 Boethius (c.480–525), a Christian

Introduction

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Neoplatonist commentator writing in Latin, composed his Consolation of Philosophy, in which a female figure identified as Philosophy visits him in his cell to remind him of the truths he had – he supposed – believed, just before his execution.13 A little later, John Philoponus (c.490–570), the greatest Christian Neoplatonist commentator, wrote a number of commentaries and treatises exploring the possibility of a Christian physical science, and the Neoplatonist Simplicius wrote the last great commentaries, learned and comprehensive surveys of the entire Greek philosophical tradition. Philoponus and Simplicius, who had the same teacher (Ammonius) and bitterly criticized each other in their works, are the last great figures of the period. After the closing of the Neoplatonic School in Athens in 529, some of its leading lights – including Damascius, the last head of the Athenian School – fled temporarily to the court of the Persian king (it is likely that some slipped back to the West).14 Although the School of Alexandria continued in business for some decades, by the end of the sixth century a vital strand of the pattern we have been observing, Greek philosophy, would be broken. By the time that philosophy appeared again as a respected discipline distinct from scriptural theology, in Islam (ninth century), in Byzantium (the Byzantine humanism of the ninth and tenth centuries), or the West (twelfth century), not only were the historical conditions entirely different, but also Greek philosophy was recoverable only from the written records, not an ongoing oral tradition. Or so, at any rate, it is now commonly supposed: whether we would have quite the same picture if more documents had survived, or we had better access to Syriac or Aramaic texts, may be disputed. With these historical markers set, a brief account of the main intellectual preoccupations of the period is in order. Within Greek philosophy, the main object was precisely to come to terms with the authoritative legacy of classical philosophers (especially Plato and Aristotle). This could be described as an attempt to reconcile their views, but is best thought of as a process of creative transformation of Plato’s and Aristotle’s thought under a number of different pressures (one such pressure being, of course, their inherent philosophical disagreements).15 Christian thinkers had their own problems and pressures during this period. Their main task, the development of Christian dogma (for example, the formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine or an adequate understanding of the nature of Jesus Christ), was a philosophical one, but the activity had to be conducted in the context of concrete and bitter internal and external debates with heretics and pagans. Part of the problem for both ‘camps’, the Christians and the (pagan) philosophers, had precisely to do with

6


the ambivalent relation between Christianity and Neoplatonism: Christians and Neoplatonists agreed on several important matters, disagreed on many others, were fighting each other using, to some extent, weapons borrowed from the ‘enemy’ (a tactic used mostly by Christian thinkers), and had also to engage with other religious forces of the period, such as various forms of Gnosticism, Judaism, and the other religions of the East. Obviously, the relation between philosophy and religion is a central issue of the period, debated not only between Neoplatonists and Christians, but also within each of the two camps. If we understand ‘philosophy’ as ‘abstract’ reasoning, relying only on such axioms as seem self-evident or – at least – agreeable to any rational enquirer, then neither camp was exactly philosophical (since both sides relied on authoritative scriptures, and on ritual practices, to keep themselves in line, and both shared an ideal of holiness as a prerequisite for philosophical authority).16 If we understand ‘religion’ as a complex of symbolic stories, ritual practices and social orders, accepted as a fact of social life, then neither camp was only religious, since both believed that all these merely social factors depended on a transcendental real, and could be criticized by that standard, and that there was a route to understanding by an exercise of the enlightened intellect. In other words, ‘philosophy’ and ‘religion’ both meant rather more to ‘late-antique’ intellectuals (at any rate) than they do now. Two particularly important aspects of this issue need to be highlighted, which will serve as a context for the present volume. The first, which will be further discussed below, concerns the destabilization, or else the enrichment, of the classical Greek dichotomy between theoria and praxis. Already from the time of Pythagoras,17 certainly in Plato and Aristotle, and even in Plotinus’ understanding of the activity of Nous, philosophical activity (at least in its highest spheres) had been conceptualized in terms of a contemplation of truth, to be distinguished from any kind of poiesis or praxis. What is introduced and explored in this period is the possibility that forms of (religious) practice may be essential or indispensable components of the pursuit of truth. The second aspect, already noted above, concerns the significance attributed to the human subject during this period. Although this entire era is operating under the Platonic understanding of the human being as divided between the distinct spheres of sensible and intelligible reality, philosophical analysis of the human condition is enriched by the discovery or invention of a hitherto unidentified inner dimension of the human experience, and a dynamic conception of the distance between the sensible and the intelligible. The human subject was conceived as an active mediator between the two realms. In this respect, (pagan)

Introduction

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Neoplatonists and Christians were essentially working together against the various forms of Gnosticism, and their achievements were to prove crucial for the development of modern conceptions of subjectivity.18 What is unusual, from our perspective, in the late-antique philosophers is that certain ‘non-rational’ practices, such as oracular testimonies, theurgic rituals, erotic passion, poetic inspiration, metaphors, and myths, were reckoned as reliable as reasoned argument, or better still. Thus, what – at first sight, at least – distinguishes epistemology in late antiquity from that in the classical and hellenistic periods, is that these ‘other ways’ to discover truth, which have previously been thought inferior to the philosophically approved techniques of rational argument (though Plato – seriously or not – suggested otherwise, in several of his dialogues), are no longer suitable just for the less philosophically inclined, for children, savages or the uneducated. If, that is, they ever were just that. Late twentieth-century commentators, such as E. R. Dodds, have offered historical or psychological explanations of this turn, but only recently has it been accepted that there might also have been philosophical explanations, and that the late-antique philosophers were not necessarily deluded.19 Interestingly, although philosophers and classical scholars, until very recently, have tended to despise much late-antique theorizing, speculative physicists have often found some affinities, at least, between their own speculations and late-antique imaginings.20 And psychotherapists have made use of imagination in ways that the ancients would have found familiar.21 But even they have rarely accepted the more openly theurgical or magic elements. Contemporary scholars have attempted to elucidate several aspects of the sort of philosophical reflection and practice advocated by late-antique philosophers, drawing particular attention to the relationship – or dialectic – between discursive and non-discursive elements,22 rational arguments and coherent theurgic practice,23 and to the introspective, esoteric, or transformative nature of truth.24 The overriding impression is that during late antiquity, the very notions of ‘reason’, ‘rationality’, and ‘truth’, with which epistemology is primarily concerned, underwent a significant change. This reflected the general spiritual and cultural changes effected by the interaction of Christian and pagan worlds characteristic of this historical period. In late antiquity, more radically than in earlier periods, coming to know the truth involved methods by which the soul might be ‘persuaded’, awakened, and reformed; an enriched philosophical language able to capture and express realities beyond those of abstract reasoning; and

8


a corresponding way of life, through which the human being may be enlightened, and live accordingly. How do these techniques and practices relate to our more modern understanding of epistemology and philosophical reasoning? An earlier volume of essays, edited by Michael Frede and Gisella Striker, deals with some aspects of the problem, by debating what concepts of ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’ the ancients used.25 The contributors to that volume sharpened our awareness of conceptual changes, with a view to improving our understanding of the ancient philosophers. The contributors to the present volume have a similar remit, but are concerned with aspects of philosophical endeavour that even the ancients placed outside or alongside ‘reason’, in the attempt to show not only that they are not to be dismissed as useless, but that they should be legitimized as complementary (and in some cases superior) ways of discovering or realizing truth. A final comment about the significance of late-antique philosophy and its study may be useful. The overall historical importance of the period could, of course, be hardly denied: this is the era in which Greek philosophy is synthesized in the form in which it would be transmitted later to the West (directly or via Arabic philosophy) and in which it was to remain historically effective at least until the beginning of the nineteenth century.26 It is also the era in which mainstream Christian doctrine was shaped. Our reaction to these facts today certainly depends on our perspectives and agendas: one could choose, for instance, to consider this entire period as the first stage in a dark age that divides, say, Plotinus from Aquinas or Descartes, or Ptolemy from Galileo. Or else one could choose to consider it a seminal and significant age, whose influence is still with us. The perspective adopted by the contributors to the present volume is a mixture of the historical and the philosophical. If indeed a refreshed understanding of the past may show us new ways for philosophical reflection, then, looking backward, through the late-antique philosophers, we gain valuable insights into how Plato, Aristotle, and the hellenistic schools have been and could still be interpreted; looking forward, we may be able to identify the paths through which these interpretations and innovations have contributed and could still contribute to the development of philosophical thought and practice.

Structure of the volume The first part of the present volume, on Rituals, Religion, and Reality, has four chapters, by Busine, Dillon, Kutash, and Mazur. They address the

Introduction

9

ways in which the Neoplatonists made inventive philosophical use of traditional rituals, whether by allegorizing or spiritualizing them: that is, by treating them merely as metaphors for spiritual or philosophical experience, or by seeking to locate, and encourage others to accept, their effect on philosophical life and thought. Aude Busine’s chapter on ‘Porphyry and the Debate over Traditional Religious Practices’ discusses Porphyry’s attempt, in the De Philosophia ex oraculis, to show how an accurate interpretation of traditional oracles could help a philosopher save his soul. Her study concentrates on the ways in which Porphyry interprets the symbolic meaning of pagan sacred texts in order to defend two central and much-debated rituals, namely, sacrifice and magic. Busine hopes to develop from this basis an account of theurgic practices able to resist the severe attack on traditional rituals formulated by other contemporary Neoplatonists as well as Christian polemicists. John Dillon’s chapter on ‘St John in Amelius’ Seminar’ addresses the use made of the Prologue of St John’s Gospel in the (pagan) Neoplatonic seminar of Plotinus’ friend and disciple Amelius, as reported by Eusebius of Caesarea. In dealing with this intriguing reference, Dillon investigates the reasons that motivate Amelius to refer to a Christian writer and the significance of his allusion to John as ‘the Barbarian’, rather than by name. Dillon argues that, when placed in the context of the discussion of Logos, Amelius’ exegesis reveals subtle changes in the sense and terminology of St John’s text and provides us with insight into some of Amelius’ innovations in Neoplatonic doctrine. Amelius is known to have had an interest in traditional rituals and in the study of texts that include the Orphic poems, the Chaldaean Oracles, and the Gnostic writings. Dillon shows that the reference to St John’s Prologue provides evidence of Amelius’ – as well as his audience’s – familiarity and intellectual engagement also with at least parts of Christian literature. Emilie F. Kutash’s chapter on ‘Eternal Time and Temporal Expansion: Proclus’ Golden Ratio’ is an examination of Proclus’ account of time and eternity. She argues persuasively that his hypostatization of Time and Eternity is not, as some have supposed, merely an attempt to accommodate Orphic or Chaldaean deities, but a serious attempt to resolve familiar difficulties about temporality. She concludes that hypostatized Time, or the panoptic view, includes the whole, rounded history of the cosmos, and that our souls’ temporal experience (of past, present and future) is saved from pointless and unending drift by the realization that all times, all periods, are equally contained in Time. Temporality is not therefore an evil: it provides the realm within which individual

10 Panayiota Vassilopoulou

organisms can gradually achieve perfection, a perfection mirroring both their own panoptic reality, and the structures of Eternity. Intellect is not itself enough either to explain existence or to guide us: something beyond Intellect and the Forms breathes life into the equations, and allows even the formless to have some hope of achieving perfection. Zeke Mazur’s chapter on ‘Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor’ examines Plotinus’ surprisingly frank use of sexual metaphors for mystical experience, and contests the view that they rely on and advance a rigid distinction between sexual and spiritual, non-somatic, love. He shows that this imagery, which is central to Plotinus’ metaphysics and philosophical practice, extends and enriches the erotic philosophical vocabulary employed by Plato, in ways that point to the long literary tradition of erotic mysticism, a tradition whose tropes are familiar from their Christian, Jewish, and Islamic formulations. Mazur concludes that Plotinian erotic mysticism might be helpfully compared with inner Tantric praxis of the sort described by the Kashmiri Shaivite author Abhinavagupta (c.975–1025 CE). The second part, Crossing Boundaries, has three chapters, by Kukkonen, Lacrosse, and Uzdavinys. All attempt to trace connections between Neoplatonism and non-Greek traditions, by exploring the role various religious experiences and practices employed in the search for philosophical truth and unification with the divine. Taneli Kukkonen’s chapter on ‘Ibn T ufayl and the Wisdom of the East’ examines three Muslim Neoplatonists’ reactions to the ascendant Sufi brotherhoods’ claims to having experienced unification with the divine as a result of their ascetic practices. Avicenna (Abû ‘Alî Ibn Sînâ, d. 1037 CE) had first appropriated Sufi language in his Pointers and Reminders, situating the so-called drunken Sufis’ ecstatic exclamations in the context of an Aristotelian faculty psychology. Kukkonen shows that al-Ghazâlî (1058–1111) and Ibn T ufayl (1116–1185), while each keen to provide an appreciative understanding of Sufi appearances, drew different lessons from Avicenna’s presentation. Al-Ghazâlî underlined Avicenna’s point that what is supposed to be a vision of the divine in fact reveals only the created order, while Ibn T ufayl claimed to detect a real ‘divine spark’ in the mystical experience. The three thus illustrate different ways of applying the ancient principle of ‘like knowing like’. Joachim Lacrosse’s chapter on ‘Plotinus, Pophyry, and India; a ReExamination’ examines the much-debated issue concerning the influence that the Indian philosophical tradition may have exerted on the Neoplatonists. Lacrosse shows that despite many contextual differences, there are several striking similarities between Neoplatonism and Indian

Introduction

11

thought which need not be explained by mere chance or by perennial philosophy, but also by a kind of distant and partial knowledge of Indian philosophy and philosophical practice in the Roman Empire, in Plotinus’ and Porphyry’s time. His study of the available evidence is informed by an attempt to combine traditional historical methodology with comparativism, that is, with a selective borrowing and dissemination of ideas and patterns of thought between the Greek and Indian cultures. Algis Uzdavinys’s chapter on ‘Animation of Statues in Ancient Civilizations and Neoplatonism’ deals with the strange practice of Neoplatonic telestike, that is, the ritual of consecrating and animating statues. Uzdavinys advances the view that divine images and statues were not mere symbols of the gods, but were filled with the divine presence, and that their esoteric dimension suggests ways in which a seer of truth may be immortalized. He argues that these ‘telestic’ rites, adapted and presumably transformed by the Neoplatonists, are deeply rooted in the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Tantric cultic traditions. Those traditions themselves incorporate sophisticated metaphysical theories that are at least analogous to Neoplatonic theory. We need to understand and recall this background if we are to understand Platonic thought. The third part, on Poetry and Art has three chapters, by Heath, Kuisma, and Manolea. They examine the use made of poetry and other literary forms by the late-antique philosophers. Malcom Heath’s chapter on ‘Platonists and the Teaching of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity’ deals with rhetoric, which, in antiquity, was considered an integral and important part of the general education curriculum. Heath examines the reasons (practical, ideological, and theoretical) for the philosophers’ engagement with rhetoric, as well as the relationship between rhetoric as taught by philosophers and by rhetoricians with no known philosophical allegiance. Heath concludes his study by showing how philosophers and rhetoricians of late antiquity responded to the Platonic suspicions concerning rhetoric’s contribution to the search for philosophical truth and political justice. Oiva Kuisma’s chapter on ‘Proclus’ Notion of Poetry’ examines Proclus’ reasons for giving poetry a higher status than the merely instrumental ones of aesthetic pleasure and, occasionally, profit. Concentrating on inspired poetry, Kuisma argues that Proclus attributes to it an illuminative power of symbolic language that would help transform human consciousness so as to see, that is, to know and experience, reality itself. He concludes that, although Proclus did not intend to formulate an autonomous theory of art, especially one that could fit easily within


the context of modern aesthetics, proper attention to his views on poetry helps to place him within the tradition of thinkers like Plotinus or Augustine who appreciated the significance of beauty of art as a step towards the contemplation of Divine truth. Christina-Panagiota Manolea’s chapter on ‘The Homeric Tradition in Ammonius and Asclepius’ examines the use made of Homeric material in the commentaries in view of the question of whether allegory was employed as a reliable way to discover truth. Through a careful examination of a variety of contexts in which Homeric references appear in Ammonius and Asclepius, she concludes that although these Alexandrian late- antique writers were familiar with allegory, they nevertheless were reluctant to use it in their exegesis. According to Manolea, this treatment of allegory marks a significant difference between the Neoplatonic schools of Alexandria and Athens. In the fourth part, on Later Influences, there are five chapters, by Berchman, Bertini, Bregman, Corrigan, and Poster, showing how lateantique philosophy influenced early-modern philosophy – and is available as a resource for the future. Robert Berchman’s chapter on ‘Nous and Geist: Self-Identity and Methodological Solipsism in Plotinus and Hegel’ offers a parallel discussion of Plotinus’ conception of Nous and Hegel’s conception of Geist. Berchman argues that these conceptions enable Plotinus and Hegel to construct a notion of self-identity and consciousness in which the individual soul or ‘I’ can be identified with a supra-natural entity or mind. Moreover, according to Berchman, they also allow Plotinus and Hegel to employ the presupposition of methodological solipsism, not as a strategy that restricts the validity of certain philosophical claims within a first-person perspective, but as one that actually makes possible the expansion of the first-person perspective into a collective perspective that includes other minds. This expansion from a first-person singular metaphysical perspective to a ‘We-perspective’, offers an alternative to egoistic notions of self-identity and consciousness, and opens up new horizons for philosophical thinking and knowledge. Plotinus still maintains, however, that there is an altogether Other, the One, beyond our knowledge and conception: Hegel avoids this last problem but at the cost of lapsing into substantive solipsism. Daniele Bertini’s chapter entitled ‘Μεστὰ πάντα σημείων: Plotinus, Leibniz, and Berkeley on Determinism’, suggests that Leibniz’s and Berkeley’s arguments against materialism bear a strong resemblance to Plotinus’ treatment of the same issue. Bertini proposes that Berkeley, Leibniz, and Plotinus all seek to explain what happens as a system of signs rather than by material mechanisms, and that this ontology is grounded not only

Introduction

13

in epistemological considerations, but also in a way of appreciating the world. Modern versions of materialism, he suggests, fail to explain experience and also, if believed, make it more difficult for us to realize the world’s beauty. Jay Bregman’s chapter, ‘Proclus Americanus’, is a detailed discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, and other American Transcendentalists, showing their creative debt to Proclus. They sought to revive a way of seeing the world that could rival Christian philosophy and practice. T. M. Johnson in particular devoted his life to spreading the Procline gospel, and encouraging other scholars and enthusiasts to examine ancient texts, including the Chaldaean Oracles. Bregman also testifies, sometimes from personal experience, to Proclus’ continuing influence on both theory and practice, and his significance for a renewed appreciation of nature. Kevin Corrigan’s chapter on ‘Ecology’s Future Debt to Plotinus and Neoplatonism’ argues that Plotinian doctrine and method may help construct a sound metaphysical and ethical basis for proper environmental concern and understanding. Corrigan’s starting point is that the past is part of the present and a source for the discovery of, or speculation for, a (possible) future. By correcting the false impression that Platonism is an abstract, other-worldly philosophy, indifferent to the sensible and perceptible world, and by drawing attention to the much broader and richer conception of nature adopted by the Neoplatonists, and especially Plotinus, he invites us to envisage a future of an ethically aware and more inclusive ecology, which would address not only humans, but all beings. Carol Poster’s chapter on ‘Heathen Martyrs or Romish Idolaters: Socrates and Plato in Eighteenth-Century England’ is an exploration of early-modern theological responses to Socrates, Plato, and the Neoplatonists. She concentrates on two important and controversial theological issues, namely, the nature of the Trinity and the relationship of natural religion to Revelation. Poster seeks to demonstrate that both interpretation of Plato and negative or positive judgments of him in the eighteenth century were strongly influenced by contemporary religious contexts, and that, therefore, twenty-first century scholars studying the reception of Plato should take into account these contexts. This volume certainly does not cover all that might be considered of most significance. There is little or nothing here, for example, on physical or mathematical theory, nor yet on political and ethical considerations. Recent scholars have begun to explore these aspects of Neoplatonism,27 and there is yet more to be done. All our contributors testify to the enduring significance of the lateantique texts and traditions they consider, whether or not, as individuals,


they endorse the truth of late-antique suggestions. In this, they are not alone. The International Society for Neoplatonic Studies has organized, and continues to organize, annual conferences worldwide, and several recent publications have been gradually and more systematically contributing to making Neoplatonism and the study of late antiquity a recognized field of scholarly interest and philosophical debate. It is not necessary to be an enthusiast to think the texts and traditions well worth examining, though all of us do also owe a debt to those enthusiasts who sustained the tradition even during those years when ‘academic’ interest was slight or patronizing.28 We may also be grateful to those past scholars who, despite being sceptical about some of the ideas and practices that lateantique philosophers clearly favoured, nonetheless devoted their lives and talents to expounding and clarifying what they actually said.29 It is a mark of true philosophy that it encourages rather than silences or puts a stop to thought. All the contributors to this volume may reasonably hope that their arguments and suggestions will excite disagreement or development, and in this way will explore ‘other ways to truth’ pointing towards a new beginning. When the prefect of Rome, Symmachus (c.340–c.402), wrote to the emperor to beg him to restore the Altar of Peace to the Senate (removed by an earlier, Christian, emperor’s orders) he urged that: The divine Mind has distributed different guardians and different cults to different cities. As souls are separately given to infants as they are born, so to peoples the genius of their destiny. We ask, then, for peace for the gods of our fathers and of our country. It is just that all worship should be considered as one. We look on the same stars, the sky is common, the same world surrounds us. What difference does it make by what pains each seeks the truth? We cannot attain to so great a secret by one road (uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande secretum).30 The aphorism is greater than its author (who was actually pleading, pompously, for ancestral privilege). Different periods, as well as different cities, have made their own discoveries (or been granted different revelations). It does not follow, of course, that every such ‘discovery’ or ‘revelation’ was entirely right, nor that we should attempt to rationalize or embrace them all. But before we decide that any such ‘discovery’ should really be forgotten it is as well to know what it actually was, and what might be said for it, as well as against it. All the contributors to this volume – and the participants in the conference back in 2004 from which this volume takes its beginning – have helped with this endeavour.

Introduction

15

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Cameron (1993), p. 7. Brown (1989), p. 7, 1st edn 1971, London. See also, Brown (1978). See Watts (2004). Miles (1999), p. 3. Burrus (2000), p. 9. From a gold sheet, judged to rely on ‘Orphic’ symbolism, found in Thessaly: see Meyer (1999), p.101; see also McEvilley (2002), p. 136. McEvilley’s work is an indispensable guide to the connections between different periods and regions of the mediterranean and Middle Eastern milieux. The standard reference work for the period is still Armstrong (1967). For the tradition of the Commentators, see Sorabji (2004). For an overview of this development, see Stead (1994). For a discussion of the interaction between Platonism and Christianity, focused on the notion of mysticism, see Louth (1981). For a thematic introduction to Plotinus, see Gerson (1996). A collection of sources that covers Plotinus and the most important later Neoplatonists is Dillon and Gerson (2004). On Proclus, see Siorvanes (1996); on Porphyry’s work see, most recently, Karamanolis and Sheppard (2007). For a discussion of Neoplatonism in its historical context, see Edwards (2006). The standard history of Middle Platonism is Dillon (1996). The current state of scholarship about the social context of these centuries is outlined and explored in Clark (2004). The text was translated into Anglo-Saxon, and expanded, by King Alfred of Wessex in the ninth century, into what became the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. See http://www. yorku.ca/inpar/Boethius_Fox.pdf (accessed 6 January 2008) for Samuel Fox’s translation and commentary of Alfred’s translation. Oddly, Alfred changed Boethius’ female Philosophy into a male Wisdom. For a discussion of the fate of philosophers after the closing of the School and for further references on this issue, see Watts (2005). See Gerson (2006). See Fowden (1982). Recalling here the anecdote related by Diogenes Laertius (Lives of the Philosophers 8.8), according to which philosophers are spectators of the truth. Taylor (1990) is a valuable survey of the origins of the ‘modern’ conception (now challenged by ‘post-modern’ materialist analysis). See also Sorabji (2006). Dodds (1965). See Goswami (1994). For example, Hillman (1992). For example, Rappe (2000). For example, Shaw (1995). For example, with emphasis on Plotinus, Smith (2004). Frede and Striker (1996). As a background discussion on this issue, see also Dodds (1951). It is now widely forgotten that ‘early-modern’ philosophers, including Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and Berkeley, were deeply influenced by classical


27. 28.

29. 30.

and late-antique philosophy: it may be that the ‘early-modern’ period, like the late-antique, was a new beginning, but – like the late-antique – it also depended on the past. For example, O’Meara (2003). Hilary Armstrong (1909–97), of course, is an exception to that generalization: he explored Plotinian and other Platonic treatises and arguments not merely as an academic exercise but because he thought they were likely to be true. For example, Lloyd (1990); Blumenthal (1996). Symmachus Relation 3, ch.10: taken from http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ vandersp/Courses/texts/sym-amb/symrel3f.html (accessed 1 January 2008). See also O’Donnell (1979).

Bibliography Armstrong, A. H. (ed.), 1967, The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge. Blumenthal, H., 1996, Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the ‘De Anima’, London. Brown, P., 1978, The Making of Late Antiquity, Harvard. Brown, P., 1989, The World of Late Antiquity, New York. Burrus, V., 2000, Begotten, Not Made: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity, Stanford. Cameron, A., 1993, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, London. Clark, G., 2004, Christianity and Roman Society, Cambridge. Dillon, J., 1996, The Middle Platonists 80 B.C. to A.D. 220, rev. edn, Ithaca. Dillon J., and Gerson, L. P. (eds.), 2004, Neoplatonic Philosophy. Introductory Readings, Indianapolis and Cambridge. Dodds, E. R., 1951, The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London. Dodds, E. R., 1965, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, New York and London. Edwards, M., 2006, Culture and Philosophy in the Age of Plotinus, London. Fowden, G., 1982, ‘The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 102, pp. 33–59. Frede, M., and Striker, G. (eds.), 1996, Rationality in Greek Thought, Oxford. Gerson, L. P. (ed.), 1996, The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge. Gerson, L. P., 2006, Aristotle and Other Platonists, Ithaca. Goswami, A., 1994, Self-aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, Los Angeles. Hillman, J., 1992, Re-Visioning Psychology, 2nd edn, New York. Karamanolis, G., and Sheppard, A. (eds.), 2007, Studies on Porphyry, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement, London. Lloyd, A. C., 1990, The Anatomy of Neoplatonism, Oxford. Louth, A., 1981, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition. From Plato to Denys, Oxford. McEvilley, T., 2002, The Shape of Ancient Thought, New York. Meyer, M. W. (ed.), 1999, The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of the Mystery, Philadelphia. Miles, R., 1999, Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity, London and New York.

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O’Donnell, J. J., 1979, ‘The Demise of Paganism’, Traditio 35, pp. 45–88. O’Meara, D., 2003, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity, Oxford. Rappe, S., 2000, Reading Neoplatonism. Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge. Shaw, G., 1995, Theurgy and the Soul, The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, University Park, PA. Siorvanes, L., 1996, Proclus: Neoplatonic Philosophy and Science, Edinburgh. Smith, A., 2004, Philosophy in Late Antiquity, New York. Sorabji, R. (ed.), 1990, Aristotle Transformed: the Ancient Commentators and their Influence, London and Ithaca. Sorabji, R. (ed.), 2004, The Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600 AD: A Sourcebook, 3 vols, London. Sorabji, R., 2006, Self. Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death, Oxford. Stead, C., 1994, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, Cambridge. Taylor, C., 1990, Sources of the Self, Cambridge MA Watts, E., 2004, ‘Justinian, Malalas, and the End of Athenian Philosophical Teaching in A.D. 529’, The Journal of Roman Studies 94, pp. 168–82. Watts, E., 2005, ‘Where to Live the Philosophical Life in the Sixth Century? Damascius, Simplicius, and the Return from Persia’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45, pp. 285–315.

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Part I Rituals, Religion and Reality


1 Porphyry and the Debate Over Traditional Religious Practices Aude Busine

This chapter will examine the references made by Porphyry to pagan rituals in the De Philosophia ex oraculis in order to understand better the author’s attitude towards traditional religious practices. In his work originally entitled Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, Porphyry gathered pagan oracles, most of which were ascribed to the god Apollo. Each oracle was followed by a philosophical commentary by the author. As is well known, this work is of considerable importance for our knowledge of Neoplatonic views on pagan traditional religion. However, the interpretation of this enigmatic work remains puzzling, thus creating further difficulties for the analysis of Porphyry’s role in the debate over religious practices. Indeed, the work is not extant: it is only available to us in the form of quotations made by Christian apologists in their polemical writings against Porphyry and pagan religion in general.1 Consequently, there are still doubts surrounding its date, the attribution of certain fragments, and its general composition.2 Despite its fragmentary state, scholars have attempted to reconstruct Porphyry’s original work, but they agree neither as to whether the De Philosophia addressed a pagan or Christian audience, nor even about the general purpose of its author. Traditionally, modern scholars follow the conclusions of J. Bidez, who considered the De Philosophia as a work written by Porphyry before he stayed at Plotinus’ school, when he was young and still superstitious.3 However, the uncertainty of this early date has been pointed out.4 At the same time, some scholars have proposed associating the De Philosophia with other Porphyrian treatises: J. J. O’Meara suggested adding to the De Philosophia the fragments generally attributed to the De regressu animae.5 More recently, P. F. Beatrice has proposed to attribute to the De Philosophia the fragments usually ascribed 21

22 Aude Busine

to the work Against the Christians, a hypothesis which was firmly rejected by R. Goulet.6 I shall not discuss here the key issues that arise from these statements. Yet, it should be noted that these modern controversies have overlooked the analysis of the remaining fragments. The aim of this chapter is to delve into Porphyry’s attitude towards religious practices in the light of the fragments that are attributed with certainty to the De Philosophia ex oraculis. In addition, I shall also compare it with the fragments of the Letter to Anebo, as well as with Iamblichus’ answer in his De Mysteriis. Indeed, while assessing Porphyry’s views on religious practices, modern scholars have traditionally opposed the De Philosophia and the Letter to Anebo. They have usually relied on the common interpretation of Porphyry’s intellectual development, which supposes an evolution from early superstition to later rationalism. On the contrary, A. Smith has shown that these two works do not express opposite attitudes towards pagan religious practices; and he claimed that the Letter to Anebo should no longer be considered as the attack of a rationalist mind on superstition and magics, but rather as a constructive enquiry about pagan rituals.7 It is now time to turn to the prologue of the De Philosophia ex oraculis in which Porphyry explained the aim of his work.8 In the first lines, the author claims that an accurate interpretation of traditional oracles could help a philosopher in the search for salvation.9 According to Porphyry, the teaching of the gods’ revelations could provide philosophers with a means to find an end to their questions.10 In this context, Porphyry announced that his commentaries on oracles aimed at providing his reader, on the one hand, with some philosophical principles revealed by the gods and, on the other hand, with more practical accounts intended to help the person who looks at the contemplation and purification of life.11 It is not clear whether, as has usually been asserted by scholars, the treatise was practically organized according to this dichotomy between philosophical accounts and practical features of the teaching of the oracles. In view of the remaining evidence, I would prefer to consider that this distinction constitutes two features of Porphyry’s argumentation, and merely represents two different levels of interpretation. At any rate, it is clear that on many occasions Porphyry sought to explain and justify the validity of religious practices. At that time, the justification of pagan rituals was at stake: indeed, pagan intellectuals increasingly tended to reject some traditional rituals, such as blood sacrifice.12 The denunciation of pagan rituals as nonsense was at the core of the Christian attacks against paganism.

Porphyry and traditional religious practices

23

In the De Philosophia ex oraculis, Porphyry’s main argument consists in justifying religious practices with the assertion that everything concerning the divine world, and hence also ritual performances, was imposed upon men by the gods themselves. In this regard, the author claims that: Not only have they [the gods] themselves informed us of their mode of life, and the other things which I have mentioned, but they also suggested by what sort of things they are pleased and prevailed upon, and moreover by what they are compelled, and what one ought to sacrifice, and what day to avoid, and what sort of figure should be given to their statues, and in what shapes they themselves appear, and in what kind of places they abide; and all the things whereby men thus honour them there is not one which they were not taught by (the gods) themselves. As the proofs which confirm this are many, we will bring forward a few out of number, not to leave our statement without witness (Trans. Gifford).13 In all likelihood, Porphyry referred here to the well-known account in Plato’s Republic (IV 427b) where it is claimed that the Delphic Apollo has enacted the best laws ‘having to do with the establishing of temples, sacrifices, and other forms of service to gods, daemons, and heroes, the burial of the dead, and the services that ensure their favour’.14 In this respect, Porphyry seized the opportunity to use oracular texts as witnesses of divine expression on cultic practices. The remaining fragments of the De Philosophia reveal four main themes related to religious practices: (1) the traditional blood sacrifice; (2) magical rituals; (3) the ways in which the god passes on his inspiration to his medium and (4) the inaccuracy of the divine predictions. This chapter will focus on the manner in which Porphyry commented on the divine words in order to justify the first two features of the debate about religious practices, that is to say, sacrifices and magic. First, Porphyry used Apollinian oracles in order to justify traditional blood sacrifices. In that context, Porphyry quotes a long verse oracle of Apollo. In this prophecy, the god gave precise information on the different victims to be sacrificed. According to him, the victims must differ, depending on the type of deities concerned, whether terrestrial, infernal or celestial.15 This is the kind of material typically used by Christian authors (here Eusebius) to emphasize the nonsense and barbarism of pagan religious practices. Modern scholars also referred to this kind of oracle in order to emphasize both Porphyry’s superstition and his lack of criticism and rationality. However, as is shown by the remaining fragments, the commentaries made by Porphyry in the De Philosophia

24 Aude Busine

differ from the contents of the oracles, and, therefore, we should not identify Porphyry’s intentions merely with the contents of the texts he commented on. In this particular example, Porphyry gives notice that he used this oracle in a part of the work concerned with worship (θεραπεία). It is employed in order to establish the rank (τάξις) of the different divine entities.16 In the following commentary, which is the longest piece of the De Philosophia we have properly preserved, Porphyry did his best to show the logic of the classification exposed in the oracle. His first explanation is that the sacrifices are meant to be sumbola (σύμβολα), which are only clear to clever men.17 In the view of Porphyry, oracular revelations thus contain symbolic meanings that are to be understood and interpreted by sensible men. The second explanation refers to the principle according to which ‘like is delighted about like’ (τῷ . . . ὁμοίῳ χαίρει τὸ ὅμοιον). As we have been recently reminded, this rule of ‘like to like’ goes back very far in Greek thought.18 However, in the context of theurgic practice, it refers to the identification of certain natural substances with definite parts or levels of the cosmos and the spiritual entities inhabiting them.19 Porphyry uses this rule in order to explain that one must sacrifice animals living in the same element as that of the deities for which the animal is intended. The same kind of classification is found in the Letter to Anebo, where Porphyry claims that the divine entities are to be classified according to the different kinds of bodies (aetherial, aerial or earthly).20 In the De Mysteriis, Iamblichus refutes this point because, according to him, one cannot confine the gods to certain parts of the cosmos, because it does not properly reflect the totality of their essence.21 In V 20, where he discusses sacrifices, Iamblichus also admits that ‘the rule of cult, obviously, assigns like to like’,22 but in a different context (the criteria used by Iamblichus to connect the gods to the victims are not material; they rather follow the rule of empathy). All this goes to show that Porphyry’s account of sacrifices in the De Philosophia ex oraculis is in line with the debate over the validity of the kinds of victims to be sacrificed, which is exposed in the Letter to Anebo and in Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis. The second theme dealt with in this chapter is that of magic. Indeed, Porphyry found in oracles a justification for magical rituals and constraint exerted on gods. Just before quoting six oracles of the goddess Hekate,23 Porphyry refers to a certain Pythagoras of Rhodes according to whom ‘the gods who are invoked over the sacrifices have no pleasure


25

therein, but come because they are dragged by a certain necessity of following, and some of them more, and some less’.24 Porphyry admits the truth of Pythagoras’ statement, but only because it was confirmed by the oracles (ἐκ τῶν λογίων): ‘For as Pythagoras had made these statements, I learned how true his words are by close observation of the oracles’. Later on, Porphyry notes that ‘For all the gods say that they have come by compulsion, yet not simply so, but as it were, if I may so speak, by compulsion under the guise of persuasion’.25 In this passage, Porphyry created a new word, πειθανάγκη, in order to explain that which happens when the gods accept to be invoked. This term combines the pejorative notion of constraint (ἀνάγκη), with that of persuasion (πειθώ), whose importance is well known in Platonism and will be developed by Iamblichus. In the following passage, Porphyry quotes an oracle in which Apollo himself advises someone to perform magical rituals (τὰ μαγεία) in order to purify his soul and to be able to receive the god. Porphyry comments on the sacred prescription by asserting that ‘hereby it is clearly shown that the use of magic in loosing the bonds of fate was a gift from the gods, in order to avert it by any means’.26 Regarding two other oracles about the constraint exerted on the gods during the divination act, Porphyry adds that ‘they give out answers for their own compulsion, as will be shown by Apollo’s answer about his own compulsion’.27 We know that Porphyry would probably have condemned such magical practices. However, by describing magic as a gift from the gods and by showing that the gods themselves accepted to be constrained, Porphyry seems to answer the severe attack formulated by pagan philosophers and Christian apologists against such practices. Unfortunately, Eusebius’ scattered quotations do not allow for a proper understanding of Porphyry’s opinion about magic and constraint. Nevertheless, we can connect these comments to the passages of the Letter to Anebo where Porphyry has also questioned the manner in which men could address the gods.28 Conversely, Iamblichus firmly refuted the fact that gods could be compelled by humans. He claimed that theurgy differs from magic especially because it does not exert constraint on gods.29 In conclusion, we have seen that Porphyry used pagan oracles in order to justify some traditional religious practices, like sacrifices and magic. The first conclusion we can come to is that the philosopher’s explanation was that cultic matters depended on a divine rule, and that oracles of the gods were the expression of this rule. In this regard, the commentaries of Porphyry aimed at explaining the logic of this rule, which was

26 Aude Busine

sometimes hidden from men by the symbolic character of the oracular language. The overwhelming impression conveyed by the evidence is that the accounts about rituals were at the centre of the debate over religious practices, as expressed in the Letter to Anebo and in the De Mysteriis. Nevertheless, the fragmentary state of the De Philosophia does not allow us to have a complete view of Porphyry’s attitude toward religious practices. In providing new views on traditional rituals, Porphyry probably wished to build a general interpretation of religious practices that would be able to resist the severe attack against traditional rituals formulated by other contemporary Neoplatonists and by Christian polemicists. One may still wonder why Porphyry decided to gather such a collection of oracles, whose philosophical interpretation posed so many problems. Yet, the new status ascribed to the traditional oracles, called ‘logia’ by Porphyry, may have constituted a means to answer the Christian claims that truth and wisdom had to be found in the logia of the Bible.30 In that context, Porphyry has conversely tried to show that pagans too had their own sacred texts in which men could find truth about philosophic principles and practical aspects of religion.


27

Notes 1. See the collection of fragments in Wolff (1856/1983), replaced today by Smith (1993), pp. 351–407 (p. 43). 2. For an overview, see Smith (1987). 3. Bidez (1913), followed by Barnes (1973 and 1994), Hoffmann (1994), pp. 16–17. 4. See Wilken (1979 and 1984); Fowden (1981). 5. O’Meara (1959 and 1969). 6. Beatrice (1997), sv. Porphyrius, 27, pp. 54–9 (with previous bibliography); contra Goulet (2001), pp. 395–7; Goulet (2004). 7. Smith (1997). 8. Porphyry F 303–304–305 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 7–8. 9. Porphyry F 303 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 7, 1. 10. Porphyry F 303 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 7, 2: ἣν δ' ἔχει ὠφέλειαν ἡ συναγωγή, μάλιστα εἴσονται ὅσοιπερ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ὠδίναντες ηὔξαντό ποτε τῆς ἐκ θεῶν ἐπιφανείας τυχόντες ἀνάπαυσιν λαβεῖν τῆς ἀπορίας διὰ τὴν τῶν λεγόντων ἀξιόπιστον διδασκαλίαν. ‘And the utility which this collection possesses will be best known to as many as have ever been in travail with the truth, and prayed that by receiving the manifestation of it from the gods they might gain relief from their perplexity by virtue of the truthworthy teaching of the speakers’ (trans. Gifford). 11. Porphyry F 303 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 7, 1: ἕξει δὲ ἡ παροῦσα συναγωγὴ πολλῶν μὲν τῶν κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν δογμάτων ἀναγραφήν, ὡς οἱ θεοὶ τἀληθὲς ἔχειν ἐθέσπισαν· ἐπ' ὀλίγον δὲ καὶ τῆς χρηστικῆς ἁψόμεθα πραγματείας, ἥτις πρός τε τὴν θεωρίαν ὀνήσει καὶ τὴν ἄλλην κάθαρσιν τοῦ βίου. ‘And our present collection will contain a record of many doctrines of philosophy, according as the gods declared the truth to be; but to a small extent we shall also touch upon the practice of divination, such as will be useful both for the contemplation and the general purification of life’ (trans. Gifford). 12. See for example Bradbury (1995). 13. Porphyry F 316 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. V 11, 1: Οὐ μόνον δὲ τὴν πολιτείαν αὐτῶν αὐτοὶ μεμηνύκασιν καὶ τὰ ἄλλα τὰ εἰρημένα, ἀλλὰ καὶ τίσι χαίρουσι καὶ κρατοῦνται ὑπηγόρευσαν, καὶ μὴν καὶ τίσιν ἀναγκάζονται τίνα τε δεῖ θύειν καὶ ἐκ ποίας ἡμέρας ἐκτρέπεσθαι τό τε σχῆμα τῶν ἀγαλμάτων ποταπὸν δεῖ ποιεῖν αὐτοί τε ποίοις σχήμασιν φαίνονται ἔν τε ποίοις διατρίβουσιν τόποις· καὶ ὅλως ἓν οὐδέν ἐστιν ὃ μὴ παρ' αὐτῶν μαθόντες ἄνθρωποι οὕτως αὐτοὺς ἐτίμησαν. 14. Plato, Rep. IV 427b: τῷ μέντοι Ἀπόλλωνι τῷ ἐν Δελφοῖς τά γε μέγιστα καὶ κάλλιστα καὶ πρῶτα τῶν νομοθετημάτων. Τὰ ποῖα; ἦ δ' ὅς. Ἱερῶν τε ἱδρύσεις καὶ θυσίαι καὶ ἄλλαι θεῶν τε καὶ δαιμόνων καὶ ἡρώων θεραπεῖαι· τελευτησάντων αὖ θῆκαι καὶ ὅσα τοῖς ἐκεῖ δεῖ ὑπηρετοῦντας ἵλεως αὐτοὺς ἔχειν. ‘... for the Delphic Apollo it remains to enact the greatest, finest and first of laws.What laws are those? Those having to do with the establishing of temples, sacrifices, and other forms of service to gods, daimons, and heroes, the burial of the dead, and the services that ensure their favour’ (trans. Grube). 15. Porphyry F 314 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 9, 1-2. 16. Porphyry F 314 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 9, 1: Ἀκολούθως μετὰ τὰ ῥηθέντα περὶ εὐσεβείας ἃ περὶ τῆς θεραπείας αὐτῶν ἔχρησαν, ἀναγράφοιμεν ἂν ὧν ἐκ μέρους κἀν τοῖς περὶ εὐσεβείας φθάσαντες παρατεθείκαμεν. ἔστιν δὲ ὁ χρησμὸς τοῦ

28 Aude Busine

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

Ἀπόλλωνος ἅμα καὶ διαίρεσιν τῆς τῶν θεῶν περιέχων τάξεως. ‘Next in order after what has been said concerning piety we shall record the responses given by them concerning their worship, part of which by anticipation we have set forth in the statements concerning piety. Now this is the response of Apollo, containing at the same time an orderly classification of the gods’ (trans. Gifford). Porphyry F 315 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. IV 9, 6: ἆρ' οὖν δεήσει ἐξηγήσασθαι τῶν θυσιῶν τὰ σύμβολα τῷ εὐσυνέτῳ δῆλα; Clarke, Dillon and Hershbell edition (2004) p. 261. See Plato, Lys. 214a–b for a good statement of the principle, together with an attribution of it to Homer. For further hints at this fundamental doctrine, see Iamblichus, De Myst. I 5; I 6; I 15; V 10. Porphyry, Ep. Ad Aneb. F 2a Iamblichus, De Myst. I 8: Οὐ μέντοι τὴν ὑπὸ σοῦ διάκρισιν ὑποτεινομένην αὐτῶν προσιέμεθα, ἥτις τὴν πρὸς τὰ διαφέροντα σώματα κατάταξιν, οἷον θεῶν μὲν πρὸς τὰ αἰθέρια, δαιμόνων δὲ πρὸς τὰ ἀέρια, ψυχῶν δὲ τῶν περὶ γῆν, αἰτίαν εἶναί φησι τῆς νυνὶ ζητουμένης διαστάσεως. Iamblichus, De Myst. I 8: ἡ μὴ διειργομένη μερισταῖς περιγραφαῖς ὑποκειμένων κατέχεται μεριστῶς ὑπὸ τῶν μερῶν τοῦ κόσμου; τί δὲ δὴ καὶ τὸ διακωλῦόν ἐστι τοὺς θεοὺς προϊέναι πανταχοῦ καὶ τὸ ἀνεῖργον αὐτῶν τὴν δύναμιν ὥστε ἰέναι μέχρι τῆς οὐρανίας ἀψῖδος; Iamblichus, De Myst. V 20: ὁ δὴ τῆς θρησκείας νόμος τὰ ὅμοια δηλονότι τοῖς ὁμοίοις ἀπονέμει. Porphyry F 347 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. V 8, 4–7 Chaldaean Oracles F 219, 222, 221 and 223 (des Places). On these texts, see the brief accounts of Johnston (1990), pp. 130–1; Van Liefferinge (1999), pp. 143–4. Porphyry F 347 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. V 8, 1: τοῦ γὰρ Πυθαγόρου ταῦτ' εἰρηκότος παρετήρησα ἐκ τῶν λογίων ὡς ἀληθές ἐστιν τὸ εἰρημένον. On the author, see Ziegler (1963), sv. Pythagoras n° 11, pp. 304–5. Porphyry F 347 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. V 8, 3: πάντες γὰρ δι' ἀνάγκην φασὶν ἀφῖχθαι, οὐχ ἁπλῶς δέ, ἀλλ' οἷον, εἰ χρὴ οὕτω φάναι, πειθανάγκην. Porphyry F 339 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. VI 4, 1–2: δι' ὧν καὶ σαφῶς δεδήλωται ὅτι ἡ μαγεία ἐν τῷ λύειν τὰ τῆς εἱμαρμένης παρὰ θεῶν ἐδόθη εἰς τὸ ὁπωσοῦν ταύτην παρατρέπειν. Porphyry F 348 (Smith) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. V 8, 8–10: ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐπανάγκους ἑαυτῶν ἐκδιδόασιν, ὡς δηλώσει ὁ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἐκδοθεὶς περὶ ἑαυτοῦ ἐπάναγκος. Porphyry, Letter to Anebo F II 8c (Sodano, pp. 18–22) Eusebius, Prep. Ev. V 10, 3. See Van Liefferinge (1999), pp. 55–84; Van Liefferinge (2000). See Busine (2004).

Bibliography Barnes, T., 1973, ‘Porphyry Against the Christians: Date and Attribution of the Fragments’, The Journal of Theological Studies 24, pp. 424–42. Barnes, T., 1994, ‘Scholarship or Propaganda? Porphyry Against the Christians and his historical setting’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 39, pp. 53–65. Beatrice, P.F., 1997, ‘Porphyrius’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 27, pp. 54–9.


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Bidez, J., 1913, Vie de Porphyre, le philosophe néo-platonicien. Avec les fragments des traités ΠΕΡΙ ΑΓΑΛΜΑΤΩΝ et De regressu animae, Gent. Bradbury, S., 1995, ‘Julian’s Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice’, Phoenix 49, pp. 331–56. Busine, A., 2004, ‘Des logia pour philosophie. À propos du titre de la Philosophie tirée des oracles de Porphyre’, Philosophie Antique 4, pp. 149–66. Des Places, É. (ed. and trans.), 1971, Oracles Chaldaïques, Paris. Eusebius, 1903, Preparation for the Gospel, E. H. Gifford (ed. and trans.), 2 vols, Oxford. Fowden, G., 1981, ‘Late antique Paganism reasoned and revealed’, The Journal of Roman Studies 71, pp. 178–82. Goulet, R., 2001, Études sur les Vies des Philosophes de l’Antiquité tardive. Diogène Laërce, Porphyre de Tyr, Eunape de Sardes, Paris. Goulet, R., 2004, ‘Hypothèses récentes sur le traité de Porphyre, Contre les chrétiens’, in M. Narcy and E. Rebillard (eds.), Hellénisme et Christianisme, Lille, pp. 61–109. Hoffmann, R. J. (ed. and trans.), 1994, Porphyry’s Against the Christians. The Literary Remains, New York. Iamblichus, 1966, Les Mystères d’ Égypte, É. des Places (ed. and trans.), Paris. Iamblichus, 2004, De Mysteriis. Translated with an Introduction and Notes, E. C. Clarke, J. M. Dillon, and J. P. Hershbell (eds.), Leiden and Boston. Johnston, S.I., 1990, Hekate Soteira. A Study of Hecate’s Roles in the Chaldaean Oracles and Related Literature, Atlanta. O’Meara, J. J., 1959, Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles in Augustine, Paris. O’Meara, J. J., 1969, ‘Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica and Augustine’s Dialogues of Cassiciacum’, Recherches augustiniennes 6, pp. 103–39. Plato, 1900–07, Opera, J. Burnet (ed.), 5 vols, Oxford. Plato, 1974, The Republic, G. M. A. Grube (trans.), London. Smith, A., 1987, ‘Porphyrian Studies since 1913’, in W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II, 36, 2, Berlin, pp. 717–73. Smith, A. (ed.), 1993, Porphyrii Philosophi Fragmenta, Stuttgart and Leipzig. Smith, A., 1997, ‘Porphyry and Pagan Religious Practice’, in J. J. Cleary (ed.), The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism, Leuven, pp. 29–35. Sodano, A.R. (ed.), 1958, Porfirio, Lettera ad Anebo, Naples. Van Liefferinge, C., 1999, La Théurgie. Des Oracles chaldaïques à Proclus, Liège. Van Liefferinge, C., 2000, ‘Magie et théurgie chez Jamblique’, in A. Moreau and J.-C. Turpin (eds.), La Magie. Actes du colloque international de Montpellier 25–27 mars 1999, vol. II, Montpellier, pp. 115–25. Wilken, R. L., 1979, ‘Pagan Criticism of Christianity: Greek Religion and Christian Faith’, in W. R. Schoedel and R. L. Wilken (eds.), Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition. In Honorem R. M. Grant, Paris, pp. 117–34. Wilken, R. L., 1984, The Christians As The Romans Saw Them, New Haven and London. Wolff, G. (ed.), 1856/1983, Porphyrii De philosophia ex oraculis haurienda librorum reliquiae, Berlin/Hildesheim. Ziegler, K., 1963, ‘Pythagoras nº 11’, in Realencyclopädie der classichen Altertumswissenschaft 24, pp. 304–5.

2 St John in Amelius’ Seminar John Dillon

This chapter, I regret to say, is a somewhat fanciful production. The topic on which I propose to allow my fancy to play is the report by Eusebius1 that the Neoplatonic philosopher Amelius, senior pupil of Plotinus, who retired in later life to Apamea in Syria, provided, in some context, an exegesis of the Prologue (at least) of the Gospel of John. This remarkable testimony has often been noted, but never, I think, dwelt on with quite the attention that it deserves.2 I must confess to having long been intrigued by the mystery of exactly how and why Amelius approached this troublesome text – product of an alien and, indeed, dangerously hostile tradition, but yet in some ways oddly familiar to a Platonist or Stoic philosopher in its terminology. The text of Eusebius runs as follows (he has just been quoting Numenius on the relations between his first and second gods, the latter of whom Eusebius wishes to equate with the Logos of St John): So much, then, for Numenius’ utterances on this topic. That he is not here stating views of his own, but rather expounding the doctrines of Plato, there is no need to prove by direct quotations of the latter. However, that Plato was not the first to employ these concepts, but that he is obviously anticipated by the sages of the Hebrews, has been demonstrated above. It is quite reasonable, then, that a distinguished modern philosopher, Amelius, himself as strong a partisan as any of the philosophy of Plato – even though he is not prepared to mention the evangelist John by name, but refers to the Hebrew theologian as ‘the Barbarian’ – yet bears witness nonetheless to his words, writing as follows [19]: ‘And this then was the reason-principle (logos) in accordance with which (kath’ hon), eternally existing as it is, things that come to be come to be, as indeed would be the view of Heraclitus, and, by 30

St John in Amelius’ Seminar

31

Zeus, which the Barbarian considers, established as it is in the rank and dignity of a first principle, to be “with god (pros theon)”, and to be god, through the agency of which (di’ hou) absolutely everything has come to be, and in which (en hôi) that which comes to be has taken on the nature of a living thing, life and being; and that it fell into bodies and took on flesh, and assumed the appearance of man, along with also showing by this action the grandeur of its nature; and then again, after suffering dissolution, it is divinized once again and becomes god, even such as it was prior to being drawn down into body and flesh and man’.3 To appreciate the truly remarkable nature of this passage, we must recall to our minds the text of the opening verses of the Gospel of John:4 In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God (pros theon), and the Logos was God. It was in the beginning with God; all things were made through it (di’ auton), and without it was not anything made. That which came to be5 in him (en autôi) was life, and the life was the light of men6… And the Logos became flesh, and took up its abode amongst us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.7 The question before us here is, just what is Amelius up to? What is his purpose in dragging St John into whatever discussion he is engaged upon? And what is the significance of his being able to refer to him, allusively, as ‘the Barbarian’, assuming that his audience knows exactly to whom he is referring? Before addressing these specific issues, however, we should perhaps review briefly all that we know about Amelius himself, his philosophical background, and his distinctive philosophical positions.8 We do not know exactly when or where he was born, but we learn from Porphyry (VPlot. 3) that he was of Etruscan stock, and that he joined the school of Plotinus only two or three years after Plotinus arrived in Rome in the spring of 244 – that is to say, in 246 or 247, presumably in his early or middle twenties. We learn also – and this is of some significance for the present topic – that he had studied briefly with a Stoic named Lysimachus before finding his way to Plotinus. We also know of him that he was a great admirer of the Neopythagorean Numenius – whether under the influence of Plotinus or off his own bat is not made clear – but Porphyry tells us (ibid.) that he had copied out all of Numenius’ works, and actually knew most of them off by heart. Indeed, towards

32 John Dillon

the end of Plotinus’ life, in 269, Amelius, after a period of twenty-four years as Plotinus’ senior disciple, decamped to Numenius’ home town of Apamea, where he spent the rest of his life. It is probably to his Apamean period, which seems to have lasted into the 290s,9 that we may date such commentaries as he composed on the dialogues of Plato, of which the best attested is one on the Timaeus, to which we find fully seventeen references in the commentary of Proclus (the majority, admittedly, concerning his remarkable theory of a triple demiurge, derived from his exegesis of Tim. 39E).10 From these, and from other testimonia, we can derive some notion of his philosophical tendencies, which were sufficiently distinctive to mark him as something of a maverick from the perspective of the later Platonic tradition.11 First of all, like Porphyry, but unlike his master Plotinus, he can be seen to take an interest in the observance of traditional religious practices,12 and in the exegesis of texts such as the Orphic poems and the Chaldaean Oracles.13 He was also, necessarily, well-read in Gnostic texts, as Plotinus set him at one point to refute the pretensions of the book of Zostrianus, which Amelius did in a treatise which ran to 40 books! (Porph. VPlot. 16). This would bring him close also to a knowledge of basic Christian texts. As regards specific doctrinal positions within Platonism, possibly the most relevant to his exposition of the Logos of St John is his exegesis of Tim.39e7–9, where he (admittedly, developing further suggestions made by Plotinus in a little note preserved by Porphyry as Enn. III.9.1)14 professes to see a whole triad of demiurges – or perhaps, rather, three aspects of the demiurgic function of Intellect – adumbrated in the passage ᾗπερ οὖν νοῦς ἐνούσας ἰδέας τῷ ὃ ἔστι ζῷον, οἷαί τε ἔνεισι καὶ ὅσαι, καθορᾷ, τοιαύτας καὶ τοσαύτας διενοήθη δεῖν καὶ τόδε σχεῖν, ‘Accordingly, then, as Intellect perceives Forms existing in the Essential Living Being, such and so many as exist in it did he decide that this world should also possess.’ As Proclus explains the situation (In Tim. I 306, 1–14), Amelius discerns here, first, an aspect which is existent, or Being Itself, ὁ ὤν, represented by ὃ ἔστι ζῷον; then a possessive aspect, ὁ ἔχων, not so clearly expressed (though implied, presumably, by the phrase δεῖν καὶ τόδε σχεῖν), representing Being, as object of intellection (νοητόν), in its aspect of being possessed by Intellect as a whole; and thirdly, a ‘seeing’, or conscious aspect, ὁ ὁρῶν, represented by the verbs καθορᾷ and διενοήθη, which contemplates Being as a system of Forms, and which Amelius regards as the Demiurge proper, equating him with the Orphic Phanes. It is this third Demiurge that would send forth a Logos in order to bestow upon the physical universe – or rather, upon Matter as the Receptacle – all the Forms that it beholds in the Essential Living Being.


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The median, possessive aspect, though that is not stated explicitly here,15 must correspond, I think, in such a triadic system, to the stage of potency, δύναμις, or ‘life’, ζωή – and that has some relevance, as we shall see, for the exegesis of the Prologue of St John. Amelius is credited with various other interesting innovations in doctrine, such as his claim that one must postulate Forms of evils also in the demiurgic Intellect,16 but they are not of immediate relevance to our present concerns, so we may leave them aside, and instead turn back to our initial text. To begin at the beginning, what are we to make of the opening phrase καὶ οὗτος ἄρα ἦν ὁ λόγος? We must conclude, surely, that Amelius has been, in some context or other, discussing the Logos in general, necessarily in the later Platonist sense of a projection downwards into Soul, and ultimately into the physical world, of the totality of Forms resident in the Intellect. It is only after he has fully characterized this Logos, we may assume, that he is adducing, first that of Heraclitus, and then that of ‘the Barbarian’.17 The reference to Heraclitus’ Logos – a reference never made by Plotinus, we may note – may be something of a throwback to Amelius’ studies with the Stoic Lysimachus, but no doubt too much should not be made of this; it is a reference that might come to the mind of any Platonist. If we may allow ourselves to speculate on the context of such a reference, we might look for some passage in the Timaeus (on which Amelius almost certainly composed a commentary) which would lend itself to a disquisition on the Logos. One possible passage, I suggest, would be Tim. 41a, the introduction to the Demiurge’s address to the Young Gods: ἐπεὶ δ᾽οὖν πάντες ὅσοι τε περιπολοῦσι φανερῶς καὶ ὅσοι φαίνονται καθ᾽ ὅσον ἂν ἐθέλωσι θεοὶ γένεσιν ἔσχον, λέγει πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὁ τόδε τὸ πᾶν γεννήσας τάδε:18 Here Proclus, in his commentary on the passage (In Tim. III 197, 26–199, 12), launches into a discussion of the precise nature of the logoi being uttered here by the Demiurge. He first lists all the types of logos that they are not: not logoi prophorikoi, in accordance with Stoic theory;19 not physikoi, since these are the province rather of Nature; nor yet psychikoi, as those are issued properly by the World Soul and individual souls; nor yet noeroi (though one might have thought they were!), since these are contained within the Intellect of the universe and the individual intellects comprised by it. No, says Proclus, these logoi are distinctively creative, ‘demiurgic and divine’ (δημιουργικοὶ καὶ θεῖοι), and they render creative all the encosmic gods which they inform, being characterized by the quality of the god who utters them: ‘for these logoi are impartings from primary entities to secondary ones of powers, of divine providence, and

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of marvellous life, which the creator of all things possesses first within himself’.20 Now this Procline exegesis is no doubt somewhat more elaborate than anything that we could confidently attribute to Amelius, and indeed it is unlikely that Proclus had any first-hand acquaintance with a commentary from Amelius’ hand,21 but I see no reason to suppose, on the other hand, that the exegesis of Amelius was very different in substance from what we have here. After all, for any Platonist attuned to the allegorical tradition, the address of the Demiurge to the Young Gods is not to be taken literally, and therefore any communication that takes place between them must involve the imparting of logoi, or, collectively, of logos, a logos which would be of such a nature as to make these inferior, encosmic deities creative in their turn; and this logos would impart, as Proclus suggests here, not simply intellection, but Being and Life as well. Armed with this, then, let us return to our original text of Amelius. If we may imagine that it is after explaining just what kind of Logos the Demiurge is imparting to the Young Gods that Amelius turns to adduce, first Heraclitus (briefly), and then, in greater detail, ‘the Barbarian’, certain features of his exposition, I think, come better into focus. First, Amelius’ commendation of John for declaring that the Logos ‘is in the rank and dignity of a first principle (arkhê), is with God, and is God.’ The claim was made, it will be recalled, by Proclus, that the logos being imparted by the Demiurge is not prophorikos, in the Stoic sense, and so, by implication endiathetos, or still inhering in the essence of the Demiurge, while necessarily also proceeding forth. It is this feature of the Logos that John is credited for getting right here: Christ remains with the Father, even while he proceeds downwards into Matter to do the work of creation, in this fulfilling his role as the efficient cause – di’ hou, in terms of the ‘metaphysic of prepositions’. The next passage contains the significant specification ἐν ὧ τὸ γενόμενον ζῶν καὶ ζωὴν καὶ ὂν πεφυκέναι, ‘in which that which comes to be has taken on the nature of a living thing, life and being’. Here we have a triad of qualities being bestowed upon all creation by the Logos, but it is a somewhat odd triad. Since Life and Being are being bestowed, one would expect the first element to be Intellect, or ‘consciousness’ (nous), instead of the rather curious zôn. However, I think I can discern a reason for this, if not more than one. First of all, John conspicuously does not speak of nous as being a quality imparted to all things by the Logos; nor could he, after all, since nous is not something imparted to all things, but only to a minority of them. And yet Amelius appears to have discerned in John’s text at this point the elements of a triad of qualities,


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where we can only see one: to wit, Life. What can have stimulated him to this? As I say, I think I can discern an answer, but I am afraid that it is a rather speculative one. What I think has happened is this. Amelius, we may reasonably assume, can credit John with declaring that the Logos bestows existence as well as life on the physical realm, since life is mentioned in the text, and life presupposes existence (though not vice versa). It would also be in accordance with his own doctrine – Amelius being a man partial to triads – to postulate that the Demiurge would project upon the world all three of the elements proper to him, Being, Life and Intellect. But in the text before him he is faced with something else, and he appears to have made the best of that. What was that? I have already suggested (n.5 above) that Amelius – along with most of the early Church Fathers – had before him a text which punctuated 1. 3–4 with a full stop after οὐδὲ ἕν, and took ὃ γέγονεν with what followed it. Now I would like to suggest, further, that what he read in the text available to him was not ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, but rather ἐν αὐτῷ ζῶν (with ἦν understood),22 which would give the meaning ‘that which came to be in him was a living thing, and this life was the light of men.’ This would signify that the Demiurge generated within himself an archetype of Living Being (he is himself, after all, on Amelius’ interpretation, identical with the autozôon, or Essential Living Being, which is his contents qua Intellect). The significance that Amelius could have attached to zôn, distinct from zôê, would be, not exactly consciousness (though that would be included), but rather the concept of the whole hierarchy of individual living beings, from plants, through irrational animals, to humans. So that the triad which he identifies here would be in reverse order of specificity – bare existence being the most general feature of the physical world, which Amelius may have seen as represented by St John’s phôs, ‘light’, while zôn is the most specific, representing individual living things. If phôs is to be taken as representing Being, then St John’s skotia, ‘darkness’ – though Amelius does not dwell on this – may be taken to represent Matter, which, according to Plotinian doctrine, as set out particularly in Enn. III. 6. 6–19, does not really mingle with, or ‘receive’ Form, but remains unaffected by it, though constituting a sort of substratum for bodies. Instead of treating of skotia, however, Amelius makes a leap, in his exegesis, from 1.4 to 1.14: καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, ‘and the Logos was made flesh and set up its abode amongst us, and we beheld its glory…’ It is understandable that he should do so, as the intervening passage is

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rather too specifically Christian for his purposes. He is prepared, however, to speak of the Logos as ‘falling into bodies, and, taking on flesh, appearing as man’. This might at first sight seem offensive to Platonist susceptibilities, but on closer consideration it emerges as quite consistent with the Plotinian view of how logoi work on Matter. Amelius continues, after all, after σάρκα ἐνδυσάμενον, with φαντάζεσθαι ἄνθρωπον. Now phantazesthai, like phainesthai, is a somewhat ambiguous verb, being used to describe appearances both real and illusory. A nice example from Plato would be Symp. 211a5, where οὐδ᾽ αὖ φαντασθήσεται αὐτῷ τὸ καλὸν οἷον πρόσωπόν τι οὐδὲ χεῖρες οὐδὲ ἄλλο οὐδὲν ὧν σῶμα μετέχει can be properly rendered ‘nor will beauty appear to him the sort of thing a face is, or hands, or anything else in which a body shares,’ with no real connotation of illusoriness (though of course the Beautiful Itself is not in fact identical with any physical manifestation of beauty). Here Amelius can take John to mean that the Logos manifests itself as generic Man (this being the most exalted of its manifestations), without any suggestion that it became uniquely instantiated in any particular human form, such as that of Jesus.23 This was not, in Amelius’ interpretation, a compromising or polluting descent into a particular physical body, but simply a general illumination by the Logos of the material realm, such as manifests the grandeur of its nature – this being an interpretation of St John’s doxa autou.24 Amelius’ term to megaleion is noteworthy. In this nominal form it appears to be hellenistic, being attested in Polybius (8.1.1) and, in the plural, in the LXX (Deut. 11. 2, etc.). He subtly alters the sense of John’s text, as well as his terminology. John is referring, presumably, to the doxa of Christ as an individual; Amelius takes this as denominating the Logos as a whole, in its manifestation in the physical world. Lastly, we have a reference, not to anything in chapter 1, but rather to the culmination of the whole story, as recounted by John in chapters 20–21. Amelius represents John as portraying the analysis of the Logos from its material integuments, and thus its reassumption of its divine status,25 but I think that he must be interpreting this as a permanent process, involving the dissolution of individual beings, and the reversion of the Logos, as the sum-total of individual logoi, to its source. Nonetheless, it is notable that Amelius goes along with John in presenting this as an historical cycle of ascent and descent.26 He may here be influenced particularly by such a passage as 20: 17, where Jesus, in conversation with Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, talks of ‘ascending to my father and your father, and my God and your God’.27 Amelius can, I feel, tolerate these ‘primitive’ elements in the narrative of ‘the


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Barbarian’ – even as he can co-opt Heraclitus, despite the apparently cyclical nature of his account – since the whole story of the life and death of Jesus must be taken, in his view, as an allegory of the eternal procession and return of the Logos, if it is to have any philosophical value at all. And after all, did not the divine Plato himself couch his cosmogony in the Timaeus – including the address to the Young Gods, which I am postulating as the occasion for this digression in the direction of St John – in mythological terms, such as led many simpleminded persons (including, of course, many Christians) to regard it as presenting an account of a temporal creation? By way of putting this exegesis of Amelius into some perspective, I think it apposite here to adduce some details of the exegesis provided by the most philosophically acute Christian commentator on John, Origen of Alexandria, composed, probably, some fifty years previously. It would be quite beyond the scope of this discourse to do full justice to Origen’s very copious and discursive exegesis, which takes up the majority of the first two books of his vast commentary, but there are a few details which are of particular interest. There is no evidence, in fact, that Amelius had any knowledge of Origen’s commentary – though this possibility cannot be excluded – but that does not make the comparison any less interesting. To begin at the beginning, Origen interprets ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος by taking the archê to be God’s Wisdom, or Sophia (I 109–118), but hastily qualifies that (lest he be understood to be hypostatizing Sophia, in a Philonic or Gnostic manner) by asserting that Christ as Demiurge is identical with Sophia (111). He thus in effect understands ‘in’ in the same sense as does Amelius, as signifying something like ‘in the position of’, ‘in the role of’. The rest of Book I is taken up with a long disquisition on the various names of Christ. The next section of the text, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, is addressed at the beginning of Book II (1–33). Here Origen emphasizes that, though the Logos proceeds forth to the physical world, it also remains with God (8–9), and in this context gives due weight to the use of ἦν, rather than, say, ἐγένετο, as emphasizing its eternal nature. Origen, of course, as a Christian, accepts the creation of the world in time, and indeed ex nihilo, so he does in the next section (34–63) specify that archê signifies a beginning as well as a first principle, but this is not a question that would concern Amelius. One detail, however, that does exercise Origen relates to Amelius in a rather devious way. Origen, very like contemporary Platonist commentators in respect of Plato (on whom he is doubtless more dependent than he would admit), is much concerned to free the Evangelist from any

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imputation of pleonasm or repetition, so he is concerned to justify the apparent superfluity of adding, after πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, the phrase καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. This latter phrase, he suggests ingeniously (91–9), actually tells us that Christ, as the Logos, is not responsible for evil in the world, evil being depicted as ‘not-being’, represented here by οὐδὲ ἕν, or οὐδέν. This would indeed accord with mainline Platonist doctrine, but Amelius, as we know, advanced the view that forms of evils, and of opposites, must also be postulated as being present in the demiurgic Intellect. It is conceivable that he was influenced in adopting this view by meditation on precisely the passage from John under discussion – though that would, admittedly, betoken a deeper degree of influence on Amelius from this text than is probable; but it is interesting that Origen, in the previous generation, is going out of his way to counter an interpretation of this passage that would make Christ the cause of everything in this world. It rather sounds, from what Origen goes on to say just below (100–4), that one of those whom he had in his sights in this connection was the Valentinian Gnostic Heracleon,28 and Heracleon is an author whom Amelius might well have studied in the process of his refutation of Zostrianos. On the question of the Life that is the content of the Logos, Origen has much of interest to say, but it is not of direct relevance to Amelius, so we may leave it aside in the present context. I wish that I could claim that he shows some knowledge of the reading (or misreading) ζῶν that I am postulating for Amelius, but I can discern no sign of that – though it is interesting that two of the parallel texts that he quotes in this connection are Ps. 142 (143): 2: οὐ δικαωθήσεται κατενώπιόν σου πᾶς ζῶν, and Num. 14: 28/Ex. 3: 6: ζῶ ἐγώ, λέγει κύριος, but not much can be concluded from that, I’m afraid. He does, however, recognize the variant reading ἐστι for ἦν (132), for what that is worth. Much more might be said, certainly, about Origen’s commentary on the Prologue, but that is enough, I think, in the present context. I have adduced it simply to remind us that a good deal of fairly sophisticated commentary on this document had been going on, in both orthodox Christian and Gnostic circles, in the century prior to Amelius, with some of which he may well have been familiar. To conclude, then: this exegesis by Amelius of St John is, as I suggested at the outset, a thoroughly remarkable phenomenon, both in its content and in the form in which it is couched – I refer in particular to the oddly allusive characterization of John as ‘the Barbarian,’ giving evidence as it does of a considerable degree of familiarity on the part of both Amelius and his audience with at least the author of the Fourth


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Gospel, whatever they knew about the rest of Christian literature. However, Amelius was not, it seems, the only Platonist to take an interest, malevolent or otherwise, in the work, if we may conclude this from the remark of an unknown Platonist relayed to us by St Augustine29 – presumably someone other than Amelius, whom Augustine shows no sign of being acquainted with – that the beginning of John’s Gospel ‘should be inscribed in letters of gold and set up in the most prominent place in every church’. This Platonist was not necessarily filled with admiration for Christianity in general – much more probably, he was suggesting that proper attention to this text would keep Christians from straying into much worse follies – but it does provide some further evidence of intellectual engagement such as we have just been examining.

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Notes 1. Prep. Ev. XI 18, 26ff. 2. It has, admittedly, been the subject of a most useful discussion by Heinrich Dörrie, in Dörrie (1976). 3. Καὶ οὗτος ἄρα ἦν ὁ λόγος καθ' ὃν αἰεὶ ὄντα τὰ γινόμενα ἐγίνετο, ὡς ἂν καὶ ὁ Ἡράκλειτος ἀξιώσειε καὶ νὴ Δί' ὃν ὁ βάρβαρος ἀξιοῖ ἐν τῇ τῆς ἀρχῆς τάξει τε καὶ ἀξίᾳ καθεστηκότα πρὸς θεὸν εἶναι καὶ θεὸν εἶναι· δι' οὗ πάνθ' ἁπλῶς γεγενῆσθαι· ἐν ᾧ τὸ γενόμενον ζῶν καὶ ζωὴν καὶ ὂν πεφυκέναι· καὶ εἰς τὰ σώματα πίπτειν καὶ σάρκα ἐνδυσάμενον φαντάζεσθαι ἄνθρωπον μετὰ τοῦ καὶ τηνικαῦτα δεικνύειν τῆς φύσεως τὸ μεγαλεῖον· ἀμέλει καὶ ἀναλυθέντα πάλιν ἀποθεοῦσθαι καὶ θεὸν εἶναι, οἷος ἦν πρὸ τοῦ εἰς τὸ σῶμα καὶ τὴν σάρκα καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον καταχθῆναι. 4. I adopt here the Revised Standard Version with due modifications. It would be unnecessarily misleading, for example, to use the traditional Christian rendering for logos, ‘Word’. 5. It must be noted that Eusebius, like most of the early Fathers (e.g. Irenaeus, Clement, Hippolytus, Origen), attaches the phrase ὃ γέγονεν to what follows, to give the meaning ‘that which came to be in him was life’ – and that is pretty plainly how Amelius reads it also. Further problems with Amelius’ exact reading here will be discussed below. 6. I omit here vv. 6–13, following Eusebius (who quotes St John just after Amelius). Amelius glosses over the intervening verses, since they do not serve his purpose (being too specifically Christian), and Eusebius lets him away with that. 7. Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων·… Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, … 8. Our best guide to this is the comprehensive Brisson (1987). He analyses this passage in particular at pp. 840–3. My only point of dispute with him, as will emerge, is that he feels that Amelius is identifying John’s Logos with the Neoplatonic World Soul, while I would prefer to keep the Logos separate, as an emanation from the demiurgic Intellect, passing (of course) through the World Soul to the realm of Matter. 9. The date of his death is unknown, but it antedates both Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus (composed around 305 AD), and Porphyry’s Commentary on the Timaeus (cf. Fr. LXXIV Sodano) – which is itself, unfortunately, of unknown date (cf. Procl. In Tim. II 300, 23 – 301, 2 Diehl Fr. LXXIV Sodano). This passage, incidentally, tells a nice story about Porphyry coming in on a seminar on the Timaeus which Amelius was giving (necessarily while he was still in Plotinus’ school), and correcting him where he wanted to read λήγει for λέγει at Tim. 37a6 (a pretty wild conjecture, it must be said). Porphyry tells us that, much later, he discovered the same reading being adopted by a certain Sosicrates (otherwise unknown, unless he is identical with the author of a Succession of Philosophers utilized by both Diogenes Laertius (II 84) and Athenaeus (IV 163f), in which case he will probably be of the hellenistic period – but in any case prior to Amelius) – but by the time he had discovered this fact, which would have pleased Amelius, the poor man was dead!


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10. There is some evidence also of comments, at least, on the Republic (six references in Proclus, In Remp.), on the Parmenides (he is recorded as proposing correlates for all the hypotheses of the latter part – which he reckons as eight, rather than nine, as was usual), and on the Philebus (two references in Damascius, In Phlb.) 11. Proclus is more or less uniformly condemnatory of his positions, applying to him on occasion (In Tim. I 76, 26; 309, 21), the rather ironic epithet ὁ γενναῖος. At In Tim. II 214, 5, he describes one of his suggestions as θαυμαστόν. 12. As illustrated by the story told by Porphyry in the VPlot. ch. 10, where Amelius, who has become φιλόθυτος, ‘addicted to sacrifices’, unsuccessfully tries to lure Plotinus out on a sort of temple crawl, at the festival of the New Moon. 13. E.g. Procl. In Tim. I 306, 1–14, and 336, 16–26, where he identifies his three demiurges, or levels of demiurge, with Ouranos, Kronos, and Phanes; a probable Chaldaeanism at In Tim. I 361, 30: αὐτουργὸς τεχνίτης (cf. Or. Chald. 68, 2 Des Places). 14. On which I may make reference to an early article of mine, see Dillon (1969). 15. Proclus does, however, just below (I 309, 24), characterize the median aspect of the triad as a γεννητικὴ δύναμις. 16. As reported indignantly by Asclepius of Tralles, in his Commentary to Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic (In Nic. I 44). This is an interesting and logically defensible notion, but we do not unfortunately, hear what Amelius’ case for it was. 17. A word here, perhaps, on this remarkable appellation for St. John. It indicates, first of all, that Amelius can assume that his auditors, or readers, know perfectly well to whom he is referring, and this in turn betokens a considerable degree of familiarity with Christian texts by members of his circle. Then, the epithet barbaros could be seen, not just as an insult, but also as an ironic reference to the Christian claim (as put forth, for example, by Clement of Alexandria, but by many others as well) for the superiority of ‘barbarian’ wisdom over hellenic. 18. ‘Now when all the gods, both those who revolve manifestly and those who manifest themselves so far as they choose, had come to birth, he who generated this universe spoke to them thus.’ This is by no means the only passage in the work where the verb lego or the noun logos is used (logos at 37b3, for instance), but it does seem far the most plausible, as only here is there direct mention of a logos of the Demiurge. 19. Though I am not quite clear why Proclus feels the need to make this point, except for polemical reasons – the demiurgic logoi are surely not endiathetoi either, in the sense that they do, after all, issue forth. 20. Εἰσὶ γὰρ οἱ λόγοι δυνάμεων μεταδόσεις ἀπὸ τῶν πρώτων εἰς τὰ δεύτερα καὶ θείας πρόνοιας καὶ ζωῆς θαυμαστῆς, ἢν ὁ τῶν ὅλων δημιουργὸς ἐν ἑαυτῷ προείληφεν. 21. He certainly knows of his existence, but he does seem to derive his knowledge of him through the commentaries of Porphyry and Iamblichus, rather than first-hand. 22. It may be noted, in this connection, that the mss. tradition here actually vacillates somewhat, as between ἦν (the majority reading) and ἐστιν (the reading of a minority, but including the Sinaiticus, and Bezae Cantabrigiensis, of the

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23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

sixth century), while one fifth-century ms., the Freer Gospels of Washington (W), omits the verb altogether. It is conceivable that the verb is actually a scribal addition, albeit an early one. Brisson makes reference in this connection to the Docetist heresy (op. cit. p. 842), but I doubt that that is in Amelius’ mind here. He seems rather to be sidestepping the issue of the incarnation of the Logos in the body of Jesus altogether. It is possible also that τῆς φύσεως τὸ μεγαλεῖον refers to the grandeur of Nature, in the Plotinian sense of the the lower emanation of the World Soul which presides immanently over the physical world; but the former interpretation accords better with the sense of the text of John. Ἀναλυθέντα πάλιν ἀποθεοῦσθαι καὶ θεὸν εἶναι. As a follower of Plotinus, Amelius did not, presumably, entertain the Stoicizing notion of a periodic apokatastasis, though some Middle Platonists, such as Severus, actually did (cf. Procl. In Tim. I 289, 7ff.). Indeed, if we accept, as I do not, the ms. reading of Numenius, Fr. 16, where the Demiurge is described as ἔπειτα θεωρητικὸς ὅλως, one would have a case for supposing that Amelius also entertained the view that the Demiurge took periods of rest; but I am convinced by Dodds’ ingenious emendation, ἐπεὶ ὁ α’ ( πρῶτος) θεωρητικὸς ὅλως, which would effectively dispose of that problem. For John, admittedly, it is not a cycle, but a once-off event; for a Platonist, however, this would be quite intolerable. Ἀναβαίνω πρὸς τὸν πατέρα μου καὶ πατέρα ὑμῶν καὶ θεόν μου καὶ θεὸν ὑμῶν. Origen is admittedly primarily attacking Heracleon for suggesting that Christ’s creative activity is confined to the physical world, and excludes the Aeon; but we gather that Heracleon used the second phrase, ‘and without him was made nothing that was made’, to reinforce the first. City of God X 10, 29. Admittedly, Augustine presents this as something told to him by a holy old man called Simplicianus, so it remains a possibility that Simplicianus had some knowledge of Amelius; but I doubt it. I feel that if Amelius had said this, Eusebius would not have failed to let us know of that.

Bibliography Athenaeus, 1887–90, Deipnosophistarum libri xv, G. Kaibel (ed.), 3 vols, Leipzig. Augustine, 1955, De Civitate Dei, B. Dombart and A. Kalb (eds.), 2 vols, Turnhout. Brisson, L., 1987, ‘Amélius, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, son style’, in W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II, 36, 2, Berlin, pp. 793–860. Damascius, 1959, Lectures on the Philebus Wrongly Attributed to Olympiodorus, L. G. Westernink (ed.), Amsterdam. Des Places, É. (ed. and trans.), 1971, Oracles Chaldaïques, Paris. Des Places, É. (ed. and trans.), 1973, Numénius. Fragments, Paris. Dillon, J., 1969, ‘Plotinus, Enn. III.9.1 and Later Views on the Intelligible World’, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100, pp. 63–70. Diogenes Laertius, 1964, Vitae Philosophorum, H. S. Long (ed.), 2 vols, Oxford. Dörrie, H., 1976, ‘Une exégèse néoplatonicienne du prologue de l’Evangile selon St Jean’, in H. Dörrie, Platonica Minora, München, pp. 491–507.


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Eusebius, 1954–56, Preparatio Evangelica, C. Mras (ed.), 2 vols, Berlin. Origen, 1966–75, Commentaire sur saint Jean, C. Blanc (ed. and trans.), 3 vols, Paris. Plato, 1900–07, Opera, J. Burnet (ed.), 5 vols, Oxford. Plotinus, 1964–82, Opera (edition minor), P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer (eds.), 3 vols, Oxford. Polybius, 1889–1905, Historiae, T. Buettner-Wobst (ed.), 5 vols, Leipzig. Proclus, 1899–1901, In Platonis Rem Publicam Commentarii, W. Kroll (ed.), 2 vols, Leipzig. Proclus, 1903–06, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, E. Diehl (ed.), 3 vols, Leipzig. Sodano, A. R. (ed.), 1964, Porphyrii in Platonis Timaeum Commentariorum Fragmenta, Naples. Tarán, L., 1969, ‘Asclepius of Tralles. Commentary to Nicomachus’ Introduction to Arithmetic, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 59, pp. 1–89.

3 Eternal Time and Temporal Expansion: Proclus’ Golden Ratio Emilie F. Kutash

Iamblichus elevated Time from the level of the Soul to the level of the Intellect and elevated Eternity to a level above the Intellect. In doing so, he took several steps beyond Plotinus along the road of hypostatizing grades of reality. Plotinus distinguished between a higher and a lower time (III.7.13, 58ff). Iamblichus posited a superior time that is participated and an inferior time that participates. Much to the distress of commentators such as S. Sambursky and E. R. Dodds, Proclus systematized the Iamblichean distinctions by hypostatizing these levels within an elaborate ontological schema. Sambursky finds that the ‘need for a further multiplication of hypostases probably arose from the endeavors of Iamblichus and his school to correlate their ontology with the diversified syncretistic theology of their day and to include in their system the sacred entities and divinities of Oriental religions’.1 Dodds expresses similar concerns when he finds the hypostatizing of Time and Eternity as substantive principles an ‘unfortunate development’ compared to what he considers Plotinus’ more sophisticated account of time as the activity of Soul (III.7.11–12).2 He attributes Proclus’ lapse to (a) late hellenistic cult and magic, where a deified Αἰών has a prominent place in Gnostic and Hermetic speculation, and (b) the Chaldaean Oracles, which Proclus followed when he called time ‘an intelligible god’ (Procl. In Tim. III 14, 3). O’Neill, as well, remarks on Proclus’ effort to adapt Orphic and Chaldaean sources to the discussion as the cause of its ‘intricacy’.3 Dodds’ and Sambursky’s views reflect a disdain for Greek ‘irrationalism’, an attitude that current scholars are now rejecting. Although the bulk of O’Neill’s discussion of Proclus’ theory on time takes it seriously as philosophy, he too implies that Proclus’ ‘exalted position’ on time is partly due to Orphic and Chaldaean influence. 44

Eternal Time and Temporal Expansion

45

At first glance, both Proclus and Iamblichus may seem obscure, but when Proclus’ theory of time is placed within the context of his metaphysics, the hypostatic levels he adapts from Iamblichus can be justified by systematic considerations as much as from anything else. Proclus’ theory of time is a solution to philosophical aporias native to a Platonist vision of the whole. Central to Proclus’ entire metaphysics is the fact that Unity has a higher status than Being. While Plotinus also held to the priority of Unity, for Proclus the principle of ‘all in all but each appropriately’4 means that Unity pervades all hypostases, from the highest to the lowest. A single structure provides the pattern to which everything approximates, and its influence radiates from Unity through Being and Intellect all the way down to Soul. Giving Time a place as ‘unparticipated’ (that is, as something real and undivided) along with Intellect allows the Soul to reach for these ruling patterns as it moves to mediate between permanent idealities and physical, changing phenomena. In doing so, Soul accesses Time as a Monad which provides the ‘syntax’, as Peter Manchester explains, that communicates order to ‘interval’ (that is, to the discrete moments of the temporal flow).5 Since what is second in time is often first in logos (that is, what is chronologically later actually reveals the reason for what happens) the ‘map’ of Time (the hypostasis) has to exist as static and unparticipated, since the fluctuations within temporality do not display logical but only temporal arrangement. In some ways, the Monad of Time is comparable to an arena for the presence of the ‘synthetic a priori’ (substantive laws intuitable by intellect) that the Soul will access. For Plotinus, in contrast, it is not as clear how Unity can effect time (experienced time) if Soul alone is its container or, at least, his explanation is quite different to Proclus’. For Proclus, an account of Time and Eternity must include the fact that both Time and Eternity are elevated above the Soul and that they are monads, beneath which, divided time unfolds. This view goes beyond Beierwaltes’ view that spiritual motion is a logical identity, because Time and Eternity imbue it at all points with a ‘life’ of eternal continuity and temporal limit.6 Procession, the derivation of lesser realities from superior ones, is not just a logical or intellectual derivation, but a progress or succession in Time itself, under the rule of a self-constituted Eternity. The flux of unfolding reality is permeated by a synchronous presence of Eternity in ‘temporality’, the linear succession of moments. The following passage is a capsule presentation of Proclus’ complex view of Time and Eternity. In it, Proclus, in a highly nuanced approach, identifies the many kinds of time possible in an infinite and eternal universe that unfolds in temporal and spatial interval (that is, in each

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successive or contiguous space or moment). It aptly summarizes the complex view of time, eternity, perpetuity, interval, and the now and all of the finer distinctions of which one must be aware in order to fully appreciate Proclus’ work. ... ἄλλo γὰρ τὸ ἀεὶ τὸ χρoνικὸν καὶ ἄλλo τὸ αἰώνιoν· τὸ μὲν ἀθρόως πᾶν ὄν, τὸ δὲ τῇ ὅλῃ συνεχείᾳ τoῦ χρόνoυ συνεκτεινόμενoν καὶ ἄπειρoν, τὸ μὲν ἐν τῷ νῦν, τὸ δὲ ἐν διαστάσει, τῆς διαστάσεως ἀκαταλύτoυ τυγχανoύσης καὶ ἀεὶ γιγνoμένης. ἔστιν ἄρα τὸ μὲν ‘αὐτὸ’ τoῖς oὖσιν ἀπὸ τoῦ παραδείγματoς ἐφῆκoν· ἐκεῖνo γὰρ τῆς ἁπλότητoς αἴτιoν τoῖς oὖσι καὶ τῆς εἰς τὰ ἄλλα δόσεως ὧν ἔχει πρώτως· τὸ δὲ ‘ὄπερ ὄν’ ἀπὸ τoῦ ἑνὸς ὄντoς· ἐκεῖνo γάρ ἔστι τῷ πρώτως ἐξῃρημένoν τoῦ μὴ ὄντoς καὶ τῆς στερήσεως, διότι πρώτως ἐστὶν ὂν καὶ κρυφίως ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα καὶ ἀδιαιρέτως ὑφέστηκε· τὸ δὲ ‘ἀεί’ ἀπὸ τoῦ αἰῶνoς· ὡς γὰρ τoῦ εἶναι τὸ ἓν ὄν, oὕτω τῆς ἀϊδιότητός ἐστι χορηγὸς τoῖς νoητoῖς ὁ αἰών.7 (... For a temporal forever is one thing and an eternal forever, another: the latter being everything collectively and at once; but the former being coextended with the whole continuity of time; and being infinite. And the latter subsisting in the now, but the former, in interval, the interval being unceasing and always in generation, or becoming to be. The term therefore ‘itself’ is derived to beings from the paradigm … but the term ‘that which is’ is derived from the one being. For that is exempt from nonbeing and privation, because it is primarily being and all things subsist in it occultly and indivisibly. And the term ‘forever’ is derived from eternity. For as the One Being is from ‘to be’ so Eternity imparts perpetuity to intelligibles.) In this highly compressed passage Proclus distinguishes between: (1) τὸ ἀεὶ τὸ χρoνικόν, the temporal forever, which is coextensive with the whole continuity of time and is infinite; (2) τὸ αἰώνιoν, the Eternal Forever, which is everything collectively and at once and which subsists in the now; (3) τὸ αὐτὸ, itself, which beings have by derivation from their paradigms (the forms); (4) τὸ ὄπερ ὄν, that which is derived from the One Being; (5) τoῦ ἑνὸς ὄντoς – the One Being, which gives existence τoῦ εἶναι; (6) τὸ ἀεὶ, the forever which is derived from the Eternal Forever but which conveys perpetual action or existence; (7) ὁ αἰών, Eternity, the hypostasis that is eternity itself; (8) τῆς ἀϊδιότητος, the perpetuity that eternity gives to whatever is perpetual (like what is τὸ ἀεὶ τὸ χρoνικόν); (9) τί τὸ ὂν ἀεί, that which is being always and includes generation and the ungenerated; (10) τὸν χρόνoν, Time; (11) τὸν αἰῶνα, the Eternal, that which derives from Eternity.


47

The premise that Eternity and Time are hypostases, even if we set Dodds’ and Sambursky’s prejudice aside, may be disturbing on general positivist grounds because of the multiplication of unverifiable entities. Like many other unseen and unproven invisible realities postulated in modern physics, (such as black holes and negative space), Proclus’ hypostases are heuristically useful and clear up many aporias endemic to Platonism. Iamblichus makes an important and basic distinction between imparticipable (amethektos chronos) and participated time. The former is comparable to Proclus’ Monad of Time. Postulating its priority to the sort of time that is understood and experienced as change and movement has several consequences. First of all, hypostatizing Time (the unparticipated Monad) as well as Eternity allows Proclus to make some finer distinctions, such as, the difference between Time and temporality, Eternity and eternal things. Time and Eternity have continuity while temporality and eternal things have infinite perpetuity. There is an important distinction between Time as an hypostasis and time as unfolding asymmetrically according to motion (temporal phenomena proceed in one direction: towards the future). The one is a static infinity, while the other is moving temporality; the former has continuity, while the latter unfolds in discontinuous intervals but is stabilized by being subordinate to Time as infinite continuity.

Soul is to Intellect as Time is to Eternity Soul is the only entity endowed with movement that is both discontinuous and continuous as it is engaged both with the physical and with the intelligible world. The double identity of Time alternatively as continuity and as temporality is enacted in the Soul. The physical world in turn, unfolds in a discursive or successive manner, one moment at a time, but with a mathematically discernible pattern. It bears the mark of Eternity, that is, of a continuity, a unity, expressed in a discursive fashion carried out in Time. The physical world itself, since it unfolds through motion and is created in intervals and dimensions, never achieves more than perpetuity. The physical world achieves this through its association with the intellectual cause of Soul, which in turn is rooted in Time whose ultimate cause is Eternity. It is possible to see here an important difference between Proclus and Plotinus. As O’Neill explains, in Plotinus, Eternity is the life of ‘Nous’, whereas Soul uses discursive reasoning and is involved in time.8 For Proclus, Being transcends Intellect, and Eternity has a province that is beyond Intellect. Eternity contains the whole universe’s life, whereas Intellect holds only intelligible things: the

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formal paradigms which the demiurge copies. The whole of time holds the beginnings, middles, and ends of all things, but the forms hold only their intelligible parameters. Mind precedes Soul, and Soul participates in it, but Eternity is unparticipated and permeates Mind and Soul, Time and the Timeless as well as infinite potentiality. Were there not a Monad of Time, temporality would progress in a purely linear fashion (all past moments would be lost entirely, and there would be no defined goal or direction for time’s passage). While Time as a Monad ensures continuity, temporality brings with it the peril of infinite divisibility were it not also providing the overriding unity that guarantees that nature is constructed according to intellectual limits (the course of nature is not simply one thing after another, but maintains an intelligible pattern through all its changes). The reverting spiral that assimilates all phenomena toward a predetermined formal perfection is a transcendent unity and determines limit in existence and therefore object-constancy (recognizably the same things persist through change). A good example is harmonics, where ratios imposed on the continuum of sound determine consonance in music. A mere continuum of sound in time from low to higher sounds with no unity provided by consonance and ratio (no harmonious chords), is an example of a series progressing temporally without the Monad of Time. Porphyry’s Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics discusses how logic determines the intervals that become manifest in material existence in musicology.9 Porphyry cites the Timaeus extensively, as evidence for the equation of ratio and interval in the theory of scales (36a–b). Interval, the difference between one discrete note and another, is the material effect of an intelligible harmony. Dunamis, generation in body (which requires temporal progress), and mathematical formula, are all present in the Monad of Time. Intellect alone can only account for the contribution of mathematical formulae but not for the requirement that things have any particular temporal order. Similarly, Syrianus contends that if there were not only one dyad, triad, etc. (that is, if each of the monadic numbers were many and infinite), there would be infinitely many mathematical numbers (In Metaph. 135, 32–136, 3). Regarding the numbers as a series of forms processing from a monad, allows numbers to be treated as forming an ordered sequence that satisfies the condition of falling under one form, that of number. If this were not so, Syrianus cautions, multiplication could proceed ad infinitum. These are the kinds of issues that form the background to Proclus’ decision to posit a Monad of Time beyond mere temporality and show that the determination of the constancy of material objects resides in a transcendent syntaxis.


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Proclus proposes the following ratio. As Soul is to Intellect, Time is to Eternity. εἰ δὲ καὶ νοῦς μὲν αἰῶνoς δεύτερoς, ψυχὴ δὲ νoῦ μίμημα, πῶς oὐχὶ ὁ χρόνoς αἰῶνoς ὢν εἰκὼν κρεῖττόν τι καὶ αὐτῆς (ἂν) εἴη τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ oὐσιωδέστερoν; ὡς γὰρ νoῦς πρὸς ψυχήν, oὕτως αἰὼν ἔσται πρὸς χρόνoν.10 (If intellect is second to eternity, soul a copy of intellect, how could time, which is the image of eternity, not be something more excellent and more essential than the soul itself? For as soul is to intellect, that is how time is to eternity.) Here it is made clear that Soul is subordinate to Time and that Intellect is subordinate to Eternity and not the other way around. The opposite position could perhaps be attributed to Plotinus since, in III.7, he states that: ... one must not conceive time as outside Soul, any more than eternity there as outside real being ... it is ... something which is seen along with it and exists in it and with it.11 It is by this suggested ratio that Proclus solves some of the most trying aporias of ancient philosophy. To consider Soul as subordinate to Time, guarantees that the activities of Soul will not dissipate toward non-being. Should Time be subordinate to Soul, it could be serial and unidirectional and could be potentially infinitely iterable and interminably successive. Some of the same issues that Zeno raises with his paradoxes of motion, or those that the mathematicians raised regarding incommensurate magnitudes in infinitely decreasing size with no least common denominators, arise when iterable operations can be carried out with no cessation or higher level of resolution.12 Zeno’s arguments, for example, rest on the assumption that continuous magnitudes are made up of indivisible elements.13 If Time is regarded as a monad, continuity is introduced on a transcendent level, and thus there is an antidote to the notion of a discrete, instant by instant, interminable progress of phenomena in time. The Monad of Time counteracts the danger of movement in time where there is no hypostatic fundament to which Soul is subordinate. The infinitely iterable process of determining the quantity of an incommensurable magnitude, for example, is never actualized, since all existent magnitudes are produced by a higher-level formula. Just as intellectual simples contain all infinities in mathematics, Time as

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a Monad contains all the dimensions of time. All things are contained by their cause. Unparticipated time resides at the level of objective Intellect (personified by the Olympian god, Zeus).14 This allows Soul as subordinate to Time to partake of Intellect and Intellect’s changeless structures and to apply them within temporal progressions. It also allows for the fact that ‘those beings without soul participate in time too; therefore time is placed over and above soul’.15 It also answers a very ‘modern’ issue, raised by the correspondence theory of truth: why structures in the physical world conform to structures in the intellect (as they must if our judgments are ever truthful). Both are separately subordinate to similar intellectual paradigms, by both being subordinate to a transcendent hypostasis. Intellect and physical world have a common origin. Eternity as a hypostasis is a cause and just as Time holds iterative potentiality within its bounds, it holds Intellect which has its own types of discursion (movement from one point to another, connected point), as in dianoia and dialectic where self-reflexive thinking, itself a duality, is in some way discontinuous. In the Institutia Physica Proclus specifically associates the continuous (συνεχῆ) with Eternity; the successive (ἐφεξῆς) with temporality and Time with the former.16 Time as an hypostasis differs from temporality because it and Soul that is subordinate to it are both subordinate to Intellect, and in turn to Eternity which underwrites its continuity in a more ultimate sense. Eternity is not enough to secure the continuity of time because the Monad of Time alone holds the dynamic identity of past, present and future as arranged. Eternity on the other hand is a simultaneous whole.17 Eternity is motionless, and for ‘spiritual motion’ to actualize the spacing of a temporal expansion something else is necessary. Stephen Gersh (1973, pp. 53ff.) discusses Walter Beierwaltes’18 theory of the nature of spiritual motion and the relation of the nature of the triads which provide ‘dynamische Identitat’. In any triad, one member mediates the differences between the other two, so that ‘Identity’ and ‘Difference’ carry out a complex relationship, for example, between Life, Intellect and Being. The result is that no formal structure in the universe comes about or is maintained by a static existence. Life functions as the third and uniting element in the Intellect–Being–Life triad and proodos (procession) is the successive, and not coordinate, staging of each of these as a consequent of the one before.19 In Gersh’s opinion, Beierwaltes neglects a discussion of dunamis, except that in this triad, Life is an exemplification of power and performs a special function in uniting the three elements. Logical identity alone is a manifestation of Intellect and so has no dynamic force or Being.20 Proclus needs Time as a Monad and Eternity as its essence to generate the spiritual motion that actualizes a dynamic production


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combining Intellect, Being and Life. Proclus says, ‘... undivided Eternity and the one Time; these are the Eternity of eternities and the Time of times, since they generate the participated terms’. 21 If Time were not subordinate to Eternity, and Soul not subordinate to Time, certain conundrums such as are to be found in the Parmenides dialogue would undermine the stability of being. Were time not eternal, all Being as beings would be destroyed by the passage of time (temporality). If time were only unidirectional (serial) all the paradoxes of the Parmenides aporias would remain unresolved. If the truth of time is its ultimate symmetrical wholeness, for example, the perplexing discussion at Parmenides: 141a–b, (that the same thing which is becoming older than itself is becoming different than itself) is resolved. In a continuum, the earlier and later stages of its development are not discrete and irreducible moments. This is a parallel to the Zeno argument where the obstacles to the progress of motion are indivisible units of time. An entity holds its identity throughout its relata since its identity is as a unity in the Monad of Time even though distributed in temporal succession (each temporal moment of its being, as we experience it, is a part or aspect of a single, unified, transtemporal whole). There is a circular continuity in the Monad that transcends temporality and results in self-identity through time. The attraction of the higher unparticipated hypostases causes the spiral towards being. Proclus uses the term ‘cyclo-spiral (kukloelikton), which Siorvanes points out literally means ‘twisting in a circular fashion’.22 Were such a circularity not possible, even to the last extremities of the universe, unidirectional seriality extending to perpetuity would constitute a dissipating infinity and the world would be less and less formed as time went by. Change would be only in the direction of increasing formlessness. If time were not an hypostasis, the earlier entity would disappear or remain incomplete when the latter arrived; there would be no object-constancy. There would be no epiphanal point at which something is at its perfection as intended by its individual pronoia or predetermined form; all states of its existence would be equal and therefore fragmented. Proclus describes the forms in the Commentary on Parmenides (934.38ff) as ‘an incorporeal cause, transcending its participants ... a model, intelligible to souls through images and intelligizing causally the existents modelled upon it’. This goes far along the way to accounting for structure, but still does not contain the overriding foundational structures that make all things in the universe ‘homoiotatos’. Eternity and the Monad of Time account for the continuity in time and space derived from Being, with a wider effect than Intellect. The symmetry of all things to the One (their existence – and the existence of the unformed – as would-be-unities) cannot be accounted for by forms alone. Proclus says

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in 890.19–22 that infinity in the realm of Forms is an infinity of power rather than one of number. This statement, like many others of Proclus, points to a hypostasis greater than the forms as a cause. In effect, it could be said that the forms in Proclus are what Aristotle would regard as formal causes, but the Monad of Time and Eternity provide the teleological context to which forms are subordinate. Soul with its ability to traverse reality in a linear fashion within the parameters of its interval structure would never ‘reverse’ itself (would never cease from unending, formless and pointless motion) were it not for the attraction of Intellect. Noetic Time is circular in nature, and a monad, continuous with no beginning or end.23 The interval structure of Time when it unfolds according to the ratio structure of Soul, that is in subordination to Intellect, is subject to a larger overriding perfection, the continuity provided by Time as a monad. Similarly, Eternity centres the Intellect, ensuring that it too does not oscillate infinitely from self-reflexive poles but spirals toward perfection as toward the centre of a circle. The ratio ‘Intellect is to Eternity as Soul is to Time’ states the ontological priority of Eternity and Time. Soul is subordinate to Time as a monad, which in turn is subordinate to Eternity, and this renders creation as a whole an image of the Original Paradigm. The answer then, to the question why hypostatizing Time and Eternity is not ‘irrational’ as Dodds would have it, has to do with the functional utility of assuming these hypostases. Geometry is a good example of a body of knowledge that starts from first principles which it does not demonstrate: axioms, definitions and postulates. Similarly, the hypostases Time and Eternity are archaic but heuristic principles. They are self-constituted realities which lead to the premises and conclusions which are derived from them, but they cannot be independently proved since they must be assumed for proof to proceed in the first place. As Iamblichus puts it, Time itself is a monad, ‘a measure not with respect to measuring locomotion or being measured by movement ... but with respect to its being simultaneously the cause and the One of all these’.24 Systemic considerations and not theurgic obscurities, then, clearly determine the ‘hypostatizing’ of Time and Eternity, guaranteeing the subordination of temporality/Soul to Time and Intellect/perpetuity to Eternity.

Time’s dimensions If there is any other period besides the twentieth century where an idea of relativity found an expression it is in late antiquity, and the Neoplatonist


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view of the dimensions of time. Iamblichus had stipulated a twofold analysis of time: ‘there is one time before temporal things’, and there are ‘several times, which come into being in what participates, so that in them one time is past, one present, one future’.25 Iamblichus’ ‘Time’ before temporal things, or the Monad of Time, which Proclus proposes, represent a ‘panoptic’ position which rules out any egocentric or limited perspective.26 The so-called ‘now’ represents the panoptic position while the dimensions of time qua temporality (past, present and future) do not entail that the present occupy any privileged position (as in the ‘now’ which is the panoptic eternal view.) The perfect number of Republic 546 is an example of a panoptic ‘now’ and has the whole measure of the periodic return; it is a superstructure within which all periodicity (temporality) can find a position. The concept of a panoptic ‘Now’, a stand-in for the Monad of Time, gives a further perspective to the Parmenides dialogue’s aporias. These arguments represent the perennial philosophical problems of the existence of ideal objects and how they can exist when time and motion are introduced. Opposites such as rest/motion are mutually exclusive in respect to a single point in time, but not so in relation to time’s dimensions. That which could not exist simultaneously can co-exist in a universe that possesses interval. Something can be in motion at one point and at rest at another if there is temporality. Rest/motion, one/many, limited/unlimited do not disrupt the constancy of formal identity. The Monad of Time preserves being in the face of becoming because it is self-contained and holds the (metaphysically) prior and necessary arrangement that dictates the structure of actualization in time. The Law of the Now that applies to sensible being, namely that opposite characteristics cannot exist at the same time or in the same space, does not apply to the Now of the Monad. When Time is an hypostasis its dimensions reduce to positions (before and after, earlier and later) the stages of the becoming of the Being of Wholes. The absurdities of argument in the dialogue such as ‘If the One is, than motion is and is not’ are resolved in a Double universe, where becoming is a moving reflection of a static Being. What is and what is not can be given simultaneous existence within the unity that is Time despite successive appearances in the physical world. Now something is at rest, now it is in movement, but neither at the same time albeit in the same universe. Motion and rest are only mutually exclusive in a given set of time coordinates. When placed in a hierarchical structure where ‘higher’ ontological status is given to Unity over Being and Being over Becoming, rest contains motion as it contains all positions.

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Blumenberg has discussed the specular view of time in relation to Plato’s Timaeus, but this applies to Proclus’ views on Time in his Commentary on Timaeus as well. Blumenberg points out, ‘It remains unclear, in Plato, who is supposed to be the observer and the beneficiary of the cosmic clock’.27 The onlooker at rest, Blumenberg points out, on an absolutely fixed earth, determines a vantage point from which the observer can see the heavenly bodies measuring time. This state of affairs led Greek astronomy to speculate about what patterns the universe of heavenly bodies as a whole or in themselves might follow. Constructs like the cosmic Great Year, of Plato’s Timaeus, presume an onlooker that has a more objective overview than the earthbound onlooker. Proclus elevates the astronomical panoptic vantage point to a metaphysical significance, and the result is a vision of the whole projected as an eternity of temporal activity. Time’s measurability, following Timaeus, is due to the observed clock constituted by the movement of the fixed stars and their relations to all the other bodies of the universe, while Time itself (caused by Eternity) is that which always is and has the whole of its existence simultaneously present to itself. Time, then, is more like a space than a succession of points. What Proclus says in this regard, is as follows: διὸ καὶ τῶν παλαιῶν τινες ὄντως μὲν ὂν καλoῦσι τὸ νoητὸν πλάτoς, oὐκ ὄντως δὲ ὂν τὸ ψυχικόν, oὐκ ὄντως δὲ oὐκ ὂν τὸ αἰσθητόν, ὄντως δὲ oὐκ ὂν τὴν ὕλην· (Hence some of the ancients call the intelligible breadth (νoητόν πλάτoς) truly existing being; the psychical truly existing and at the same time not truly existing being; the sensible not truly existing being; and matter, truly non-being ...)28 Supramundane time, then, is time functioning as a principle. All things must originate in the eternal principle or there would be an infinite regress, πόθεν γὰρ τὸ γιγνόμενoν γίγνεται, ἢ ἀπὸ τoῦ ἀεὶ ὄντoς; εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἐκεῖνo γίγνoιτo, ὑπ᾽ ἄλλoυ τινὸς ὄντoς γενήσεται καὶ ἤτoι ἀεὶ ὄντoς ἢ γιγνoμένoυ καὶ αὐτoῦ, ὥστε ἢ ἐπ᾽ ἄπειρoν χωρήσoμεν, ἢ κύκλῳ ἡ γένεσις, ἢ ἔστι τὸ ἀεὶ ὄν. ἀλλ᾽ oὔτε (δὲ) ἐπ᾽ ἄπειρoν πρoϊέναι θέμις· ἐκ γὰρ ἑνὸς πάντα καὶ μιᾶς ἀρχῆς’.29 (For whence was that which is generated generated except from perpetual being (ἀεὶ ὄντoς)? For if this also was generated, it must have been generated from some other being. And this must either


55

be perpetual being, or must likewise have been itself generated. So that we must either proceed to infinity, or generation is in a circle, or perpetual being has subsistence. But it is not lawful to proceed to infinity. Out of one principle which is the one, all things originate.) An analogy can be made here to a space/time coordinate system as it is depicted in modern physics. The cosmic time which embraces all measures by which the periods of the souls and bodies are made perfect is, in effect, such a system. Einstein, like Proclus, took the panoptic view of the scientist in order to decentre all motions in Riemannian space– time.30 The related cosmological theories that followed from his work, such as the work of E. A. Milne (1935), describe all events as contained within a sphere: all intervals between two events (points in space–time) are regarded as homogeneous with all places alike, and isotropic. The world, under these circumstances, should look the same in all directions from all points at a given cosmic time. Similarly, the Procline view is that all positions in successive time, past, present and future are decentered within an overarching ‘One’. From the panoptic perspective all times fit into hypostatic Time as a monad like so many pieces of a puzzle. Time as a hypostasis is symmetrical; asymmetrical events (earlier and later) can be completely reciprocal, since they could be read either way from the panoptic view. This presumption of symmetry in the Simultaneous One from which time emerges, lends support to Proclus’ views on predetermination (all events exist somewhere from all eternity). This is juxtaposed against the relativity of positions in the time and space of material reality, that is, in the absence of a panoptic point of view in a created time, always a diminution of the simultaneous whole. In modern physics the directionality of time comes into question, as it does for Einstein, as Reichenbach points out.31 Similarly, by the Athenian view all positions in successive time (past, present and future) are decentered within an overarching Oneness of Being. If everything exists with no before or after, but in an eternal Now are all together one, as Parmenides says in his poem, then all before and after positions are on one map. From a panoptic view everything exists in simultaneity; it is only from the limited perspective of temporality (interval) that earlier and later exist. To pursue the map analogy, if one were travelling from New York to San Francisco, San Francisco would be reached later than New York. If the trip then went on Hawaii, Hawaii would be later than San Francisco and New York would be earlier than San Francisco. From the perspective of another traveller reversing that sequence it would be the opposite. From the panoptic perspective the directions are completely

56 Emilie F. Kutash

reversible. It is interval and direction which determine the apparently unidirectional series. Time can be a symmetrical balance with earlier and later in reciprocity, since they could be read either way from the panoptic view. What seems to be prior in sensible time may be posterior in noetic importance and vice versa. All the epiphenomena of Time then, are reconcilable in a larger picture, and are subordinate to what Proclus calls a ‘circular apocatastasis’ (κυκλικῆς ἀπoκαταστάσεως). The ‘Now’ for Proclus, is a stand-in for Being, and not merely a dimension. It is a panoptic Now within which all nows become co-ordinates. All limits are proportionate to the whole, all finitudes images of Limit (αὐτόπερας). With this in mind, the dimensions of time (past, present and future) are for the purpose of conferring perfection on things that are imperfect, and all things move along in time in tune with their hidden sympathy with the Good.32 Even things which are not noetic are brought under the order of a larger universe, as Proclus proclaims in the following passage: ὡς γὰρ τὰ μὴ δυνάμενα κατὰ νoῦν ζῆν ὑπὸ τὴν τῆς εἰμαρμένης ἄγεται τάξιν, ἵνα μὴ φυγόντα τὸ θεῖoν τελέως ἄτακτα γένητε, ... τινων περιόδων ἀπoκατασταστικῶν ἀπoλαύειν δυνήσεται.33 (Even those things which are not able to live according to intellect are brought under the order of fate, lest they become disorderly ... (and even things that are not permanent and stable ... still received the end adapted to time) ... through certain apocatastatic periods.)

Providence and the dance of temporal event The concept of a Providence determining all events in the universe is the kingpin of both Platonism and Soteriologic. It is in this belief that the Athenian school forever encrusts itself within the archaic concepts we associate with antiquity, religion and everything else that Dodds would call the irrational. If one keeps an open mind, however, Providence is neatly rationalized by the Procline view of Time. Providential creation demands that all events in time be subordinate to a continuous whole that is the Divine Plan or some sort of panoptic overview. Time as a monad carries the Divine Pronoia into material reality; eternity holds it within itself. The bipolarity built into the Procline soul, whereby it is capable of both temporality and salvation; temporality through self-motion and salvation through reversion to intellect enables Providence to associate itself with the sensible world. Thus, there is a Oneness of Infinity even in the measured temporality.34 Time is the One


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of temporality in measure, and is infinite in the same sense as is any monad which is a homogenous, and continuous whole.35 Temporality could never be whole in and of itself without Time as a monad since it must exist only in measured units and is therefore serially iterated ad infinitum. Time is a road to destruction for whatever follows its temporal course in a discontinuous way (serial division for example). Whatever can turn back upon itself, the whole to the whole (ὅλoν ὅλῳ συνάπτεται), says Proclus, is incorporeal: ‘this turning back is impossible for any body because of the division of its parts, which lie outside one another in space’.36 Only the continuous can turn back upon itself thus only Time qua Monad qua Eternity completes the purpose of the universe. ἴδιoν γὰρ τῶν μὲν κατὰ χρόνoν τὸ γίνεσθαι ἀεί, τῶν δὲ αἰωνίων τὸ εἶναι ἀεί· καὶ γὰρ ἡ κoινὴ ἔννoια παρὰ τὸ ἀεὶ εἶναι τὸν αἰῶνα λέγεσθαι oἴεται, καθάπερ τὸν χρόνoν παρὰ τὴν χoρείαν κίνησιν οὖσαν καὶ ἐν γενέσει τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἔχoυσαν. (Things which subsist according to time (are) always in generation, or becoming to be; those eternal things, are always being. It is the common tendency then for men to denominate always-being as Eternity, in the same way that time receives its name from dancing, which is a movement and which has its subsistence in coming to be.)37 The allusion here is to the relation between ‘chronos’ and ‘choreia’. ‘Dancing’ is a fitting trope to convey the relation between temporal events within an eternal and immobile whole. It also carries the idea of measure since dance in ancient thought means to the measure of music. This trope appears ubiquitously in Neoplatonic thought, (certainly in Proclus). Aristotle states the dilemma of time’s dimensions quite succinctly: Some of it is past and no longer exists, and the rest is future and does not yet exist; and time whether limitless or any given length of time ... is entirely made up of the no longer and not yet; and how can we conceive of that which is composed of non-existents sharing in existence in any way? (Physics 217b) For Proclus, the no-longer and the not-yet (time as temporality), is contained by Time qua Eternity, and the no-longer and not-yet are revealed in visible nature moving around Being as around a centre. The runaway successiveness that could result in progressive deterioration now has limits imposed by being grounded in the infinity of eternity,

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guaranteeing permanence. By this means the dimensions of time are rendered stations within wholes. Time by this view is itself a monad; eternities stand in Being, while its effects appear to dance around its own stable centre. It is thus that ‘non-existents’ share in existence, namely through their attraction to Being, their hypostasis in time through their essence, which is to be intelligible. For Proclus there are two kinds of ‘is’; that which is a now, and akin to was and will be, and the ‘is’ (which is simultaneity), a monad in the sense of a singular unity, and a placeholder for the unity of time on a cosmological level. Time in motion, on the other hand, is linear and allows room for nature to proceed in its perpetual becoming. Cause can proceed to effect. Temporality provides the room for gignomata to become perfect, and its phenomenology is of an asymmetrical logic of before and after in linear and irreversible sequence. There is always a larger, panoptic, hypostasis in which the dimensional now participates. Time within which linearly unfolding events develop is only linear when regarded from a limited perspective. Linearity is an artifact of time when it unfolds through the auspices of Soul, but which bends back upon itself to assimilate to the Monad of Time when attracted by Intellect. R. Mohr points out the difference between ‘merely relative temporal comparisons of earlier and later, before and after’ (1985, p. 65) and judgments of past, present and future made by reference to a celestial clock, which are only possible in an ordered world or οὐρανός. All relata are dimensional within a unity that is time; after and before are potentially reversible since the asymmetry of before and after pertain only to the relation of succession. In an eternal Now circularity and not linearity prevails, before and after become relative to the position from which they are regarded. From a panoptic view events could be read forward or backwards. The Truth of Time reverses asymmetrical time; the celestial clock orders past, present and future within an overarching frame. Proclus therefore calls ‘τὸ ἤν’ and ‘τὸ ἔσται’ species of time generated by the Demiurge.38 They are a correlate of the soul and life of the world and posterior to generation. While past and future are discussed by Proclus as species (εἴδη) of time, days, nights, months and years are temporal intervals (διάστημα τὸ χρoνικόν) which are part of time’s progression, whereas Time itself is an eternal unity that is motionless and a simultaneous (non progressive) whole.39 Time perfects things, and the stars measure the numbers of time. All this however is again only the expression of infinite power (ἄπειρoδύναμoν); the infinity of appearing time (ἐμφανoῦς χρόνoυ τὴν ἀπειρίαν τὰ κατὰ κύκλoν) and circling which goes on perpetually while Time itself stays in itself (μένoν).40


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Husserl discusses the fact that ideal objects have to be produced again and again ‘and are in no way capable of being found’.41 The mystery of their existence is a perennial problem for Philosophy from very early. Because Proclus’ idea of the eternity of the world allows creation in time due to the fact that eternity is preserved by the axioms of hypostasis, temporality can provide the space for demonstration of eternal principles as they ‘come to be’ in generated existence. Essence moving into existence through demiurgic intervention produces the cosmos, an eternal dance. Demiurgic event is the activity of paradigmatic production. According to Proclus, creation is not a process in time, but time is an unfolding of the atemporal in its visible and tangible existence. This is not an alternation of absence and presence but is always presence, always circular; it never departs from Eternity for more than a dance. For a Platonist, the creation story is always a ‘μῦθoς’ (myth) an εἰκὼς λόγoς, a tale in time that narrates becoming – a narrative as illusory as becoming itself. Chaos is continually being put back into order by Nous under the rule of the Demiurge, reflecting the fact that the cosmos undergoes many revolutions, of which there is never a beginning. Thus the beginning of the world in time in a universe where Time is perpetual, and Eternity is its essence, is merely the occasion of demiurgic intervention when disorder is formed into order. The privilege of the Present renders all formative states measurable by the Now; they exist only as part of the infinite potential for wholeness. This does not mean that there is a beginning of order and a previous chaos in the temporal sense, but that there is a continuous converting process of a hypothetical disorder which in fact never exists, since the process of conversion to order is simultaneous with the possibility of existence. This amounts to saying that things achieve perfection, their own end, in a span of time, since creation of individuals is never all at once, except from a panoptic Now. The notion of generation, then, is just another way of saying that something proceeds from a cause: τὸ oὖν μὴ ὅλην ἅμα ἐστῶσαν ἐν ἑνὶ τὴν oὐσίαν ἢ τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἔχον γενητὸν ἐπoνoμάζεται·... ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι μὲν πᾶσα κίνησις κατὰ μέρoς ὑφίσταται καὶ oὐχ ὅλη ἅμα ἔσται, δῆλoν. (That which does not possess at once the whole of its being or energy unified, is denominated ‘generated’... it is clear, (that in such things) that all motion subsists according to a part, and that the whole of it is not at once.)42

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With these stipulations, history is merely a stage for the production of eternal paradigms, and at certain epiphenomenal points it is resolved into the focus of the true image of its eternal paradigm. As history moves away from paradigmatic epiphanies, memory fades. The theme of the infinite but nonetheless unitary and indivisible nature of divine πρόνoια, Proclus regards as the fount of Providence.43 Whittaker points out that this identifies the infinite and the unitary. Nicholas of Cusa follows up on this when he says that ‘infinite’ means non solum non finitum sed simul et valde finitum.44 The glory of infinity is its undiminished bestowal of creation which is inexhaustible and everlasting, its danger is at ‘τὰ πέρατα’ – the extremes of being where things cling to existence upon pain of being nothing. Its salvation is the purposeful nature of the Divine providence. The wider reach of Unity than Intellect, the higher rule of Providence than intellectual fabrication, is characteristic of the Athenian school. Pronoia (providence) that determines and produces the continuous creation, must always be read into Proclus’ account of Time and Eternity. The one Time, the Monad of Time, for the whole universe, contrasts with its ‘dance’.45 What is an ‘all at once’ in the divine mind unfolds into the light in temporal form: ἄλλoς γὰρ ὁ θεῖoς νoῦς καὶ ἄλλoς ὁ θεῖoς λόγoς. ὃ μὲν ἡνωμένoς, ὃ δὲ πεπληθυσμένoς, καὶ ὃ μὲν τὰ ὅλα περιέχων, ὃ δὲ διαιρῶν τὴν ἕνωσιν εἰς πλῆθoς, καὶ ὃ μὲν ἐν ἑαυτῷ μένων, ὃ δὲ ἐκφαίνων ἑαυτόν. (For there is a difference between the divine intellect and the divine thought –‘the one being unified, the other multiple, the one encompassing the whole things, the other dividing unity into multitude, the one resting in itself, the other revealing itself’.)46 Now it can be seen how the theory of time, and Proclus’ principle that continuities image the One in the real world, also include the idea of Providence. ‘ὁ αἰών’ is Eternity itself and therefore continuous (τὸ ἀεὶ τὶ χρoνικόν) in the sense that infinite power and infinite existence are eternal, simultaneous, a vision of the whole that is a paradigm for the visible world; ‘τoῦ ἑνὸς ὄντoς’, that which is being (τoῦ εἶναι) always is eternity (τὸ αἰώνιoν) and the eternal (τὸν αἰῶνα) in its continuous existence (τί τὸ ὂν ἀεί) in Being; ‘τῆς ἀϊδιότητoς, perduration in time contains the interval structure of procession in time which is potentially infinite though actually always finite and bounded by Limit. Time (τὸν χρόνoν) as a monad is a reflection of Eternity, and as the life of the soul it is always


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becoming, unfolding in the interval structure natural to genesis. It is, in short, ‘τὸ ἀεί’. Thus every aspect of Time and Eternity is a manifestation of providential rule; is ‘suspended from the back of the goddess’. Becoming is Providence in action; Time must be organized prior to its usage within Soul so that its order pre-exists Soul’s activity. The Soul’s temporality has to be prestructured by Time which transcends the Soul’s enactments.47 Why is it not enough for Intellect to revert upon itself and be the ‘cause superior to all things?’, Proclus asks, referring to Aristotle. He then comes up with the greatest tribute to the ontological priority of Being as greater than Intellect, one that cannot be refuted by the scientific integrity of twentieth-century logic. ‘And by abolishing providence he does away with creation, for what can provide for nothing is sterile’.48 Providence includes all of creation, perishable and imperishable, and therefore has a longer reach than Intelligence. Time is a God and not a destroyer for Proclus. He criticizes those who would see time as the cause of corruption49 and reminds the reader that in fact, as the theurgists say, time is a God, and this means it is a measure of motions, assimilating them to paradigms, making partial things whole.

Conclusion Proclus uses a precise terminology for pinpointing the distinctions that are needed for a complete theory of time and eternity. It is clear that systematic considerations and not theurgic obscurities determine the ‘hypostatizing’ of Time and Eternity as opposed to more derivative aspects of time such as temporality and perpetuity. Hypostatizing guarantees the subordination of temporality/Soul to Time and Intellect/ perpetuity to Eternity. Proclus, in the tradition of the Athenian school, regards the Infinite as the principle of life, fecundity and creative expansion without which the great diffusion of the Good through all the levels of multiplicity cannot occur, and not as a dark Other responsible for evil.50 Without the spacings of discontinuities, serial expansion, growth in depth in dimensionality, life as infinite in potential could not be realized. This infinite fecundity however, threatens ultimate destruction were it not contained by the circular infinity of Being as a simultaneous whole. Time as a hypostasis carries the import of Being and subordinates temporality. Like Einstein’s infinity with boundary, Proclus’ formulations take into account finitude and infinity, Time and temporality, eternal perduration and Eternity.

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For Proclus, Aristotle’s Physics presented an opportunity for a more scientific Platonism. He took into account certain of his notions, such as continuity, succession and contiguity, potential versus actual infinity and so on, which allowed him to devise an expanded superstructure which was heuristically valuable for further scientific and metaphysical development.51 At the same time, Proclus presents a radically teleological view, combining the predetermination by the Good of Plato with Aristotle’s teleological view of nature. Time as Providence is preservative of things ‘containing the beginnings and the ends of all things, bringing everything perfectly to its conclusion’.52


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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

Sambursky and Pines (1971). El. of Theol, Dodds (1963), Commentary on proposition 53, p. 228. O’Neill (1962), p. 162. ‘Πάντα ἐν Πᾶσιν’ (El. of Theol. 103, 92.13). Manchester (2005) discusses Neoplatonic views and describes Iamblichus’ higher time as ‘mind-like in its unity, syntactical in nature and hence expressive in physical motion’ (p. 66). In discussing this with him, he agreed that Proclus’ Monad of Time has a similar connotation. Gersh (1973), points out that interpreters such as von Ivanka view the causal process in essentially logical terms as does Grondijs. See also Beierwaltes (1965); Gersh (1973, pp. 14–15 and 14, n.1, 15, n.2 and n.5). Gersh criticizes Beierwaltes as not fully developing a doctrine of power in the identity and difference and similarity which mediates the cycle of procession and reversion (p. 73ff). It would require a study in and of itself to relate this to the rule of Eternity in Time as the telos ruling the transformation of power from cause to effect. In Plat.Tim., Diehl (1903–06) I 239, pp. 2–14. O’Neill (1962), pp. 161–5. Porphyry, Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics, I. During (1930). See Barker (1994), p. 54, n.2. In Tim. III 27, 18–21. In Plotinus, ed. Armstrong, vol. 3, pp. 337–43. Proclus is not specifically postulating an hypostatized Time and Eternity to respond to the aporias mentioned here, but is responding with a foundational ontology to the more general notion of an apeirakis apeiron, which, as he mentions in the first proposition of the Elements of Theology, would occur if there were not unity (since, every manifold has, in some way, to participate unity). An example is Zeno’s argument that the arrow ‘in flight’ is always at rest since it is always in each instant in a space equal to itself. Other arguments have to do with an infinite regress argument. In the general case of a continuous variable, this may be taken as denying actual infinitesimals. For Zeno it meant that continuous change was impossible without a state of change which involves infinitesimals and the contradiction of a body’s being where it is not. In Russell’s (1938) framework, p. 347ff, there is a denial of infinitesimal segments. A monad is a continuum and the moments of time can be regarded as positions on the continuum but not discrete atoms of time. When the idea of Eternity is added there is a basis for a simultaneous whole which is the allthat-is and all points in time and space are relative to one another. Siorvanes (1996), p. 134. In Tim. III 32, 27–30 quoted by Siorvanes (1996), p. 135. Instit. Phys. Ritzenfeld (1909), II 6 (time is continuous and eternal). Proclus’ Institutio Physica begins with making the following distinctions: things which are continuous (συνεχῆ) wherein the boundaries are one; things which are contiguous (ἁπτόμενα) where the boundaries are joined and those which are successive (ἐφεξῆς) where there is nothing that is a unity in between them. Those things which are continuous will have a continuous (circular)

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17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

movement and will not have discontinuities (points, ends, limits) while the contiguous is discontinuous but adjacent and the successive is totally discontinuous. See proposition 52 of Elements of Theology on Eternity as a simultaneous Whole. The principle of Being is stated in proposition 52 of Elements of Theology ‘Πᾶν τὸ αἰώνιον ὅλον ἅμα ἐστίν’ (All that is eternal is a simultaneous whole). As expanded in Beierwaltes (1965). Gersh (1973), p.18; see also Dodds (1963), p. 254, and proposition 92 of Elements of Theology. Gersh (1973), p. 59. El. of Theol. proposition 53, 5–7. In Tim. III 20. 25, Siorvanes (1996), p. 136, n.42. Miller (1982) pp. 102–3, points out that Aristotle in Physics VI, discusses spatial magnitude, time, and motion as isomorphic, such that either all three of them have an atomic structure or all three are continua. Miller suggests that Aristotle infers that one of the three is continuous because another is, in such statements as ‘For because magnitude is continuous, motion is also continuous, and time because of motion’ (p. 103, n.63 Phys. IV II, 219a12–13; cf. 219b15–26 and VI 2, 233a11–21). Simplicius, Phys. 792. 20–795.3; Sambursky and Pines (1971), p. 43. Simplicius’ report of Iamblichus’ view quoted from Phys. 793.3–7. See Sorabji (1983) p. 37, n.13. and ch.3, wherein Sorabji compares McTaggart’s A-Series and B-Series to Iamblichus’ twofold distinction. As the concept of an A-Series would, where present is always the placeholder for a token reflexive point of reference. Given the Athenian School position, the A-Series that McTaggart has identified, of past present and future, is was and will be, reduces to a B-Series (earlier, simultaneous, later). Blumenberg (1987), p. 451. In Tim. I 233, 1–4. In Tim. I 228, 13-18. See Kutash (2008). Reichenbach, (1953), pp. 206–7. In Tim. III 18, 12–19. In Tim. III 18, 5–7. Here Proclus quotes Iamblichus In Plat. Tim. III, 33. 1–30 : ‘Ὅτι φησὶν ὁ θεῖoς Ἰάμβλιχoς, τὸ ἓν καὶ ἄπειρoν τoῦ αἰῶνoς καὶ ἤδη ὂν καὶ ὁμoῦ πᾶν καὶ ἐν τῷ νῦν μένoν καὶ ἀμέτρητoν ὂν μέτρoν τῶν νοητῶν ἐν ἀνελίξει κυκλικῇ καὶ ἐν συνεχείᾳ καὶ τῷ ἐφεξῆς ἐπιδείκνυσι καὶ τῷ ἀρχὰς καὶ μέσα καὶ τέλη διακρίνoντι καὶ μηδ᾽ ὁτιoῦν ἀπoλείπoντι τῶν ὑπ᾽ αὐτoῦ περιεχoμέν ων ...’. In Sambursky’s translation: ‘Because as the divine Iamblichus says, in the cyclic unfolding and continuity and succession, and in distinguishing between beginnings and middles and ends, and in leaving out nothing that is encompassed by it, it (time) indicates the One and infinite of eternity’. In Tim. III 30, 30–2. El. of Theol. proposition 15: Dodds (1963), pp. 17–19. In Tim. III 9, 14–18. Also see: In Tim. III 29, 29–31: ‘δεῖ τὸ κινητὸν τoῦ χρόνoυ κυκλικὸν εἶναι καὶ χoρευτικόν, ἵνα μηδὲ τoῦ αἰῶνoς ἀπoστατῇ καὶ τὴν περὶ αὐτoῦ νόησιν τoῦ πατρὸς ἀνελίττη’. ‘It is necessary that the moveable nature of time be


38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52.

65

circular; and proceed with a dancing (or measured) motion; in order that it may neither depart from eternity and may revolve about it the intellection of the father ...’ ‘ἀλλὰ μὴν τὸ ‘ἦν καὶ ‘τὸ ἔσται’ χρόνoυ ἐστὶν εἴδη γεγoνότα παρὰ τoῦ δημιoυργoῦ.’ (In Tim. III 37, 15–17). In Tim. III 34, 15. In. Tim. III 40, 24. Husserl. The Concept of Number. (1887), quoted by Jacques Derrida (1962), p. 28, n.6. Husserl describes numbers as ‘unique relation-concepts which can only be produced again and again and which are in no way capable of being found somewhere ready-made’. In Tim. I 277, 27–9, 32-3. Proclus De decem. dub. 5.30ff., in Whittaker (1976), p. 163. Whittaker (1976), p.163, quotes Nicolaus de Cusa, De principio, J. Koch (ed.) (1948), p. 102. Gersh (1973) discussing pronoia and commenting on El. of Theol. 106. 6–7, suggests that Proclus is not completely clear either about Intellect or about the hypostases of Being and Life and Intellect’s relation to pronoia: ‘Above the level of Intellect, we must think not of activity but rather of its analogue “before intellect” (pro nou¯)’, p. 93 and 93, n.3. In Tim. III 53, 39–42. See Heath (1981), pp. 132–3 and 171–3. The Great Year, originated by Oenopides and adopted by Plato in Republic, stipulated that periods of revolution for the various planets could be calculated so that each planet would be found at the moment of the Great Year to be aligned in the same configuration as in the Great Year before it, (Oenopides had it at every 59 years, whereas other interpreters of Plato make it to be every 36,000 years). The commensuration of times within Time becomes elevated to a metaphysical assertion of eternal recurrence and cyclicality as the true image of Eternity. Morrow and Dillon (1987), p. 601. In Tim. III 20, 14–15. Trouillard (1982), p. 247, also discusses this; other references are mentioned by Armstrong (1984), p. 40, n.22. ‘The mother of reality is honored equally with the father’, In Tim. I 54, 176; In Parm. 1119.4–1123. 21 (Morrow and Dillon 1987, p. 461–5); El. of Theol. propositions 89–92; Plat.Th. III 7–9. Park (1980), pp. 102–3, recognizes that Proclus anticipated the laws of dynamics when it comes to Time, which, in his opinion, is twofold: the time that has a physical aspect (represented in the equations of dynamics by the letter t) and the time of human consciousness and process. Dynamical laws, says Park, waited for more than a thousand years to find an expression once again. In Parm. 1016.14–15 (Morrow and Dillon 1987, p. 365).

Bibliography Aristotle, 1970, Physics, P. H. Wickstead and F. M. Cornford (trans.), Cambridge. Barker, A., 1994, ‘Greek Musicologists in the Roman Empire’, Apeiron 27.4, pp. 54–74, reprinted in T. D. Barnes (ed.), The Sciences in Greco-Roman Society, Edmonton.

66 Emilie F. Kutash Beierwaltes, W., 1965, Proklos, Grundzüge seiner Metaphysik, Frankfurt am Main. Blumenberg, H., 1987, The Genesis of the Copernican World, Cambridge. Derrida, J., 1962, Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry. An Introduction, Lincoln. During, I. (ed.), 1930, Porphyry’s Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics, Göteborg. Gersh, S., 1973, Kine¯sis Akine¯tos, Leiden. Heath, Sir T., 1981, Aristarchus of Samos, New York. Kutash, E., 2008, ‘Proclus’ theories of motion and twentieth-century physics’, in J. Bregman (ed.), Neoplatonism and American Thought, New Orleans. Manchester, P., 2005, The Syntax of Time, Leiden. Miller, M. H., 1982, Plato’s Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul, University Park PA. Mohr, R., 1985, The Platonic Cosmology, Leiden. Milne, E. A., 1935, Relativity, Gravitation and World Structure, Oxford. Morrow, G. R. and Dillon, J. M., 1987, Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, Princeton. O’Neill, W., 1962, ‘Time and Eternity in Proclus’, Phronesis 7, pp. 161–5. Park, D., 1980, The Image of Eternity, Amherst. Plato, 1926, Plato Vol. IV, H. N. Fowler (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plotinus, 1966–88, Plotinus, A. H. Armstrong (trans.), 7 vols, Cambridge MA. Proclus, 1903–06, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, E. Diehl (ed.), Leipzig. Proclus, 1912, Lycii Institutio Physica, A. Ritzenfeld (ed.), Leipzig. Proclus, 1961, Platonici Opera Inedita, V. Cousin (ed.), Pt. 3, Hildesheim. Proclus, 1963, The Elements of Theology, E. R. Dodds (ed.), 2nd edn, Oxford. Proclus, 1968–97, Théologie platonicienne, H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink (eds. and trans.), vols 1–6, Paris. Reichenbach, H., 1953, ‘The Philosophical Significance of the Theory of Relativity’, in H. Feigl and M. Brodbeck (eds.), Readings in The Philosophy of Science, New York, pp. 195–211. Russell, B., 1938, Principles of Mathematics, New York. Sambursky, S. and Pines, S., 1971, The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism, Jerusalem. Simplicius, 1882–95, In Aristotelis Physicorum, H. Diels (ed.), 2 vols, Berlin. Siorvanes, L., 1996, Proclus, New Haven. Sorabji, R., 1983, Time, Creation and the Continuum, Ithaca. Syrianus, 1902, Syriani In Metaphysica Commentaria, W. Kroll (ed.), Berlin. Trouillard, J., 1982, La mystagogie de Proclos, Paris. Whittaker, J., 1976, ‘Philological Comments on the Neoplatonic Notion of Infinity’, in B. Harris (ed.), The Significance of Neoplatonism, Norfolk. pp. 155–72.

4 Having Sex with the One: Erotic Mysticism in Plotinus and the Problem of Metaphor Zeke Mazur

At several points in the Enneads, Plotinus describes what appears to be a first-hand experience of a moment of mystical union with the supreme principle, the One.1 And yet – despite the large volume of scholarship on Plotinian mysticism in the context of philosophical hermeneutics – a seemingly fundamental question has been neglected: what, in practical terms, was Plotinus actually doing during these extraordinary moments? Indeed, it seems that the importance of this question has typically been underestimated. For if we remain in the dark about what was (according to Porphyry)2 the ultimate goal of Plotinus’ life and philosophy, one might wonder whether we can in fact claim to have any real understanding of his thought. The essential difficulty for the historian of philosophy is that the experience of union with the One transcends ordinary intellection and thus (according to Plotinus’ own repeated injunctions) cannot be expressed in literal or discursive terms. Nevertheless, he does try to communicate the essence of the experience through the use of various images: images which ostensibly are metaphors for more abstract and ineffable states of consciousness. In this chapter I would like to suggest that the curiously physical, erotic – and indeed frankly sexual – imagery Plotinus uses to describe mystical union is not an arbitrary metaphor, but is in fact central to both his metaphysics and his experiential praxis.

The essential question: how to interpret Plotinus’ erotic imagery? It has often been noted that Plotinus’ use of erotic imagery diverges in significant ways from that of Plato.3 The notion of eros as the impetus for philosophical ascent already occurs prominently in the Symposium, where the process is said to begin with sexual desire for beautiful male 67

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bodies; this attraction is gradually sublimated into desire for progressively more abstract notions of beauty, until the final stage at which sexual love must be superceded for the soul to be able to contemplate Beauty itself.4 For Plotinus, by contrast, the soul’s unbounded love for the One persists and even attains florescence at the ineffable moment of mystical union. Moreover, Plotinus extends the erotic imagery in ways that would have been unthinkable to Plato, not only by describing the initial stages of ascent with remarkably explicit (but often under-translated) erotic language,5 but more importantly, by comparing the experience of mystical union with the One to an act of sexual intercourse. In treatise VI.9 – thus already in his very first account of the ultimate union – he describes it in graphically sexual terms; in chapter 4 he says it is ‘a kind of erotic experience like that of a (male) lover resting in the (male) beloved’,6 while later, in chapter 9, he contrasts love for the One with worldly love, but still describes the former with strikingly sexual language: ‘But there is our true love, with whom also we can be united, having a part in him and truly possessing him, not embracing him in the flesh from the outside’; he then insists that we should ‘embrace him with the whole of ourselves and have no part with which we do not touch God’.7 Similarly, in treatise VI.7, the images range from the relatively simple analogy between those who behold the One and lovers who have sex with their beloved (chapter 31), to the rather more concrete statement that the desire of lovers to be blended together (sugkrinai) with each other sexually is in fact an ‘imitation’ (mimêsis) of the soul’s mystical union with the One (chapter 34).8 This sort of imagery seems to go well beyond the sublimated or metaphorical eroticism one finds in Plato. In chronological terms, these Plotinian passages are perhaps the first fully explicit examples of a long literary tradition of erotic mysticism, a tradition whose tropes are now familiar to us from their medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic formulations. In traditional theological exegeses, the erotic imagery of the mystics has typically been interpreted as a commonplace metaphor (if not a cliché) for intense but essentially chaste religious devotion, whatever it was that the mystics themselves had actually experienced. Yet much recent scholarship on medieval mysticism has called into question precisely the assumption that the sexual language used by mystics was intended to describe an entirely non-somatic, ‘spiritual’ experience.9 Indeed, there may instead be good reason to suspect that many of these mystics’ erotic experiences of the Divine cannot be clearly distinguished from the affective and even physiological aspects of embodied sexuality. How, then, are we to understand Plotinus’ erotic mysticism? Is this imagery of sexual love

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just (as many modern interpreters seem to imply)10 a striking metaphor for an emotionally intense (but in fact sterile and desexualized) love of the Good?

Sexual love and its relationship with love of the One Here I would like to question the common assumption that Plotinus’ use of sexual imagery to describe mystical union is unproblematically ‘metaphorical’, (whatever this might mean). In order to understand what Plotinus intends to express with this comparison, we must first understand that to which he is comparing the mystical union; and this requires that we examine his complex notion of sexual love. It is significant that according to Plotinus’ explicit theory of eros, human sexual love is intimately related to, and in fact dependent upon, the soul’s mystical desire for the One, since all forms of love – that of the soul in its individual, cosmic, and hypostatic modalities, that of Intellect, and even that of the One itself – are ultimately expressions of desire for the One.11 Plotinus’ most explicit discussion of the specifically psychic aspect of love, which includes human sexual attraction, runs throughout his ostensible exegesis of Plato’s Symposium in treatise III.5, ‘On Love’. In the first chapter, Plotinus generally follows Plato in his claim that the passion of human sexual love is the desire or longing (orexis) for beauty and thus ultimately for the Good (or the One).12 His essential argument is that what we perceive as human beauty is actually a reflection of the Form of intelligible Beauty upon the corporeal substrate, and further, that this intelligible Beauty originally derives from the One. The necessary conclusion is that sexual love is always, ultimately, a desire for the One, whether or not we are conscious of its true object.13 In the subsequent chapters of the treatise, Plotinus explains the origin of love with a tendentious interpretation of Diotima’s allegorical myth of Eros and Aphrodite (Symposium 203b–204a). According to Plotinus, Eros is not only a psychic passion but also an independent entity arising from the hypostatic Soul’s initial glimpse of the beauty of Intellect. More specifically, Eros emerges simultaneously as an efflux of the ‘eye’ of the Soul and also as the power of the vision of Intellect itself; it thus mediates between lover (the Soul) and beloved (the Intellect).14 Lesser Erôtes are similarly born from the desire of subordinate types of soul as each glimpses a correspondingly dimmer reflection of beauty. This results in a hierarchy of interrelated psychic loves, each correlated with the type of soul on its respective ontological level, and each in turn inspiring a passion for the ultimate source of this beauty, which is, in each case, the One.

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This dynamic is evident throughout Plotinus’ system; thus, at the level of Nous, love similarly arises from a primordial vision, although in this case the vision is directly of the One. At VI.7.35, 20–6, Plotinus distinguishes between two states of Intellect: the normal state, in which it thinks rationally, and the other, exceptional state, that of the ‘Intellect in love’ (nous erôn), whose intoxicating glimpse of the One has rendered it insane. This latter state is necessary for Intellect to transcend its own cognitive limitations and attain the final, hyper-noetic union. Here Plotinus explicitly equates this love with the immediate, non-discursive self-perception of the One by which the emergent Intellect first acquired definition and independent subsistence.15 Intellect’s erotic attraction results in its epistrophê towards the One, and attains its (seemingly orgasmic) fulfilment in mystical union. This is possible, however, only because of the One’s own abundantly erotic nature, the latter being ‘loveable, and love, and love of himself’.16 The One also contributes to the love that arises in each subsequent hypostasis, giving a ‘trace of itself’ (ichnos autou) to its subordinates and eventually squirting a kind of ‘grace’ (charis) into the soul. This erotic efflux in return kindles the soul’s desire for its source.17 For Plotinus, then, every form of love is correlated with epistrophê and instils a desire, conscious or unconscious, for union (or rather, reunion) with the One. Yet at this point one could still suppose that Plotinus saw a substantial distinction between metaphysical and worldly love. In certain places he seems to suggest that actual sexual intercourse is a kind of failure (although I differ from the majority of scholars in seeing his position on sexual love as deeply ambiguous and at times surprisingly positive).18 In any case, one might imagine that in Plotinus’ view it is only at the lower end of this spectrum that love becomes ‘sexual’, strictly speaking; in other words, that it involves physical bodies, sexual fluids, biological reproduction, and so forth. Plotinus seems to be suggesting as much at VI.9.9: first, with his interpretation of the Platonic division of Aphrodite into two distinct but related manifestations, one ‘heavenly’, representing the soul’s love of God in the intelligible world, the other whorish and ‘vulgar’ (pandêmos), presiding over terrestrial sexual love (lines 29–33); and second, with his comparison between the soul’s love for the One and that of a girl for her father (Freudian interpretations notwithstanding), and the subsequent contrast between this ‘noble’ love and other more mundane loves (lines 33–44). Nevertheless, he emphasizes the interrelation and even consubstantiality of all forms of love, both in this passage and in an extended passage at III.5.4, in which he says that all subordinate ‘Aphrodites’ flow from,


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and depend upon, a universal Aphrodite.19 Human sexual love and the Soul-as-Intellect’s love for the One are therefore consubstantial as well as functionally analogous; and if they do occupy different ontological strata, they are still intimately related, as opposite poles of a unified continuum.

The biological-reproductive model of procession Yet there is, I think, another reason we should not rush to separate sexual love from love for the One. Here I would like to call attention to a striking but underappreciated aspect of Plotinus’ system, which calls into question any rigid distinction between sexual and spiritual love. Just as Plotinus seems to conceive of conversion towards the One in terms of sexual attraction, so also he subtly envisions the complementary system of procession from the One in terms of the inherently related process of sexual reproduction. He employs physiological terminology and concepts drawn from contemporaneous embryology, and they frequently involve explicit reference to aspects of biological reproduction, such as seed, sperm, conception, impregnation, labour, and birth. And even where there is no explicit mention of physiological reproduction, Plotinus’ account of this process is tacitly permeated with double-entendres and suggestive images, such as ejaculatory ‘outflows’ of spermatic ‘nectar’, penetrations and ‘fillings’ of inferior principles by superior ones, and so on. In his model of procession, however, he emphasizes less the erotic than the biological and reproductive aspects of sex, although he often seems to envision the process as androgenetic, or at least as involving jarring incongruities of gender roles, sometimes dictated by the grammatical gender of the hypostases or that of the traditional deities in the myths he is trying to allegorize.20 Indeed, the imagery of insemination and conception is crucial for the entire system. At IV.8.6, for instance, Plotinus compares the One itself to a seed, using the analogy to describe the prefiguration of greater multiplicity and complexity in a prior and more unified principle.21 Concurrently, the One behaves as a self-fertilizing or monogenetic seed; thus he often describes it ‘overflowing’ from itself in language evocative of a primordial ejaculation.22 This spermatic effluence – a prefiguration of the subjacent hypostasis while still in some sense an extension of the One – reflexively reverts towards its source through a kind of autoerotic self-attraction and is thus ‘filled’ or impregnated with the One’s own generative dunamis so as to acquire independent substantiality as Intellect.23 One should note that the verb plêrousthai, ‘to be filled’, which

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Plotinus uses repeatedly in the context of procession, is commonly used (notably by Aristotle) to describe impregnation.24 Moreover, the One’s (seemingly abstract) process of self-reversion is curiously reminiscent of two apparently common Hellenistic spermatological and embryological notions: on the one hand, the idea that seeds and semen share an inherent attractive power capable of drawing in both pneuma and the nutrients necessary for growth, and, on the other hand, the related idea that conception or germination requires a prior act of self-contraction.25 The reproductive imagery continues on subsequent levels; the relationship of superior to inferior hypostasis recalls that of male to female in Aristotelian embryology, in which the active male principle (the form) in the sperm imparts limit and form to the passive female substance (the matter).26 Thus as the Intellect perceives the One, it ‘conceives offspring’ within itself; the offspring is both the Forms and the prefiguration of the Soul.27 The process is then replicated at the level of the Soul, which is described as taking pleasure in being united with and filled with forms by Intellect;28 the Soul is ‘as if pregnant by the intelligibles and labouring to give birth’ to the world.29 Plotinus blends mystical with reproductive imagery at VI.9.9, where the individual soul is said to become ‘pregnant’ with beauty and virtue when it is ‘filled’ by the One.30 The image of seeds and germination, like that of love, continues down the chain of being; thus he frequently describes the Intellect and the Forms it contains in terms of seeds, and the formative principles of matter as spermatikoi logoi flowing down from the Soul.31 He similarly describes the imprinting of intelligible forms upon matter with phallic and ejaculatory images.32 Although he occasionally uses the analogy of plant growth to describe the generation of the hypostases, the ‘seeds’ are often described in terms of animal sperm, either through the imagery of fluidity33 or with reference to bodily organs.34 Even Plotinus’ notion of natural generation through contemplation is rife with sexual connotations. ‘Even when living things produce’, he says at III.8.7, ‘it is the logoi within that move them, and this is an activity of contemplation, the birth-pain (ôdis) of creating many forms and many things to contemplate, and filling all things with logoi, and a kind of endless contemplation...’ He makes clear that he has sexual reproduction in mind at the conclusion of the passage, where he compares natural generation to the mutual attraction of human lovers, an attraction whose true object, he insists, is actually the Forms that the lovers embody.35 The reproductive model of procession thus slides seamlessly into the generation of biological organisms; what we would consider ordinary sexual reproduction is simply the manifestation of procession on the physical plane.36


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The structural identity of mystical union and sexual intercourse At each stage of Plotinus’ system, then, one can discern parallel processes whose fundamental mechanism derives from the universal structure of sexual love. On the one hand, there is erotic desire, correlated with reversion towards the superior principles. On the other hand, there is biological reproduction, correlated with procession. Plotinus thus organizes the entire dialectical cycle according to a sexual model: that is, a model with both erotic and reproductive modalities.37 Moreover, the penultimate phase of the mystical ascent to the One recapitulates the first moment of procession.38 Therefore, just as in the natural world an act of sexual intercourse links erotic desire with reproduction, so also in Plotinian metaphysics, it is not surprising to find the two eternal motions, procession and reversion, naturally conjoined and mediated by a unitive act that is described in more or less explicitly sexual terms, an act which integrates the fulfilment of erotic desire with generation. It is thus evident that Plotinus’ use of the imagery of sexual intercourse to describe the moment of mystical union is far from arbitrary. On the contrary: Plotinus presupposes that worldly sexual intercourse, with its dual implications of both erotic attraction and biological reproduction, is inherently coordinated with the Intellect’s union with the One, a union which is simultaneously the climax of the soul’s mysticalerotic ascent and the first eternal moment of the perpetual unfolding of Being. We may now grasp the full sense of Plotinus’ statement that the sexual act of human lovers is a mimêsis of mystical union: sexual intercourse is a ‘true image’ of the ultimate union with the One, to which it is profoundly, and qualitatively, related.39 May we still conclude that this imagery is merely metaphorical? On the one hand, the inherent ineffability of hyper-noetic experience precludes the possibility of any ‘literal’ description of union with the One. On the other hand, we have seen that there is nothing especially ‘metaphorical’ about Plotinus’ ascription of eros to the metaphysical realm; for the category of sexual love, with all its concomitant biological processes, genuinely exists (in some incorporeal way) in the intelligible as well as the sensible world. If this is a metaphor, it lies not at the superficial level of language, but rather at the most fundamental level of his thought.40 I would suggest that Plotinus was largely, but not entirely, aware of this sexually-reproductive framework, as the erotic imagery vacillates between the explicit language of a deliberate biological model and the

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tacit evocation of a deep conceptual structure of which he was perhaps not fully conscious.41

Some possible sources for Plotinus’ erotic–reproductive model Despite its strikingly original formulation, however, Plotinus’ conception of sexual ontogenesis did not itself generate spontaneously. Similar notions may be found in several prior traditions of which he may have been aware. Thus, for example, the notion of the divine archê as a kind of seed occurred in Middle-Platonic and Pythagorean cosmogony, and already appears in the thought of Plato’s successor Speusippus.42 The notion of God as a seed occurred in Stoicism (as did the spermatikoi logoi which Plotinus adopted wholesale),43 and a similar idea seems to have been current in Neopythagorean thought.44 The second-century Gnostic heresiarch Basilides posited a complex ontogenesis in which a transcendent deity emits a series of seeds.45 Moreover, one finds explicitly sexual themes in a variety of contemporaneous Gnostic traditions. In Valentinian protology, a primordial deity called ‘Deep’ injects a spermlike emanation into the ‘womb’ of his female consort, ‘Silence’, thereby engendering the Nous; this is followed by a series of divine copulations.46 Numerous other Gnostic systems were preoccupied with the sexual couplings of hypostases and the human sexual physiology to which the divine pleroma was compared.47 Somewhat closer to Plotinus, the Chaldaean Oracles are generally replete with reproductive terminology, and they describe the instantiation of Forms in terms of sexual reproduction: the Father ‘sows’ the forms into Hecate’s womb, from which they are subsequently poured into the material cosmos.48 And elsewhere there are, of course, numerous other examples.49 It therefore seems likely that Plotinus’ own emanationism was in some way a deliberate ‘spiritualization’ of this type of sexual ontogenesis, although detached from its original and more explicitly somatic template.

A ritual background underlying Plotinian mystical praxis? Returning to our original problem, what might all this reveal about Plotinus’ actual hyper-noetic praxis? Significantly, the Gnostic sexual protologies seem to have corresponded with a variety of soteriological rituals. In several Gnostic systems, human sexual fluids – semen and menstrual blood – were considered to be in some way consubstantial with the primordial seminal efflux of the transcendent god, and there is


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evidence that certain sects used sexual rituals in an attempt to reintegrate this seed with its divine source.50 Implicitly underlying many of these schemes seems to have been a deep-rooted conception of human physiology as a microcosmic homologue for a macrocosmic process.51 In ancient Greek medical thought, the soul, the brain, the spinal marrow, and the semen were understood to be a hydraulic continuum containing a limited economy of vital pneumatic fluid.52 In Gnostic systems based upon this model, the body was envisioned as a vertical axis extending between the head (often encoded as male) and the genitals (encoded as female), along which the seed could either ascend towards the divine plenitude, or descend and dissipate through ‘emanation’, i.e. ejaculation and sexual reproduction.53 Salvation therefore consisted in controlling the precious sexual fluids, either through rituals involving their actual emission and sacramental consumption (one supposedly ‘libertine’ option), or, alternately, through rigorous ascetic practices thought to halt or even reverse their natural downward flow (the ‘encratite’ option).54 My conjecture, therefore, is that one aspect of Plotinus’ hyper-noetic praxis – which, as we have seen, he expressed in sexual terms but considered to be the diametrical opposite of sexual generation – might have consisted of an interiorization of rituals involving more external and embodied forms of sexuality. To be absolutely clear, I am not, of course, trying to argue that Plotinus himself engaged in actual sexual rituals; rather, I would simply suggest that his contemplative praxis was (consciously or unconsciously) structured upon this type of technique and that it may have induced intense subjective experience of the sort that others might qualify as somatic, but which Plotinus himself did not interpret as a function of the body, and which he subsequently expressed in the objective and metaphysical language of academic Platonism.55 Given our conventional assumptions about the nature of philosophical praxis in late antiquity, it may be difficult to conceive of the ‘most otherworldly of philosophers’56 engaging in this sort of thing. However, there is, perhaps, a useful (if slightly provocative) cross-cultural analogy to be found in the medieval Indian tantric traditions. This analogy might help us both to reconceptualize Plotinus’ mystical praxis and also, importantly, to envision the mechanism by which Plotinus interiorized sexual ritual.57 While the earlier Kaula (clan-based) rituals apparently involved actual sex acts with living partners and the sacramental use of sexual fluids (broadly parallel to that of the Gnostics), the eleventh century Kashmiri Shaivite reformer Abhinavagupta catered to the tastes and taboos of a higher-caste clientele by transforming these rituals into ‘internalized’ visualizations of subtle-physiological processes and spiritual copulations

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within the practitioner’s own body. These techniques were typically thought to cause the semen to reascend through subtle centres located along the channel of the spine and to culminate in a reintegration with the supreme principle, envisioned in or above the head. The final stage was sometimes understood as a participation in the eternal coupling of the male and female aspects of the supreme deity.58 As in Plotinus, this sexual act was also understood as the source of a macrocosmic cycle of emission and contraction.59 While the somatic aspects of this interiorized tantric ritual seem entirely distinct from the Plotinian flight from the body, there are interesting similarities in both (a) the identification of the individual experience of sexual intercourse with the divine generative forces, and (b) the use of contemplative techniques or visualizations involving this homology. As with these later tantrics (and medieval Christian ascetics) Plotinus’ sublimated, non-genital ejaculation erupted inwards, in the contemplative orgasm of union with the One.


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Notes 1. E.g. Plotinus, Enneads I.6[1].7, 1–14; VI.9[9].7, 17–26, 9, 50–60, 10, 14–21, 11, 4–25; V.5[32].8, 9–24; VI.7[38].34, 8–22, 36, 10–22. 2. Porphyry, Vita Plotini 23.8–18. 3. E.g. by Nygren (1953) pp. 182–99; more recently by Hadot (1989) pp. 81–90; idem (1982–83); Mortley (1980); Thesleff (1980). 4. Plato, Symposium 200a–d; 210a–212a; cf. Phaedrus 250d–256e. 5. Thus, for example, at I.6[1].9,17, in the explicitly auto-erotic context of ‘working on your statue’ (a play on Phaedrus 252D), the phrase sautôi katharos sunegenou, which Armstrong translates as ‘are at home with yourself in purity’, may be rendered as ‘you, pure, had sex with yourself’. Likewise, earlier in the treatise, at 5.7, heautois suneinai potheite probably means ‘long to have sex with yourselves’. For the plausibility of this reading, note Aristophanes’ speech in Symposium 189c–193d. 6. Plotinus, VI.9[9].4, 18–19: hoion erôtikon pathêma ek tou idein erastou en hôi erai anapausamenou ...; cf. VI.5[23].10, 2–9. 7. VI.9[9].9, 54–6: hina toi holôi hautôn periptuxômetha kai mêden meros echoimen, hôi mê ephaptometha theou. 8. VI.7[38].31, 11–19: ‘And just as (hôsper) here below those who are in love shape themselves to the likeness of the beloved, and make their bodies handsomer and bring their souls into likeness ... these are the lovers who are able to have intercourse (houtoi eisin hoi suneinai dunamenoi); in this way (touton ton tropon) the soul also loves (erai) that Good, moved to it by love from the beginning’. VI.7[38].34, 14–16: ‘[The soul sees the One] in itself suddenly appearing (for there is nothing between, nor are there still two but both are one; nor could you still make a distinction while it is present; lovers and their beloveds here below imitate this in their will to be united ... (mimêsis de toutou kai hoi entautha erastai kai erômenoi sugkrinai thelontes)’. These and all subsequent Plotinus translations are those of Armstrong (1966–88). Besides the ubiquitous physical imagery of physical contact to describe the relationship to the One, one might also consider the sexual connotations of the imagery of divine possession at e.g. V.8[31].10, 42, or the repeated entreaties to ‘give oneself up’ (with its connotation of sexual surrender) to the superior principles in mystical ecstasy e.g., heauton aphenta at III.8[30].9, 31; heauton ... didous at V.5[32]8, 12; epidosis autou at VI.9[9].11, 24. 9. See Kripal (2001), pp. 71–2; also, Jantzen (1995), p. 133; Bynum (1991), pp. 186–95. 10. Thus, inter alia, Ferwerda (1965), pp. 87–91. 11. The close interrelation of all types of eros in Plotinus has been noted by several authors, e.g. Rist (1964), pp. 99–103; Lacrosse (1994) pp. 110–11; Pigler: (2002), p. 273. 12. Thus Plato, Symposium 205e. 13. III.5[50].1,17-29, 63–4; see also VI.5[23].10, 1–10; VI.8[31].2, 7–19; II.9[33].16, 45–48; VI.7[38].32, 24–32, 33, 21–30, 34,8–14. 14. III.5[50].2, 33–45, 3, 1–30. 15. VI.7[38].35, 23–4; see also Perczel (1997). 16. VI.8[39].15, 1–2: kai erasmion kai erôs ho autos kai autou erôs, hate ouk allôs kalos ê par’ autou kai en autôi; also 16, 12–16.

78 Zeke Mazur 17. III.8[30].11, 22–25; also VI.7[38].22–23; thus 22,1–10: ‘When anyone, therefore, sees this light, then truly he is moved to the Forms, and longs for the light which plays upon them and delights in it, just as with the bodies here below our desire is not for the underlying material things but for the beauty imaged upon them. For each is what it is by itself; but it becomes desirable when the Good colors it, giving a kind of grace (charitas) to them and erotic love (erôtas) to the desirers. Then the soul, receiving into itself (labousa eis autên) an outflow (aporroên) from thence, is moved and dances wildly and is all stung with longing (oistrôn pimplatai) and becomes love (erôs ginetai)’. 18. Contrary to the majority of scholars, I read III.5[50].1 as implying that nonprocreative sex is not merely not a failure but is a positive good so long as one is aware of the divine origin of beauty that inspires it. This is also more or less the conclusion of Wolters (1972). 19. III.5[50].4, 18–23: ‘... one must think that there are many Aphrodites in the All, which have come into being in it as spirits along with Love, flowing from an universal Aphrodite (hrueisas ex Aphroditês tinos holês), many partial ones depending from that universal one, with their own particular loves – if one assumes, that is, that soul is the mother of love, and Aphrodite is soul, and love is the activity of soul reaching out after good’. 20. E.g. at V.8[31], 12–13. 21. IV.8[6].6, 7–12: ‘... there must not be just souls alone either, without the manifestation of the things produced through them, if this is in every nature, to produce what comes after it and to unfold itself as a seed does (exelittesthai hoion spermatos), from a partless beginning which proceeds to the final stage perceived by the senses, with what comes before abiding for ever in its own proper dwelling-place, but, in a way, bringing to birth (gennômenou) what comes after it from a power unspeakably great ...’ 22. III.8[30].10, 1–5: ‘What is it [the One] then? The power of all things; if it did not exist, neither would all things, nor would Intellect be the first and universal life. But what is above life is cause of life; for the activity of life, which is all things, is not first, but itself flows out, so to speak, as if from a spring’. VI.7[38].12, 23–7: ‘... all things are filled full of life, and, we may say, boiling with life. They all flow, in a way, from a single spring ...’ 23. V.2[11]1, 8–13: ‘The One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing, overflows, as it were, and its superabundance makes something other than itself. This, when it has come into being, turns back upon the One and is filled (eplêrôthê), and becomes Intellect by looking towards it’. VI.7[38].16, 32–6: ‘So then Intellect came to be by being filled (plêroumenos), and when it was filled (plêrôtheis) it was, and simultaneously it was perfected and saw. Its principle was that which it was before being filled, but another principle, in a way external to it, was the one that filled (plêrousa) it, from which it received its character in being filled’. VI.7[38].40, 14: ‘But since it [the One’s self-thought] was a power (dunamis) of generation (tou gennan) itself, it generated (egenna) ...’ Also, V.1[10].7, 1–6; V.5[32].16–19; VI.8[39].16, 13–16. 24. E.g. Aristotle, Historia Animalium 541a20 (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum 7.3.28); for the active form plêroun, ‘to impregnate’, see Aristotle, Metaphysics 988a6.


25.

26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

79

Note that the metaphor of fluid influx to describe cognitive processes already has a tacit erotic connotation in Plato, Phaedrus 251a–255b. On conception or the animation of the semen through the inspiration of pneuma, e.g., Hippocrates, On the Nature of the Child 12.1; Plato, Timaeus 91a–b; Porphyry, Pros Gauron 35; Iamblichus, De Anima 32.2; on the supposed attractive power of seeds and semen, e.g., Soranus, Gynecology I.38.5; Plutarch, Against the Stoics on Common Conceptions 1077a–b; Galen, On the Natural Faculties II.3, 83–6; Hierocles I.5; Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis 228d, 240a–b; on conception as self-contraction of the uterus or the self-withdrawal of the semen into uterus, e.g. Galen, On Semen I.2.6; Soranus I.43.7. Aristotle, Generation of Animals 729a24–34; cf. Plotinus, III.6[26].19, 19–23; V.8[31].2, 7; II.9[33].12, 22; III.5[50].8, 18–20. VI.7[38].15, 18-20: ‘Intellect therefore had the power from him to generate (gennan) and to be filled (plêrousthai) full of its own offspring (gennêmatôn), since the Good gave what he did not himself have’. VI.7[38].35, 31–2: ‘For when [Intellect] saw [the One] it had offspring (gennêmata) and was intimately aware of their generation and existence within it ...’. V.8[31].12, 2–5: ‘But when he sees, whether as another or as one who remains himself, what does he report? He reports that he has seen a god in labour (ôdinonta) with a beautiful offspring all of which he has brought to birth (gegennêkota) with him, and keeping the children of his painless birth-pangs (ôdina) within himself’. Also, III.5[50].9. V.1[10].7, 42–9: ‘And the offspring of Intellect is a rational form and an existing being, that which thinks discursively; it is this which moves round Intellect and is light and trace of intellect and dependent on it, united (sunêgmenon) to it on one side and so filled (apopimplamenon) with it and enjoying (apolauon) it and sharing in (metalambanon) it and thinking, but, on the other side, in touch with the things which came after it, or rather itself generating what must necessarily be worse than soul ...’ For the same process in an explicitly erotic context, see also III.5[50].9, 1–9. IV.7[38].13, 7-8: hôsper kuoun ap’ autôn kai ôdinon gennêsai; also II.9.12, 17–23. VI.9[9].9, 20: tauta gar kuei psuchê plêrôtheisa theou (a reminiscence of Plato, Symposium 209a–b). III.7[45].11, 23; IV.3[27].10, 10–13. III.6[26].19, 26–9: ‘... the ancient sages ... make the ancient Hermes always have the organ of generation ready for its work, revealing that the intelligible formative principle is the generator of the things in the sense-world ...’ E.g. III.2[47].2, 15–25. V.9[5].6, 10–15: ‘But the whole Intellect encompasses [Forms] as a genus does its species and a whole its parts. The powers of seeds (hai tôn spermatôn ... dunameis) give a likeness (eikona pherousi) of what we are talking about: for all the parts are undistinguished in the whole, and their rational forming principles are as if in one central point; and all the same there is one principle of the eye and another of the hand, known from the sense-object which is produced by it to be distinct’. Also II.6[17].1, 10; IV.7[2].5, 43-52; IV.9[8].3, 18. III.8[30].7, 18–27: ‘For when living things, too, produce, it is the logoi within that move them, and this is an activity of contemplation, the birth-pain

80 Zeke Mazur

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

(ôdis) of creating many forms and many things to contemplate and filling (plêrôsai) all things with logoi, and a kind of endless contemplation, for creating is bringing a form into being, and this is filling all things with contemplation ... And lovers, too, are among those who see and press on eagerly to a form’. This conflation is in fact so natural that Porphyry later is able to describe embryogenesis conversely in terms of procession (Pros Gauron VI.2). We need no longer be perplexed (with Nygren 1953, p. 195, for example) as to how Plotinian Eros could result in the downward motion of procession. Plot. VI.9[9].4, 28–31, 9.22; VI.7[38].35, 20–3, 30 ff.; see O’Daly (1974). Plotinus believes there to be an intimate and dynamic relationship between image and archetype: e.g. V.8[31].1, 33–40, 12, 15-27; II.9[33].16, 44–8. A recent argument for the philosophical centrality of metaphor in Plotinus’ thought has been made by Gerson (2003). I should clarify that my intention is not to psychoanalyse Plotinus, but rather to reveal a deep structure of which he need not have been entirely aware: either because of his dependence on prior sources which he might not have analysed fully, or, possibly, due to its origin in his own (non-discursive) embodied experience. Significantly, research in cognitive linguistics has suggested that essentially all human thought consists of unconscious metaphors based upon bodily experience; see Lakoff and Johnson (1999). Aristotle, Metaphysics 1072b, 1091a. On earlier notions of cosmological spermatology, see Baldry (1932) and Lesky (1951). Aristocles apud Eusebius, Preparatio Evangelica 15.14.2SVF 1.98; Aetius 1.7.33SVF 2.102. Nicomachus of Gerasa apparently thought that the divine Monad was an androgynous seed; thus Iamblichus, Theologoumena Arithmeticae 3–5. Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium 7.9–13; also Jufresa (1981). Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I.1 [trans. from Unger (1992) p. 23]: ‘At one time this Profundity [the Valentinian protoprinciple] decided to emit from himself the Beginning of all things. This emission would be as a “seed” which he decided to emit and deposit as it were in the womb of Silence, who coexisted with him. After she had received this “seed” and become pregnant, she gave birth to Mind, who was both similar and equal to his Father who had emitted him; and he alone comprehended his (Father’s) greatness’. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis III.29.2 [trans. from Ferguson (1991), p. 274], [quoting ‘licentious’ Gnostics]: ‘All things were one. Since this Unity thought it right not to be left alone, a Spirit of Inspiration emerged from it. It had intercourse with this and produced the Beloved. From the Beloved emerged its own Spirit of Inspiration, with which it had intercourse, producing Powers, invisible and inaudible down to “each by her own name”.’ Apocryphon of John (NHC II,1, III,1, IV,1 and BG 8502,2) 6.10–13 [trans. Wisse in Robinson (1988), p. 108]: ‘And [the Invisible Spirit] looked at Barbelo with the pure light which surrounds the invisible Spirit and (with) his spark, and she conceived from him’. See also Ap. Jn. 5.4–11; Paraphrase of Shem (NHC VII,1), with Smith (2000). Chaldaean Oracles frs. 28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39, 56 (des Places). E.g. Numenius fr. 13 (des Places); Corpus Hermeticum XIII.1 (following Plato’s description of the Demiurge ‘sowing’ human souls at Timaeus 41D ff.).


81

50. See, inter alia, Epiphanius, Panarion 26.1.9, 4.3–8, 9.4; Hippolytus, Refutatio VI.14; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I.6.4, 13.2–6; Asclepius 21 with NHC VI,8.65. Despite some scepticism, recent scholars have tended (more or less) to accept the patristic accounts of Gnostic sexual ritual; thus Benko (1967), Gero (1986); Buckley (1994); Turner (2000); De Conick (2003). 51. Filoramo (1980 and 1999); Stroumsa (1984), esp. ch. 2. 52. E.g. Plato, Timaeus 91A–B; Hippocrates, On the Seed in Littré, Ouvres complètes d’Hippocrate, vol. 7, pp.470–1; see also Onians (1951), pp. 93–302 passim. 53. Hippolytus attributes this view to Simon Magus and Valentinus (Refutatio IV.51), and to the sect of the Peratae (V.7, 12); see also Ap. Jn. (NHC II,1 etc.) 20.22–4. 54. See, for example, a Gnostic Gospel of Phillip cited in Epiphanius, Panarion 26.5.2; also, the Testimony of Truth (NHC IX,3) 30.30–31.5; compare Plotinus’ statement (at V.3[49].8, 28–32) that the illumination from Intellect ‘gives the soul a clearer life, but a life which is not generative (ou gennêtikên); on the contrary it turns the soul back upon itself and does not allow it to disperse, but makes it satisfied with the glory in itself’. 55. That at least an awareness of ritual sexuality existed in Plotinus’ milieu is suggested by Porphyry’s anecdote (Vita Plotini 15.1–6) about his own mysticoerotic poem, the ‘hieros gamos’, which scandalized Plotinus’ entourage but of which Plotinus himself vigorously approved. In his very first treatise, at I.6[1].7, 7, Plotinus himself compares ascent to the One to the ritual nudity in what were presumably sexual mysteries. Porphyry characterizes Plotinus’ method of mystical ascent as that of the Symposium (VPlot. 23.10), which was perhaps also a putative source-text for some ‘licentious’ Gnostics derided by Clement at Stromateis III.272.2; see also Plotinus’ own critique of Gnostic sexual proclivities, II.9[33].17, 23–9. 56. The (somewhat misleading) phrase of Armstrong (1967), p. 202. 57. Much has been written about the possible historical links between Plotinus and India, but I here am only proposing this as a heuristic device. 58. See White (2003), pp. 219–57. 59. See Muller-Ortega (1989), p. 53; also Abhinavagupta, Tantrâloka 5.121–4, ibid., p. 111: ‘This linga, the Heart of the yogini, beautiful with bliss, generates an extraordinary form of consciousness, due to the union of the seed and the womb. All the hosts of divinities dwell, without any effort whatsoever, in this abode full of bliss, and their nature is an unfailing form of consciousness. Here shines the paradoxical potency of Bhairava which continuously expands and contracts, while Bhairava himself is beyond all expansion and contraction. The totality of all that is poured out by the streams of bliss which occur by the union of the linga with that (yoni), is continuously and perpetually renewing itself’.

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82 Zeke Mazur Armstrong, A. H., 1967, Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge. Baldry, H. C., 1932, ‘Embryological Analogies in Pre-Socratic Cosmogony’, Classical Quarterly 26, pp. 27–34. Benko, S., 1967, ‘The Libertine Gnostic Sect of the Phibionites According to Epiphanius’, Vigiliae Christianae 21, pp. 103–19. Buckley, J. J., 1994, ‘Libertines or Not: Fruit, Bread, Semen, and Other Body Fluids in Gnosticism’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 2:1, pp. 15–31. Bynum, C. W., 1991, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, New York. Clement of Alexandria, 1991, Stromateis, Books One to Three, J. Ferguson (trans.), Washington. De Conick, A., 2003, ‘The Great Mystery of Marriage: Sex and Conception in Ancient Valentinian Traditions’, Vigiliae Christianae 57, pp. 307–42. Des Places, É. (ed. and trans.), 1996, Oracles Chaldaïques, Paris. Epiphanius, 1990, The Panarion of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis: Selected Passages, P. R. Amidon (trans.), New York. Ferwerda, R., 1965, La Signification des images et des métaphores dans la pensée de Plotin, Groningen, pp. 87–91. Filoramo, G., 1980, Luce e gnosi: Saggio sull’illuminazione nello gnosticismo, Rome. Filoramo, G., 1999, ‘The Transformation of the Inner Self in Gnostic and Hermetic Texts’, in J. Assmann and G. Stroumsa (eds.), Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Traditions, Leiden, pp. 137–49. Galen, 1963, On the Natural Faculties, A. J. Brock (trans.), Cambridge MA. Galen, 1992, On Semen, P. de Lacy (ed. and trans.), Berlin. Gero, S., 1986, ‘With Walter Bauer on the Tigris: Encratite Orthodoxy and Libertine Heresy in Syro-Mesopotamian Christianity’, in C. W. Hedrick and R. Hodgson (eds.) Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, Peabody MA., pp. 287–307. Gerson, L. P., 2003, ‘Metaphor as an Ontological Concept: Plotinus on the Philosophical Use of Language’, in M. Fattal (ed.) Logos et langage chez Plotin et avant Plotin, Paris, pp. 255–69. Gregory of Nyssa, 2002, La Création de l’homme, J. Laplace (trans.), Paris. Hadot, P., 1982–83, ‘Plotin: sur L’Amour’, in Annuaire de l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études, Ve section: sciences réligieuses, vol. 91, 345–50. Hadot, P., 1989, Plotin ou la simplicité du regard, Paris. Hierocles, 1906, Ethische Elementarlehre (Papyrus 9780), H. von Arnim (ed.), Berlin. Hippocrates, 1973, Oeuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, É. Littré (ed. and trans.), Amsterdam. Hippocrates, 1981, The Hippocratic Treatises ‘On Generation’, ‘On the Nature of the Child’, ‘Diseases IV’, I. M Lonie (trans.), Berlin. Hippolytus, 1986, Refutatio omnium haeresium, M. Marcovich (ed.), Berlin. Iamblichus, 1922, Theologoumena Arithmeticae, V. de Falco (ed.), Leipzig. Iamblichus, 2002, Iamblichus: De Anima, J. Finamore and J. Dillon (eds. and trans.), Leiden. Jantzen, G., 1995, Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge. Jufresa, M., 1981, ‘Basilides, a Path to Plotinus’, in Vigiliae Christianae 35, pp. 1–15. Kripal, J., 2001, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism, Chicago.


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Lacrosse, J., 1994, L’Amour chez Plotin: érôs hénologique, érôs noétique, érôs psychique, Bruxelles. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 1999, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, New York. Lesky, E., 1951, Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken, Mainz. Mortley, R., 1980, ‘Love in Plato and Plotinus’, Antichthon 14, pp. 45–52. Muller-Ortega, P. E., 1989, The Triadic Heart of Siva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir, Albany. Nock, A., D., and Festugière, A.-J. (eds. and trans.), 1992, Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 2, Paris. Numenius, 1973, Fragments, É. des Places (ed.), Paris. Nygren, A., 1953, Agape and Eros, Philadelphia. O’Daly, G., 1974, ‘The Presence of the One in Plotinus’, in Plotino e il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, Rome, pp. 159–69. Onians, R. B., 1951, The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate, Cambridge. Origen, 2005, Contre Celse, M. Borret (ed.), Paris. Perczel, I., 1997, ‘L’Intellect amoureux et l’ “Un qui Est”: une doctrine mal connue de Plotin’, Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, 15:2, pp. 223–63. Pigler, A., 2002, Plotin: une métaphysique de l’amour, Paris. Plato, 1972–1977, Platonis Opera, J. Burnet (ed.), 5 vols, Oxford. Plotinus, 1966–88, Plotinus, A. H. Armstrong, (trans.), 7 vols, Cambridge MA. Plutarch, 1976, Moralia, vol.13, pt. 2, H. Cherniss (trans.), Cambridge MA. Porphyry, 1895, Die neuplatonische, fälschlich dem Galen zugeschriebene Schrift, Pros Gauron peri tou po¯s empsychoutai ta embrya, K. Kalbfleisch (ed.), Berlin. Rist, J., 1964, Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen, Toronto. Robinson, J. M., (ed.), 1988, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 3rd edn, Leiden. Smith, R., 2000, ‘Sex Education in Gnostic Schools’, in K. King (ed.), Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism, Harrisburg, pp. 345–60. Soranus, 1988, Maladies des femmes: Soranos d’Éphèse, P. Burguière, D. Gourevitch, Y. Malinas (eds. and trans.), Paris. Stroumsa, G., 1984, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology, Leiden. Thesleff, H., 1980, ‘Notes on Unio Mystica in Plotinus’, Arctos (Acta Philologica Fennica) 14, pp. 101–14. Turner, J. D., 2000, ‘Ritual in Gnosticism’, in J. D. Turner and R. Majercik (eds.) Gnosticism and Later Platonism: Themes, Figures, Texts, Atlanta, pp. 83–139. Unger, D. J., 1992, St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Against the Heresies, Vol. 1, New York. von Arnim, J, (ed.), 1978-79, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Stuttgart. White, D. G., 2003, The Kiss of the Yogini: ‘Tantric Sex’ in its South Asian Contexts, Chicago. Wolters, A. M., 1972, ‘Plotinus on Eros: a Detailed Exegetical Study of Enneads III, 5’, doctoral dissertation, Amsterdam.


Part II Crossing Boundaries


5

Ibn T ufayl and the Wisdom of the East: On Apprehending the Divine Taneli Kukkonen

In his introductory address to H ayy Ibn Yaqz ân (‘Living, Son of Wakeful’) Abû Bakr Ibn T ufayl (1116–85) indicates that the tale he is about to tell was occasioned by a request made upon the Andalusian philosopherphysician to relate what he can concerning the secrets of Ibn Sînâ’s Philosophy of the Easterners (h ikma al-mashriqiyyîn). Those expecting an actual exposition of this chimera-like entity will be frustrated in their desires as instead, Ibn T ufayl launches into what appears to be an account of the psychological effect the request had on the author. According to Ibn T ufayl, the question carried him on a stream of consciousness that led him to a state such as he had not experienced before, culminating: in the attainment of something so wonderful that ‘no tongue can describe it’, something for which there is no explanation: this because it came from another stage (tawr) and another world (‘âlam) from that which they [descriptions and explanations] occupy. But neither could anyone who has reached this state (h âl) or even come upon the verge of the delight, pleasure, and rapture keep its secrets or conceal its mysteries.1 Though this rapturous experience is in principle ineffable, because infinite (H ayy, 11.4–5), Ibn T ufayl does provide a few pointers as to what it is and what it is not, both in his introduction and in the context of H ayy’s story itself (the protagonist enters a state that is clearly meant to mirror the author’s own). The experience in question is not intellectual in the sense of consisting of discursive reasoning or theoretical reflection (naz ar). It can more fruitfully be compared to bearing witness (mushâhada), on the model of the immediate sensation of taste (dhawq: 7.8–9). It is of the nature of consuming erotic love (ishq) in that it comes 87

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coupled with a certain intimacy (wilâya, 8.12, 9.3) an intense pleasure and joy (7.3–4, 8.11), and a sense of self-annulment following the lover’s immersion into the beloved (4.11–12; cf. 120.6–7). There follows a detailed account of the extent to which preceding Muslim philosophers had acknowledged the possibility of such ecstasy. Ibn Bâjja (d. 1138) is admonished for his overt intellectualism and al-Fârâbî (d. 950) for his covert materialism, while the two Shaykhs al-Ghazâlî (1058–1111) and Ibn Sînâ (the Latin Avicenna, 980–1037) are singled out as exemplars of true sagacity. Here we begin to glimpse why the work should start off with what looks like a detour: apparently these two thinkers had developed a theoretical framework detailing the ontological and epistemological preconditions for just the kind of blissful state Ibn T ufayl himself claims to have experienced. Though things are kept suitably vague, the net impression is that this was the true ‘wisdom of the East’, and that its contents had been disclosed to a select group of adepts. Also heavily implied is that while Ibn T ufayl may only have had incomplete access to the esoteric (madnûn) works in question, he nevertheless has a firm grasp on their substance. It is this that the present text will elucidate by means of hints, pointers, and similitudes based on everyday syllogistic reasoning. Unfortunately for those still in pursuit of Avicenna’s elusive ‘Oriental’ or even ‘Illuminationist’ philosophy, Dimitri Gutas has demonstrated once and for all that Ibn T ufayl’s testimony has exactly zero testimonial value as regards the contents or even existence of such a body of doctrine.2 The introduction to H ayy Ibn Yaqz ân in fact constitutes a patchwork of materials cobbled together from Ibn Sînâ’s introduction to The Healing, his Pointers and Reminders, and a few selected works of al-Ghazâlî (most notably the latter’s autobiography, The Deliverance from Error). These are juxtaposed in a manner that gives the illusion of a unified body of doctrine lying tantalisingly just out of reach. In reality no such esoteric doctrine seems to have existed:3 as a guide to the supposedly mystical side of Avicennian philosophy, then, H ayy Ibn Yaqz ân fails miserably. Fortunately, we have an alternative. Why not take Ibn T ufayl at his word when he says that what triggered his flood of ecstatic experience was the merest mention of Ibn Sînâ’s Eastern philosophy, and when he says that what understanding of it he had attained had come from a diligent pursuit of al-Ghazâlî’s and Ibn Sînâ’s arguments, a careful comparison between those views of theirs which he did know (not those contained in the fabled ‘Eastern’ works) and those of other philosophers, and, finally, his own witnessing and taste (dhawq) of matters divine?

Ibn T ufayl and the Wisdom of the East

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(H ayy, 18.5–10.) What I am suggesting is that Ibn T ufayl is perhaps slightly less duplicitous than Gutas would have him be. Nowhere does Ibn T ufayl go quite so far as to claim that he is quoting from Ibn Sînâ’s Eastern philosophy, chapter and verse. He also does not lay claims to having read a single esoteric work from the two authors he so clearly reveres, Ibn Sînâ and al-Ghazâlî: in fact, in al-Ghazâlî’s case this is explicitly denied (17.1–10). Perhaps all that Ibn T ufayl is saying is that, based on personal experience, there are fundamental truths and phenomena that he would expect thinkers of Ibn Sînâ’s and al-Ghazâlî’s calibre to recognize. What he finds in the texts of these philosophers, he will consequently read in the light of these findings. The projection of a larger body of knowledge that is supposed to lie beyond the texts cited is a mirage, to be sure, and wishful thinking at best; but if we attend to Ibn T ufayl’s precise wording, he never claims it to be anything more. If nothing more is read into Ibn T ufayl’s words than that H ayy finds inspiration in the notion of an esoteric philosophy of the East, one remains free to search for its actual sources in works other than those that may never have existed. One is also free to investigate as an independent, but nonetheless interesting, piece of philosophical speculation Ibn T ufayl’s particular conception of ‘Eastern wisdom’ – that philosophical tradition to which Ibn T ufayl would have liked to belong, but which in fact was an original construction of his. This, then, will be my aim in this brief chapter: to identify the precise contribution Ibn T ufayl imagined the Wisdom of the Easterners to have made to the analysis of ultimate bliss, and to weigh his statements against his sources.

Perceiving and apprehending What Ibn T ufayl wants to do is claim an equivalence relation between the discoveries of the Sufis and those of the falâsifa at the highest level of contemplation – an understandable desire, since in addition to his medical, administrative, and philosophical duties Ibn T ufayl was also a practising Sufi master.4 The same desire for Sufi rehabilitation also motivates his references to al-Ghazâlî. The Baghdadi theologian had already achieved fame for arguing that the Sufi quest for divine union need not violate either the teachings of the philosophers or Islamic orthodoxy. By juxtaposing the second Shaykh’s musings on the ineffability of the divine with a smattering of controversial exclamations culled from the notorious ‘drunken’ Sufis Abû Yazîd al-Bistâmî (d. 874) and al-Hallâj (d. 922), Ibn T ufayl seeks to extend the authority enjoyed by the former onto the latter.5 The same purpose is in evidence throughout H ayy’s

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story: without any outside instruction and led only by his instinct and natural reason, the eponymous protagonist ends up adopting practices reminiscent of the Sufis. H ayy strenuously regulates his diet, spins in a circle like the dervishes, and contemplates until his world-denouncing meditation results in a complete loss of sense of self and surroundings. (H ayy, 110–13, 116–21.) Now, most of H ayy is given to recounting the natural philosophy and cosmology of the Muslim falâsifa, and Avicenna more specifically. H ayy discovers that he lives in an Aristotelian material universe topped up by a superstructure of ten immaterial intellects, all but one of them corresponding to a celestial sphere.6 Why this long trawl through the physical world, if the goal is to reach (an understanding of) what lies beyond? The answer has to be that Ibn T ufayl takes seriously a stipulation he states at the beginning: that one only approaches the divine through the mundane.7 There are two dimensions to this. On the one hand, H ayy, and with him the reader, is guided through natural reality, from considering the sensible qualities of things to their formal characteristics and thereafter that which by its very nature is immaterial. On the other, this process is mirrored by the maturation of H ayy’s own cognitive powers: (see H ayy, 46–7, 51, 64–5, 90, 125–32.) From the long-standing point of view of Aristotelian faculty psychology the parallelism makes perfect sense: our various psychological capacities are secondary to the outside world and carefully calibrated so as to facilitate our functioning within it. Thus, while our possessing a sense of taste tells us that there are tastes in the world and that recognizing them can prove useful and/or pleasant, the shapes and intentions (ashkâl, ma‘ânî) that are discerned by the inner senses are no less real, even as they belong to another layer of reality. The same applies a fortiori to the universals abstracted from particulars and the intelligibles whose acquisition the handling of sensible images is meant to facilitate. Thus, in peeling away at the layers of our own soul, we are at once witnessing reality unfold before our eyes: this is the meaning several Muslim thinkers, Ibn Sînâ and al-Ghazâlî among them, attach to the prophetic tradition according to which only one who knows oneself can know God.8 But this already brings up the problem we were meaning to address. The mystic’s goal is to stand face to face with the divine: yet according to the prevailing view, this apprehension can only arrive through some faculty, power, or potentiality (all varying translations of dunamis), since the Aristotelian analysis of cognition stipulates that for any actualization of a cognitive state to occur not only must the agent (in this case, God) have


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the active potential to effect the actualization, but the patient must also possess the appropriate type of receptivity.9 However, none of the standard senses – whether inner or outer – can do the necessary work, because each is meant to deal with some aspect of the material created world. And Islamic orthodoxy puts divinity altogether above corporeality. (See H ayy, 82.11–83.5, 90.9–91.11.) Will access to the divine domain then be gained through some nonstandard faculty? This is what Ibn T ufayl appears to think, and what he believes Ibn Sînâ’s Philosophy of the Easterners to have disclosed. Ibn T ufayl is quick to caution that he calls the capacity he has discovered a faculty (quwwa) only by extension (5.13, 9.4), as he has found no appropriate name for it ‘either in the common language or in the technical terminology’ of the age (5.13–14). Yet he feels confident in postulating the presence in humankind of a special ‘taste’ for the divine, a channel through which one may experience the supernal realm without interference or intermediaries.10 This will transcend the mere drawing of conclusions from premises or deriving causes from effects (for which see H ayy, 80–90); knowing that God exists is not yet the same as knowing God.11 It is the latter that conveys the highest bliss, in accordance with the principle that the enjoyment received from the activation and exercise of a given power is proportionate to the worth of its proper object.12 Shams Inati, commenting on Ibn Sînâ’s Pointers and Reminders, neatly summarizes this conviction: ‘Salvation consists, not of attaining knowledge of the Truth, but of attaining the Truth Itself, the object of such knowledge ... it is this object Itself that has the perfect infinite attributes in which we share once we arrive at this object.’13 Considering that ‘the Truth’ (al-H aqq) is one of the familiar names given to God by the Sufis, no wonder that Ibn T ufayl should have discerned in Avicenna a kindred soul.

Knowing and intuiting The catch is that there is nothing particularly mystical about Avicenna’s theory. What the felicitous soul enjoys on Avicenna’s view is an unrestricted view into the intelligible structure of reality itself. The highest form of intellection comes accompanied by the highest form of pleasure, yes, and this experience resists discursive explication: but the affective quality attaches to the immediacy, intimacy, and force of the experience itself, not to an especial object of study beyond that of the intelligible. It results from seeing the whole at once, instead of having to fit the pieces of the puzzle together one by one.14

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Perhaps H ayy’s experiences could be interpreted in a similarly intellectualist light? Several considerations need to be weighed here. On the one hand we have Ibn T ufayl’s insistence that nothing disclosed through this mode of revelation will run counter to what reason dictates, even if it could never be reached through its workings (5.11–12, 9.11–12). The truths reached through witnessing may well be the same ones reason reaches and faith teaches: the difference will then lie merely in direct vision being more lucid and delightful (5.12, 9.12–13). Ibn T ufayl offers the simile of a man blind by birth, well conversant with the operations of his home town and familiar with the theoretical qualities of visual perception, who wakes up to the sudden reality of vision. No new information is imparted in this instance: it is only that there is an inward quality to the man’s experiences that was lacking before, which no amount of outward explanation can hope to reproduce. (7.9–8.11) All of this would point in the direction of making of Ibn T ufayl’s faculty of taste merely an affective relation to an otherwise ordinary object of study. On the opposite side of the equation must be placed the unequivocal statements we find in Ibn T ufayl to the effect that the revealed supplement (ziyâda: 5.12, 8.10-11) to the percipient’s field of vision does disclose an altogether different world (‘âlam) from that which the senses occupy. And although this could charitably be interpreted as merely signifying a compartmentalization and a division of labour of sorts among the soul’s many functions, Ibn T ufayl further emphasizes that it is not possible to combine a vision of the two worlds, the divine and the sensible (131.11– 132.1). This seems to speak against the Peripatetic conviction that what is being applied is but a variety of filters upon a single reality. This would represent a fundamental misunderstanding on Ibn T ufayl’s part concerning Ibn Sînâ’s project. For Avicenna – let us reiterate – the highest wisdom consists in grasping the structure of reality. What is being tracked in each and every act of intellection is the necessary order of the universe, as revealed in its syllogistic framework: its binding glue is that network of middle terms which reveals how things hang together. And it is this that attracts Ibn Sînâ’s attention and admiration. To draw a neurological analogy, what fascinates Avicenna is the process of synapses firing and connections being made, rather than the (perhaps misguided notion of) isolated cellular pods of information.15 This Ibn T ufayl fails to see, as revealed by his assumption that what the ‘wisdom of the East’ unveils is another class of ‘things’ (ashyâ’). What could have led to such a misconstrual? One thing to factor in is al-Ghazâlî’s influence, which will have weighed in favour


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of a ‘new worlds’ approach. Al-Ghazâlî customarily speaks of the different aspects of even sensible reality as if they were worlds apart.16 Another is Ibn T ufayl’s neglect of, or else failure to understand, the significance for Avicenna’s epistemology of intuition (h ads), that ‘sacred faculty’ (quwwa qudsiyya) which enables the grasping of middle terms. H ads gets exactly one mention in H ayy (7.12) and, as Gutas correctly notes, this has the effect of demoting intuition to the level of one of the faculties of the animal soul.17 It also leaves Ibn T ufayl grasping for a name for his more exalted spiritual sense, except to call it ‘taste’. What Gutas fails to recognize is that Avicenna’s own shifting perspectives on intuition may have had a hand in compounding Ibn T ufayl’s confusion. In the original form in which it is presented, for example, in The Healing, intuition is supposed to account both for the way in which middle terms are sought (a time-consuming process that involves mulling over facts and figures abstracted from sense-data) and the way in which they are attained (an instantaneous emanation of the actual intelligibles from the Agent Intellect). By contrast, in late works such as Pointers and Reminders the former task gets assigned to animalistic acumen (dhakâ’), with h ads now being limited to the immediate comprehension of a universal truth. The latter is associated with a direct emanation of the intelligibles.18 Ibn T ufayl demonstrably read both of Avicenna’s encyclopaedias, and is liable to have caught the discrepancy. Why he should have placed intuition in the animal soul is unclear to me. But in distinguishing sharply the abstractive process from true intellection, at least, Ibn T ufayl is merely taking his cues from Avicenna’s maturing thought. Another departure from Avicenna concerns Ibn T ufayl’s contention that the highest form of knowledge not only resembles the knowledge a god might have, but is also – perhaps first and foremost – a knowledge of the divine (cf. Aristotle, Met. 1.2.983a5–10). For, in terms entirely derived from Greek philosophy, stable and abiding knowledge can only concern that which is altogether immaterial, which again can only mean the formal and/or intelligible part of reality. This will have the effect of positioning the intellective part of psychology between natural philosophy and metaphysics;19 and from this it is but a small step to regard the task of first philosophy as being primarily one of mapping out the domain of separate substances. Ibn Sînâ never quite succumbs to reducing general metaphysics thus into theology; Ibn T ufayl assuredly does.20 Why?

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Drinking and tasting Let us begin again, this time starting from Ibn T ufayl’s doubts as regards the possibility of satisfactorily accounting for H ayy’s absorption into the divine. Do not set your heart on describing a thing or event (amr) that cannot occur to the human heart: for even of those things that do occur to the human heart many escape description. How, then, <will one describe> that which does not occur to the human heart – that which is not of the world to which it belongs, but comes from elsewhere? Nor do I mean by ‘heart’ the corporeal heart, nor again the spirit that resides in its cavities: instead I mean by the form of that spirit whose powers are spread across the human body. Each of these three is called the heart, while none of them attain to the presence of this thing: and only that which occurs to something can be given expression by it (‘ibâra: H ayy, 121.3–10). Three alternative interpretations of ‘heart’ (qalb) are outlined here, roughly, the materialistic, the Galenic, and the Aristotelian; clearly, some technical sense is sought. The same meanings (ma‘ânî) are recounted by al-Ghazâlî in his Revivification of the Religious Sciences. Yet in the Ih yâ’ al-Ghazâlî offers a further interpretive option which Ibn T ufayl suppresses: the heart can also be a divine spiritual subtlety (latîfa rabbâniyya rûh iyya), and as such something directly addressed by God. How this happens, what connection this mysterious entity enjoys with the body, and what role it plays in man’s ultimate salvation, all are questions left hanging: al-Ghazâlî warns that delving into the inner reality (h aqîqa) of the heart is a perilous business. Still, as a technical term in psychology al-Ghazâlî favours ‘heart’ over the near-synonyms ‘spirit’, ‘soul’, and ‘intellect’.21 This fourth sense of ‘heart’ would fit Ibn T ufayl’s purposes well, as it refers to a direct addressee of God’s self-revelation and an intellectual substance of a mysterious nature. The reason why Ibn T ufayl eschews the term in favour of intellect (‘aql) and self/soul (nafs) is probably because the latter two were favoured by the philosophers and the Sufis. Nevertheless, issues of naming aside, surely this innermost reality (h aqîqa) is what is meant by all parties when detailing the reception of those divine revelations which no amount of preparation can guarantee? Compare Ibn T ufayl’s metaphor of the blind man gaining eyesight with what


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al-Ghazâlî states regarding the inward knowledge that transforms the heart (Munqidh, 85–6): It became apparent to me that most distinctive characteristic is something that can be attained, not by study, but rather by <way of> taste (dhawq), an <ecstatic> state (h âl), and an exchange of qualities . What a difference there is between knowing the definitions and causes and conditions of health and satiety and being healthy and sated! And how great a difference there is between your knowing the definition of drunkenness – that it is a term denoting a state resulting from the predominance of vapours rising from the stomach to the seat of reason – and actually being drunk! Indeed, the drunkard, while drunk, does not know the definition and concept of drunkenness; he has no knowledge of it. The one who is sober, by contrast, knows the definition of drunkenness and what goes into it, though he does not experience the inebriation for himself.22 The comparison once more is between outward knowledge (‘ilm) and inward understanding (ma‘rifa). Although the two may share a common subject matter, there is a qualitative aspect to direct apprehension that simply is not present in any inference from signs (min al-dalâ’il).23 But al-Ghazâlî’s ruminations on the similarities between the drunkard’s and the mystic’s experiences will have appealed to Ibn T ufayl for another reason as well. His remarks stand in a long line of attempts to secure this attractive analogy a place in an intellectual culture which not only expressly forbade the drinking of wine, but frowned upon most forms of unruly behaviour in general.24 Al-Ghazâlî draws the comparison repeatedly in an attempt to win the Sufis mainstream acceptance.25 The main point each time is that when one is taken over by a higher reality, one is quite naturally driven out of one’s usual self-possessed state; ‘under the influence’, as it were, one cannot help but blurt out claims which cannot literally be true. Valid insights may nonetheless underscore such spontaneous effusions, so one should not hasten to censure this kind of careless talk as mere Sufi hogwash.26 Reason, upon regaining control, is sure to make sense of what’s what, since nothing that God reveals will ever speak against reason, though it may not be immediately accessible to it.27 Ibn T ufayl shares al-Ghazâlî’s aims, but he goes about achieving them in a different manner. He, too, wants something that will at once make sense of the Sufi experience of unification and provide a theoretical basis for its deconstruction. Protestations about the ineffability of the divine to

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one side, we are dealing with an attempt to demystify Sufism by placing it in a framework of ontological, psychological, and epistemological preconditions. For Ibn T ufayl, insight into the world’s radical dependency on God will not suffice, since this can be construed entirely in discursive and argumentative fashion.28 Ibn T ufayl is more willing to venture down a lane al-Ghazâlî avoids, that of positing an ontological affinity between man and God as two intelligible substances and therefore virtually (though not actually) indistinguishable from one another. This is accomplished through carefully tracing the steps of emanation from the Necessary Existent downwards. The cryptic claims made in this connection are most readily interpreted as indicating that upon achieving ecstasy, the philosopher assumes his rightful position among the immaterial and luminous intelligences inhabiting the ‘spiritual world’. The bliss constantly enjoyed by such creatures is described in a wholly Ghazalian vein as a series of reflections from the sun, that is to say, the One Light.29 H ayy comes to recognize himself in a sea of seventy thousand faces, each of which has seventy thousand mouths, each of which has seventy thousand tongues, every one of which sings God’s praises.30 Under these conditions, and in accordance with the Aristotelian principle that the intelligible and the intellect become fused in the contemplative act, it becomes easy to confuse the self-reflective nature of the Necessary Existent with the reflective nature of the self.31 What is remarkable is how reluctant Ibn T ufayl is to dispel this notion completely, even when given the tools to do by his predecessors. Consider al-Ghazâlî, for example: the theologian states that a mistaken identity claim along the lines of the Sufis can arise either from (a) taking too literally the thesis of divine unity that results from recognizing the dependency of all creatures upon their Creator, or from (b) equating an acquisition of the divine attributes (the functional equivalent to the intelligibles in al-Ghazâlî’s system) with a reception of divinity itself (which in the essential sense remains strictly off-limits). Ibn T ufayl does not avail himself of either one of these explanations: instead, he opts for the seemingly weak excuse that in the immaterial realm, designations of one and many do not apply. Whence the evasiveness? I believe the reason to be the same as the original reason why Ibn T ufayl would have believed there to be a dangerous truth concealed within Avicenna’s and al-Ghazâlî’s teachings. For an ancient epistemological principle going back to the Platonic Seventh Letter (344a) states that without some likeness between the apprehender and the thing apprehended, no apprehension can occur. Ibn T ufayl subscribes to the principle, and unflinchingly draws the only possible conclusion. Any


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real possibility of contemplating the Necessary Existent must mean that an equally real likeness exists between man and God. (H ayy, 105–6, 118–19.) The admission is astonishingly frank, and yet Ibn T ufayl puts a novel spin on this theologically volatile notion: instead of promoting the human soul above the level of intellect, what Ibn T ufayl does is bring God down to it. This, of course, gives a whole new meaning to the concept of divinization. If what we are dealing with here is indeed a form of mysticism, then it is of a distinctly rational sort.

Conclusions Ibn T ufayl’s conception of bearing witness to the divine emerges from a complex of interrelated notions inherited from Ibn Sînâ, al-Ghazâlî, and the Sufi tradition which Ibn T ufayl hoped to illumine with the aid of the previous two. All three thinkers believe in an emanation of the intelligibles following upon the discursive use of reason; all three are convinced that this state is conducive to the highest felicity; and yet their systems differ in small but meaningful ways. At its basis, Ibn T ufayl’s sacred faculty of taste is modelled on the Avicennian notion of intuition. In contrast to h ads, however, which acts as a tool for viewing the everyday world in a different light, Ibn T ufayl’s mechanism for witnessing has the primary function of directly disclosing unknown objects of an unseen world. This description of ‘another eye’, with its special purpose of apprehending supernal matters over and above the discourse of reason and opened by God in those specially blessed, is taken from al-Ghazâlî. Against al-Ghazâlî, Ibn T ufayl maintains that such insight can be reached without the instruction of a teacher or master. The Enlightenment line of interpretation that viewed H ayy Ibn Yaqz ân as the story of a self-taught philosopher operating autonomously of revealed religion is not misguided.32 The value that Ibn T ufayl places on rational enquiry likewise marks a departure from al-Ghazâlî. Through the example set by H ayy, Ibn T ufayl gives his tacit approval to the philosophers’ contention that illumination is only apt to occur after diligent preparation of the theoretical sort.33 Human preparation for a divine exhalation (nakhf: H ayy, 131.9) will require not only the soul’s purification from improper impulses (something with which al-Ghazâlî would readily have agreed), but also the lengthy process of reasoning and reflection (naz ar) whereby observable regularities come to be abstracted from the sensible manifold. In this regard Ibn T ufayl follows Avicenna more than al-Ghazâlî.34

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Finally, Avicenna and al-Ghazâlî stand against Ibn T ufayl in their continued interest in the way that the universal truths of contemplation are funnelled back into the world of particulars, whether through the medium of prophecy or the mysterious occurrences of miracles or occult powers.35 Ibn T ufayl displays no interest in such phenomena. For him, once the level of contemplation is reached, the philosopher’s attention is to be directed solely upwards;36 any remaining concern for the material constitutes a fall, and will have correspondingly lamentable consequences.37 To my mind, these differences are most readily explained in terms of the different problems the system is meant to solve. The main explanandum for Ibn Sînâ is the baffling logic of scientific discovery;38 for al-Ghazâlî, the fantastic prognostications of the prophets; for Ibn T ufayl, the Sufis’ claims to a perceived ontological union with the divine. The warning on which all three thinkers would agree is one to which Plotinus already gave voice: namely, that ‘to set oneself above the intellect is in fact to fall outside it’ (to d’ huper noun êdê estin eksô nou pesein: II.9.9, 52–3). The promise of the enthusiasts to carry the soul above its station is tempting but empty, and best exposed for what it is by carefully analysing where the mind falls within the great chain of being. Only by so doing will we be able to identify ourselves as ones suspended between heaven and earth and to distinguish, where appropriate, the divine in us from the divine in the All.


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Notes 1. H ayy Ibn Yaqz ân (hereafter H ayy), 4.4–8. The translations in this study are my own, but an eminently readable English translation exists in Goodman (2003). 2. See Gutas (1994); on the ‘Oriental’ vs. ‘Illuminationist’ controversy and other related issues, see Gutas (2000). 3. The main point here is that while Ibn T ufayl presents Ibn Sînâ as having taught distinct doctrines in The Healing and The Easterners, Ibn Sînâ’s own prologue to The Healing establishes that the difference lies merely in style and presentation: where The Healing engages in a dialogue with the Peripatetic tradition, The Easterners will present concisely the fruits of Ibn Sînâ’s investigations. Cp. H ayy, 11–12 and 14–15 with Ibn Sînâ, Al-Shifâ’: Al-Madkhal, 10–11. 4. See Cornell (1996). 5. Cp. H ayy, 4.10–14, e.g., with al-Ghazâlî’s autobiography, Munqidh, 30, 52; al-Ghazâlî, Mîzân al-‘amal, 207; on the Sufis’ equivalent misunderstanding of the philosophers and theologians, see the Revivification of the Religious Sciences: Ih yâ’ ‘ulûm al-dîn (hereafter Ih yâ’), bk. 1, bayân 7, 1:86.32–87.1. The complexities of al-Ghazali’s relationship with the Sufi movement need not concern us here: for an overview, see Ormsby (1991). 6. In addition to the Platonic–Aristotelian synthesis, Stoic and Galenic strands as well as influences from the Letters of the Brethren of Purity have been detected in Ibn T ufayl’s teachings on the natural world: see the studies and bibliography collected in Conrad (1996). 7. See H ayy, 18.13–14. Ibn T ufayl allows for exceedingly rare cases where one can ‘see’ or ‘comprehend’ (bas ura/bas ira) without ‘searching’ (talaba), that is, receive the higher reality without going through the intermediary process of reasoning (9.5–6). Clearly, however, this is meant as the exception, not the rule. 8. See Altmann (1969). 9. This is an extension of the general Aristotelian analysis of change, for which see Phys. 3.3.202a13–b5, Met. 9.1.1046a19–31; the analysis is extended throughout De anima, where however Aristotle is careful to point out that the passivity of the apprehending faculties does not constitute a change in the conventional sense. 10. A similar ‘God-module’ in the brain is described, albeit in derogatory tones, by Patricia Churchland (2002), pp. 387–8. 11. This notion of intimacy derives from al-Ghazâlî: cf., e.g., Munqidh, 84 and Ih yâ’, bk. 21, bayân 8, 3:18–19. 12. See H ayy, 94–96 and for the principle, Ibn Sînâ, Pointers and Reminders, pt. 4, namat 8, ch. 9, in Ishârât, 4:20–25; for al-Ghazâlî, e.g., Ih yâ’, bk. 10, bâb 1, bayân 1, 1:318. 13. Inati (1996), p. 38. 14. For the Plotinian background to this conception see Theologia Aristotelis II, §§16–23 (corresponding to Plotinus IV.4[28].1); G. Lewis’ English translation in the editio maior, 2:65; Avicenna’s commentary on the (Plotinian) Theology of Aristotle, in Badawî (1947), p. 44; and Adamson (2004). 15. See Gutas (2005).

100 Taneli Kukkonen 16. See, e.g., Munqidh, 78-80; at Ih yâ’, bk. 21, bayân 4, 3:9.25ff. al-Ghazâlî presents the simile, common in Arabic psychological literature, which likens the various senses to messengers carrying news from different parts of the ruling force’s domain and the common sense to the guardian who is entrusted with the task of combining them into a single coherent report. 17. Gutas (1994), pp. 236–9. 18. See Gutas (2001). 19. As can be ascertained from the numerous cross-references between the two in each of Ibn Sinâ’s encyclopaedias: on Arabic theories of intellection, see Davidson (1992). 20. The entirety of Ibn T ufayl’s blissful vision has to do with the supernal realm: see H ayy, 127–31. 21. See Ih yâ’, bk. 21, bayân 1, 3:4.5–18; for comments on these and related passages, Gianotti (2001). 22. Munqidh, 68–70 (the case of the blind man is mentioned – without, however, bringing up the transformative element – at Munqidh, 80). 23. See Jabre (1958). 24. See Kueny (2001), pp. 105–15. 25. Al-Ghazâlî, Maqs ad, 168.2–3; Mishkât, 18.3–6. 26. Tarhâb al-s ûfiyya: Book of Knowledge, Ihyâ’, bk. 1, bayân 5, 1:54.21–4. Cp. H ayy, 4.10–14: ‘Indeed, one not versed in the sciences speak of the matter in an inappropriate manner, even going so far as to exclaim while in the throes of this state: “Praise be to me, how tremendous am I!” Another will declare: “I am the Truth”, and yet another: “Inside this robe there is nothing but God.” As for the Shaykh Abû H âmid , he drew a comparison with his arrival at this stage by <way of referring to> the following verse: “It was, but what it was, one cannot say; just assume it was good, do not ask about its goodness” ’. 27. See, e.g., Maqs ad, 170–1. 28. This is al-Ghazâlî’s favoured interpretation: cp. H ayy, 83–5, 133–4 with al-Ghazâlî, Maqs ad, 58–9, 137; similarly Ih yâ’, bk. 35, bayân 1, 4:215.26ff. and 217.1ff. 29. Compare H ayy, 127.6–129.5 with al-Ghazâlî, Mishkât, passim; on the equation of angelic and human with contemplative nature, e.g., Ih yâ’, bk. 21, ch. 4, 3:9.12–18. 30. This stands for the thinking done by the Agent Intellect in association with individual human minds: see H ayy, 129.6–131.1. 31. The garbled state in which the Theology of Aristotle reached the Arab philosophers may have inspired such notions: cf., e.g., Theologia Aristotelis I, §§21–25 Plotinus IV.8[6].1 2:225 Henry-Schwyzer. 32. In Western scholarship this begins with the editio princeps as Edward Pocock’s 1671 edition carries the title Philosophus autodidactus, sive epistola Abi Jaafar, Ebn Tophail de Hai Ebn Yokdhan; likewise Ockley’s first English translation (1708) talks of The Improvement of Human Reason. 33. Remarks made by Ibn T ufayl’s contemporary and countryman Ibn Rushd (the Latin Averroës, 1126–1198) in the Kitâb al-kashf (41.21–42.15) reinforce the same point. 34. For Avicenna, see Hasse (2001); for Ibn T ufayl, see Kukkonen (2008). Al-Ghazâlî’s Revivification is built on the inseparability of theory from practice: on


35.

36.

37.

38.

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misunderstanding the claims of the Sufis, in particular, for licence to become lax, see, e.g., Ih yâ’, 1:40.29–30 and ff. (also Munqidh, 89). On intellectual prophecy, see Ibn Sînâ, Al-Shifâ: Al-Nafs, 249–50; on the imaginative variant, e.g., Ishârât, pt. 4, namat 10, chs. 7–23 4:119–48 Dunyâ; for further comments, Griffel (2004); also Rahman (1958). Already Pocock in the editio princeps contends that the aim of the book is to show how unlimited reason can achieve cognition of sublime things, of God, and of the higher world: Daiber (1994), p. 78. The brief remarks at H ayy, 136–7 are uninformative; all we learn is that religion symbolically represents the eternal truths. For Ibn T ufayl’s ethics, see Kukkonen (2008). As enthusiastically described by Gutas (2001), pp. 23–4.

Bibliography Adamson, P., 2004, ‘Non-Discursive Thought in Avicenna’s Commentary on the Theology of Aristotle’, in J. McGinnis (ed.), Interpreting Avicenna, Leiden, pp. 87–111. Altmann, A., 1969, ‘The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism’, Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, London, pp. 1–40. Aristotle, 1924, Metaphysics, W. D. Ross (ed.), 2 vols, Oxford. Aristotle, 1936, Physics, W. D. Ross (ed.), Oxford. Badawî, ‘Abdurrahman (ed.), 1947, Aristû ‘ind al-‘arab, Cairo. Churchland, P., 2002, Brain-Wise, Cambridge, MA. Conrad, L. I. (ed.), 1996, The World of Ibn T ufayl, Leiden. Cornell, V. J., 1996, ‘H ayy in the Land of Absâl: Ibn T ufayl and Sûfism in the Western Maghrib During the Muwah h id Era’, in Conrad (1996), pp. 133–64. Daiber, H., 1994, ‘The Reception of Islamic Philosophy at Oxford in the 17th Century: The Pococks’ (Father and Son) Contribution to the Understanding of Islamic Philosophy in Europe’, in C. Butterworth and B. A. Kessel (eds.), The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy into Europe, Leiden, pp. 65–82. Davidson, H. A., 1992, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect, Oxford. Ghazâlî, Abû H âmid al-, s.a., Al-Munqidh min al-d alâl, Beirut. Ghazâlî, Abû H âmid al-, 1964, Mîzân al-‘amal, S. Dunyâ (ed.), Beirut. Ghazâlî, Abû H âmid al-, 1982, Al-Maqs ad al-asnâ fî sharh ma‘ânî asmâ’ Allâh al-h usnâ, F. Shehadi (ed.), 2nd edn, Beirut. Ghazâlî, Abû H âmid al-, 1998, Mishkât al-anwâr, in The Niche of Lights, ‘A. Afîfî (ed.), David Buchman (trans.), Provo, Ut. Ghazâlî, Abû H âmid al-, 2002, Ih yâ’ ‘ulûm al-dîn, 5 vols, Beirut. Gianotti, T., 2001, Al-Ghazali’s Unspeakable Doctrine of the Soul, Leiden. Goodman, L. (trans.), 2003, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale, 5th edn, Los Angeles. Griffel, F., 2004, ‘Al-G azâlî’s Concept of Prophecy: The Introduction of Avicennan Psychology into As‘arite Theology’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 14, pp. 101–44. Gutas, D., 1994, ‘Ibn T ufayl on Ibn Sînâ’s Eastern Philosophy’, Oriens 34, pp. 222–41.

102 Taneli Kukkonen Gutas, D., 2000, ‘Avicenna’s Eastern (“Oriental”) Philosophy: Nature, Contents, Transmission’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10, pp. 159–80. Gutas, D., 2001, ‘Intuition and Thinking: The Evolving Structure of Avicenna’s Epistemology’, in Wisnovsky (2001), pp. 1–38. Gutas, D., 2005, ‘Intellect Without Limits: The Absence of Mysticism in Avicenna’, in M. Pacheco and J. Meirinhos (eds.), Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie medievale, 3 vols, Turnhout, vol. 1: pp. 351–72. Hasse, D., 2001, ‘Avicenna on Abstraction’, in Wisnovsky (2001), pp. 39–72. Ibn Rushd, Abû al-Walîd (Averroës), 1859, Kitâb al-kashf, in Philosophie und Theologie von Averroes, M. J. Müller (ed.), Munich. Ibn Sînâ, Abû ‘Alî (Avicenna), 1952, Al-Shifâ’: Al-Madkhal, I. Madkûr et al. (eds.), Cairo. Ibn Sînâ, Abû ‘Alî (Avicenna), 1959, Al-Shifâ’: Al-Nafs, in Avicenna’s De Anima (Arabic Text). Being the Psychological Part of Kitâb al-Shifâ’, F. Rahman (ed.), Oxford. Ibn Sînâ, Abû ‘Alî (Avicenna), 1968, Al-Ishârât wa al-tanbîhât, S. Dunyâ (ed.), 2nd edn, 4 vols, Beirut. Ibn T ufayl, Abû Bakr, 1936, H ayy Ben Yaqdhân. Roman philosophique d’Ibn Thofaïl, L. Gauthier (ed.), 2nd edn, Beirut. Inati, S. (trans.), 1996, Ibn Sînâ and Mysticism. Remarks and Admonitions: Part Four, London. Jabre, F., 1958, La notion de la ma‘rifa chez Ghazâlî, Beirut. Kueny, K., 2001, The Rhetoric of Sobriety. Wine in Early Islam, Albany. Kukkonen, T., 2008, ‘No Man Is an Island’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 46, 2:187–204. Ockley, Simon (trans.), 1708, The Improvement of Human Reason, Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, London. Ormsby, E. L., 1991, ‘The Taste of Truth: the Structure of Experience in al-Ghazâlî’s Al-Munqidh Min al-D alâl’, in W. B. Hallaq and D. P. Little (eds.), Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, Leiden, pp. 133–52. Plotinus, 1951–1973, Opera (editio maior), P. Henry and H.-J. Schwyzer (eds.), 3 vols, Bruxelles, Paris, and Leiden. Rahman, F., 1958, Prophecy in Islam. Philosophy and Orthodoxy, London. Wisnovsky, R. (ed.), 2001, Aspects of Avicenna, Princeton.

6 Plotinus, Porphyry, and India: A Re-Examination Joachim Lacrosse

Introduction Whether or not Plotinus and his disciple Porphyry were ‘influenced’ by some aspects of Indian philosophical thought, has been a familiar but also very controversial and passionate point of argument.1 Emile Bréhier (1928) claims that such Indian — namely upanis adic — influences may be detected in the life and works of Plotinus, but since Armstrong’s (1936) critical reply to Bréhier’s thesis, most scholars involved in Neoplatonic Studies have agreed with Armstrong’s view that early Neoplatonism must be interpreted as a purely original development of the Greek philosophical tradition. Since then, most of the works published on this issue, especially the two volumes edited by the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies under the titles Neoplatonism and Indian Thought (ed. Harris, 1982) and Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy (ed. Gregorios, 2002), deal mainly with comparisons between the philosophy of Plotinus and that of chronologically posterior Indian thinkers (classical authors like Sán˙ kara as well as modern ones like Aurobindo), while they mostly exclude any historical dimension of the topic. The purpose of this chapter is to propose a new way for the historical and the comparativist approaches to work together. Though historical study and comparative philosophy have very different methodologies and have to be sharply distinguished, combining these two approaches proves important in the attempt to re-examine the problem of the so-called ‘Indian influences on Neoplatonism’. My aim is to show that Porphyry and, presumably, his master Plotinus as well, although they had very little knowledge (in modern academic terms) of Indian philosophy, and although this knowledge could have 103

104 Joachim Lacrosse

been distorted both by the routes of transmission and a six-centuries long tradition of interpretatio graeca, it may still be the case that they have been ‘influenced’ or ‘incited’ by some Indian ideas.

Two preliminary questions By way of introduction, let us raise two preliminary questions: What exactly is meant when one uses the concept of ‘influence’, and are philosophical traditionalism and philosophical syncretism mutually exclusive? What is meant by the concept of ‘influence’? On the question of ‘influence’, one may recall the French Indologist Lacombe’s2 distinction between ‘incitative’ and ‘massive’ influence. The first kind of influence, which indicates a small starting point that may lead to an autonomous development, is supposed to be typically Indian, while the second one, which implies obvious textual and conceptual borrowings, would be regarded as typically Greek and Western. The ‘incitative’ influence can be summarized by a veda¯ntic maxim: May good thoughts come to us from every side! The ‘massive’ influence can be exemplified by Plotinus’ proposition that his own writings are nothing more than an exegesis of Plato and ancient Greek philosophy. One may add that the first kind of influence, that is, the ‘Indian’ one according to Lacombe, sometimes bears a resemblance to Neoplatonic exegetical and polemical practices, where both kinds of ‘influences’ may be detected. We may identify, on the one hand, incitative influences coming from the hellenistic, Roman, and Barbarian philosophers, while, on the other hand, massive influences come from the ancient Greek philosophers. It is worth noting that, while Plotinus only quotes his sources in the case of a ‘massive’ influence, Porphyry quotes sources for both ‘incitative’ and ‘massive’ influences. If modern scholars were looking for influences (just) of the second kind, that is, for a traditional and textual massive transmission with traceable paths of diffusion, it is unlikely that they would find any ‘neo-brahmanic’ or ‘neo-buddhist’ elements in Neoplatonic thought. If one understands the concept of ‘influence’ in a broader sense however, so that a ‘source’ is regarded as an incitative element or an ingredient for feeding a new, active, and original philosophical thought, then Bréhier’s and Armstrong’s suggestions concerning the Greek and Indian

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‘influences’ on early Neoplatonism, would not necessarily be mutually exclusive. Are philosophical traditionalism and philosophical syncretism mutually exclusive? Most scholars, including Bréhier and Armstrong, do consider intercultural syncretism and intra-cultural traditionalism to be mutually exclusive, as is implied by the manner in which they raise the question: ‘Is this Greek or non-Greek?’ Surprisingly, nobody seems to admit, even as a possibility, that there may be some elements of Neoplatonism that could be both Greek and non-Greek. This a priori assumption, shared by most modern scholars who have written on this issue, is logically false and historically wrong if we consider the fascination of Plotinus’ contemporaries with both Greek classical philosophy and the ‘barbarian’ wisdom that penetrated the Roman Empire during the first centuries AD. In other words, the fact that some elements of early Neoplatonism which, at first sight, may seem very similar to some Indian doctrines, could be referred primarily to some Greek traditional antecedents, is not sufficient evidence for excluding the possibility that they also echo ‘syncretically’ some intuitions belonging to Indian thought. To take an example, the Plotinian conception of the One is obviously and ‘massively’ influenced by the first hypothesis about the One found in Plato’s Parmenides, but this fact is not necessarily inconsistent with the possibility that the same Plotinian conception of the One could be very close to the upanis adic conception of brahman as the undiminished and unalterable source of all Being. This suggestion raises the question whether this major Indian commonplace was known in Neoplatonic circles.

Early Neoplatonic statements on India Historically speaking, a connection between Neoplatonism and India may be established with reference to Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. According to Porphyry, Plotinus, who was a student of Ammonius in Alexandria for eleven years, joined the expedition to the East led by the Roman Emperor Gordian III (242 AD) in order to acquire better knowledge of the philosophy of Persians and Indians. Porphyry also informs us that Plotinus failed to reach his goal and was forced to return to Rome after the Emperor’s death.3 Another connection concerns Augustine’s claim in the City of God, regarding Porphyry’s failed attempt to find a universal method for the


salvation of the soul. According to Augustine, Porphyry hoped to do this by comparing the ‘truest philosophy’ (that is, Platonism) with the Chaldaean Oracles, on the one hand, and, on the other, with Indorum mores ac disciplina, that is, ‘the Indian’ way of life and teaching. With regard to this claim, Augustine states that he is quoting from the conclusion of the first book of Porphyry’s treatise De regressu animae.4 These two doxographical statements are important because they establish the existence of a real interest in Indian ‘philosophy’ or ‘way of life and teaching’, at least as far as Plotinus and Porphyry are concerned. Unfortunately, however, neither of these philosophers makes any explicit reference to the contents of Indian philosophy, way of life, or teaching. This fact complicates the issue under discussion, and calls for extra caution when attempting to determine whether, or the exact ways in which, early Neoplatonists were influenced by that tradition. Two other Porphyrian passages may assist in this endeavour. Both are directly concerned with Indian philosophy, and are based on stories coming from an Indian embassy met by the Syrian Gnostic philosopher Bardesanes at the time of Emperor Heliogabales (around 220 AD). These two passages – especially the second one – have been largely overlooked by modern scholarship. The first one is a passage from the Peri Apoches (De Abstinentia), where Porphyry gives a detailed description of Indian philosophers’ way of life.5 This text resembles, so to speak, a manual for Indologists. The account on the Indians follows a long succession of similar accounts on the diet of philosophers of different origins: Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Syrians, Indians, and Persians. The description of the Indians’ diet, second to last on the list before the description of the Cretans’, is structured around the distinction between two kinds of Gymnosophists: the ‘Brahmins’ and the ‘Samaneans’. The Brahmins (transliteration of the sanskrit bra¯hman a), are described as theosophoi by descent; they all come from one father and one mother; they live in the mountains or across the river Ganga; they are vegetarians and eat only fruit, yoghurt and rice; they are independent from the king and devote all their time to the worship of the gods. The Samaneans (from the Pali samana, derived from the Sanskrit s´raman a)6 probably refers to Buddhist monks from Bactria. They become philosophers by choice and may descend from any Indian caste. When they become Samaneans, they renounce all their possessions, shave the superfluous hair on their body, take their robe and depart without any glance or word of farewell to their wives and children, if they have any. Samaneans, live in communities and spend their time in debates about the Divine. Like


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the Brahmins, they are vegetarians and their diet is made up of rice, bread, fruit and vegetables. Both Brahmins and Samaneans are councillors of the kings, and they pray for their country’s prosperity. Porphyry’s description is in accordance with the Indian classical distinction between the bra¯hman a and the s´raman a and the respective characteristics of the Brahmins of India and the Buddhists of Bactria. Let us now have a look at the second passage, which is a fragment from Porphyry’s lost work, Peri Stugos, quoted by Stobaeus.7 In this passage, together with other references to the Indian tradition (such as, the sacred lake, the mountain and cave, the trial by water-ordeal, the worship of living statues, long pilgrimages, the concern of the Brahmins about karman or orthos bios, etc.), we are presented with a precise description of a divine statue, half-male and half-female. This statue is most probably one of Ardhana¯rīs´vara, a very popular form of the Indian god Síva joined with his Sákti or ‘Divine Energy’. It should be noted that the emergence of the cult of Síva as an androgynous deity, is dated around the second century AD,8 that is, at the most one century before Bardesanes’ reported meeting with the Indian ambassadors. The androgynous Síva symbolizes the conjunction of binary oppositions in the Supreme God: conception and creation, substance and energy, meaning and action, time and space, rest and motion, transcendence and immanence, and so on. Porphyry claims that when one looks at the androgynous statue worshipped by the Brahmins, one realizes immediately that the two opposite sides, male and female, are indivisibly united. The enthusiastic description of the Indian statue recorded by Bardesanes and Porphyry, and its close resemblance to some later Neoplatonic speculations about the androgynous,9 cannot be treated merely as an ‘influence’. In any case, there is a syncretic and, apparently conscious, ‘meeting’ in that text between Neoplatonic and Indian conceptions of the relationship between the One and the Many.10 In the light of the above evidence, we may safely assume that Porphyry, and presumably, his master Plotinus, had some accurate, albeit remote, knowledge to feed their interest in Indian culture and philosophy. This knowledge is primarily concerned with the Indian philosophers’ way of life and society, but we cannot fail to notice that it is also concerned with at least some purely (and central) philosophical notions, such as the coincidentia oppositorum in the One, symbolized by the figure of the androgynous. Additional evidence in support of this claim may have been contained in one other Porphyrian fragment from the first book of De regressu animae, which according to Augustine referred to the


Indian accounts for the salvation of the soul, but, unfortunately, it is not preserved.

Greek and Roman accounts about the Indian Gymnosophists The next step in the attempt to specify the nature and extent of Indian philosophy’s influence on Neoplatonism, is to link the evidence produced above with other Greek traditions about the Gymnosophists or ‘Naked Wise Men’ of India, with a special focus on three accounts from the same period that can be found in Clement of Alexandria, Philostratus of Tyre, and Hippolytus of Rome. Clement is the first Western author to mention the Buddha’s name (Boutta). In the same context, he makes an instructive distinction, relevant to Porphyry’s later account in the De Abstinentia, between the Gymnosophists of India and the Samaneans of Bactria.11 Quoting Megasthenes’ Indika, he also divides the Gymnosophists into the Brahmins and the ‘Sarmans’, the latter including the hulobioi, ‘those who live in the forest’ (this is the exact Greek translation of the Sanskrit vanapratis t ha). It should be added that Clement is using two different ‘Greek’ terms, Sarmanai and Samanaioi, to express the two basic meanings of the sanskrit term s´raman a, which may refer either to the type of the Brahmanic sam nya¯sin (renouncing ascetic), as in Megasthenes, or to that of the Buddhist or Jain monk, as in Porphyry. Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, despite the expected exaggerations contained in that kind of biographical/hagiographical novel, provides some accurate information about the Brahmins’ ascetic practices, worship, psychology, and cosmology. The Brahmins are here depicted in a way that brings them very close to the disciples of Pythagoras. Finally, Hippolytus of Rome’s Elenchos contains a unique account on the metaphysics of the Brahmins, in which, as Jean Filliozat has shown in a controversial study,12 one could perhaps find some textual parallels to the doctrine of the upanis ads and especially to one specific passage of the Maitry-upanis ad.13 Let us now have a look at the chronology and the geography of these texts. Clement was the head of the Christian school of Alexandria, a city of cross-cultural interactions, around 211 AD, that is, not long before Plotinus attended Ammonius’ classes (232 AD). Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius was published in Tyre around 216 AD, one generation before the young Porphyry (born in 234 AD) spent time in that city. Hippolytus’ activity in Rome can be dated from about 222 AD to 235 AD, that is,


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just before the creation of the Neoplatonic school in Rome by Plotinus (245 AD). These accounts indicate that, during a short period of about twenty years, between 210 AD and 230, in Alexandria, Tyre, and Rome, that is, precisely the cities where Plotinus and Porphyry were soon to live, think, and teach, an interest in Indian philosophers’ way of life and thought was not only evident, but also possibly renewed via the commercial and diplomatic contacts between the Roman Empire and India during the first centuries AD. This interest, once again, was partly directed on the traditional and classical – especially Megasthenian – accounts of the Gymnosophists of India met by Alexander the Great’s army around 326 BC. Nonetheless, the later texts that I have mentioned, and especially the Bardesanian/ Porphyrian statements about Indian philosophers, contain new material and are more accurate than the classical accounts. It is often said that all these Greek and Roman accounts say nothing about authentic Indian philosophical practices or ideas but refer only to Greek polemics or problems.14 What is clear, however, is simply that they are describing far-off Indian philosophical practices and doctrines by using Greek philosophical words and topics. There are Pythagorean-, Platonic-, Aristotelian-, Stoic-, Cynic-, Sceptic-, Jewish-, Pagan- or Christian-oriented descriptions of Indian philosophers, but all these descriptions give an account, perhaps at many removes, of philosophers who were really living in India. There is nothing inconsistent about this. The Greek and Roman accounts of Indian philosophy15 clearly suggest that, during the third century AD, it was possible for intellectual circles in the Roman Empire to be aware, although not in a very detailed way, of numerous elements of Indian thought and culture. These include the importance of ascetic exercises undertaken by long-suffering and temperate philosophers,16 the four steps for the achievement of the ideal life of a Brahmin, from learning to renunciation (with a special focus on the fourth stage),17 the three functions involved by the caste system, that is, philosophers, warriors and producers;18 the functional complementarity between kings and philosophers;19 the opposition between brahmanism and buddhism or jainism;20 the abstinence from animal food, and its meaning;21 the removal of pleasure and pain from the soul as the aim of philosophical discourse;22 the indifference towards death and the practice of suicide by fire;23 the methodical suspension of sensible and discursive judgments;24 the conception of a divine principle that pervades the whole world;25 the vedic myth of the ‘universal Father and Mother’ and the related Sívait conception of the Supreme God as


androgynous;26 the doctrine of the five elements;27 the belief in the transmigration of souls and the judgement of their actions;28 the purification of the soul by way of leaving behind the individual ego and the sensible world;29 the existence of an Indian doctrine about the parts of the soul;30 the interpretation of human self-knowledge as knowledge of the gods;31 the metaphorical description of the One as Word and Light.32 All these Indian elements noted by Greek and Roman authors are only those that can be found in the material available to us. We have no way of knowing whether other Indian elements were represented in the numerous accounts that have not survived. On the other hand, even this lengthy enumeration does not prove that Plotinus or Porphyry did have an actual knowledge of all these Indian elements, but it proves at least that some material for an accurate knowledge of Indian philosophy was available, at their time and place, and that they had the chance to acquire an image, even if it was a distorted one, of what an Indian philosopher actually was and thought. Another conclusion is that India at their time was not seen by early Neoplatonists as different from the country reached by Alexander’s army six centuries before. This is obvious in Clement and Porphyry, where contemporary information from Bardesanes (third century AD) is mixed with information from Megasthenes (third century BC). Third-century Greeks were unlikely to have had any direct access to Indian ‘sources’ (with the exception, perhaps, of Hippolytus’ Elenchos) but, more likely, they had access to very general Indian ideas. Porphyry’s accounts deal mainly with (sometimes vague, sometimes more precise) ideas about Hindu beliefs and customs. On the other hand, if we gather together all Greco-Roman views on Indian philosophers, we may think that more information (if not ‘sources’) was available to them, though probably in a very general and distorted way.

Brief recapitulation of comparisons between Neoplatonic and Indian elements The aim of this chapter is to reconstitute, as far as possible, Greco-Roman views on Indian philosophers at the time of Plotinus and Porphyry. In this sense, my perspective is entirely historical and internal to GrecoRoman texts. On the other hand, this reconstitution aims to give future comparativist works a better sense of the historical background to the topic. As I have already said, though historical study and comparative philosophy have to be distinguished in terms of their methodology, they must be deployed in tandem, in the sense that they should be aware of


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each other’s results. This is why, though I do not aim to give a genuinely comparativist account of the topic, I will briefly recapitulate some of the main comparisons made by modern scholarship between elements of Neoplatonic and Indian philosophies, with the intention of throwing some light on the historical data.33 There are, of course, some major differences that have to be recalled first: • Indian psychosomatism avoids the duality between Mind and Body, and we cannot find anything like a methodic yoga practice in the early Neoplatonists’ intellectual exercises.34 • There is nothing resembling a ‘realm of ideas’ in Indian thought, nothing that looks like the Neoplatonic Nous as the intermediate hypostasis between the One and the Soul.35 • Concerning the mystical experience of deliverance by union with the One, and the self-renunciation required by this, we may state that, compared to Indian philosophical systems, there is a kind of reserve, an impression of modesty, in early Neoplatonism. The Indian method implies a total and definitive self-renunciation and a complete fusion with the One.36 In Neoplatonic thought the successful mystic may become a god, but not quite God. This corresponds to John Rist’s distinction between Plotinian ‘theistic’ mysticism and Indian ‘monistic’ mysticism.37 Being aware of these major differences, let us recall briefly two of the main correspondences that can be established between early Neoplatonism and Indian classical thought: 1. The idea that the individual and transmigrating soul’s self-knowledge leads ultimately to the recognition of its identity with the divine and universal Being and Unity. This idea is expressed by Indian traditions as the identity of the individual self (jīva) with the universal Self (a¯tman), the principle of man’s life and individual consciousness, which is itself one with the brahman, principle of all things. This is close to the Neoplatonic doctrine that the god in us is to be led back to the God in the all (Porphyry tells us that this was Plotinus’ last instruction to his followers: Vita Plotini 2). As a result, the different levels of Reality must be understood as different steps in an inner spiritual experience. Through this experience, one follows a path that leads from a belief in the existence of the empirical world and individual ego – a state of metaphysical ignorance called avidya¯,38 which


consists in the over-determination (adhya¯sa)39 of Reality by ‘name and form’ (na¯maru¯pa) – to the recognition of the divine Unity as the very essence of the illusory empirical world and individual self.40 2. The description of the First Principle as the undiminished and unalterable source of all beings. In the Bhagavad-Gīta¯, Krs n a, who is the personification of the Absolute,41 declares: ‘All beings dwell in me, but I do not dwell in them’.42 The idea expressed by Krs n a is very close to the Plotinian statement that ‘Because there is nothing in the One, all things come from the One’.43 It may be compared with the upanis adic and Neoplatonic Overfullness and Overflowing of the One,44 which remains in itself, unaffected by its effects and remaining different from the active Energy (Sákti or Energeia) that proceeds from it. And, as a result of this, the discourse about the One is unable to express it directly and is forced to use negative predicates (the One is said to be ‘neither this, nor that’)45 or contradictory analogies (he is ‘inside and outside’, ‘here and there’, ‘everywhere and nowhere’, ‘close and far’, and so on).46 Each time we talk about the One, we use an ‘as-if’ and a metaphorical way of speaking (announced by the terms iva, in Sanskrit, and hoion, in Greek)47, which ultimately leads to the meditative silence conceived as the matrix of any language.

Conclusion The problem I have considered clearly does not admit of an easy solution. However, I have argued that in order to account for these striking similarities between early Neoplatonism and some aspects of Indian thought, we have to consider again, quietly and seriously, the historical evidence which seems to support the view that there was a ‘dreamlike’ and ‘impressionist’, but nevertheless broadly accurate, knowledge of Indian philosophy and culture in the Roman Empire at the time of Plotinus and Porphyry and also in their intellectual circles. That Neoplatonists owe a great deal to classical Greek philosophy does not prevent them from having also had a keen interest in far-off Indian philosophy and way of life. The ‘Indian dream’48 of Plotinus and Porphyry has to be considered an historical fact, and, excepting some cultural preconceptions of the East–West relationship, nothing weakens the thesis that this dream may have played an ‘incitative’, though not principal role, in some aspects of the shaping of the philosophy created and promoted by early Neoplatonists during the third century AD. Moreover, it is a fact that, despite many cultural and contextual differences, there are several striking similarities between some elements of


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early Neoplatonism and some general aspects of Indian thought, such as the description of the One as the undiminished source of all beings, or the conception of the individual and the transmigrating soul’s identity with the Universal Being and Unity. Since these similarities do not imply that any very detailed knowledge of Indian philosophy was available in these Neoplatonic circles, nor that there was any kind of adhesion or obedience to a specific Indian school, the following conclusion may be safely drawn. The existing historical evidence of a far-off and distorted knowledge of Indian philosophy in early Neoplatonic circles suggests that these convergences may neither be referred altogether and only to mere chance, nor to a ‘perennial philosophy’, nor even to the so-called ‘Indo-European mentality’, but must be interpreted as the probable result of a six-centuries-long interest in Indian philosophy in the Greek and Roman world.


Notes 1. See Ritter (1834), Brentano (1876), Zeller (1903), Müller (1914), Bréhier (1928), Przyluski (1933), Armstrong (1936), Marucchi (1938), Szabó (1938), Lacombe (1950), de Lubac (1952), Staal (1961, Appendix), Schlette (1962), Sedlar (1981), O’Meara (1982), Tripathi (1982), Wolters (1982), Halbfass (1988), Chenet (1998), Lacrosse (2001, 2002), Ciapallo (2002) and McEvilley (2002). 2. Lacombe (1950). 3. Vita Plotini, III, 6–24. 4. Civ. Dei, X, 32. See O’Meara (1982) and Lacrosse (2001). 5. De abstin., IV, 16, 9–18, 3. See O’Meara (1982) and Lacrosse (2001). 6. See André and Filliozat (1986), n. 81, p. 348. 7. 376F Smith Stobaeus I, 3, 56. On this fragment, see Lassen (1858), t. III, p. 348 sq., and Lacrosse (2002). 8. See Yadav (2001), p. 3 and 13–14. 9. On this, see Brisson (1997), pp. 78–102. 10. See Lacrosse (2002), pp. 52 sq. 11. Strom., I, 15, 71, 3sq., pp. 45, 19. 12. See Filliozat (1945; rev. Vers. 1956) and Vofchuk (1993); contra, see Ducoeur (2001). 13. Elenchos, I, 24, 1–7. 14. For examples, see Muckensturm (1993) and Ducoeur (2001); contra, see, Lacrosse (2006). 15. See the whole corpus in Breloer and Bömer (1939). 16. Onesicritus in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 65; Apuleius, Flor., XV, 11–13; etc. 17. Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., II, 30; Bardesanes in Porphyry, De abst., IV, 17, 6. 18. Apuleius, Flor., 6, 5–8. 19. Megasthenes in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 60; Nearchus in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 66; Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., III, 10; Bardesanes in Porphyry, De abst., IV, 17, 4, 8 and 10. 20. Megasthenes in Clemens of Alexandria, Strom., I, 15, 71, 3 sq., p. 45, 19; Alexander Polyhistor in Clemens of Alexandria, Strom., III, 6, 60, 2 sq., p. 223–8 Bardesanes in Porphyry, De abst., IV, 17, 1, 3 and 7–10; Jeronimus, Adv. Jov., I, 41. 21. Onesicritus in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 65; Bardesanes in Porphyry, De abst., IV, 17, 4–5; etc. 22. Onesicritus in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 65. 23. Zeno, fr. 241, von Arnim I, p. 57, 28, in Clemens of Alexandria, Strom., II, 20, 125, 1 p. 180, 25 sq.; Philo, Quod omn. prob., 93–96; Flavius Josephus, Bell. Iud., VII, 351 sq.; Porphyry, De abst., IV, 18, 1–3; etc. 24. Diog. Laert., Vit., IX, 61. 25. Megasthenes in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 59. 26. Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., III, 34; Bardesanes in Porphyry, De abst., IV, 17, 3; Bardesanes in Porphyry (376F Smith) in Stobaeus I, 3, 56. 27. Megasthenes in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 59; Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., III, 34. 28. Megasthenes in Strabo, Geogr., XV, 1, 59; Apuleius, Flor., XV, 11–13; etc. 29. Diog. Laert., Vit., IX, 61; Hippolytus, Elenchos, I, 24, 2. 30. Apuleius, Flor., XV, 11–13.


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31. Aristoxenus in Eusebius, Prep. Ev., XI, 3, 8 (fr. 53 Wehrli); Philostratus, Vit. Apoll., III, 18. See Lacrosse (2007). 32. Hippolytus, Elenchos, I, 24, 2 and 5. 33. In this ‘comparativist’ part of my chapter, I am dealing, in a very general way, with Indian ideas prior to the third century AD. It has to be recalled that Sán˙ kara’s thought, which is often compared with Plotinus’s thought, is chronologically posterior to Neoplatonism. Despite this, Sán˙ kara forges a kind of system on the basis of much older material, such as the upanis ads, the Bhagavad-Gīta¯, and the so-called ‘pre-Sán˙ karian Veda¯nta’ (already attested from the first or second century AD). In any case, one has to keep in mind the fact that the Neoplatonists’ knowledge of Indian ideas is neither textual nor chronological at all. 34. See Lacombe (1950). 35. See Brunner (1981), p. 107, and Hacker, ‘Cit and Nous’, in Harris (1982), pp. 161–81. 36. See Lacombe (1950). 37. See Rist (1967), pp. 213–30, and Lacrosse (2005a). 38. To compare with Plotinus’ agnoia in Enn. V.1.1, 1–5. 39. To compare with Plotinus’ prosthèkè in VI.5.12, 16 ff. 40. Cf. Cha¯ndogya-up., III. 14. 1–4; Ma¯n d u¯kya-up., 12; I¯sá¯-up., 16; Kat ha-up., V. 8–12. See also Radhakrishnan’s introduction (1953, pp. 52–103). 41. See Lacombe and Esnoul (1972), passim. 42. Bhagavad-Gīta¯, IX, 4. 43. Enn. V.2.1, 5. 44. Br had-a¯ran yaka-up., V,1,1 (pu¯rn a¯t pu¯rn am udacyate ‘from fullness proceeds fullness’). To compare with Enn. V.2.1, 7–11 and Proclus, El. of Theol., proposition 152. 45. Br had-a¯ran yaka-up. (II.3.6; III.9.26; IV.4.22; IV.5.15). To compare with Enn. VI.9.3,51–52. 46. I¯sá¯-up., V. To compare with Enn. VI.8.18, 2–5. 47. Enn. VI.8.13, 1–5 and 47–50. 48. Cf. Lacrosse (2001).

Bibliography André, J., and Filliozat, J., 1986, L’Inde vue de Rome, Paris. Armstrong, A. H., 1936, ‘Plotinus and India’, Classical Quarterly, pp. 22–8. Bréhier, É., 1928, La philosophie de Plotin, Paris. Breloer, B., and Bömer, F., 1939, Fontes historiae religionum indicarum, Bonn. Brentano, F., 1968, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand. Nebst Abhandlungen über Plotinus, Thomas von Aquin, Schopenauer und Auguste Comte, O. Kraus (ed.), Hamburg. Brisson, L., 1997, Le sexe incertain. Androgynie et hermaphrodisme dans l’Antiquité, Paris. Brunner, F., 1981, ‘Une comparaison entre Plotin et le viçishtâdvaita’, in Les Cahiers de Fontenay nº. 19–22. Néoplatonisme. Mélanges offerts à Jean Trouillard, Paris, pp. 101–24.

116 Joachim Lacrosse Chenet, F., 1998, ‘L’Inde et la Grèce’, in J.-F. Mattéi (dir.), Le discours philosophique. Encyclopédie philosophique universelle (volume IV), Paris, pp. 1288–327. Ciapalo, R. T., 2002, ‘The Oriental Influences Upon Plotinus’ Thought: An Assessment of the Controversy Between Bréhier and Rist on the Soul’s Relation to the One’, in Gregorios (2002), pp. 71–81. Ducoeur. G., 2001, Brahmanisme et encratisme à Rome au IIIè siècle, Paris. Filliozat, J., 1945, ‘La doctrine des brahmanes d’après saint Hippolyte’, Revue de l’histoire des religions 130, pp. 59–91. Filliozat, J., 1956, Les relations extérieures de l’Inde, vol. 2 (La doctrine brahmanique à Rome au IIIè siècle), Pondicherry. Gregorios, P. M. (ed.), 2002, Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, Albany. Halbfass, W., 1988, India and Europe, Albany. Hacker, P., 1982, ‘Cit and Nous’, in Harris (1982), pp. 161–80. Harris, R. B. (ed.), 1982, Neoplatonism and Indian Thought, Albany. Lacombe, O., 1950, ‘Note sur Plotin et la pensée indienne’, Annuaire de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, Ve section: sciences religieuses, Paris, pp. 3–17. Lacombe, O., and Esnoul, A.-M. (trans.), 1972, La Bhagavad Gîtâ, Paris. Lacrosse, J., 2001, ‘Le rêve indien de Plotin et Porphyre’, Revue de philosophie ancienne, XIX (1), pp. 79–97. Lacrosse, J., 2002, ‘Un passage de Porphyre relatif au Shiva androgyne chez les brahmanes d’Inde’, Revue de Philosophie ancienne XX (2), pp. 37–56. Lacrosse, J., 2005a, ‘De la commensurabilité des expériences mystiques en Orient et en Occident. Une comparaison entre Plotin et Çankara’, in A. Dierkens and B. Beyer de Ryke (eds.), Mystique. La passion de l’Un, de l’Antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, Problèmes d’Histoire des Religions, Tome XV, Brussels, pp. 215–23. Lacrosse, J., 2006, Review of G. Ducoeur Brahmanisme et encratisme à Rome au IIIè siècle, Revue philosophique de Louvain 1/2006, pp. 206–11. Lacrosse, J., 2007, ‘Some Remarks About a Meeting Between Socrates and an Indian. Aristoxenus’ Fragment 53’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 2007/3, pp. 247–63. Lassen, C., 1858, Indische Alterthumskunde, Leipzig. de Lubac, H., 1952, La rencontre du bouddhisme et de l’occident, Paris. Marucchi, P., 1938, ‘Influssi indiani nella filosofia di Plotino?’, Atti del XIX Congresso Internazionale degli Orientalisti, Rome, pp. 390–4. McEvilley, T., 2002, The Shape of Ancient Thought, New York. Muckensturm, C., 1993, ‘Les gymnosophistes étaient-ils des cyniques modèles?’, in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé and R. Goulet (eds.), Le cynisme ancien et ses prolongements, Paris, pp. 225–39. Müller, H. F., 1914, ‘Orientalisches bei Plotin?’, Hermes 49, pp. 70–89. O’Meara, J. J., 1982, ‘Indian Wisdom and Porphyry’s Search for a Universal Way’, in Harris (1982), pp. 5–26. Plotinus, 1951–73, Opera (editio maior), P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer (eds.), 3 vols, Bruxelles, Paris, and Leiden. Porphyry, 1977–94, Porphyre, De l’abstinence, J. Bouffartigue and M. Pattilon (eds.), Paris. Porphyry, 1993, Fragmenta, A. Smith (ed.), Stuttgart and Leibzig. Przyluski, J., 1933, ‘Mani et Plotin’, Bulletin de la classe des Lettres de l’Académie Royale de Belgique 19, pp. 322–6. Radhakrishnan, S., 1953, The Principal Upanis ads, London.


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Rist, J., 1967, Plotinus. The Road to Reality, Cambridge. Ritter, H., 1834, Geschichte der Philosophie, Hamburg. Schlette, H. R., 1962, ‘Indisches bei Plotin’, in J. Ratzinger et H. Fries (eds.), Einsicht und Glaube, Fribourg, pp. 171–92. Sedlar, J. W., 1981, India and the Greek World, Totowa. Staal, J. F., 1961, Advaita and Neoplatonism. A Study in Comparative Philosophy, Madras. A. Szabó, A., 1938, ‘Indische Elemente in Plotinischen Neuplatonismus’, Scholastik 13, pp. 87–96. Tripathi, C. L., 1982, ‘The Influence of Indian Philosophy on Neoplatonism’, in Harris (1982), pp. 273–92. Vofchuk, R., 1993, ‘San Hipolito de Roma: primer expositor de las doctrinas brahmanicas en occidente’, Estudios Eclesiasticos 68, pp. 49–68. Wolters, A. M., 1982, ‘A Survey of Modern Scholarly Opinion on Plotinus and Indian Thought’, in Harris (1982), pp. 293–308. Yadav, N., 2001, Ardhanarisvara in Art and Literature, New Delhi. Zeller, E., 1903, Die Philosophie der Griechen, III/2, 4th edn, Leipzig.

7 Animation of Statues in Ancient Civilizations and Neoplatonism Algis Uzdavinys

Sacred images and idols When Plotinus in the Enneads (I.6.9,7ff) describes the process of working on one’s own inner statue, this ‘demiurgic’ work is simply an interiorization of the ancient hieratic art (based on the symbolic identity of the microcosmic human body and the animated divine statue) that reveals its true esoteric meaning. In modern times, it became habitual for the students of hellenic philosophy to ridicule the Neoplatonic telestikê, which sought to animate the sacred images or to induce the presence of a god in an inanimate receptacle (hupodochê). The crusade against idolatry, recast in biblical or positivist scientific language, is filtered through Reformation Protestant theology and an idealized rationalism that found a new life in the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment. The zeal is directed not simply against what is supposed to be irrational superstition (though such an impression is intentionally maintained, Protestant and other Western ideological beliefs, both religious and secular, might be regarded as equally fantastic), but against ‘pagan’ Neoplatonism in general and, especially, against the animation of images. The classic example regularly provided, even by those scholars who otherwise are quite sympathetic to Neoplatonic metaphysics, is that of Maximus, the spiritual master of Julianus. Just as Indian ‘idolatry’ was treated as shameful in nineteenth-century British education, so also is Maximus, who, according to Eunapius, made a statue of Hecate laugh and caused the torches in her hands to light up automatically (Vita soph. 475).1 For the late hellenic Neoplatonists, divine images were not only symbols of the gods: they were filled with the divine presence. The ancient 118

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world is rich in testimonies about statuas animatas sensu et spiritu plenas (Asclepius 24):2 statues living and conscious, filled with the breath of life, which provide oracles and foretell the future, cause and cure disease, and do many other ‘mighty works’. Such and similar results are achieved through the sacred rites conducted in the temples, or by special inspirations, incubations, dreams, and visions. As the supreme God is the fashioner, begetter, irradiator, or – to coin a phrase – imaginator of the gods, so man (though indirectly) is the maker of the gods who dwell in temples, or rather, of their material bodies, which then need to be consecrated, sacralized, permeated by the divine and living Soul, or pneuma, and thus be ‘animated’ in the sacramental liturgical sense, and so made a means of theurgic communication with the divine. The main argument against idolatry, raised by the Jewish and Christian iconoclasts, consists in the observation that idols are the mere work of human hands (erga cheirôn anthrôpôn). In no way can they be regarded as theia erga, divine works, based on the acting of the gods or their energies, irradiations, and powers. Since theurgy intensifies the presence of the gods on earth, which is itself viewed as a god (that is, a visible psycho-material manifestation of the Egyptian Geb), or a temple, mediated through the sacred rites, symbols, images, and hieroglyphs, any attack against the power of ‘idols’ is an attack against theurgy. There is no spirit in them (ouk estin pneuma en autois), no vital principle, pneuma, Egyptian ka, or Hindu prana. For the radicalized Hebrew Prophets, only Israel is a ‘statue’ of Yahweh, or rather a living substitute for the cultic statue, since Yahweh mysteriously dwells in the seed of his nation and its history. To put it in Egyptian terms, he is the Lord of kau (pl.of ka, vital spirit, double). Classicists who deal with late hellenic philosophy sometimes forget that Neoplatonic theurgy in many respects is a continuation, restoration, or learned imitation of the ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern rituals, liturgies, and spiritual techniques, surely reinterpreted according to the prevailing philosophical discourse of the time. And more than that. It requires no great hermeneutical effort (as Western rationalists and puritans maintain) to discover theurgy in selected texts of the ‘divine’ Plato himself and in Pythagorean and Orphic wisdom. In this respect, animation of statues is inseparable from the Platonic theory of Ideas, which itself is scarcely ‘Platonic’ in its ultimate origin, but stems from Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythological patterns. We need to understand and recall this background if we are to understand Platonic thought. If regarded in its ‘universal’ metaphysical sense, the animation of statues is neither a magic show arranged to deceive naive believers

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and irritate clever naturalists, nor simply a branch of mediterranean theurgy aimed at obtaining oracles and producing telesmata – enchanted images whose presence had certain miraculous powers. The theurgic art of animation is closely related to the central metaphysical problems of the ancients, namely, those regarding the relationship between the divine principle and its manifestations (creation as theophany or selfdisclosure), between the noetic archetypes and their earthly images, form and matter, soul and body. Accordingly, it presupposes the divine names and powers that organize and govern the cosmos: the divine body turned into the state (politeia) and holy shrine of initiation. Thus, before actual research into the misty problems of the Neoplatonic telestikê is started, one ought to outline the scope of subjects to be investigated – some of them to be explored beyond the limits of a purely historical analysis and beyond what can be learnt directly from available, clearly Neoplatonic, documents. The first and simplest surmise, if not a self-evident premise based on an ‘ineffable intuition’, would be to suppose, despite all possible historical, mythological, and cultic differences, that there must be some common metaphysical ground, or at least certain similarities, which connect the Neoplatonic art of animation with analogous practices in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and India (especially with the manifold tantric traditions, partly based on the ancient Dravidian and Mesopotamian substrate). Therefore, the Neoplatonic telestikê (be it genuinely hellenic or Chaldean) cannot be fully understood and explained without constant references to the cosmological doctrines and rituals of all those ‘philoiconic’ traditions from Pharaonic Egypt to contemporary India. This is not a bold assertion of their identity nor an insistence that their contents are in all respects ‘perennial’ and therefore unable to change, but rather a conviction that similar problems suggest similar resolutions. A comprehensive investigation (which is not my present task) should include such different but related topics as the prevalent conceptions of life and death, of cosmogonical principles and animating forces, as well as the traditional theory of anthrôpos and his relationship with the divine realm both in various mythological systems and in ancient hellenic philosophy, which itself partly derives from the rational exegesis of myths and the deconstruction of rituals. In societies practising traditional crafts and artistic initiations, different levels and aspects of reality may be described by using the rich vocabulary of sculpture. The cultic statue belongs to the broader category of sacred images. Not only the human body but also the universe as a whole may be compared to the divine statue. The Platonic kosmos


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noêtos, tantamount to an intelligent living Animal, and the solar Nous, the Demiurge, are sometimes regarded as statues and exemplary images. For Iamblichus, the stellar manifestations of the gods are agalmata – true icons or statues of the divine ‘drawn out of uniform Forms and noetic Essences’ (De Mysteriis 168.4–5) by the Demiurge. Thus, the cosmos as a whole (to pan) is an image, created and animated by the ‘sounding statues’ (or ‘vocal images’, agalmata phônêenta: Damascius In Phlb.24), by the cosmogonical sounds which are the agalmata of the gods, later imitated by the theurgists in the path of the ascent and the animation of artifacts. On a microcosmic level, the human being as an imago dei, or simulacrum dei, may be likened to the theurgic statue constructed by the rules of symbolic iconography, according to the proper ‘ontological genre’. For example, the figure of the ruler, who, in Pharaonic Egypt, is Horus incarnated, a son of Ra, of the solar Demiurge, is a visible model and vital principle (ka) for the entire body-like State. His historical heirs and imitators are the initiates of all sorts, mustai, bakchoi, magicians, poets, and philosophers, who in one way or another represent the central cosmic axis, the Perfect Man of the later Gnostics and Sufis. Finally, every human being, regarded as a puppet or toy of the gods (Plato, Laws, 803–4), may restore the primordial splendour of his body (acting through the mask of some divine hero or by maintaining himself as a virtuous servant, doulos theou, therapeutês) and reveal the ideal inner statue by ‘polishing a mirror of the heart’ in the search for the animating water of life.

Vehicles of divine forces Any statue serves as a vehicle of a certain essence; therefore, it is a body. Now, there are physical, psychic, pneumatic, ethereal, and noetic bodies, immaterial and material, constituted by different elements or mixtures of those elements. Their trajectories, on the way up or down, are governed – in this system of thought – by analogy, and by how well or badly they are prepared for the climb. In the organized cosmos of theophanies, where ideas and images, archetypes and copies, are arranged according to a strict hierarchy, the difference between natural and artificial is almost indiscernible: everything, except the One, is in a sense both artificial and natural. Therefore, the fabricated cult statues simply constitute one of the numerous ontological levels (each filled by their own ‘statues’ – models and images), where the bonds between form and matter, archetype and icon, are made visible and where the higher divine forces are at work. Thus, not only a king, an ancestor, a parent, a beloved,

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or a spiritual master can be regarded as real or imagined ‘statues’ prescribed for adoration and contemplation, but also the dead body itself may be turned into an archetypal mask, a stellar body, or a statue-like mummy (sah) which – in Egyptian practice - represents the ideal golden body of Osiris, reconstructed by Anubis (the chief mystagogue in the alchemical rites of rebirth), and animated by the Eye of Horus. As a means of communication with the beyond, the divine images served in the economy of cultic offerings, thus maintaining the cosmic rhythm, creating social integration, granting oracles, and affording health, abundance, and protection. The methods of divination themselves are part of the theurgical techniques to elevate and divinize the soul, and, therefore, it is no wonder that in certain cases the telestic statues assist in initiation, rebirth, and union with the divine essence. Even the tomb or sarcophagus may be regarded as sôma and the womb of the goddess. Likewise, the human body is both an alchemical tomb and a temple wherein the golden statue is to be produced and revealed. Behind all the ideas of a forged immortal body of metal or gold lies the metaphysical symbolism and conviction that the incorruptible bodies of the gods were made of precious substances – perfumes, stones, and metals, especially gold (neb). In the Pyramid Texts,3 the anagogic gods (those who function as elevating forces) and the ascending ba of the animated king (who is himself regularly equated with Osiris, Horus, Thoth, and other divine hypostases) are indistinguishable from their immortal iconographic statues or holy images. Since ‘all processions and all conversions are accomplished because of likeness’ (dia tên tês homoiotêtos aitian), according to Proclus (Plat.Th. VI.3.17.1–2), the leader-gods (hoi hêgemonikoi theoi) lift up and unfold all things in the demiurgic unity, including the blessed souls. And the soul (ba) of the Pharaoh is the most perfect tut, or divine image, which ought to be united with the Demiurge through the rites of ascent.

The living images of everlasting gods According to Plato, the great statue of the cosmos is animated by the Demiurge, who is the equivalent of the Egyptian god Ptah. The Heaven as a whole is a living creature, self-moved by its own self-moving soul, because the Demiurge gave the universe the motion proper to its body: When the father who had begotten it saw it set in motion and alive, an agalma (statue, image, ornament, shrine) brought into being for


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the everlasting gods (ton aidion theôn gegonos agalma), he rejoiced and being well pleased he took thought to make it yet more like its pattern. So as that pattern is the Living Being that is for ever existent, he sought to make this universe also like it, so far as might be in that respect. Now the nature of that Living Being was eternal, and this character it was impossible to confer in full completeness on the generated thing. But he took thought to make, as it were, a moving likeness of eternity (Tim.37c–d). This passage may be regarded as the cosmological model for the theory of ontological images (eikones) and archetypal imitations. The phrase theon agalmata refers to the traditional cult statues (ta xoana), images of the gods, objects of worship that are established through the different levels of manifested being by the creative energies of divine irradiation. Thus, the cultic agalma may be regarded as a god whose life stems not from itself but from the living god, the transcendent principle that it represents, symbolizes, or incarnates. For the Neoplatonist Julian (Flavius Claudius Julianus, 331–363 AD), the Sun is the living statue (to zôn agalma), endowed with a soul and intelligence, and is regarded as an image of the noetic Father (Jul. Ep. 51.434). The Demiurge is called the agalmatopoios tou kosmou by Neoplatonists, which means that he produced the cosmos as an agalma and fashioned all lower gods as agalmata. For Plato (Laws 931a), the terms eikon and agalma are almost synonymous, though not strictly equivalent. The animated cosmos is a living and moving agalma of the everlasting gods, and therefore all theurgic agalmata that belong to the lower levels of existence are modelled according to this pattern. The visible stars symbolize the invisible archetypes (the goal of the soul’s stellar ascent), and are themselves agalmata in the sense of divine habitations, vehicles (ochêmata) which contain the divine presence. Hence, just as the entire cosmos receives the animating divine energies, so the cult statues, as the receptacles of the sacred powers, properly prepared or engendered by the union of sophia and technê, receive the invisible rays of the gods. In the ancient Egyptian texts, these descending irradiations, or noetic and pneumatic rays, are called bau (manifestations), sekhemu (powers), kau (vital principles). However, not only manifestations (kheperu, bau) and manifested theophanies or creatures are images: the Creator himself is also described as an image (tut). Atum, or Amun-Ra, as the divine tut, the supreme imago Dei, came into being from the ineffable depths of Nun, tantamount to the Neoplatonic One, when no other gods (neteru) existed and no name (ren) of anything was known. In this sense, he

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is both (1) tut of the supreme unimaginable Source and (2) tut as the noetic model and archetype. He is like ‘an image of the Ineffable that is ineffably identical with the Ineffable’ in the Porphyrian metaphysics: the One-Being of the Plato’s Parmenides’ second hypothesis, a product and image of the One. In a papyrus from the reign of the New Kingdom pharaoh Ramesses II (1279/1212 BC), Amun is described as: fashioning (hem) himself, none knowing his shape (qi), goodly nature who came into being as the sacred, secret image (bes) who built (qed) his images (seshemu), who himself created (qema) himself, goodly power (sekhem) who made good his desire (ib), who joined his seed with his body to bring his egg into being within his secret self, being (or manifestation, self-disclosure – kheper) who came into being (or disclosed himself – kheper), image (or model, archetype, statue – tut) of what is fashioned (mesut).4 Along with the term tut, another term used in the text, bes, often refers to the form of the supreme God at the eternal ‘first moment’ of theogony when he reveals himself as the solar kosmos noêtos, or the archetypal pleroma and orders (taxeis) of the gods, namely, bes, or tut, of the ineffable Abyss. This noetic Demiurge who establishes Being, Life, and Intelligence (the divine triad which is multiplied into the Egyptian Ennead, particularly the ‘Great Ennead’ of Heliopolis, a group of nine principal gods) is the model of his own creation and, consequently, of all ontological images irradiated by the divine Sun. A beautiful hymn at the temple of Hibis, carved in the first Persian period (XXVII Dynasty), proclaims that Amun-Ra: made (iri) the gods (…), wise one excellent of being, intelligent one (…), who began all existence (…), who made great his image (seshem) to exalt his beauty, who fashioned (nebi) his image (qi) according to his desire, he having graced it with the grace of his breath (…), he having created (qema) his self, having begotten (setji) himself as the great image (tut).5 Accordingly, any artist, or theurgist, who conducts the ritual of creation and animation of an image (tut), imitates the divine cosmogony, because creative activity and life (ankh) are the attributes proper to Amun-Ra. This Demiurge made the kau of the gods, their vital principles, life energies, and the ka of an artist who produces his (that is, the Demiurge’s) material image.


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In the Shabaka text of the XXVth Dynasty, known as the Memphite Theology, it is the supreme Demiurge Ptah who fashioned (mesi) the gods and created all things and all hieroglyphs (medu neter), i.e., the Forms that constitute the totality of the manifested universe. Their coming into being (kheper) or creation is articulated by thoughts, images, and spoken words: Ptah conceives of the Ideas of things and invents the archetypal script that Thoth records and utters. The animated images of sacred script are inherent in the structure of the universe like the Neoplatonic sumbola and sunthêmata. Ptah Tatenen created the bodies (setut) of the gods in their likeness, i.e., produced their cultic images: And thus the gods entered their bodies of every kind of wood and mineral, all kinds of clay and all other things that grow on him (i.e., Ptah) from whom they originated (kheper). And thus assembled around him all gods and their kau.6 The last line may be rendered also like this: ‘he has united the gods (i.e., their statues) and their kau’. This passage testifies to the divine origin of the cult statues and indirectly confirms theurgy as an imitation of demiurgy. The statues are theia erga, the works of the Demiurge Ptah. In a certain sense, the gods themselves are united with their statues when their vital principles (kau) enter their bodies (setut). Therefore, not only the cult statue (seshem, nen) is an image (tut) of the Demiurge, but the entire created, or rather manifested, cosmos is a divine statue, the body of Heka (creative Magic) constituted by his powerful images (sekhemu) and words (hekau). According to the Leiden Papyrus:7 All the gods are three: Amun, Ra, and Ptah, without their seconds. His identity is hidden in Amun, He is Ra as face, His body is Ptah (Leid.300).

Animation as ritual of union with the descending rays of Ra The cult statue, like any image, picture, or inscription carved or painted on the temple walls, and like the whole temple itself, had to be animated by the living power of the deity. Likewise, the entire cosmic state, imagined as an ordered symbolic structure, is reanimated by the rays of Ra,

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or Helios, i.e., the Sun, whose rebirth every morning repeats the ‘first moment’ when the self-created noetic scarab beetle (Amun-Kheper-Ra) emerged from the primordial waters of Nun: You rose up in this your name of High Hill. You came into being in this your name of Kheper (PT 1587). The statue-like sah-body of Osiris, his inert corpse, reassembled by Thoth and ‘being what Anubis has done for him’, is animated by the ramheaded ba (‘soul’) of the Sun. As ba and statue-like corpse, Ra and Osiris unite at the deepest point in the nocturnal journey through the Duat, or mundus imaginalis, which contains everything that has ever existed. This mysterious nightly union of Osiris-Sokar and the solar ba precedes resurrection in the form of a scarab and serves as a model for the mystical rebirth of the initiate who follows the way of Thoth. The solar barque itself turns into a serpent whose fiery breath helps to ignite the new light. The night journey depicted in the New Kingdom Books of the Netherworld shows the path of alchemical transformation, rebirth, theurgic ascent, and apotheosis. The union of Ra and Osiris in the Duat can be compared to the ritual union of the hieratic statue with the Sun Disk on the roof of the Horus’ temple in Edfu, still celebrated at New Year’s festival during Roman times. The holy procession of priests carried the statue by the staircase to the rooftop terrace (symbolically, to the ‘back’ of Heaven, the supercelestial place of Plato’s Phaedrus, whither the Orphic mystai and the true lovers of wisdom, i.e., philosophers, fly to gaze on the infinite plenitude of light, to behold the spiritual world of Ideas and to contemplate God at its centre) and is depicted as: Arrival of hem (the statue of his majesty Horus) at the Place of the first moment (i.e., of the first occasion, tep sepi, the realm of metaphysical realities), so that his ba might unite (sema) with his image (sekhem).8 To put the same point in slightly different terms: the First Time, tep sepi, is entered when the ascending procession reaches the rooftop, which symbolizes the back of the goddess Nut, the Platonic huperouranios topos, discussed by Proclus in his Platonic Theology. According to J. Naydler: The concept of the First Time is comparable to that of the realm of being in which the Platonic Ideas exist. In Egyptian thought, though, it is not abstract ideas that are to be found here, but living


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gods and archetypal relationships that obtain among them. The First Time is the realm of metaphysical realities conceived in terms of symbolic images and myths. These are the patterns that are reflected in the mundane world and that need to be participated in if mundane events are to be filled with archetypal power.9 On the rooftop terrace of the temple, the Eastern Ba (Horus, represented by the rising Sun) alights (khen) upon his statue (bes), his august body (sah). In such a ritual, the ‘revelation of the Face’ occurs and the images (sekhemu) of Horus, Hathor, or other deities, are united with their bau in the horizon (akhet – this term, which also means a pyramid, the location of akh, here refers to the rooftop). Thus the ba of Ra is established upon the images of neteru and their statues (seshemu) are renewed, so that they ‘might live by seeing his [noetic] rays’.10 The Sun-god’s (who is Nous, the creative Intellect of the Neoplatonists) ba (soul, manifested power) is united (sema) with the image (sekhem) of his ka. This union (sema) is among the paradigms and prototypes of the theurgic union with the divine principle, of the unio mystica praised by later philosophers and initiates.

Opening of the Mouth and awakening to light In the funerary realm, every mummy (sah) had to be reanimated by the living ba. Likewise every statue of the deceased, placed inside the tomb, must be animated by his living ka in order that the funerary cult could be maintained. In all these cases, the quickening of inert matter (which, however, is already alive on the deeper ontological level) is achieved by means of a certain hieratike technê and by employing rituals such as the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. According to the ancients, such rituals were revealed by the gods themselves and actually performed by them (that is, by the priests who played the role of the gods) following the patterns of tep sepi, the First Time. The Opening of the Mouth ritual is to be performed for the sacred building as a whole, for the tombs, sarcophagi, heart scarabs, magical figurines (such as ushebti) and other objects of the temple and funerary realm. The descent of ba and the sacramental union of the falcon-like Horus with his cultic body, is described at Edfu in the text from the interior of the holy of holies: He alights (khen) upon his statue (bes), he mingles with (sensen) his idol (akhem), he embraces (sekhen) his image (sekhem).11

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Once quickened by the Opening of the Mouth ritual,12 a cult statue is considered ‘alive’ on two different levels: (1) the ka of the god slept during the night and had been awakened in the morning for the daily cult offerings and other ritual activities; (2) the ba of the god, whose invisible noetic power pierces through the material receptacle, has maintained a permanent relationship with the intelligible source, or the Demiurge (symbolized by the Sun), though this bond is periodically re-established and rejuvenated through union with the divine principle. Certain shapes, and the material substances of which the sacred objects are made, were regarded as suitable receptacles or mediums for the spiritual powers of the gods (neteru). Heraiskos, the fifth-century Neoplatonist and practising theurgist from the Panopolite nome, was able to divine whether or not the statues of the gods were animated, that is, filled with invisible divine irradiations. According to Damascius, Heraiskos fostered the ancestral rites of Egypt and ‘made his soul to dwell always in sanctuaries and mystic places’, confessing that the ancient Egyptians were wiser than himself.13 The divine ‘soul’, ba (in a certain sense analogous to the immanent Form) makes the cult statue a manifestation of the deity whose epiphany in the religious procession (a ritual counterpart of the Neoplatonic proodos) is called ‘lifting up the beauty’. The gods ‘live’ and their life (ankh) and interaction constitute reality, but in the New Solar Theology, which arose at the beginning of the XVIII Dynasty (1550 BC), the ‘life-giving’ action is ascribed to the one world-creating and world-preserving Sun god. The ‘speaking’ statue of Amun-Ra was carried in the festival processions and this image was thought both to illuminate the entire landscape by its life-giving and sustaining divine light, and to provide oracles. For the ancient Egyptians, the world as a whole was animated from the beginning; therefore any secondary ‘animation’ is tantamount to re-establishing or reactivating the otherwise hidden theurgic relationship between an image (the visible shape of a hieroglyph) and a certain spiritual will or power, between a corporeal vehicle (such as the royal throne, the sacred barque, or any representation carved or painted according to the strict rules of symbolic iconography) and its archetypal principle, its neter. Everything here below is an image of its spiritual archetype and is involved in a rhythmic series of ‘ontological rituals’ performed on different levels of being, including the mundane temple rites and funerary ceremonies. The light-like primordial sound, pronounced by the supreme Creator or the Ennead of gods, is characterized by its miraculous force: therefore, the world is this transcendent sound and living (ankh) noetic (akh) image


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(tut) made substantial. The divine words, imbued with demiurgic and theurgic power (hekau, reminiscent of Hindu mantras) have also animating, purifying, transforming, and elevating power. They are the onomata barbara, nomina barbara praised by the Chaldaean Oracles (fr.107).14 The ability of the cult statue to act (iri), that is, to reveal the divine presence and thus to serve as a container of the immanent sacred essence, is a response to the cultic act. This can be explained in the light of ancient metaphysics centered around the problems of the One and many, of descent and ascent, of archetypes and images, as well as those of initiation, transformation, and spiritual rebirth. In the ritual a solution to these problems is acted out, or it is at any rate felt to be at hand: what had seemed a contradiction or a conflict is an experienced, unifying reality. In this respect, the symbol of the Eye (iret) reveals the dialectic of life and death, the theory of sacrifice, reintegration, and theurgic animation. The awakening to light, to the true divine identity, symbolized by the joining together of the scattered limbs of Osiris, is to be understood as the psychic and spiritual integration accomplished on the different levels of reality. This integration may be expressed and conveyed by the embrace (sekhen) that culminates the quickening process of the image (tut).

The sacramental birth of statues in Mesopotamia and Egypt The Egyptian and Mesopotamian archaic theory of animation that deals with metaphysical problems of the divine presence, of transcendence, and immanence, seems rather strange and exotic only from the modern standpoint. This latter has been created by the prevailing scorn, misunderstandings, and exaggerations, partly arising from biblical and Protestant polemics against cult images. These iconoclastic attacks have a hidden purpose: to annex and monopolize the ancient ‘theurgy’, and so preserve the soteriological privileges of particular monotheist communities. The manufactured icon is transformed into a living body or into an effective symbol of deity by the rites called hidrusis in Greek and dedicatio in Latin. In Mesopotamia, there were two such rituals, designated Mouth Washing (Akkadian mis pi, Sumerian ka-luh-u-da-dingir) and Mouth Opening (pit pi, ka-duh-u-da). Without these rituals, the sacred icon is only a dead product of human artisans that cannot consume food, drink water, beer, wine and smell incense, even if these sacramental activities are not to be understood literally, but rather spiritually.

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During the mis pi ritual, the image made in the temple atelier (bit mummi), the place where the gods are born, is consecrated. The fact that the statue is the work of human hands is ritually denied and the authorship of Ea, the Image Fashioner (nu-dim-mud) is confirmed. The Akkadian Ea (Sumerian Enki) is the god of the primordial waters (apsu), wisdom, magic and incantations, of the arts and crafts, and is analogous to the Memphite Demiurge Ptah, the Ugaritic Kothar-wa-Hasis, the Clever and Skilled Artisan, Hephaistos and Daidalos of the ancient Hellenes. The statue is produced by the gods themselves, acting through the ‘skilled artisans who know the secrets’ (ummani le’uti mude pirishti). This theogony belongs to the realm of ‘theurgy’ in its etymological and metaphysical sense. In fact, the statue is not even manufactured, but ‘ceremoniously born’ (ke-nish im-ma-al-du-ma) in a process that microcosmically repeats all phases of cosmogony. The materials used in the statue are already considered divine, and thus the fashioning of the statue (which consists in revealing its eidos on the level of material existence) by the artisans, who themselves play the role of the gods, is the process of assimilating the image to the archetype through the ritualized descent of the Form. According to the Neoplatonists, it is only the divine Nous and the theurgists (and artisans) who are established by Athena in the Maker of the universe – that is, those who are elevated by purifications, mystic rites, and symbols, by hymns and prayers, sacrifices and meditations – that are capable of contemplating the Forms. Therefore, one could say that the human artificer follows the forms created by the divine Artificer (Ea, Ptah, Vishvakarma). He directly contemplates or visualizes (according to the canonical rules) a mental image of the deity through the Eye of the heart-intellect and draws this form from Heaven, the realm of akh, where the noetic models of art exist, or from the immanent divine light in the heart. The god (ilu, understood as salamu, salam, the statue completed and perfected in its form) is not simply ‘produced’, but ‘actually born’. In the royal inscription of Sargon II the manufacture of the statue is described by using the verb waladu, ‘to beget’: Nishshiku, creator of everything, begat images of their great divinities, and they took up their daises.15 In certain Mesopotamian texts the image is not the product of an artisan, even the Creator Ea, but is born of the loin of the gods and goddesses. Consequently, V. A. Hurowitz says that: ‘the process of iconoplasty


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is biological and not technological’.16 I would insist on the designation ‘metaphysical’ instead of ‘biological’, because the autogenesis of a statue and the conception of the noetic life cannot be treated in terms of modern biology. The Father of the gods is ‘creator of himself’ (banu ramanishu) and the Mouth Washing ritual states: ‘In Heaven it (the god) is born of itself’ (an-na ni-bi-ta tu-ud-da-am) and ‘on Earth it is born of itself’ (ki-a ni-bi-ta tu-ud-da-am: STT 199).17 The incantations of the Mesopotamian mis pi ritual stress the statue’s ability to smell odours, to see, to hear, and even to walk. The mis pi ritual, like the Egyptian ritual called Performing the Opening of the Mouth in the workshop for the statue (tut) of N., is only the culmination of the theogonical process. As already stated in the Pyramid Texts, the opening of the nose and ears as well as of the mouth and eyes is performed for the dead king, equated with Osiris, whose ‘head is knit to his bones and his bones are knit to his head’ (PT 355), and who ‘provides himself with his iron members’ (PT 419):

The way of the golden falcon Your mouth is split open by dua-ur in the Mansion of Gold, [your mouth] is split open by the two images which are foremost in the Mansion of Natron, your mouth is split open by Horus with this little finger of his with which [he] split open the mouth of his father, with which he split open the mouth of Osiris (PT 540). The exemplary theurgic ascent of the king, his animation and divinization through the Eye of Horus, is described as a rebirth in the nest of Thoth from the broken egg (PT 669), as a flight through the opened doors of the tomb, the doors of Nut (Heaven), and as taking a seat in the solar barque of Ra. He ascends as the reconstructed statue, ‘reassembled by Thoth’ (PT 448) and raising his ‘iron bones’, his ‘golden members’: ‘for this body of yours belongs to a god’ (PT 723). Thus, the statue-like king, the son of Ra, is ‘a sacred image, the most sacred of the sacred images of the Great One’ (PT 273-4). His face is that of a jackal, his arms are those of a falcon, his wing-feathers are those of Thoth, his savour is the savour of a god, the savour of the Eye of Horus, because Horus has split open his eye that he may see with it in the name of ‘she who opens the way of the god’ (PT 638), to fly up to the sky and to be equated with Thoth, ‘the mightiest of the gods’ (PT 524).

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In the course of a complicated ritual drama, which includes sacrifices and incantations, the mouth of the statue is touched with various implements, perhaps artisans’ tools, the little finger of the sem-priest, and the adze called neterty (neter means a god, a divine principle and spiritual power). The ritual imitates certain divine events and precedents, and its purpose is not only to make the statue a fit object for the cult (by opening hidden channels of grace), but also to serve for the theurgic apathanatismos, for turning the mortal human statue into the immortal divine statue. In this case, both the descent and the ascent of the immortal light, of the divine bau (spiritual energies, manifestations) are to be viewed as inseparable and interpenetrating. The powers involved in such operations are higher than all human wisdom. And this is exactly the definition of theurgy provided by Iamblichus and Proclus. The king, who is the perfect imago dei, embodies the perfect Wisdom, for he ‘becomes Sia who bears the god’s book, who is at the right hand of Ra’ (PT 250). His throne is over the spirits, or intellects (akhu), he unites hearts and his ‘limbs are the Imperishable Stars’ (PT 570). Hence, he is the Theurgist par excellence. The Egyptian initiates, who followed this archetypal example of the ascending Mystagogue, the way of the divine golden falcon, wished to enter and experience states of consciousness which would reveal their true identities and the ineffable unity of all. Since the conception of tut, the living (ankh) image of god (e.g, Atum, Ptah, Amun) has both external and internal meaning, the fashioning of the material statue and the procreation of the spiritual body are analogous processes. The inner alchemical body, symbolized by gold, or other metals, is created according to the patterns of Osirian transformation which, among other things, includes the gathering of limbs and the reconstruction of an archetypal eidos, accomplished by Anubis, the guide of initiates, as well as the animation and resurrection on the level of anima mundi. The way of transformation and ascent is the way of Thoth, who makes the Eye of Horus intact and integral, which may be interpreted as the spiritual restoration of the heart-intellect, and rebirth.

When the womb-like tomb is opened The process of making a statue by the technique of lost wax casting (in which a was model is first made, a clay mould plastered round it, and then the whole baked to melt the wax, thus leaving an empty shell into which, for example, molten bronze can be poured to set into the same shape as the lost wax model) imitates the mystical


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way aimed at regeneration and theurgic union with the divine. Some rituals performed in the Egyptian temples, as well as their own architectural designs and structures, follow step by step this metaphysical and mythological pattern. Let us briefly analyse the sequence of the process. First, the gathering together of an image is accomplished, by joining together the limbs of a statue or of the dismembered body of Osiris. This event includes (1) the creation of a form in wax for the metal statue to be cast, and (2) the spiritual integration, purification of body and heart, and mental concentration. The gathering together of an image outlines the inner ba form that needs to be transformed into gold (akh-spirit and its golden body). This stage is followed by vitalization. The model made of beewax is coated wtih clay and thus turned into a clay ball, imaging the cosmogonical egg (the Egg of the Great Cackler which ‘lives’ and ‘breathes the air’, given by Atum), like the imagined (or painted) sphaira-like figure used in the spiritual exercises known to Plotinus. The sphere is regarded as an icon of deity, the world as a whole which embodies a sacred image of the god within. Keeping this image before his mind’s eye, Plotinus removes from it both space and the imaginary conception of matter, calling upon the god (whose image this is) to come (Enn. V.8.9, 11). The heated metal is poured into the mould. This action represents the way things come alive (enter into the realm of life (ankh)), they are animated by the heart, ‘by the ray of Nous’, the breath of life (suh en ankh). According to the spell for giving breath in the realm of the dead: I am the jackal of jackals, I am Shu who draws the air into the presence of the sunshine to the limits of the sky, to the limits of the earth, to the limits of the plume of the nebeh-bird, and air is given to those youths who open my mouth so that I may see with my eyes (BD 55).18 The universe, including the sensible realm, is equally dependent on the constant influx of this life-giving force, the breath of Amun. Therefore, to ‘make a sculpture’ means in Egyptian ‘to enliven, to revive’. The transcendent divine essences, the gods in Heaven and their earthly images are distinguished. The Egyptian sculptor, the follower of Ptah and the initiate of Imhotep-Nefertum, is ‘the reviver’. His imaginal operations – both external and internal – imitate the patterns established by the gods, and so his art and the path of spiritual realization coincide.

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The last phase of the work consists in breaking the mould and revealing the perfect image, the beautiful divine statue. This is a birth of the god, a spiritual rebirth, symbolized by casting off the mummy’s bondage: The doors of the tomb are opened for you, the doors of Nut are unbolted for you … remove the mask which is on your face, loosen your bonds, for they are not bonds, they are the tress of Nepthys … that you may become divine (PT 553). The term sah means (1) the ritually embalmed body, turned into the archetypal icon of Osiris, the corpse of Sokar, his ‘mysterious image’ (that is, the mummy wrapped in his strips of linen and likened to the silkworm cocoon, the pupa of the scarab), and (2) the star of Osiris, the luminous spiritual or stellar body. The breaking of the mould happens when the barque of Ra reaches the 10th hour of the Night in the Duat,19 itself symbolized by the body of goddess Nut, the heavenly Cow who is eternally giving birth to the world of spiritual forms (stars). This goddess represents the overarching divine presence, in whose cosmic embrace all things rest, though she is only secondarily connected with sensory phenomena. The night journey of the Sun-god’s ba is the model of all alchemical gestations in the womb of Nut-Hathor, the womb-like tomb (which imitates the primordial mound and the cave of primordial darkness), sarcophagus-vessel, cauldron, the nest of Thoth, and both the physical and mental body of the artisan, for all formations, transformations, and ‘foetal quickenings’ which lead to the final maturation and birth. The mystery of spiritual realization and immortalization is based on this polysemantic pattern.

Divine beauty and the inner golden statue: from Egyptian theology to Plotinus The opening of the ball, or the egg, symbolizes an appearance of the divine body, itself like the golden sphere (aten) of Ra, or the golden (sometimes green) scarab which represents the noetic fullness of Atum, the restored heart-intellect of the initiate, who is a perfect ‘philosopher’ (in the sense of Plato’s Phaedo 67c–d, that ‘true philosophers make dying their profession’) and is therefore regarded as ‘dead’, now reborn. During the theurgic rituals the divine powers may be temporarily incarnated in a human body, (which itself is a sunthêma for the Neoplatonists).


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According to Proclus, some things pertaining to the statues established by the telestic art are manifest, while others are inwardly concealed: they symbolize the presence of the gods and are only known to the telestic artisans themselves (In Tim. I.273e). We do not know exactly what kind of sunthêmata were used in the Neoplatonic rites of animation. However, the practice of concealing certain symbols inside the statues, even entire sacred books, shells, and flowers, mantic words of power (hekau), written formulas (the Neoplatonic engrammata) in the hieroglyphic script, and images (eikones, charactêres, schêmata), is common for the Egyptian tradition. Similar practices are attested even in the classical hellenic Hekate-magic (Diodorus Bibl.hist.4.51). All these pharmaka, sumbola, and sunthêmata do the same work as Egyptian amulets (hearts, buckles of Isis, djed pillars, collars of gold, papyrus sceptres, human-headed falcons, ladders, Eyes of Horus, shensymbols, ankh-symbols, scarabs, some inscribed with hekau, words of power), which are placed on (1) the living human body (which itself resembles a ‘statue’) or (2) the embalmed sah-body (mummy), along with incenses, oils, perfumes and flowers. Any amulet (meket, sa, wedjat) that attracts and preserves divine energies and manifestations (bau) is a sort of sunthêma. The animated statues, images, symbols, and amulets work through the theurgic heka-power, and heka is regarded as the ba of Ra (Amun-Ra, Atum-Ra). The hellenic telesmata, the concealed or visible telestic images, especially the animated statues, also had power to avert disaster and provide protection. According to the historian Zosimus, the theurgist Nestorius saved Athens from an earthquake in 375 AD by dedicating a statue of Achilles, regarded as a telesma, in the Parthenon following the instructions provided by the gods in a dream (4.18).20 According to Proclus: As an initiator into the mysteries, by placing certain symbols about statues, renders them more adapted to the participation of the superior powers (ho telestês sumbola atta tois agalmasi perititheis epitêdeiotera auta kathistêsin eis metousian dunameôn huperterôn), thus also total nature fashioning bodies, by physical productive powers, the statues of souls (agalmata tôn psuchôn), disseminates a different aptitude in different bodies for the reception of different souls, the better and the worse (In Tim. I.51e–f). This passage confirms the notion that animation is closely related to the theory of Ideas, or archetypal cosmogonical Forms, which Plato detached from the initial cultic sphere and rendered into rational philosophical

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discourse, thus building a solid scientific ground for the later Neoplatonic versions of theurgy. Every classicist remembers the passage from the Enneads of Plotinus (I.6.9, 7ff), which can be understood beyond its intended metaphorical sense, because such metaphor itself stems from the realm of theurgic techniques and rituals, partly inherited by the hellenic philosophy. The passage alludes to the Phaedrus (252d, 254b), where Plato speaks of the lover who works on the soul of his beloved, fashioning it into the likeness of the god, their common divine archetype. The relevant passage runs as follows: How then can you see the sort of beauty a good soul has? Go back into yourself and look; … and never stop ‘working on your statue’ (tektainôn to son agalma) till the divine glory of virtues shines out on you, till you see ‘self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat’. If you have become this, and see it, and are home with yourself in purity … wholly yourself, nothing but true light (phôs alêthinon monon), not measured by dimensions, or bounded by shape into littleness, or expanded to size by unboundedness, but everywhere unmeasured, because greater than all measure and superior to all quantity; when you see that you have become this, then you have become sight; you can trust yourself then; you have already ascended … (Enn. I.6.9, 7ff). The ‘inner statue’ is the golden body of the Egyptian theology, the ascending soul (ba) turned into the luminous eternal spirit (akh). Thus through the sensuous body (sthula-sharira), to put it into the cultic terms of Hindu Tantra, an image is revealed, an image which is interiorized and serves as a pointer to, or a diagram (yantra) of, the unseen noetic realm, the spiritual essence (suksma-sharira), or the divine presence. Both external and internal images are symbolic constructs (pratika) whereby what is invisible and immaterial (amurta) is represented as visible and material (murta). The external worship (bahyayaga) of the statue is necessarily accompanied by meditation (manasa-puja) on its outward form as well as on its immaterial state, the noetic Form, or Idea. The seer and the object contemplated are to be united. The worshipper is turned into the god (ishta-devata) that he adores: he ascends to the akh realm and actually becomes Ra. So the initiate, whose ba is transformed and united with the divine principles, may declare as follows: ‘I am Thoth, the favoured of Ra; Lord of strength who ennobles him who made him; great of magic (heka) in the Barque of Millions of


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Years; master of laws … who does what Ra in his shrine approves’ (BD 182). ‘My head is that of Ra who is united with Atum …, my tongue is that of Ptah, my throat is that of Hathor, for I have recalled with my mouth the speech of Atum …’ (BD 82). ‘I am he who dwells in his Eye, I have come that I may give maat to Ra’ (BD 96). ‘Let me see Ra’ (BD 65). ‘I am he in whom is the Sacred Eye’ (BD 42). ‘I am Ra’ (BD 42). Plotinus says almost the same, though in philosophical terms: No eye ever saw the Sun without becoming Sun-like … You must become first all godlike (theoeidês) and all beautiful if you intend to see God and beauty. First the soul will come in its ascent to intellect (anabainôn epi ton noun) and there will know the Forms, all beautiful, and will affirm that these, the Ideas, are beauty; for all things are beautiful by these, by the products of intellect and essence (panta gar tautais kala, tois nou gennêmasi kai ousias: Enn.I.6.9, 30ff). The Egyptian term nefer signifies both ‘beauty’ and ‘goodness’, and also means happiness, joy, and other related ideas, especially those of the divine realm. The hieroglyph nefer is a composite of the heart and trachea, and in fact belongs to the same type as the ‘union’ (sema) hieroglyph. All gods (neteru) irradiate beauty and their statues are beautiful (nefer) and alive (ankh). The apperance both of the cult statue and of the transformed inner body (thought of as a statue-hieroglyph, like the Hindu asana) of the initiate is called ‘lifting up the beauty’ which represents the golden splendour (meskhau). As the cult image (sekhem, tut) is united (sema) with the descending ba of the noetic Sun, so the ascending human ba, already purified and made beautiful, seeks to unite with its divine archetype, the perfect and beautiful disk (or sphere, aten) of Ra. I draw the following conclusion. Though the Neoplatonic telestikê cannot be reconstructed in detail, the principles that grounded its existence and theurgic efficacy may be roughly identified by investigating the cultic metaphysics and cosmogonical patterns of ancient civilizations as well as the Platonic tradition itself. Most striking is the realization that along with the external cultic dimension of animated images and statues

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there is an inner esoteric dimension that is concerned with the spiritual drômena, the completion (teletê in its etymological sense) of the intelligible statue. In this final stage of solar knowledge (gnôsis) a seer (epoptês) becomes ‘blessed’ (makarios); he is reborn as the luminous and intelligent spirit (akh), now entering the divine body (sah) of light attached to the Sun barque. Thus the soul becomes Ra. This is the theurgic apathanatismos, immortalization through the noetic life (the breath of Shu) and union (sema) with the divine.


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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

References to Eunapius come from Wright (1921). In Nock and Festugiere (1945–54). All references to the Pyramid Texts are from Faulkner (1969). Lorton (1999), pp. 185–6. Ibid., p. 184. Assmann (2002), p. 353. In Assmann (2001). Alliot (1949), p. 306. Naydler (1996), p. 93. Alliot, op.cit., p. 334. Lorton, op.cit., p. 197. See: Baly (1930), pp. 173–86. Fowden (1982), p. 47. Translated by Majercik (1989). Hurowitz (2003), p. 151. Ibid., p. 152. Translated by Dick and Walker (2001). All references to the Book of the Dead come from Faulkner (2001). Roberts (2000), p. 172. Dodds (1984), p. 294.

Bibliography Alliot, M., 1949, Le Culte d’Horus a Edfou au temps des Ptolemees, Bibliotheque d’Etude 20/1, vol. 1, Cairo. Assmann, J., 2001, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, Ithaca and London. Assmann, J., 2002, The Mind of Egypt. History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, New York. Baly, T. J. C., 1930, ‘Notes on the Ritual of Opening the Mouth’, The Journal of Egyptian Archeology XVI, London, pp. 173–86. Cornford, F. M., 1997, Plato’s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato, Indianapolis. Damascius, 1959, Lectures on the Philebus Wrongly Attributed to Olympiodorus, L. G. Westerink (ed.), Amsterdam. Dick, M. B., and Walker, C., 2001, The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamian Mis Pi Ritual, Winona Lake. Diodorus, 1933–67, Library of History, C. H. Oldfather et al (trans.), 12 vols, Cambridge MA. Dodds, E. R., 1984, The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley. Eunapius, 1921, The Lives of the Sophists, W. C. Wright (ed. and trans.), Cambridge MA. Faulkner, R. O. (trans.), 1969, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Warminster. Faulkner, R. O. (trans.), 2001, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Austin. Fowden, G., 1982, ‘The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 102, pp. 33–59. Hurowitz, V. A., 2003, ‘The Mesopotamian God Image, From Womb to Tomb’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 123, 1. p. 147–57.

140 Algis Uzdavinys Iamblichus, 1989, Les Mystères d’ Égypte, É. des Places (ed. and trans.), Paris. Julian, 1913–23, The Works of the Emperor Julian, W. C. Wright (trans.), vols I–III, London and Cambridge MA. Lorton, D., 1999, ‘The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt’, in M. B. Dick (ed.), Born in Heaven, Made on Earth. The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East, Winona Lake, pp. 123–210. Majercik, R. (trans.), 1989, The Chaldaean Oracles, Leiden. Naydler, J., 1996, Temple of the Cosmos. The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred, Rochester. Nock, A. D. (ed.) and Festugiere, A. J. (ed. and trans.), 1945–54, Corpus Hermeticum I–IV, Paris. Plato, 1914, Plato Vol. I, H. N. Fowler (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plato, 1926, Laws, R. G. Bury (trans.), London. Plotinus, 1966–88, Plotinus, A. H. Armstrong (trans.), 7 vols, Cambridge MA. Proclus, 1903–06, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, E. Diehl (ed.), Leipzig. Proclus, 1968–97,Théologie platonicienne, H. D. Saffrey and L. G.Westerink (eds. and trans.), vols 1–6, Paris. Roberts, A., 2000, My Heart My Mother. Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt, Trowbridge.

Part III Art and Poetry


8 Platonists and the Teaching of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity Malcom Heath

A significant contribution to the teaching of rhetoric and the development of technical aspects of rhetorical theory in late antiquity was made by rhetoricians with a Platonist philosophical commitment. This chapter surveys the phenomenon, considering the relationship between rhetoric as taught by philosophers and by rhetoricians with no known philosophical allegiance, and the practical and ideological reasons for philosophers’ engagement with rhetoric.1 Prosopography rapidly takes us from familiar to unfamiliar names; but even well-known individuals do not always appear in familiar roles. Perhaps the most obvious example is Cassius Longinus, a polymath who taught rhetoric and literary scholarship as well as philosophy in Athens in the middle of the third century AD. An epitome of his Art of Rhetoric survives, along with a lengthy extract; we also have fragments from some other relevant works.2 His best-known and most admired work is the treatise On Sublimity – if that is, in fact, his. The traditional attribution has generally been discounted since the early nineteenth century. But the objections to a third-century date do not stand up to careful scrutiny, and the fragments display sufficiently distinctive connections with the critical interests and vocabulary of On Sublimity to make the attribution to Longinus plausible.3 Much of our knowledge of Longinus’ teaching comes from his most famous pupil, Porphyry. He, too, was a wide-ranging polymath: Eunapius pays tribute to his contributions to rhetoric and literary studies as well as to philosophy (Lives of the Sophists 455f.). This assessment hardly corresponds to modern perceptions. The Homeric Questions, if not as intensively studied as they deserve, are reasonably well-known, but the fragments of Porphyry’s writings on rhetoric, some of them very substantial, have been largely ignored. That is not entirely surprising; 143

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the fragments, most of which have to be retrieved from the scholia to Hermogenes, are often forbiddingly technical discussions of details of a complex and unfamiliar system of theory. Even now that they have been collected, translated and commented on, these fragments are unlikely to reach the top of many reading lists.4 Porphyry, though not conspicuous in modern eyes as a rhetorician, is at least well-known as a philosopher. Metrophanes of Eucarpia is barely known as a rhetorician and virtually invisible as a philosopher. His entry in the Suda (M1009) describes him as a sophist and gives him a bibliography that is predominantly rhetorical in nature, and that certainly contains nothing distinctively philosophical. The extant fragments of his writings on rhetoric likewise contain nothing indicative of any philosophical inclination. But Syrianus, in his Commentary on Hermogenes’ On Issues describes him as a Platonist (Stas. 55.5 Rabe); and since the distinction between philosophical and other rhetoricians was, as we shall see, ideologically important to Syrianus, we may presume that he or his source had some basis for this description, even if it is hidden from us. Another Suda entry describes Tiberius as a philosopher and sophist (Suda T550); again, nothing in his wide-ranging, but exclusively rhetorical, bibliography or in his fragments would lead us to identify him as a philosopher. A rhetor and philosopher named Harpocration is recorded in a third-century Athenian funerary inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae II2 10826).5 Several sophists named Harpocration are recorded in the Suda, and we have fragments of rhetorical works by more than one Harpocration. But the prosopographical problems are insoluble: we have no way of assigning the fragments to individual sophists, and no way of guessing whether any of them was the philosophically inclined rhetor attested in the inscription.6 These examples prove two things. First, in this period ‘rhetor’ and (in one of its many uses) ‘sophist’ could designate any teacher of rhetoric; ‘sophist’ is not necessarily used in contrast with ‘philosopher’.7 Secondly, the impossibility of diagnosing philosophical allegiance from rhetorical fragments suggests that rhetoric as taught by philosophers was not sharply differentiated from non-philosophical rhetoric. In view of the former point, the fact that the Syrianus who wrote commentaries on Hermogenes’ On Issues and On Types of Style is described in manuscript superscriptions as a sophist is consistent with his being the fifth-century scholarch. This identification has been questioned, but there is good reason to make the connection. The commentator identifies himself strongly with a Platonist philosophical tradition. He refers respectfully to Iamblichus (ὁ θεῖος, Id. 9.10–18; cf. 22.4f);8 he draws

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heavily on Aquila and Evagoras, ‘who combined the understanding derived from philosophy with the art of the rhetoricians’ (Stas. 35.2–4; cf. 55.6, ‘the philosophers’); Aquila, his direct source, was probably the Aquila who wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories around the beginning of the fourth century.9 There is also an intriguing lexical detail: in explaining Hermogenes’ use of στομφάζειν (247.13 Rabe) Syrianus makes reference to στομφώδης (Id. 39.11–15). The words στόμφος and στομφώδης are not common in rhetorical criticism: but Longinus used them (in On Sublimity, but also in fragments less controversial in their attribution), and so did Proclus, Hermias and Lachares, all pupils of Syrianus. It is a reasonable inference that Syrianus mediated knowledge of Longinus to his pupils.10 Syrianus’ emphatic identification with a tradition of philosophical rhetoric shows that it was possible to see a more significant difference between philosophical and non-philosophical rhetoric than was apparent from the fragmentary authors mentioned earlier. He reports that commentaries on Hermogenes’ On Issues had been written by both sophists and philosophers (Stas. 1.6f., 15.3; Id. 1.7–9), and singles out certain philosophers as sophists (Id. 57.6f., on Basilicus). Other evidence confirms that the broad usage of ‘sophist’ co-existed with this narrower, contrastive use of ‘sophist’, which did mark a distinction between philosophers who taught rhetoric and other rhetoricians. Two texts, which in view of their frequent and respectful references to Plato are likely to be the work of philosophically inclined rhetoricians, refer to ‘sophists’ in distancing terms. One is an essay on declamation falsely attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but probably dating to the early second century.11 The author’s criticism of certain kinds of argument customarily used in declamations by sophists culminates in the recommendation that they should be avoided by anyone who intends to engage in ‘genuine’ rhetoric (371.22–5 Usener-Radermacher). The treatise on epideictic falsely attributed to Menander distinguishes epideictic proper from the ‘displays’ (ἐπιδείξεις) of the ‘so-called sophists’: ‘we call that practice for contests, not display’ (331.16f.).12 By contrast, the second of the two Menandrian treatises (which I think is genuinely his) is explicitly concerned with what is useful for a sophist (338.17f.). The author of the On Invention falsely attributed to Hermogenes,13 lists the six elements of circumstance (who? what? when? where? how? and why?) standardly recognized in rhetorical theory, and notes that the philosophers add a seventh (‘material’, ὕλη) which rhetoricians do not treat separately (140.19f. Rabe). Since there are rhetorical texts which do recognize the seventh circumstance,14 the author is

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not contrasting philosophical doctrine with rhetorical doctrine, but the rhetorical doctrine of philosophers with that of non-philosophical rhetoricians.15 This evidence shows that, while it was possible to extend the reference of ‘rhetor’ and ‘sophist’ so as to include philosophers who taught rhetoric, there was also – and on both sides – a sense of a distinction between philosophical and sophistic rhetoricians. The two terms could, accordingly, also be used in a restricted sense so as to highlight a contrast between philosophical and sophistic teachers of rhetoric. Yet the differences we have seen so far do not appear very radical. Whether there are six or seven elements of circumstance is a minutely technical point, far less significant than some of the disagreements which provoked polemical exchanges between sophists; it is not evidence of deep doctrinal divergence. Pseudo-Menander does not reject the practice of declamation; he simply says that it should not be called epideixis—and even his criticism of sophistic terminology is limited in scope, since his preferred term (‘exercise’, μελέτη) was in common use by sophistic rhetoricians. When pseudo-Dionysius criticizes the sophists, he is in fact teaching his students declamation: the context concerns a technical disagreement about which kinds of argument can properly be used in conjectural cases (cases in which the point at issue is one of fact: did the accused do what is alleged or not?). Porphyry’s fragments give the same impression: the more extensive ones show that he was exploring technical details of rhetorical theory in a way that is indistinguishable from what we find in works by rhetoricians who have no identifiable philosophical connection. It is precisely because of this substantial commonality in technical doctrine that philosophical allegiance cannot be inferred reliably from fragments of technical rhetoric. It could be argued that there is a deeper methodological difference between Menander and pseudo-Menander in their treatment of epideictic which may reflect the latter’s Platonism.16 Both are concerned with the ‘division’ of epideictic themes, but in different senses. Menander is interested in the division of a text into a linear sequence of headings: the first topic to be treated, the second, and so forth. This usage corresponds to the sense which division has in the theory of issues (stasistheory). That branch of rhetorical theory is concerned with classifying the different kinds of dispute and developing a default strategy for handling the argument in each kind. The default strategy is formulated as an ordered sequence of heads of arguments: in technical language, the issue is divided into its heads of argument.17 Menander was an expert on issue-theory: he wrote a commentary on Hermogenes’ On Issues. Also,


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and more importantly, he wrote a commentary on Demosthenes, from which we have numerous fragments. This was, in fact, his most famous and influential work in antiquity, and I believe that we can recover a lot of Menander’s commentary from the Demosthenes scholia.18 But the named fragments are enough to show that the main feature of his work was the application of division in its issue-theoretical sense to Demosthenes: he analysed the speeches in minute detail as a linear series of heads of argument (and other structural units at higher and lower levels of analysis). Menander’s approach to division, in his Demosthenes commentary and in his work on epideictic, is therefore linear or syntagmatic. By contrast, pseudo-Menander’s approach is predominantly vertical or paradigmatic. He divides each single topic into a range of possibilities out of which the speaker may select one or more, as appropriate. For example, in praising a city one topic is the date of its foundation: and that is divided into three periods—the oldest, middle, and most recent (353.3–8, 354.22-355.2). It might be conjectured that there is a connection between this approach to division and pseudo-Menander’s Platonism. But the difference should not be over-emphasized. Division on the vertical axis is not entirely absent from Menander. Conversely, even though pseudo-Menander does not emphasize linear divisions programmatically, he is aware that the heads, topics, and divisions of topics of a speech are expressed in a linear sequence of sections. If this contrast suggests a difference, it is again a difference in emphasis or detail rather than a fundamental doctrinal or methodological divide. Porphyry’s work on rhetoric was probably distinctive at the time of writing in one respect: his use of a commentary format. The writing of commentaries was, of course, commonplace: philosophers wrote commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, literary scholars on Homer and other classical texts, rhetoricians on the orators. Galen on Hippocrates provides an example of a commentary on a technical classic; Longinus’ commentary on Hephaestion’s metrical handbook is a precedent for a commentary on a recent technical work. But Porphyry was, so far as we can tell, the first person to have written a commentary on a technical work of rhetorical theory. More specifically, his commentary was on a treatise on the theory of issues. The extant treatise on this subject is by Hermogenes (in the late second or early third century); Porphyry’s commentary was on a similar treatise by Minucianus, an older contemporary of Hermogenes and the implicit target of some of his polemic. Some scholars have seen this choice of text as significant, inferring an ideological difference between the supposedly philosophical Minucianus and the sophistic Hermogenes; but neither the fragments of

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Minucianus, nor the fragments of Porphyry’s commentary, offer any support for this idea.19 Moreover, we know of another commentary on Minucianus by a sophist, Pancratius (probably the father of Prohaeresius, the sophist who taught Eunapius). Conversely, there was a commentary on Hermogenes by the Platonist Metrophanes, as well as one by the sophist Menander. The choice of base-text therefore does not correlate with philosophical commitment, and there is no evidence that the philosophers contributed distinctively to the technical content of the commentaries. It is probable that philosophical rhetoricians introduced the commentary format: chronological considerations suggest that Porphyry must have preceded Pancratius; and Metrophanes was criticized by Menander. But it is clear that the innovation was quickly taken up by sophists. It became commonplace: the list of subsequent commentators on Hermogenes is extensive.20 Commentary on a standard teaching text provides specialists with an excellent vehicle for exploring (and debating) technical doctrine in depth and detail. So it is not surprising that an innovation in the form of rhetorical technography should have disseminated rapidly from philosophers to sophists. In a culture in which philosophy was part of general advanced education, many rhetoricians who were not professional philosophers would in any case have had some philosophical training, and been familiar with both the formats and the language of philosophical writing. It follows that the appearance of philosophical terms or motifs in a text on rhetoric is not enough to show that the author was a philosopher: self-conscious positioning or a systematic use of philosophical material is needed. Conversely, one would expect philosophers to have studied rhetoric in the course of their schooling, given the place of rhetoric in ancient education.21 So the high degree of commonality in rhetorical doctrine should not surprise us, either. But that does not explain why some philosophers continued their engagement with rhetoric beyond their adolescent schooling, and why they taught the subject. There is unlikely to be a single answer to that question. Longinus had broad academic interests, and maintained them throughout his career. He was sufficiently eminent to have been free to concentrate his efforts on philosophy alone had he so wished; he chose not to. The inference that he was interested in rhetoric as such is supported by the evidence that, unlike some other Platonists (including his own teacher Origen), Longinus believed that Plato deliberately cultivated an artificially pleasurable and elegant style.22 But for many Platonists, teaching rhetoric was a second-best. Financial constraints prevented Serapion,


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an Alexandrian rhetorician who studied with Plotinus, from giving up rhetoric entirely (Porphyry Life of Plotinus 7). When Eunapius returned home to Sardis after studying rhetoric with Prohaeresius in Athens, he taught rhetoric in the morning and studied philosophy in the afternoon (Lives of the Sophists 502f.). Perhaps it was common practice to spend part of one’s career teaching rhetoric to finance advanced study in philosophy, or to support oneself while waiting for an opening as a teacher of philosophy.23 Such a pattern would provide a context for Syrianus’ commentaries on Hermogenes. To judge from his usually mechanical, and sometimes inept, treatment of illustrative examples, it was not natural talent that drew him to teaching rhetoric;24 financial considerations may have been relevant. If teaching rhetoric is an interim stage, a second-best stopgap in your career as a philosopher, then self-esteem would provide a motive for magnifying the differences between philosophical and sophistic rhetoric. Emphasizing the merits of philosophical rhetoric might also be a useful aid to recruitment. A philosopher who wishes to persuade students to study rhetoric with him, rather than with one of the sophists who might otherwise seem to have a better claim to relevant expertise, must promote some feature of his brand of rhetorical teaching as distinctive and valuable. Moreover, Plato’s apparently critical stance confronted anyone taking an active interest in rhetoric within the Platonist tradition with a need for legitimation, which the distinction between philosophical and sophistic rhetoric might help to meet. When Syrianus picks out certain individuals as Platonists, favouring philosophers over sophists, the difference on which he lays most emphasis is that philosophical rhetoricians produce better definitions of technical terms. Syrianus does not think that all philosophical rhetoricians are good at defining technical terms: he is critical of Metrophanes’ definitions (61.19–23), and his real heroes are Evagoras and Aquila (56.16–24, 128.20–129.3). The pattern of citations suggests that Aquila was the intermediary from whom Syrianus derived both his positive opinion of Evagoras’ teaching and his negative opinion of Metrophanes’ definitions. Precision in defining technical terms is not, perhaps, a convincing guarantee of rhetorical talent; but it does lend credence to a claim to understand the subject scientifically (ἐπιστημονικώτατα 56.22). That claim is manifest in other evidence for Evagoras’ teaching. The material which Aquila transmitted to Syrianus includes an anecdote about a sophist who, dismissing issue-theory as ‘drivel’ (φλυαρία), rejected rhetorical theory and relied on unstructured improvisation to produce facility in his students (3.23–4.19). Another source reveals that

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this sophist was called Phrynichus (PS 346.13–347.12 Rabe). Evagoras objected that in making practice the exclusive basis for rhetoric Phrynichus was denying that rhetoric involves scientific knowledge (ἐπιστήμη). Evagoras’ defence of scientific rhetoric against Phrynichus’ antitheoretical stance appealed to the authority of Plato. Plato says that ‘it is the rhetor’s function to speak the truth’ (Apology 18a); that ‘someone who is going to be a rhetor in the right way must be just, and be knowledgeable (ἐπιστήμων) of what is just’ (Gorgias 508c); and that ‘if you have a natural capacity to be a rhetor, you will become a distinguished rhetor if you also acquire knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and practice’ (Phaedrus 269d). In another fragment (PS 196.22-197.11, cf. 322.19-323.4) Evagoras differentiates five kinds of rhetoric, one of them a science of speaking well that is a companion (σύνδρομος) of philosophy. Evagoras’ appeal to Plato makes it easier to understand why some philosophers thought it intellectually respectable, as well as financially necessary, to take an active interest in rhetoric. But it may still be felt that the need for legitimation should have left a deeper mark on the content of rhetorical teaching than the narrowly technical ones mentioned so far. Ethics may provide a more significant contrast. The moral superiority of philosophers over rhetoricians is sharply formulated by David (Prol. 40.33–41.10): rhetoric is concerned with ‘political’ justice, but does not understand the true nature of justice – that is the preserve of philosophers; consequently, rhetoricians prefer acting unjustly to suffering unjust treatment. Professional rhetoricians would not have disputed the first part of David’s claim. It was commonplace that rhetoric addresses ‘political questions’, defined as ‘a rational dispute on a particular matter, based on the established laws or customs of any given people, concerned with what is considered just, honourable, advantageous, or all or some of these things together’; hence ‘it is not the function of rhetoric to investigate what is really and universally just, honourable, etc’ (Hermogenes Stas. 28.15–29.6). What of David’s inference that rhetoricians act unjustly? Speakers want to win cases, and use rhetoric to that end. The author of probably the earliest extant rhetorical handbook explains without embarrassment how to secure false testimony while shielding the witness from prosecution (Rhetoric to Alexander 1432a3–10). Pliny ruefully acknowledges that forensic advocacy teaches sharp practice (Ep 2.3.5f.). Castricius, a teacher of rhetoric, cheerfully allows advocates the right to be dishonest, devious and sophistical, provided that what is said appears plausible and has the desired effect on those one is trying to influence (Aulus Gellius 1.6.4). Quintilian is more tortuous and discreet in recommending underhand tactics; but he still does so (2.17.26–9;


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4.5.5; 6.4.14; 12.1.33–45). Philosophical rhetoricians might be expected to set higher standards.25 The scholia to Demosthenes provide an opportunity to test this prediction by direct comparison. If my analysis is correct,26 Menander’s commentary is by a large margin the most important source. But it is also possible to distinguish at least two other late ancient commentaries in the tradition; neither is as well-represented as Menander, but there is enough to reveal some of their characteristics. Menander’s commentary clearly originated as lectures to advanced students, and was practical in its orientation. He constantly draws attention to features of Demosthenes’ rhetorical technique, with the intention that his students imitate them. His recommendations are not unduly burdened with ethical scruples. When he identifies ‘sophistries’ in Demosthenes (as he often does) he is not expressing disapproval; he is willing to combine notice of a sophism with enthusiastic admiration of the technique (e.g. sch. Dem. 24.112 (223)). At one point he conjectures that Demosthenes has bribed witnesses to give false evidence; he maintains a neutral tone, merely commenting on the precautions taken to deflect suspicion (21.107 (378ab)). It is perhaps not surprising that Menander makes no reference to the widespread tradition that Demosthenes was a pupil of Plato.27 Nor is there any suggestion that Demosthenes was under Plato’s ideological influence; indeed, one passage implies an ideological opposition between Plato and Demosthenes (20.105 (241), 110 (258)). Menander merely acknowledges Platonic influence on Demosthenes’ literary technique (19.2 (13c), 42 (112)).28 By contrast, another of the commentaries represented in the scholia does accept the story that Demosthenes was Plato’s pupil (22.40 (114c); cf. 19.70 (170b), 24.121 (238)); admiring observations of Demosthenic sleightof-hand are unsurprisingly absent from its (admittedly sparse) remains. This Platonizing commentary was probably the work of Zosimus, a late fifth-century rhetorician.29 It is not certain that the Zosimus who commentated on Demosthenes is the Zosimus, pupil of Theon, who edited the rhetorician Athanasius of Alexandria’s prolegomena to Hermogenes (PS 171.3f. Rabe) But the identification is tempting. I believe (contrary to recent consensus) that Theon’s Progymnasmata dates to the fifth century.30 Since its author, an Alexandrian sophist Aelius Theon (Suda 206), is sometimes referred to as ‘Theon the Platonist’ (RG 2.513.25f. Walz; John of Sardis 218.3 Rabe), a connection between this Theon and a commentator who emphasises Demosthenes’ connections with Plato makes sense.31 It is, moreover, likely that this Theon is the sophist with whom Damascius studied in Alexandria in the 480s

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(Suda 209 Damascius F49 Athanassiadi). Damascius himself went on to teach rhetoric for a number of years, though he displays extreme distaste for this activity (F137b). Another fifth-century Progymnasmata, by Nicolaus, shows signs of responding to Theon (or to views which Theon accepted). Nicolaus had studied philosophy in Athens under Plutarch and Proclus (Suda N394–395);32 he was also a pupil of the sophist Lachares (Suda Λ165),33 a close associate of Syrianus, the philosopher who wrote commentaries on Hermogenes. Clearly, the connection between philosophy and the teaching of rhetoric was still flourishing in the fifth century.34 The rhetoric taught by ethically fastidious philosophers would, of course, not be the merely flattering ‘empirical’ rhetoric condemned in Plato’s Gorgias. But it does not follow that they were compelled to make the (perhaps implausibly ambitious) claim to be teaching an ideal scientific rhetoric. Socrates’ statement that Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades and Themistocles practised neither true nor flattering oratory (Gorg. 517a) could be understood as assigning them to an intermediate kind. Hermias explains that, between the true oratory of the philosopher who turns his attention to civic affairs, and the populist (δημώδης) oratory of someone who merely indulges the citizens’ whims, there is the orator who, though lacking philosophical understanding, pursues what he believes is good for the city – for example, Themistocles and Pericles (on Phaedr. 260d, 221.7–24 Couvreur; cf. 242.9–15). Hermias mentions Pericles, pupil of Anaxagoras, and Demosthenes, pupil of Plato, to show that there cannot be genuinely good oratory without a philosophical foundation (on Phaedr. 261a, 223.21–6; cf. 244.2–12, on 269e–70a: cf. n.27). This intermediate rhetoric, then, is not the truly scientific rhetoric of the philosopher, but does depend on philosophy. The distinction between true, false and intermediate rhetorics is invoked in several prolegomena to rhetoric,35 but raises an obvious question: why should we have anything to do with a rhetoric that is not simply truthful? One anonymous text (PS 326.1–24 Rabe) notes that it is not enough to say, with Aristotle (Rhet. 1.1, 1355a29–b7), that we need to know how to counter falsehood: orators actively exploit falsehood.36 The real solution is that it is right to use falsehood in appropriate circumstances, as Plato himself testifies. The reference is to Republic 1, 331c, a passage cited by David (Prol. 56.28–57.1) and Elias (In Isagog. 26.20–28) to show that the goals of theoretical philosophy (truth) and practical philosophy (goodness) are not identical. Troilus (PS 56.24–57.7) likewise invokes the three kinds of rhetoric and the principle that falsehood is sometimes appropriate (‘broadly speaking, it is impossible to find a city well-governed without falsehood’) to show that Plato’s disparagement


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(55.12) does not apply to ‘our’ rhetoric. Synesius describes Troilus as a philosopher,37 although his pointed rejection of Plato’s critique of rhetoric (44.7f. παρὰ τὸ προσῆκον μεμφόμενοι) raises doubts about the strength of his allegiance. Elsewhere, the same arguments appear in contexts that are unambiguously unsympathetic to Plato. Another anonymous text uses them to show that Plato’s disparaging definition of rhetoric would be irrelevant to ‘our’ rhetoric, even if its truth were conceded (PS 342.26– 343.8). But that concession is withheld: Plato’s denigration was malicious, motivated by a need to defend his own business against the rise of rhetoric; alternatively, he was arguing the weaker case as an exercise – that is, he was engaging in rhetoric himself, as he does throughout his works (342.16–26). Marcellinus appeals to the three kinds of oratory, Aristotle’s solution to the problem posed by a rhetoric that is only partially truthful, and Plato’s support for the ‘good lie’, in the context of an elaborate reply to Plato’s critique (PS 281.9–283.12). Since he claims that Plato’s ‘contentious rather than truthful’ definition (281.10), and his ‘exaggerated abuse’ (295.7f.), were motivated by jealousy at Gorgias’ success (273.16–18), we may assume that Marcellinus was not a committed Platonist.38 The ‘good lie’ argument is, in fact, an old one: it was available to Quintilian, who noted that even the sternest Stoics concede that the good man will lie (2.17.27, 12.1.36 SVF 555; cf. SVF 554; Epictetus Diss. 4.6.33). Professional rhetoricians could claim, therefore, that philosophical defences of the intermediate rhetoric granted everything they needed to legitimate their own brand of rhetoric. That, perhaps, is why Olympiodorus felt it necessary to take a harder line. Near the beginning of his commentary on the Gorgias (1.13) he distinguishes only two kinds of rhetoric: the true, scientific kind which is subordinate to the statesman, and the false, empirical kind which aims at pleasure. This scheme is then elaborated. Each of the five kinds of constitution discussed in Republic 8–9 has its own rhetoric.39 True rhetoric belongs to aristocracy; the other constitutions (falsely so-called) sustain different varieties of false rhetoric.40 These are not all equally bad: orators such as Demosthenes, Pericles and Themistocles refrained from flattering the people, loved honour, and sought the city’s well-being. Nevertheless, when Olympiodorus allocates these orators to the intermediate kind of rhetoric, he still assesses them harshly (32.2–5). Their rhetoric repudiated flattery, but was not guided by truth and achieved nothing worthwhile: witness the failure of Demosthenes and the Four to transform democracy into aristocracy. Complicity with a corrupt constitution is unacceptable. If you do not live under, and cannot bring about, aristocracy, the only legitimate option is withdrawal from public life.41

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Notes 1. This chapter supplements the investigation of late ancient rhetoric in Heath (2004), and the detailed supporting studies. The completion of that project was made possible by a British Academy Research Readership; I am pleased to record once more my gratitude for that support. Earlier discussions of the topic include Kustas (1973); Kennedy (1980 and 1983). 2. Longinus’ fragments are collected in Patillon and Brisson (2001); some addenda in Heath (2002a). 3. Heath (1999a); Heath (2004), pp. 62–7. 4. Text and translation: Heath (2002b); introduction and commentary: Heath (2003a). Smith (1987), surveying Porphyrian studies since 1913, illustrates the absence of rhetoric from modern perception of his work; Smith’s collection of Porphyry’s fragments (1993) lists exclusions (viii), but does not draw attention to the omission of most (and the most substantial) of the rhetorical fragments. 5. Puech (2002), p. 288. 6. Metrophanes, Tiberius, Harpocration: Heath (2004), pp. 73–7 summarizes the evidence, with further bibliography. 7. Philosophers and sophists: Heath (2004), pp. 73–83. 8. Iamblichus is cited eight times in Syrianus’ Metaphysics commentary, three times with the epithet θεῖος. 9. Pernot (1989); Schenkeveld (1991). Strictly speaking, only the first part of Syrianus’ ‘commentary’ on On Issues is an exposition of Hermogenes’ text. Syrianus declines to follow Hermogenes beyond the introduction to the general theory of issues, because his definitions of the issues are defective (Stas. 56.16–24); the detailed divisions of each issue, derived from Evagoras and Aquila, often differ significantly from those in Hermogenes. 10. The lexical argument (Heath 1999a, pp. 64–6 gives detailed references) is indicative, not conclusive. Longinus’ works were well-known in the fourth century (Eunapius Lives of the Sophists 456), and Gregory of Nyssa uses στομφώδης in a context which proves his familiarity with Longinus’ critical writing (Heath 1999b); so we are not compelled to assume that Proclus, Hermias and Lachares were dependent on Syrianus in this regard. 11. Heath (2003c). 12. Against the attribution of this treatise (Treatise I) to Menander, see Pernot 1986. Heath (2004), pp.129–31 considers the possibility that it is the work on epideictic which the Suda (T550) ascribes to the philosopher and sophist Tiberius; but the chapters of epideictic in pseudo-Dionysius (which cannot be from the same source as the pseudo-Dionysian essay on declamation just mentioned) also display Platonizing tendencies, and it is impossible to decide whether Tiberius is to be credited with pseudo-Menander or pseudoDionysius or some other text no longer extant. 13. Some sources attribute it to Apsines – perhaps correctly: there is internal evidence that Apsines was not the author of the treatise transmitted under his name: Heath (1998b). 14. Including Porphyry: RG 7.921.2–4 Walz. Further references: Heath (2003a), p. 157f.


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15. By contrast, when an anonymous introduction to Hermogenes On Issues (PS 206.13–16 Rabe) contrasts rhetoricians and philosophers with regard to division into heads, this does not mean that philosophical rhetoricians do not practise division in the technical sense which those terms have in issue-theory (see text at n.17); a glance at the fragments of Porphyry or Metrophanes would be enough to refute such a claim. The point is that division into heads in the rhetorical sense is not part of the methodology of philosophical argumentation. 16. Methodological comparison: Pernot (1986); Heath (2004), pp. 127–9. 17. Heath (1995); Heath (2004), pp. 4–23. Heath (2007) reports on a practical experiment in teaching the theory to modern students, outlining the theory with an illustrative application to a worked example; it concludes with a brief discussion of the rationality of rhetorical argument. 18. Menander’s named fragments are collected, with translation and commentary, in Heath (2004), pp. 93–124. On the recovery of the Demosthenes commentary see n.26. 19. Minucianus: Heath (2004), pp. 32–6. Heath (1996) argues against the undeservedly influential speculations of Schissel (1926/7); the suggestion that Athenian Platonists favoured Minucianus over Hermogenes is found already in Keil (1907), p. 203. 20. Heath (2004), pp. 69–73, 118–20, 274–6; Heath (2003a); Heath (2003d). 21. When explaining Plato’s view of mathematics as a preparatory study (προγύμνασμα) for philosophy, David compares grammar and rhetoric (Prol. 57.18f.). 22. Heath (1999a), pp. 60–3; cf. n.28. 23. Westerink (1964). 24. Heath (1995), p. 181. 25. Another reason for philosophers to teach rhetoric, perhaps: if rhetoric is taught, it is better for it to be taught by morally upright philosophers than by unscrupulous professional rhetoricians. (Consider the moralizing slant which Syrianus gave to material adapted from Philostratus’ biography of Hermogenes: Heath 1998a). Moreover, if students are brought under philosophical influence at an early stage in their studies, it might subsequently prove easier to win them over to philosophy and its values. 26. Source-critical analysis of the Demosthenes scholia: Heath (2004), pp. 132–83. On the nature of Menander’s commentary: Heath (2004), pp. 184–213. 27. This story, backed by the admiration for Plato expressed in [Dem.] Ep. 5, was recruited in hellenistic debate to support the claim that good oratory needs a philosophical foundation (Cic. Orator 15f.; Brutus 121; de Or. 1.88f.; cf. Quint. 12.2.22; Tac. Dial. 32.5f.). But the story was not always used to suggest rhetoric’s harmonious subordination to philosophy. It is first attested in Hermippus (third century BC), citing anonymous ὑπομνήματα as his source (FGrH 1026F49 Plut. Dem. 5.7); since Hermippus also recorded that Demosthenes abandoned philosophy for public speaking (FGrH 1026F50 Aulus Gellius 3.13), he is unlikely to have been praising Demosthenes’ philosophical credentials. The story was not universally accepted: [Plut.] Lives of the Ten Orators 844bc reports it as what ‘some’ say. 28. Stylistic influence is sometimes, but not always, taken as evidence that Demosthenes was Plato’s pupil: contrast Quint. 12.10.24 with [Hermogenes]

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29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

Meth. 20 (both on the Marathon oath). In one unfavourable version of the tradition, Plato rejected Demosthenes as a pupil on discovering that he was interested only in style, not in content: anon. in Arist. Rhet. 1403b36 (CAG 21.2, 160.26–32); a scholion on Galen (published in Kalbfleisch 1944) adds that Demosthenes continued to eavesdrop on Plato after his expulsion. The fact that stylistic imitation of Plato could be turned to Demosthenes’ discredit presumably reflects the dispute among Platonists as to whether the undoubted excellence of Plato’s style was the product of deliberate contrivance: some thought that such things were not worthy of a philosopher’s attention (n.22). Heath (2004), pp. 158–60. Zosimus’ life of Demosthenes presents him as a devoted pupil of Plato (298.39f. Westermann). Heath (2003b). For the prosopographical nexus sketched in this paragraph see also Heath (2004), pp. 295–9; Heath (2003d). The opening of Theon’s Progymnasmata shows some signs of philosophical inclination; but a comparison with Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ introduction On the Ancient Orators suggests that this should not be over-emphasized. Felten (1913), xxi–xxvii. Graeven (1895); Radermacher (1921); Puech (2005). In the sixth century, Simplicius also had a reputation as both philosopher and rhetor: Hadot (1990), pp. 297–301. Prolegomena: Rabe (1931); Plezia (1949); Mansfeld (1994); Heath (2003a), pp. 149–51. This author mentions, but does not endorse, the opinion of ‘some’ that Demosthenes and others practised the rhetoric that is a counterpart to dialectic (cf. Aristotle Rhet. 1.1, 1354a1, 1355a33–6). This position is most fully stated by Athanasius, who distinguishes ideal rhetoric, a counterpart to apodeictic philosophy that aims at truth, from the rhetoric of Demosthenes, which is a counterpart to dialectic and aims at victory (PS 172.8–175.15, 179.25–181.6). Athanasius quotes Aelius Aristides approvingly (174.17–22), and argues that the flattering rhetoric of which Plato makes so much is as irrelevant to the characterization of rhetoric as eristic is to philosophy (174.11–15, 174.22–175.15, 183.1–9). In this context, his description of Aristotle as ‘standing apart from contentious competitiveness’ (174.8f.) is an implicit rebuke to Plato. Plutarch disapproves of philosophers aiming at victory, like advocates in court (Mor. 1036b); Ammonius carefully distinguishes Aristotelian dialectic, aiming at victory, from Socratic dialectic (In de Int. 202.20–25). Rabe (1931), xxxix–xliii. Cameron (1993), pp. 89f. is sceptical, because Troilus is elsewhere described as a sophist and taught rhetoric; we have seen that this is not decisive. Kennedy (1980) identifies Marcellinus as a ‘Neoplatonizing rhetorician’: but evidence of philosophical education does not prove philosophical commitment. Sopater, a fourth-century commentator on Hermogenes, also appears to regard Plato’s disparaging definition as malicious (RG 5.4.31f., 15.12–14, 23.4). O’Meara’s (2003) description of Sopater as ‘showing some sympathy’ with Platonism (p. 209f.) seems groundless, and he misses the complexity of the prosopography of rhetoricians called Sopater: Heath (2003b), pp. 136–9, pp. 153–7; (2003d), pp. 32–4.


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39. O’Meara (2003), pp. 101–5. Cf. Marcellinus PS 275.3–13. 40. At 12.2 Olympiodorus argued that populist rhetoric is not an art because it deceives the jury and distorts the laws (by arguments from letter and intent). Since the intermediate kind has not yet been distinguished, this seems to apply to all non-scientific rhetoric. 41. Olympiodorus does not view Demosthenes positively (41.10): he mentions the pseudonymous letter (n.27) only to rebut Aelius Aristides’ admiration of Demosthenes (Demosthenes’ testimony shows that Plato is more deserving of admiration), and he makes passing reference to Plato’s rejection of the stylistically fixated Demosthenes (n.28).

Bibliography Adler, A. (ed.), 1928–38, Suda Suidae Lexicon, Leipzig. Ammonius, 1897, In Aristotelis de Interpretatione, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin. Aristotle, 1959, Ars Rhetorica, W. D. Ross (ed.), Oxford. Athanassiadi, P., 1999, Damascius. The Philosophical History, Athens. Aulus Gellius, 1968, Noctes Atticae, Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit, P. K. Marshall (ed.), Oxford. Cameron, A., 1993, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius, Berkeley. Cicero, M. Tullius, 1966, Brutus, A. E. Douglas (ed.), Oxford. Cicero, M. Tullius, 1969, De Oratore, K. F. Kumaniecki (ed.), Leipzig. Cicero, M. Tullius, 1980, Orator, R. Westman (ed.), Leipzig. Cornelius Taciti, 1975, Opera Minora, recognoverunt brevique adnotatione critica instruxerunt, M. Winterbottom et R. M. Ogilvie (eds.), Oxford. David, 1904, Prolegomena Philosophiae, A. Busse (eds.), Berlin. Demosthenes, 1921, Demosthenis Orationes, W. Rennie (ed.), Oxford. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 1885–1929, Dionysii Halicarnasei Quae Exstant, H. Usener and L. Radermacher (eds.), Leipzig. Elias, 1900, In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Categorias Commentaria, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin. Epictetus, 1916, Epicteti Dissertationes ab Arriano Digestae, H. Schenkl (ed.), Leipzig. Eunapius, 1956, Eunapii Vitae Sophistarum, J. Giangrande (ed.), Rome. Felten, J., 1913, Nicolai Progymnasmata, Leipzig. Graeven, H., 1895, ‘Ein Fragment des Lachares’, in Hermes 30, pp. 289–313. Hadot, I., 1990, ‘The Life and Work of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic Sources’, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, London, pp. 275–303. Heath, M., 1995, Hermogenes On Issues: Strategies of Argument in Later Greek Rhetoric, Oxford. Heath, M., 1996, ‘The Family of Minucianus?’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 113, pp. 66–70. Heath, M., 1998a, ‘Hermogenes’ Biographers’, Eranos 96, pp. 44–54. Heath, M., 1998b, ‘Apsines and Pseudo-Apsines’, American Journal of Philology 119, pp. 89–111. Heath, M., 1999a, ‘Longinus On Sublimity’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 45, pp. 43–74.

158 Malcom Heath Heath, M., 1999b, ‘Echoes of Longinus in Gregory of Nyssa’, Vigiliae Christianae 53, pp. 395–400. Heath, M., 2002a, Review of Patillon and Brisson 2001, Classical Review 52, pp. 276–8. Heath, M., 2002b, ‘Porphyry’s Rhetoric: Testimonia and Fragments’, Leeds International Classical Studies 1.5, 1–38. Heath, M., 2003a, ‘Porphyry’s Rhetoric’, Classical Quarterly 53, pp. 141–66. Heath, M., 2003b, ‘Theon and the History of the Progymnasmata’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 43, pp. 129–60. Heath, M., 2003c, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius Art of Rhetoric 8–11: Figured Speech, Declamation and Criticism’, American Journal of Philology 124, pp. 81–105. Heath, M., 2003d, ‘Metalepsis, Paragraphe and the Scholia to Hermogenes’, Leeds International Classical Studies 2.2, 1–91. Heath, M., 2004, Menander: A Rhetor in Context, Oxford. Heath, M., 2007, ‘Teaching Rhetorical Argument Today’, in J. G. F. Powell and L. Rubinstein (eds.), Logos: Rational Argument in Classical Rhetoric (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement), pp. 105–22. Hermogenes, 1913, Opera, H.Rabe (ed.), Leipzig. Jackson, R., Lycos, K., and Tarrant, H., 1999, Olympiodorus. Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias, Leiden. Kalbfleisch, K., 1944, ‘Plato und Demosthenes’, Rheinisches Museum 92, pp. 190–1. Keil, B., 1907, ‘Pro Hermogene’, Nachrichten von der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, pp. 176–222. Kennedy, G. A., 1980, ‘Later Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 13, pp. 181–97. Kennedy, G. A., 1983, Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors, Princeton. Kustas, G. L., 1973, Studies in Byzantine Rhetoric, Thessalonica. Longinus, 1964, On the Sublime, edited with introduction and commentary by D. A. Russell, Oxford. Mansfeld, J., 1994, Prolegomena. Questions to be Settled Before the Study of an Author, or a Text, Leiden. Nicolaus, 1913, Nicolai Progymnasmata, J. Felten (ed.), Leipzig. O’Meara, D. J., 2003, Platonopolis. Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity, Oxford. Patillon, M. and Brisson, L., 2001, Longin. Fragments. Art Rhétorique. Rufus. Art Rhétorique, Paris. Pernot, L., 1986, ‘Les topoi de l’éloge chez Ménandros le rhéteur’, Revue des Etudes Grecques 99, pp. 33–53. Pernot, L., 1989, ‘Aquila (Akylas)’, in R. Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques I, Paris, pp. 317–21. Plato, 1900-07, Opera, J. Burnet (ed.), 5 vols, Oxford. Plezia, M., 1949, De Commentariis Isagogicis (Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci, Archiwum filologiczne 23), Kraków. Plutarch, 1971, Plutarchi Moralia, J. Mau (ed.), Leipzig. Porphyry, 1966, Life of Plotinus, in Plotinus, Enneads, A. H. Armstrong (ed.), Cambridge, MA. Pseudo-Aristotle, 2002, Rhétorique à Alexandre, P. Chiron (ed.), Paris. Puech, B., 2002, Orateurs et sophistes grecs dans les inscriptions d’époque impériale, Paris.


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Puech, B., 2005, ‘Lacharès d’Athènes’, in R. Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques IV, Paris, pp. 64–5. Quintilianius, M.Fabius, 1970, Institutionis Oratoriae Libri Duodecim: recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit M. Winterbottom, Oxford. Rabe, H., 1931, Prolegomenon Sylloge, Leipzig. Radermacher, L., 1921, ‘Lachares (4)’, in Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 12, pp. 332–4. Schenkeveld, D.M., 1991, ‘The Philosopher Aquila’, Classical Quarterly 41, pp. 490–5. Schissel, O., 1926/7, ‘Die Familie des Minukianos’, Klio 21, pp. 361–73. Smith, A., 1987, ‘Porphyrian studies since 1913’, in W. Haase (ed.), Aufsteig und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 36.2, pp. 717–73. Smith, A., 1993, Porphyrii Philosophi Fragmenta, Stuttgart and Leipzig. Syrianus, 1892, In Hermogenem Commentaria, H. Rabe (ed.), Leipzig. Westerink, L.G., 1964, ‘Philosophy and Medicine in Late Antiquity’, Janus 51, 169–77 Texts and Studies in Neoplatonism and Byzantine Literature (Amsterdam 1980), pp. 83–91.

9 Proclus’ Notion of Poetry Oiva Kuisma

The aims of my chapter are twofold. First, I will offer an overview of Proclus’ theory of poetry and how humans experience its affective power. Second, I will discuss his views from the point of view of modern aesthetics. From the historical point of view aesthetics has usually been divided into two principal domains – the philosophy of beauty and the philosophy of art. My focus is on the latter domain, the philosophy of art, though for the sake of economy I usually use the term aesthetics. I ask whether Proclus’ theory of poetry represents autonomous or heteronomous aesthetics.1 As a background to my discussion, I begin by drawing attention to some general facts about aesthetics and its history, which is the proper perspective from which to evaluate Proclus’ place in its history.

On the origin and history of the modern notion of aesthetics Aesthetics as an academic discipline was established in the eighteenth century when German, French, Italian, and British critics and philosophers began to discuss the role of psychological and cognitive factors in the perception of artificial and natural beauty. In history books the place of honour is usually given to Alexander Baumgarten who, in the mid eighteenth century, defined and introduced the discipline of ‘aesthetics’ in his Philosophical Meditations on Poetry (Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, 1735) and Aesthetics (Aesthetica, 1750, 1758). Baumgarten defined the new science as ‘the science of sensible knowledge’,2 which is concerned with matters that have their basis below the level of reason and logical demonstration, but nonetheless 160

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demand constant attention from humans: impressions, imagination, psycho-somatic reactions, pleasures, displeasures, etc. Baumgarten’s definition does not, of course, claim that the cognitive status of sensible knowledge had not been a subject of discussion before him, but simply that there had not been a special science devoted to the systematic study of information based on perception. Further, from our point of view, it is not crucial whether his definition of aesthetics is correct or not. The crucial point is that a particular science was established in the academic world in the eighteenth century and not before, or at least, not centuries before. On this account one can always ask whether classical, medieval, and renaissance philosophers from Plato to Thomas Aquinas and Marcilio Ficino really belong to the history or the pre-history of aesthetics. The answer to this question depends on the criteria established. For example, Paul O. Kristeller argued in an influential two-part study ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics I–II’ (1951–52)3 that a crucial step toward the modern notion of art and aesthetics was taken when the so-called fine arts were conceptually separated from practical crafts. In classical and medieval Latin, the term ars, as well as the Greek technê, did not distinguish clearly between the fine arts and practical crafts, whereas the new sense of fine art was built upon precisely this distinction.4 Practical crafts produce utility objects, whereas fine arts produce aesthetic objects, i.e., works whose primary function is to be objects of perceptual attention. This change in the meaning of ars was not an instantaneous conceptual revolution but a gradual process spanning two to three centuries after the renaissance. It eventually became established in the eighteenth century, when art critics and philosophers began to acknowledge that there was a real problem demanding a definitive response; namely, what art is in the restricted sense of the term. In this regard, Kristeller drew attention to the manner of classifying five different species under the genus of art: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry. He claimed that this manner of determining the field of art was a crucial step toward the modern notion of art. Thus, one infers, since in antiquity and the middle ages there was no similar method of separating fine arts from practical crafts, there was no art theory or aesthetics in the modern sense. There were theories of poetry, theories of music, theories of architecture, and theories of pictorial art, but no general aesthetic theories covering all species of art. Explanations based on the notion of mimêsis (imitation, representation) do not meet this requirement, since mimêsis and fine art only partially

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overlap and are not identical. For example, from the point of view of mimêsis both maps and paintings may be representations of the one and same natural scene but only the latter usually count as works of art. Maps are made for utility whereas paintings are to be objects of disinterested attention. Further, the notion of mimêsis was used not only for explaining productive activities but also for explaining various linguistic, religious and ontological matters.5 To my mind, it is not crucial whether Kristeller was right or wrong in his historical review of the stages that led to the modern notion of art.6 The crucial point is that the determination has been made to understand fine art as an autonomous part of human culture and not as a servant of religion, politics, ethics, or economics. The autonomous status granted to art guarantees that works of art can be taken as embodiments of truly independent aesthetic values and not just bearers of political, religious, and other values. Accordingly, in evaluating Proclus’ or anyone else’s views on poetry one has to determine the point of view from which the theory has been constructed. Is it from the standpoint of art or some other point of view? To answer this question, we have to look at how Proclus himself defined the position of poetry. Before turning to Proclus’ own words, however, it may be of interest to glance briefly at what historians of aesthetics say of this topic, if anything. For this brief review, I have chosen the following works: Bernard Bosanquet’s A History of Aesthetic (1892), K. E. Gilbert and H. Kuhn’s A History of Esthetics (1939), Monroe C. Beardsley’s Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. A Short History (1966), and Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz’s History of Aesthetics. Vol. I, Ancient Aesthetics, published in an English translation in 1970.7 Of these works, Bosanquet’s history (p. 118) claims that Proclus did not add ‘anything of serious importance to the ideas of Plotinus’; Gilbert and Kuhn’s history ignores him completely; Beardsley’s history (p. 111) mentions Proclus as a source for pseudo-Dionysius. Tatarkiewicz’s history is the most generous, citing two passages from Proclus on visual arts (pp. 283–4, 297), but leaves them without more detailed commentary.8 On the basis of this very brief review, it can be said that Proclus – in contrast to Plotinus – has no significant place in the history of aesthetics, even though he has written relatively copiously on topics that should be of interest to all historians of aesthetics. However, we may note that Proclus’ interest in the theory and interpretation of poetry has been noted somewhat better in histories of literary criticism; for example, in Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism. Translations and Interpretations (pp. 310–23) and The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Volume 1: Classical


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Criticism.9 Since theories of literature can always be adapted to theories of aesthetics, it could be said that Proclus’ place in the history of aesthetics depends on his place in the history of literary criticism. To define Proclus’ position more accurately, however, we must see next what he himself has to say on this topic. He, of course, did not know the modern term ‘aesthetics’ (or, ‘philosophy of art’), but nonetheless he could have recognized its intension and extension some other way.

Three types of poetry10 In what follows I will discuss Proclus’ views on poetry, although he has also commented on other arts here and there in his works; for example, sculpture (commentary on Timaeus I 264.10–272.6) and music (commentary on the Republic I 54.3–63.15).11 These would deserve critical evaluation as well, but for now I will focus on Proclus’ theory or philosophy of poetry. According to Horace’s well-known dictum, the function of poetry is either to profit or to delight (Ars poetica 333–4).12 In many cases this offers a sufficient basis for understanding the functions of literary art. It explains why sometimes we read poetry for the mere pleasure of reading, and sometimes for extra-aesthetic purposes such as knowledge, morality or edification. Occasionally we have both purposes in mind; for instance, while studying and at the same time enjoying our own favourite works of art. In general, it can be said that Horace’s view, built upon the notions of delight and profit, represents some sort of standard view of literary art, and of art more generally. Platonic philosophers could easily live with this kind of commonsense explanation of poetry, but with the important provision that the human search for truth should go far beyond the sphere of momentary delight in well-formed words and sentences. Plutarch, for example, claimed that the end of the study of poetry is philosophy (De audiendis poetis 37b).13 The pleasurable effect of poetry can be useful in attracting young people to discuss serious philosophical issues raised by poetic verses. On this view, the value of poetry is basically instrumental and provisional, a value that will be passed by in progressing toward philosophy. A late echo of this assessment can be seen in the Hegelian aesthetics of the nineteenth century. Hegel declared that from the philosopher’s standpoint the glory days of great art belong in the past (Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, pp. 24–6).14 Proclus, defining the late Neoplatonic attitude to the achievements of the declining pagan culture in fifth-century Athens, granted poetry

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an explicitly positive status. In his view, there are basically three types of poetry: mimetic, epistemic, and inspired. Proclus explains the differences between these from various points of view; in particular, from the psychological point of view. He stresses that the effects of different types of poetry on an audience differ from each other. There are more and less valuable experiences of poetry, which are the combined function of the type-dependent quality of poetry and the sensibility of the readers and listeners. Mimetic poetry, the lowest type, has two sub-species, eicastic and fantastic. Eicastic poetry aims at true likeness, while fantastic poetry aims at apparent likeness (In Remp. I 179.29–32). Presupposing satisfactory mimetic quality, the effect of fantastic poetry on an audience is emotional pleasure (In Remp. I 191.19–22), while the effect of eicastic poetry is intellectually more respectable in truthfully representing the perceptual aspect of the objects of imitation (In Remp. I 190.24–5). In Proclus’ judgement, the intentional inflation of an audience’s emotions is not a good thing though it happens to be an essential objective of tragic and comic poetry. In the long run, becoming accustomed to strong emotional reactions leads to irrational habits and behaviour, which is not acceptable for a morally upright person. Proclus explains that this is exactly what Plato condemned in his famous denunciation of poetry in the Republic. On the other hand, eicastic poetry is acceptable to the extent that it achieves its proper end, truthful representation of objects worthy of representation. The second type, epistemic poetry, serves philosophy in imparting knowledge of natural, supernatural, ethical, and political matters (In Remp. I 186.22–9). Proclus does not elaborate at length or in detail on the effect on an audience of this type of poetry. From his brief remarks we can, however, infer that epistemic poetry promotes both psychological and social virtues. It seems that the aesthetic role of this type of poetry is practically nominal, reminding one of the versified philosophy of Empedocles, whom one reads only to learn more about preSocratic notions about various things. From this point of view, it is no surprise that Proclus had not much to say about a type of poetry whose main function is to embellish truths better known from philosophical and scientific books. Epistemic poetry perhaps works in arousing patriotic spirit through the enumeration of a nation’s heroic deeds, but otherwise it falls on the barren land between the emotional pleasure of mimetic poetry and the truly spiritual enthusiasm of inspired poetry. It is the third type, inspired poetry, which gets the most thorough and positive evaluation in Proclus’ account.


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Proclus claimed that the origin and cause of inspired poetry is divinity and its effect intellectual ecstasy. Inspired poetry is ‘full of divine goods’; it ‘establishes the soul in the causes of things’, and ‘it is madness better than temperance’ (In Remp. I 178.10–26). From the phenomenological point of view, Proclus characterized this kind of experience as an illumination (ellampsis; In Remp. I 178.15). Inspiration was of old a generally acknowledged psychological phenomenon and not in need of existential verification. Proclus stressed that Homer’s poetry testifies explicitly to this phenomenon, while Plato’s philosophy explains its nature; in particular, Plato had discussed the nature of inspired poetry in the dialogues Phaedrus (245a), Ion (533d–e) and the Laws (682a). For example, the Phaedrus (245a) teaches that the source of inspired poetry is the chorus of divine Muses, that inspired poets are ‘soft’ and ‘not yet corrupted’, that inspiration is experienced as an awakening and as Bacchic frenzy, and that inspired poetry has an educative function (In Remp. I 180.10–182.20). Proclus took these points quite literally, thinking that they revealed Plato’s true evaluation of inspired poetry, while the much more critical statements of the Republic show his attitude toward fantastically imitative poetry. We may summarize Proclus’ account by saying that inspired poetry originates from the world of the divine Muses (ontology), produces exalted experiences (psychology), and induces people to turn from the sphere of perception to self-investigation and finally to the contemplation of reality itself (epistemology). The epistemological point of view unites the ontological and psychological points of view in stressing the need to revert (epistrophê) to the intelligible causes of inspired experiences. Proclus did not deny the influence of lower psycho-somatic forces on the human mind, but demanded their rejection as a hindrance to the epistrophic ascent.15 A conspicuous characteristic of Proclus’ view is that it highlights the power of the poetic word, the hierarchical power to affect sensitive recipients. Inspired words are not mere images and referential signs that offer people imaginative surrogates of reality, they are a power that helps the human consciousness to see the reality itself. A modern realist may see this as a metaphorical ideal, but taken literally s/he would probably not accept the view of reality it implies, the world-view expounded in Proclus’ The Elements of Theology and The Platonic Theology. These works depict the hierarchically ordered cosmic ontology in the language of conceptual and dogmatic demonstration, whereas inspired works of poetry do so through the illuminative power of symbolic words and mythical stories. Ontological speculation is so central a feature of Proclus’ thinking

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that one cannot ignore it in any serious interpretive enterprise, not even in evaluating his theory of poetry. But, having already discussed the topic (Kuisma 1996, pp. 46–68), I take it as read and move straight to the evaluation of Proclus’ theory from the aesthetic point of view. What does Proclus’ account of poetry say in terms of art theory and aesthetics? To determine this, it is sufficient to focus on inspired poetry since, as the highest type of poetry, it properly represents poetry in general.

Autonomous or heteronomous aesthetics To determine the place of poetics in Proclus’ philosophical programme, we must first ask whether his theory of poetry was meant to be a specific (‘local’) literary theory without larger contexts or higher aims like, for example, Horace’s Ars poetica.16 The summary account presented above offers a clear response to this in that the hierarchy of types of poetry – fantastically mimetic, eicastically mimetic, epistemic, and inspired poetry – points to an end beyond the pleasures of sensible sound, rhythm and imagination, to the sphere of abstract as well as mystical truths (μυστικῆς ἀληθείας; In Remp. I 182.13). From poetry’s point of view, however, the level of abstract truth, in contrast to the spheres of perception and imagination, is a heteronomous factor.17 On this account we can say that, even though Proclus showed theoretical interest in all kinds of poetry, his intent was not theory-building in the narrow field of pure poetics but more general objectives. Could one of these objectives have been anything comparable to modern aesthetic theory, or a general theory of art? Poetry can be placed under domains such as politics, ethics, religion, science, biology, etc., or granted the status of a species of art under the genus of art. The latter alternative represents the standpoint we can call genuinely aesthetic, whereas the others are politically aesthetic, religiously aesthetic, etc. Political, religious and other types of heteronomous aesthetics do not necessarily deny the existence of aesthetic values but they do deny their independence. For example, political aesthetics claims that aesthetic value is the function of social and economic factors, biological aesthetics that it is the function of procreative and other needs, and religious aesthetics that it is the function of imitation in regard to divine creativity. On this view, aesthetic value is dependent on more fundamental values or is constituted from nonaesthetic elements. Which of these basic alternatives, autonomous or heteronomous aesthetics, does Proclus’ thought represent?


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In response, we can say immediately that Proclus did not want an aesthetic theory in the modern sense of the term, that is, an autonomous aesthetics. The necessary conceptual tools for such an enterprise were available – the notions of tekhnê, mimêsis and beauty would suffice for that – but instead of a general theory of art or aesthetics, the higher genus under which Proclus subsumed his views on poetry was politics and, further, metaphysics, or religion. This becomes manifest in the final chapters (8–10) of the fifth essay of his Republic commentary, where he defines the status of poetry, saying that: it is a way leading toward political life, a way that does not lead the soul toward a theoretical but a political end. Therefore we have said that it is necessary for the politician to define the rules of activity to the poet in the same manner as to the strategist, the physician and the rhetorician (In Remp. I 67.26–30). Proclus also explains that this account of human professions reflects a higher state of affairs, that of the divine world, in which it is Zeus the god who represents the leading ‘political’ power, while Apollo represents the cosmic ‘poet’ who puts everything in rhythmic and harmonious order. On this basis Proclus demands that all poets should look to Apollo as their divine exemplar (In Remp. I 68.3–69.19). When Proclus finally brings his explanation of poetry to such supernatural causal factors as Zeus and Apollo, he steps by the same token from the domain of art to that of religion.18 One must note that this conclusion is not mere eloquence or hyperbole but an expression of serious religious conviction, of which The Platonic Theology provides a sufficient proof. Proclus did not aim for pure art theory or aesthetics but for a hierarchically higher end for which poetry was simply a means. And by virtue of Proclus’ explicit confession of Zeus and Apollo as sources of inspired poetry, we can count this as one type of religious or theological aesthetics. The boundaries between art and religion are not clearly marked, but from Proclus’ point of view one thing is clear. He was not promoting art for art’s sake but art for the sake of higher things; in particular, for man’s epistrophic ascent to the intelligible world. However, one can also evaluate experiences produced by works of art in different ways from this perspective. In fact, one can claim that aesthetic experience is the most important motive force for doing aesthetics, since without the pleasures, excitements, fears and even displeasures produced by works of art (as well as by objects of nature) people would not be daily discussing such

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matters. Since ideologically motivated thinkers are not exceptions to this rule, one would like to know in more detail how Proclus described his own experiences of poetry, inspired poetry in particular. In this regard he disappoints his readers, not opening up his soul to outward curiosity.19 Usually he refers to experiences in an impersonal way, merely offering conceptual deductions and clarifications based on Plato’s words, as in his explanation of the three types of poetry. From our point of view such impersonal descriptions are not quite satisfactory. We would like to find a real person speaking in the first person of his own experiences. Do we find any traces of such a person in Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Republic? Yes, but not many.

Describing experiences Proclus’ account of poetry in the Republic commentary, made up of two separate essays (the fifth and the sixth), takes up about 160 pages (pp. 42–205) in Kroll’s edition.20 In these pages Proclus describes the affective power of poetry from various points of view, from everyday emotional reactions to experiences of mystical illumination, but the critical question is what he says on the basis of his own personal experiences. Even without reports of personal experience we can infer that Proclus’ strict criticism of the emotional effects of tragedies and comedies reflects his own negative attitude toward emotional reactions as well as his evaluation of those who love theatrical entertainment.21 When we transfer our attention from the sphere of negative evaluations to Proclus’ references to inspired experiences, however, it is more difficult to assess what he says of personal experience and what not. Indeed, he rarely speaks of experiences in the first person. Most of his comments on the topic are offered in an impersonal and generalizing voice. Impersonal generalizations are problematic, since it is difficult to see how many of them come straight from the Platonic tradition, how many are conceptual deductions and how many are based on personal experience. The experiential dimension of Proclus’s theory of poetry appears most explicitly in the sixth essay when he explains the function of myth in poetry and philosophy.22 In his view, there are two basic types of myth, paedagogic and telestic (perfective), of which the latter is what interests us here. Proclus describes telestic myths in the same manner as inspired poetry, i.e., in words with religious connotations.23 He claims that telestic myths suit only a chosen few, that they lead to contact with divinity, that they are ineffable, and that they manifest their meaning only through sacrificial acts and mystical teachings (In Remp. I 81.11–21).


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On the basis of this eulogizing account, one might expect that Proclus would delight his readers with descriptions of marvellous personal experiences, but, as already remarked, he remains quite reticent about such things. Interestingly, he mentions in passing that he is discoursing to hearers who are capable of divine visions (In Remp. I 82.9–10), but this does not tell us anything particular.24 Proclus is secretive and intentionally so, as becomes obvious from the concluding words of his lectures, where he demands his hearers not to divulge his words to the public (In Remp. I 205.22–3). Even though we cannot get an exact picture of an experience praised as ‘the mystical union in divinity’ (πρὸς τὸ θεῖον μυστικὴν ἕνωσιν; In Remp. I 81.10), Proclus’ secretiveness is revealing from another point of view. From an intentional secretiveness we can safely infer that the experiences Proclus refers to but does not describe in detail are not aesthetic experiences in this term’s ordinary sense, since in this case there would be no need for secrecy. Why should one abstain from a public analysis of one’s pleasurable experiences of poetic myth and diction? Modesty may be accepted as a reason in some cases, but not as a general rule. Secretiveness is typical of religions and mystery cults, not of participation in poetic and other artistic activities. However, Proclus’ reticence does not mean a total rejection of aesthetic values, since religious experiences may quite well contain elements that are named by aesthetic terms such as beauty and harmony.25 The crucial point is that the sphere of perceptible and imaginative aesthetic values is transcended in divine visions. The step from perceptual values to the contemplation of divine beauty can be called a step into theological aesthetics.26 We can now answer the question of how Proclus’ place in the history of aesthetics should be determined. His place is next to thinkers like Plotinus and Augustine, who could appreciate beauty in art and nature, but who in the end exhorted people to turn their gaze from perceptible beauty to imperceptible beauty, from the sphere of perception to the sphere of intellectual contemplation. This means a turning away from the sphere of aisthêsis, the domain of most of art and natural beauty. It is a turning away toward divine creativity and theological aesthetics.

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Notes 1. An absolutely independent theory of any species of art is of course an impossibility, which Proclus would have been the first to point out since ‘everything is in everything’ – The Elements of Theology, proposition 103 (ed. E. R. Dodds). Hence, by ‘autonomy’ and ‘independence’ I do not mean absolute autonomy and independence but an intentional desire for purity, as far as that is possible. 2. ‘Aesthetica (theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulchre cogitandi, ars analogi rationis) est scientia cognitionis sensitivae.’ Baumgarten, Aesthetica, prol. §1 (ed. H. R. Schweizer). 3. Kristeller’s articles were published in the Journal of the History of Ideas 1951 and 1952 and reprinted later in Essays on the History of Aesthetics, pp. 3–64, (ed. P. Kivy). 4. Cf. Larry Shiner (2001), pp. 19–24. 5. Cf. Plato, Cratylus 423b; Phaedrus 252d; Timaeus 38a. 6. For a criticism of the view that identifies aesthetics with ‘modern’ aesthetics, see Stephen Halliwell (2002), pp. 1–22. It is, however, due to the notion of modern aesthetics that we can make a clear distinction between autonomous and heteronomous aesthetics. Autonomous aesthetics serves the cause of aesthetics itself, while heteronomous aesthetics puts aesthetics in the service of religious and political ends. For an illuminating study of how aesthetic values were put in the service of the Catholic Church, see Yrjö Hirn (1912). 7. B. Bosanquet, (1892; 2nd edn 1904); K. E. Gilbert and H. Kuhn (1939); M. C. Beardsley (1998); W. Tatarkiewicz (1970). 8. Histories in other languages: Raymond Bayer’s Histoire de l’Esthétique (1961) refers to Plotinus’ followers in a confusing manner (p. 70) and later mentions Proclus in the context of Renaissance Neoplatonism (pp. 96, 99, 100). C. G. Allesch’s Geschichte der psychologischen Ästhetik (1987), p. 34, summarizes the general opinion in these words: ‘Jedenfalls endet mit Plotin der Abschnitt einer eigenständigen Ästhetik der Antike. Was folgte, wie etwa bei Pseudo-Dionysios oder bei Proklos und der athenischen Schule, beschränkte sich auf Interpretationen und Ergänzungen’. To this one can retort that Proclus – more than most of his ancient predecessors – actually showed genuine interest in the psychology of art. 9. A. Preminger et al. (1974); G. A. Kennedy (1989). 10. This summary of Proclus’ theory of the three types of poetry is based on my earlier account in Kuisma (1996), especially pp. 122–34. Cf. also A. Sheppard (1980); W. Bernard (1990), pp. 95–182; R. M. van den Berg (2001). 11. References are to the following editions of Proclus’ works: In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria I–III, E. Diehl (ed.); In Platonis Rem Publicam Commentarii I–II, G. Kroll (ed.); Théologie Platonicienne I–VI, H. D. Saffrey et L. G. Westerink (eds. and trans.). 12. Horace, Epistles (II) and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars Poetica’), N. Rudd (ed.). 13. Plutarch (Plutarco), De audiendis poetis, E. Valgiglio (ed.). 14. Hegel, G. W. F., Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I. Werke 13, E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel (eds).


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15. Cf. Plato’s (Republic 588b–589b) metaphor of the many-headed beast at the bottom of the human soul and Proclus’ explanation of it in the Republic commentary (I 225.16–226.22). 16. Here we must bear in mind that in ancient parlance poiêtikê tekhnê covered the whole range of literary art (fiction), as becomes manifest in Aristotle’s Poetics. 17. It is one thing to apply truths, say mathematical truths, in poetry but another thing to be ruled by these. The first does not annul poetic autonomy, whereas the second does. 18. Not wishing to make a problem of the term ‘religion’, I use it simply to designate world-views that depend on the notion of God (Absolute) or gods. Proclus himself discussed religious topics under various headings, such as ‘theology’, ‘Chaldaean Oracles’, ‘hieratic art’, ‘myth’, and ‘philosophy’. For his practical religiosity, see Marinus Vita Procli, chs 28–29, M. D’Auria (ed.). 19. Proclus has written some hymns which seem to reveal his personal feelings to readers. It is, however, difficult to assess their significance. Cf. van den Berg (2001) pp. 138–40. 20. Although the accounts of poetry offered in the fifth and sixth essays of the Republic commentary are not identical in detail, they are sufficiently similar in intention and evaluation. Cf. Kuisma (1996), pp. 69–146. 21. Cf. In Remp. I 46.27–9, where Proclus criticizes those who ‘now’ love to experience the exciting feelings of emotional poetry. Despite the Christian rule and legislation, the institution of theatre survived till the sixth century in the Roman world. See J. Blänsdorf (1990), pp. 261–74. 22. Proclus offers an account of the origin and motives of his treatise on Homeric poetry and its interpretation ( the sixth essay of the Republic commentary) in its first pages, In Remp. I 69.23–71.17. 23. Proclus does not explicitly define the relation between inspired poetry and telestic myths, which he also calls ‘entheastic’. However, his remarks make it clear that telestic myths naturally go together with inspired poetry. On the other hand, myths also have other natural ‘places’, viz. religion, ritual, and even philosophy. For an evaluation of the function of myth in Proclus, see, for example, D. Cürsgen (2002). 24. From The Platonic Theology (III 83.14–18) we find a comparative allusion to visionary experiences of the Parmenidean theology, but its information value is not greater than the one above. Likewise, Marinus’ Vita Procli (529–37) declares that Proclus was acquainted with theological truths by personal visionary experiences (autopteia), not just through books. This statement makes Proclus a sage, but does not clarify the problem of divine visions. 25. In fact, the Christian follower of Athenian Neoplatonism known as pseudoDionysius granted an important role in his theology to the notion of beauty. Cf. The Divine Names 701c–716c. 26. Cf. C. Terezis and K. Polychronopoulou (2002). Terezis and Polychronopoulou (p. 57) note that Proclus’ aesthetics was ‘not an autonomous theoretical discipline’, but subservient to ethics, gnosiology and ontology. This is true and not in disagreement with the view that aesthetics is subservient to theology, or henology.

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Bibliography Allesch, C. G., 1987, Geschichte der psychologischen Ästhetik, Göttingen. Aristotle, 1968, Poetics, D. W. Lucas (ed.), Oxford. Baumgarten, A. G., 1973, Ästhetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis. Eine Interpretation der ‘Aesthetica’ A. G. Baumgartens mit teilweiser Wiedergabe des lateinischen Textes und deutscher Übersetzung, H. R. Schweizer (ed.), Basel and Stuttgart. Bayer R., 1961, Histoire de l’Esthétique, Paris. Beardsley, M. C., 1998, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present. A Short History, Tuscaloosa and London. Berg, R. M. van den, 2001, Proclus’ Hymns. Essays, Translations, Commentary, Leiden, Boston, and Köln. Bernard, W., 1990, Spätantike Dichtungstheorien. Untersuchungen zu Proklos, Herakleitos und Plutarch, Stuttgart. Blänsdorf, J., 1990, ‘Der spätantike Staat und die Schauspiele im Codex Theodosianus’, in J. Blänsdorf, , Theater und Gesellschaft im Imperium Romanum, Tübingen, pp. 261–74. Bosanquet, B., 1949 [1892, 2nd edn 1904], A History of Aesthetic, London. Cürsgen, D., 2002, Die Rationalität des Mythischen. Der philosophische Mythos bei Platon und seine Exegese im Neuplatonismus, Berlin and New York. Dionysius, 1987, Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works, C. Luibheid (trans.), Mahwah. Gilbert, K. E. and Kuhn, H., 1954 [1st edn 1939], A History of Esthetics, rev. edn, Bloomington. Halliwell, S., 2002, The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems, Princeton. Hegel, G. W. F., 1970, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, E. Moldenhauer und K. M. Michel (eds.), Frankfurt am Main. Hirn, Y., 1912, The Sacred Shrine. A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church, London. Horace, 1989, Epistles, book II; and Epistle to the Pisones: Ars Poetica, N. Rudd, (ed.) Cambridge. Kennedy, G. A. (ed.), 1989, The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Volume 1: Classical Criticism, Cambridge. Kristeller, P. O., 1992, ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics I–II’, in P. Kivy (ed.), Essays on the History of Aesthetics, Rochester NY, pp. 3– Kuisma, O., 1996, Proclus’ Defence of Homer, The Finnish Society of Science and Letters: Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum vol. 109, Helsinki. Marinus (Marino di Neapoli), 1985, Vita Procli (Vita di Proclo), R. Masullo (ed.), Napoli. Plato, 1914, Plato Vol. I., H. N. Fowler (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plato, 1925, Timée. Platon: Oeuvres complètes, t. X, A. Rivaud (ed. and trans.), Paris. Plato, 1926, Plato Vol. IV, H. N. Fowler (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plato, 1974, The Republic, D. Lee (trans.), 2nd edn, Harmondsworth. Plutarch, 1973, De audiendis poetis, E. Valgiglio (ed.), Torino. Porphyry, 1966, ‘Life of Plotinus’, in Plotinus, Enneads, A. H. Armstrong (ed.)


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Preminger, A., Hardison O. B., and Kerrane, K. (eds), 1974, Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism. Translations and Interpretations, New York. Proclus, 1899–1901, In Platonis Rem Publicam Commentarii, Kroll, G. (ed.), Leipzig. Proclus, 1903–06, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, E. Diehl, (ed.), Leipzig. Proclus, 1963, The Elements of Theology, E. R. Dodds (ed.), 2nd edn, Oxford. Proclus, 1968–97, Théologie platonicienne, H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink (eds. and trans.), vols. 1–6, Paris. Sheppard, A., 1980, Studies on the 5th and 6th Essays of Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic. Hypomnemata, 61, Göttingen. Shiner, L., 2001, The Invention of Art. A Cultural History, Chicago. Tatarkiewicz, W., 1970, History of Aesthetics. Vol. I, Ancient Aesthetics, J. Harrel (ed.), The Hague and Paris. Terezis C. and Polychronopoulou, K., 2002, ‘The Sense of Beauty (κάλλος) in Proclus the Neoplatonist’, in A. Alexandrakis and N. J. Moutafakis (eds.) Neoplatonism and Western Aesthetics, Albany, pp. 53–60.

10 The Homeric Tradition in Ammonius and Asclepius1 Christina-Panagiota Manolea

Introduction Homer was considered by ancient Greeks the poète par excellence, and he is encountered in almost every writer dealing with issues of rhetoric and philosophy. Moreover, the works of Homer provide our earliest direct insights into the religious thought of the Greeks,2 and he was regarded not only as the best poet, but often also as a theologian. The Alexandrian commentators Ammonius and Asclepius are only two of the many Neoplatonic philosophers who made use of the ancient Greek literary tradition (in which the Homeric tradition has the leading role) in their philosophical discussions. Allegory played a major role in many pagan texts and the Neoplatonist philosophers had naturally included the allegorical method in their treatment of the Homeric tradition.3 In the school of Athens, under the leadership of Syrianus and Proclus (fifth century AD), allegory was one of the accepted methods for interpreting the Homeric poems.4 Studies show that they used this technique in order to discover an alternative reliable way to truth. Ammonius, who had been a student of Proclus in Athens, was Head of the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria during the last decades of the fifth century and the first two decades of the sixth century AD.5 Ammonius and his students adopted a simplified version of the metaphysical system of Proclus, who was nevertheless considered to be their spiritual father.6 Alexandria in the late fifth and early sixth centuries had been established as a centre of pagan as well as Christian philosophy and thought.7 We will examine whether and to what extent this fact affected Ammonius’ use of the Homeric tradition, especially with regards to the Homeric allegories. 174

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A close reading of literary passages found in Ammonius and Asclepius may lead us to a better understanding of the philosophers’ ideas, help us explain their attitude towards the literary tradition, or even make us consider problems of transmission and reception. As a whole, this is a far-reaching and ambitious work, of course, which goes well beyond the limits of any single chapter. I will first refer to the most characteristic cases of their use of the Homeric tradition and then explain what Homer meant for Ammonius and Asclepius, and the reasons for their attitude. From the works of Ammonius, it is the In Porphyrii Isagogen, In Categorias, In de Interpretatione, and In Analytica Priora, that were preserved. His devoted student Asclepius’ preserved works, namely the In Metaphysica and the In Nicomachi introductionem arithmeticam, are ἀπὸ φωνῆς Ἀμμωνίου8: therefore, they too can be considered as reliable sources for Ammonius’ use of the Homeric tradition. There is no Homeric reference either in Ammonius’ commentary on the Analytica Priora or in Asclepius’ commentary on Nicomachus. In their remaining works there are no less than 54 Homeric passages containing one or more Homeric verses; some passages also refer to Homer’s authority, or mention well-known Homeric heroes or episodes. This variety allows us to examine the most characteristic Homeric references in Ammonius and Asclepius. First and foremost, Homer is used in an attempt to define philosophy. Secondly, Homeric elements appear when linguistic issues or problems in the philosophy of language are considered. Thirdly, Homer is quoted only once in the context of ethical discussion. Fourthly, a few passages concern logic. Fifthly, the works are cited for theological ends, and sixthly, when metaphysical, or seventhly, when cosmological issues are examined. Eighthly, references to Homer are used to cast light on matters of psychology, and ninthly, on theory of knowledge. Last but not least, Homeric verses are employed as evidence of what actually happened in the past.

Definition of philosophy Two Homeric verses containing the words ‘wisdom’ and ‘wise’ (σοφίη, σοφός) are quoted by Ammonius in his discussion of the famous definition of Pythagoras, that philosophy is the love of wisdom.9 This is not simply about words: the philosopher Ammonius is using the authority of Homer, who is clearly stated as ‘ὁ ποιητής’, to support the view of a major philosopher on a very serious matter, the definition of philosophy. Homer is considered to be more than just a poet, even the greatest poet.

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Linguistics – philosophy of language Among the eight passages that have to do with linguistics,10 a very interesting one is Ammonius’ In Isag. 23.3–5, where Homer is referred to as the poète par excellence.11 Moreover, in the In de Int. 2.5–3.6 certain Homeric half-verses are cited for examples of the words that form the five propositions.12 One of those verses is Il. III 182 ‘ὦ μάκαρ Ἀτρείδη’, which is also found in two other Homeric passages of the same commentary related to linguistics.13 Further on, in the In de Int. 95.28–96.26 Ammonius, discussing the function of negation, quotes three Homeric half-verses, one of which is part of the very well-known (both in antiquity and in modern times) passage Il. II 204: ‘οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη: εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω’.14 The Homeric episode of the false dream Zeus sent to Agamemnon is mentioned in the In de Int. 269.32–270.5, in the course of the discussion of the meaning of the adverb ‘πανσυδίῃ’. Ammonius offers no deeper analysis of this episode, most probably because, familiar as he was both with Plato’s condemnation of it and with Proclus’ expansion, which aimed to prove that Homer was not impious, he did not have anything to add to the discussion. Asclepius, on his part, in In Met. 7.24–27, uses Il. V 800 in his effort to distinguish between the adverbs ‘μικρόν’ and ‘ὀλίγον’. There are no fewer than ten Homeric references in Ammonius’ and Asclepius’ works, in discussions of the philosophy of language.15 In three of these16 Ammonius refers to synonyms and homonyms, and his example is the two Homeric figures bearing the name Ajax: the son of Telamon and the son of Oileus. Ajax (without further clarification) is mentioned once more by Asclepius when he tries to distinguish between the notion of ‘human beings’ and the notion of ‘animals’.17 In his discussion of paronyms, Ammonius mentions the difference between Helen and Helenos.18 In their discussion of metaphor, both Ammonius19 and Asclepius20 use ‘the feet’ and ‘the head’ of mount Ida. I must add that the Iliad is considered by Asclepius to be an example of things that are made up of many things, and which therefore present difficulties when one tries to define them.21

Ethics There is one Homeric reference in the context of ethical discussion: Ammonius discusses the problem of choosing something either because it is the best or because it is the least evil option. He refers to a wellknown dilemma in antiquity: Achilles had to choose between a long but


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inglorious life and a short but glorious one. Ammonius stresses the fact that Achilles knew that his taking part in the Trojan War would mean a short but glorious life and that he preferred to be glorious and die young.22

Logic When matters of logic are discussed, Ammonius appeals to the Homeric tradition twice.23 In both cases, we find Il. II 204 once again: Ammonius there deals with the scope of negation in logical premises. The function of negatives is expounded, and their two roles: that is, in denying either a part of a sentence or the whole. He also cites Od. XIV 466,24 which seems to have acquired the status of a proverb. This reference was also used by philosophers such as Syrianus, Proclus and Olympiodorus, but in contexts different from those of Ammonius.25 An interesting Homeric reference concerning logic is found in a corrupt text of Asclepius, which discusses the cases of contradiction and analogy (although, because of the condition of the text, it is not clear how he passes from one topic to the other). At any rate, it is the feet of Mount Ida and the mountain itself that are mentioned, once again, as examples of analogy.26

Theology In these earlier cases, the Homeric poems are used simply as a source of memorable examples. Ammonius appeals to Homer’s authority in the course of his discussion of the properties and the acts of god.27 This is not an innovation: long before Ammonius’ time, as I remarked before, Homer was considered by ancient philosophers to be more than a poet, even more than the poet, and had acquired the fame of a theologian.28 A brief example is Syrianus’ mention of Homer, Orpheus, and Parmenides, all as philosophical authorities, in his In Phaedrum exegesis.29 Ammonius in turn quotes three Homeric verses in a theological context.30 Although he refers to Homer as a poet and not as a theologian (and we should note that he says οἱ ποιηταί, but in fact quotes only Homer, most probably as the poets’ chief representative), the fact that Homer’s poetic authority is cited after Plato and immediately before Aristotle strongly suggests that Homer was at least thought of as a poet whose views in matters of theology could reasonably be quoted alongside Plato and Aristotle. As for Asclepius, one Homeric reference in a theological context is found when violence is considered as something perhaps authorized by the gods.31 The example brought in is Eurystheus’ violence towards Heracles and Heracles’ need to obey and perform his


Labours. The verse that expresses Heracles’ need is Homeric and the reference to Homer is ‘φησι κἀκεῖνος’: Homer does not need to be quoted by name; he does not even need to be called ‘the poet’ when verses of his poems are quoted. And it should be noted that the verse quoted in this case is not among the very well-known, many of which had become popular proverbs. But though some theological authority is implicitly conceded to the Homeric texts, neither Ammonius nor Asclepius make much of this, nor do they use the techniques of other commentators in expounding the supposed theological significance of the Homeric stories.

Metaphysics There are seven passages in Ammonius in which the Homeric tradition is used for metaphysical purposes, and twelve in Asclepius. In his first passage,32 Ammonius conducts a discussion on the differentiae that make a person become different (ἀλλοῖος) but not other (ἄλλος) and he refers to the disguise of Odysseus with the help of Athena. In the second passage, which discusses genera and differentiae, Ammonius makes use of the Homeric passage that refers to the famous monster Scylla as an ‘immortal evil’.33 The third passage is a reference to the era, in which wars such as the Peloponnesian and the Trojan (which Ammonius considered as much a matter of history as the Peloponnesian)34 took place. In the fourth Homeric passage relevant to metaphysics Ammonius refers to Achilles’ horse Xanthus.35 The fifth Homeric passage of Ammonius relevant to this theme is particularly interesting, because a well-known Homeric verse is quoted concerning the famous episode (Il. XVIII 86–87), where Agamemnon tries to account for his behaviour towards Achilles and says that what happened was not his own fault, but is to be attributed to the will of Zeus, Fate, and Erinys. Ammonius in fact condemns people’s tendency to blame metaphysical causes for their behaviour.36 The two remaining Homeric references cited during metaphysical discussion both deal with the properties of beings: in the sixth occurrence37 his claim is that the property of being a poet is an ‘accident’ if we talk about Homer before his own birth, while in the seventh38 Ammonius examines the properties of being a poet and of being in general in relation with Homer’s essence and Homer’s nature (and whatever this means demands a longer investigation than is possible here). There are twelve Homeric references in Asclepius with a metaphysical connection.39 His first Homeric quotation is found in his discussion of the Neoplatonic doctrine of Monad and Dyad.40 The second is a reference to a Homeric hero in a context where the creative reason-principles


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are discussed: the species Ajax is considered to have an hypostasis, while the name Ajax does not.41 The same example is found twice more in the exegesis.42 In the next reference, Asclepius claims that every particular being is one in number. Among other examples, the two horses of Achilles, Balius and Xanthus, are mentioned.43 The next two references44 contain the example of Paris, who also had the name Alexander, in Asclepius’ effort to show what these two names have in common (an issue also relevant to the philosophy of language). During his discussion of categories and what ‘priority’ signifies in one or another, Asclepius observes that the Trojan War was prior (temporally) to the Persian. Continuing his argument, he points out that Odysseus as father of Telemachus and son of Laertes was ‘closer’ to Laertes than Telemachus was.45 A little later he twice mentions heroes of the Homeric tradition (Achilles and Ajax respectively) as examples of how the best thing, like the best spear or coat, suits the best person.46 The last two Homeric references in Asclepius’s works in a metaphysical context deal with wholes and parts. As an example, Asclepius considers the Iliad to be a whole consisting of parts, which are its verses.47

Cosmology Asclepius also places Homeric elements in a cosmological context.48 There are three references, in all of which he discusses the natural Elements. In the first case, with reference to Thales, who suggested that water was the principle of everything, Asclepius quotes two verses from the Iliad, concerning the god Ocean and the water of Styx respectively.49 In the second reference50 he mentions Heraclitus’, Thales’ and Anaximenes’ views on the principle of the universe. Il. VII 99 is then quoted, in order to support Aristotle’s remark that the earth is not a less important Element than the others. Once again, Homer is mentioned in this passage as ‘ὁ ποιητής’. The third cosmological reference51 also deals with the Elements and the priority of one Element over the other. Homeric heroes are brought in as examples of priority: according to Asclepius, in terms of their age, Diomedes was prior to Odysseus but subject to Nestor, who was the eldest of them all.

Psychology Asclepius has an interesting Homeric reference in a context of psychology52: he mentions Anaxagoras’ views on the ‘subjective’ character of our knowledge of the world and then adduces Hector as an example


of someone who did not perceive things as they were. The relevant Homeric verses are Il. XV 244–45: ‘Ἕκτορ, υἱὲ Πριάμοιο, τίη δὲ σὺ νόσφιν ἀπ᾽ ἄλλων ἧσ᾽ ὀλιγηπελέων’; Asclepius quotes the passage with the variant reading ‘ἀλλοφρονέων’, which is Democritus’ version and was known to Asclepius through Aristotle’s De anima. Indeed, many post-Aristotelian philosophers, including Alexander of Aphrodisias, Syrianus, Themistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus, were familiar with this version.53

Theory of knowledge In passages about theory of knowledge, Asclepius mentions three Homeric verses. In the first case,54 the verse οὐ γάρ πω σάφα ἴσμεν, οἷος νόος Ἀτρίδαο, which is a variant of Il. II 192 οὐ γάρ πω σάφα οἶσθ᾽ οἷος νόος Ἀτρείωνος, is quoted in the discussion of the difference between empirical and scientific knowledge. The particular example of (supposedly) ‘scientific’ knowledge that Asclepius uses is a general’s: he could hardly avoid mention of the Homeric verses about Agamemnon’s abilities. In the second case,55 Asclepius refers to the abduction of Helen as the cause of the Trojan War. This is in the context of a question about the need to know the efficient cause, that is, what starts off a change. The third reference is to Hector, son of Priam, who serves as an example in a discussion of the properties of things with reference to their creator.56

History The last reference to mention is in Asclepius’s account of Aristotle’s view that natural phenomena such as earthquakes and floods regularly destroy human civilization.57 Naturally, Aristotle’s particular example of such floods is the famous story of Deucalion, and he attributed the survival of the human race from this natural disaster to the fact that some people found refuge on the tops of mountains. For both Aristotle and Asclepius the stories of this great flood were as historical as the stories of the Trojan, Persian, or Peloponnesian Wars. Therefore, Il. XX 216–18, which refers to the building of Troy, is quoted to support the view that people do build their cities on hills, to be protected from such events.

Conclusion From this summary account it is now possible to evaluate the way the Homeric tradition is used by Ammonius and Asclepius. In most cases, Homer is acknowledged as the the poète par excellence. ‘His words and


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stories are an immediately recognizable resource, and his authority is invoked to give support to both metaphysical and historical claims. Sometimes heroes of the wider Homeric tradition are mentioned; at other times Homeric verses are quoted to support philosophers’ arguments. Some of these verses are topoi (that is, they had been widely used by many ancient writers, and not only philosophers, long before Ammonius’ and Asclepius’ time). But nowhere in the existing works of Ammonius and Asclepius do we encounter an allegorical interpretation of Homer. I have already mentioned that Syrianus and Proclus made use of allegorical interpretations of Homeric passages, in order to support or explain or illustrate their theological beliefs.58 Being a part of the Neoplatonic tradition and a student of Proclus, Ammonius was certainly familiar with the allegorical method of interpreting Homer. The question is: why did he and his student Asclepius not make use of it in their works? Have we simply lost those works in which they did use allegorical interpretation? But we have so much of Ammonius’s own work, and of his follower’s work, that this seems unlikely. Although they must have been aware of the allegorical method and its popularity, they were clearly reluctant to use it. This reluctance does not seem to be an effect of the sort of exegesis in which they were engaged: it would have been as relevant in that as anywhere.59 Instead, I suggest, it was an effect of social and political constraints. Having both Christians and pagans in his audience, Ammonius might reasonably have taken extra care to teach philosophy without addressing his audience’s personal religious beliefs.60 Allegorizing Homer’s stories would probably have led on to theological disputation, which would be neither appropriate nor desirable. Of course, this is almost pure speculation. Whatever the explanation of Ammonius’ and Asclepius’ attitude towards Homeric allegories, the absence of allegorizing interpretation in their work is one of the major differences between the Neoplatonic schools of Athens and Alexandria. Moreover, Syrianus, apart from making wide use of the traditional scholarly Homeric quotations, gave Homer the status of a ‘theologian’, alongside Orpheus and Parmenides (as I have said before). Ammonius and Asclepius did not, on the available evidence, seek to give Homer quite so much authority, and handled the Homeric texts in a traditional scholarly way, as an admired resource.


Notes 1. This chapter has derived from my wider research as a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Athens (November 2003–October 2004). I would like to thank the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) for their financial support. 2. Lamberton (1986), p. vii. 3. For a definition of allegory as such, see Pépin (1976). For an account of the history of Homeric allegories in antiquity the works of Wehrli (1928), and Buffière (1956), are still valuable. Lamberton (1986) is essential, in order to form a picture of Homeric allegory in late-antique philosophers, as, for example, the Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists. For Homeric allegory in the Stoics see Steinmetz (1986), pp. 18–30 and Long (1992), pp. 41–66. The latter tries to give a definition of allegory by distinguishing between strong and weak allegory. For a critique of this view see Manolea (2004), pp. 37–9. Plotinus seems not to have used Homeric allegory in his works. For the use of Homer, as well as of the wider literary tradition in Plotinus, see Cilento (1960), and Lamberton (1986), pp. 83–107. For Porphyry’s Homeric allegories see Lamberton (1986), pp. 108–33. 4. As far as the multiple uses of the Homeric tradition in the Neoplatonic school of Athens are concerned, see Fiedl (1936), Sheppard (1980), pp. 48–85, Kuisma (1996), and Manolea (2004); cf. also Coulter (1976). As is shown in the above-mentioned studies, both Syrianus and Proclus treated Homer allegorically. 5. For Ammonius’ and Asclepius’ lives and existing works, see Westerink (1990a), pp. x–xlii of the introduction; cf. also Westerink (1990b). As far as the philosophical system of the school of Alexandria, and especially its metaphysics, is concerned, Kremer’s dissertation (1961) presents problems and may lead to confusion. For a more accurate picture, as well as for a critique of Kremer’s work see Verrycken (1990). For a comprehensive study of the metaphysics of Ammonius’ school, see Tempelis (1998). 6. See Tempelis (1998), p. 31. 7. For the social and religious frame of philosophical teaching in Alexandria from the 4th to the 6th cent. AD, see Haas (1997), pp. 152–7 and 227–44. 8. For the ἀπὸ φωνῆς commentaries see Richard (1950). 9. Ammonius, In Isag. 9.7–18. From the two Homeric verses included in the passage the second one is Il. XV 412, which refers to Athena’s wisdom. The first is Il. XXIII 712, and refers to the wise builder. We should note that in the case of Il. XXIII 712, Ammonius quotes the variant σοφός instead of κλυτός. This variant caused trouble to Busse, Ammonius’ editor, as we see in his apparatus criticus ad loc. West mentions it in his 2000 edition of the Iliad. Westerink (1990b, 348) considers it to be a rare variant, which illustrates the use of σοφός before Pythagoras. But the fact that, apart from Ammonius, Elias (In Isag. 23.34–24.3), David (In Isag. 45.7–9) and pseudo-Elias (In Isag. 17.5), Eustathius himself (1023.14) quotes it, shows that it was not only the school of Alexandria that used it, and therefore it cannot have been especially rare.


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10. These passages are: Ammonius, In Isag. 23.1–5, In de Int. 2.5–3.6, 44.2–6, 60.24–61.2, 95.28–96.26, 97.27–34, 269.32–270.5 and Asclepius, In Met. 7.24–27. 11. Ammonius, In Isag. 23.3–5: φαμὲν οὖν πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὅτι τὰ ὑπερέχοντα τῶν πραγμάτων ἀορίστως εἰώθαμεν σημαίνειν, ὥπερ ὅτε τὸν Ὅμηρον βουλόμεθα σημᾶναι ‘ὁ ποιητὴς’ λέγομεν κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν. 12. The half-verses are Il. III 182, VIII 399, Od. VII 238, Il. IV 288, Od. IV 379 and V 184. It should be noted that verses from the Odyssey do appear in philosophical exegeses, although their total number is, quite naturally, considerably smaller than the number of the verses from the Iliad. 13. Ammonius, In de Int. 44.2–6 and 60.24–61.2. 14. The other two half-verses are Il. VI 58 and I 144. As to the Il. II 204, it seems that it used to be one of the most famous and most beloved topoi in antiquity. For its use by writers of late antiquity, and especially philosophers, see Tempelis (1998), p. 116, n.492, Manolea (2004), pp. 225–8. 15. The passages are: Ammonius, In Cat. 15.29–16,6, 19.17–20.12, 22.6–10, 22.12–19, 23.6–8, In de Int. 19.9–18, Asclepius In Met. 87.34–88.2, 106.28– 33, 384.33–385.1 and 387.23–36. 16. Namely, In Cat. 15.29–16.6, 19.17–20.12 and 22.12–19. 17. Asclepius, In Met. 106.28–33: βούλεσθε μὲν γὰρ τὸ ἐξῃρημένον αἴτιον δηλῶσαι, οὐ δείκνυται δὲ τοῦτο ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐννοηματικόν, καὶ αὐτὸ ἡνίκα γένος ἐστὶ τὸ κατηγορούμενον, ὡς ἐπὶ ζῴου· εἰ γάρ ἐστιν ὁμώνυμος φωνή, οὐδὲ ἐννοηματικῶς ἔστιν ἑλεῖν τοῦτο (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐννοηματικῶς ἑλεῖν ὅτι ἔστι καθόλου Αἴας ἢ κύων). 18. Ammonius, In Cat. 23.6–8: πάλιν ἔστω τὰ ἄλλα πάντα ἀκολούθως, κοινωνία δὲ μὴ εἴη κατὰ τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ ὁμοίως οὐκ ἔσται παρώνυμα, ὡς ἐπὶ τῆς Ἑλένης καὶ τοῦ Ἑλένου. 19. Ammonius, In Cat. 22.6–10: καὶ τῶν μὲν κατὰ τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων ὁμοιότητα οἷον Γοργίας ἀπὸ τοῦ γοργεύεσθαι τόνδε τινά, τὰ δὲ διὰ τὴν τῆς μορφῆς ὁμοιότητα οἷον ἐπὶ τῆς εἰκόνος καὶ τοῦ παραδείγματος, τὰ δὲ κατὰ μεταφορὰν ὡς πόδες Ἴδης καὶ κορυφή. 20. Asclepius, In Met. 87.34–88.2: Φησὶν ὅτι τὸ ὑποτίθεσθαι τὰς ἰδέας παραδείγματα εἶναι τῶν τῇδε κενολογεῖν ἐστιν· οἱ γὰρ τοιοῦτοι μεταφοραῖς κέχρηνται, καθάπερ καὶ οἱ ποιηταί φασι πόδας Ἴδης. οὐ δεῖ οὖν τοὺς ζητοῦντας τὰς τῶν πραγμάτων φύσεις κεχρῆσθαι μεταφοραῖς καὶ ὀνοματοθετεῖν. 21. Asclepius, In Met. 387.23–36: ἔστιν οὖν καὶ τῶν συμβεβηκότων ὁρισμός, ἀλλ' οὐχ ὁμοίως οὐδὲ πρῶτος· οὔτε γὰρ τῶν κατὰ συνέχειαν ἐχόντων τὸ ἕν ἐστιν ὁρισμὸς οὔτε τῶν συνδέσμῳ. διὸ οὔ φαμεν ὁρισμὸν εἶναι τῆς Ἰλιάδος, ἐπειδὴ μία ἐστὶ τῇ συνεχείᾳ ἡ Ἰλιάς, ἅτε δὴ ἓν ἔχουσα τέλος, εἴ γε ἡ πᾶσα ποίησις, φησί, πρὸς τέλος ὁρᾷ τὴν ἁρπαγὴν τῆς Ἑλένης. οὔτε δὲ τῶν συνδέσμῳ ἕν, ὥσπερ ὁ οἶκος· ἐκ γὰρ τῆς συνδέσεως τῶν λίθων καὶ τῶν ξύλων ἔχει τὸ ἓν ἐπίκτητον. φησὶν οὖν ὅτι οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης, ἐὰν τοῦτο τιθῶμεν καὶ ὑποθώμεθα ὁρισμὸν εἶναι τοῦδε τοῦ πράγματος, ὁ δὲ ὁρισμὸς τὸ αὐτὸ δηλοῖ ὀνόματι, τουτέστιν ὃ ἂν ὄνομα λόγῳ τὸ αὐτὸ σημαίνῃ, ἤδη ὁρισμὸν εἶναι τοῦτον, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῆς Ἰλιάδος εἰρήκαμεν καὶ τοῦ οἴκου, ἀλλὰ τῷ λόγῳ, τουτέστι τῷ μὴ δηλοῦντι τὸ ἓν κατὰ συνέχειαν ἢ κατὰ σύνδεσμον. τοῦτο δὲ ἐὰν ὁρισμὸς ἑνὸς πράγματος ὑπάρχῃ μὴ ἔχοντος τὸ ἓν τῇ συνεχείᾳ, ὥσπερ ἡ Ἰλιὰς ἢ ὅσα συνδέσμῳ ἔχουσι τὸ ἕν, ἀλλ' ὁσαχῶς λέγεται τὸ ἕν.

184 Christina-Panagiota Manolea 22. Ammonius, In de Int. 149.10–15: ὁποτέρῳ γὰρ ἂν αὐτῶν φαίνηται ἢ μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν ἢ ἔλαττον κακὸν ἑπόμενον, ἐκεῖνο μᾶλλον αἱρούμεθα. οὕτω δὲ καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς τὸν Ἀχιλλέα φησὶν εἰδέναι ὅτι μένων μὲν ἐν τῇ Τροίᾳ καὶ πολεμῶν ὀλιγοχρόνιος ἔσται καὶ εὐκλεής, ἀναχωρῶν δὲ τοῦ πολέμου καὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ πατρίδι διατριβὴν ἀγαπῶν πολυχρόνιος μὲν ἀκλεὴς δέ, καὶ προτιμῆσαι τὴν εὔκλειαν τοῦ εἰς γῆρας ἐλθεῖν. 23. Ibid. 114.33–115.7 and 117.15–118.27. 24. Od. XIV 466: καί τι ἔπος προέηκεν, ὅπερ τ᾽ ἄρρητον ἄμεινον. 25. For a discussion of the use of the famous verse Od. XIV 466 by Syrianus, Proclus, Olympiodorus, as well as by writers such as Athenaeus, Aelius Aristides, Libanius and pseudo-Plutarch, see Manolea (2004), pp. 111–16. 26. Asclepius, In Met. 353.23–28: ταῦτα δὲ ἔλεγεν ὁ Ἀντισθένης ὑπολαμβάνων ὅ τι οὐκ ἔστι· καὶ ὁ ψευδόμενος γὰρ κατὰ τοῦ αὐτοῦ φέρεται καὶ ὁ ἀληθεύων ὅτι ἀθάνατός ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή· ὥστε ἔστιν ἀντιλέγειν. ἔστιν οὐ *** παντελῶς μὲν οὖν ὡς ἐπὶ τοῦ λέγοντος θνητὴν εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν, ἐπί τι δὲ ὡς ἐπὶ τοῦ λέγοντος πόδας Ἴδης (κατὰ ἀναλογίαν γὰρ εἴρηται), ἢ ὅτι τὰ ὀκτὼ διπλάσια τῶν τεσσάρων ὑπάρχουσιν. 27. Ammonius, In Isag. 3.4–24: διεῖλε γὰρ τὰ ὄντα εἰς τὰ θεῖα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα τὰ μὲν ἀίδια εἰπὼν θεῖα, τὰ δὲ ἐν γενέσει καὶ φθορᾷ εἰπὼν ἀνθρώπινα. (…) οὕτω γὰρ ὁ Πλάτων ὡρίσατο. ὁ γὰρ θεὸς διττὰς ἔχει τὰς ἐνεργείας, τὰς μὲν γνωστικάς, καθ' ἃς τὰ πάντα γινώσκει, ὡς καὶ οἱ ποιηταὶ σημαίνουσι λέγοντες ‘θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα ἴσασι’, τὰς δὲ προνοητικὰς τῶν καταδεεστέρων, καθ' ἃς τοῦ κόσμου ὅλου προνοεῖται, ὡς καὶ οἱ ποιηταί φασι ‘θεοὶ δωτῆρες ἐάων’. ὁ δὲ φιλόσοφος κατ' ἄμφω βούλεται ἐξομοιοῦν ἑαυτὸν τῷ θεῷ· βούλεται γὰρ καὶ θεωρητὴς εἶναι τῶν πάντων (πάντα γὰρ ἐπισκέπτεται), καὶ μέντοι καὶ πρόνοιαν τῶν καταδεεστέρων ποιεῖται (ὁ γάρ τοι πολιτικὸς φιλόσοφος δικάζει καὶ νόμους τίθησιν)· ὥστε εἰκότως ἡ φιλοσοφία ὁμοίωσίς ἐστι θεῷ. τὸ δὲ ‘κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἀνθρώπῳ’ καλῶς πρόσκειται· οὔτε γὰρ ἡ γνῶσις ὁμοία οὔτε ἡ πρόνοια ἡ αὐτή, ‘ἐπεὶ οὔ ποτε φῦλον ὁμοῖον ἀθανάτων τε θεῶν χαμαὶ ἐρχομένων τ' ἀνθρώπων’· ὧν γὰρ αἱ οὐσίαι διάφοροι, τούτων καὶ αἱ τελειότητες διάφοροι ὑπάρχουσι. The first two half-verses quoted by Ammonius are Od. IV 379 and VIII 325 respectively, while the third quotation is Il. V 441–2. 28. For Homer’s consideration as a theologian by Pythagoreans, Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists see Lamberton (1986). 29. In Phaedr. 122.19–20. Syrianus actually refers to the three men as belonging to the ‘ἔνθεοι ποιηταί’, but the status of the latter among Greeks was indeed that of theologians. Now, as to the work in question, the In Phaedrum is attributed by the manuscript tradition to Syrianus’ student Hermias; it can nevertheless be considered as an adequate source of Syrianus’ teaching and ideas. For a discussion of this matter see Manolea (2004), pp. 47–58. 30. Ammonius, In Isag. 3.7–24. The Homeric verses are Od. IV 379, VIII 325 and Il. V 442. 31. Asclepius, In Met. 309.21–26: τὸ βίαιον δὲ ἀναγκαῖον, ὅταν τις ἐπιθῇ τινι βίαν ποιῆσαι τόδε τὸ πρᾶγμα, ὥσπερ ὁ Εὐρυσθεὺς ἐπέταττε τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ. διό φησι κἀκεῖνος ‘ἀναγκαίη γὰρ ἐπείγει’· τῷ ὄντι γὰρ ὁ προστάττων ἀμετα ποιήτως ἔχει· εἰ γὰρ μεταπεισθείη, οὐκέτι ἐστὶ βία. ἐπὶ τοίνυν τοῦ θείου οὐδὲν θεωρεῖται βίαιον ἐξ ἀνάγκης, ἐπειδὴ οὐδὲ ἔξωθεν ὑπάρχει τι αὐτῷ, ἀλλὰ συνουσίωται αὐτῷ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον. The halfverse quoted is Il. VI 85. 32. Ammonius, In Isag. 94.10–95.5.


185

33. Ibid. 99.6-20: δῆλον οὖν ὅτι αἱ μὲν διαιρετικαὶ διαφοραὶ χρησιμεύουσι πρὸς τὴν διαιρετικὴν μέθοδον, εἴπερ κατὰ ταύτας γίνονται αἱ τῶν γενῶν εἰς τὰ εἴδη διαιρέσεις, αἱ δὲ συστατικαὶ εἰς τὴν ὁριστικήν, εἴπερ οἱ ὁρισμοὶ ἐκ γενῶν εἰσι καὶ τῶν τοιούτων διαφορῶν. ἰστέον δ' ὅτι συντιθέμεναι αὗται ποιοῦσι τέσσαρας συζυγίας, ὧν αἱ μὲν τρεῖς συνίστανται ἡ δὲ μία ἀσύστατός ἐστιν. οἷον ἔστω λογικὸν καὶ ἄλογον, θνητὸν καὶ ἀθάνατον. ἰδοὺ τοίνυν λογικὸν καὶ θνητὸν συνίσταται, ἔστι γὰρ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, λογικὸν καὶ ἀθάνατον ὁ θεός, ἄλογον δὲ καὶ θνητὸν ὁ ἵππος, οὐκ ἔστι δέ τι ἄλογον καὶ ἀθάνατον· ζητεῖται γὰρ περὶ τῆς λοιπῆς συζυγίας, τῆς τοῦ ἀλόγου φημὶ καὶ τοῦ ἀθανάτου, πότερον συνέστηκε καὶ ἔστι τι ἄλογον καὶ ἀθάνατον, οἷόν τι δοκεῖ καὶ περὶ τῆς Σκύλλης ὁ ποιητὴς λέγειν ‘ἀλλ' ἀθάνατον κακόν ἐστιν’, ἢ οὔ· οἱ μὲν γάρ φασιν εἶναί τι δαιμονίων ἀλόγων γένος ἀθάνατον, ὅπερ δὴ μείονα ἐπέχει τάξιν, οὓς καὶ ἀποτρεπόμεθα. The halfverse quoted in the passage is Od. XII 118. 34. Ammonius, In Cat. 29.5–6: Λέγεται δὲ τὸ ἔν τινι ἑνδεκαχῶς, ὡς ἤδη λέλεκται· ἐν χρόνῳ (ἔν τινι γὰρ χρόνῳ γεγόνεν ὁ Τρωικὸς πόλεμος ἢ ὁ Πελοποννησιακός), ἐν τόπῳ (λέγομεν γὰρ τὸν Σωκράτην ἐν τόπῳ εἶναι οἷον ἐν Λυκείῳ). 35. Ibid. 43.11–14: Ὃν γὰρ ἔχει λόγον ὁ ἄνθρωπος πρὸς τὸν τινὰ ἄνθρωπον, τοῦτον καὶ ὁ ἵππος πρὸς τὸν Ξάνθον· ὥσπερ γὰρ κατὰ τοῦ Σωκράτους οὐδὲν οἰκειότερον εἴποις τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, οὕτως οὐδὲ κατὰ τοῦ Ξάνθου τοῦ ἵππου. 36. Ammonius, In de Int. 131.10–19: καὶ οὐδὲ τοὺς πάνυ ἰδιωτικῶς διακειμένους τῶν ἀνθρώπων εὑρήσεις ἀμελοῦντας τῆς περὶ τούτου τοῦ θεωρήματος ἐννοίας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς μὲν ὡς πάντων ἐξ ἀνάγκης γινομένων τὰς αἰτίας ὧν ἁμαρτάνουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἢ τὴν πρόνοιαν τήν τε θείαν καὶ τὴν δαιμονίαν ἀναφέρειν πειρωμένους, καθάπερ ὁ ἀπαιδεύτως παρ' Ὁμήρῳ λέγων ‘ἐγὼ δ' οὐκ αἴτιός εἰμι, ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς καὶ Μοῖρα καὶ ἠεροφοῖτις Ἐριννύς’, τοὺς δὲ ὡς ὄντων τινῶν καὶ ἐφ' ἡμῖν ἀπομαχομένους μὲν τοῖς πάντα ἀναγκάζουσιν ἀξιοῦντας δὲ ἡμᾶς ὡς αὐτοκινήτους παιδείας τε καὶ ἀρετῆς ἐπιμέλειαν ποιεῖσθαι. 37. Ibid. 184.20–22. 38. Ibid. 211.27–212.2. 39. These references are: In Met. 38.11–19, 71.17–20, 190.13–20, 223.31–33, 244.6–9, 320.19–21, 321.5–9, 323.17–31, 339.3–7, 341.21–25, 345.17–26 and 349.7–9. 40. Asclepius, In Met. 38.11–19: αὖθις δὲ αἰσθητῶς ἐδήλουν διὰ μὲν τῆς δυάδος τὴν ὕλην, διὰ δὲ τῆς μονάδος τὸ εἶδος, διὰ δὲ τῆς ἑνάδος τὴν φύσιν τὴν προαγωγόν· (…) διὸ παγκάλως φησὶν ὁ ποιητὴς τὸ ‘σειρὴν χρυσείην’· καὶ πάλιν ὁ Παρμενίδης ‘οὐ γὰρ ἔην, οὐκ ἔσται ὁμοῦ πᾶν, ἔστι δὲ μοῦνον’. διὰ δὲ τῆς ἑνάδος τὴν πρωτίστην καὶ ἐξῃρημένην αἰτίαν· ‘κλῦθι, κύδιμ' ἀριθμέ, πατὴρ μακάρων τε καὶ ἀνδρῶν.’ The Homeric verse Asclepius refers to is Il. VIII 19 (σειρὴν χρυσείην ἐξ οὐρανόθεν κρεμάσαντες), along with the allegorical treatment of this strange claim by many writers in antiquity. For this allegory see Lovejoy (1948), pp. 3–66; cf. also Lévèque (1959). 41. Asclepius, In Met. 71.17–20: ἐνταῦθα δὲ ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὐκ ἔστι μέρος τοῦ δημιουργικοῦ λόγου, ἀλλὰ τὸ εἶναι προάγει ὁ λόγος. οὔτε δὲ πάλιν ὁμώνυμος ὡς ἡ Αἴας φωνή· αὕτη γὰρ καὶ ἀνυπόστατός ἐστι, τὰ δὲ εἴδη οὐκ ἀνυπόστατα ὑπάρχουσι. 42. Ibid. 223.31–33 and 244.6–9. 43. Ibid. 190.18–20: ἕκαστον γὰρ τῶν ὄντων ἀριθμῷ ἔχει τὸ ἕν, οἷον Σωκράτης Πλάτων, Βαλίος Ξάνθος, καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα ὑπάρχουσιν αἰσθητά. πρὸς τούτοις δὲ οὐκ ἔσται οὐδεμία ἀρχή. 44. Ibid. 320.19–21 and 321.5–9.

186 Christina-Panagiota Manolea 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60.

Ibid. 323.17–31. Ibid. 339.3–7 and 341.21–25. Ibid. 345.17–26 and 349.7–9. There are three references in cosmological contexts, In Met. 24.37–25.15, 58.24–32 and 326.5–10. Asclepius, In Met. 24.37–25.15. The verses quoted are Il. XIV 201 and XV 37. Asclepius, In Met. 58.24–32. Ibid. 326.5–10. Ibid. 277.23–278.6. For a discussion of the variant, as well as the verse’s quotation by philosophers, see Manolea (2004), pp. 209–11. Asclepius, In Met. 9.31–10.6. Ibid. 157.7–12. Ibid. 410.5–8. Ibid. 10.28–11.6. See above, n. 3. Ammonius and Asclepius were commenting on Aristotle, as was Syrianus, in whose In Met. we encounter two passages where the philosopher uses Homeric verses bearing a long allegorical tradition. The way Syrianus quotes the Homeric verses traced in those passages shows – or rather implies – that he was at least familiar with their allegorical interpretation; thus, these passages can be described as belonging to the tradition of allegorical exegesis. For these two passages see Manolea (2004), pp. 211–14 and 218–21. Ammonius’ effort to keep balances between different persons and different beliefs was bitterly attacked by Damascius (Philosophical History, fr. 118B Athanassiadi), who actually accused him of coming to an agreement with the overseer of Alexandria because of his greed for money. The matter is much more complex. Given the situation in sixth-century Alexandria, Ammonius seems to have been engaged in a game of balances and politics. It seems right, therefore, to examine his attitude towards pagans and Christians, as well as much of his philosophical teaching, in this perspective.

Bibliography Ammonius, 1891, In Porphyrii Isagogen sive quinque voces, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin. Ammonius, 1895, In Aristotelis Categorias, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin. Ammonius, 1897, In Aristotelis de Interpretatione, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin. Asclepius, 1888, In Aristotelis Metaphysicorum Libros A–Z, M. Hayduck (ed.), Berlin. Buffière, F., 1956, Les mythes d’ Homère et la penseé grecque, Paris. Cilento, V., 1960, ‘Mito e poesia nelle Enneadi di Plotino’, Entretiens sur l’ Antiquité Classique V, Vandoeuvres – Genève (transcript of 1957 Symposium), pp. 245–323. Coulter, J. A., 1976, The Literary Microcosm. Theories of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists, Leiden. Damascius, 1999, The Philosophical History, P. Athanassiadi (ed.), Athens. David, 1904, In Porphyrii Isagogen, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin. Elias, 1900, In Porphyrii Isagogen, A. Busse (ed.), Berlin.


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Eustathius, 1971–87, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem, M. van der Valk (ed.), vols 1–4, Leiden. Fiedl, A. J., 1936, ‘Die Homer-Interpretation des Neuplatonikers Proklos’, dissertation, Würzburg. Haas, C., 1997, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, Baltimore and London. Hermias, 1901, In Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, P. Couvreur (ed.), Paris.; reprinted with an index and an afterword by C. Zintzen (1971), Hildesheim and New York. Homer, 1991, Odyssea, H. van Thiel (ed.), Hildesheim, Zürich, and New York. Homer, 1998–2000, Ilias, M. L. West (ed.), vols 1–2, Stuttgart and Leipzig. Kremer, K., 1961, ‘Der Metaphysikbegriff in den Aristoteles-Kommentaren der Ammonius-Schule’, dissertation, Frankfurt am Main. Kuisma, O., 1996, Proclus’ Defence of Homer, The Finnish Society of Science and Letters: Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum vol. 109, Helsinki. Lamberton, R., 1986, Homer the Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London. Lévèque, P., 1959, Aurea catena Homeri. Une Étude sur l’ allégorie grecque, Annales Littéraires de l’ Université de Besançon 27, Paris. Long, A. A., 1992, ‘Stoic Readings of Homer’, in R. Lamberton and J. J. Keaney (eds.), Homer’s Ancient Readers, Princeton, pp. 41–66. Lovejoy, A., 1948, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge MA. Manolea, C.-P., 2004, The Homeric Tradition in Syrianus, Thessaloniki. Pépin, J., 1976, Mythe et allégorie. Les origins grecques et les contestations judéo-chrétiennes, Paris. Pseudo-Elias (Pseudo-David), 1967, In Porphyrii Isagogen, L. G. Westerink (ed.), Lectures on Porphyry’s Isagoge, Amsterdam. Richard, M., 1950, ‘Apo phones’, Byzantion, 20, pp. 191–222. Sheppard, A. D. R., 1980, Studies on the 5th and the 6th Essays of Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic, Hypomnemata 61, Göttingen. Sorabji, R. (ed.), 1990, Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and their Influence, London. Steinmetz, P., 1986, ‘Allegorische Deutung und allegorische Dichtung in der alten Stoa’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 129, pp. 18–30. Syrianus, 1902, In Aristotelis Metaphysica, W. Kroll (ed.), Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. VI.1, Berlin. Tempelis, E., 1998, The School of Ammonius, Son of Hermias, on Knowledge of the Divine, Athens. Verrycken, K., 1990, ‘The Metaphysics of Ammonius Son of Hermeias’, in Sorabji (1990), pp. 199–231. Wehrli, F., 1928, ‘Zur Geschichte der allegorischen Deutung Homers im Altertum’, inaugural dissertation, Zürich. Westerink, L. G., 1990a, Prolégomènes à la philosophie de Platon, Paris. Westerink, L. G., 1990b, ‘The Alexandrian Commentators and the Introductions to their Commentaries’, in Sorabji (1990), pp. 325–48.


Part IV Later Influences


11 Nous and Geist: Self-Identity and Methodological Solipsism in Plotinus and Hegel Robert M. Berchman

Introduction This study offers a parallel discussion of Plotinus’ and Hegel’s conceptions of Nous and Geist. Its overall aim is to show how these conceptions enable Plotinus and Hegel to construct a notion of self-identity in which the individual self or mind can be ultimately identified with a supra-personal identity or mind. To attain this goal, Plotinus and Hegel employ the presupposition of methodological solipsism not as a strategy that restricts the validity of certain metaphysical claims within a first-person standpoint, but as a strategy that makes possible the expansion of the first-person perspective into a collective one that includes other minds. Their aim is to overcome the dualistic and solipsistic tendencies that they saw in Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant. Nous and Geist make possible a switch from the I-perspective (usually associated with methodological solipsism) to a We-perspective. Methodological solipsism is a first-person philosophical orientation that restricts the kinds of questions one might ask and the types of appeal one can make from the I- philosophical standpoint, or from the I- to a We-philosophical standpoint.1 Plotinus and Hegel employ methodological solipsism to expand the kinds of questions one might ask, and the types of appeal one can make from an I- to a We- philosophical standpoint.2 Consequently, notions of self-identity as We, and their use of methodological solipsism as a philosophical rule which allows a move from an I to a We, open up new horizons for philosophical thinking. 191

192 Robert M. Berchman

Nous and Geist Plotinus’ Nous is a hypostasis composed of Forms, or at least every species in the world as well as all moral and mathematical forms. Plotinus’ starting point is Plato’s Sophist (248e–249a). There, the Forms are not merely self-subsistent universals but beings that think. This follows from Plotinus’ identification of Intellect with the Forms (V.1.4, 26–29) and individual forms with individual intellects (V.9.8, 3–7).3 Thus, each Form is capable of thinking and being the object of thought whether they are the individual components of Intellect or the hypostasis as a whole. The thinking of Plotinus’ Intellect is a thinking of intellectual objects that are its own contents. This is the kind of thinking that the human intellect may do when the soul is free from interference from the sensible world and reasoning about it. The human intellect is a substance or being (ousia) that accesses Intellect by turning toward it and away from any distractions arising from lower levels of reality (V.3.27–29; IV.3.30, 11–16). Once this is done the human intellect does as Intellect does. It thinks and is thought. By raising oneself to the level of Intellect we gain self-identity. Thus the concept of Intellect is the hallmark of a theory of self-identity – a theory in which I am something other than a person. Nous is a theory of supra-personal identity. Hegel’s Spirit is a form of general consciousness, a single ‘mind’ common to everyone. Hegel is careful not to identify Spirit with the inadequate conceptions of oneself as an individual in opposition to others (in the ‘master–slave relationship’) and in opposition to God (in ‘contrite consciousness’). Absolute consciousness is the explicit recognition of one’s identity as General or Universal Spirit. Thus the concept of Spirit is the hallmark of a theory of self-identity – a theory in which I am something other than a person. Geist is a theory of supra-personal identity. The difference between Plotinus’ Nous and Hegel’s Geist is that, for Plotinus, Intellect is a being (to on; ousia).4 For Hegel, Spirit must be referred to simpliciter as subject or substance (as substantia; das Wesen). The distinction hinges on the different meanings of ousia and substantia in their metaphysical traditions, which remains a serious story to be told. However, the disjunction between Nous and Geist is not as serious a matter as one might assume. For both Plotinus and Hegel Nous and Geist are supra-personal identities. Thus within the context of methodological solipsism, metaphysical distinctions between being (to on; ousia) and substance (substantia; das Wesen) are not crucial.

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Self-identity There are presuppositions to any philosophical discussion. Self-identity and methodological solipsism are principal among such philosophical presuppositions. As a presupposition, either self-identity is a perception, intuition, or conception in which I am identified with myself as an individual, a person, an ego, an I, or, self-identity is a concept in which I am identified as something other than an individual, a person, an ego. In these two thinkers, the I is associated with a supra-personal mind, a We. For Plotinus this supra-personal mind is Nous. For Hegel this supra-personal, or absolute consciousness, is Geist.

Methodological solipsism As a philosophical rule, methodological solipsism is among the defining characteristics of Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and Plotinus’ philosophies. Moreover, it was taken over by Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel with a series of metaphysical consequences. The fundamental difference between ancient and modern consequences of methodological solipsism is that the ancient philosophers tend toward realism. For the ancients, the results of methodological solipsism entail the claim that real being is essential for the being of consciousness. Whether rationalists, empiricists, idealists (including Hegel), or positivists, modern philosophers argue the contrary. For them, the results of methodological solipsism support the claim that no real being is essential for the being of consciousness.5 Another distinction requires mentioning. The difference between Plotinus’ and Hegel’s versions of methodological solipsism and those of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant is that for these latter thinkers there is no appeal to other intellects, or to other persons which I cannot justify for myself ontologically and epistemologically. For Plotinus and Hegel there is an appeal to a common intellect shared by other intellects, or other persons, which we can justify for ourselves. Moreover, since methodological solipsism is the ‘fact’ of my intellect, my consciousness, or my self-consciousness, this presupposition is not simply an ultimate presupposition, nor a mere premise of philosophical argument. If it were, one could not make sense of the fact that Plotinus and Hegel took the I and We as intellect, consciousness, and self-consciousness as the starting point and end-point of their philosophies. For Plotinus and Hegel, there is something most peculiar about the ‘fact’ of my intellect, consciousness, or self-consciousness. This is the


starting-point of an epistemological and ontological ‘turn’ from an I- to a We consciousness. Plotinus and Hegel endorse methodological solipsism to demonstrate that our knowledge of being can be understood and defended only in terms of a supra-personal or collective intellect – as Nous and Geist. On this point, they stand in sharp contrast perhaps to Plato and Aristotle, but certainly to Descartes and Kant, who use the first-person philosophical orientation to demonstrate that only my knowledge of being can be understood and defended, and that such first-person knowledge is one of understanding rather than reason. For Aristotle and Plotinus it is Intellect, while for Descartes, Kant, and Hegel it is consciousness and self-consciousness, that is the key to all knowledge. Moreover, for each of these philosophers the knowing-subject is the key to all philosophical understanding. Plotinus’ Nous and Hegel’s Geist play a role as subject similar to that played by Nous in Aristotle’s philosophy, and by the Cogito and transcendental ego in Descartes’ and Kant’s philosophies. But there are important differences. Nous and Geist, which are Plotinus’ and Hegel’s first-person cases of methodological solipsism, can only be defended as a first-person plural. Once the I drops out of the formulation, the possibility of individuating intellect and consciousness drops out as well. That is to say, at the level of Nous and Geist the subject–object dichotomy dissolves. The We overcomes and sublates the I. When this occurs the We moves from understanding to reason; from an I to a We conceptualization of knowledge and reality. If self-identity for Plotinus and Hegel is understood as a theory of supra-personal identity, where the relation of self-identity is taken to be the highest class under which everything falls, then, when we think, what we think about is the class of things identical with ourselves. Early examples of this include Plato’s Ideai and Aristotle’s Nous Poietikos. Later, when Plotinus discusses intellection, by which we raise ourselves to the level of Nous, we in no sense lose our identity. Similarly, when Hegel discusses consciousness, through which we raise ourselves to self-consciousness, we in no sense lose our identity. What is gained is a self-identity that expands the soul or self from the first-person singular to the first-person plural. Acknowledging Nous and Geist as supra-personal identities also entails certain metaphysical and ontological claims that Plotinus and Hegel thought Plato and Descartes minimized, and Aristotle and Kant dismissed entirely.

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Self-identity and methodological solipsism The argument of this study can now be restated. Plotinus’ Nous removes certain philosophical perplexities that Plato’s Ideai and Aristotle’s Nous Poietikos are incapable of resolving – at least according to Plotinus. Similarly, Hegel’s Geist also replaces Descartes’ Cogito and Kant’s transcendental ego because it too resolves certain philosophical perplexities that their concepts are incapable of resolving – at least according to Hegel. We must now ask, why? Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant proposed that ‘I think’ holds a precious place in philosophy. Indeed, even Hume, in denying the unity of consciousness, is forced to say ‘I am not aware’. This claim, ‘I think’, is not merely one self-evident truth among others, but the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge. It is the first principle of a philosophical methodology and a criterion for philosophical truth. It is also a philosophical truth itself. Again, such perspectives are examples of what is called methodological solipsism, requiring that every proposition must be justified from a first-person standpoint. Every philosophical problem must be construed as my problem. I must determine whether it is justifiable for me to accept any theory that attempts to answer that problem, and I can justify my acceptance of this theory only by appealing to evidence that I have, and I treat this evidence according to methods that I am also able to justify. This solipsist demand is usually linked to the insistence that only thoughts and propositions of which I am certain may be allowed into philosophical inquiry. In brief, the demands for self-evidence and certainty require that philosophical inquiry restrict itself to an examination of the necessary features of the ‘first-person standpoint’. In Plato and Aristotle, this method limits its appeal to thinking and its correspondence to being; in Descartes, this method limits its appeal to the clarity and distinctness of ideas and the natural light of reason; in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume this method limits its appeal to the immediacy of perceptions, and in Kant, the dual restrictions of certainty and appeal to the firstperson case yield a ‘transcendental method’ whose aim is to provide the features of self-consciousness that are universal and necessary.

The first-person case With such presuppositions in place, the methodological solipsist argues that my mind is not one mind among others, and I am not one person among others. Thus, every philosophical proposition depends upon my


mind for justification. If this is so, every other mind can only be a philosophical problem. This does not mean that Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant openly accept solipsism as a philosophical truth. However, although it is their methodological starting point, and it is an initially given problem to be resolved, one of the central efforts of all who have adopted this method is to show that solipsism is false in spite of the method. Before we can appeal to ‘the first-person case’, we must understand what this case is. Kant, in the ‘Transcendental Analytic’ of the Critique of Pure Reason, represents ‘the first-person case’ in its most exemplary contemporary form.6 His epistemological starting point is a finite (‘personal’) subject of knowledge. Kant claims that epistemology rests upon the ‘necessity of the possibility for the ”I think” to accompany all my representations’ (CPR., B131). For Kant, methodological solipsism is a position that must be explained and defended while for Plotinus and Hegel, it is there to be used and overcome. Unlike Kant’s Ich Denke, Plotinus’ Nous and Hegel’s Geist can be understood as infinite (‘supra-personal’) subjects of knowledge identical with their objects of knowledge. But even more fundamentally: how can an analysis of ‘self-consciousness’ be carried out from the vantage-point of methodological solipsism? Plotinus, Kant, and Hegel would probably agree that this is impossible. Appeals to an empirical study of consciousness, to other philosophical analyses of ‘self-consciousness’, even to other persons’ experiences of themselves, or to studies of the language we use to communicate about ourselves cannot be utilized. I cannot even appeal to myself as a person, for persons have bodies, and the existence of my body or of any connection between that body and my mind must be held in philosophical suspension. I can only ask ‘How can I, and must I, come to be conscious of myself ?’ The beginnings of an answer can be discerned in Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Descartes, and Kant. Two ancients, at least, employ methodological solipsism but are still realists. There is Aristotle’s ‘I’ of active intellect, where consciousness and being are the same and there is Plotinus’ ‘I’ of intellect, where thinking and the being of Forms coincide.7 Aristotle and Plotinus offer occasional excursions into quasi-idealist positions but they are not idealists.8 The congruity between these claims is that each identifies primary being with the activity of intellection. Does this mean that they must be idealists? Since Aristotle conceives Intellect (as well as Matter) as prior to things, it seems that he approaches idealism in Metaphysics Lambda

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when he claims that God is at once Intellect and a substance engaged in noêsis. Plotinus suggests a possible link to idealism in at least three possible forms. The first is in Ennead III.8 where a Berkeleyan mode suggests itself, and the second is in Ennead V.5 where a possible Hegelian trope surfaces.9 The third occurs in what Plotinus says about the One in relation to Intellect’s thinking, where parallels may be drawn with what Kant says about the unity of apperception. These idealist claims are underscored by the additional proposal that Aristotle and Plotinus share a claim about intentionality.10 So, are Aristotle, and Plotinus idealists? Realism is the view that: (1) there are real objects that exist independently of our knowledge or experience of them; (2) that these mental and physical objects have properties and enter into relations independently of (a) the concepts with which we understand them, or (b) the language with which we describe them. Anti-realism is any view that rejects any one of these tenets and it includes all claims to representationalism, transcendental deduction, and phenomenology.11 Neither Aristotle nor Plotinus reject any of the three theses of realism. So, I would suggest that even when they take occasional excursions into quasi-idealist positions, such as Aristotle’s view of God (as at once an Intellect and a substance in the most primary sense) and Plotinus’ identification of primary being with acts of thought, this does not constitute idealism. Furthermore, neither Aristotle nor Plotinus propose any anti-realist or constructivist claims that would suggest Berkeley’s immaterial, Kant’s transcendental, Hegel’s absolute, or Husserl’s phenomenological types of idealism.12 In this sense, a return to Burnyeat is apposite. He argues that not only is idealism absent from antiquity, but it could not have arisen.13 I tend to agree with Burnyeat that idealism is a thoroughly modern phenomenon and that ancient thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus are essentially realists, and not rationalists, empiricists, phenomenalists, idealists, or phenomenologists.14 Yet, on the basis of the principle of ‘family resemblance’ it still could be argued that ancient and modern philosophers share a common metaphysical language. However, even here there is a caveat. In Wittgenstein’s terminology, although any member of a family resembles some other member, there is no single pervading feature marking them all as members of the same family.15 Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and all the rest may perhaps belong to the same extended family, but Aristotle and Plotinus do not share the constitutive metaphysical ‘vocabularies’ and ‘descriptions’ of Berkeley’s immaterial, Kant’s transcendental, Hegel’s absolute, and Husserl’s phenomenological idealisms.


The reasons for such a conclusion are straight-forward. First, the position regarding the constitutive activity of the subject in experience (the relation being the key point) is a clear-cut modern notion. There is no ancient philosopher with any comparable viewpoint concerning such unity of apperception. This would require a constitutive thinker unknown before Kant. Second, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus hold to the realist notion of a mind-independent reality, be it Being, the Ideas, Forms, Intellect, or even a hyper-reality such as the One. They also maintain that phenomena are real because of causes other than mental activity, and they claim that what is ‘given’ to intellect is distinct from what is ‘added by the mind’ as a rational reconstruction, transcendental construction, or phenomenological reduction. Such constructivist notions had to await Descartes’ Cogito, Spinoza’s substantia, Locke’s theory of perception, but principally Berkeley’s, Kant’s, and Hegel’s claims that our mental activity, however differently they understood mental activity, constitutes and, in the case of Hegel, sustains reality itself. There are also two modern rationalist and idealist methodological solipsisms that follow in the wake of this constructivist model. The first rests on Descartes’ ‘I’ of the Cogito, which is not dependent upon other persons and is not itself a person. In Descartes’ formulation, the ‘I’ is neither person, nor human body, but a thinking mind (Med., 6). The second finds expression in Kant’s ‘I think’ where consciousness is a formal necessity, a precondition for any consciousness. For Kant, the ‘I’ as a formal principle is analytic, but the unifying principle is itself not analytic but synthetic. The analytic unity of apperception is possible only under the presupposition of synthetic unity (CPR., B133). Kant’s ‘I think’ as the vehicle of all concepts (CPR., B399) is carefully distinguished from two other concepts of ‘self’ with which it is often confused. It is not equivalent to a person but only to that non-material conception of the ‘I’ that thinks what is transcendentally necessary for there to be consciousness at all. Moreover, this transcendental ‘I’ has no special designation because it serves only to introduce all our thought as belonging to consciousness (CPR., B399–400). Thus, it is neither a substance nor a soul. The use of ‘first-person’ language raises great problems for Descartes and Kant within the demands of methodological solipsism. There is the question of how can I know there are any other subjects or ‘I thinks’ or whether there are any other persons, by arguing from my own case? If this is to be established at all, it must be from some form of inductive argument such as analogy, or as an inference about the ‘behaviour’

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of certain objects. Each thinker is forced to adopt a provisional behaviourism to complement their respective methodological solipsisms. However, the problem that really confronts us is not so much the problem of other minds, but the problem of identifying my own mind. Descartes and Kant see the relationship between me and my body as a strictly empirical one, although a very special empirical relationship. The relation between me and my mind is no more necessary. The content of consciousness (for example, particular thoughts) is identified empirically: there is nothing that I must be thinking for it still to be true that ‘I think’. What this means is that any criterion used to identify persons (mental as well as physical) does not suffice to identify the ‘I’ that thinks. Thus, the ‘I’ that thinks is not a person and considerations about the ‘I think’ are quite independent of considerations about myself as a person. Moreover, ‘I think’ cannot be individuated by individuating persons, because is it possible that I share an intellect, mind, or transcendental ego with others. In short, it is impossible to assert any claims about ‘myself’ at all. All we can do is attribute all thoughts and experiences to a subject; but we cannot identify or individuate subjects in the way we individuate persons. There is no particular ‘I’ that thinks, and nothing is known about what does. At this point, for Descartes and Kant, methodological solipsism ends in an aporia. Can this I be a person at all? Can this I acknowledge other persons? The answer to both questions is a qualified ‘no’. It is simply impossible within Descartes’ Cogito, and it is ‘only’ transcendentally possible when Kant’s ‘I think’ grasps the unity of apperception, such as when it ascertains the transcendental principle involved in the universal communicability of the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime. I would suggest that this is a special apperceptive state, which Kant limits to aesthetic sensibility in the free play of imagination (Einbildungskraft). But that is another story. Plotinus and Hegel propose that it is possible for the I to be a person and to know other minds, and this only occurs in a suprapersonal sense within the activity of Nous and dialectically within Geist. That is to say, We can only gain an inter-subjective perspective when I attain a perspective that amounts to the disappearance of an I that acknowledges other persons. Eschewing the use of ‘first-person’ language to describe the ‘I think’, Plotinus and Hegel favour a universal ‘We think’. At this level of thinking, there is no longer merely a personal ego thinking other persons. There is also an interpersonal ego thinking other persons.


The supra-personal case Despite their differences, Plotinus and Hegel would still be in general agreement with Kant‘s ‘I think’. Nous and Geist reflect much of Kant’s transcendental ‘I’. Each is an activity, and neither is a ‘soul’ lying behind our thoughts. Rather, Plotinus’ Intellect and Hegel’s Spirit are the universal Nous and Geist in activity and action. That is to say, as a beginning, the only sense in which the ‘I think’ exists, is the sense in which it knows of itself or is ‘reference-to-itself’. Its existence and its knowledge of its existence are the same. For Plotinus, this means that being (ousia) and Intellect are identical in the light of the thesis of the unity of the knower and known in the seeing of the Forms. For Hegel, this means that existence and intellect are identical in light of the thesis that Spirit is the underlying principle of consciousness. This is why Plotinus and Hegel understand Nous and Geist as a We instead of an I. The traditional uses of Nous and ego carry with them the more or less explicit stipulation that there is one such noein, cogito, or transcendental ego for each person. Likewise ‘I’ and ‘I think’ refer to individual persons. But Plotinus and Hegel recognize that any attempt to use these concepts mandates a use of methodological solipsism, which makes it impossible to move beyond the first-person standpoint to verify other-selves, or, for that matter, any philosophical postulates which are inclusive of other-selves. This is also why Plotinus and Hegel reject traditional egoistic concepts of self-reference. If we wish to talk as the methodological solipsist supposes we must, it cannot be through this traditionally misleading use of the personal ‘I’. The subject of philosophy is not a person, is not an individual. For Plotinus and Hegel, the subject of philosophy is Nous or Geist – a general or universal consciousness. They would have argued that it ought to have been as well for Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant. Plotinus’ Intellect and Hegel’s Spirit is Plato’s Noein, Aristotle’s Nous Poietikos, Descartes’ Cogito, and Kant’s transcendental ego (without the unwarranted claim that each person has a separate ego). Nous and Geist are simply the underlying unifying principle of consciousness, and the transition to Intellect and Spirit from earlier proposed principles is a transition from a personal consciousness to a universal consciousness. Every intellect or consciousness is indistinguishable from every other. With Plotinus and Hegel we encounter a theory that consciousness is universally owned, a theory that offers not only a philosophical alternative to egoistic notions of self-identity and consciousness, but also a way toward ‘absolute truth’.

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If this interpretation of Plotinus’ Nous and Hegel’s Geist is valid, then I would like to suggest that for both Plotinus and Hegel, We-consciousness is a theory just as the I-consciousness of ‘sensecertainty’, perception, understanding, intellect, and reason are each a theory. The difference is that the theory of We-consciousness arises from an examination of theories of knowledge that take the possibility of knowledge as real. The knowledge Plotinus and Hegel theorize about – even if it is theory-laden – is not I-reflective, and the theories themselves are not self-reflective either. Rather, both (the I and the theories) are We-constitutive. Epistemology is for Plotinus and Hegel ‘an ontology of knowledge’. Both philosophers distinguish between two very different epistemological problems. The first one, which Plotinus thought was solved, beyond any doubt, by Plato and Aristotle, and Hegel thought was solved by Kant, is the so-called empiricist ‘constitution’ problem: How do our sensations or ‘impressions’ become organized into objects? Through intellection We organize our experience into objects. Thus, it makes no sense to talk about experience except in terms of our constitution of the experience of objects. Accordingly, familiar empirical epistemological problems concerning the relation between experience and objects are eliminated: there cannot be one without the other. However, the solution of this first problem raises a second problem. Assuming that we are conscious of objects, how do we know the objects we are conscious of are ‘objective’? How can we know that they exist independently of our awareness of them, that they are not just products of my consciousness? To this problem, Aristotle, for Plotinus, and Kant, for Hegel, gave promising but incomplete answers. The categories by which I constitute my experience are such that to be conscious of objects is to be conscious of objects as independent, as real, and not just as mine. But there is still the question unsatisfactorily answered by Aristotle and unanswered by Kant altogether. This question concerns the ontological status of objects of knowledge. To deal with this Plotinus introduces a new set of categories, the five genera of the Sophist, which encompass both sensible and intelligible reality, while Hegel ‘sublates’ Aristotle’s and Kant’s categories altogether in his dialectical categories of Being, Non-Being, and Becoming, to encompass reality. The reasons for such radical categorical shifts are complex, but important to grasp, if the notions of Nous and Geist are to be fully understood. Plotinus and Hegel considered Plato’s Parmenides to be the greatest masterpiece of dialectic, precisely because in this work Plato proved the


impossibility of determining any single Idea by itself, independently of the totality of Ideas, intellect, consciousness, and self-consciousness. They both understood that the Aristotelian (and Kantian) logic of definition as the instrument of all conceptual clarification of experience, reaches its limits in the realm of philosophical principles. These first principles cannot be defined, but can only be approached by a quite different kind of reflection, which Aristotle, following Plato, called Nous.16 For all their variety, these ‘first’ most comprehensive categories, which are transcendental in the sense that they go beyond every particular realm as delimited by a genus, constitute a unity. To rephrase the same point: Plotinus identifies these transcendentalia with the five genera of the Sophist (248a–249e), and Hegel with the strikingly singular term, ‘the category’.17 These are all definitions of the Absolute, rather than definitions of kinds of things in the manner of Aristotle’s and Kant’s classificatory logic, according to which the essence of a thing is determined by the concept of the genus and the specific difference.18 For Plotinus and Hegel, these categories represent boundaries that bind and delimit in the literal sense of the word horos – boundary and definition – and are only defined reciprocally within the totality of the concept. They represent the whole truth of the concept only when they are all taken together. Plotinus’ and Hegel’s transcendentalia allow us to transcend and sublate the I boundaries of conceptual understanding. They permit us to reason the whole truth of the concept when they are taken together. For Plotinus and Hegel, we are responsible for producing the objects that we are apparently given. With this claim both philosophers move us from sensation (aisthêsis) to intellection (noêsis) of intelligibles; from consciousness (Bewusstsein) of objects, to self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein) of concepts. That is to say, the move is to their notions of Nous (Intellect) and Vernunft (Reason): according to these, our mental activities are as essential to the object of knowledge as the object is to our knowledge.19

Understanding, intellect, and reason Plotinus and Hegel arrive at their conclusions by viewing epistemological theories as ontological claims: claims about what we can possibly know amount to claims about the nature of what is real. Both assert that ontology (what we can reliably say about what is real) is limited by epistemology (what we can reliably say about what is possible for us to know), but they also argue that no epistemology can avoid ontological commitments. Thus, attention has to be drawn to the role of

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philosophical critique in the determination, as well as in the analysis of understanding. Philosophy is not only reflection upon knowledge; it is also the structuring of our knowledge. Accordingly, philosophy is a matter of reason rather than merely understanding. Philosophizing about knowing is a self-confirming activity: we show that it is possible by actually doing it. Such claims, that knowing and philosophizing about knowing are self-confirming activities, do not entail the fallacy that all knowledge is my own creation. Rather, concepts and propositions that arise from philosophizing about knowledge and being function as rules or basic presuppositions or self-confirming stipulations that provide a framework for the knowledge of being. It is in this sense, however differently Plotinus may conceive of intellect and Hegel of consciousness, that both insist that knowledge is self-confirming and that certain basic concepts of intellect and reason are contributed by the knower. Another way of interpreting their argument is that, for Plotinus and Hegel, there are no concept-free representations. What we know is determined by the concepts and language that we provide to describe what we know. The central and fundamental theoretical commitments in the organization of experience and knowledge are our own contribution. That is to say, if knowledge depends on the way we understand it, our understanding in turn depends upon the way we reason. Thus, the difference between understanding (dianoia, Verstand), intellect (Nous), and reason (Vernunft) is that the Verstand applies categorical concepts in an unreflective, rigid, and mechanical way, while the Nous and Vernunft apply categorical concepts in a we-reflecting manner, which takes into consideration every possible coherent conceptualization of experience and knowledge. An understanding which is finite, can only understand the finite. Thus, it is not equal to the tasks of philosophy. Only Nous and Geist are equal to the tasks of philosophy. The position held by Plotinus and Hegel entails an intellect and reason that knows the difference between the possible and the actual, and is aware of the existence of many different perspectives within the collectivity of the We. That is to say, at the level of Nous and Vernunft, Plotinus’ intellect and Hegel’s reason are aware of modal distinctions and things apart from themselves. We are not at the level of a ‘finite’ I perspective, but at ‘infinite’ perspectives. Such perspectives have been made possible by employing the presupposition of methodological solipsism which as a strategy does not restrict the validity of certain philosophical claims within a first-person perspective, but makes possible the


expansion of the first-person perspective into a collective perspective that includes other minds. The relationship between self-identity and methodological solipsism is a dialectical one. Thus, ‘I think’ holds a precious place in philosophy. It is not just one self-evident truth among others, but the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge. It is also the first principle of philosophical methodology and a criterion for philosophical truth, if not philosophical truth itself – for the ‘I think’ inevitably leads to an acceptance of the ‘We think’ of Nous and Geist. Therefore methodological solipsism is the defining characteristic of all philosophers who valorize the ‘I think’ of the understanding. But it is also characteristic of those few philosophers who valorize the ‘We think’ of reason. Initially, in methodological solipsism, every philosophical problem is understood as my problem. The question ‘what is knowledge?’ is cast as ‘what is it for me to know something?’. I determine what is justifiable for me to believe or know according to the evidence that I have. In this context there can be no appeal to other persons, to common sense, to theories or models that I cannot justify for myself. Accordingly, our common knowledge can be understood and defended only in terms of the I of methodological solipsism. Eventually, we must reverse this movement: every philosophical problem is to be reasoned as our problem. The question ‘what is knowledge?’ is cast as ‘what is it for us to know something?’. Now, We determine what is justifiable for us to believe or know according to the evidence that we have. In this context there can be an appeal to other persons, to common sense, to theories or models that we justify for ourselves. From these claims, the attempt can be made to move from intellection, or immediately known mental states, to objective reality.

Methodological solipsism and phenomenalism This allows us entrance into a final aporia – which Plotinus fails to resolve and which Hegel might have resolved. Methodological solipsism does not entail phenomenalism; it, in fact, provides overwhelming evidence against such a theory, contrary to most ancient and modern rationalists’ and empiricists’ attempts to turn it into a phenomenalist programme. Undoing the distinction between phenomenalism and physicalism was one of Aristotle’s and Kant’s greatest contributions. Both remained dualists of sorts, but they were not phenomenalists. Each argued against the claim that the mental is better known than the physical. The very existence of a unified self-consciousness presupposes the existence of

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physical objects. What we know are physical objects, not merely our own sensations or mental states. Following Aristotle and Kant, Plotinus and Hegel also claim that phenomenalism is to be distinguished from methodological solipsism. There is nothing in the first-person method that requires the introduction of purely mental entities or events. It does not follow from this method that experience is better known than objects. Moreover, as noted earlier, the status of the ‘I’ singular is suspect for Plotinus and Hegel. The first-person case of methodological solipsism can only be defended as the first-person plural. Once this occurs the ‘I’ no longer functions as a first principle, axiom, or premise, but only as a rule for philosophical discussion. Consequently, the ‘I-consciousness’ no longer prevents us from stepping outside methodological solipsism and into the ‘We-consciousness’ of Nous and Geist. Plotinus’ Nous and Hegel’s Geist also function as philosophical rules, ultimate rules within the first-person plural case. These rules can be employed as an axiom, as a premise, which is actually what Plotinus and Hegel do. But the ultimate problem for Plotinus and Hegel, respectively, is Nous and Geist, which although they are rules, are ultimate rules. Thus, at no time can one step outside methodological solipsism and see that Intellect and Spirit are merely methodological principles, and dispensable ones at that. There will be more on this problematic as it relates to Hegel, in the conclusion of the chapter.20 But first, the sceptical challenge to methodological (first person plural) solipsism requires attention. From the position of methodological solipsism then, Plotinus and Hegel try to prove the objectivity of what they know. It makes no sense to ask what things are like independently of one’s possible knowledge of them. Nonetheless, the ultimate challenge to methodological solipsism is scepticism, which would entail that Nous and Geist may degenerate into solipsism or absolute solipsism. Traditional scepticism is a direct consequence of phenomenalism, through the separation of knowledge and object. Plotinus and Hegel would answer that since our experience is necessarily experience of physical objects and our knowledge necessarily knowledge of mental objects, such a slide is impossible. Hegel could also argue, while Plotinus could not, that because of the rules by which we as Geist constitute our experience and knowledge, there appears to be no place for the sceptic to get a wedge in between experience or knowledge and their objects. Thus, the sceptic gets a second chance with Plotinus. There is no longer the vulnerable gap between experience or knowledge and object, but there is a new gap between knowledge and object at the level of the One.


The One transcends everything we know through and in Intellect: how then can we know it? If Plotinus were consistent, and if consistency were important, he would have avoided this final slip out of the position of methodological solipsism into a solipsism grounded in the One. Here Plotinus falters and Iamblichus picks up the phenomenalist banner – against the fading Intellect – and carries it to Proclus. This is not to say that Plotinus could have overcome the distinction between knowledge and object at the level of the One. He thought this ontologically and epistemologically impossible. For Plotinus, epistemology and ontology ultimately merge at the levels of Nous and Soul. But all he could do, given his metaphysical stance, is claim that intellect and Forms merge at the level of Intellect, while sense and sensibility merge at the level of Soul. The One remains entirely Other. Much the same problem arises for Kant. The sceptic can make use of the distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves. Thus, the sceptic gets a second chance at Kant when the latter asserts a gap between object as phenomenon and the object- in- itself. Kant could have addressed the claim that asserting things-in-themselves opens up the possibility, at least in the context of methodological solipsism, that I can know the Ding-an-Sich. That is to say, if Kant were consistent, again if consistency were important, he could have avoided the slip out of methodological solipsism, while still acknowledging the phenomena– noumena gap. This is not to suggest that Kant wanted to overcome the distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves. He thought this epistemologically impossible. All he could do, given his metaphysical stance, is claim that synthetic a priori intuitions and categories are the conditions for the possibility of objects of knowledge. Within Kant’s ‘horizon’ there is no way to acknowledge the possibility of a world beyond the transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. Here Kant falters and Fichte picks up the phenomenalist banner – against the fading Will – and carries it to Hegel. For Kant epistemology can only be an ontology of knowledge, while for Hegel epistemology and ontology merge. Hegel, unlike Plotinus and Kant, never leaves methodological solipsism. Indeed, he expands the scope of methodological solipsism to the extent that there is no other place to go than to an ultimately absolute truth, a self-conscious We that we can consistently and consciously pursue within methodological solipsism, even beyond the point of possible refutation. It is in this sense that Hegel remains the only absolute idealist. In the case of Plotinus’ One and Kant’s Ding-an-Sich, there remains an

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acknowledgement of a mind-independent or at least a noumenal reality. Such recognition prohibits any ‘turn’ toward absolute idealism.

Conclusion Two questions remain to be addressed as I conclude this study: (1) is Hegel’s absolute idealism the overcoming of substantial (as opposed to methodological) solipsism, or is it an absolute (substantive plus methodological) form of solipsism; and (2) are we to consider Hegel’s achievement in never leaving methodological solipsism philosophically praiseworthy? I would suggest that since Hegel’s solipsism is an absolute form of solipsism, it turns out not to be philosophically fruitful. The ultimate problem for Hegel is consciousness, which although it is a rule, is an ultimate rule. One can, as Plotinus and Kant illustrate, step out of methodological solipsism at any time, seeing that it is only a methodological principle, and a dispensable one at that. However, consciousness was the limit of Hegel’s investigation. Consciousness remained unquestioned and unquestionable. As a result, consciousness as Self-Consciousness becomes absolute truth. In brief, from the perspective of methodological solipsism, Hegel can only prove the objectivity of what he knows from the absolute vantage-point of Geist. He cannot ask what things are like apart from our possible knowledge of them. Thus, the sceptic might say, Hegel’s substantive plus methodological solipsism slips into absolute solipsism. The origins of Hegel’s position can be traced back to Descartes. The Cogito guarantees conformity between presentation and what is presented. When truth becomes certitude, that which is true can be verified only by the knowing subject’s certitude of itself. Hegel thinks the implications of Descartes’ truth-as-certitude through to the level of Absolute Certitude in the Self-awareness of the Absolute Subject. Certitude moves from an I to a We locus. This is why for Hegel, the first-person case of methodological solipsism can only be defended as a first-person plural. Hegel was aware that since Plato’s turn to the logoi, the common characteristic of all philosophizing is the ability to move exclusively in the medium of the concept.21 In The Republic (511bc), Plato claims that the relation that concepts have to one another is not explicated through personal internal reflection or external reflection, which envisages the concept of the subject from without, that is, from my point of view. Rather, concepts unfold dialectically from our point of view.22 Hegel, like Plotinus, would agree and add the further claim that philosophy is a dialectic within which We informs I. Dialectic preserves


thought and being within itself by recovering them from all egoistic internalization and externalization. In the dialectic of Nous and Geist is realized not only the conversation which each of us conducts with others in thinking, but also the conversation in which we are all caught up together, and never cease to be caught up. Nous discloses the unity of Being and Intellect in the intelligible realm of the Forms. Logos is the dialectical process through which Geist shines forth as the unity of Being and Intellect. From the precipice of Nous and Geist, We take upon ourselves, in Hegel’s words: ‘the rigorous extension of the concept’ – ‘die Anstrengung des Begriffs’. In such a methodologically solipsistic extension, the We is never lost to the I, for through dialectic there unfolds the activity of Nous and Geist. Thus, in answer to the second question, there is philosophical merit in Hegel’s not abandoning methodological solipsism. Methodological solipsism leads the Self to consciousness of a supra-personal Self; it leads the Self beyond the limits of I-consciousness to a consciousness of We. That is to say, We begin to see multiple perspectives where minds make we-claims as Geist, leaving the I-claims of souls and persons, or egoclaims, behind. That is to say, firmly entrenched in methodological solipsism, Hegel claims that it is Reason (Vernunft) that dialectically grasps truth. This is why the activities of Geist are more certain than deductive proof, inductive, explanatory hypotheses, or empirical investigations themselves. This also explains why, at least for Hegel, We are able to ask metaphysical questions in a meaningful way. We-metaphysical horizons arise out of I-metaphysical horizons dialectically and within this dialectic there is the possibility for truth to emerge as well.

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Notes 1. Fodor, following Carnap’s and Putnam’s earlier investigations, claims that methodological solipsism is a research strategy whereby mental activity is abstracted from its physical basis. The focus is upon the agent’s contribution to propositional attitudes, subtracting away the contents. The result of methodological solipsism is the claim that no real being is essential for the being of consciousness:see Fodor (1980). 2. Solomon claims that this strategy is employed by Hegel: see Solomon, (1987), pp. 18–36. Its use by Plotinus, however, has received limited attention. Cf. Oehler (1997). 3. All references to Plotinus, Plato, and Aristotle follow the Loeb Edition. 4. Following Corrigan (1996), pp. 106–7. 5. See Fodor, art cit. 6. This reconstruction of Kant relies on Solomon’s discussion of Kant: see Solomon, op. cit., pp. 20–8. 7. On Plato and Aristotle as realists and not idealists, see Berchman (2007a and 2007b). 8. On the question of idealism in Greek philosophy, see Burnyeat (1982). 9. On idealism in Plotinus, see Rappe (1996); Emilsson (1996); Gerson, in Gregorios (2002). On other sources for idealism in antiquity, see Sorabji (1983), especially, ‘Gregory of Nyssa: The Origins of Idealism’, pp. 287–96. 10. See Berchman (2007b). Briefly, there is a crucial difference between quasiIdealist statements about Intellect and intentionality by Aristotle and Plotinus and Husserl’s notions of intentionality. Following Aristotle, ‘intentionality’ appears limited by Plotinus to intellection (noêsis) alone. Following Brentano, Husserl applies intentionality to all mental acts. Thus, it cannot be asserted for Aristotle and Plotinus that intentionality is identical in terms of intellect (noêsis) and perception (aisthêsis) as it is for Husserl. 11. See Audi (1995), p. 488. 12. In conversation, Stephen Gersh and Helmut Kohlenberger have suggested that an Idealist tradition enters the Neoplatonic tradition with pseudoDionysius and strengthens from Eriugena to Cusanus. With the Christian Neoplatonists, God becomes a constitutive thinker. Thus, man, made in God’s image, becomes one as well. 13. Burnyeat (1982); for a critique of Burnyeat, see Emilsson, in Gerson (1996). 14. This does not exclude the claim that Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, and pseudo-Dionysius inspired modern idealism; cf. Beierwaltes (1972) and Viellard-Bacon (1979). 15. For clarification, see Wittgenstein (1953), especially I. pp. 65–7, 71, 116. 16. Post. An., II.100b5–17. 17. Phenomenology, pp. 142–3. 18. Topics, VI.139a27–30. 19. For a discussion of Plotinus and Hegel on the categories as transcendentalia, see Berchman (2007a). 20. Whether this is actually the case remains an open question. It might well be that Nous and Geist are indispensable principles tout court. If so, neither Plotinus nor Hegel escape the shoals of solipsism. 21. Phaedo, 99e. 22. Republic, 511c.


Bibliography Aristotle, 1960, Aristotle Vol. II, Tredennick, H. and Foster, E. S. (trans.), Cambridge MA. Audi, R. (ed.), 1995, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge. Beierwaltes, W., 1972, Platonismus und Idealismus, Frankfurt am Main. Berchman, R. M., 2006, ‘The Language of Metaphysics Ancient and Modern’, in K. Corrigan and J. Turner (2006), pp. 228–47. Berchman, R. M., 2007a, ‘Mapping Knowledge and Consciousness of Being: Categories as Transcendentals in Plotinus and Hegel’, in J. F. Finamore and R. M. Berchman (2007), pp. 193–208. Berchman, R. M., 2007b, ‘Commentary on Perl’, in J. J. Cleary and G. Gurtler (2007), pp. 27–40. Burnyeat, M., 1982, ‘Idealism in Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed’, Philosophical Review 91, pp. 3–40. Cleary, J. J., and Gurtler, G. (eds.), 2007, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy XXIII, Boston. Corrigan, K., 1996, ‘Essence and existence in the Enneads’, in L. Gerson (1996), pp. 105–29. Corrigan, K., and Turner, J. (eds.), 2006, Platonisms: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern, Leiden and Boston. Descartes, R., 1977, Meditationes, Hamburg. Emilsson, E. K., 1996, ‘Cognition and its Object’, in L. Gerson (1996), pp. 217–49. Finamore, J. F., and Berchman, R. M. (eds.), 2007, Metaphysical Patterns in Platonism. Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern Times, New Orleans. Fodor, J. A., 1980, ‘Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy’, Cognitive Psychology in Brain and Behavioral Sciences 3.1, pp. 63–109. Gerson, L. (ed.), 1996, The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge. Gerson, L., 2002, ‘Being and Knowing in Plotinus’, in Gregorios (2002), pp. 107–9. Gregorios, P. M. (ed.), 2002, Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, Albany. Hegel, G. W. F., 1977, The Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller (trans.), Oxford. Kant, I., 1971, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Hamburg. Oehler, K., 1997, Subjektivitaet und Selbstbewusstsein in der Antike, Wuerzburg. Plato, 1914, Plato Vol. I , H. N. Fowler (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plato, 1921, Plato Vol. VII, H. N. Fowler (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plato, 1930, Plato Vol. V and VI, P. Shorey (trans.), Cambridge MA. Plotinus, 1966–88, Plotinus, A. H. Armstrong, (trans.), 7vols, Cambridge MA. Rappe, S., ‘Self-Knowledge and Subjectivity in the Enneads’, in Gerson (1996), pp. 250–74. Solomon, R. C., 1987, From Hegel to Existentialism, Oxford. Sorabji, R., 1983, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, Ithaca. Viellard-Bacon, J.-L., 1979, Platon et L’idealisme allemand [1770–1830], Paris. Wittgenstein, L., 1953, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford.

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Μεστὰ πάντα σημείων. Plotinus, Leibniz, and Berkeley on Determinism Daniele Bertini

Neoplatonism against matter The materialist way of thinking, notwithstanding its mechanistic limits, still has an undoubted appeal for many contemporary philosophers. Against their claims, I think that a reading of the arguments framed by Leibniz and Berkeley is instructive for those who do not share the materialist standpoint. Naturally, Leibniz and Berkeley disagree on many issues, and the general position of the one is very different from that of the other; but both attack the very heart of materialism with similar arguments, refuting the same elements in a similar way.1 My claim is that their rejection of matter is deeply rooted in a Neoplatonic way of thinking. I’m not arguing that Berkeley and Leibniz were Neoplatonists, but that in the epistemological context of early modern philosophy, their attempt to escape materialism inclined them to assume a Neoplatonic attitude towards unity, order, and the beauty of nature.2 This apparently trivial assumption is important because their Neoplatonic attitude assigned a spiritual meaning to their rejection of matter. We are used to thinking of modern epistemology simply as a rationalist approach to the problems derived from the rise of mathematical sciences and physics. A Neoplatonic interpretation of Leibniz’s and Berkeley’s refutation of materialism points to their reliance on a metaphysical description of spiritual experience. In other words, for Leibniz and Berkeley, the refutation of mechanistic materialism does not rely only on epistemological reasons: materialism cannot account for our experience of ourselves and of reality. The principle informing their general attitude is that undifferentiated matter cannot be the ontological substratum of qualities. Nature is not the network of causal and objective interactions among beings. Nature 211

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is something living, a perfect living whole, whose every part is naturally and symbolically linked with every other. Leibniz and Berkeley share with Plotinus a semiotical conception of nature. Their arguments against matter’s being a cause for movement and change observable in the sensible world, show that these philosophers adopt an understanding of the relationship between beings that is different from a causal one. In their view, all things are signs for something else. They hold this semiotical conception because all three believe that the whole is logically and ontologically prior to its parts, and cannot be explained by these. The Italian scholar M. Andolfo calls this thesis ‘Plato’s Parmenides Principle’.3 Plotinus accepts this tenet as he suggests that sensible nature should be understood as a collection of parts whereof the hypostasis Soul is the governing principle.4 Berkeley also holds this principle, as attested by his appeal to the biblical quotation that God is an active spirit ‘in whom we live, move and have our spirit’.5 Leibniz agrees. He writes:6 Dieu seul a une connaissance distincte de tout: car il en est la source. On a fort bien dit qu’il est comme centre partout; mais que sa circonférence n’est nulle part, tout lui étant présent immédiatement, sans aucun éloignement de ce centre. Undifferentiated matter does not properly exist. Since sensible beings cannot be understood as changing qualities, inherent in material substance, they must be conceived as parts of a whole. Plotinus adopts Aristotle’s theory on this issue. Aristotle conceives of matter only as an aspect of movement, without assuming a metaphysical subsistence for an unqualified ‘sensible’ matter.7 For him, sensible matter is just a fiction since, as J. Laurent has written, ‘an undifferentiated matter is not merely unknowable, but can take no part in the system of the existences’.8 Plotinus takes this argument to its logical conclusion.9 In ‘On What Exists Potentially and What Actually’ II.5.[25], he refers directly to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, book Z, using the same example as Aristotle (that is, the statue), in order to explain the relationship between matter and form, dunamis and energeia’.10 But later, from line 30 onwards, he says: ‘τὸ μὲν δὴ δυνάμει τοιοῦτον ὥσπερ ὑποκείμενόν τι πάθεσι καὶ μορφαῖς καὶ εἴδεσιν’. He thus conceives potential existence as a sort of substance, a subject of affections. Now, if potential existence can become actual existence, there must be a definite being through which the potential does become actual (nothing can, for example, become hot unless there is something else which is already hot to heat it!). At the end of chapter two of the same treatise, Plotinus indeed specifies that every potential

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existent becomes actual through another actual existent.11 This actual existent is the World Soul, whose activity is in turn made possible by the actuality of Nous, from which the Soul departs to the inferior task of actualizing phenomenal beings. In fact, at the beginning of chapter three Plotinus tells us that Nous, being beyond time, is always actually existent.12 He then says, in the middle of the chapter, that δύναμις ἡ ψυχὴ τούτων.13 Soul is thus the true substance, an actuality itself and a δύναμις, which gives affections to the mere potential ‘substance’, whose existence is only potential; because Soul is the same δύναμις that acts. Thus the merely potential substance, the ὑποκείμενον, only, as it were, pretends to be, since it is not an actual existent, being indefinite ‘substance’. Soul, being a real existent, in the totality of the eternity of Nous, can reproduce real principles in the order of experienced time. Plotinus goes on to identify ‘material substance’ with this realm of possibility, so denying any positive value and existence to matter.14 My claim is that Plotinus is drawing ontological consequences from Aristotle’s logical treatment of this point. Berkeley does something similar when he too denies that there can be an undetermined ὑποκείμενον existing without the mind. Before setting forth his master argument for idealism, Berkeley criticizes Locke’s conception of an unknowable substratum, existing unperceived.15 He refutes this notion of a material substratum, as being unknowable, unqualified and a logically empty concept. Leibniz too, in his book on Locke’s philosophy, directly attacks Locke’s notion of substance, through the words of Theophilous, with arguments resembling Berkeley’s.16 The impulse to reject the notion of undefined or indeterminate matter is a consequence of the spiritual experience that directs Platonists in explaining reality: experience never displays undifferentiated qualities or states of being, but always actual and determinate realities. This denial of matter also leads them to reject any kind of determinism or materialism. I believe that the logical structure of this refutation includes two sets of arguments: firstly, arguments against the concept of material substance, and secondly arguments against the concept of causality.

Arguments against matter Let us look at the first set of arguments. Berkeley addresses the concept of substance in his Treatise, Part 1.§ 7.17 He writes: … there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives. But for the fuller proof of this point, let it be considered the

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sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, and such like, that is, the ideas perceived by sense. Now for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction; for to have an idea is all one as to perceive; that therefore wherein colour, figure, and the like qualities exist, must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or substratum of those ideas. Berkeley’s argument for spiritual substance is quite simple. If there are only three kinds of beings (perceivers, percepta and an unknown material substratum), since the percepta are always dependent on the perceivers, the material substance cannot really be the true substratum. On the other hand, perceivers have always some perception, and so the percepta do inhere in them.18 In Part 1, § 89 Berkeley presents his argument systematically, and sums up its consequences. He asserts that to erect a ‘firm system of sound and real knowledge’ a true philosopher must begin by explaining ‘what is meant by thing, reality, existence’. He says: Thing or being is the most general name of all, it comprehends under it two kinds entirely distinct and heterogeneous, and which have nothing in common but the name, to wit, spirits and ideas. The former are active, indivisible (incorruptible) substances: the latter are inert, fleeting, (perishable passions,) or dependent beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are supported by, or exist in minds or spiritual substances. For Berkeley, ‘material substance’ is ruled out by the concept of substance, because if we distinguish the different kind of beings there are only two possibilities to consider: beings who perceive, and those which are perceived. Beings perceived, dependent on perceivers, cannot be substances. In fact the traditional concept of substance, which Berkeley holds along with most modern philosophers, implies that substance should be ontologically independent from any other thing, except from God;19 and so the spirits, or perceivers, those things wherein ideas exist and which are independent of any thing but God, are the substances whereof ideas are properties. Leibniz too argues from the concept of substance. He begins his Les principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison with a definition of substance: La Substance est un Être capable d’Action. Elle est simple ou composée. La Substance simple est celle qui n’a point de parties. La composée est


l’assemblage des substances simples, ou des Monades. Monas est un mot Grec, qui signifie l’unité ou ce qui est un. Since the monads are simple they cannot have parts, and so they cannot belong to the realm of extension. Simplicity too is a quality usually ascribed to substance, every substance having a single essence by which the substance is what it is.20 So Leibniz infers from the necessary simplicity of substance that it is impossible for the monad to be extended.21 In the Monadology he states again his argument from simplicity. In the first and the third section of this work we can read: 1) La Monade dont nous parlerons ici, n’est autre chose, qu’une substance simple, qui entre dans les composés; simple, c’est-à-dire, sans parties. 3) Or là, où il n’y a point de parties, il n’y a ni étendu, ni figure, ni divisibilité possible. Et ces monades sont les véritables Atomes de la nature et en un mot les Éléments des choses. Furthermore, Leibniz specifies that every monad perceives and acts continuously; in fact, the monads can be distinguished from each other only by their internal qualities and actions, because since monads are simple and without parts, none of their qualities can affect another monad.22 Now, these perceptive powers of the monads cannot be explained by any mechanical cause, since even if we imagine an artificial material construction designed to ‘think’, but big enough for us to observe its internal workings: on ne trouvera, en la visitant au-dedans, que des pièces qui se poussent les unes les autres, et jamais de quoi expliquer une perception. Ainsi c’est dans la substance simple, et non dans le composé ou dans la machine, qu’il la faut chercher. (Monadologie, 17) Certainly, it is quite difficult to interpret such a complex thesis (namely, that no merely material arrangements can explain perception, and that a substance’s unity cannot depend simply on the conjunction of material parts), but I believe that Leibniz’s scheme is as follows.23 If substance must be simple, substance must be indivisible. So a candidate for the rank of substance cannot be extended, because to be extended means to have parts, figure, and the like. Now, thought, in the general Cartesian sense of the term, is surely an activity of the simple substances. The problem is that thought, as conscious perception, is often the unified result

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of many unconscious activities, such as perceptions or thoughts. I think that Leibniz thus introduces the concept of a monad and the distinction between simple and compound beings to give an account of the complexity of thought: simple substances are the unities of thought, of which a complex being must be made. Now, the rejection of materialism relies on the premise that thought or perception cannot be accounted for by parts relating to each other in a mechanical way, since perception presupposes some kind of unity. And so, even if a relationship between monads in some way explains the complexity of thought, this relationship cannot be mechanical, but must be of a different kind. So both Berkeley and Leibniz think that material substance would be unable to account for perception, and in this way they argue that there are only spiritual substances. Thus understood, Berkeley’s and Leibniz’s account resembles Plotinus’ views concerning the relationship of the hypostasis Soul with sensible nature. As Plotinus points out in III.9[13].3 (with reference to Plato), the soul, indeed, gives herself a body: that is to say, spiritual substance is always prior to any sensible determination.

Arguments about causality The second set of arguments against an indefinite matter concerns the treatment of the concept of causality. Formally, Leibniz admits a causal relationship between extended beings. In Les principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison, § 3, he writes that ‘les changements des corps et les phénomènes au dehors naissent les uns des autres par les lois des causes efficientes, c’est-à-dire, des mouvements’. But Leibniz does not really believe that in nature efficient causality could have an explanatory power, because as he states a few pages later, in § 11, ‘il est surprenant que, par la seule considération des causes efficientes ou de la matière, on ne saurait rendre raison de ces lois du mouvement’; so that ‘il faut recourir aux Causes Finales’: ‘… ces lois ne dépendent point du principe de la nécessité’. These statements become clearer if we compare them with Monadology, § 11: Il s’ensuit de ce que nous venons de dire, que les changements naturels des Monades viennent d’un principe interne, puisque une cause externe ne saurait influer dans son intérieur. In other words, causality is not able to explain the changes that the monads perceive. The laws of nature can describe corporeal movements, but there is no true causal chain among monads, because no external


principle can account for the changes internal to the simple substances. Each monad can have an influence on another only in an ideal sense (that is, it is helpful to think of them as having such an influence – I can write what others read!), and, so, there should be another explanation of the relationship between one simple substance and another.24 Leibniz calls this cause Harmonie préetablie: all monads agree in their perception, ‘mirroring’ each other, and in this way they represent the whole of nature. Each of them is in fact a ‘miroir vivant perpétuel de l’univers’,25 perceiving more clearly what is ‘nearer’, and less clearly what is ‘far’ (there are of course no real materially measurable distances between one monad and another: this is only how the real world is represented in each monad). Furthermore, one monad could be understood as a cause for some perceptions of another: when this is the case, Leibniz says that the monad which can be considered as a priori reason for what happens to the other must be considered as an active substance, and the other as a passive one.26 Composite beings are beings in which the dominant, or active, monad is called soul; so that Leibniz can account for conscious thought or perception as thought or perception of the dominant monad, in which the unconscious thoughts or perceptions of lesser monads are more or less confusedly expressed.27 In this way, Leibniz replaces the concept of a mechanical relationship between beings with a new ‘semiotical’ pattern of physical reality. If each monad expresses all the others and the whole universe in every perception, nature becomes an image in which everything is a sign for something else. Berkeley too attacks the concept of causality in order to advance a semiotical interpretation of nature. In Treatise, Part I § 65, he writes: … the connexion of ideas does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. The fire I see is not the cause of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me of it. In like manner, the noise that I hear is not the effect of this or that motion or collision of the ambient bodies, but the sign thereof. For Berkeley, such an experience does not have a causal structure, because beings exist in a spiritual substance, or a general mind, the mind of a perceiving God; so that the relationship among those beings is only a connection of some perceptual content. This connection is not a necessary one, as Berkeley’s previous work on visual perception had tried to show.28 Therefore, nature is like a book where every perception is a letter

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joined to the other letters by a law of significance. Understanding nature means reading each phenomenon as a proposition in a book, grasping the sense communicated by words. We read at Part I, § 109: As in reading other books, a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language; so in perusing the volume of nature, it seems beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. We should propose to ourselves nobler views, such as to recreate and exalt the mind, with a prospect of the beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator: and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God’s glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. The main purpose of Berkeley’s criticism is to propose a conception of the book of nature alternative to the mathematical one advanced by Galileo, by giving to the metaphor of the book its original medieval sense.29 In particular, Berkeley concentrates on the aesthetic value of nature, noting that the mechanical interpretation of matter leaves little or no room for any sense of nature’s beauty and integrity.

The ‘right way to look’ Neither Berkeley nor Leibniz reject materialism merely because it does not adequately explain ‘the facts of nature’, nor merely because they have a distinctively different conception of substance and causality. They also aim to enrich the notion of experience with aesthetic concepts, such as order, harmony, meaningfulness, and so on. Mechanistic explanations may describe what happens in the phenomenal world; but the metaphysics of materialism cannot account for the way nature looks to those who look at her with the right eyes, and with the right emotional response.30 ‘The right way to look’ means, for both Berkeley and Leibniz, understanding the spiritual being of nature. This is why, I believe, their refutation of materialism resembles some arguments against determinism introduced by Plotinus, which I shall examine next. Two treatises of Plotinus are particularly apt for this comparison: ‘On Destiny’ III.1[3] and ‘On Whether the Stars are Causes’ II.3[52]. Plotinus’


argument is the same in both treatises, a fact which reveals that his views on the issue in question were consistent.31 In III.1 the argument runs as follows: (a) Every event has a cause (III.1.1, 24–5). (b) This cause cannot be ascribed to atoms nor to elements (III.1.3, 1–5). The reason Plotinus gives in support of this claim is that the regularity (order) we can observe in nature could not be caused by irregular (disorderly) movements. (c) The same holds for the notion of a single presumed soul’s passing through everything and causing everything (III.1.4, 1–2). In fact, if this were the case, Plotinus says ‘οὔτε ἡμεῖς ἡμεῖς οὔτε τι ἡμέτερον ἔργον’ (III.1.4, 21). (d) Neither can the movements of the stars account for our deliberations and passions; since we can observe differences in men born under the same circumstances (III.1.5, 29–30). (e) So, the movements of the stars only coincide with true causes (III.1.6, 3–8); so that they are ὥσπερ γράμματα, suggesting ‘κατὰ τὸ ἀνάλογον μεθοδεύοντας τὸ σημαινόμενον’ (III.1.6, 22–3). (f) And the true cause must necessarily be the individual soul, since this is such as a ‘πρωτουργοῦ αἰτίας οὔσης’ (III.1.8, 8). In II.3 Plotinus argues as follows: (a) Since Nature is a single living being, arising from a single principle, everything is linked with everything else (II.3.7, 4–14). This linkage is semiotical, so that ‘μεστὰ πάντα σημείων’ (II.3.7, 12). (b) Causality cannot be ascribed to movements of the corporeal parts of nature, since these parts are linked to one another by Soul, and so the stars cannot be the cause of our actions (II.3.16, 24–29; II.3.16, 46). Even if we receive ‘our moral characters, our characteristic actions, and our emotions’ from the stars (as was common doctrine in Plotinus’day), we still remain ‘ἢ ὅπερ ἐσμὲν κατ᾽ ἀλήθειαν ἡμεῖς, οἷς καὶ κρατεῖν τῶν παθῶν ἔδωκεν ἡ φύσις’ (II.3.9, 14–16). It is in our power to use what we have been given, to recognize ourselves as something more than the composite bodies we now inhabit. (c) Causality must instead be attributed to the soul: ‘ἃ δὴ παραλαβοῦσα ἢ προιδοῦσα ἡ ψυχὴ ἐπὶ τούτοις τὰ ἐφεξῆς περαίνει καὶ συνείρει’ (II.3.16, 23–24). The importance of these two treatises may easily be overlooked, perhaps because Plotinus gives a more detailed account of this issue in other

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treatises. However, these two works are very important because they show clearly the semiotical conception of nature with which I am concerned. Plotinus states firstly that it is only the Soul that causes anything in a strict and full sense, and, secondly that the soul precedes the individual changes observable in sensible nature. This is the reason why all things, though in a way determined, are better thought of as signs than as causes and effects. By the term sign, as G. Manetti has nicely shown, a Platonist generally means three things: a divine communication, an interior voice, and an ontological quality of things.32 It is in the first and third senses that Plotinus speaks of things as ‘signs’. It is evident that Plotinus’ reasoning is also based on a moral viewpoint. He emphasizes that accepting determinism would prevent us from ascribing moral responsibility to the soul. But we can really appreciate his arguments only if we consider them in connection with his metaphysical views on matter and causality. In both these treatises, Plotinus claims that there are two different souls, one upper soul, which remains at the level of Nous, and one lower soul, which descended to the level of nature.33 He then asserts that only those beings that lack the upper soul are subject to destiny. The destiny to which those souls are subjected has nothing to do with matter. Plotinus, indeed, rejects a deterministic account of matter. In ‘On Matter’ II.4[12], he deals with the issue of materialism, and rejects the existence of discrete atoms and the traditional four elements.34 According to Plotinus, matter can be thought of as a cause only in a negative sense. That is, its effect consists only in preventing the intelligible Forms from informing nature in a perfect way. Its power is a resistance to being formed, rather than a causal power to act (I.8.5; III.6.14). Or, as he writes in his later treatises, matter is a privation of light, a lacking in truth, the last effect of what proceeds from the One.35 We should then think of matter as a reason for the contingency of the cosmos, rather than for its having a definite and determined nature. The detail and variety of nature depends upon the Forms, and so upon the hypostasis of Nous. Furthermore, since matter is completely indeterminate it can have neither a true being nor an independent substantiality. Its nature is ‘εἴη ἂν οὖν τοῦτο μὴ ὄν’, matter is ‘οὐκοῦν ἐνεργείᾳ εἴδωλον· οὐκοῦν ἐνεργείᾳ ψεῦδος’.36 I have argued so far that Plotinus, Berkeley, and Leibniz seem to adopt a similar attitude in their refusal to attribute a causal role to matter. But the three philosophers deal very differently with the soul’s relations with the world.


We must examine Plotinus’ concept of causality to see what kind of destiny can be found in nature. Both in his earlier and later work Plotinus asserts that the movement of the whole cosmos has some physical effects on our bodies.37 These effects are the result of the activities of the World Soul mediated by the souls of stars, that cause movements of bodies.38 Those beings who exist at the lower levels of the universe are subject to these movements. Plotinus also believes that everything has a share in Soul: in ‘On Nature and Contemplation’ III.8[13], he holds that lifeless beings are the lowest manifestation of logos, since nature puts in everything a reason (logos), whose action accounts for the changes that are observable in our sensible experience.39 Now these logoi are in the Nous, they provide the frame for every particular being, and it is the soul that builds all natural, material, or phenomenal things according to those patterns. The World Soul receives the logoi from Nous. Plotinus indeed says that the World Soul ‘κατ᾽ εἴδη ποιεῖ’, and ‘νοῦς δὴ ψυχῇ δίδωσι τῇ τοῦ παντός’.40 Thus, Plotinus claims that it is only if we ascribe causality to the soul that we can explain our sensible world. The soul causes every being to exist in its particular way. Our existence as individuals is ruled by the relationship between our several souls. The closer we are to our inner essence, that is, to our superior soul, the more we are free. Determinism can therefore account only for those inferior beings lacking in, or cut off from, a superior soul. The superior soul, that is, is a soul independent, in a certain degree, from the World Soul’s actions. We should then say that for Plotinus too the relationship among beings is of a semiotical kind, since it is just the World Soul and the free, individual souls that are causes, and one sensible being is simply a sign of another. Whether this Neoplatonic approach, for all its influence on Berkeley, Leibniz, and other canonical philosophers, is, in the end, the right answer or even the beginnings of a right answer to metaphysical problems, cannot be settled here. My opinion is that it does at least facilitate an attitude to ourselves and to the world that is, experientially, enlightening.41

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Notes 1. Leibniz wrote on Berkeley twice. He made some remarks on his copy of Berkeley’s Treatise, whose text is now available in Robinet (1983). Then, he wrote to Des Bosses (ed. Gerhardt, II, p.492). His remarks are quite favourable to Berkeley’s arguments, even if he would not approve many elements of Berkeley’s thought. In the second text, he noted the paradoxical way Berkeley stated his theory. Berkeley quoted Leibniz in De Motu, in the Theory of Vision Defended and Explained, and in Alciphron. In the second of these works, he considered Leibniz a materialist. For a comparison between the two philosophers see Furth (1967), MacIntosh (1970–71), Adams (1983), Wilson (1987). 2. Berkeley’s later work Siris plainly shows that Neoplatonism was a possible context for his way of thinking. Recently, Daniel proposed reading Berkeley’s early work in the light of his mature work, in this way inverting the traditional scholarly attitude; see Daniel (2001). On Berkeley and Neoplatonism see also Baladi (1974), Wenz (1976), and Corrigan (1994). Leibniz presents himself as a follower of Platonism, against Locke’s Aristotelianism, in his Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, préface. It is evident that the sources of Leibniz’s philosophy are wider, as he looks for a reconciliation between Plato and Aristotle, see Nouveaux essais, I, § 1. This approach is native to the history of Neoplatonism, and it is one of his underground directions, as Porphyry’s figure can adequately show; see Girgenti (1996) and Narbonne (2001). On Leibniz and Neoplatonism see Mercer (2001), and M. Mugnai (2001). 3. See Andolfo (1996). I think Andolfo’s treatment of the structure and general form of Plotinus’ theory of soul is substantially correct; but I do not agree with him when he accounts for matter in Plotinus, by giving an interpretation based on a presumed independent substantiality of the ὕλη. On The structure of Nous and the Psyche see also Szlezák (1979). 4. III.7.11, 20–35; IV.4.10, 9–13 and 11, 9–10; VI.2.6, 14–20. 5. See Acts, XVII, 28. Berkeley quotes this maxim many times in his works; twice in his Treatise, §§ 66, 149. During the modern age Malebranche and Spinoza also quote it in a similar sense. 6. See Les principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison, § 13. All quotations from Les Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison and from La Monadologie follow the standard critical edition by Robinet (1986, 3rd edn). 7. See Ackrill (1981). See also Reale (1974). 8. See Laurent (1992), pp. 72–3. 9. All quotations from Plotinus follow Plotini Opera (editio maior) by Henry and Schwyzer (eds.). 10. See, II.5.1. 11. II.5.2, 33: ‘τὸ μὲν γὰρ δυνάμει τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ἔχειν παρ᾽ ἄλλου’. 12. II.5.3, 7–8: ‘οὐκ ἂν εἴη ἐκεῖ τὸ δυνάμει ἐν ᾧ ἐστι, τῶν ὄντων καὶ αἰῶνα, οὐ χρόνον ἐχόντων’. 13. See, II.5.3, 22. 14. II.5.5, 1–2: ‘πῶς δὲ τῶν ὄντων ὕλη; ἢ ὅτι δυνάμει’ and 9–10: ‘εἴη ἂν οὖν τοῦτο μὴ ὄν, οὐχ ὡς ἕτερον τοῦ ὄντος, οἷον κίνησις’. 15. See Treatise, § 16. 16. See Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, II, XII, § 6, T.; II, XXIII.

Plotinus, Leibniz, Berkeley on Determinism 223 17. All quotations to Berkeley’s texts follow the standard edition by Luce and Jessop (1948–55). 18. On Berkeley’s commitment to the thesis that soul always thinks see Tipton, (1974), chapter VII. In a well-known article Allaire maintains that Berkeley’s idealism is based on his acceptance of the relationship between substance and qualities (see Allaire, 1963). After some criticisms by Cummins, Muehlmann, Bracken, and Pappas, he partially changed his views; see Allaire (1982 and 1995). I personally think that Berkeley’s idealism cannot be deduced by any logical form, as Allaire would suggest; since its foundation must be found in the impossibility of performing a de re conception without imaging the thing conceived; see also Pappas (1995). In fact, the refutation of materialism I am proposing, following Berkeley’s argument for spiritual substance, could only prove a kind of phenomenalism, if the so-called Berkeley’s master argument were not added. In any case, there can be no doubt that Berkeley accepts the relationship between substance and qualities. Muehlmann (1992) has denied that this acceptance has been sincere, interpreting Berkeley’s philosophy through an excessive use of his juvenile work, the Philosophical Commentaries. In my opinion, from an ontological viewpoint Berkeley held that spirit and ideas were distinct, while from an actual one that they were indiscernible. 19. See Descartes, Principia philosophiae, I, 51; Spinoza, Ethica, def. III. 20. See Descartes, Principia philosophiae, I, 53 21. See Ruf (1973) and Sleigh (1977). 22. See Leibniz, Les principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison, 2: ‘une Monade en elle-même, et dans le moment, ne saurait être discernée d’une autre que par les qualités et actions internes, lesquelles ne peuvent être autre chose que ses perceptions, …, et ses appétitions’; the same opinion attested here also occurs in Monadologie, §§ 8, 14, 15. For a discussion of the difficulties of Leibniz’s theory of perception see Wilson (1977 and 1992). 23. I follow in my account some ideas pointed out by Brandom (1981) and Wilson (1992). In another important article Wilson suggests that the core of Leibniz’s rejection of matter is his concept of perception; see, Wilson (1974). 24. See Monadologie, § 51: ‘Mais dans les substances simples ce n’est qu’une influence idéale d’une Monade sur l’autre, qui ne peut avoir son effet que par l’intervention de Dieu… Car, puisqu’une Monade crée ne saurait avoir une influence physique sur l’intérieur de l’autre, ce n’est que par ce moyen, que l’une peut avoir de la dépendance de l’autre’. 25. See Monadologie, § 56. 26. See Monadologie, § 50: ‘Et une créature est plus parfaite qu’une autre en ce, qu’on trouve en elle ce qui sert à rendre raisona priori de ce qui passe dans l’autre, et c’est par-là, qu’on dit, qu’elle agit sur l’autre’. 27. See Adams (1983) and Look (2002). 28. See An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, §§ 5, 17, 21, 24, 25, 26, 45, 62, 63. For a similar reading, see Turbayne (1971). 29. See Bradatan (1999). The first scholar who has observed the use of the metaphor in immaterialism was Gilson, who compares Berkeley to Eriugena; see Gilson (1986; 1st edn 1922). More recently, Blumenberg has clearly shown that Berkeley’s philosophy distinguishes the immediacy of the reading from the exegetical and critical work requested of the reader by the sense of the book of nature, opening the field for an hermeneutical conception of

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30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

nature; see Blumenberg (1981). The considerations of P.F. Mugnai (1979), are crucial in these issues. See Leibniz, Les principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison, § 3: ‘Tout est plein dans la nature’; § 10: ‘Il suit de la Perfection Suprême de Dieu, qu’en produisant l’Univers il a choisi le meilleur Plan possible, où il y ait la plus grande variété avec le plus grand ordre; le terrain, le lieu, le temps, les mieux ménagés; les plus de la puissance, les plus de connaissance, les plus de bonheur et de bonté dans les créatures que l’univers en pouvait admettre’; § 15: ‘… Tous les Esprits… entrant en vertu de la Raison et des vérités éternelles dans une espèce de Société avec Dieu, … par l’ordre même des choses naturelles, en vertu de l’harmonie préétablie de tous temps, entre les Règnes de la Nature et de la Grâce: … en sorte que la nature même mène à la grâce, et que la grâce perfectionne la nature en s’en servant’. Monadologie, § 69: ‘… il n’y a rien d’inculte, de stérile, de mort dans l’univers, point de chaos, point de confusions qu’en apparence; à peu près, comme il en paraîtrait dans un étang à une distance dans laquelle on verrait un mouvement confus et grouillement, pour ainsi dire, de poissons de l’étang, sans discerner les poissons même’. See Berkeley, Treatise, § 146: ‘If we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole…; I say if we consider all these things, … we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the aforesaid spirit [God], who works all in all, and by whom all things consist’. On the importance of the aesthetic paradigm in Berkeley see Leduc-Fayette (1997) and Forest (1997). It is widely accepted that there is no substantial change in Plotinus’ philosophical positions from the first to the last treatises he wrote. Reading his works in chronological order shows only the way his interest may have changed; see Hadot (1997); Isnardi Parente (1989). The two treatises discussed here have the same philosophical content, namely a criticism of the stoic doctrine of natural determinism and of the epicurean doctrine of atomism; see Vegetti (1989), Brisson and Pradeau (2002). See Rist (1967), for the thesis that these arguments can be read as turned against determinism. See Manetti (1987). See III.1.8, 4–21; II.3.9, 20–44. Blumenthal has advanced some doubts about the rightness of a similar interpretation of the undescended soul; see Blumenthal (1966 and 1974). Maybe he is right in detecting some inconsistencies in Plotinus’ thought, because, on the basis of textual evidence, we cannot determine what Plotinus’ position really was. I believe, however, that reading a text philosophically means finding philosophical arguments to prefer one reading to another. The three transcendent hypostaseis are framed in such a way that the lower part of the upper is joined to the upper part of the lower by that which Plotinus calls logos; justifying in this way my reading. See, especially on this issue, Rist (1967), Smith (1978), Pépin (1979), Beierwaltes, (1980 and 1985), Reale (1983), Laurent (1992), Andolfo (1996), Phillips (2002). See II.4.7.

Plotinus, Leibniz, Berkeley on Determinism 225 35. See I.8.7, 21–23; I.8.8, 19–24. I follow the consideration advanced by Rist (1961), Laurent (1992), Narbonne (1993), Nikulin (2002). 36. See II.5.5, 9; II.5.5, 22–3. 37. See III.1.6, 3–7; II.3.13, 1–8. 38. See Donini (1985). 39. See III.8.2, 24–37. 40. See II.3.17, 13–14; II.3.17, 15. 41. A previous version of this paper was read and commented on by Robert Berchman. I am very grateful to him for his helpful suggestions.

Bibliography Ackrill, J. L., 1981, Aristotle the Philosopher, Oxford. Adams, R. M., 1983, ‘Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance in Leibniz’, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8, P. A. French et al (eds.), Minneapolis, pp. 217–57. Allaire E. B., 1963, ‘Berkeley’s Idealism’, Theoria 29, pp. 229–44. Allaire, E. B., 1982, ‘Berkeley’s Idealism Revisited’, in Berkeley: Critical and Interpretative Essays, C. M. Turbayne (ed.), Minneapolis, pp. 23–37. Allaire E. B., 1995, ‘Berkeley’s Idealism: Yet Another Visit’, in Muehlmann (1995), pp. 23–38. Andolfo, M., 1996, L’ipostasi della Psiche in Plotino: struttura e fondamenti, Milano. Baladi, N., 1974, ‘Plotin et l’immatérialisme de Berkeley: témoignage de la Siris’, in Plotino e il neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, Rome, pp. 597–604. Beierwaltes, W., 1980, Identität und Differenz, Frankfurt am Main. Beierwaltes, W., 1985, Denken des Einen. Studien zum Neuplatonismus und dessen Wirkgungsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main. Berkeley, G., 1948–57, The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.), 9 vols, Edinburgh. Blumenberg, H., 1981, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt. Blumenthal, H. J., 1966, ‘Did Plotinus Believe in Ideas of Individuals?’, Phronesis 11, pp. 61–80. Blumenthal, H. J., 1974, ‘Nous and Soul in Plotinus: Some Problems of Demarcation’, in Plotino e il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, Rome, pp. 203–19. Bradatan, C., 1999, ‘Berkeley and Liber Mundi’, Minerva. An Internet Journal of Philosophy 3. Brandom, R., 1981, ‘Leibniz on the Degrees of Perception’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, pp. 447–80. Brisson, L. and Laurent, J., 2002, ‘Notice sur le destin’, in Traités 1–6, Luc Brisson. J.-F.Pradeau et al., Paris, pp. 143–7. Corrigan, K., 1994, ‘Berkeley and Plotinus on the Non-existence of Matter’, Hermathena 157, pp. 67–86. Daniel, S. H., 2001, ‘Berkeley’s Christian Neoplatonism, Archetypes, and Divine Ideas’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, pp. 239–58. Descartes, R., 1964–76, Oeuvres, C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds.), 12vols, (1st edn 1897–1913), Paris.

226 Daniele Bertini Donini, P., 1985, ‘Gli dei e il dio: la teologia greca’, in Introduzione alle culture antiche II. Il sapere degli antichi, M. Vegetti (ed.), Torino, pp. 295–318. Forest, D., 1997, ‘George Berkeley, langage visuel, communication universelle’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger 4, pp. 429–46. Furth, M., 1967, ‘Monadology’, Philosophical Review 76, pp. 169–200. Gilson, E., 1986, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, (1st edn 1922), Paris. Girgenti, G., 1996, Il pensiero forte di Porfirio. Mediazione tra henologia platonica e ontologia aristotelica, Milano. Hadot, P., 1997, Plotin ou la simplicité du regard, Paris. Isnardi Parente, M., 1989, Plotino, [1st edn 1984], Roma and Bari. Laurent, J., 1992, Les fondements de la nature selon Plotin. Procession et Participation, Paris. Leduc-Fayette, D., 1997, ‘Qu’est que “parler aux yeux”? Berkeley et le langage optique’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger 4, pp. 409–27. Leibniz, G. W., 1986, Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison. Principes de la philosophie ou Monadologie, 3rd edn, A. Robinet (ed.), Paris. Leibniz, G. W., 1875–90, Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, C. I. Gerhardt (ed.), 7vols, Berlin. Look, B., 2002, ‘On Monadic Domination in Leibniz’s Metaphysics’, The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10:3, pp. 379–99. MacIntosh, J. J., 1970–1, ‘Leibniz and Berkeley’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71, pp. 147–63. Manetti, G., 1987, Le teorie del segno nell’antichità classiche, Milano. Mercer, C., 2001, Leibniz’s Metaphysics. Its Origins and Development, Cambridge. Muehlmann, R. G., 1992, Berkeley’s Ontology, Indianapolis. Muehlmann, R. G. (ed.), 1995, Berkeley’s Metaphysics. Structural, Interpretive, and Critical Essays, University Park PA. Mugnai, M., 2001, Introduzione alla filosofia di Leibniz, Torino. Mugnai, P. F., 1979, Segno e linguaggio in George Berkeley, Rome. Narbonne, J.-M. (ed.), 1993, Plotin. Les deux Matières, Paris. Narbonne, J.-M., 2001, Hénologie, ontologie et Ereignis (Plotin – Proclus – Heidegger), Paris. Nikulin, D., 2002, Matter, Imagination and Geometry, Burlington. Pappas, G., 1995, ‘Berkeleian Idealism and Impossible Performances’, in Muehlmann (1995), pp. 127–48. Pépin, J., 1979, ‘Platonisme et Antiplatonisme dans le Traité de Plotin Sur les Nombres (VI.6,34)’, Phronesis 24, pp. 197–208. Phillips, J., 2002, ‘Plato’s Psychogonia in Later Platonism’, Classical Quarterly 52, pp. 231–47. Plotinus, 1951–73, Opera (editio maior), P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer (eds.), 3 vols, Bruxelles, Paris, and Leiden. Plotinus, 2002, Traités 1–6, L. Brisson, and L. Jerome (eds.), Paris. Reale, G., 1974, Aristotele, Roma and Bari. Reale, G., 1983, ‘I fondamenti della metafisica di Plotino e la struttura della processione’, in Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Presented to Joseph Owens, L. P. Gerson (ed.), Toronto, pp. 153–75. Rist, J. M., 1961, ‘Plotinus on Matter and Evil’, Phronesis 6, pp. 154–66. Rist, J. M., 1967, Plotinus. The Road to Reality, Cambridge.

Plotinus, Leibniz, Berkeley on Determinism 227 Robinet, A., 1983, ‘Leibniz: Lecture du Treatise de Berkeley’, Études philosophiques 2, pp. 217–23. Ruf, O., 1973, Die Eins und die Einheit bei Leibniz. Eine Untersuchung zur Monadenlehre, Meisenheim am Glan. Sleigh, R. C., 1977, ‘Leibniz on simplicity of substance’, Rice University Studies in Philosophy 63, pp. 107–21. Smith, A., 1978, ‘Unconsciousness and Quasiconsciousness in Plotinus’, Phronesis, 23, pp. 292–301. Spinoza, B., 1925, Opera, C. I. Gebhardt (ed.), 4 vols, Heidelberg. Szlezák, T. A., 1979, Platon und Aristoteles in der Nuslehre Plotins, Basel and Stuttgart. Tipton, I. C., 1974, Berkeley. The Philosophy of Immaterialism, London. Turbayne, C. M., 1971, The Myth of Metaphor, Columbia NY. Vegetti, M., 1989, L’etica degli antichi, Roma and Bari. Wenz, P. S., 1976, ‘Berkeley’s Christian Neoplatonism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 37, pp. 537–46. Wilson, M. D., 1974, ‘Leibniz and Materialism’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3, pp. 495–513. Wilson, M. D., 1977, ‘Confused Ideas’, Rice University Studies in Philosophy 63, pp. 123–37. Wilson, M. D., 1987, ‘The Phenomenalism of Leibniz and Berkeley’, in Essays on George Berkeley, E. Sosa (ed.), Dordrecht, pp. 3–22. Wilson, M. D., 1992, ‘Confused vs Distinct Perception in Leibniz: Consciousness, Representation and God’s Mind’, in Minds, Ideas and Object, P. Cummins and G. Zoeller (eds.), Atascadero, pp. 336–52.

13 Proclus Americanus Jay Bregman

Thou shalt read … Proclus Proclus says: ‘beauty swims in the light of forms’ Emerson The New England Trancendentalists initiated a significant Neoplatonic movement in nineteenth-century America. They read most of their Neoplatonic texts in the translations of Thomas Taylor, a Neoplatonic revivalist and enthusiast. Taylor’s work suggests that he was, metaphorically at least, a ‘reincarnation’ of Proclus. His translations of all Greek philosophers evoke the Greek style of Proclus transliterated into English, as it were. New England intellectuals, therefore, read Plato, and Plotinus as well, through ‘Procline spectacles’. The greatest Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a serious advocate of Neoplatonic spirituality. His reading of Plotinus has been widely acknowledged; he was also an avid reader of Proclus. The Transcendentalists understood later Neoplatonism as a philosophical religion. In the finale of his essay ‘Intellect’, Emerson introduces his ‘band of grandees’: ... that lofty and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age. When, at long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages, wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world, these of the old religion, dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of Christianity look parvenues and popular; for ‘persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.’ This band 228

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of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathematics. I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of things for its illustration. But what marks its elevation, and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from age to age prattle to each other, and to no contemporary. Well assured that their speech is intelligible, and the most natural thing in the world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment’s heed of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who do not comprehend their plainest argument.1 Emerson read Thomas Taylor’s translation of Plotinus’ Ennead V.3.6; he then, interestingly, seems to have transferred the Plotinian idea that Soul knows itself as the progeny of another thing (Nous) – ‘For necessity is indeed in intellect, but persuasion is in soul’ – to the idea that the religion of Christianity is on the level of persuasion, that is, Soul, but the older and deeper religion/philosophy of Neoplatonism is on the level of intelligible necessity, that is, Nous.2 Emerson understood why so many in the newly emerging romantic Bohemia used stimulants, but was himself puritanically averse to these: he preferred his books: I read Proclus for my opium, it excites my imagination to let sail before me the pleasing and grand figures of gods and daemons and demonical men. I hear of rumors rife among the most ancient gods, of azonic gods who are itinerants, of daemons with fulgid eyes, of the unenvying and exuberant will of the gods; the aquatic gods, the Plain of Truth, the meadow, the nutriment of the gods, the paternal port, and all the rest of the Platonic rhetoric quoted as household words. By all these and so many rare and brave words I am filled with hilarity and spring, my heart dances, my sight is quickened, I behold shining relations between all beings, and am impelled to write and almost to sing. I think one would grow handsome who read Proclus much and well … Every abstract idea is presented as a god … so that the universe is filled with august and exciting images. (Emerson (1965b): Journals VI (1843, pp. 375–6).

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In another essay, ‘The Poet’, Emerson notes that Proclus calls the universe the ‘statue of intellect’ (Emerson (1965a, p. 328) and himself proposes a Neoplatonic aesthetic: The Universe is the externalization of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it … the earth and the heavenly bodies, physics and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have. The mighty heaven, says Proclus, exhibits, in its transfigurations, clear images of the splendour of intellectual perceptions; being moved in conjunction with the unapparent periods of intellectual natures. (Emerson (1965a), p. 319). Hence, ‘the Poet’ who speaks adequately, speaks ‘wildly’, or with the ‘flower of the mind’ (Emerson (1965a, p. 325), the mind’s organ for grasping noetic unity. This notion was adopted by Proclus from the Chaldaean Oracles. In ‘The Poet’ Emerson’s claim that we are genuine ‘children of the fire’ also invites comparison with the Chaldaean Oracles. His ‘furor poeticus’ is reminiscent of Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’ (Emerson (1965a, p. 314). The poet is ‘a beholder of ideas, an utterer of the necessary and the causal’ (Emerson (1965a, p. 316). The ex-Unitarian minister affirms his loyalty to hellenic Neoplatonism. He admits that he revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground and died hard; his quip that a reading of Iamblichus On the Mysteries would inspire a revival in the Churches (Harper and Raine 1969, p. 56 and n. 29) might have been an in-joke: he knew that the emperor Julian had been an Iamblichaean, and that he intended to found an hellenic Church based on theurgic sacramentalism, as an alternative to and an opponent of Christianty. But the quip also shows Emerson’s awareness of syncretistic possibilities. New combinations of hellenic Neoplatonism and Christianity had been part of the Romantic agenda in Europe. Taking into consideration the influence of German Romanticism and Idealism, the ‘Neoplatonized’ Kantianism of Coleridge and the Idealist and Neoplatonically informed French Eclecticism of Victor Cousin, as well as Thomas Taylor, Emerson and the Transcendentalists worked out a new American synthesis, appropriate to the requirements of their movement.3 The Procline, in addition to the Plotinian, element became a focus of Transcendentalist thought. Among the ‘Orphic Fragments’ in H. D. Thoreau’s literary notebooks is a translation of an Orphic verse attributed to Proclus by the Cambridge Platonist R. Cudworth4 ‘in which the world is represented as one great animal, god being the soul thereof’. Thoreau also translated

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two fragments from the Chaldaean Oracles: ‘There is a certain intelligible which it becomes you to understand with the flower of the mind’ (frg. 167): ‘You will not understand that as understanding a particular thing’ (frg. 163) (Cameron 1976, p. 176; Bregman 1990, p. 106). It is not clear whether or not Emerson and Thoreau were attentive to Proclus’ notion that the One itself cannot be perceived by the ‘flower of the mind’ but must be perceived by an even subtler organ of thought, ‘the flower of the whole soul’. The ‘flower of the mind’5 grasps the First Intelligible triad, not the One itself.6 The ‘flower of the mind’ idea appears again in Thoreau’s ‘Walking’ (or ‘the Wild’):7 The highest that we can attain, is Sympathy with Intelligence … a realization of the insufficiency of all that we called knowledge before … It is the lighting up of mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense than this any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun: … ‘hos ti noon, ou keino noesis’, ‘You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing,’ say the Chaldaean Oracles.8 Like Emerson, Thoreau appreciated the theurgists’ theory of the correspondence of images to archetypes, and the ‘seira’ on which stones, plants, animals, human souls, discarnate souls, heroes, daemons, angels, gods, etc., are suspended. Hence the sunflower, as far as it is able, moves in a circular dance towards the sun; so that if any one could hear the pulsation made by its circuit in the air, he would perceive something composed by a sound of this kind, in honour of its king, such as a plant is capable of framing.9 In Women in the Nineteenth Century Margaret Fuller refers once to Proclus, briefly but insightfully and with a clear appreciation of the interpenetrating Neoplatonic noetic: ‘Proclus teaches that every life has in its sphere a totality of wholeness of the animating powers of the other spheres, having only as its own characteristic a predominance of some one power’ (cited in Mott 1996, p. 171). Compare the Elements of Theology, proposition 179: ‘all intellectual forms are both implicit in each other and severally existent’; and proposition

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103: ‘All things are in all things, but in each according to its proper nature’, (that is, the ontologically ‘expressive’ level of each): ‘for in Being there is life and intelligence, in Life, being and intelligence, in Intelligence, being and life’ (trans. Dodds 1963, pp. 155 and 93 respectively). The Transcendentalists’ interest in Proclus was as important as their interest in Plotinus. Emerson’s ‘Representative Mystic’ was Swedenborg, whose two major concepts were the ‘influx’ of the spiritual into the natural world, and the Neoplatonic concept of correspondence: ideas common in Neoplatonic and Hermetic circles since the Renaissance (Mott 1996, p. 214). Even before his visionary period, Swedenborg held that the ‘living body’ and all of nature were purely symbolical of the spiritual world. He thought that words restored to their true meaning can decode the emblematic world, converting ‘natural truth’ into ‘spiritual truth’. Emerson used the doctrine of correspondence in his seminal Nature, ‘seeking to establish the radical correspondence between visible things and human thoughts’; thus, a work of art ‘is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature’. Language too could be understood as a function of correspondence: ‘1.Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. 3. Nature is a symbol of Spirit’ (Emerson 1965a, p. 200). Eventually, Emerson criticized Swedenborg as too rigid, too inclined to believe in literal ‘one to one’ correspondences. Symbols are ‘fluxional’ the quality of imagination is ‘to flow’ (Emerson 1965a, p. 329). A sculptor taught him ‘wonderful indirections’: He rose on day according to his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning break, grand as the eternity out of which it came, and, for many days after, he strove to express this tranquility, and lo! his chisel had fashioned out of marble the form of a beautiful youth, Phosphorus, whose aspect is such that, it is said, all persons who look on it become silent. (Emerson 1965a, p. 324). Matthiessen sees significance for Emerson (and later Whitman) in these indirections; he also attributes the basis of this concept of spontaneous artistic freedom to Emerson’s appreciation of ‘Zoroaster’ (that is, the very same fragments of the Chaldaean Oracles Thoreau translated): Emerson concluded that the gap between the world of fact and the world of human thought and experience could not be bridged by force, by merely intellectual or abstract means. For that reason in particular the symbol came to possess supreme value for him, since it enabled him to transcend that gap between the worlds. The quality that he continually ascribed

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to its power was that of ‘indirection’. As he expressed it in a favourite figure, ‘The gods like indirect names and dislike to be named directly’,10 He found one of his chief texts for ‘indirection’ in Zoroaster: It is not proper to understand the Intelligible with vehemence, but if you incline your mind [my italics], you will apprehend it: not too earnestly, but bringing a pure and inquiring eye. You will not understand it as when understanding some particular thing, but with the flower of the mind.11 In a Plotinian mode, Emerson tells us that Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study but by intellect’s being where and what it sees, ‘by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms, and by making them translucid to others’ (Emerson (1965a), p. 325). In the same essay he continues: Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic [by which he means Swedenborgean correspondence theory] that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false…. Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one. The morning redness happens to be the favorite meteor to the eyes of Jacob Behmen, and comes to stand to him for truth and faith: and he believes should stand for the same realities to every reader. But the first reader prefers as naturally the symbol of a mother and child, or a gardener and his bulb, or a jeweler polishing a gem. Either of these or a myriad more, are equally good. (Emerson 1965a, p. 329). Emerson also used Proclus for his own literary speculations. In ‘Nominalist and Realist’, he credits the artist with the ability to harmonize ‘the individual’ with ‘the universal’; where he also suggests a ‘pragmatic’ approach even to arcane Platonic literature: I find the most pleasure in reading a book in a manner least flattering to the author … I read Proclus and sometimes Plato, as I might read a dictionary, for mechanical help to the fancy & imagination. I read for the lustres, as if one should use a fine picture in a chromatic experiment for its rich colors. ‘Tis not Proclus but a piece of nature and fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see an author’s author than himself … The preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of the deification of art, which is found in all superior minds. Art in

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the artist is proportion, or, a habitual respect to the whole, by an eye loving beauty in details. (Emerson 1876, p. 233). The above passages perhaps begin to help us see why Emerson considered the ‘Proclus Redivivus’, Thomas Taylor, ‘a better man of imagination, a better poet, or perhaps I should say a better feeder to a poet, than any man between Milton and Wordsworth’ (Harper and Raine 1969, p. 52 and n.13). When in England, he inquired diligently after Thomas Taylor, but in the end he declared that he could only ascertain one fact concerning him, ‘viz … that he had a son and named him Proklos’.12 Emerson’s Transcendentalist friend Amos Bronson Alcott, also read Proclus along with Plotinus and Plato, who all three ‘filled his thoughts with majestic and cloudy conjectures’.13 But Alcott’s thought is more evocative of Plotinus and Neopythagorean asceticism. It was Alcott’s trip to England that resulted in the acquisition of a library of Thomas Taylor’s books in 1843, which enabled Emerson to read more systematically in Proclus.14 The direct disciples of Emerson and Alcott, who represent later Transcendentalism, Thomas M. Johnson and Alexander Wilder, actually became ‘Taylorian’ advocates of the religion of theurgic Neoplatonism. Johnson published fragments of a poem attributed to Proclus, reprinted from the Trinity College Dublin review, Hermathena, ‘for the sake of our philosophic reader, to whom nothing concerning Proklos is without interest’ (Bregman 1990, p. 99). Translation and commentary on Proclus was prominent in Johnson’s late nineteenth-century journal The Platonist (abbreviated as P), including the Elements of Theology. Johnson followed Eunapius of Sardis in his praise of the emperor Julian and condemnation of what he saw as the ‘barbaric’ Christian destruction of the mystery cults and temples. Wilder considered Platonism and the mysteries the greatest source of truth, revived in modern times! He also abhorred the oppression of the rising Orthodox Christian Roman state. Appalled at the fate of Hypatia and the politics of Bishops Theophilus and Cyril of Alexandria, he considered Justinian’s closing of the Platonic Academy in 529 and the subsequent Persian exile of Damascius and his colleagues, ‘the end of liberal thought and learning in the Roman Empire: the twilight of the Dark Ages, was begun’ (Johnson, P, vol.3, Jan. 1887, pp. 15ff.). Johnson agreed, in Bibliotheca Platonica (abbreviated as BP) – the 1889/1890 follow up journal to The Platonist – and lamented the loss of many texts ‘through criminal carelessness or fanaticism’. In an introduction to a translation of Damaskios’ ‘First Principles’ Johnson alludes to Justinian’s ‘infamous edict, suppressing the Platonic school: ‘the effects of the execution of

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this maliciously unjust edict were world wide. Ever since the accession of Constantine misnamed ‘the great’ to the imperial throne’, said Johnson, ‘the Platonic philosophers, who were ardent champions of the ancient faith, had been harassed and oppressed – except during the brief reign of Julian – in many ways, so that their schools had been kept open under great and numerous difficulties’ (Johnson, BP, Nov–Dec 1889, pp. 82–6). None of this means, however, that Johnson and Wilder were pure ‘pagan’ revivalists, as was Taylor, but rather that, as liberal religious syncretists, they were willing to accept Christianity as one valid stream of revelation of a universal ‘cosmic theism’.15 More literal-minded than Emerson, they followed Taylor’s ideas about the understanding of ancient texts. Lamberton has pointed out that in Romanticism there was a subjective ‘pre-hermeneutical’ branch. But for Schleiermacher, for example, ‘understanding a text hinges on recovery of the original thought … made possible by the fundamental harmony of intellects, which transcends time’ (Lamberton 1986, p. 301). A similar sense of the relationship of idea and text can be found in Taylor’s remarks on translating ancient texts: ‘Since all truth is eternal, its nature can never be altered by transposition, though, by this means, its dress may be varied, & become less elegant and refined. Perhaps even this inconvenience may be remedied by sedulous cultivation’.16 Taylor’s American followers took him at his word. The first instalment of The Platonist appeared in 1881. It was to include: 1. Original articles on Platonic themes; 2. Translations of the great works of the tradition; 3. Reprints of out of print treatises, especially those of ‘the most genuine Platonist of modern times’, Thomas Taylor; 4. Biographical sketches of the heroes of philosophy. The journal appeared, somewhat sporadically throughout the 1880s. A successor journal, Bibliotheca Platonica, was published in 1889–90. Proclus’ Elements of Theology first made its appearance serially in The Platonist, translated by the editor as a ‘handbook of elementary principles of Platonic Theology’ (Johnson, P, v.4, 1888, p. 210). The translation began to appear in volumes one and two; a few passages of a revised translation appeared in volume four as Theological Institutes. In 1909, Johnson finally published a complete revised edition in book form as Proclus’ Metaphysical Elements. His introduction is largely a paraphrase of Marinus’ Life of Proclus. Johnson also attempts to schematically outline the system of Proclus in the introduction and the appendix of his translation.17 Other translations by Johnson include, The Commentary of Proklos on the First Alkibiades of Platon, the basic introduction to Platonism and a key to ‘mystic wisdom’ (Johnson, P, v.3, 1887, pp. 1–15; 57–66, 113–16;

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169–72.). In his translation of Eunapius’ Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists Johnson also reveals himself a lively advocate of religious hellenism, disturbed by the fate of theurgy and the mystery cults and temples such as the Serapeum, in an increasingly intolerant Orthodox Christian Roman empire. The emperor Julian is praised and the Neoplatonists lauded as the ‘mathatmas’ and ‘adepts’ of their age (Johnson, P, v.3, 1887, 589n). Alexander Wilder, a physician, who believed in a spiritual component to evolution, presented a new serial translation of Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries (Johnson, P, v.1, 1881, pp. 27–30; first instalment). He also wrote a ‘Platonic Technology’, alphabetically explaining the major Greek terms from the Platonic Lexicon, in instalments.18 The Chaldaean Oracles also appeared, many of them from fragments attributed to Proclus. In addition, Islamic mystics, the Kabbalah, Hermetic and other Occult texts and subjects were published: for example, ‘The improvement of humanreason exhibited in the life of Hai Ebn Yokdan: written in Arabic above 500 years ago’, by Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail’ (originally published in translation in Dublin in 1731).19 A Philadelphia lawyer, Isaac Myer, made the first English translation of Synesius’ work On Dreams. In his commentary and notes he compared the ideas of the soul and its vehicle with what he considered to be parallel ideas found in the Kabbalah. The soul is connected to the body through a ‘pneumatic envelope’ or ‘spiritual body’, which becomes the ‘imagination’ (phantasia) in connection with the sense realm. ‘He (Synesius) considers the imagination as something very subtile yet material, corresponding perhaps to Qabbalistic Ruach (spiritus, pneuma)’ (Johnson, P, v.4, May 1888, 228n). Myer later published an erudite work on the Kabbalah and the thought of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, with an introduction by Madame Blavatsky. In which he says that ‘St (sic) Synesius – flour. circa 370–414 AD – surnamed the Philosopher, in his writing, On Dreams (404 AD), shows considerable knowledge of the Qabbalah’ (Myer 1988, 46, n.2). Thus, Myer, as well as Alexander Wilder and other among these later Transcendentalist Neoplatonists were forging links with the Theosophical movement, which they probably saw as a contemporary attempt to revive later hellenistic syncretism, Proclus’ ‘Religion of the World’, as it were. Edwin Arnold, an Englishman famous for his studies of Buddhism, tried a version of Proclus’ Hymn to the Muses: ‘… it is not too much to say that something eloquent from the greatest poet & something lofty from the greatest philosopher of Hellas – an inheritance at once of the melody of Homer & of the mind of Platon – fell upon this last of the Greek minstrels …’ (Johnson, P, v.1, 1881, p. 24). In the introduction

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to a translation of Ficino’s version of Proclus’ de magia, a little work that attempts a practical (in part) demonstration of the principles of Cosmic Sympathy, Correspondence of Image to Archetype, in a Pythagorean spirit, the editor claims to be quoting Thomas Taylor: Life may be compared to a perpetual & universal sound; & the soul of the world resembles a Lyre … But from the unbounded diffusion as it were of the mundane soul, everything participates of the harmonical sound, in greater or less perfection, according to the dignity of its nature. So that while life everywhere resounds, the most abject of beings may be said to retain a faint echo of the melody produced by the mundane lyre. It was doubtless from profoundly considering this sympathy between the mundane soul & the parts of the world that the ancient philosophers were able to procure the presence of divinity, and produce effects beyond the comprehension of the vulgar. (Johnson, P, v.1 1881, p. 116). The world of the Transcendentalists and their followers was always transatlantic. They published Continental European as well as English articles, in the attempt to keep up with contemporary developments. Each issue had its share of ‘Platonic Enthusiasm’; for example, in the ‘Miscellanea’ of an issue of Bibliotheca Platonica printed in bold letters: SECURE THE ACADEMY! We desire to call the attention of Platonists throughout the world to the fact that the ancient Academy at Athens Greece could probably be secured … It should be rescued from the hands of the profane, and set aside for the perpetual use of all true followers of Divine Philosophy. There is no good reason why, in due time, the Platonic School should not again flourish on its original site, and again become, as it once was, the nursery of science and wisdom for the whole world. (Johnson, BP, v.1 1889, p. 77). The Neoplatonic revival represents a significant stream in the nineteenthcentury religious phenomena of secularization, comparative religions, and the critique of Christianity. This particular branch of the flowering of American Metaphysical religion, as it has been called,20 is perhaps largely forgotten, but remains an important element behind the mystical revivals of the twentieth century, as well as more recent interest in Eastern religious thought. Indeed, the best preparation for Westerners to understand Easterners has always been Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism itself has been central to modern forms of American spirituality: ‘From

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Transcendentalism on, most unchurched spiritual systems invoke a Neoplatonic view of evil’ (Fuller 2001,p. 160).21 It also enabled comparative religionists such as James Freeman Clarke (The Ten Great Religions) and the famous abolitionist and Platonic idealist, Lydia M. Child. Her neglected novel Philothea is a genuine example of Neoplatonic Romantic hellenism: the pure heroine of the story is contrasted with the worldly, yet somewhat jaded Aspasia, the Athenian democratic leader Pericles’ mistress. In the course of the novel, Philothea’s fiancé ascends to the Platonic Forms, literally, if anachronistically! Perhaps this modified Romantic revival of the religion of the emperor Julian and Proclus in late nineteenth-century America appears a bit odd and/or far-fetched. Yet, Transcendentalist ‘paganism’ became a concern of Orestes Brownson, originally a Trancendentalist, who was converted to Roman Catholicism, and one to which he offered a serious Christian apologetic response. The St Louis Hegelians, W. T. Harris and F. H. Sanborn, played a similar, if more moderate and friendly, role in their Hegelian Idealist Christian critique of their friend, Emerson’s Transcendentalist colleague, A. Bronson Alcott, whom they thought of as a kind of ‘Plotinian fundamentalist’, born out of his time. By their account, he lacked a positive appreciation of Time and History, based on the incarnation, which they think makes possible their positive valuation of the historical, dialectally determined temporal world (Sanborn and Harris 1965, v.2, pp. 602–5). Mutatis mutandis, some of these ideas seem to echo very similar debates in late antiquity, undertaken by Celsus, Porphyry, the emperor Julian, and their Patristic opponents: Origen, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria and others. Interestingly, today, Professor Donald Gelpi, S. J., who teaches at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, has taken up the cause of Brownson. He chides Emerson for a putative descent into pantheism and the ‘lack of an incarnational imagination’, which would have allowed Emerson (especially the ‘late pessimistic’ Emerson) to express more positive world affirmation.22 Perhaps. Some scholars have considered Emerson and his colleagues as too ‘spiritual’, and (surprisingly) even somewhat other-worldly. And Emerson’s late Essay ‘Fate’ has been viewed as pessimistic, in contrast to his early ‘Saturnalia of Faith’, which upbeat mood he expressed in Nature, ‘The Over-Soul’, ‘Self Reliance’, ‘Representative Men’ and other essays poems and addresses. But it should be noted (why has it not been?) that ‘Fate’ actually concludes with an affirmative ‘epiphany’ to ‘the Beautiful Necessity’, and Emerson also connects this necessity with the One! In Proclus, ‘the power of the Nous insofar as it produces Nature

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is known as Necessity (anankê) or Fate (heimarmenê) … for the source of Nature is called First Fate by the gods’ (Rosan 1949, p. 171). Rosan also affirms that in Proclus, the Power of Unpossessed Mind that Produced Unpossessed Nature is also in Unpossessed Nature (Rosan 1949, p. 173). Nature in Transcendentalism, replaces and becomes a substitute for Torah in Judaism and Christ in Christianity ; for a discussion of this and other related ideas, see Cameron (1976). Indeed, E. R. Curtius is surely closer to the truth (about Emerson both early and late) when he says that in Emerson ‘Platonism leaves the cloister and the sanctuary and steps into the open, into the sun, into the wide blue spaces’ (Curtius 1973, p. 220). The negative critique, at bottom distorted by an apologetic agenda, cannot be applied with any credibility to the Neoplatonism of Proclus. His was a system that included ‘Faith’ (pistis) understood as a supernoetic path to union with the One; and even a version of grace: Iamblichus’ unasked-for gifts from the gods, through theurgic prayer (de Myst. V.5). It affirmed the ritual of Soul’s embodiment and was a basically a religious way of Salvation. As P. Hadot has pointed out the final phase of Neoplatonism, of Iamblichus’, Proclus’ and Damascius’, must be viewed as a ritualistic religious way, with its own sacred revelatory texts and sacramental system, the putative alternative, in its day, to Christianity (Hadot 2002, pp. 168–71). A secular and rationalist attack on Neoplatonism, aimed largely at Johnson and colleagues, was launched by Professor Paul Shorey; his student R. B. Levinson continued a more academically detailed version of Shorey’s crusade in his 1924 University of Chicago doctoral thesis on Thomas Taylor. He presents Taylor, credibly, as a more thoroughgoing dogmatist than Proclus (as was Johnson), who still realized that even his most dogmatic dogmas were ultimately based on argument. This is in line with Shorey’s attempt to ‘save’ Plato for a rationalist world and defend humanistic education against pragmatist attacks. Levinson also consulted with the contributor to Johnson’s and other Platonist journals, Lewis J. Block (Harper and Raine 1969, p. 91) to learn more about the late nineteenth-century Plato Clubs in the Midwest. Along with Johnson, against the Chicago school, others became champions of dogmatic Neoplatonism. According to K. S. Guthrie (1871–1940: a translator of Proclus, Numenius, and other Platonic philosophers), Proclus had allegedly appeared in a vision, speaking a foreign language, to a sailor on the west coast of the United States who visited Guthrie in Yonkers, New York. He took this message as an ‘Oracle’, made a new translation of Marinus’ Life – an account of a Greek philosopher … innately loved by the gods, ‘completed with the help of God’ (Bregman 1990,

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pp. 115–16). In his translations of Proclus, Guthrie often follows Thomas Taylor almost word for word. Or in the case of On the Chaldaean Philosophy, he follows Thomas M. Johnson almost word for word. He makes many scattered highly eulogistic remarks about Proclus.23 Guthrie seems almost to have been an incarnation of the Melville character Winsome, the New England Sage in The Confidence Man, who quotes Proclus and displays ‘incoherent wisdom’; he is portrayed by Melville as something of a ‘snake oil’ salesman of Neoplatonism! (Melville 1971, 161–92). His idiosyncratic syncretism seems to comprise the final chapter of the now moribund movement initiated by Thomas M. Johnson, Alexander Wilder and their friends. Subsequently, Neoplatonism was largely ignored in Anglo-American polite academic society till some time in the 1960s. The Pythagorean David Fideler and his Phanes Press became, for a time, Johnson’s heirs. Phanes has published several Neoplatonic articles in its journal Alexandria.24 Logicians and philosophers of science have included Proclus in recent discussions. Any fragment of a Hologram contains in nuce the entire Hologram; and may be used to reconstruct the whole: ‘all things are in all things, but each according to its proper nature’ (Proclus, Elements of Theology, proposition 103 and compare Plotinus Ennead V.8). Johnson looked forward to Jahn’s edition of Proklou ek tes chaldaikes philosophias: There is added a Platonic Hymn to the divinity commonly attributed to St Gregory Nazianzen, which Dr. Jahn demonstrates to have been composed by Proklos. This is an important discovery. Every line written by Proklos is of value, and his Hymns, of which most unfortunately only a few have survived, are replete with most sublime conceptions, and represent a devotion of the highest type. (Johnson 1889, p. 237). Later, Johnson made the first English translation (1907) of ‘those wondrous remnants of ancient wisdom … mostly lost … of the highest species and greatest value’ (Johnson 1998, p. 123, n.1). In addition to the above-mentioned discovery of a lost MS (papyrus) of Proclus (Johnson, P, v.2, 1885, p.140) found by the Bishop of Limerick and reported in Hermathena, fragments alleged to be from a cyclic poem by Proclus were presented to the ‘philosophic reader …’ Several years later Johnson reported in the ‘Miscellanea’ (Johnson 1889, 80–1) ‘an unsuccessful search for Proklos’ lost commentary on the first 6 books of the Iliad and the hope that it is probably still in existence’. He went on to say that ‘Proklos’ knowledge of Homer’s text was most profound, and its interpretations would doubtless prove to be of great value’.

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Alexander Wilder surveyed the ‘school of Alexandria’ (Johnson, BP, v.1, May–June 1890, pp. 162–85), a branch of which planted at Athens had Proklos as its chief luminary (Johnson 1890, p. 167). Proclus ‘made a bold attempt to assimilate the old rites with later philosophies and put a new face upon religion’ (Johnson 1890, p. 167). He presented an earlier version of the Florentine ‘prisca theologia’: ‘What Orpheus delivered in arcane allegories Pythagoras learned when he was initiated into the Mysteries; and Plato next received the knowledge of them from Orphic and Pythagorean writings.’ In ‘perennialist’ fashion he took the ‘the primitive unity of religions and philosophies for his point of beginning’ (Johnson, BP, 1890, p. 168). The most learned and systematic of the Neo-Platonists … elaborated the entire theosophy and theurgy … into a complete system. Like the Rabbis and Gnostics [he means Clement and Origen mostly], he cherished a profound reverence for the ‘Abraxas’, the ‘word’ or ‘Venerable Name’, [which] in speaking a wisdom that he did not comprehend and becoming the utterance of a superior will … [He proposed] that there were ‘symbola’ or tokens that would enable the person to pass from one order of spiritual being to another, higher and higher, till he arrived at the absolute Divine. Faith would make one the possessor of this talisman. (Johnson, BP, 1890, p. 168) Much of his syncretism is obviously dated in detail, but the basic universalist intent is clear. ‘A spiritual Substance is the Cause of the Universe … All must be led up to this Primal substance which governs in subordination to THE FIRST’ (Johnson 1890, 183–4). The state after death, the metempsychosis to superior life, is thus explained by him: after death the soul continues in the aerial body till it is entirely purified from all angry and voluptuous passions; then doth it slough off by a second dying the aerial body as it did the earthly one. Wherefore, the ancients say that there is a celestial body always joined with the soul, which is immortal, luminous and star-like. (Johnson, BP, 1890,p. 184.) [No wonder, then, that Wilder joined the Theosophists.] He praises Iamblichus for his piety, and Proclus for his ‘serene temper’. Wilder also connects Neoplatonic ecstasy directly with Transcendentalism: ‘We begin with instinct; the end is omniscience … so that transported out of himself, so to speak, he thinks thoughts, views things from their highest point of view, and, to use an expression of

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Emerson’s, “becomes recipient of the soul of the world”‘ (Johnson 1890, p. 179). For a November 7, 1890 Plato’s Birthday celebration at the Plato Club of Jacksonville, Illinois, Dr Lewis J. Block’s poem includes a verse about Proclus: Proclus, the dreamer high, Sought thee [i.e., Plato] beyond the sky To fathom what thy deepest speech contains; Plotinus into thee Swooned in his ecstacy, Being rapt unto the far empyreal plains. At a Symposium – the same celebration that included Johnson’s paper ‘The Debt of the Moderns to Plato’, one Van B. Wisker read Proclus’ ‘Hymn to the Muses’ (Johnson 1890, 287–308). Serious scholarly work on Proclus in modern America begins with L. J. Rosan’s book: Proclus: The Final Phase of Ancient Thought, published in New York in 1949, originally a Columbia University doctoral dissertation written under Irwin Edman and especially P. O. Kristeller.25 Rosan is a Proclan himself and displays the enthusiasm of Johnson and Wilder. He was also a first-rate scholar, whose book remains an excellent introduction to the thought of Proclus. In addition to its historical value, his philosophy is intrinsically significant (‘to which it is not irrelevant to add, the writer is sympathetically disposed’: Rosan 1949, vii). Rosan was also familiar with Dodds’ edition of the Elements of Theology, and worked under the guidance of first rate philologists and historians of philosophy. In the preface he presents a translation of Proclus’ ‘Hymn to god’ – the same that Johnson was excited to find out that Jahn proved could not have been written by Gregory of Nyssa, but had to be by Proclus, as Rosan points out, because it contains ideas like ‘henads’ and ideas derived from the Chaldaean Oracles. His translation expresses religious language: for example, ‘O Absolutely Transcendent (what else is it rightful to call thee?) (Rosan 1949, ix).26 Rosan’s work explains Proclus’ systematic thought (both theological and philosophical) in detail. It also contains an excellent account of Proclus’ notions of ‘Universal Syncretism’, ‘Sympathy and Correspondence’, ‘Theurgy’, the Soul’s ‘ascent’ to the Noetic level and the One through the ‘flower of the mind’ and ‘the flower of the whole soul’. The author also included a useful translation of Marinus’ Life of Proclus. In his overall evaluation, Rosan sees Proclus as more learned, more systematic, an architectonic ‘scholastic’, as well as a clearer thinker than Plotinus. He was also in a sense more religious, because of his devotion

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to ritual and theurgy – even in its lower forms; Proclus was willing to ‘go to the gods’. And this was perhaps the result, perhaps the cause of the fact that whereas for Plotinus the gods tended to be merely symbolic representations of a single Reality, in Proclus … they are openly identified with the ‘independent unities’ (henads) and thus each god is guaranteed an objectively real existence of its own. (Rosan 1949, p. 227). Rosan also considers Proclus more emotional than the austere, classic Plotinus. In part because he wrote many works in his 20s and 30s they were, Baroque in contrast to Plotinus, a ceaseless motion of ideas, stimulated by the principle ‘all things are in all things, properly’ – so that it might be likened … to the rhythmic flow of lines in a Gothic Cathedral where the single motif, not of the pointed arch in this case, but the triadic arrangement, by being presented to the eye of the mind first on a grand scale and then in all the details, leads it from one thought to the next then back again. Like Plato he came to philosophy through an experience of conversion, and we find in him as we also find in Plato the same emotional vehemence and sense of agitation, the same spiritual yearning. (Rosan 1949, pp. 227–9).27 In certain circles, Proclus remains an inspiring figure. The self-described ‘New Kabbalist’ Sanford L. Drob, includes a chapter on Kabbalah and Neoplatonism in his book Kabbalistic Metaphors (2000). Under the influence of his teacher J. N. Findlay, he discusses the Sefirot in the light of Plotinus and Proclus. The principle of ‘all in all’ was adopted by the Kabbalists. Ben Sheshet’s view that each letter comprises all of the others (Drob 2000, p. 131); Asher ben David’s that each divine trait (middah) is contained in each of the others (Drob 2000, p. 132). In the Zohar, Cordovero and the Kabbalists of Safed, ‘there emerged the view that each of the Sefirot interpenetrate and thereby contain aspects (Behinnot) of each of the others’ (Drob 2000, p. 132). Later Kabbalists, for example, Abravenel, held that not only the second Sefirah Chochmah (Wisdom), but the entire sefirotic system corresponded to the realm of Platonic Ideas. They are, according to Abravanel, ‘the divine figurations with which the world was created’. I too have been influenced by J. N. Findlay. While in graduate school, working on Julian and Synesius we analysed certain Neoplatonic texts

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of Plotinus and Proclus. His view was essentially monistic: we are really talking about one rather than three realities, as he liked to say in respect of the three Plotinian hypostases. When I discovered Proclus’ On the Chaldaean Philosophy I showed it to him. He read and translated the Greek text at sight, without making any mistakes. During our subsequent discussion I asked him how the ‘flower of the mind’ could be one thing and ‘the flower of the whole soul’ another. He replied that he didn’t know Proclus very well, only the Elements of Theology, but he thought that these two ‘things’ must really represent levels of unity and ultimately must be unified: the ‘flower of the mind’ (anthos tou nou) would in its turn unite with the deeper and more inclusive ‘flower of the whole soul’ (anthos tes pases psyches). This made sense to me. As Proclus puts it, according to Thomas M. Johnson’s translation of On the Chaldaean Philosophy: But this, i.e. the flower of the intellect, is the most unific of our intellectual life, and the flower of the soul is the one of all the psychical powers, they being multiform. For we are not intellect alone, but discursive reason and opinion and attention and will, and prior to these powers we are one essence and many, partible and impartible. And the one shining forth is twofold: one or the flower of the soul being the first of our powers, the other being the whole essence of the center and of all the all-various powers about it; but this, i.e., the flower of the soul, alone unites us to the Father of the intelligibles. For the one is intellectual, but this is apprehended by the Paternal Intellect according to the unity (henad) which is in it. But the unity (henad) to which all the psychical powers verge and in which they unite and center alone naturally leads to the Principle which is beyond all beings, and is the unifying power of all that is in us. So that we are rooted or planted essentially in this Principle, and by being rooted, even though we may descend from the intelligible region, we will not be estranged from our cause. (Uzdavinys 2004, p. 248). I also mentioned to him that I had read an article by John Rist in which he said that Neoplatonic theurgy was rather more mechanical than Christian ‘grace’ and, therefore, did not represent ‘true’ mysticism.28 Findlay replied: ‘Theurgy is mystical!’ (He told me that he personally preferred pure Neoplatonism to Christianity; and that he thought Christianity was a fanatic religion). At the end of the session he remarked, ‘You wouldn’t call this pleasant weekend reading, now, would you?’

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Notes 1. Taken from http://www.xmission.com/~seldom74/emerson/intellec.html (accessed 23 December 2007). 2. Bregman (1990), p. 102; like Synesius in Ep.105, in which he accepted a bishopric on condition that he would continue to maintain privately that the demonstrable truths of philosophy supersede their inaccurate popularized mythic/persuasive version taught as Christian dogma. Emerson was, in a sense, ‘Synesius’ in reverse. Like Emerson, Synesius believed that in the end what matters is the integrity of your own mind. 3. On the seminal importance of the Platonic tradition to German Idealism and Romanticism see Beiser (2003), ch 4, ‘Fruhromantik and the Platonic Tradition’, pp. 56–72; on Coleridge’s debt to Neoplatonism see Hedley (2000), passim. 4. Before they read seriously Thomas Taylor’s translations (ca. 1837), the chief guide to Plotinus and Neoplatonism for Emerson and the Transcendentalists was Cudworth; see Cameron (1971), p. 57. 5. This implies Hilary Armstrong’s notion of the negative theology of Nous; for a discussion of this, see Armstrong (1990), pp. 31–7. 6. In 1907 Thomas M. Johnson published the first English translation of the short work of Proclus, where these passages are found in context; reprinted in Uzdavinys (2004), as Proclus’ Commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles, Part IV, pp. 247–8. 7. See also Thoreau (1973), pp. 153 and 133, where the editor, Anderson, says, ‘Drawn form the Journal of 1850–51 and given as a lecture at the Concord Lyceum, Apr., 1851 … when it became too large he broke it into two parts “Walking” and “The Wild” … Just before his death he put the two parts together under the title, “Walking or the Wild”’. [Modern printings usually give ‘Walking’]. 8. Taken from http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/Writings 1906/05Excursions/Walking.pdf 9. ‘Pythagoric Sayings’, 1841, Apr., 13; Extracts from Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras or Pythagoric Life, Accompanied by fragments of the ethical writings of certain Pythagoreans, and a collection of Pythagoric Sentences from Stobaeus & others. Translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor (1818), reprinted from Library of Congress Notebooks, pp. 29–34, in Cameron (1976) saying no. 299, p. 183; the handwritten version may be consulted in Cameron (1964). 10. Matthiessen attributes this passage to Emerson, without a reference; neither I nor my editors have been able to locate the source. I am, however, indebted to S. R. L Clark, for locating the following: ‘Gods like indirect perception and dislike direct perception’ (Gopatha Brahmana 1.2.21). This would fit perfectly into Emerson’s mindset, as well as with his reading in Indian literature, which formed a natural bridge to his Neoplatonism. For the ‘Zoroastrian’ references and discussion, see Matthiessen (1968), p. 57 and n. 2; see also pp. 68–9 for a discussion of Emerson on Plotinus and Heraclitus, in respect of his notions of ‘fluctions and mobility’. The Transcendentalists and other contemporaries thought Zoroaster wrote the Chaldaean Oracles. 11. In his lecture on ‘The Method of Nature’, An Oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841; found

246 Jay Bregman

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at http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/ method.html (accessed 9th January 2008). Harper and Raine (1969), p. 55 and n. 26; in his ‘Thomas Taylor in America’ Harper quotes this from Emerson’s Journals VII, 7–8, pp. 516–17. Mott (1996), p. 171; who follows here Odell Sheppard’s introduction to Alcott’s Journals (1938). For the details of Thomas Taylor’s influence in America, see ‘Thomas Taylor in America’, by G.M. Harper, in Haper and Raine (1969), pp. 49–102; for a summary of Alcott’s Neoplatonism, see Bregman (1990), pp. 104–5. Bregman (1991), p. 93 and n.5. Cited by Lamberton (1986), p. 301, from Thomas Taylor’s ‘Introduction to (his translation of) Concerning the Beautiful (Plot. Enn. 1.6.), Harper and Raine (1969), p. 137. As follows: everything other than the One is multitude (plethos) and participates in some degree the One. Hence they are one and not one; one through participation, but not essentially (Johnson 1909, p. 2, n.1). An overview of the system can be represented by the schematic diagram provided by Johnson (1909) in the Appendix, p. 198, and reproduced here, of four interlacing triangles each containing three circles. The circle at the apex represents the primary cause, at the base-right, a secondary, and left the order of nature is a

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The Base to Generation.

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26.

27.

28.

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series. For example, at the top is Being, which is the cause of Life (located base-right). At base-left is the circle of beings that proceed from Being, their primary cause, and so on: Life of lives: Intellect of intellects: Soul of souls: Body of bodies. A circle above the triangle represents the One (Cause of all) and two circles below, bodies and matter respectively. The One is the direct cause of matter. Here is also ‘horizontal’ as well as ‘vertical’ progression: thus Being-Life-Intellect manifest appropriately at each level: intellectually at Intellect, psychically at Soul, and so on. This is not very clear, but the idea seems to be that, beginning with the second triangle with Life at the apex, the triangles interlace at base right; e.g., the first triangle has Life at base right, thus it interlaces with the apex of the second triangle, down through Intellect, Soul, etc. These appeared in all of the issues of P,vol. 1; Johnson, 1881–82, pp. 30–2; 100–2; 159–60; 188–94. Johnson, P, vol. 1(1881–82), pp. 75–80, first serialized instalment, trans. Simon Ockley. See Albanese (2006), passim. Fuller (2001), p. 160. Fuller’s account provides a context and framework for the American Transcendentalist Neoplatonists. Gelpi (1991), passim and especially pp. 130–1; 144–5; 152–3. On this see Rosan (1949), p. 255. Including, among others, in Alexandria 4, Bregman (1997), and Alexandria 5, Fideler (2000), and Bregman (2000a and 2000b). Anton (2005), pp. 300–1. This paper was originally read at the ISNS conference on Platonic and Neoplatonic Traditions in American Thought, Vanderbilt, University, May, 1999, organized by J. Lachs and J. Bregman. Recently, however, Matthias Vorwerk has discussed the authorship of this hymn, considering as authors, Proclus, Gregory Nazianzen, and pseudoDionysius; and finally settles not on Proclus, but on the corpus Dionysiacum; see article in Brill Encyclopedia of Philosophical and Religious Thought in Late Antiquity, Neusner and Avery-Peck (2007) pp. 168–9. Rosan also wrote the 1967 Encyclopedia of Philosophy article ‘Proclus’ (v. 6). It remains a useful summary, in which he presents Proclus as an important early idealist who perceives reality as basically mind-like. As Emerson said: ‘Hegel pre-exists in Proclus’; quoted by Bregman (1990), p. 103 and n. 29. Rosan’s book is still taken seriously; recently, for example, Luc Brisson told me he thought the book a very good introduction to Proclus, and he wanted to know more about Rosan. Rist (1964), pp. 213–25.

Bibliography Albanese, C. L., 2007, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, New Haven. Anderson, C. R. (ed.), 1973, Thoreau’s Vision: the Major Essays, Englewood Cliffs. Anton, J. P., 2005, American Naturalism and Greek Philosophy, Amherst. Armstrong, A. H., 1990, Hellenic and Christian Studies, Norfolk.

248 Jay Bregman Beiser, F. C., 2003, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism, Cambridge MA. Bregman, J., 1990, ‘The Neoplatonic Revival in North America’, Hermathena CXLIX, pp. 99–119. Bregman, J., 1991, ‘Thomas M. Johnson the Platonist’, in Dionysius XV, 91–112. Bregman, J., 1997, ‘The Contemporary Christian Platonism of A. H. Armstrong’, Alexandria 4, D. Fideler (ed.), Grand Rapids, pp. 181–93. Bregman, J., 2000a, ‘Alcott’s Transcendental Neoplatonism and the Concord Summer School’, Alexandria 5, D. Fideler (ed.), Grand Rapids, pp. 253–70. Bregman, J., 2000b, ‘Memorial of A. H. Armstrong (1909–97)’, Alexandria 5, D. Fideler (ed.), Grand Rapids, pp. 451–4. Cameron, K. W., 1971, Young Emerson’s Transcendental Vision, Hartford. Cameron, K. W., 1976, Transcendental Apprenticeship: Notes on Young Henry Thoreau’s Reading, Hartford. Cameron, K. W. (ed.), 1964, Thoreau’s Literary Notebook in the Library of Congress, facsimile text, Hartford. Child, L. M., 1975, Philothea, On Plato against Epicurus, Hartford. Clarke, J. F., 1871–83, Ten Great Religions: an Essay on Comparative Theology, Boston and New York. Coleridge, S. T., 2000, Philosophy & Religion: Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the Spirit, Cambridge and New York. Curtius, E. R., 1973, Essays in European Literature, M. Kowal (trans.), Princeton. Deler, D., 2000, ‘Two Platonic Voices in America: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas M. Johnson’, Alexandria 5, D. Fideler (ed.), Grand Rapids, pp. 235–51. Dodds, E. R., 1963, Proclus, The Elements of Theology, Oxford. Drob, S. L., 2000, Kabbalistic Metaphors, New York. Emerson, R. W., 1876, Essays: Second Series, Boston and New York. Emerson, R. W., 1965a, Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. H. Gilman (ed.), New York. Emerson, R.W., 1965b, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. H. Gilman (ed.), Cambridge MA. Fuller, Robert C., 2001, Spiritual, But Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America, Oxford. Gelpi, D. S. J., 1991, Endless Seeker: the Religious Quest of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lantham. Hadot, P., 2002, What is Ancient Philosophy, M. Chase (trans.), Cambridge MA. Harper G.M. and Raine. K., 1969, Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings, London. Harris, W. T. and Sanborn F. B. (eds.), 1965, A. Bronson Alcott, His Life and Philosophy, New York. Hedley, D., 2000, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion: Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the Spirit, Cambridge. Johnson, T. M. (ed.), 1889–90, Bibliotheca Platonica: an Exponent of the Platonic Philosophy, v.1, Osceola. Johnson, T. M. (ed.), 1881–88, The Platonist, An Exponent of Philosophic Truth and Devoted Chiefly to the Dissemination of Platonic Philosophy in All its Phases, 4 vols, Osceola. Johnson, T. M., 1909, Proclus’ Metaphysical Elements, Osceola.

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Johnson, T. M., 1998, Iamblichus: The Exhortation to Philosophy, Including the Letters of Iamblichus and Proclus’ Commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles, translated from the Greek by T. Moore Johnson, with a foreword by Jocelyn Godwin, S. Neuville (ed.), Grand Rapids. Lamberton, R., 1986, Homer The Theologian. Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London. Levinson, R. B., 1924, ‘Thomas Taylor the Platonist’, dissertation, University of Chicago, copy in University of Maine, special collections. Matthiessen, F.O., 1968, American Renaissance: Art and Expression on the Age of Emerson and Whitman, Oxford. Melville, H., 1971, The Confidence Man; His Masquerade, H. Parker (ed.), New York. Mott, W. T. (ed.), 1996, Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism, Westport. Myer, I., 1988, Qabbalah: The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol, or, Avicebron, with an Introductory Review by H. P. Blavatsky, San Diego. Neusner, J. and Avery-Peck, A. J. (eds. in chief), 2007, Brill Encyclopedia of Religious and Philosophical Writings in Late Antiquity: Pagan, Judaic, Christian, Leiden. Porphyry, 1983, On the Cave of the Nymphs, R. Lamberton (trans.), Barryville. Proclus, 1909,Metaphysical Elements, T. M. Johnson (trans.), Osceola. Rist, J., 1964, ‘Mysticism and Transcendence in Later Neoplatonism’, Hermes 92, pp. 213–25. Rosan, L. J., 1949, The Philosophy of Proclus: the Final Phase of Ancient Thought, New York. Rosan, L. J., 1967, ‘Proclus’, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol.6, P. Edwards (ed.), New York. Snider, D. J., 1895, Homer’s Odyssey: A Commentary, 3rd edn, St Louis. Taylor, T. (trans.), 1817, Select Works of Plotinus, London. Uzdavinys, A. (ed.), 2004, The Golden Chain; An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy, Bloomington.

14 Ecology’s Future Debt to Plotinus and Neoplatonism Kevin Corrigan

The problem Can we really learn anything new from the past? Is it possible to find something original and even useful in an old, forgotten, dusty text? One common assumption of our own times is that novelty and usefulness are the preserve of ‘science’, to be judged finally by the standard of a technological progress that supersedes everything older than yesterday evening. Yet this is plainly false; for first, there is no such entity as ‘science’, but many different sciences with different methods, some of them reductive and pragmatic in order to get results, but others more descriptive, non-exclusionary and open-ended, in principle; and, second, ‘science’ has a habit of discovering its future in the past: Darwin discovered that the new could startlingly be found in a different way of looking at the past. Astrophysics and astronomy help us to see what is really happening in the present by taking us billions of years into the past. Moreover, in order to discover that 96% of the matter and energy in the universe remains a total mystery to us we have had to devise the means of looking intelligently into the pre-human history of our universe. So the past is a part of the present, in some ways, and a reservoir of possibilities for the future; and even if we cannot remember much about the day before yesterday, our fragile ability to record, and then to retrieve in a new way, something of our own history remembered or written thousands of years ago may be crucial to help us overcome uncritical, exclusionary models of science and thought that may even come to threaten our survival. This is, in fact, what I want to argue here (in the light of some recent work – an unpublished paper on ‘The Mysticism of Plotinus and Deep Ecology’ by Donald Blakeley, a book of articles edited by Michael Wagner (Neoplatonism and Nature) in 2002, and two other books edited by Tom 250

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Robinson and Laura Westra in 1997 (The Greeks and the Environment) and 2002 (Thinking about the Environment).1 Perhaps we need a new model of science, one that is radically open not only to a variety of scientific methods as well as to all the arts and developing forms of thought (even including theology) but also to a universe of which we are certainly not the most important parts but to which nonetheless we bear some sort of responsibility by virtue – among many other features – of our capacity to make this universe a lot worse than we found it. Thoughtless destructiveness has forced us to an ecology, that is, to an awareness of fragile balances in us and nature, and to the need for a moral awareness almost totally eclipsed by the rise of modern ways of thought. Where then can we find this? I want to suggest one source (among many other possibilities): our own early human history when such balances and respect for natural processes were a more integral part of the development of ‘scientific’ thinking in the Western world, namely, Neoplatonism as part of the legacy of the whole of antiquity (including the Presocratics).2 But I do not mean, of course, to return to the ancient world (even if we could), for that world intellectually and materially was far different from our own – on the one hand, infinitely less endangered as a whole and, on the other, utterly devoid of some of the real benefits of technology, science, law, civilization. The ancients were aware of the problem of pollution, as is attested by an inscription on a stone tablet from about 430 BC forbidding poisoning of the river Ilissos at Athens from leather tanning (as also by prescriptions for clean water to be found in Plato, Aristotle, and elsewhere),3 but they were not threatened by the vastly more complex problems posed by population increases, depletion of resources, global industrialization and technology. At the same time, however, the emergence of ecology as a genuine biological science in the modern world has forced us to re-think our own history, not least because of the realization that our own inherited thought-patterns may themselves be environmental pollutants; even our science, so dearly wrestled out of the obscurities and religious mists of the past, may hide the seeds of our own destruction. Despite its spectacular successes, some of the major results of scientific thinking have been (i) to eliminate any notion of inherent value in nature or natural things in favour of quantification, (ii) to replace observation of things in nature for their own sakes by controlled experiment for our own sakes, and (iii) to make scientific investigation essentially value-free by excluding any religious, metaphysical, moral or political perspectives, but in reality leaving such investigation open to hidden exploitation by determined and organized interest groups, corporate, private or governmental.4

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Again, let me be clear on this: the benefits have been enormous, but one of the most pernicious results is that we conduct our scientific investigations without having to take the good (the well-being or the perfection) of any of the things we study into account – or without having any notion of a good at all beyond our own right to investigate. But dispassionate value-free enquiry, sometimes thinly masking very naked and even brutish self-interest, can no longer be permitted to characterize scientific thinking, as the emergence of ecology has shown. Feeling and thought, value and judicious thinking are needed together and in large measures if we are to survive the marriage of technology and terrorism alone, a Moloch of our own making. Value has to be integral to science; otherwise no good or someone’s agenda will prevail. Naturally, therefore, we are forced to go back to the ancient world for hints, to a time before the good was drained out of things altogether – to Plato and Aristotle certainly, who integrate value or good with scientific enquiry and take into account the goods of other species as well as the goods of our own. But what model should we adopt? After all, which values does nature imply? As Donald Worster has argued, two major competing models of ecology emerged in the twentieth century: on the one hand, nature as a machine to be managed and, on the other, nature as a superior living entity to be served.5 The problem with the management model has been the widespread realization that nature needs to be safeguarded both from pollution and from the environmental managers. The problem with the Romantic model is that it is based upon a sentimental, anthropomorphic ideal and not upon any integral values in nature itself. Surely then, as Daryl Tress has suggested,6 we need a new integrative model that does not make nature earn its value either by being useful (i.e. managed) or by being glorified (i.e. romanticized). Now I don’t have any practical solutions to a complex problem, nor do I want to tell scientists how to do science. I want to suggest instead that while Neoplatonism is obviously not pro-environment and while Plotinus – my principal example – doesn’t do biology, Neoplatonism can provide a crucial foreground for thinking about ecology and the sciences generally, and this may also help us to correct the false picture of Platonism that is the almost ineradicable fashion of our day, as abstract, spiritualist and unconcerned with ordinary people and their evident desires.7 Let me start, then, with two immediate problems. First, the problem of getting any comparison off the ground: does Neoplatonism really deal with this sensible or perceptible world, or is its focus only spiritual in the broadest sense of that term? Second, does Neoplatonism have a viable theory of nature, especially in view of the radical reconsiderations of


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nature’s supposed ‘equilibrium’ or ‘steady state’ in the opening decade of the twenty-first century? We will then go on to the more rarified atmospheres of intellect and the One to see if these dimensions can add anything to our understanding of ecology and contemporary science. But first, to set up the picture, a brief look at ecology. Donald Worster, in his Nature’s Economy (1994), defines ecology as the branch of biology that deals with interrelationships. The name was first coined in 1866 (by Ernst Haeckel), but its roots are much earlier.8 Ecology came into its own in the latter half of the twentieth century when the interdependence of living things became a vital question. But it remains unclear, as we saw above, whether this interdependence is a system of economic organization or a moral community of mutual tolerance and aid, or even whether ecology is primarily a science at all or rather a philosophy of interrelatedness. Worster traces the roots of ecology to the eighteenth century and especially American Transcendentalism, but he is well aware that the tips of these roots are also in antiquity and that Neoplatonism ‘in all its forms of expression … has taken a holistic view of nature – unity in multiplicity, a world of sympathy and interdependence – and has been an important influence on ecological thought’.9 If we read between the lines, however, any similarity between Neoplatonism and ecology is superficial, if not trivial, since in his discussion of Transcendentalism – Blake, Coleridge, Fichte, Emerson, Thoreau – (which he explicitly traces to Neoplatonism), Worster makes clear that there is an antiscientific attitude at play, one that – flat out – rejects nature: ‘… the transcendentalist movement placed little value on nature in and of herself; indeed the transcendentalist was as often repulsed by this slimy, beastly world as any good Christian … Rather than looking deeper into nature to find the divine spark, the transcendentalist raised his eyes above this unsatisfying life toward a vision of serene and immortal harmony’.10 In short, any resemblance is threadbare, like comparing apples and oranges – or apples and the wholly insubstantial Form of apple. Later deep ecology, in the work of Arne Naess, draws some of its inspiration from Spinoza11 (who is certainly inspired by Neoplatonism), but its fundamental insights are clearly the values of this world, i.e., our contemporary world; and these are in brief: (1) a view of nature that is systematic, contextual, and holistic; (2) self-realization: a view of the self that extends itself to include all things and the environment on the basis that all things have intrinsic value and contribute to the ongoing flourishing of the ecosystem as a whole; (3) identification: parts of nature are parts of ourselves; we have to put ourselves into their standpoints; and (4) the world as conceived from a depth perspective (as interdependent,

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as containing diverse species with their own ‘values’) provides a basis for aesthetic values such as joy, loyalty, solidarity, majesty, beauty, etc. This will provide a context, then, for my question: does Neoplatonism (and Platonism generally) provide anything concrete to our contemporary views of the interdependence of all things in this world? Can an other-worldly, spiritual, non-evolutionary form of thought have much to say to modern science?

Neoplatonism and this world The answer, I think, is clearly that Platonism, including Aristotle (and despite Aristotle’s criticisms) is very much interested in this world, even if it has to leave the cave, with its cinematographic images, actually to see parts of it for the first time, and even if it returns to the cave only to get put to death or, perhaps fortunately, to be marginalized. Take, for instance, the much-misunderstood relation of the soul to the body. It is true that Platonism envisages the ultimate separation of the soul from the body, that it espouses a certain contempt for earthly things and even that, in the words of Porphyry (to Augustine’s chagrin in the De Civitate Dei), ‘we must flee from every body’ (omne corpus fugiendum).12 But this is still only one aspect of a much more complex issue: the ‘separating’ soul in Plato’s middle dialogues and in Plotinus (e.g. Ennead I.1) is an incarnate soul attempting to move away from simple body or object-ego identification, or again to move away from the fixity of only one point of view, in order to be able to see a world at all – and to see it intersubjectively. The myth at the end of the Phaedo may be understood as a paradigm of such vision for incarnate souls and the ‘ladder of love’ in the Symposium, however problematic and thought-provoking, is a vital image of the opening up of a world and of a care for that world (i.e. at every stage, care for the offspring – like Socrates at the end of the Symposium ‘putting them to sleep’ (katakoimisanta) – funny, ironic, but also like a mother/father).13 An immediate objection here might be that what we get is not really a world at all, but Plato’s world – a hidden agenda. Yet this is foreign to the very spirit of Platonism – which surely insists that things should be testable, able to be rejected, in ‘well meaning refutations’, according to the 7th Letter;14 and it is also specifically foreign even to the intent of the Symposium, since the hidden author, Plato, presents us with a perfect dramatic example of someone who clearly distinguishes soul and body, provides some of the best reasons for what he does, even offers a selection of different points of view in an expanding world, yet has no real


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idea of any standpoint beyond his own and is ironically, even tragically, unaware that the soul and body he talks about are hermetically sealed into the opposite of a shared world, and that he risks justifying nothing but his own preferences. This is Pausanias, who in all honesty, for the highest moral reasons, and in a compelling cross-cultural and comparative case worthy of our own times, wants his students to give him sex in exchange for wisdom!15 For Pausanias it’s all about Pausanias. For Socrates wrapped up in thought in a porchway or drinking and arguing everybody under the table, it’s least about Socrates – except ironically in the case of Aristodemus (a special kind of Socrates-groupie) and tragically in that of Alcibiades (a tragic example of love–hate). It’s about something else entirely: opening up a world of beauty. And if Glenn Most’s recent interpretation of Plotinus’ last words (following Henry) is correct ‘Try to restore the divine in you/us back up to the divine in the All’, i.e., ‘it’s not about me at all (!), real philosophy is the augmentation, linking, or return of a world’, then Plotinus’ life profoundly expresses this world-aspect of Platonism, together with its deep expression of care for the other.16 Here precisely then, is where science and self-knowing begin. Noêsis is not detached from the world: it is a form of art in which, to borrow Heidegger’s phrase, ‘the world worlds’ (die Welt weltet). Which is why, I suggest, in Republic 6–7, after the dividing line in which dianoia and noêsis are at first strictly distinguished, Socrates finally calls dianoia a form of noêsis after he has fleshed out the mathêma of the good in his discussion of dialectic (in bk.7).17 Dianoia is transformed into understanding of a deeper and broader sort by the panoptic eye that is dialectic. And this is just as true, if in a different way, of Aristotle’s noêsis, for the ‘place of beauty’ is where a knowledge of causality starts (Parts of Animals) and this includes, not just mud or hair (as apparently in Plato’s Parmenides) but even the lowliest parts of animals.18 Far from being the occlusion or abandonment of the physical world, the articulation of what Socrates in the Republic calls ‘the whole soul’ – with the body also being properly articulated for the sake of the soul19 – is actually a depth approach to the world itself, in the perspective of which the body actually becomes organic, not only for Aristotle, but also for Plotinus. Plotinus, in the last of the ‘logical works’ (VI.3) can’t do very much with bodies beyond a rudimentary classification of ‘more material’ (hulikotera) and ‘organic’ (organika), i.e. the elements and plants or living creatures respectively (VI.3.10, 1–7) when the soul, their principle of organization and understanding, is left out of account; but in other works he sees the nature of the organon emerge with much greater clarity

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as an organon … gnôseôs tinos (‘an instrument of a kind of knowing’) in the case of perception, for instance, because of the presence of soul (IV.4.23: how does perception take place? Is it the soul that perceives?).20 Evagrius of Pontus – in the tradition of Origen, Athanasius, Antony, and Gregory Nazianzen – draws a similar distinction in the Letter to Melania, translated from the Syriac by Parmentier, in a discussion of the symbolic reading of created nature, but for him the elemental body is the sensible body, while the organic body is the ‘intelligible body’.21 We might expect this ‘intelligible body’ to be a spiritual or mystical body of some kind, perhaps derived from Paul’s letters or from speculation about some sublunary or superlunary vehicle. But this is not what Evagrius means: ‘The states of the intelligible body are (the same): life and death, health and sickness. So are its attitudes: standing and sitting … Its senses are: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch …’ He means ‘this body’, yours or mine, understood from a higher degree of organic development as an interrelating activity of opposite perspectives or possibilities in balance, namely, something understood in terms of relating logoi (Evagrius uses the following terms: nature – phusis, conditions – taxeis, modes of being – schêmata, impulses – kinêseis, perceptions – aisthêseis) and, ultimately, grasped from the viewpoint not simply of movements or impulses, but rather of activities (energeiae), i.e., perceptions. ‘All these we have in common with the animals’, continues Evagrius. In other words, as in Plotinus, an organic view of a shared world only emerges from a top–down perspective, from a formal way of looking at the compound individual.22 A synaptikos logos, a logos sunaptôn ta akra, a logos linking the extremes in perception, creation, and providence in the case of Plotinus (III.3; IV.4. 23). In III.3.4, for instance, the interweaving logoi that make up the complex organization of this world are governed by both a productive and a synaptic function: ‘… there is one forming principle that is productive (poiêtikos), and another that links together (sunaptôn) the better things with the things that have come into being, and those (act as/ are) pronoia from above, but there is another pronoia from that above, and another forming principle connected with that and a whole interweaving comes from both …’. Providence or pronoia in this context is a two-way physical function at work in all physical things.23 Or to take a later example, for pseudo-Dionysius some 230 or 240 years later, this is the symbolic Ecclesiastical and Legal hierarchy, participating in both the sensible and the intelligible worlds, a sacramental world for ordinary people, whose door is Baptism and whose final gate, entry into the intelligible in the strict sense, is Eucharist or Synaxis, a ‘linking together’ of community.24


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This is not, I suggest, to kick biology into an abstract, intelligible world of serene harmony, but the place or level where ecology should be located as the logoi/logos of an oikos or oikoumenê, a natural habitat.25 Nor is it covertly to transfer everything into the form and leave the matter desiccated of potentiality, for potentiality still resides in the matter, however minimally formed this may be.26 What it does mean, however, is that coming out of the cave into the larger environment of potential connectedness requires an intelligible perspective; and this perspective, as Plotinus makes clear elsewhere, particularly in VI.7 chapters 1–11, is a perspective on this world, this human being (VI.7.4–5), this horse (VI.7.8–9), and even this apparently inanimate element (VI.7.11).27 Beyond interconnectedness and a genuine search for deep ecology in the senses specified above, then, what positive contributions might Neoplatonism make to a framework for ecology? Let me take up the question of nature (phusis) first before going on to look more generally at the Neoplatonic notion of science and intellect, and finally the problematic case of the One.

Nature in Plotinus The question of nature is a genuine problem in Neoplatonism for two reasons. First, Plotinus’ notion of nature can seem to be almost entirely spiritual, since nature is a mysterious, psychic, and unmoved power set apart from anything that we might recognize as nature today. Second, from the viewpoint of the history of ecology at the start of the twentyfirst century, the belief that nature tends toward equilibrium or a steady state of balance has been radically questioned.28 We might hope for order, but what we actually find is ‘a wild jostling of species, each seeking its own advantage in utter disregard for the welfare of the others’.29 Does the Plotinian/Neoplatonic view of nature, then, meet the exigencies of a more complex modern ecological view or even an entirely sceptical reductive view according to which there might well be no equilibrium of either nature or human society? An answer to these questions might be sketched as follows. While the Plotinian view of nature is very different from any modern view, it is nonetheless generally broader in scope, potentially multi-dimensional insofar as it is capable of embracing problems of both order and disorder, and much more subtle than may at first appear. Plotinus’ view of nature is worked out in some detail in IV.3[27].1–10 and IV.4[28].10–13 and then in III.8[30], and I can give here only a brief outline of a much bigger picture. For Plotinus, nature is a principle at rest, the last power

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of the World Soul that, immediately and without deliberation, fashions bodies which then come to be animated and governed by individual souls. Nature in this sense is a psychic activity of the World Soul that precedes individual animation, and yet, at the same time, there is a continuity between the intelligible and sensible worlds insofar as nature is a principle both external to, and yet also at work in, things. Plotinus uses the term phusis of both the final power of the World Soul and the trace it gives to body.30 But why, we may well ask, should nature ultimately be external to bodies? Why is nature formal and psychic rather than biological in our sense of the term? This is because nature, according to Plotinus’ way of thinking, cannot be a compound of form and matter for otherwise it would not be in its own way an ultimate governing principle of all natural things, but a determinate entity; and also because, were nature composite, it would be only the nature of an individual composite thing, and not the nature of all things. For these reasons, Plotinus broadens Aristotle’s view of nature considerably in IV.3–4 and III.8, but retains or develops something of the hidden logic in Aristotle’s view. Just as for Aristotle nature may be regarded on different levels as form, compound, and matter, so too for Plotinus, while nature must ultimately be a formal principle, animated bodies may be said to have a phusis, and even (in III.8.2) the matter to the degree it bears form may also be regarded as bearing such a derivative nature. Nature therefore is form, unmoved in its primary activity, but also an intimate gift as trace or image in bodies and formed matter.31 This view, then, permits an intimate connection between intelligible and sensible worlds, as we saw above, but it also allows for a complex interplay between different levels of nature’s manifestation as well as, for instance in the works on providence (III.2–3) and in those on matter (II.4; II.5; III.6; I.8), a kind of delicate oscillation defying any simple objective description between what may in some sense be attributed to the form and what may be said to come from the substrate, that is, between various relative levels of organic complexity and order, on the one hand, and less ordered complexity or even disorder, on the other: So [the one who contemplates the things that come to be] contemplates things which are mixed and continually go on being mixed; and he cannot himself distinguish providence and what is according to providence clearly on the one side, and on the other the substrate and all that it gives to what results from it. This discrimination is not for a man, except for a wise and godlike man; or one might say that ‘a god alone could have this privilege’ (III.3[48].6, 8–17).


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Indeed, earlier in III.2[47].16, even deviancy and opposition are prefigured in the universal logos that governs the genesis of all natural things,32 and apparent disorder, as we shall see below, can also spring in unforeseen ways from the sheer complexity of the branching of natural systems. In other words, Plotinus’ notion of nature is no simplistic or procrustean unity, but a highly complex perspectival strategy that allows for both balance and lack of balance, the enarchic as well as the apparently anarchic. As such, it is a highly nuanced, multi-dimensional and instructive notion for a contemporary ecology that oscillates itself between a paradigm of balance and an ultimately untestable hypothesis of anarchy, disruptive competition, or even pure chaos without possessing any conceivable model to account for the oscillation. At the same time, nature conceived as anchored in the intelligible world in this way, yet also articulated more broadly, possesses certain advantages over its more simple modern counterparts. First, nature in this sense is not a management-notion, since phusis is ultimately prior to individual souls, human or otherwise. Second, it is not a romantic notion as the Gaia hypothesis appears to be, or common popular conceptions of ‘mother earth’,33 since it is not the soul of the earth and, in addition, the earth is not our ‘mother’. The furthest Plotinus goes toward such anthropomorphisms is to call the World Soul our ‘elder sister’, but this is an address that connotes not romanticism but, together with respect and reverence, a sense of co-workership and coresponsibility in a familial, egalitarian relationship.34 Finally, Plotinus’ view of nature is not abstract or spiritualistic, but rather an attempt to think of nature in the most inclusive and yet potentially organic way, instead of generalizing, on the basis of one particular environment, ecosystem, species, or individual composite thing, to a more general positive or negative notion, as has been the case in recent ecological developments.35 We may conclude then that nature so conceived not only meets the exigencies of a complex, even reductive modern ecological view of nature, but also provides a much broader context than is usually available for re-conceiving nature in terms of both balance and lack of balance, apparent teleology and yet lack of apparent teleology.36

Science and intellect What then about the Neoplatonic conceptions of science and intellect? How can a non-evolutionary, substance-based, reflexive model of science

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that has heard nothing yet of Ockham’s razor, be remotely useful for rethinking the context of any modern science? One may, in reply, rightly sketch a somewhat adventurous, but surely correct argumentative scenario, namely, that it is the mystical eye above all that develops the capacity to see things not only as they are but also as they might be, and that it is this mystical eye – particularly in the Franciscan tradition of Grosseteste, Bonaventure, Bacon – that helped historically to give birth to empirical science in the West.37 One may also argue that long before Brentano, Freud and the development of modern psychology, there was a flourishing cognitive psychology in the desert tradition (Evagrius, Cassian, etc.), if for no other reason that when people live on their own for long periods of time in inhospitable places they have to pay deep attention to what they are actually doing and thinking to stop themselves from going crazy; and this wisdom or science turns out to be useful and testable for others in the same predicament. For the ancient and medieval worlds, empirical science and cognitive psychology have to go together, since if the instrument of cognition is faulty, then we either have to fix it or allow for the angle of deviation. This is why the scientific path for an Evagrius has to start from the self in order to organize and discipline the instrument of cognition and self-cognition, but then go through a scientific knowledge of the world to test further, to amplify, and give content to that cognition, before it can ever hope to reach the mystical or revelatory trajectory of a share in the life of God. This is why there are three dimensions of overlapping, interpenetrating growth in the scientific life: praktikê, gnostikê, theologia. Science in this sense, by contrast with some major strands of science in the modern world, is reflexive and inclusive from the start.38 So while the reflexive model of ancient science in the philosophical sense developed by Plato, Aristotle, and later thought, is not necessary to produce either a Mars Rover or a Grand Unified Theory of all the forces supposed to exist in the universe, it surely is helpful for thinking of science in the broader context of humanity or what it means to be human, and it is indispensable for any ecology if ecology is genuinely concerned to think beyond the immediate practical needs of the human species, to see intrinsic value in horses, snakes, rocks, and oceans, and to recognize other points of view against the backdrop of the universe itself. But can reflexivity in this sense be reconciled with the apparently other-worldly view of self-knowledge in Neoplatonism? One can reasonably argue that self-knowledge and the second-person standpoint are, in fact, indispensable to science. For Plotinus, the genuine second-person


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standpoint is situated at the level or threshold of Nous, but it is still testable: (The sharp seer) must, in coming to learn about the god, remain within a particular imprint of him and exercise discrimination in seeking him to determine what he is entering into; and when he has learned in good faith that he is entering into the most blessed thing, he must already give himself to what is within and become instead of one who sees, already an object of vision of another who contemplates him shining out with such thoughts as come from there (V.8.11, 13–19). If science is also to be about being transformed by what one comes to know, then some such transposition must be somewhere resident in it: namely, a choice of the right instrumental approach, proper calibration of the instrument, testability through experience, and transformation of one’s point of view from a more or less objective perspective to a deeper inter- or trans-subjective approach. In thinking something real, am I in some sense already being thought? This is perhaps a bit of a leap for modern science except perhaps at the quantum level, where the field ‘adjusts’ to the observer, but all of this, of course, still remains provisional for Neoplatonism. Even though self-knowledge is a prerequisite for genuine science, it remains a gift (from Apollo) and although for Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, and Aquinas a complete return (pantê epistrophê/reditio completa) to one’s own being, by way of returning the whole world there, that is, to that fullness of being, is necessary for true self-knowledge, nonetheless as compound beings we are incapable of knowing ourselves completely. Again, Plotinus: ‘But we have no perception of what belongs to us and since we are like this, we are comprehensible to ourselves only when we have made self-knowledge one with ourselves’ (V.8.11, 30ff.).39 What then about the non-evolutionary, substance-based character of Neoplatonic ‘science’, with no inkling of Ockham’s razor? To do science that gets results, one has to exclude. To see science in a broader context, one needs multi-dimensionality. Neoplatonism conspicuously anticipates this contemporary need by recognizing that different dimensions – matter, sense, soul, intellect, the good – require different forms of address and language. To talk about matter, for example, as potentiality or conversely as privation, is not the same as to talk about a world of determinate facts or things, because at these levels of potentiality, possibility or lack thereof there are no simple determinate truth values to be assigned. To talk about the One, again, is not the same as to talk about Intellect and its

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content. Plotinus is therefore constrained by logic to develop new kinds of discourse, just as we have also been constrained in modern times to invent new ways of speaking and thinking with the advent of quantum physics.40

Substance and biology At the same time, ironically, the one principle in Plotinus’ thought that ecology seems to need is the principle that has been jettisoned in the modern world: ousia or substance. For while qualities are fleeting snapshots of an ever-vanishing universe in Plotinus, from the perspective of substance, there is no substance without all substances. The intrinsic value of one thing involves those of everything. If this is a founding insight of ecology – to be anchored undoubtedly in the Living Creature of Plato’s Timaeus and in Aristotle’s great insight, if I understand him correctly, that a contemplative wisdom (sophia) is needed in scientific understanding beyond practical wisdom (phronêsis) and political wisdom, if there is to be a sophia that deals with the good of all living creatures (Nicomachean Ethics 6.7) – if this is fundamental to ecology, then the various ancient notions of ousia are still instructive, because according to Plotinus at least, this is the basis of interrelatedness, interdependence, and our ability to unpack and frame ‘causes’ at all: because of the intelligible causal unity present in things, organic parts themselves possess a mutuality which can be traced back to a non-discursive, non-anthropomorphic causality in intellect (VI.7[38].2, 19–24; VI.8[39]. 14, 29–31). As Plotinus puts it in his summary of the early chapters of VI.7[38] and VI.8[39], real beings (onta) as well as sensible things that are ‘of their kind’ (toiouton), namely, things that ‘have with their substance (ousia) also the cause of their existence (hypostasis)…’ exhibit the following resultant peculiarity: … that the observer can say afterwards why each of its inherent parts (is there), for instance, why eye and why feet are of such a determinate kind in such determinate beings and the cause that brings into existence together (sunapogennôsan) each part of each and makes the parts exist because of one another. Why are the feet this length? Because this is as it is and because the face is as it is the feet too are as they are. And in general the harmony of all the parts (sumphonia) is their reciprocal cause (allêlois aitia); and the reason why this part (tode) is, is because this is what it means to be human (to anthrôpô einai); so that being and cause are one and the same; and these have come in


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this way from one source (pêgês) that did not reason, but gave the reason why and the being together as a whole (VI.8.14, 21–33). (Trans. A. H. Armstrong.) Other perspectives come into play too, of course, from environmental influences, deficiencies of material or formal organization to the web of complex interactions within the physical universe itself (cf. III.3(48).6, 8–17), but interrelatedness, and the joy, delight, desire we take in them are at root intrinsic functions of substance. This is clearer perhaps in later Neoplatonic thinkers like pseudo-Dionysius, who specifies how impassibility is compatible with desire and eros,41 but it is fundamental in Plotinus too: Nous is ordered desire of everything, a desire almost foolishly, but certainly infinitely and open-endedly in love with the Good,42 and this everything includes the spontaneous delight we take in seeing practical wisdom or phronêsis in the face of another fellow human being and spontaneously again recognizing it as our own (V.8.2): ‘But if you have seen yourself beautiful, remember/recollect (anamnêsthêti)’! In this context too, Plotinus’ thought is tantalisingly biological throughout. The implicate nature of the sciences, for instance, is conspicuously likened to the dunameis in seeds (V.9.6–8; IV.8.6; III.7.11, 23–7), and the dunamis of the One is represented in an unforgettable image as the outpouring of a source into its rivers and the unfolding, through many derivative unities, of the branches of a great tree (in III.8.10). Perhaps one of the most striking instances of this is toward the end of the second treatise on providence, when Plotinus sets out his view of the relation of better and worse things all together in this sensible universe, order and forethought together with apparent disorder and unplanned shoots in a rooting system that allows for a mixture of the apparently unforeseen and the hidden (even to the point of obscurity): For the gathering all into one is beginning/principle (archê) in which all are together and all whole; and individual things go forth already from this … as from one root (rhiza) … they flower out into divided multiplicity, each bearing an image of that, and here one clearly comes to be in one thing and one in another, and some are close to the root and others advance farther and split up to the point of becoming, as it were, branches and twigs and fruit and leaves; and those that are closer to the root remain for ever, and the others come into being forever, the fruits and the leaves; and those which come into being always have in them the logoi of those above them, as if they wanted to be little trees; and if they produce before they pass away, they only produce what is near to them. And what are like empty spaces

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(diakena) between the branches are filled with shoots that also grow from the root, these, too, in a different way; and the twigs on the branches are also affected by these, so that they think the effect on them is only produced by what is close to them; but in fact the acting and being acted upon are in the archê (kata tên archên), and the archê itself, too, is dependent (III.3.7, 9–24). This is a remarkable passage. Even the ‘in-between-empties’ (diakena) are filled with prolific, surely adaptive, rhizomatic possibilities (a little like Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the rhizome),43 yet they are definitely rhizomatic, i.e., rooted things all the way, even if not in the way our local views tend to figure this. From this perspective we may perhaps be cautious of thinking too simplistically of the unity of soul–hypostasis or of the posterity of matter’s potentiality, for we should miss the sheer diversity, non-linear and non-simple, inherent intelligibility of it all. We should miss, for example, the possibility that things which sometimes seem to be a waste of time, or to take circuitous routes unnecessarily, might turn out to add something to ‘reality’. The activities of the spoudaios, Plotinus observes in I.4.13, will not be hindered by chance, but will be adapted to chance; ‘but they will all be fine and, perhaps, finer for being adapted to circumstances (hosô peristatikai)’. Adaptability does not have to be accidental or simply posterior to what a thing really is. It may well express something as yet hidden of what a thing might, can, and should be. This rhizomatic image, then, is worth examining in a little detail since it forces us to correct the instinctively simplistic notions of unity we often tend to have when we think about soul, intellect and so on, when we think, for instance, about soul-hypostasis as some readily conceivable unity in which multiplicity is subsumed and dominated rather than as a much more complex proliferation than we are ready to visualize or than we are capable even of thinking. Neoplatonism is, of course, also hierarchical (that is, it posits a vertical inverted world with spiritual semantic height, unlike our contemporary world), but to spatialize hierarchy too rigidly is mistaken, for since everything comes from the One, then power, potentiality, possibility and matter are included in dunamis everywhere – which is why Plotinus emphasizes the fecundity of potency everywhere: ‘Actuality everywhere reveals completely hidden potency/power in a way obliterated and non-existent because it does not yet truly exist’ (IV.8.5). Or again, in his revolutionary rethinking of the very notion of contemplation in III.8, Plotinus can evoke the principle of diverse plenitude as a creative


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biological power: ‘when an animal generates, the logoi within move, and this is an activity of theoria, and a labour of giving birth to many forms and many objects of theoria, to fill everything with logoi, and thus always to contemplate; for to make something is to make an eidos, but this is to fill things with theoria’ (III.8.7). The result of this is that all forms of life are like encoded forms of living insight: vegetative, sensitive, psychic thoughts (III.8.8). And, in this sense, while Plotinus nowhere formulates a version of evolutionary theory (as Aristotle does in Physics 2, 8 – only to reject it), his thought is not anti-evolutionary, at least in the sense that unfolding of implicate and explicate orders in the outpouring of life is never complete – even in intellect, or even to the degree that he seems to allow for a process of natural selection in animals (in VI.7), where horns, fangs, tusks appear out of deficiency and need, as well as from a kind of safeguarding necessity.44 All in all, however, one of the most striking features for the modern reader of the early treatises of the ‘Long Work’ (III.8; V.8; V.5; II.9) is Plotinus’ vivid sense, developed from Plato and Aristotle, that we are parts of a great living organism (not a mechanism arranged by pulleys and levers) whose living contemplation springs from the deeper and more intensive contemplation of an intelligible organism. The latter is where truth immediately expresses itself, but since intellect is omnipresent, such truth is open to anyone and to anything at any point, and yet at the same time is never to be instantiated anywhere.45 Plotinus’ reflexive model of science as living contemplation with its rather startling insistence that reality is fundamentally holographic (i.e. that all the parts contain the whole, but each in their own way)46 and that all being must be able to return to itself in an inclusive, multi-dimensional subject – object duality (in which each is reflected in the other) seems light years ahead of some modern scientific paradigms based upon either an objective, third-person standpoint alone or a single scientific paradigm, such as that alone of physics or chemistry or even simply of mathematics. Perhaps even more important is Neoplatonism’s balanced view of humanity in relation to other species. Human beings are not the most important species, but part of something much larger. Other species too have claims to thought and intellect, and even where no such claims can be made, existence and life are given to things by the Good. (cf. VI.7.21 ad fin.)

The dimension of the Good This brings me to my final point: the dimension of the Good. I can’t know directly the intrinsic goods of stones, water, snakes, mosquitoes,

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etc., but there is a sort of reply that comes to my voiceless question through the ecosystem. What I do to them – the ways I address them – can come back to haunt me. How so? According to Plotinus, this is because even inanimate things have soul in them – though they are ‘easily liable to stand apart from the soul which exists in’ them (VI.7.11) or from the soul that ‘sleeps as it were’ in them (IV.3.10) – and this is true even more so for Plotinus because they ‘all flow, in a way, from a single spring, not like one particular breath or warmth, but as if there was one quality which held and kept intact all the qualities in life itself, of sweetness along with fragrance of all tastes, the sights of touch, and all that hearings hear, all tunes and every rhythm’ (VI.7.13). Is there then a form of address or attitude appropriate even to inanimate things, a kind of gigantic, rather absurd Vaihingerism or ‘as-if-ism’ by which I try to address rocks, trees, frogs or snakes as if they were not ‘its’ or things, but instead potential ‘yous’? I don’t think any amount of legislation or even wishful thinking can bring this about. If inanimate things are to have a logos that can come to their aid (to use Socrates’ example from the Phaedrus)47 it can only be in a larger sense of recognition and reverence for everything that is a part, at least, of our experience. So my problem is a difficult one to formulate: if I should address the world (and not just my own species), how should I do so? In what direction should I turn? How can I turn in two or more different directions simultaneously? How can I be really and genuinely inclusive? Here Neoplatonism – from Plotinus to pseudo-Dionysius – has something important to offer: The principle of the Good is beyond Being, but it also transcends the Good. God is the Good that transcends the Good (and God) and the Being that transcends Being. Emptiness and goodness: emptiness to receive all, or to make way for all, and goodness to provide intrinsic value to all, whether that be intelligence, life, or just existence: that is, an active theurgical good beyond language and determinate being for Proclus and pseudo-Dionysius; a transcendent, but practical, ethical good for Levinas in our own times.48 As Jacques Derrida has observed in a rather profound little essay,49 ‘between the theological movement that speaks and is inspired by the Good beyond Being and the apophatic path that exceeds the Good, there is necessarily a passage, a transfer, a translation’. This experience is prayer, and Derrida cites Dionysius’ famous prayer from the beginning of the Mystical Theology: O Triad beyond substance, beyond God, beyond good … there the simple, absolved, and unchanged mysteries of theology lie hidden in the darkness beyond light of the hidden mystical silence there,


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in the greatest darkness, that beyond all that is most evident exceedingly illuminates the sightless intellects … This is my prayer. And you, dear Timothy, be earnest in the exercise of mystical contemplation. (Mystical Theology 998a). What happens in this prayer is something remarkable. Dionysius’ prayer addresses an unknownness, namely, the utterly unknown God, that is immediately determined by an encomium of contradictory predications beyond truth or falseness. This is an instantaneous translation: both prayer to (pure address) and prayer about (predication, encomium). At the same time, its immediate addressee is Timothy, yet the prayer is the result of a prayer that has already been prayed and is now, as written by Dionysius, being quoted, or as read by us the readers, being quoted again. As Derrida rightly observes, it is addressed not to Timothy or to us ‘as we are, at present, but as we would have to be in our souls if we read this text as it ought to be read, aright, in the proper direction, correctly: according to its prayer and its promise’.50 In other words, the remarkable quality of such a prayer is, first, its radical inclusiveness, even if in this case it happens to be a Christian encomium or celebration: ‘It is exactly because he does not turn away from God that he Dionysius can turn toward Timothy and pass from one addressee to the other without changing direction’51 and, second, its future orientation, its promise of a place of waiting, expectation, hope, Jerusalem ‘only after what will have taken place – according to the time and history of this future perfect’.52 On Dionysius’ terms: ‘Do not distance yourself from Jerusalem, but await the promise of the Father … according to which you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit’ (Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 512c–d). Now I am not advocating that ecologists or anybody need to pray or that we all have to believe in any one divinity. The responsibility, if there is one, is for each of us perhaps to receive and create our own prayers. I just want to suggest two things: first, that the beauty of such multiple, multi-dimensional, inclusive forms of address and their profound reverence for the intrinsic value or semantic height of all things is not necessarily alien to the scientific spirit; and, second, that the future hyperdeterminate orientation of this theological address is not without significance for ecology in a world where everything tends to get nailed down to its least or minimal common denominator or lost in a brown study of things. This is what I mean by ecology’s ‘future’ debt to Neoplatonism, whatever the present beliefs of any of their practitioners: I refer to the possibility of a more inclusive form of address that opens up a world and is capable of understanding and celebrating its multi-dimensionality

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and yet its inevitable escapability in a thoroughly open-ended and ultimately future-tensed, non-sectarian way. In T. S. Eliot’s words: ‘I do not know much about gods, but I think that the river is a strong, brown god’ (Four Quartets: The Dry Salvages). Transcendence and immanence may be where one least expects to find them or, at least, they may really be nowhere, that is, perhaps, the nowhere in which all expectations are simultaneously extinguished and renewed in the face of overwhelming odds: the always urgent and presently irrefragable fact of the force of a nature that somehow, irresistibly, surprisingly, alarmingly, remains divine.


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Notes 1. See bibliography for references under Blakely (unpublished); Wagner (2002); Robinson and Westra (1997 and 2002). 2. Cf. Corrigan (2004a). 3. For references, see Rossetti (2002). 4. See Tress (2002). 5. Cf. Worster (1994). See also Clark (2000), pp. 112 ff. 6. See Tress (2002), p. 221. 7. See, for example, Dover (1980), p. 113; Vlastos (1981), p. 21; Nussbaum (1986), p. 178 ff. 8. Cf. Worster (1994), p. 471. 9. Cf. Worster (1994), p. 472. 10. Cf. Worster (1994), p. 100. 11. Cf. Naess (1989). See also Naess (1977), pp. 45–54. I am indebted to Donald Blakeley for this reference. 12. E.g., De Civitate Dei 10 and 13. 13. See Corrigan and Glazov-Corrigan (2004), pp. 224–34. Cf. Symposium, 223d. 14. 7th Letter, 344b. 15. Symposium, 223d, 9. 16. See Most (2003), pp. 576–87. 17. At Republic 7, 543a. 18. Cf. Parmenides 130 c–d; Aristotle, Parts of Animals I, 6. 19. See especially Republic 9, 591b–e. 20. On this generally, see Wurm (1973); Emilsson (1988); Strange (1987); K. Corrigan (1996); Chiaradonna (2002). 21. For translation here and immediately following see, Parmentier (1985), pp. 2–38. 22. Cf. VI.2.21; VI.7.4–7. 23. See especially III.3.6, 8–17. 24. See, for example, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 424C ff., and, in general, Corrigan and Harrington (2004; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 25. On this see Corrigan (2004 b), pp. 147–8. 26. Cf. III.8.2, 23–5. 27. For VI.7, generally, see Hadot (1988). 28. For example, by Gleason as early as 1926 and later by Drury and Nisbet in 1973; see Worster (1994), pp. 391 ff. 29. Worster (1994), pp. 392 and 290 ff. 30. See, for example, III.8.2, 25–33; IV.4.10–13. 31. Generally, see Corrigan and Glazov-Corrigan (2004), pp. 110–16. 32. III.2.16; III.3.7, 10–28; VI.7.20, 15. 33. See Lovelock (1988 and 1991). 34. See IV.3.6, 13, and Helleman-Elgersma (1980). 35. Cf. Worster (1994), pp. 339–434. 36. This is a complex question in Aristotle, Plotinus, and later in Kant’s 3rd Critique. For Aristotle, see Nussbaum (1978); for Plotinus, see Corrigan (1996); and for Kant, see Pluhar (1987). 37. Again, this is a complex issue. For comment, see Corrigan (1985).

270 Kevin Corrigan 38. See, especially on Evagrius, Stewart (2001), Guillamont and Guillamont 1971), vol. 1. 39. On this question, see Corrigan and Still (2004). 40. Cf. Corrigan, in Fattal (2003), pp. 223–46. 41. See Celestial Hierarchy 141 c–145 b. 42. Cf. III.8.11, 22–4. 43. Deleuze and Guattari (1987), pp. 6–7. 44. See VI.7.3, 15 ff. 45. On this, see Corrigan (2004 b), p. 229 ff. 46. Cf. especially V.8.4. 47. Plato, Phaedrus 275d–276b. 48. For Levinas, see especially Peperzak (1993). 49. In his ‘Comment ne pas parler: Dénégations’, in Derrida (1987) pp. 535–95 and in English translation by K. Frieden, in Coward and Foshay (1992), pp. 73–142. 50. Derrida (1992), p. 117. 51. ibid. 52. ibid., p. 118.

Bibliography Aristotle, 1894, Ethica Nicomachea, L. Bywater (ed.), Oxford. Aristotle, 1936, Physics, W. D. Ross (ed.), Oxford. Aristotle, 1937, Parts of Animals, A. L. Peck (ed.), Cambridge MA. Augustine, 1955, De Civitate Dei, B. Bombart and A. Kalb (eds.), 2 vols, Turnhout. Augustine, 1998, The City of God Against the Pagans, R. W. Dyson (trans.), Cambridge. Blakeley, D. N., ‘The Mysticism of Plotinus and Deep Ecology’, [unpublished paper kindly given to me by the author]. Chiaradonna, R., 2002, Sostanza, movimento, analogia: Plotino critico di Aristotele, Napoli. Clark, S. R. L., 1991, God’s World and the Great Awakening, Oxford. Clark, S. R. L., 2000, Biology and Christian Ethics, Cambridge. Corrigan, K., 1985, ‘The Irreconcileable Opposition Between the Platonic and Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul in some Ancient and Mediaeval Thinkers’, Laval Théologique et Philosophique, 41.3, pp. 391–401. Corrigan, K., 1996, Plotinus’ Theory of Matter - Evil and the Question of Substance: Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, Louvain. Corrigan, K., 2003, ‘Plotin, la discursivité et le temps futur du langage’, in Logos et langage chez Plotin et avant Plotin, M. Fattal (ed.), Paris. Corrigan, K., 2004a, ‘An Ecological Ethos and Presocratic Thinking: Can we Really Learn Anything New from the Past?’, The Structurist 43–44, pp. 12–17. Corrigan, K., 2004b, Plotinus: A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism, West Lafayette. Corrigan, K., and Glazov-Corrigan, E., 2004, Plato’s Dialectic at Play: Structure, Myth, and Argument in the Symposium, University Park PA.


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Corrigan, K., and Harrington, M., 2004, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on-line-Library of Congress Catalog Data, ISSN 1095–5054. Corrigan, K., and Still, C. N., 2004, ‘The Problem of Aquinas’s Notion of Reditio Completa in Relation to its Sources’, in Being and Thought in Aquinas, J. Hackett, W. E. Murnion, and C. N. Still (eds.), Binghampton, pp. 1–15. Coward, H. and Foshay, T., 1992, Derrida and Negative Theology, Albany. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis. Derrida, J., 1987, Psyche: Inventions de l’autre, Paris. Dover, K. J., 1980, Plato: Symposium, Cambridge. Eliot, T.S., 1963, Collected Poems 1909–1962, Four Quartets, Dry Salvages, New York, San Diego, London. Emilsson, E. K., 1988, Plotinus on Sense-Perception: A Philosophical Study, Cambridge. Fattal, M. (ed.), 2003, Logos et langage chez Plotin et avant Plotin, Paris. Guillaumont, A. and C., 1971, Évagre le Pontique. Traité Pratique ou le Moine, t.1, introduction, Paris. Hadot, P., 1988, Plotin. Traité 38, Paris. Heidegger, M., 1960, Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, H.G. Gadamer (ed.), Stuttgart. Helleman-Elgersma, W., 1980, Soul-Sisters. A Commentary on Enneads IV 3(27) 1–8 of Plotinus, Amsterdam. Lovelock, J., 1988, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth, Oxford. Lovelock, J., 1991, Healing Gaia: Practical Medicine for the Planet, New York. Most, G., 2003, ‘Plotinus’ last words’, Classical Quarterly 53.2, pp. 576–87. Naess, A. 1977, ‘Ecology and Spinoza’, Philosophia 7, no.1, pp. 45–54. Naess, A., 1989, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, D. Rothenberg (trans. and rev.), Cambridge and New York. Nussbaum, M. C., 1978, Aristotle’s De motu animalium : Text with Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays, Princeton. Nussbaum, M., 1986, The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge. Parmentier, M., 1985, ‘Evagrius of Pontus’ “Letter to Melania I” ’, Bijdragen, tidjschrift voor filosofie en theologie 46, pp. 2–38. Peperzak, A. T., 1993, To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, West Lafayette. Plato, 1900-07, Opera, J. Burnet (ed.), 5 vols, Oxford. Plotinus, 1966-88, Plotinus, A. H. Armstrong (trans.), 7 vols, Cambridge MA. Pluhar, W. S., 1987, Critique of Judgement: Immanuel Kant, translated with an introduction, Indianapolis. Pseudo-Dionysius, 1987, The Complete Works, C. Luibheid and P. Rorem (trans.), London. Pseudo-Dionysius, 1990, Corpus Dionysiacum I (Divine Names), B. R. Suchla (ed.), Berlin. Pseudo-Dionysius, 1991,Corpus Dionysiacum II (Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Mystical Theology, Letters), G. Heil and A. M. Ritter (eds.), Berlin. Robinson, T., and Westra, L. (eds.), 1997, The Greeks and the Environment, Lanham. Robinson, T., and Westra, L. (eds.), 2002, Thinking about the Environment, Lanham.

272 Kevin Corrigan Rosetti, L., 2002, ‘Il piu antico decreto ecologico a noi noto e il suo contesto (The Oldest Known Ecological Law in Context)’ in Robinson and Westra (2002), pp. 43–59. Stewart, C., 2001, ‘Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 9.2, pp. 173–204. Strange, S. K., 1987, ‘Plotinus, Porphyry, and the Neoplatonic Interpretation of the Categories’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 36.2, pp. 955–74. Tress, D., 2002, ‘Reuniting Science and Value in the Natural Environment’, in Robinson and Westra (2002), pp. 213–23. Vaihinger, H., 1935, The Philosophy of As If, trans.C.K.Ogden, 2nd edn, London. Vlastos, G., 1981, ‘The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato’, in G. Vlastos, Platonic Studies, 2nd edn, Princeton, pp. 3–42. Wagner, M. F., 2002, Neoplatonism and Nature. Studies in Plotinus’ Enneads, Albany. Worster, D., 1994, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, 2nd edn, Cambridge. Wurm, K., 1973, Substanz und Qualität. Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation der plotinischen Traktate VI 1, 2 und 3, Berlin and New York.

15 Heathen Martyrs or Romish Idolaters: Socrates and Plato in Eighteenth-Century England1 Carol Poster

The history of the British reception of Plato is often written as if the eighteenth century were a vast wasteland, a sort of flyover country between the interesting territories of Cambridge Platonism (a seventeenth-century phenomenon) and the Romantic revival of Plato (a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century movement).2 The eighteenth century, in fact, is of interest in itself, both for its approaches to Plato, particularly for its gradual separation of Plato from Socrates, and for the way it explains the differences between the seventeenth- and nineteenth- century Platos. The most important phase (for later philosophy and theology) of the seventeenth-century British reception of Plato was ‘Cambridge Platonism’, the leading figures of which were Henry More (1614–1687) and Ralph Cudworth (1617–1689), both fellows of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), Peter Sterry (1613– 1672), John Smith (1618–1652), Nathaniel Culverwell (1619–1651), and John Worthington (1618–1671), who were all associated with Emmanuel College. Anne Conway (1630–1679) and John Norris (1657–1711) were among their later followers. Three common features of their work are significant for the purposes of this chapter. First, they interpreted Plato Neoplatonically, and in some ways can be regarded as working within the tradition of Ficino and Renaissance Platonism. Second, they believed that Plato and Platonism were compatible with or useful for Christianity. Third, they were ‘latitude-men’; in other words, they generally advocated religious tolerance, saw principles of church government as adiaphora, and promulgated a model of Christianity in which the ascent of the soul by means of prayer, moral living, and reading of Scripture was more important than dogma or orthodoxy.3 Eighteenth-century English interpretation of Plato was continuous with Cambridge Platonism in that 273

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both developed in the context of Christian controversy; the readings of Plato in both periods can only be understood in light of the theological issues to which they respond. The positions gradually diverge by mideighteenth century in other respects. This study discusses two major theological issues that affected the eighteenth-century English reception of Plato, namely controversies concerning the nature of the Trinity and the relationship of natural religion to Revelation. The issue of whether natural religion could be a system sufficient by itself without Revelation, and also how much of Revelation was deducible from nature without Scripture, was crucial to the deistical controversies of the first part of the eighteenth century. Deists invoked heathen philosophers to prove that natural religion without Revelation was sufficient for belief in God and regulation of morals. Some Christians, in response, argued that the existence of true notions of God and morality among the heathens proved either (1) that God had given some primitive revelation universally to mankind; or (2) that the Greek moralists had learned Mosaic wisdom in Egypt; or (3) that many of the truths of Christianity were so obviously correct that they could be deduced from the natural world (which was God’s Creation) by means of human reason (which God had implanted in humanity) unaided by the specifics of Revelation. Other Christians argued the opposite, that the general immorality (especially, among the Greeks, sodomy) and idolatry of the heathens proved the insufficiency of natural religion and the need for Revelation. An even more difficult problem for Christians confuting deists was Trinitarian theology. As deists gleefully pointed out, nothing in nature, or even in Scripture, could prove the existence of the Trinity beyond doubt. The stumbling and mutually contradictory efforts of the orthodox members of the Church of England to explicate the Trinity not only lent additional ammunition to the deists, but also led many theologians, both members of the Establishment and of rational dissenting congregations, into anti-Athanasian positions, ranging from Arianism through Socianism to Unitarianism. These Trinitarian controversies sparked renewed interest in the early church and the development of the Nicene and Athanasian creeds, which in turn demanded a critical investigation of the relationship of Neoplatonic triadic and emanational metaphysics to the development of Christian theology. This study examines the theological responses to Plato in the English translation of Dacier’s Works of Plato Abridg’d (1701), Anthony Blackwall’s Introduction to the Classics (1718), Joseph Mills’ Plato’s Apology of Socrates (1775), William Enfield’s translation of Brucker’s History of Philosophy

Socrates and Plato in 18th Century England

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(1791), and Joseph Priestley’s Socrates and Jesus Compared (1803). These works show the major stages in the evolution of Platonic reception between Christian Platonism and Romanticism within the English tradition.4

André Dacier’s Works of Plato Abridg’d (1701): Plato as prophet to the gentiles The first significant English eighteenth-century response to Plato was the anonymous 1701 (rpt. 1719–1720, 1739, 1743–1744, 1749, 1772; individual dialogues reprinted in various other editions) translation of André Dacier’s French versions of several Platonic dialogues, including Alcibiades I and II, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Laches, and Protagoras. It approached Platonic interpretation from within a Neoplatonic tradition as it had evolved from late antiquity through the Renaissance, using Neoplatonic commentaries to explicate the dialogues and emphasizing a Platonic canon and curriculum based on Iamblichean and subsequent Neoplatonic models, placing, e.g., Alcibiades I as an authentic and outstanding introduction to Plato, especially for the new or unphilosophically inclined student.5 Dacier’s long general introduction and short introductions to individual dialogues guided his readers to view the dialogues within a Christian context. André Dacier and his wife Anne were both Huguenots who had converted to Romanism in the increasingly repressive period immediately before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In his work on Plato, Dacier espoused the cause of religious tolerance, with arguments for the assimilation of gentile Greeks to a Judaeo-Christian tradition functioning metonymically to advocate tolerance of French Huguenots and English dissenters. Plato was defended by being linked to Christianity, with Dacier arguing that to underestimate the value of Greek philosophy almost verged on heresy: Whenever they [Learned Men] speak of the Heathens, they bear witness against themselves that they never well read ’em, and that they have only an imperfect Idea of ’em, for they impute such Sentiments to ’em as they never had, and deny ’em others which they had in reality; which is a great piece of Injustice: nay it seems (if I may so speak) to diminish somewhat from the Mercy and Justice of God, not to acknowledge all the Testimonies he was pleased to give of himself among the Pagans, in those Times that were corrupted with the most abominable Idolatry, in order to reduce ’em to the true Religion. (Works of Plato Abridg’d, p. 3)

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The works of Plato, despite their being a less complete revelation than Christian Scripture, ‘compose as it were a Body of Doctrine which contains the highest perfection of Knowledge to be found among the Heathens’ (Works of Plato Abridg’d, p. 3). Dacier moved beyond asserting the common and general claim that the Greek philosophers prepared the gentiles for Christ just as the prophets prepared the Jews, a position held by several of the Church Fathers, including Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Eusebius, to strongly implying a larger claim, namely that Plato literally was prophet to the gentiles: Let a Man read never so little of him with attention, and reflect upon what he teaches, and he’ll easily discern, that God, to stop the mouth of Incredulity, was long since preparing the way for the conversion of the Heathens, which had been so often predicted by the Prophets; for was it not the work of God, and a kind of Preludium of their Conversion, that a Heathen in the most Idolatrous City in the World, and almost 400 years before the light of the Gospel illuminated the Universe, should declare and prove a good part of the Truths of the Christian Religion. The Circumstance of the Time is remarkable, for Plato begins to write immediate after the three last Prophets that were in Israel. So that as soon as the Prophets ceased among the Jews, God raises up Philosophers to enlighten the Gentiles; and divers Principles of the Gospels are taught at Athens… (Works of Plato Abridg’d, pp. 3–4) Dacier’s explicit and implicit arguments, thus not only advocated emphasizing Plato within the classical tradition, but did so in a manner which emphasized the unity of the classical tradition itself and its essential place within Christian providential history.

Anthony Blackwall’s Introduction to the Classics (1718): Socrates as type and prophet of Christ Like Dacier, Anthony Blackwall took the side of the ancients in the ongoing battle of the books.6 His Introduction to the Classics (1718, frequently reprinted) advocated, as well as introduced, classical learning and promulgated toleration through praise for non-Christian writers, implying that if what the Greeks deduced of Christian moral truths by means of natural religion and moral sense (independent of Revelation) should be admired, the Christian values of dissenters and radical thinkers within the established Church also should be viewed with charity.


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Blackwall assumed that the connection between the Greek philosophers and the Judaeo-Christian tradition was one of direct influence, in particular that Pythagoras and Plato had learned Mosaic wisdom on visits to Egypt (Introduction to the Classics, pp. 83–4) and that the PlatonicPythagorean account of creation in Timaeus was a hellenized version of Genesis. He portrayed Socrates typologically, as prefiguring Christ, and described him as an ‘undaunted Champion and Martyr of Natural Religion’ (Introduction to the Classics, pp. 77–8). If Socrates functioned typologically as a Christ-like figure, Xenophon and Plato served for evangelists. Socrates’ moral teachings (as they prefigured Christian morality) were set forth by Xenophon: Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates is a very instructive and refin’d System of Morality; it goes thro’ all Points of Duty to God and Man, with a great Clearness of Sense and sound Notion, and with inexpressible Simplicity and Purity of Language. The great Socrates there discourses in such a manner, as is most proper to engage and persuade all sorts of Readers: He argues with the Reason of a Philosopher; directs with the Authority of a Lawgiver; and addresses with the Familiarity and Endearments of a Friend. He made as many Improvements in true Morality, as cou’d be made by the unassisted Strength of human Reason; nay he delivers himself in some Places as if he was enlightened by a Ray from Heaven. (Introduction to the Classics, pp. 73–4) Plato, on the other hand, chronicled Socrates’ clearest Christian prophecy: In one of Plato’s divine Dialogues [Dialog. Select. Cantab. 1683. 2d. Alkcibiad. p. 255], Socrates utters a suprizing Prophecy of a divine Person, a true Friend and Lover of human Nature, who was to come into the World to instruct them in the most acceptable Way of addressing their Prayers to the Majesty of God. (Introduction to the Classics, p. 74) The role of the classics in the British curriculum was like that of Bible reading in church and home – a return to original sources of prophecy or revelation. Just as biblical interpretation had been distorted by the additions of the ‘modern’ Roman Catholics (the Church Fathers and Schoolmen), so the original classical models of the arts had been distorted by the barbarism of the intervening dark ages and the continental

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schools influenced by them. For Blackwall, Renaissance and Reformation were linked together as recoveries of early truth from later distortions; thus: While they [the Greek and Latin classics] last there cannot be much danger that Ignorance and Stupidity shou’d generally prevail; or gain the absolute Empire they had in the long and dismal Night before our happy Reformation. Here ’tis obvious to observe, that true Religion and good Learning for the most part flourish and decay together. We at the same time triumph’d over Barbarism and Superstition; and at once got into our hands the Classics and the Sacred Writers. (Introduction to the Classics, p. 5). Blackwall’s defence of Socrates is similar to that of Dacier, linking Plato and the classics to Christianity and implying that anyone who doubted the value of Plato verged on denying the truths of Christianity, although Blackwall differs from Dacier in a having a more explicitly and strongly Protestant and more overt anti-Romanist stance.

Joseph Mills’ Translation of Plato’s Apology (1775) and the limits of loyal dissent. Joseph Mills’ 1775 translation of Plato’s Apology, with extensive preface, introduction, and afterword, like the work of Blackwall, provided a Christian defence of the Greek moral philosophers. Mills’ rhetorical situation, however, was not identical to Blackwall’s. The major threat Mills perceived to Christianity was no longer the devastating sectarian conflicts of the seventeenth century, but the growth of deism. Although Mills still valued pagan philosophers as evidence that humans could by reason discover God prior to Revelation, he also emphasized the inferiority of natural to revealed religion, something that served clearly to distinguish his position from deism . Like many other eighteenth-century divines, Mills thought that human reason, applied to nature would reveal evidences of divine creation. Although this natural religion (deduced by applying reason and the innate moral sense to nature) was inferior to, and insufficient without, Revelation, the fact that numerous heathens, by reason alone, had discovered Christian truths, although not specifically the revelation of Christ himself, could serve as an argument for the existence of God (the ‘argument from universality’) against atheists such as Edward Gibbon and David Hume. Mills, like Anthony Blackwall, whom he cited,


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understood Socrates and Plato as having been acquainted with and promulgating Mosaic wisdom and preparing the gentiles for the coming of Christ, specifically claiming ‘that as the law of Moses was, as it were, a schoolmaster to bring the Jews to the faith of Christ, so sound moral philosophy was to the Gentiles a preparative and introduction to the Christian faith’ (Apology, 88) and citing Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr in support of this position. Since of the Greek moral philosophers, Socrates’ acquaintance with Hebrew wisdom was indirect at best, he provided the best argument for natural religion: So that Socrates, who never travelled out of Greece, nor, indeed, far from Athens, had nothing to erect a scheme of religion or morality on but the scattered fragments of truth darkened by endless superstitions, and handed down from time immemorial among his countrymen, or imported by Pythagoras, Thales, and others, who had been in Egypt and the East. These he picked out from a heap of absurdities and errors, and by the help of extraordinary capacity, laying them together, comparing them with the nature of things, and drawing consequences from them, found reason to question the soundness of Grecian Theology and Morality. (Apology, p. 86) Unlike Dacier and Blackwall, Mills was just as concerned about the threat of deism as that of intolerance, and therefore was more ambivalent about natural religion, an ambivalence that causes his praise of Socrates to be leavened with caveats: … it is certain that the effect of all the teaching and instruction of the best Philosophers in the heathen world, was in comparison small and inconsiderable. They were not able to turn men from their absurd idolatry, to acknowledge the worship of the true God. Their disciples, at least the practicers of their doctrine, were in their own lifetime, very few; as too plainly appears from the evil treatment, which, we see, Socrates met withal at Athens. And their followers quickly fell back into the common idolatry, superstition, and corruption of manners, which then prevailed in the world. (Apology, pp. 89–90) Although heathen moralists could prepare the ground for Christianity, something which Mills saw his translation of Plato’s Apology as demonstrating, he is careful to add to it a cautionary Postscript, expanding the description of Plato in his Preface as ‘shewing the want which the

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Heathens had of a clearer revelation of God’s will’ (Apology, p. xix). Moreover, the Greek moralists should not themselves be taken as models for contemporary religious thought, for they were only followers of natural religion because they had lived before the incarnation. Although they had supplied a partial preparation for the gospel, they should be understood as only propaideutic and evidentiary: ‘Tis with this disposition we should study the ancient Philosophers, for if we take up with them, and stop there, we wander in the inextricable mazes of deism, and continue to want the true food of our souls, the grace and favour of God afforded us in the gospel. (Apology, p. xix) Mills concludes his preface with a caution that seems to imply that if Socrates and Plato had lived in eighteenth-century Britain, they would have been Christians, not deists, and that it was only an accident of chronology that prevented them from accepting revelation.

Enfield’s Translation of Brucker (1791): recovering a Protestant Socrates from Platonic (and Romish) corruptions William Enfield, a dissenting minister and Rector of Warrington Academy, abridged and translated Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae due to a desire to make the work available to his students, whose Latin was considerably weaker than that of their counterparts at public schools and the old universities (Enfield, History of Philosophy, iv). Brucker, a Lutheran theologian, appealed to Enfield because Brucker’s history of philosophy attempted to elucidate systematic theological orthodoxy by identifying and correcting the historical record of heterodoxies. This proved extremely useful to Enfield, who in order to argue for Unitarianism needed to show that Trinitarianism was not part of the original deposit of Christianity, but the result of patristic writers misreading Scripture in light of Platonic philosophy. A convincing way for Enfield (and Priestley as well, as will be discussed later) to make this claim was to trace a history of errors leading to Trinitarianism, borrowing the authority and appearance of impartiality of Brucker’s massive (if, at times, uncritical) scholarship. A crucial feature of Enfield’s anti-Trinitarian analysis of ancient philosophy was his separation of Socrates from Plato. Like the emerging Continental critics, Enfield distinguished between the founding or authorizing figure of a sect and later followers, even if the only evidence


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remaining of the founder was the writings of the disciples. Thus the Christ-like Socrates could be distinguished by Enfield from a Plato who corrupted his message just as Jesus could be separated from the Church Fathers who corrupted the Gospel with Platonic theology. This separation was radically Protestant, countering the authority of tradition and antiquity (asserted by the Roman Catholic Church, and, to a lesser extent, the established Church of England) with the pure doctrines of Jesus interpreted in light of the reason implanted in humanity by God. For Enfield, Xenophon, a clear and simple writer, who, like the Evangelists, simply reported the words of his master, was far more to be trusted as a guide to Socrates than Plato (especially as constructed within the Neoplatonic tradition), who mixed ‘metaphysical speculations’ with Socratic doctrines (Enfield, History of Philosophy, p.100). In particular: Plato, disdaining the sober method of reasoning introduced by Socrates, left his first master in search of other preceptors. His natural propensity towards excessive refinement in speculation, and the celebrity of the Italic school which abounded in subtleties, induced him to attach himself to the Pythagorean philosophy. … Among other things which Plato received from foreign philosophy, he was careful to borrow the art of concealing his real opinions. His inclination towards this kind of concealment appears from the obscure language which abounds in his writings, and may indeed be learned from his own express assertions … (Enfield, History of Philosophy, p. 124) Not only was it possible to draw an analogy between Plato’s misleading portrait of Socrates, which mixed his own idle speculations with the practical teachings of Socrates, but it was also Platonic teachings which, by the agency of converts originally schooled in Platonism (especially Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine), corrupted the purity of Christian doctrine: The fathers of the Christian church soon departed from the simplicity of the apostolic age, and corrupted the purity of the Christian faith. This is chiefly attributable to two causes: first, the practice, which at the time so generally prevailed, of clothing the doctrines of religion in an allegorical dress; and secondly, the habit of subtle speculation, which the more learned converts from Paganism brought with them from the schools of philosophy. …In the same manner in which Philo and other Alexandrian Jews had corrupted the Jewish church, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and the other disciples of

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the Alexandrian school in the second century, introduced error and corruption into the church of Christ. (Enfield, History of Philosophy, pp. 272–3) The abstract theoretical speculations of the philosophers were, for Enfield, associated, in both ancient Greece and eighteenth-century England, with the superstitions of the priests and fables of popular religion (History of Philosophy, p. 89). The negative use of the term ‘priest’ in this context is particularly significant. For Enfield, as for many low church Protestants (whether within the Church of England or outside) the terms ‘priest’ and ‘priesthood’ pertained exclusively to the Levitical priesthood, which offered, as did pagan priests, ‘sacrifices’ to God. For Enfield and others of similar theological leanings, Christ’s atonement, being a ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’ combined with the ‘abrogation of the law’ in the Pauline epistles, implied an abolition of the priesthood. For low church Protestants, there were no priests under the New Covenant, but only ministers of the Gospel. The term ‘priesthood’ or ‘priest’ is associated with the Old Covenant and pagan ‘priesthoods’; Roman Catholics and the high church party in the Church of England who considered the ministry a priesthood were, in the eyes of Enfield, pagan or ‘judaizing’ idolaters and their concepts of atonement were a regression to heathen concepts of sacrifice which had no part in the New Covenant. Enfield, by analogy, casts himself and his rational quasi-Unitarian Christianity with its opposition to the tritheism and idolatry of Romish and the Establishment priesthoods as parallel to Socrates, who believed in the unity of God, and opposed a polytheistic and idolatrous pagan priesthood. Enfield implies a parallel between the disabilities under which dissenters suffered and the martyrdoms of Socrates and the English Protestant martyrs, as all being endured for the sake of true religion against superstitious priestcraft and idolatry: The same weakness and bigotry that banished our Saviour from Gadara, and afterwards condemned him to cruxifiction at Jerusalem, mingled the cup of poison for Socrates at Athens, forged the chains for Paul at Cesarea, and kindled the flames for Cranmer in Britain. (Sermons on Practical Subjects, 3, p. 119) Persecution of dissenters, as Enfield argued in several of his sermons, spread from the same spirit as persecution of Socrates and Christian martyrs, including the Protestant martyrs whose stories were told so


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vividly in John Foxe’s often reprinted Book of Martyrs and who were often cited in schoolroom and pulpit as patriotic and religious English heroes. To defend Socrates was also to defend true Protestant Christianity, as distinct from its Romanist, Platonizing, and heathen persecutors. By separating Socrates from Plato and the Platonic tradition, Enfield was taking a crucial step to reform, as it were, Plato for English Protestantism. Drawing parallels between ancient and modern situations, Enfield cast himself and his fellow rational dissenters as the true heirs of Socrates and Jesus and the Romish and Established Churches as the heirs of Plato and Platonism.

Priestley’s Socrates and Jesus Compared (1803):Unitarian Christianity dissociated from Socratic paganism Joseph Priestley’s pamphlet, Socrates and Jesus Compared, had two aims: proving that Trinitarianism was a Platonic corruption of Jesus’ doctrine and showing that Unitarians were indeed true Christians (in fact, the only true Christians) against the popular British tendency to consider Unitarians closer to deism than to Christianity. To do so, he needed to show that even though Jesus Christ was not a god for Unitarians, he was still the centre of their religion and of a different nature than other humans because he existed in a unique relationship to God. Priestley argues for Socrates being the best of heathens, and then shows that Jesus is so superior to Socrates as to almost be a different order of person. His first step is proof of Socrates’ superior natural endowments: The history of Socrates is so singular a phenomenon in the heathen world, and his general behaviour, and manner of life to which he devoted himself, have in them so much that resemble those of the ancient prophets, and even of our Saviour, that they have always drawn the particular attention of the friends of divine revelation, though these have formed very different opinions on the subject. (Priestley, Socrates and Jesus Compared, p. 1) But after admitting the evident virtues displayed by Socrates, Priestley then shows how Socrates’ want of knowledge of revealed religion results in equally distinct flaws. These flaws fall into two categories, religious (idolatry and lack of knowledge of afterlife) and pedagogical (insufficiently reproach for vice). Priestley concedes that Socrates believed in infinitely wise and good gods who created humanity and the world, gave humans reason, and responded to prayer (pp. 6–9). Socrates,

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however, was also an idolater, a polytheist, and believed in divination (pp. 3–5). Moreover, Socrates did not have a secure belief in an afterlife. Like Enfield, Priestley dismisses the crucial argument from Phaedo that Socrates did believe in survival of the soul after death of the body on the basis that Plato was less accurate a source than Xenophon. Of course, Priestley graciously points out that given an upbringing without the benefit of Scripture, it was inevitable that Socrates would hold false religious opinions. Priestley here is setting up the claim that human reason unaided by revelation cannot discover religious truth, a point which he wished to emphasize because it was one on which Unitarians were in agreement with other Christians against deists. Those who tried to Christianize Socrates by ignoring his polytheism could be disproved not only from the evidence of Xenophon and the doubt cast on Plato (argued above), but also by reason: Notwithstanding all this evidence of the polytheistic sentiments, and corresponding practice of Socrates, Rollin and others suppose him to have been a believer in the divine unity, and to have been sensible of the absurdity and folly of all popular superstitions, and of the popular worship of his country. But I am far from seeing any sufficient evidence of this. … Indeed I much question whether any person educated as Socrates was, among polytheists and idolaters, could possibly, by mere light of nature, have attained to a firm belief of the divine unity, though he might in some degree have been sensible of the folly and absurdity of the prevailing superstitions. (Priestley, Socrates and Jesus Compared, p. 5) Like Enfield, Priestley considered the ‘unity’ of divine nature a crucial tenet of Christianity. While Enfield suggested that tritheism was introduced into early Christianity by means of Platonic contamination and implied its continued presence in the Roman and Established churches, Priestley adds to this the further point that divine unity is not automatically a part of ‘natural religion’ (even in the case of Socrates, the most moral and pious of pagans) but rather something found exclusively in revealed religion, assuming Scripture is read by itself without the corruptions introduced by later theologians. The lack of firm grounding in revealed religion also leads Socrates, despite his own personal probity, to tolerating certain unspeakable vices: As the laws of his country, which with Socrates were too much of a standard of right, with respect to both religion and morals, were


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very imperfect on many subjects, we do not wonder that he did not express a sufficient indignation (such as those do who are acquainted with the purer and more severe precepts of revealed religion relating to them) at some particular vices, especially sodomy, which the laws of God by Moses justly punished with death. (Priestley, Socrates and Jesus Compared, p. 16) The series of contrasts Priestley draws between Socrates and Jesus, with respect to morality, belief in the afterlife, universality of message, and concept of and relation to God, thus evokes a parallel distinction between deists and Unitarians. Taken with the additional parallels Priestley constructs among Plato, Romanism, and the Establishment, Unitarianism is left as the only true Christianity, balanced on a narrow median between the hazards of Platonic/Papistical idolatry and Socratic and British deism.

Conclusion The works discussed in this study are only a limited selection of the diverse and profuse reactions to, and uses of, Plato and Socrates in eighteenth-century England. What even this quite limited selection of works demonstrates is that Plato and Socrates were often invoked in the specific contexts of religious controversy and that interpretations of various dialogues that might seem eccentric to a twenty-first century scholar are readily explicable within their original context. Moreover, as much of the reception of Plato has been theological, and the mystical, religious, and irrational Plato (as opposed, e.g., to the Plato of analytic philosophy) accounts for much of the Platonic tradition, this strand of Platonic studies may be particularly important for interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogy.

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Notes 1. Thanks are owed to the York University Faculty of Arts for research and conference travel support and to an anonymous reader for useful comments. 2. Evans makes this point in his extremely useful bibliographic survey of eighteenth-century British editions and translations of Plato (1943). For a general survey of Greek studies in England, see Clarke (1945). Tigerstedt (1974) summarizes many seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century British and European works on Plato, focusing on the degree to which they do or do not follow Neoplatonic or esotericist approaches. Zebrowski (1994, 1997, 2000) supplies important analyses of Price and Clarke, and a brief, but useful discussion of Priestley. Demetriou (1966) underestimates the volume of eighteenth-century responses to Plato and neglects the quite significant dissenting and Scottish influences on Utilitarian Platonic reception. John Glucker’s (1987 and 1996) claim that the recovery of Plato begins with Thomas Taylor in 1804 is inaccurate, and his division of types of Plato limited by an inadequate bibliographic survey. Evans (1940) is a good starting point for Thomas Taylor, and Burnyeat (2001) for James Mill. 3. General treatments of Cambridge Platonism include Cragg (1968), Kroll (1992), Patrides (1969), Roberts (1968), and Rogers (1997). Hedley (2000) discusses the influence of Cambridge Platonism on Coleridge. 4. The Scottish tradition is parallel to the English one. Although the two traditions do interact with one another at key points (especially towards the end of the eighteenth century), the religious contexts differ, and thus Scottish sources are not discussed in this study. 5. Alcibiades 1 was normally the first Platonic dialogue taught in the Neoplatonic curriculum of Iamblichus and subsequent philosophers. For the Neoplatonic canon and ordering of the Platonic dialogues, see Mansfeld (1994), Poster (1998), Tarrant (1993), Tigerstedt (1974), and Westerink (1962). 6. I have discussed ways in which religious positions affected the discussions of ancient philosophy within the English ‘Battle of the Books’ at length elsewhere (Poster 2003).

Bibliography Blackwall, A., 1718, An Introduction to the Classics; containing a short discourse on their excellencies; and directions how to study them to advantage. With an essay, on the nature and use of those emphatical and beautiful figures which give strength and ornament to writing, London. Burnyeat, M. F., 2001, ‘What Was the “Common Arrangement”? An Inquiry into John Stuart Mill’s Boyhood Reading of Plato’, Apeiron 34:1, pp. 51–90. Burnyeat, M. F., 2001, ‘James Mill on Thomas Taylor’s Plato: Introduction’, Apeiron 34:2, pp. 101–10. Clarke, M. L., 1945, Greek Studies in England 1700–1830, Cambridge. Cragg, G. R. (ed.), 1968, The Cambridge Platonists, New York. Demetriou, K., 1996, ‘The Development of Platonic Studies in Britain and the Role of the Utilitarians’, Utilitas 8.1, pp. 15–37.


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Enfield, W., 1791, The History of Philosophy From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Present Century: Drawn up from Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae, 2 vols, London. Enfield, W., 1798, Sermons on Practical Subjects. To which are prefixed Memoirs of the Author by J. Aikin, M. D., 3 vols, London. Evans, F. B., 1940, ‘Thomas Taylor: Platonist of the Romantic Period’, PMLA 55:4, pp. 1060–79. Evans, F. B., 1943, ‘Platonic Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century England’, Modern Philology 41:2, pp. 102–10. Foxe, J., 1576, The volume of the ecclesiasticall history: conteyning the actes & monumentes of martyrs, with a generall discourse of these latter persecutions, horrible troubles and tumultes, stirred up by Romish prelates in the Church, with divers other thinges incident, especially to this realme of England and Scotlande, as partly also to all other forreine nations apperteining, from the tyme of K. Henry the viii, to Queene Elizabeth. Printed by Iohn Daye . Glucker, J., 1987, ‘Plato in England, the Nineteenth Century and After’, in H. Funke (ed.), Utopie und Tradition: Platons Lehre vom Staat in der Moderne, Würzburg. Glucker, J., 1996, ‘The Two Platos of Victorian Britain’, in Keimpe Algra et al (eds.), Polyhistor, Leiden. Hedley, D., 2000, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion: Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the Spirit, Cambridge. Kroll, J. et al. (eds.), 1992, Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England 1640–-1700, Cambridge. Mansfeld, J., 1994, Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled Before the Study of an Author or a Text, Leiden. Mills, J. A. B. (trans.), 1775, Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Cambridge. Patrides, C. A. (ed.), 1969, The Cambridge Platonists, London. Plato, 1701, The Works of Plato Abridg’d. With an Account of his Life, Philosophy, Morals, and Politicks. Together with a Translation of his Choicest Dialogues, Illustrated with Notes by M. Dacier. Translated from the French, 2 vols, London. Poster, C., 1998, ‘The Idea(s) of Order of Platonic Dialogues and Their Hermeneutic Consequences’, Phoenix: The Journal of the Classical Association of Canada 52:3–4, pp. 282–98. Poster, C., 2003, ‘Theology, Canonicity, and Abbreviated Enthymemes: Traditional and Critical Influences on Rhetoric in Nineteenth Century Britain’, Rhetoric Society Quarterly 33:1, pp. 67–103. Priestley, J., 1803, Socrates and Jesus Compared, London. Roberts, J. D., 1968, From Puritanism to Platonism in Seventeenth Century England, The Hague. Rogers, G.A. et al. (eds.), 1997, The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. Politics, Metaphysics and Religion, Dordrecht. Tarrant, H., 1993, Thrasyllan Platonism, Ithaca. Tigerstedt, E. N., 1974, The Decline and Fall of the Neoplatonic Interpretation of Plato: an Outline and Some Observations, Helsinki. Westerink, L.G., 1962, (Intro., Text, Trans., and Indices) Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, Amsterdam. Zebrowski, M., 1994, ‘Richard Price: British Platonist of the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the History of Ideas 55.1, pp. 17–36.

288 Carol Poster Zebrowski, M., 1997, ‘Commanded of God because ’tis Good and Holy: The Christian Platonism and Natural Law of Samuel Clarke’, Enlightenment and Dissent 16, pp. 3–28. Zebrowski, M., 2000, ‘We May Venture to Say that the Number of Platonic Readers is Considerable: Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and the Platonic strain in Eighteenth-century British Thought’, Enlightenment and Dissent 19, pp. 193–213.

Conclusion Stephen R.L.Clark

What is there to learn from the late-antique philosophers? Each of the preceding chapters has its own answer to that question, but their authors are at least united in supposing that there is something to be learnt. Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus and the rest were not mere fantasists, as little worth studying – except by psychologists or historians – as Nostradamus or the prophecies of Mother Shipton. Neither were they merely ‘academics’, dedicated to a life of abstract scholarship or analytic argument. They thought – like almost all philosophers till recently – that philosophy made a difference, and that it demanded more than analytical skills and a good memory (though it did demand those too). Philosophers were expected to live differently, with an eye to other values than the everyday, bourgeois or romantic. They were also – or equivalently – supposed not to take too much for granted, and to remind themselves that ordinary life is but a ‘dream and a delirium’ (as Marcus Aurelius put it). Our ordinary lives are structured by false values and false opinions, full of pets and pests, merely apparent goods like wealth and reputation, paranoid or schizophrenic delusions. Escape from this delirium was through a wakening of Reason, an attempt to see things straight, supported by argument and a careful testing of hypotheses. But Reason, as we ordinarily conceive it, was not quite enough. Even the most compelling arguments and analyses don’t quite convince us, or not for very long. We need to keep reciting them, reminding ourselves that we are not the only nor the most important entities there are, that places far away and distant times are all, from a god’s eye view, as real as Here and Now, that there are many differing perspectives on the world, and many ways of erring. Making those insights real to ourselves takes more than ‘rational argument’. 289

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And rational arguments themselves must always rest on wholly unproven axioms. Consider a much later philosopher’s summary of certain simple truths:1 (a) Every sane man believes that the world around him and the people in it are real, and not his own delusion or dream. No man starts burning London in the belief that his servant will soon wake him for breakfast. But that I, at any given moment, am not in a dream, is unproved and unprovable. That anything exists except myself is unproved and unprovable. (b) All sane men believe that this world not only exists, but matters. Every man believes there is a sort of obligation on us to interest ourselves in this vision or panorama of life. He would think a man wrong who said, ‘I did not ask for this farce and it bores me. I am aware that an old lady is being murdered downstairs, but I am going to sleep.’ That there is any such duty to improve the things we did not make is a thing unproved and unprovable. (c) All sane men believe that there is such a thing as a self, or ego, which is continuous. There is no inch of my brain matter the same as it was ten years ago. But if I have saved a man in battle ten years ago, I am proud; if I have run away, I am ashamed. That there is such a paramount ‘I’ is unproved and unprovable. But it is more than unproved and unprovable; it is definitely disputed by many metaphysicians. (d) Lastly, most sane men believe, and all sane men in practice assume, that they have a power of choice and responsibility for action. These axioms may themselves be challenged – and I have already suggested that in a certain sense most of us are actually in a dream much of the time – but they are at least a plausible collection of axiomatic thoughts, on which not only our ordinary lives depend, but also even the efforts of philosophers. And none of them can be proved. So our premises are, much of the time, unprovable (except by recourse to yet other premises just as questionable), and any arguments we propose to ourselves will always need additional help if they are to convince all regions of our wandering and inchoate souls. It follows that we need to explore other ways of getting at and keeping to the truth as well as those we think are ‘rational’. Just so ordinary dreamers may suddenly, in their dreaming, be convinced that ‘this is all a dream’, without being able to point to any particular episode or property as proof: the ‘proof’ lies in their waking. Things that a moment ago seemed obvious will suddenly seem ridiculous – and of course this is how we may think about those

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‘other ways to truth’ that ancient philosophers were ready to employ (or at least consider). Turning ourselves around again and wondering if they might be valuable after all will always be an effort. Refusing to make that effort prevents our ever understanding the ancients, even if the refusal rests on our conviction that we understand the world much better than they did. But if we refuse to understand them, how do we understand the world? We get our premises from somewhere, whether they are biologically programmed, culturally ingrained, arbitrarily selected or intuited. We keep them, and the inferences we have drawn from them, active in our hearts and minds by careful reiteration. But we also need to make our conclusions real to ourselves even if we have, we suppose, conclusive arguments for them. There is a difference between ‘real’ and ‘notional’ assent. Or as Plotinus put it: Intellect also, then, has one power for thinking, by which it looks at the things in itself, and one by which it looks at what transcends it by a direct awareness and reception, by which also before it saw only, and by seeing acquired intellect and is one. And that first one is the contemplation of Intellect in its right mind, and the other is Intellect in love, when it goes out of its mind ‘drunk with the nectar’; then it falls in love, simplified into happiness by having its fill, and it is better for it to be drunk with a drunkenness like this than to be more respectably sober.2 Quite what this strange metaphor entails is a difficult question. It is certainly more common for philosophers to use ‘drunkenness’ as an example and a metaphor for quite undesirable mental states. Philo of Alexandria, for example, allegorizing the story of Lot’s daughters, suggests that ‘they made their father drink Wine’ means that ‘they brought complete insensibility on the mind, so that it fancied itself competent by its own abilities to judge what was expedient, and to assent to all sorts of apparent facts, as if they really had solid truth in them’.3 He goes on to mock philosophical pretensions, and philosophers’ undue willingness to trust the fallible instruments of reason and experience, pointing out that ‘about these very things, and about the different ways of life, and about the ends to which all actions ought to be referred, and about ten thousand other things which logical, and moral, and natural philosophy comprehends, there have been an unspeakable number of discussions, as to which, up to the present time, there is no agreement whatever among all these philosophers who have examined into


such subjects’.4 And again: ‘under the name of drunkenness was signified that covetousness and greediness, which has often greatly injured many persons’.5 Or consider a related metaphor as used by a modern author: The moral collapse of Vietnam was scarcely caused by an overdose of objective consciousness about what we were doing. It consisted of the failure to expand consciousness beyond mere instrumental tasks to the practical and banal significance of our national goals and policies. We kept the war going in Vietnam because our consciousness was mystified by symbols of patriotism, dreams of glory, unyielding pride, and visions of empire. In mood we were exactly what the counter-culture people want us to become. We imagined we were menaced by slant-eyed devils and worthless little yellow men; we enthralled ourselves with visions of our own ineffable majesty. In short, we were stoned.6 There is something to be said for a calm reason, and ‘drunkenness’ will usually stand for self-serving delusions of the sort that we ought to resist, and wake up from. A similar story could be told, and often has been told, about late-antique philosophy, and late-antique society, as a drunken withdrawal from everyday reality, a ‘loss of nerve’. Third-century Rome was full of magicians, occultists and astrologers. Plotinus was cautiously ready to accept that magic might have some effects and even the stars offer counsel: those were, after all, the received opinions of his day, and he was ready to accept that common opinion had some authority.7 If magic worked and the stars perhaps could be interpreted it was because the universe was multiply interconnected: what happens in one place is reflected in another. But he was sure that the stars did not cause disasters, even if they perhaps predicted them, any more than the birds that other diviners claimed to understand. He also thought that there were clearer and more manageable causes of all ordinary effects than the occult. Witness the scorn with which he speaks of exorcists: When they say they free themselves from diseases, if they meant they did so by temperance and orderly living, they would speak well; but in fact they assume that the diseases are evil spirits, and claim to be able to drive them out by their word; by this claim they might make themselves more impressive in the eyes of the masses, who wonder at the power of magicians, but would not persuade sensible people

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that diseases do not have their origin in strain or excess or deficiency or decay, and in general in changes which have their origin outside or inside. The cures of diseases make this clear too. With a vigorous motion of the bowels or the giving of a drug the illness goes through the downward passage and out, and it goes out too with bloodletting; and fasting also heals. Does the evil spirit starve, and does the drug make it waste away? … If it came into the man without any cause of disease, why is he not always ill? But if there was a cause, what need is there of the spirit to produce the illness? For the cause is sufficient by itself to produce the fever.8 According to Porphyry, when he was invited to visit ‘the temples at the New Moon and the feasts of the gods’, he responded that ‘they ought to come to me, not I to them’,9 probably because we should not expect the gods to answer us so easily. ‘People must not demand to be well-off who have not done anything that deserved well-being’.10 And again: ‘the law says that those who fight bravely, not those who pray, are to come safe out of wars; for, in just the same way, it is not those who pray but those who look after their land who are to get in a harvest, and those who do not look after their health are not to be healthy; and we are not to be vexed if the bad get larger harvests, or if their farming generally goes better’.11 He did sacrifice and entertain his friends ‘on the traditional birthdays of Plato and Socrates’,12 but not with any expectation of reward. According to Porphyry,13 he shrugged off a supposed magical assault (astrobolêsai auton mageusas epexeirêsen) by a rival teacher (and the spell rebounded on its perpetrator), but the only charms and countercharms that Plotinus himself mentions14 are arguments, designed to disenchant us, and to ‘charm away’ our fears. Admittedly, he did once attend a séance intended to reveal his guardian daemon – and startled everyone when this turned out to be a god.15 And Porphyry found it significant that it was ‘as a snake crept under the bed on which he was lying and disappeared into a hole in the wall, [that] he breathed his last’.16 Some ‘uncanny’ things happened around him – including his insight into human character (not only Porphyry’s): ‘he was in the habit of foretelling how each of the children who lived with him would turn out’.17 But all this is part of Porphyry’s hagiography, rather than Plotinus’ own text. In short, Plotinus was – by the standards of many centuries – a very hard-headed and naturalistic philosopher: the world he inhabited was the common world, and he expected it to work by natural law, without regard to any moral or mystical ideals. The natural world, by his account,


is neutral, ‘for the wicked draw water from the streams and that which gives does not know itself to what it gives, but only gives’.18 Even those philosophers who turned to theurgy did not suppose the gods could be compelled, and their worlds were not as bizarre as later scorn suggests. There are at least analogies between the Neoplatonic universe and the one revealed or posited by science, and maybe modern scientists owe more than they will usually admit to the Renaissance of this ancient wisdom. It is true that Plotinus’s astronomical problems, for example, are not ours: how is it that the stars and planets circle the earth forever, and are they compounded of all the elements or only fire?19 But in his rejection of the fifth Aristotelian element, the ether, he laid down that the heavens are moved according to the same laws as the earth. He was also hard-headed in the ancient style about the ills of mortal life. It was up to us, ‘like great, trained fighters’ to stand up to the blows of fortune, and not take our falls too seriously. Bullies will get their karmic reward, and those whom they bully should deal with them: If some boys, who have kept their bodies in good training, but are inferior in soul to their bodily condition because of lack of education, win a wrestle with others who are trained neither in body or soul and grab their food and their dainty clothes, would the affair be anything but a joke? Or would it not be right for even the lawgiver to allow them to suffer this as a penalty for their laziness and luxury? … Those who do these things are punished, first by being wolves and ill-fated men. … But the wicked rule by the cowardice of the ruled; for this is just, and the opposite is not.20 The ideals that now inspire or afflict us, of a world where all are equally respected and disasters never happen (or else, if they do, someone else must be blamed for them), were certainly not Plotinus’ ideals.. Cities, like the world itself, need all sorts and ranks of creatures.21 It would be silly if one of lower rank at court should insist that he was the king’s equal merely because they were both dependent on the One, for the courtier is also dependent on the king.22 It is silly not to acknowledge that there will be villains, and also victims. Third-century Rome (and most of the world in most other centuries) was full of troubles, and anyone who devoted himself entirely to the hope of worldly or bodily success was bound to be disappointed. Like other philosophers Plotinus preferred to find his happiness in something more clearly in his control: ‘All our toil and trouble is for this, not to be left without a share in the best of visions. … A man has not failed if he fails to win beauty of colours or bodies, or

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power or office or kingship even, but if he fails to win this and only this’.23 The vision in question was of beauty, or – to put it differently – a vision purged of merely egoistic or sensual distractions. By this account Plotinus was a sensible, hard-headed – and possibly hard-hearted – philosopher of the rationalist kind, more sensible than his age, or some of his successors. The universe ‘completes its course periodically according to everlastingly fixed rational principles, and everlastingly returns to the same state, period by period’,24 and the best that we can do is play the part assigned to us, and appreciate the ordered cosmos. ‘We should be spectators of murders, and all deaths, and takings and sacking of cities, as if they were on the stages of theatres’.25 Such things are no more than children’s games: ‘one must not take weeping and lamenting as evidence of the presence of evils, for children, too, weep and wail over things that are not evils’.26 The whole is beautiful, or as beautiful as it could be, despite or even because of its evil-seeming parts, ‘just as the public executioner, who is a scoundrel, does not make his well-governed city worse’.27 But even on this account there is something somewhat ‘uncanny’ about the Plotinian world. After all, the little world that each of us inhabits and sustains is not usually much influenced by the thought of astronomical and cosmic cycles. We are all more moved by ordinary desires, fears and enmities of a sort that Plotinus would have us purge away. We are each convinced – at least until philosophy enlightens us – that our world, our opinions, our desires are rationally right, without need of argument. Even those who profess to live by reason are often startlingly obtuse – witness those scientists who bitterly complain of ‘political interference’ when the goals or methods of their research are challenged, as though it were ‘obvious’ that their goals are good ones, their techniques to be judged only for their ‘efficiency’, and their projects to be funded without question at public expense. Plotinus admitted the real possibility of exceptional inspiration. That Minos brought the laws down from his colloquy with Zeus may be a historical claim,28 but it is expressly also an allegorical one. But few of us have any real claim to be Minos. Plotinus describes how, in the absence of such inspiration, an Assembly can move to a correct or more correct decision,29 by consensus – but this possibility rests on the uncomfortable condition that each of us can bring herself to the thought that she was mistaken! It is easy to insist that of course we all know that. We know that we make mistakes in petty arithmetic, or grammar, or pub quizzes. We even sometimes acknowledge that we make mistakes of judgement, in our assumptions about other people (though such errors are, of course, their


fault). But it is not quite so easy to escape, and perhaps there is a sort of ‘sober drunkenness’, appropriate to our seeing the divine realities,30 quite unlike our ordinary convictions. And this too has Philo of Alexandria’s blessing: If then, my soul, a yearning comes upon you to inherit the divine goods, abandon not only your land, that is, the body; your kinsfolk, that is, the senses; your father’s house, that is, speech, but escape also your own self and stand aside from yourself, like persons possessed and corybants seized by Bacchic frenzy and carried away by some kind of prophetic inspiration.31 Does this seem too distant from our everyday concerns, and even (or especially) from our concerns as ‘scholars and philosophers’? Are we advised to look towards something wholly other than mundane realities, enjoying a moment’s release from this world here, and seeing – as ordinary drunkards see – another world entirely? Allegorically, it is to be ‘drunk with the nectar’ that existed before wine was invented:32 it is intellect, as it were, ‘enthused’, and making a real assent. The higher condition, Plotinus says elsewhere, is ‘as if carried away or possessed by a god, in a quiet solitude and a state of calm, not turning away anywhere in his being and not busy about himself, altogether at rest and having become a kind of rest. He had no thought of beauties but had already run up beyond beauty and gone beyond the choir of virtues, like a man who enters into the sanctuary and leaves behind the statues in the outer shrine. … They are secondary objects of contemplation. But that other, perhaps, was not a contemplation but another kind of seeing, a being out of oneself (ekstasis) and simplifying and giving oneself over and pressing towards contact and rest and a sustained thought leading to adaptation (perinoêsis pros epharmogên), if one is going to contemplate what is in the sanctuary’.33 Armstrong in his note on this last passage, objected to the term ‘ecstasy’, as giving a ‘very misleading impression of this austere and quiet mysticism’.34 But perhaps Plotinus was not always so austere. The condition he craves is that of ‘the self glorified, full of intelligible light – but rather itself pure light – weightless, floating free, having become – but rather being - a god; set on fire then, but the fire seems to go out, if one is weighed down again’ (ei de palin barunoito).35 This may well seem far beyond our capabilities or interests: philosophers have Plato’s word for it, and Aristotle’s, that the point of philosophy is to become a god, or as like a god as possible,36 but we don’t pay much attention to this extravagance, any more than

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we attend to fantasies about living statues or attempts to manifest a daemon. We may, of course, be mistaken. But before dismissing late antique epistemology and ontology as too bizarre for words, it might be as well to notice that it is closer to common sense and everyday experience than many other philosophies now judged respectable. Epicureans and Buddhists, for example, hold that we have no single self, that each of us is a bundle or collection of soul-bits that will dissipate as they lose their grip on our bodies. Stoics suppose, contrariwise, that whatever it is we think we think and do is only what the cosmos itself is doing, that there are no separate individuals, that wisdom lies in realizing this. These doctrines do have arguments in their favour, and there are techniques for recalling or briefly convincing ourselves of our own non-existence, but it’s easy to see that Chesterton was right, that all ordinarily sane persons consider that they are individuals, responsible for their own acts and thoughts. It is axiomatic for all materialist philosophers that the only causally powerful entities are bodies, endowed by nature merely with ‘primary qualities’ like size, shape and motion, and that the other ‘secondary qualities’ with which we paint the world (colour, scent and sound) are only, somehow, causally related to the primary (we have no idea how). More consistent materialists even seek to eliminate those qualia, suggesting that they are illusions, quirks of language, and that there are no conscious selves at all, no qualia and no intentions, any more than planetary angels. Once again, there are arguments, of a sort, even for these wild conclusions, and it may be possible to invent new ways of talking and thinking that will not rely on feeling or thinking that we think or feel. But even those brave materialists admit that this is difficult! It may even be absurd to suggest that we could try to realize, and live by, doctrines of this sort. One other oddity is that many moderns will deny that there are real moral truths, but insist that we ought to admit this truth. By contrast, the late-antique philosophers, who were mostly Platonists of one degree or another, will seem models of common sense, despite their acceptance of theurgy, astrology or magic. They accepted soul’s existence, and the possibility of changed perspectives, and moral discipline. They also realized that our ordinary human worlds, the reality we inhabit, are full of signs and ghostly memories, as well as fascinating beauties. Each of us is a microcosm (that is, the world as it is presented to each of us is a microcosm), and we believe – without final or conclusive proof – that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm, the cosmos. Less often than we casually suppose, some item in our virtual universe begins


to speak as an outsider, embodying some real Other, an envoy from the Real World that underpins our virtual universe. When we look outside that on which we depend we do not know that we are one, like faces which are many on the outside but have one head inside. But if someone is able to turn around, either by himself or having the good luck to have his hair pulled by Athena herself, he will see God and himself and the all. … He will stop marking himself off from all being and will come to all the All without going out anywhere.37 The reference is to an episode in Homer’s Iliad (I.197f), in which Athena (the goddess of good sense) recalls Achilles from a murderous rage. Paradoxically, recognizing that there is a real Other is also to awaken in ourselves a recognition of a higher unity, the world on which we depend. Reality is to be conceived ‘as a richly varied sphere, or … as a thing all faces, shining with living faces’. Or rather, as he immediately adds, one must not merely see that ‘from the outside, but one must become that, and make oneself the contemplation’.38 This sudden alteration in our way of seeing involves a turn away from the merely sensory – and some have concluded that Plotinian introspection is a retreat from what is real. I hope it is already clear that this is simply false. The world as we see or hear it is private and delusional in a way that we can only escape by intellectual awakening: ‘the fool on the hill sees the sun coming up, and the eyes in his head’ – that is, the eye of reason – ‘see the world spinning round’. The real world has many copies, many virtual representations, but there must be, on pain of eternal scepticism, some cognitive state that meets reality directly. Those moments, as they are for us, are ones in which the Real is directly experienced, not merely argued to. An analogy may help: most of us can see at once that there are five or six items in a group. For most larger numbers we need to count the items, or at best to convert them – in our mind’s eye - into groups of groups. But there are others who can ‘see at a glance’ that there are so and so many. The moment when the Other becomes real, and we are elevated to an intellectual insight, is likely to be only momentary: ‘It is as if people who slept through their life thought the things in their dreams were reliable and obvious, but, if someone woke them up, disbelieved in what they saw with their eyes open and went to sleep again’.39 We live, as a rule, among phantoms.40 ‘The things which one thinks are most real, are least real’.41 So what, on his account, is real? What is it to be real? Plotinus’ answer is that beauty is reality, or that what is beautiful

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is what is real. ‘They exist and appear to us and he who sees them cannot possibly say anything else except that they are what really exists. What does ‘really exist’ mean? That they exist as beauties’.42 ‘Or rather, beautifulness is reality’.43 ‘For this reason being is longed for because it is the same as beauty, and beauty is lovable because it is being’.44 ‘Often I have woken up out of the body [that is, out of what seems to be] to my self’, he says, ‘and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I belonged to the better part’.45 These moments of truth are not to be dismissed for being rare or idiosyncratic: that is, if they are really true, exactly what we should expect. Is this to dismiss common opinion, to adopt a really bizarre idea? Perhaps, but it is worth recalling what common opinion it was that Plotinus invoked: ‘all men are naturally and spontaneously moved to speak of the god who is in each one of us one and the same’.46 Plotinus recognized truths which we, whether we will or not, must call revelations, which are entirely strange to the modern consciousness and even excite the highest degree of indignation. And now the main point: when Plotinus had to decide between ‘revealed’ and ‘natural’ truths, he unhesitatingly took the side of the former; ha gar hegeitai tis einai malista, tauta malista ouk esti (V, v, 11) (that which appears most real to common consciousness has the least existence).47 Strange to the modern consciousness, perhaps (if by that is meant the modern ideology), but not all that unfamiliar. It isn’t that we never have such experiences, but that we don’t remember or acknowledge them – and so don’t get their benefit. I have concentrated, in these concluding remarks, on Plotinus and the Neoplatonists. Other philosophers, including some Neoplatonists, made more use of public ritual or even private magic. Others expressed their doctrines in more systematic and abstract ways. Some even hoped, perhaps, to reinvigorate the Old Religion as a mystical path for individuals as well as a social order for cities, tribes and the empire. Their doctrines and their efforts had an influence on Christian, Jewish and Islamic thought, for centuries, and have been repeatedly rediscovered, in the Renaissance, by the Romantics, and in our own time by physicists and self-professed neo-pagans. Reading their texts demands more of us than scholarship (but not less): they are explorers’ notes to a reality, and – sometimes at least – they are spiritual exercises intended to change our way of seeing and feeling, ways of bringing ‘the god in us back to the god in the all’.


Notes 1. Chesterton (1907): a reference I owe to Martin Ward’s collection of Chesterton texts, at http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/philosophy.html (accessed 5 October 2007). 2. Enn VI.7[38].35. I have taken all translations from A. H. Armstrong’s edition of Plotinus’ Enneads. 3. Philo, De Ebrietate 41, citing Genesis 19.33. All passages from this treatise are taken from Philo (1929–62), vol.3, pp. 318–437. 4. Philo, De Ebrietate 48. 5. Philo, De Ebrietate 50. 6. Harris, (1989), 1st edn 1974, p. 266. 7. Enn. IV.4[29].31, 30f; see also III.7[45].1. 8. Enn. II.9[33].14. 9. ibid, 10. 10. Enn. III.2[47].4, 46. 11. Enn. III.6[26].8, 37f. 12. Porphyry, Life 2. 13. ibid., 10. 14. Enn. IV.4[28].43. 15. Porphyry, Life 10. 16. ibid., 2. 17. ibid., 11. 18. Enn. IV.4[28].42, 15f; see also IV.3[27].16. 19. see Enn. II.2[14] and II.1[40]. 20. Enn. III.2[47].8, 16–21, 26–8, 51–2. 21. Enn. III.2[47].11, 13ff. 22. Enn. V.5[32].12, 27f. 23. Enn. I.6[1].7, 34f. 24. Enn. IV.3[27].12, 14f. 25. Enn. III.2[47].15, 44f. 26. Enn. III.2[47].15, 61. 27. Enn. III.2[47].17, 87f. 28. Enn. VI.9[9].7; see also Plato Laws 1.624. 29. Enn. VI.5[23].10. 30. See Philo, De Opificio Mundi 70, in Winston (1981), p. 173. See further Lewy (1929). 31. Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit 68f, in Winston (1981), p. 169. 32. Enn. III.5[50].7 33. Enn. VI.9[9].11. 34. Armstrong op.cit: p. 342 n1. 35. Enn VI.9[9].9, 59f. 36. Plato, Theaetetus 176af; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 10.1177b33ff. 37. Enn. VI.5[23].7, 9f. 38. Enn. VI.7[38].15, 25f. 39. Enn. V.5[32].11. 40. Enn. II.6[1].7. 41. Enn. V.5[32].11. 42. Enn. I.6[1].5, 18f.

Conclusion 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

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Enn. I.6[1].6, 21. Enn. V.8[31].9, 41. Enn. IV.8[6].1. Enn. VI.5[23].1. Shestov, (1975), Pt.3 ‘Plotinus’s Ecstasies’: http://shestov.by.ru/ijb/jb_0.html (accessed 4 October 2007).

Bibliography Aristotle, 2002, Nicomachean Ethics, S. Broadie and C. Rowe (trans.), New York. Chesterton, G. K., 1907, ‘Philosophy for the School Room’, Daily News, June 22, http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/philosophy.html (accessed 5 October 2007). Harris, M., 1989, Cows, Wars, Pigs and Witches, New York. Lewy, H., 1929, Sobria Ebrietas, Giessen. Philo of Alexandria, 1929–62, Works, F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (trans.), 10vols, London. Philo of Alexandria, 1981, Philo of Alexandria: the Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections, D. Winston (trans.), London. Plato, 1973, Theaetetus, J. McDowell (trans.), Oxford. Plotinus, 1966–88, Plotinus, A. H. Armstrong, (trans.), 7vols, Cambridge MA. Shestov, L. I., 1975, In Job’s Balances, C. Coventry and C. A. Macartney (trans.), B. Martin (ed.), Athens OH (http://shestov.by.ru/ijb/jb_0.html (accessed 4 October 2007)).

Glossary Prepared by Crystal Addey

Abhinavagupta 975–1025 AD. Born in Kashmir, he wrote encyclopedically on Kashmiri Shaivism, and on the philosophy of aesthetics. Like other philosophers, West and East, he practised what he wrote about, and is regarded as both scholar and saint by Shaivites.

Abu Yazid Died 874. Sufi mystic who introduced the concept of fana, the passing away of the empirical self, a crucial and controversial theme in later Sufi mysticism.

Achilles Greek mythological figure. The central character of Homer’s Iliad, where he is depicted as the greatest of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War. In mythology, he is the son of Peleus and Thetis.

Aeon Greek: Aio¯n. This concept is of great importance in ancient Graeco-Roman religion and philosophy, but has a wide variety of uses and meanings. Primarily, it means ‘life,’ ‘life-time’ but this meaning was extended to ‘long periods of time,’ i.e., ages. It could also denote eternity. In Orphism, Aeon was personified as a god, the son of Chronos, another important deity. Mithraic depictions of this deity influenced the conception of Aeon as supreme deity and led to its adoption as tutelary deity of Alexandria. In Gnostic speculation, Aeon underwent strange metamorphosis. In Hermetic literature, Aeon as the deuteros theos (‘second god’) creates the cosmos and Time (‘chronos’).

Agamemnon A Greek mythological figure who is probably best known for his role in Homer’s Iliad as the King of Mycenae and commander-in-chief of the Greek expedition against Troy. In mythology, he is the son of Atreus, brother of Menelaus and husband of Clytemnestra.

Alexander of Aphrodisias Late second/early third century AD. Commentator on Aristotle. He was appointed public teacher of Aristotelian philosophy at some time between 198 and 209 AD, 302

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probably (although not certainly) in Athens. He is referred to by later writers as ‘the commentator’ on Aristotle. Commentaries on various Aristotelian works survive; many others are extensively quoted by later writers. He also wrote short treatises on various subjects, which demonstrate his development of Aristotelian material.

Al-Farabi, Abu nasr c.870–950 AD. Leading Islamic philosopher, thinker, logician, musician and major political scientist. He was known to the Arabs as the ‘second Master’ after Aristotle of Islamic philosophy. Deeply influenced by Neoplatonism, Al-Farabi was one of the first philosophers to transmit Aristotelian logic to the Islamic world; he has been called the ‘Father of Islamic Neoplatonism’. He wrote extensively on metaphysics and logic, and expanded Aristotle’s description of the intellect. He influenced major Islamic philosophers, such as Ibn Sina, but also major thinkers of Christian medieval Europe including Thomas Aquinas.

Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid 1059–1111 AD. Islamic jurist, theologian and mystical thinker. Primarily a theologian, Al-Ghazali taught in Baghdad but later abandoned academic study for a life of contemplation. He spent the rest of his life engaged in writing, Sufi practices and teaching his disciples. He valued the insight given by mystical comprehension above that attained through logic or reason. Generally, Al-Ghazali attacks the range of knowledge claimed by philosophers, particularly through a critique of knowledge of causation.

Al-Hallaj 854–922 AD. Sufi mystic. He was put to death for blasphemy, after seeming to assert identity with God.

Allegory Allegorical interpretation of works of literature – above all the mythological poems of Homer and Hesiod – involved the ‘decoding’ of secret, hidden meanings ‘underneath,’ or implied by, the literal meaning. The works of Homer and Hesiod were decoded allegorically as accounts of the physical world or the truths of morality and cosmology as early as the sixth century BC. Stoic philosophers provided a detailed range of allegorical readings and techniques. Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic philosophers, from the second century AD onwards, produced strongly allegorical readings, presenting the Greek poets, particularly Homer, as the first and greatest philosophers (Numenius, fragments 30–32, Des Places; Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs; Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Republic, 2, 3 and 10).

Amelius Gentilianus Third century AD. Neoplatonist philosopher and the pupil of Plotinus from 246– 269 AD, and thus Porphyry’s fellow student. He was of Etruscan origin and briefly

304 Glossary studied with a Stoic philosopher named Lysimachus. He wrote extensively, mainly presenting and defending Plotinus’ philosophy. He was a great admirer of Numenius and indeed moved to Apamea, Numenius’ home town, in 269 AD, where he spent the rest of his life.

Ammonius c. 434/45–517/26 AD. Neoplatonic philosopher and Head of the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria (from c. 470 AD onwards). He was the son of the Neoplatonist philosopher Hermeas and had been a student of Proclus. He himself taught Damascius, Olympiodorus, Simplicius, Philoponus and Asclepius. His output was fairly prolific and he is particularly well-known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle. He seems to have argued for an even greater level of harmony between Plato and Aristotle than was commonly accepted even by most Neoplatonist philosophers.

Ammonius Saccas Third century AD. Platonist philosopher, active in Alexandria in the first half of the third century AD. He is most famous as the teacher of Plotinus, who studied under him 232–242 AD, as well as of Origen the Christian, Origen the pagan, Longinus and others. According to Porphyry, he was brought up as a Christian but reverted to paganism as soon as he began to think for himself. An elusive figure, he wrote nothing, yet his legacy to Neoplatonism involves his instruction and teaching of Plotinus for eleven years.

Anaxagoras Probably c. 500–428 BC. Pre-socratic philosopher. A native of Clazomenae, he became the first philosopher known to have settled in Athens, where he was later prosecuted on a charge of impiety. Fragments of only one book of Anaxagoras’ survive, preserved in Simplicius’ writings. He was concerned with metaphysics, cosmology and epistemology. His doctrines include the fundamental homogeneity of reality and the idea that our differentiated cosmos was created by the action of mind, an entirely discrete principle, unmixed with any other substances but capable of ordering and controlling them.

Anaximenes of Miletus Flourished c.546–525 BC. Pre-socratic philosopher. He followed Anaximander in composing a treatise in Ionian prose in which he developed a world system on the basis of an infinite or unlimited principle, which he identified as ae¯r (cosmic air).

Antony, St. of Egypt c.251–356 AD. Christian hermit and Desert Father. In approximately 269 AD Antony gave away his possessions and devoted himself to a life of asceticism;

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in c. 285 AD he retired completely into the desert. He attracted a number of disciples and organized them into a community of hermits who lived under rule in approximately 305 AD. He later exercised his influence in support of the Nicene party in the Arian controversy, in which he was associated with Athanasius.

Apollo Greek god of the sun, truth, healing and purification, prophecy and oracles, poetry and music, care for young citizens. One of the twelve Olympian deities, Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto and brother of Artemis. His main cult centres, Delos and Delphi, are well-known. The Delphic oracle was sacred to Apollo; he was thought to deliver oracles to enquirers through the mouth of the Pythia, the prophetess of the shrine. One of his cult epithets was Musagetes, ‘Leader of the Muses’. He is also associated with philosophy.

Aquinas, St. Thomas 1225–1274 AD. Italian philosopher-theologian, the most influential figure of the medieval period. He produced a powerful philosophical synthesis that combined Aristotelian and Neoplatonic concepts within a Christian context. His writings continue to exert an influence amongst Catholic theologians and some contemporary philosophers of ethics.

Aristotle 384–322 BC. One of the most significant and influential Greek philosophers, Aristotle was born in Stagira and therefore is sometimes called the Stagirite. Aristotle travelled to Athens at the age of seventeen and entered Plato’s Academy, where he remained until Plato’s death in 348/7 BC. Plato’s philosophical influence is evident in all of Aristotle’s work. Aristotle also tutored Alexander the Great while in Macedon. In 335 BC, Aristotle established his own philosophical school, the Lyceum. Aristotle is particularly well-known for his scientific writings and biological research. He also wrote works on logic and metaphysics, nature, life and mind, ethics, politics and art. Aristotle’s achievements have been fundamental to much of the subsequent history of western philosophy.

Asclepius Fifth–sixth centuries AD. Alexandrian Neoplatonist philosopher. The student of Ammonius, who was Head of the Neoplatonic School at Alexandria. His extant works are commentaries on Aristotle.

Athanasius Alexandrian rhetor, probably of the fourth century. He wrote a commentary on Hermogenes’ On Issues; an epitome of the prolegomena survives, along with a few fragments. We also have a few fragments from his commentaries on speeches by Demosthenes and Aelius Aristides.

306 Glossary c.297–373 AD. Early Christian Church Father, bishop in Alexandria and a leading protagonist in the fourth-century disputes concerning Christ’s relationship to God (the Arian controversy). He made leading contributions to the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Trinity.

Augustine, St (Aurelius Augustinus) 354–430 AD. Christian Church Father, writer and apologist, Latin philosopher. Augustine was born in Thagaste (modern Souk Ahras, Algeria). He taught rhetoric at Thagaste, Carthage and Rome. He was an adherent of Manicheism, a Gnostic sect promising Wisdom but then underwent a life-changing conversion, in 386, to Christianity, under the patronage of Ambrose, bishop of Milan. He was ordained priest of Hippo in 391 and became bishop in 395. Augustine’s major works include an autobiographical masterpiece, the Confessions and De civitate Dei (the City of God), presenting a definitive juxtaposition of Christianity with paganism and Neoplatonism. Augustine transformed Latin Christianity through his philosophical views, which were influenced by Neoplatonism. He has left his distinctive mark on most aspects of Western Christianity.

Bacon, Francis 1561–1626 AD. English philosopher, essayist and scientific methodologist. He endorsed the new empiricism resulting from the achievements of early modern science. He opposed alleged knowledge based on appeals to authority, arguing for a new methodology and attitude based strictly on scientific principles.

Bardesanes 154–222 AD. Syrian philosopher and theologian with Gnostic tendencies. He lived at the court of Abgar IX of Edessa, where Syrian, Iranian and hellenistic influences intermingled. He wrote in Syriac and wrote the Book of the Laws of the Lands, showing his interest in other nations. He opposed the dualism of Marcion and the denial of freewill in astrology, but was influenced by the latter. His cosmology was regarded as Gnostic.

Basilides Second century AD. An Alexandrian Gnostic. Irenaeus and Hippolytus give versions of Basilides’ teaching, which involved a complex Gnostic metaphysical scheme and a large array of virtues, powers and angels, grouped severally in 365 heavens.

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 1714–1762 AD. German philosopher, who is known primarily for his introduction of the term ‘aesthetics’ to describe the effects of art and nature, which in the course of the seventeenth century replaced the older theory of beauty. Thus, he introduced the discipline of aesthetics into German philosophy.

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Berkeley, George 1685–1783. Irish philosopher and bishop in the Anglican Church of Ireland. He is regarded as one of the three great British empiricists along with Locke and Hume. He developed new and influential views on the visual perception of distance and size, and an idealist metaphysical system which he defended partly on the ground that it was the best defence of common sense and safeguard against scepticism.

Bhagavad Gita From Sanskrit Bhagavadgīta¯, meaning ‘song of the exalted lord / blessed one’. A famous Hindu philosophical and spiritual poem, often considered to encapsulate many of the main teachings of Hinduism. It was composed and edited between the fifth century BC and the second century AD, and contains eighteen chapters and seven hundred verses and forms the sixth book (Chapters 23–40) of the Indian epic Mahabharata. Much commented on by hundreds of Indian authors and translated into all the major languages of the world, it is the bestknown Hindu scripture worldwide.

Blake, William 1757–1827 AD. Poet and painter. Blake was a mixture of extremes, both in his thought and work. He evolved a highly intricate mythology, its allusive sources only now being unravelled by scholars. His interest in legend and antiquity was revived with the Romantics’ rediscovery of the past, especially the Gothic and the medieval. He insisted on the need to remake these legends in the poet’s own terms and the need to find a new language for expressing them.

Bonaventure, St. c.1221–1274 AD. Italian theologian. Born John of Fidanza in Bagnorea, Tuscany, he was educated at Paris and later joined the Franciscans about 1243 and was elected minister general of the order in 1257. He wrote and preached extensively on the relation between theology and philosophy, developing a synthesis of them in which Neoplatonic doctrines are used within a Christian framework.

Brentano, Franz Clemens 1838–1917 AD. A philosopher and psychologist who made significant contributions to many branches of philosophy, including psychology and philosophy of mind, ontology, ethics and the philosophy of language. He also published several works on the history of philosophy, particularly Aristotle, and argued that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. His ideas influenced the phenomenological movement of the twentieth century.

308 Glossary

Cambridge Platonists A group of seventeenth-century philosopher-theologians at the University of Cambridge. The leading figures included Henry More (1614–1687), Ralph Cudworth (1617–1689), Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), John Smith (1618–1652), Peter Sterry (1613–1672), Nathaniel Culverwell (1619–1651) and John Worthington (1618–1671). As a generic label, ‘Cambridge Platonists’ is a useful umbrella term rather than a signal of doctrinal unity. Broadly speaking, they believed that Plato and Platonism were compatible with or useful for Christianity. They interpreted Plato in a Neoplatonic manner. Their concerns were ultimately religious and theological rather than primarily philosophical. They wanted to defend ‘true religion’, namely, their latitudinarian vision of Anglican Christianity, against a wide variety of perceived enemies.

Cassian, John c. 360 to after 430 AD. Christian monk. As a young man, he joined a monastery in Bethlehem but left soon after (c.385 AD) to study monasticism in Egypt, where he was much influenced by Evagrius Ponticus. In approximately 404 AD he became a deacon of the Church of Constantinople and later (c.415 AD) founded two monasteries near Marseilles. He wrote two works, the Conferences and the Institutes, the latter of which sets out the ordinary rules for the monastic life. This work greatly influenced the later formation of monastic rules, being drawn on, for example, by St. Benedict.

Chaldaean Oracles A set of mystical oracles and teachings, used extensively by later Neoplatonist philosophers such as Proclus and Iamblichus. Written in Greek hexameter verse, they comprise a complete cosmology and metaphysical system, and a set of moral and ritual instructions, particularly aimed at those practising theurgy. This collection of oracles is thought to have been composed in the first or second century AD. Most of the oracles contained within the collection are ascribed to the Greek deities Apollo and Hekate. The Chaldaean Oracles survive only in fragments, preserved mostly by Neoplatonic philosophers such as Proclus and Damascius.

Clement of Alexandria c.150 to after 211 AD. Christian writer. He was probably born at Athens to pagan parents. He converted to Christianity and after extensive travels to seek instruction from Christian teachers, he studied in Alexandria. Some of his works survive, including the Protrepticus, or ‘Hortatory Address to the Greeks’ (c.190), designed to prove the superiority of Christianity to pagan cults and way of life. He added little to Christian dogma, but his philosophy points the way to Origen.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1772–1834 AD. British philosopher, critic and romantic poet. Coleridge’s reputation as a poet is secured by a small, though radiant, corpus of major works. The

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distinctively Continental cast of his thought was new to British contemporaries. His theory of the poetic imagination as a unifying and mediating power within divided modern cultures provided one of the central concepts of Romantic aesthetics. He was friends with William Wordsworth and provided much inspiration to younger romantic poets, such as Byron.

Damascius c. 462–540 AD. Late Neoplatonist philosopher. He was the head of the Academy in Athens at the time of its closure in 529 AD. He largely accepted the metaphysical system of Syrianus and Proclus, but subjected it to dialectical demonstration and scrutiny in a series of commentaries and especially in his treatise On First Principles. He was the teacher of Simplicius.

David Sixth-century philosopher. Author of prolegomena to philosophy, and a commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge.

Democritus Fifth century BC. Born: 460/457 BC. Greek philosopher, who was born in Abdera in Thrace. He apparently wrote works focusing on mathematics, music, ethics, physics and biology, although none of this work survives (however there are surviving fragments of his work containing ethical maxims). From the time of Aristotle, Democritus and Leucippus are jointly credited with the creation of the atomic theory of the universe; it is now impossible to distinguish the contribution of each. He defended ideas of the infinite universe, plural and perishable worlds, efficient, non-teleological causes and the atomic theory of matter. His major followers in antiquity were Epicurus and Lucretius.

Derrida, Jacques 1930–2004 AD. A prolific French philosopher born in Algeria. His major argument asserts the necessity of interrogating the Western philosophical tradition from the standpoint of ‘deconstruction.’ Deconstruction is concerned with the category of the ‘wholly other.’ Although Derrida eschewed any definition of deconstruction, it is often taken to be a method of examining texts to reveal their contradictions, silences and blindspots.

Descartes, René 1596–1650 AD. French philosopher and mathematician, a founder of the ‘modern age’ of philosophy and one of the most important figures in the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century. Descartes’ theory of knowledge has been widely influential in modern philosophy, and he is one of the central points of reference for modern philosophy, particularly as regards epistemology, theory of mind, theory of matter and metaphysics.

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Determinism The idea that every event is necessitated (determined) by antecedent conditions and the laws of nature.

Dianoia Greek: intelligence, mind, thought.

Dunamis/dynamis Greek: active and passive capacity, power, potentiality. For Neoplatonist philosophers, as for Aristotle, dunamis is potentiality as distinct from actuality.

Elias Sixth-century philosopher, possibly a pupil of Olympiodorus. Author of commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge, and Aristotle’s Categories and Prior Analytics.

Eliot, T.S. (Thomas Stearns) 1888–1965 AD. Poet, critic and dramatist. In 1948 Eliot received both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Order of Merit. These honours acknowledged his vital role in showing poetry how to become modern. With its dense allusions to earlier literature, The Waste Land (one of his major works) had crucially redefined the traditions of use to the modern poet. Eliot’s praise of the Elizabethan dramatists and the metaphysical poets in his criticism confirmed a preference for intellectual toughness, energy and wit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 1803–1882 AD. The son of a Unitarian clergyman, Emerson was born in Boston and educated at Harvard. He studied philosophy extensively, and acted as a channel for many religious, philosophical and literary currents of the early nineteenth century, exemplified by his meetings with Coleridge and Wordsworth. He was the central figure of New England transcendentalism, a movement centred on the ‘Transcendental Club’ formed in Boston in 1836. Emerson had a huge following and his journal The Dial was the main literary organ of New England transcendentalism.

Eunapius of Sardis Fourth century AD. Greek sophist, historian and biographer, who was born at Sardis c. 345 AD and studied there under Chrysanthius and later in Athens under Prohaeresius. When he returned to Sardis he entered the circle of local Neoplatonists, learned theurgy and medicine and mainly taught rhetoric. A great admirer of the emperor Julian and a vehement opponent of Christianity, he wrote to defend the traditional Graeco-Roman pagan religion. He is

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most famous for his work Lives of the Sophists and Philosophers, which contains biographies of many Neoplatonist philosophers and, on the basis of first-hand information, deals mainly with fourth–century Neoplatonists, tracing a line of Neoplatonic descent from Iamblichus.

Eurystheus A Greek mythological figure who was granted rule of the Argolid by the god Zeus through the goddess Hera’s trickery. Heracles was enslaved to him while he performed his twelve Labours, at the command of the Delphic oracle and as a punishment for killing his wife and children in a fit of madness.

Eusebius of Caesarea 269–339 AD. A Christian Church Father, biblical scholar and apologist and the effective founder of the Christian genres of Church history and chronicle. He is an important contemporary source for the reign of Constantine I. He was elected as bishop of Caesarea in c.313 AD and held this post until his death in 339 AD. During this period he played a significant role in ecclesiastical politics in the eastern empire. He wrote biblical commentaries, historical works and apologetic treatises, the most well-known of which are the Preparation for the Gospel and the Proof of the Gospel, which refute and attack pagan philosophy while advocating the supremacy of Christianity.

Evagrius Ponticus 346–399 AD. Christian Desert Father and writer. A native of Pontus, he was ordained deacon by St Gregory of Nazianus and became a preacher at Constantinople. In 382 AD, he went to the desert, where he spent the rest of his life. In his writings, he was influenced by, and developed, Origen’s metaphysics.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 1762–1814 AD. German philosopher, who developed Kant’s Critical philosophy into a system of his own, which he named ‘Theory of Science’ or Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte continually revised this system and his output was prolific.

Ficino, Marsilio 1433–1499 AD. Italian Neoplatonic philosopher who played a leading role in the cultural milieu of Florence. Through Ficino’s translation and commentaries, the works of Plato first became accessible to the Latin-speaking West. He accepted Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato, whom he saw as the heir of Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical Egyptian sage and supposed author of the Hermetic corpus. He endorsed the idea of a prisca theologia, an ancient wisdom encapsulating religious and philosophical truth, which was handed on to Plato, and later validated by Christian revelation.

312 Glossary

Freud, Sigmund 1856–1939 AD. Freud developed the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, one of the most influential schools of psychology and psychotherapy of the twentieth century.

Galileo, Galilei 1564–1642 AD. Italian astronomer, natural philosopher and physicist. His Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems (published in 1632) defended Copernicus by arguing against the major tenets of Aristotelian cosmology. His work was highly controversial at the time; he was called before the Inquisition and made to recant his Copernican views and spent the last years of his life under house arrest. His work Discourse concerning Two New Sciences (published 1638) created the modern science of mechanics: it proved the laws of free fall, thus making it possible to study accelerated motions and proposed a theory of parabolic ballistics. His scientific and technological achievements were prodigious. He made important scientific discoveries and his astronomical observation led to the discovery of four of Jupiter’s satellites, the moon’s mountains, sunspots and the nature of the Milky Way.

Geist German: spirit, soul or mind. The general term employed by Hegel and his followers to describe the all-pervasive collective substance from which mental life, in their view, is composed. The German idealist philosophers supposed Geist to be the ultimate reality, and the universe to be intelligible as the object of its own self-understanding.

Gibbon, Edward 1737–1794 AD. Historian. He is famous for writing the voluminous work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, mapping the history of the fall of the Roman Empire during the late antique period, additionally covering the Eastern half of the Roman Empire.

Gnosticism, Gnostics A religion and philosophical movement in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Gnosticism comprised many sects in various places, under various leaders. Because of this, recent scholars have become wary of using the term ‘Gnosticism’ as a generic label. Generally, Gnostic sects merit their designation by each claiming a secret gnosis (‘knowledge’) about the constitution of the universe, human nature and destiny. Mankind was generally seen as having a dual nature: a spiritual and material element. They could be saved from their wretched material state by acquiring true knowledge (gnosis) of their real nature, aiming to free

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their souls to return to communion with the Supreme Being. The incarnation of Christ could really be explained in Gnostic terms as the descent of a divine aeon from Supreme Being to mediate to men a saving gnosis. Therefore there were many Christian Gnostic sects.

Gregory Nazianzen, St. c. 330–390 AD. Cappadocian bishop, Patristic philosopher and early Church Father. He studied at the University of Athens and later adopted the monastic life. His writings include an elaborate treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Grosseteste, Robert c.1170–1253 AD. Grosseteste’s thought represents the conflicting currents in the intellectual climate of Europe in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. He made accessible the texts and ideas of the Arabic and Greek intellectual traditions to his Latin contemporaries. He worked on science, natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and theology. He was also a translator and commentator on Aristotle and pseudo-Dionysius. He was greatly influenced by Augustine.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1770–1831 AD. German philosopher, who was one of the most influential of the German Idealists. He is also well-known for his philosophy of history and philosophy of religion. His works include The Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic (an attempt to give a philosophical account of the concepts necessary for all kinds of account-giving), Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and The Philosophy of Right (a controversial book on political philosophy).

Heidegger, Martin 1889–1976 AD. German philosopher, initially influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology but developed his own existential variant. His most famous work, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), published in 1927, emphasized human finitude and our being-towards-death.

Hekate Greek goddess who was popular from the time of Hesiod until late antiquity. Unknown in Homer and harmless in Hesiod, she emerges by the fifth century BC as a more sinister divine figure associated with magic and witchcraft, lunar lore, the Underworld, creatures of the night, dog sacrifices, doorways and crossroads. This goddess is often depicted with three faces. In the theurgy of the Chaldaean

314 Glossary Oracles adopted by the Neoplatonists, Hekate, though still associated with demons, has become an epiphanic celestial deity and a cosmological principle – the World Soul – accessible through ritual and contemplation.

Heracles A Greek mythological figure who was the greatest of the Greek heroes. He famously had to perform twelve Labours, at the command of the Delphic oracle, after killing his wife and children in a fit of madness. He took part in the expedition against Troy and sacked Oechalia, accompanied the Argonauts, founded the Olympian games and ultimately died by burning on Mt. Oeta, after he had been inadvertently poisoned by his wife Deianira.

Heraclitus Flourished c.500 BC, Pre-socratic philosopher and thinker. His work only survives in fragments, which are fairly cryptic and dense. Heraclitus’ central concept is that of logos, by which he seems to mean, simultaneously, his own discourse, connected discourse and thought in general, and the connected order in things that we apprehend. Heraclitus asserted that the order we experience is in a constant process of change; thus, if we step into the same river, we find different waters constantly flowing by us.

Hermetic literature, Hermetica Hermes Trismegistos, Hermes thrice great, was the Greek rendering of the Egyptian title of Thoth, who was identified with Hermes. He was reputed to be the author of a series of philosophical and religious revelations, written in Greek. These writings, known as the Hermetica or Hermetic literature, originate in Egypt. They represent a Graeco-Egyptian synthesis and reproduce a kind of theosophy which synthesizes many religious traditions of the ancient Near East.

Hippolytus of Rome c.170–c.236 AD. Christian bishop of Portus. He died in exile in Sardinia under Maximinus’ persecution. A statue of him in Rome lists his works, but the attribution of almost every work ascribed to him has been disputed.

Homer The ancient world attributed to the poet Homer the two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the earliest and among the greatest works of Greek literature. Nothing reliable is known about Homer. There is general scholarly agreement that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be dated in the second half of the eighth century BC. As for Homer himself, his provenance is unknown but Chios and Smyrna have the strongest claims to have been his birthplace.

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Horace 65–8 BC. Roman poet. He was accepted into Maecenas’ circle of writers in 38 BC, a group which included Virgil. In his later years the emperor Augustus also sought to be on close terms with him. His works include the Epodes, Odes (Carmina), Satires and Epistles.

Hume, David 1711–1776 AD. Scottish philosopher and historian who may be considered the leading neo-sceptic of the early modern period. Many of Hume’s immediate predecessors (Descartes, Bayle and Berkeley) had dealt with important elements of scepticism. Hume consciously incorporated many of these same elements into a philosophical system that manages to be both sceptical and constructive.

Husserl, Edmund Gustav Albert 1859–1938 AD. German mathematician, philosopher and a founder of phenomenology. Husserl has been very influential in twentieth-century philosophy, particularly in Continental Europe and has inspired work in the social sciences. His concept of intentionality is viewed as a way of overcoming the Cartesian dualism between mind and world.

Hypostasis Greek: standing under, substance; real being (frequently in opposition to appearances). The process of regarding a concept or abstraction as an independent or real entity. Thus the concept is viewed as an underlying subject or substance that supports attributes.

Iamblichus c.240–c.325 AD. Neoplatonist philosopher and theurgist, born at Chalcis in Coele Syria, It is reported that he was taught by the Neoplatonist Porphyry and later founded his own school in Syria (almost certainly in Apamea). Extant writings include a compendium of Pythagorean philosophy and ‘The reply of Abammon to Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo’, now known as De mysteriis. Iamblichus’ lost writings include an extensive work on Chaldaean theology; letters and commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, which were fundamental sources for later Neoplatonist commentators. Iamblichus’ successors, especially Syrianus and Proclus, credit him with determining the direction taken by later Neoplatonic philosophy. He established a standard school curriculum, extended the use of mathematical ideas in philosophy, refined Neoplatonic metaphysics and integrated the ‘theologies’ of the ancients (Egyptians, Persians, Chaldaeans, Orphics, Pythagoreans) into Neoplatonic philosophy. He was a supporter and defender of ritual, particularly Chaldaean theurgy.

316 Glossary

Ibn Bâjja, Abu Bakr Muhammed ibn Yahya ibn as-Say’igh Birth date unknown. Died 1138 AD. Islamic philosopher. Ibn Bâjja’s philosophy is epitomized in two words: al-ittisal (conjunction) and al-tawahhud (solitude). By conjunction, he means union with the divine realm, which he argued is the means to one’s completion and thus happiness, as a human being. Solitude is separation from a society that is lacking in knowledge. His works include medical works, commentaries on Aristotle and al-Farabi and original philosophical treatises.

Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Abu Ali Al-Husayn 980–1037 AD. Leading Islamic philosopher and Neoplatonist. Avicenna was born in Bukhara in Central Asia, and educated in literature, law, logic, and mathematics, as well as science and metaphysics. He wrote between one and two hundred works on diverse subjects, mostly in Arabic but also in Persian. Avicenna represents a Neoplatonic version of Aristotelianism, a strand of thought considered influential on thirteenth-century scholasticism.

Ibn T ufayl, Abu Bakr Muhammed c. 1110–1185 AD. Islamic philosopher, known in the West as Abubacer. His only extant work is H ayy Ibn Yaqzan (The Living Son of the Vigilant), a philosophical treatise in an endearing literary form. It relates the story of human knowledge, as it rises from a blank state to a mystical or direct experience of the divine after passing through the necessary natural experiences.

Idealism Any philosophical doctrine holding that reality is fundamentally mental in nature, that it is mind-correlative or mind-coordinated. In other words, any doctrine which holds that the real objects constituting the ‘external world’ are not independent of cognizing minds, but exist only in some way correlative to mental operations. Therefore, Idealism is opposed to the naturalistic belief that mind is itself to be exhaustively understood as a product of natural processes.

Intellect Greek: nous. Intuitive intellect. This is held by Neoplatonist philosophers to be unitary and exists prior to individual human souls – it is the unitary and divine element present in all man, since all souls participate in Intellect.

Julian 331–363 AD. Commonly known as Julian ‘the Apostate,’ Julian’s full name was Flavius Claudius Iulianus. As the last pagan Roman emperor (361–363), Julian sought to restore traditional Graeco-Roman religious cults and practices to the

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Late Roman empire. Julian himself was a Neoplatonist who was heavily influenced by Iamblichus. Julian’s personal piety and intellectual and cultural interests are reflected in his extant works, which show considerable learning and some literary talent. They include panegyrics, polemics, theological and satirical, and a collection of public and private letters. Only fragments of his antiChristian critique, Against the Galileans, survive.

Justinian I 482–565 AD. A saint of the Orthodox Church, and emperor from 527 AD. In his time Roman Law was codified (and stills serves as the basis of civil law in many modern states), some of the older territories of the Western Empire were recovered, and Hagia Sophia was rebuilt. That the School of Athens was closed on his orders in 529 is perhaps an exaggeration, but pagan philosophers did not prosper under his rule. Historians, poets and artists had better fortune.

Justin Martyr c.100–165 AD. Christian apologist, who died a martyr in Rome after his condemnation as a Christian. After leaving Samaria, his birthplace, he set up a small school in Rome, and wrote two Apologies, nominally directed to Antoninus Pius. One defends Christianity against intellectual contempt; the second is inspired by acts of persecution following denunciations of Christians to the authorities.

Kant, Immanuel 1724–1804 AD. Important German philosopher whose distinctive concern was to vindicate the authority of reason. He made important contributions to moral philosophy and metaphysics. He also wrote important essays on science, legal and political theory and the philosophy of history. His major works are Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement.

Krishna The most popular (eighth) incarnation (avatara) of Vishnu, the supreme being and a saviour god of Hinduism. For many of his worshippers, he is the only full manifestation of Vishnu. He is the subject of major Hindu classics such as the Bhagavad Gita.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 1646–1716 AD. German rationalist philosopher, mathematician and polymath, who made significant contributions in geology, linguistics, historiography, mathematics, physics and philosophy. He was most well known in his lifetime for his contributions to mathematics, especially to the development of the calculus, where there was great debate over whether Newton of Leibniz should be credited

318 Glossary with priority for its discovery. The current scholarly consensus is that each discovered the basic foundations of the calculus independently. Leibniz also made important contributions in philosophy, particularly in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology and logic.

Levinas, Emmanuel 1906–1995 AD. French philosopher influenced by the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger. Levinas questioned the basis of traditional ethics on the grounds that it did not take into account that one’s obligations to the Other are unlimited and cannot be diminished by some criterion such as one’s responsibility being limited to what is within one’s power to achieve. Thus, his work attempted to explore the meaning of ethics from a phenomenological starting point.

Locke, John 1632–1704 AD. English philosopher and the senior figure of British empiricism. Locke is particularly famous for his two major works, Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689) and Second Treatise of Government (published anonymously in 1689). Locke’s contribution lies in his close attention to the actual phenomena of mental life, but his philosophy is balanced between the radical empiricism of followers such as Berkeley and Hume and the theological world of reliance on reason that formed the climate in which he lived.

Materialism The view that the world is entirely composed of matter.

Maximus of Ephesus Fourth century AD. Died: 370 AD. A Neoplatonist philosopher and theurgist who famously taught the future emperor Julian. A pupil of Aedesius, who was himself a pupil of Iamblichus, Maximus followed his teacher’s tendency to emphasize theurgy. However, he produced work on Aristotelian logic and wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. One of the most famous anecdotes about this philosopher is related by the ancient biographer Eunapius, who describes how Maximus once performed an act of telestike, animating a statue of the goddess Hekate in a temple.

Megasthenes c.350–290 BC. A diplomat and historian, who lived with Sibyrtius, whom Alexander the Great made governor of Arachosia and Gedrosia. He served on several embassies, 302–291 BC, and his mission to Chandragupta, the founding king of the Maurya empire in north India, was especially significant to his work. He embodied his firsthand experience in an Indian history, which included geography, including peoples and cities, system of government, classification of the citizens and religious customs, and archaeology, history and legends.

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Neoplatonism A modern term used to describe a philosophical movement. The Neoplatonists were pagan philosophers, beginning with Plotinus, who gave a new direction to Platonic philosophy between the third and sixth centuries AD. The word ‘Neoplatonists’ and ‘Neoplatonism’ are modern terms. These philosophers thought of themselves as simply ‘Platonists’, philosophers who followed Plato. They synthesized the thought of Plato with other main schools of Greek philosophy, for example, with the thought of Aristotle. They wrote philosophical commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle, as well as their own works on philosophical topics. The impact of their work includes their religious and moral ideals, their conception of reality as spiritual activity or states of consciousness. For the Neoplatonists, philosophy was a way of life. They viewed the human soul as a voyager with its ultimate aim the re-ascent to its divine origins.

Neopythagoreanism A modern term for the renewed interest in Pythagorean ideas and practices that took widely different forms and began to appear in the hellenistic period. Individuals described as ‘Pythagoreans’ appear in the first century BC in Alexandria and Rome (Nigidius Figulus and his circle, among others) and are found in the first century AD (Moderatus of Gades, Apollonius of Tyana) and in the second (Nicomachus of Gerasa, Numenius, Alexander of Abonuteichos). Some were philosophers interested in Pythagorean metaphysics, mathematics and number symbolism. The Pythagorean way of life, involving ascetic, spiritual and vegetarian practices, was followed by Moderatus and by Apollonius. Much of Neopythagoreanism and the legend of Pythagoras were incorporated in Neoplatonism by Porphyry and Iamblichus.

Nicholas of Cusa 1401–1464 AD. German philosopher, an important Renaissance Platonist. He is also called Nicolaus Cusanus, Nicholas Kryfts. In 1437–38, he had his famous insight into the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) in the infinite, upon which his work On Learned Ignorance is based. His central insight was that all oppositions are united in their infinite measure, so that what would be logical contradictions for finite things coexist without contradiction in God, who is the measure of all things, and identical to them in so far as he is identical with their reality or essence.

Noêsis Greek: thought, in wider and narrower senses: Plato says that knowledge (epistêmê) and reasoning (dianoia) taken together can be called noêsis, implying a level of discursive thought. For Proclus, noesis is pure intuitive apprehension.

Numenius of Apamea Second century AD. A leading Platonist and Pythagorean, about whom little is known. Substantial fragments of two of his works are extant: a metaphysical

320 Glossary dialogue On the Good and a history of the Academy designed to show how much it had corrupted Plato’s teaching. He claimed that Plato’s teaching was Pythagorean and related it to the ancient wisdom of the Brahmans, Magi, Egyptians and the Jews, whose scriptures he interpreted allegorically. He shared ideas with the Chaldaean Oracles and certain types of Gnosticism. He had considerable influence on Plotinus, Origen, Porphyry and later Neoplatonists.

Ockham’s razor Also called the principle of parsimony, a methodological principle endorsing a bias towards simplicity in the construction of theories. Found already in Aristotle, the phrase, ‘entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity’ became associated with William Ockham, possibly because it characterized the spirit of his philosophical conclusions.

Odysseus A Greek mythological figure. The central hero and protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey and an important hero and member of the Greek expedition in Homer’s Iliad. In mythology, Odysseus was the king of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticlea, father of Telemachus and husband of Penelope. In the Odyssey he is in some ways the typical ‘trickster’ of folktales, who uses guile and deception to defeat stronger opponents. He is depicted as clever and cunning.

Olympiodorus c. 495/505 to after 565 AD. Alexandrian Neoplatonist philosopher, possibly head of the Alexandrian school at the time of the Justinian edict resulting in the closure of the pagan schools in 529. Some of his commentaries on Platonic dialogues and the works of Aristotle survive, mainly in the form of notes taken on his lectures.

Origen c.184/185 to 254/255 AD. Christian writer and philosopher. Origen was born at Alexandria of Christian parents. Origen wrote a wide selection of work, but only a fraction has survived. He was a pioneer in textual criticism of the Bible, exegesis and systematic theology. He wrote commentaries on biblical scripture, an original exposition of Christianity (De Principiis) and apologetic works, such as the Contra Celsum, which provides a detailed refutation of the learned attack of the Middle Platonist Celsus.

Orpheus A mythological figure, said to be the son of Apollo and a Muse. He was a famous musician, whose song had superhuman or semi-divine power. By the fifth century BC, Orpheus’ powerful songs were thought to encompass epic poetry, healing songs, oracles and initiatory rites. His most well-known myths involve his tragic

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love for Eurydice and journey into the Underworld to retrieve her, and his dismemberment by a group of Thracian women or Bacchic maenads. An important consequence of his miraculous song was his authorship of the so-called Orphic poetry: Pythagoreans and initiates of Bacchic mystery cults adopted him as their figurehead, and the Neoplatonist philosophers discerned deep theosophical knowledge in these poems and viewed Orpheus as a primary theological thinker.

Parmenides Early fifth century BC,. Parmenides of Elea was a Pre-socratic philosopher, who is said to have legislated for his native city and to have visited Athens in his sixtyfifth year. His philosophical poem, in hexameters, survives in large fragments. It describes the journey of the initiate poet-speaker to a mysterious place where night and day cross paths and opposites are undivided. Here the poet-speaker is greeted and instructed by a goddess who teaches him the ‘Way of Truth.’ The poem combines sublime religious language and imagery with philosophical rigour and logic.

Philo c.20 BC–50 AD. Philo was a Jewish thinker living in Alexandria who sought to harmonize the Hebrew Scriptures with current Greek philosophical theory. God was essentially One, but represented by twin powers, of justice and mercy, combined in the heavenly Logos, which was also identified with the heavenly Adam, our paradeigm and inspiration. His hermeneutical techniques, similar to those used by the Greek philosophers on the stories of Homer, were also followed by later Christian commentators. He is known to have headed a delegation to the emperor Caligula in defence of the Alexandrian Jewish community, and to have survived the experience.

Philoponus, John c. 490 to the 570s AD. Christian Neoplatonist, who studied and wrote in Alexandria. He influenced subsequent science down to Galileo by replacing many of Aristotle’s theories with an account focused on the Christian idea that the universe had an absolute beginning. But because his own Christian theology was unorthodox, he was anathematized in 680, and his scientific influence came to the West much later through the Arabs. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle, as well as a treatise attacking the philosophical paganism of Proclus and a series of treatises on Christian theology. He was taught by Ammonius son of Hermeias and was known as Grammaticus. Two of his works on grammar survive, as do works on many other subjects.

Philostratus, L. Flavius Third century AD. Died: c.244/29 AD. A biographer and writer of the Second Sophistic period and cultural milieu. He enjoyed a distinguished local career and a place in the circle of Iulia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus. She commissioned

322 Glossary his ‘Life’ of Apollonius of Tyana, a philosophical holy man of the first century AD; later he produced a work entitled Lives of the Sophists.

Plato c.429–347 BC. Plato is arguably the most influential and significant of all Greek philosophers, certainly he has had a profound influence on the subsequent history of Western philosophy. The major philosophical influence on his life was Socrates, whose ideas and method of questioning (elenchus) are preserved by Plato in his dialogues. Plato’s works are all in the form of dialogues in which he himself does not appear. Plato has made decisive and profound contributions to metaphysics, ethics, politics, epistemology and psychology. He is original, radical and daring, but also elusive. His ideas are logically clear and uncompromising, challenging the reader to join in the dialogue and take up the challenge, following the arguments presented.

Plotinus 205–269/270 AD. Founder of Neoplatonism and teacher of Porphyry, Plotinus is regarded as the most significant Neoplatonist philosopher. He studied under Ammonius Saccas at Alexandria and later settled in Rome as a teacher of philosophy, where he became the centre of an influential circle of intellectuals. Plotinus’ writings consist of a series of philosophical essays arising directly from discussions in his seminars. These treatises were published by his student Porphyry, who edited them in six sets of nine, giving them their title, the Enneads. Plotinus’ essays range over almost the whole field of ancient philosophy: ethics, aesthetics, physics and cosmology, psychology, metaphysics, logic and epistemology.

Plutarch of Chaeronea c. 50 to after 120 AD. Middle Platonist philosopher, historian and biographer. Plutarch came from a well-established family in Chaeronea in Boeotia, Greece. He knew Athens well, and visited both Egypt and Italy, lecturing and teaching in Rome. For the last thirty years of his life Plutarch was also a priest of Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. He wrote approximately 230 works, of which some 128 survive. Many of his works are dialogues and he also wrote rhetorical and ethical works. The ‘Parallel Lives’ remain his greatest achievements, pairs of biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen and leaders. We have 23 pairs, 10 of them with ‘comparisons’ attached. These biographies do not aim to write continuous political history, but rather to exemplify individual virtue or vice in the careers of great men.

Porphyry 234–c.305 AD. Neoplatonist philosopher, scholar and student of religions. He was born at Tyre and originally bore the Syrian name Malchus. He studied under Longinus at Athens and became a devoted disciple of Plotinus with whom he

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studied in Rome (263–268). He was probably the teacher of Iamblichus. He wrote many works (69 titles can be listed with reasonable certainty), including introductions and commentaries on Aristotle, commentaries on Plato, apologetic and historical works, metaphysical and religious works.

Proclus 410/412–485 AD. Neoplatonist philosopher, who studied with Plutarch of Athens and Syrianus, whom he succeeded as head of the Platonic school (diadochos) in 437. He was the last great systematizer of the Greek philosophical inheritance, and as such exerted a powerful influence on medieval and Renaissance thought. His learning was encyclopaedic and his output vast. Extant works include philosophical and metaphysical treatises, commentaries on Plato, scientific works and literary works. He was also a supporter and advocate of theurgy.

Pronoia Greek: forethought, providence. The notion of an intelligent purpose operating in the universe. It is associated with the intelligence of the divine. In later Platonism, pronoia is distributed through the entire range of deities and the direct involvement of the supreme principle in pronoia was thought to be lesser, since the supreme principle was held to be transcendent.

Prosopography An historical tool used to gain some insight into individual persons’ interests and intentions by identifying their family ties and associations (see, for example, Ronald Syme on The Roman Revolution 1939). Family ties are perhaps of less importance for the study of philosophers than of statesmen (though we do sometimes know of them), but relations with their ‘schools’ or else their favourite teachers (the line from Ammonius, to Plotinus and on to Porphyry, for example) may also help to understand their works.

Pseudo-Dionysius Late fifth/ early sixth century AD. Christian Neoplatonist who presented himself as Dionysius the Areopagite (St Paul’s Athenian convert in Acts 17). The identity of the actual author has been the subject of great debate and remains undetermined. The extant treatises represent the peak of synthesis of Christianity and later Platonism, drawing especially on Proclus. They give a metaphysical view of the cosmos, centering on the absolute transcendence of God and the idea that the whole of reality is a theophany.

Ptolemy, Claudius Ptolemaeus Second century AD. Astronomer and writer. He wrote at Alexandria, between 146 and c.170 AD, definitive works in many of the mathematical sciences,

324 Glossary including astronomy and geography. These works included the Almagest, a complete textbook of astronomy which reforms and establishes Greek astronomy on a geometrically rigorous basis, the Tetrabiblos, the astrological accompaniment to the Almagest, and the Geography, an attempt to map the known world, and the Harmonics, an outstanding work on music theory and cosmology.

Pythagoras Sixth century BC. Greek philosopher, who is one of the most mysterious and influential figures in Greek intellectual history. He was born in Samos and migrated to Croton in c.530 BC, where he founded the sect or society that bore his name. He is said to have introduced the doctrine of transmigration of souls into Greece and his religious influence was reflected in the cult organization of the Pythagorean society, with periods of initiation, secret doctrines and passwords, special dietary restrictions and burial rites. The scientific tradition ascribes to him a number of important discoveries including the famous geometric theorem that bears his name, as well as the discovery of the musical consonances.

Pythagoreanism The philosophical and religious movement(s) apparently derived from the teachings of Pythagoras. Reliable tradition, derived mainly from Aristotle and his school, presents Pythagoras and his followers as a religious and political association in Southern Italy, particularly Croton, where they gained considerable political influence until approximately 450 BC. From then on, Pythagoreanism survived in two distinct forms: a scientific, philosophical form and a religious, sectarian form. The latter group laid down rules for the ‘Pythagorean life’: vegetarianism, based on the doctrine of metempsychosis and already ascribed to Pythagoras himself during his lifetime and the belief in metempsychosis and an interest in the afterlife.

Sákti In Hinduism, ‘Divine power or energy’ personified in the Devī (Goddess). She is either conceived as consort of a male god, or as an independent supreme being, created from the united power of all the gods.

Sánkara 788–820 AD. Indian philosopher who was a great reformer of Hinduism and established Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. He wrote commentaries on the major Upanisads, as well as numerous hymns and smaller treatises. He provided a strong defence of mind–body dualism, of the existence of a plurality of minds and mindindependent physical objects and of monotheism. Then, on the basis of appeal to the Hindu scriptures and an enlightenment experience, he asserts that dualism, realism and theism are illusion (the level of appearance) in favour of a monism that holds that only quality-less Brahman exists (the level of reality).

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Simplicius Sixth century AD. Neoplatonist philosopher, who was one of the seven philosophers who left Athens for Ctesiphon after the Athenian Neoplatonist school closed in 529. He probably wrote all his commentaries after 532, when it was safe for the philosophers to leave Ctesiphon. Recent research suggests that he may have settled at Harrân (ancient Carrhae) in present-day Turkey from where Platonism was transmitted to Baghdad in the ninth century. He wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle’s works, which include many of his own views on topics such as place, time and matter.

Síva A Hindu deity, whose followers represent one of the mainstream traditions of Hinduism. Identified very early with the Vedic storm god Rudra, Síva appears in some late Upanisads and in the epics as the focus of a vast mythology and philosophical reflection. This deity has creative, salvific and destructive functions.

Socrates 469–399 BC. Greek philosopher, who wrote no philosophical works but was uniquely influential upon the subsequent history of philosophy. His philosophical interests primarily focus upon ethics and conduct in life, subjects he discussed in public places in Athens. Socrates’ methods as a ‘teacher’, philosophical ideas and character are preserved in the ‘dialogues’ written by Plato and Xenophon, which represent his discussions and conversations.

Speusippus c.407–339 BC. Greek philosopher, son of Eurymedon and of Plato’s sister Potone. He accompanied Plato on his last visit to Sicily and succeeded him as head of the Academy from 347 to 339. Of his prolific writings, only fragments and later reports remain, but Aristotle treats him with respect and it is clear that he continued some major philosophical interests which the Academy had acquired under Plato.

Spinoza, Baruch/Benedictus de 1632–1677 AD. Dutch metaphysician, epistemologist, psychologist, moral philosopher, political theorist and philosopher of religion, he is usually regarded as one of the most important figures of seventeenth-century rationalism. Spinoza’s philosophical contributions involve metaphysics, epistemology and psychology, ethics, politics and philosophical theology. He is a leading intellectual forebear of twentieth-century determinism and naturalism and of the mind–body identity theory.

326 Glossary

Stobaeus Fifth century AD. John of Stobi, author of an anthology of extracts from poets and prose-writers, intended in the first instance for the instruction of his son Septimius. The work was probably composed in the early fifth century AD; it consisted originally of four Books and deals with a wide variety of topics, from metaphysics to household economy. Stobaeus cites many authors, from Homer to Themistius, including many excerpts from the Neoplatonists; the absence of extracts from Christian authors suggests that he was a pagan.

Stoicism Greek philosophical movement, founded by Zeno of Citium, who came to Athens in 313 BC, and, after studying with various philosophers, taught in his own right in the Stoa Poecile (Painted Porch), from which Stoicism derives its name. Zeno developed a philosophical position and doctrine divided into three parts: logic, physics and ethics. One of his pupils, Cleanthes, took over as head of the school after Zeno’s death and it was Cleanthes’ own pupil, Chrysippus, whose works became the standard formulation of Stoicism. Stoicism survived into the late antique period and continued to be an object of philosophical discussion. Many writers present Stoicism as an attitude or way of life: famous examples include the letters and essays of Seneca, the reported lectures of Epictetus and the meditations of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Sufism Islamic mysticism, known in Arabic as tasawwuf. Sufism stresses deep personal devotion and an ascetic lifestyle in the quest for inner illumination and loving communion with God. Rabi’ah (died: 801 AD) is generally regarded as the person who introduced the element of selfless love into the strict traditions of the early ascetics and gave Sufism a hue of mysticism. Subsequent Sufi mysticism is love mysticism and uses much of the same love imagery found in the Christian mystical tradition.

Symbolon (pl: symbola) Greek: symbol (symballein means ‘to join’). In the allegorical tradition of Neoplatonism, the theory of metaphysical, cosmological and theurgic symbolism was elaborated, and the idea of symbolon became a major critical concept. In the Chaldaean Oracles, the symbola are said to be sown throughout the cosmos by the Paternal Demiurge and serve as the central means of ascent and return to the gods. Symbola were used in theurgic ritual.

Sympatheia Greek: affected with, cosmic / universal sympathy. The natural sympathy or link between all parts of the cosmos. This concept depends upon a series of premises

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present in Greek philosophy from a very early stage: the Milesians saw the world as alive and the Pythagoreans saw it as an ordered whole. Plato describes the cosmos as a visible living creature, having within it all things that are naturally akin, in the Timaeus. Plotinus described the cosmos as a living organism, all of whose parts are suffused by the universal soul. These parts interact not by reason of their being in contact but because of their similarity.

Syncretism A modern term coined in the nineteenth century to denote the process whereby various names and natures or characteristics of deities are mingled so as to unite the beliefs and practices of different peoples and groups.

Synthema (pl: synthemata) Greek: token, symbol, passport (in many cases this word has the same meaning as symbolon). The sacred objects in ancient mystery cults are often called synthemata. In Neoplatonism, synthemata are used in theurgic ritual since the material objects that were thought to preserve and display the power of the gods are regarded as synthemata by the theurgists and function as receptacles for the gods.

Syrianus Fifth century AD. Rhetorician and Neoplatonist philosopher, who succeeded Plutarch of Athens as head of the Academy in AD 431/2. His own pupil and successor was Proclus, who owed much to him. Extant works include commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and commentaries on Hermogenes.

Taylor, Thomas 1758–1835 AD. Translator committed to the view of Platonic philosophy as a spiritual disciple, often referred to as the ‘English Platonist.’ He produced the first complete translation of Plato into English, as well as the first complete translation of Aristotle; these translations were accompanied by very extensive notes taken from the Neoplatonist commentaries on them. He also translated many works by Plotinus, Proclus, Apuleius and other Middle and Late Platonists. He was a major influence on the English Romantic movement and the American Transcendentalists.

Telestikê The Neoplatonic and theurgic ritual practice which involved the consecration and animation of cultic statues of divinities.

Thales of Miletus Early sixth century BC. Pre-socratic philosopher, who appears to be the most scientific member of the Seven Sages. He was credited in antiquity with the prediction

328 Glossary of a solar eclipse and it is reported that he advised the Ionians to form a political union. He attained legendary status in the ancient world as an engineer, geometer and astronomer; Aristotle refers to him as the first natural philosopher and cosmologist. Since Thales left no written work, it is impossible to ascertain how much historical basis there is for the achievements attributed to him in the ancient tradition.

Themistius c.317–c.388 AD. Greek philosopher and rhetorician, who was born in Paphlagonia of a cultured family of pagan landowners. He studied in the eastern provinces and in Constantinople, where he opened a school in approximately 345 AD. He attracted the attention of the local government and was appointed to an official chair and became a member of the Constantinopolitan senate. Many of his works survive, including many speeches and many paraphrases of Aristotle’s works which embody material from lost commentaries.

Theurgy Theurgy, which literally means, ‘god-working’, was a type of religious ritual which was widely respected and extensively used by the later Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus and Proclus. According to Neoplatonic tradition, the elder Julian (father of the composer of the Chaldaean Oracles) invented the term ‘theurgy’ and developed the practices it described; in support of this traditional supposition is the fact that the terms ‘theurgy’ and ‘theurgist’ are not found in any extant literature earlier than the Chaldaean Oracles.

Thoreau, Henry David 1817–1862 AD. Transcendentalist philosopher and writer. He was one of the founders of the new literature that emerged in the United States in the midnineteenth century. He had an education in the classics and in the transcendentalism of his older friend and teacher Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Transcendentalism A religious-philosophical movement founded by a group of New England intellectuals, of whom Emerson, Thoreau and Theodore Parker were the most important. This movement was centred around the ‘Transcendental Club’ formed in Boston in 1836. Taking much inspiration from Neoplatonism, this movement tended towards pantheism, mysticism and an uplifting optimism about the progress of the spirit. The Transcendentalists were united mainly by their insistence that philosophical truth could be reached only by reason, a capacity common to all people unless destroyed by living a life of externals and accepting as true only secondhand traditional beliefs.

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Upanisads/Upanishads A group of ancient Hindu philosophical texts, or the esoteric sacred doctrines contained in them. Derived from the words upa (near), ni (down) and sad (sit), it includes the notion of ‘sitting near’ the guru. This is the designation of the fourth and last part of the Vedas containing mystical teachings – thus they constitute the official source of Veda¯nta teaching. Every Veda¯nta master had to write a commentary on the principal Upanisads.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1889–1951 AD. Austrian-born British philosopher, who is one of the most challenging and original philosophical writers of the twentieth century. Wittgenstein’s work particularly centred on the idea that philosophical problems can be resolved by paying attention to the working of language. His writings are characterized by an unusual form of composition, being generally made up of short individual notes that are numbered in sequence and range from fairly technical discussions on the topics of logic, the mind, meaning, understanding, acting, seeing, mathematics and knowledge to observations about ethics, culture, art and the meaning of life.

World Soul The existence of a soul for the entire world seems to be an example of Plato’s use of analogous reasoning: if the cosmos is thought to be a living organic unity, it follows that it, like the other living creatures, must have a soul. The World Soul, according to Plato, is a paradigm not only for the harmonious movement of the heavenly bodies, but for ethical restoration of harmony in the individual human soul.

Xenophon c.430–c.350 BC. Greek soldier and historian, author of several Socratic dialogues, along with important works on history, education, political theory and other subjects. He was interested in philosophy, and was an intelligent ‘social thinker’ whose views on morality and society have been influential over many centuries. His Socratic dialogues, the only ones besides Plato’s to survive intact, illustrate his perspective on Socrates’ character and moral significance and provide a valuable supplement to the views of Plato.

Zeus The main divinity of the Greek pantheon, the Father and King of the Olympian gods. He was considered to be a weather god who sends omens by means of dreams, augural signs and thunder and lightning. He was the god of justice who punishes transgressors. He was a god of protection: human kings are under his

330 Glossary special protection and he protects those outside ordinary social bonds – strangers, suppliants and beggars. He was also the protector of property and of friendship, between individuals and entire communities.

References The following sources have been used in this Glossary: Audi, R., 1999, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge. Blackburn, S., 1994, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford. Craig, E. (ed.), 1998, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volumes 1–10, London and New York. Honderich, T. (ed.), 1995, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford. Klostermaier, K. K., 1998, A Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Oxford. Stutley, M. and J., 1977, A Dictionary of Hinduism, London. Urmson, J. O., 1990, The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary, London.

Index of Names Abhinavagupta 10, 75, 81, 83, 302 Abû Yazîd 89, 302 Achilles 135, 176–7, 178, 179, 298, 302 Adams, R.M. 222, 223, 225 Adamson, P. 99, 101 Addey, C. vii, 302–30 Agamemnon 176, 178, 180, 302 Ajax 176, 179 Al-Bistâmî 89 Al-Fârâbî 88, 303, 315 Al-Ghazâlî 10, 87–102, 303 Al-Hallâj 89, 303 Albanese, C.L. 247 Alcibiades (character) 255 Alcott, A.B. 234, 238, 246, 248, 249 Alexander of Aphrodisias 3, 180, 302 Alexander of Macedon 109, 110, 150, 305, 318 Alexander of Troy (Paris) 179 Allaire, E.B. 223, 225 Allesch, G. 170, 172 Altmann, A. 99, 101 Amelius 9, 30–43, 303–4 Ammonius Saccas 105, 108, 304, 321 Ammonius, son of Hermeias 4, 5, 12, 156, 174–87, 304 Amun 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 132, 133, 135 Anaxagoras 152, 179, 304 Anaximenes 179, 304 Andolfo, M. 212, 222, 224, 225 Anton, J.P. 247 Antony, St. 256, 304–5 Anubis 122, 126, 132 Aphrodite 69, 70, 71, 78 Apollo 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 167, 261, 305, 308, 320 Apollonius 108, 319, 321 Apsines 154, 157 Aquila 145, 149, 154, 158, 159 Aquinas, St.Thomas 8, 161, 261, 305 Aristodemus (character) 255

Aristotle 3, 5, 6, 8, 16, 52, 61, 72, 99, 147, 153, 156, 177, 179, 180, 191, 193–8, 200–2, 204, 205, 209, 212, 213, 251, 252, 254, 258, 260, 269, 296, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 309–27 Categories 145, 318 De Anima 99, 180, 194 Generation of Animals 79 Historia Animalium 78 Metaphysics 78, 80, 93, 99, 196–7, 212, 327 Nicomachean Ethics 262, 296, 300 Parts of Animals 255, 269 Physics 57, 62, 64, 99, 265 Poetics 171 Posterior Analytics 209 Rhetoric 152, 156 Topics 209 Armstrong, H. 15, 16, 66, 77, 82, 105, 245, 248, 296 Arnold, E. 236 Asclepius (of Tralles) 12, 81, 41, 43, 81, 119, 174–87, 305 Assmann, J. 82, 139 Athanasius of Alexandria (rhetorician) 151, 156 Athanasius of Alexandria (theologian) 256, 305 Athena 130, 178, 298 Athenaeus 40, 42, 184 Atum 123, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137 Audi, R. 209, 210, 329 Augustine 4, 12, 39, 42, 106, 107, 169, 238, 281, 306 Aulus Gellius 150, 155, 157 Aurelius, Marcus 289, 306, 325 Averroes: see Ibn Rushd Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ) 10, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 315–16

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332 Index of Names Bacon, F. 260, 306 Baldry, H.C. 80, 82 Baly, T.J.C. 139 Bardesanes 106, 107, 110, 114, 306 Barker, A. 63, 65 Basil of Caesarea 4 Basilides 74, 82, 306 Baumgarten, A. 160, 161,170, 172, 306 Bayer, R. 170, 172 Beardsley, M.C. 162, 170, 172 Beatrice, P.F. 21, 27, 29 Beierwaltes, W. 45, 50, 63, 64, 66, 209, 210, 224, 225 Beiser, F.C. 245, 247 Benko, S. 81, 82 Berchman, R. x, 12, 191–210, 225 Berg, R.M. van den 170, 171, 172 Berkeley, G. 12, 15, 193, 195, 198, 211–27, 306–7, 314 Bernard, W. 170, 172 Bertini, D. x, 12, 211–27 Bidez, J. 21, 27, 29 Blackwall, A. 274, 276–9, 286 Blake, W. 253, 307 Blakeley, D.N. 250, 269, 270 Blänsdorf, J. 171, 172 Blavatsky, H.P. 236, 249 Block, L.J. 239, 242 Blumenberg, H. 54, 64, 66, 223, 224, 225 Blumenthal, H. 16, 224, 225 Boethius 4, 15 Bonaventure 260, 307 Bosanquet, B. 162, 170, 172 Bradatan. C. 223, 225 Brandom, R. 223, 225 Bregman, J. x, 12, 13, 228–49 Brehier, É. 103, 105, 114, 115, 116 Brentano, F. 114, 115, 209, 260, 307 Brisson, L. 40, 42, 114, 115, 154, 158, 226, 247 Brown, P. 1, 2, 16 Brucker, J. 274, 280, 287 Buckley, J.J. 81, 82 Buddha 108 Buffière, F. 182, 186 Burnyeat, M. 197, 209, 210, 286

Burrus, V. 2, 3, 16 Busine, A. x, 9, 21–9 Bynum, C.W. 77, 82 Cameron, A. 1, 16, 156, 157 Cameron, K.W. 231, 239, 245, 248 Cassian, J. 260, 308, 311 Cassius Longinus: see Longinus Castricius 150 Celsus 238, 320 Chaldaean Oracles 9, 13, 29, 32, 44, 74, 106, 129, 140, 171, 230, 231, 232, 236, 242, 245, 308 Chesterton, G.K. 297, 300, 301 Chiaradonna, R. 269, 270 Child, L. M. 238, 248 Christ 5, 34, 36, 37, 38, 42, 239, 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 285, 312 Churchland, P. 99, 101 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 155, 157, 158 Cilento, V. 182, 186 Clark, G. vii, 15, 16 Clark, S.R.L. vii, x, 245, 269, 270, 289–301 Clarke, J.F 238, 248 Clarke, M.L. 286 Clement of Alexandria 3, 40, 41, 80, 81, 82, 108, 110, 241, 276, 279, 281, 308 Coleridge, S.T. 230, 245, 248, 249, 253, 286, 287, 308, 310 Constantine 2, 235, 311 Conway, A. 273 Cornell, V.J. 99, 101 Corrigan, K. x, 12, 13, 210, 225, 250–72 Coulter, J.A. 182, 186 Cousin, V. 66, 230 Cragg, G.R. 286 Crantor 3 Cudworth, R. 230, 245, 273, 307 Culverwell, N. 273, 308 Cürsgen, D. 171, 172 Curtius, E.R. 239, 248 Cusanus: see Nicholas of Cusa Cyril of Alexandria 234, 238

Index of Names Dacier, A. 274–6, 278, 279, 287 Daiber, H. 191 Damascius 5, 17, 42, 121, 128, 151, 152, 157, 186, 234, 239, 309 Daniel, S.H. 222, 225 David 150, 152, 155, 157, 182, 187, 309 Davidson, H.A. 100, 101 De Conick, J. 81, 82 Deleuze, G. 264, 270, 271 Demetriou, K. 286 Democritus 180, 309 Demosthenes 147, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158 Derrida, J. 65, 66, 266, 267, 270, 271, 309 Descartes, R. 8, 15, 191, 193, 194, 195, 200, 207, 225, 309 Dillon, J. xi, 9, 16, 30–43 Diocletian 2 Diogenes Laertius 15, 40, 42 Dionysius see Ps-Dionysius Dodds, E.R. 7, 15, 16, 42, 44, 47, 52, 56, 66, 139, 242 Drob, S.L. 243, 248 Ea 130 Einstein, A. 55, 61 Elias 152, 157, 182, 187 Eliot, T.S. 268, 271, 310 Emerson, R.W. 13, 228–49, 253, 310, 328 Emilsson, E.K. 209, 210, 269, 271 Enfield, W. 274, 280–3, 284, 287 Epictetus 153, 157, 325 Eriugena 209, 223 Eunapius 118, 139, 143, 148, 149, 154, 157, 234, 236, 310 Eurystheus 177, 310 Eusebius of Caesarea 9, 23, 25, 29, 30, 40, 42, 276, 311 Eustathius 182, 187 Evagoras 145, 149, 150, 154 Evagrius of Pontus 256, 260, 270, 271, 272, 308, 311 Evans, F.B. 286, 287 Ferwerda, R. 77, 82 Fichte, J.G. 206, 253, 311

333

Ficino, Marcilio 161, 237, 273, 311 Fideler, D. 240, 247, 248 Fiedl, A.J. 182, 187 Filliozat, J. 108, 114, 115, 116 Filoramo, G. 81, 82 Findlay, J.N. 243, 244 Fodor, J.A. 209, 210 Fowden, G. 15, 16, 27, 29, 139 Foxe, J. 283, 287 Frede, M. 8 Freud, S. 260, 311; Freudian 70 Fuller, M. 231 Fuller, R.C. 238, 247, 248 Galen 79, 82, 147, 156 Galileo Galilei 8, 218, 311 Gelpi, D. 238, 247, 249 Gero, S. 81, 82 Gersh, S. 50, 63, 65, 66, 209 Gerson, L. 15, 16, 80, 82, 209, 210 Gibbon, E. 278, 312 Gilbert, K.E. 162, 170, 172 Gilson, E. 223, 226 Glucker, J. 286, 287 Gordian 105 Goswami, A. 15, 16 Goulet, R. 22, 27, 29, 116, 158 Gregorios, P.M. 103, 116, 209, 210 Gregory Nazianzen 240, 247, 256, 312 Gregory of Nyssa 4, 79, 82, 154, 209, 242 Griffel, F. 101 Grosseteste, R. 260, 313 Guattari, F.: see Deleuze Gutas, Dimitri 88, 89, 93, 99, 100, 101, 102 Guthrie, K.S. 239, 240 Haas, C. 182, 187 Hadot, Pierre 77, 82, 156, 157, 224, 226, 239, 249, 269, 271 Halliwell, S. 170, 172 Harper, G.M. 230, 234, 239, 246, 248 Harpocration 144, 154 Harris, R.B. 66, 103, 115, 116, 117 Harris, M. 292, 300, 301 Harris, W.T. 238, 249 Hasse, D. 100, 102

334 Index of Names Hathor 127, 134, 137; see also Nut Heath, M. xi, 11, 65, 143–59 Hector 179–80 Hedley, D. 245, 248, 286, 287 Hegel, G.W.F. 12, 163, 172, 191–210, 248, 312, 313 Heidegger, M. 255, 313, 317 Hekate 24, 29, 118, 135, 308, 313, 318 Heliogabeles 106 Helleman-Elgersma, W. 269, 271 Hephaestion 147 Heracles 177, 178, 310, 313 Heraclitus 30, 33, 34, 37, 179, 229, 245, 314 Heraiskos 128 Hermes Trismegistos 79, 83, 229, 311, 314; see also Thoth Hermias 145, 152, 154, 184, 187 Hermogenes 144–58, 327 Hippocrates 79, 81, 82, 147 Hippolytus 40, 45, 81, 82, 108, 110, 114, 115, 306, 314 Hirn, Y. 170, 172 Homer 12, 28, 147, 165, 171, 174–87, 236, 240, 249, 298, 302, 303, 313, 314 Horace 163, 166, 170, 172, 314 Horus 121, 122, 126, 127, 131, 132, 135, 139 Hume, D. 193, 195, 278, 306, 314, 318 Hurowitz, V.A. 130, 139 Husserl, E. 59, 65, 66, 197, 209, 313, 315, 317 Hypatia 234 Iamblichus 4, 17, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 41, 44, 45, 47, 52, 53, 63, 64, 79, 82, 121, 132, 140, 144, 154, 206, 230, 236, 239, 241, 249, 286, 289, 308, 315, 319 Ibn Bâjja 88, 316 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon (Avicebron) 236, 249 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 100, 101, 102 Ibn Sînâ: see Avicenna Ibn T ufayl (Abubacer) 10, 87–102, 316

Irenaeus 40, 80, 81, 83, 306 Isnardi Parente, M. 224, 226 Jabre, F. 100, 102 Jantzen, G. 77, 82 Jesus: see Christ John, St. 9, 30–43 Johnson, T. M. 13, 234–49 Jufresa, M. 80, 82 Julian 29, 118, 123, 140, 230, 234, 235, 236, 238, 243, 310, 316, 318 Justin Martyr 276, 279, 317 Justinian 2, 17, 234, 316, 320 Kant, I. 191–210, 269, 317 Kennedy, G.A. 154, 156, 158, 170, 172 Kheper 126; see also 123, 124, 125 Kohlenberger, H. 209 Kremer, K. 182, 187 Kripal, J. 77, 82 Krishna 112, 317 Kristeller, P.O. 161, 162, 170, 172, 242 Kroll, J. 286, 287 Kroll, W. 43, 66, 168, 170, 173, 187 Kronos 41 Kueny, K. 100, 102 Kuhn, H. 162, 170, 172 Kuisma, O. xi, 11, 160–73, 182, 187 Kukkonen, T. xi, 10, 87–102 Kustas, G.L. 154, 158 Kutash, E. xi, 9, 10, 44–66 Lachares 145, 152, 154, 157, 159 Lacombe, O. 104, 114, 115, 116 Lacrosse, J. xi, 10, 77, 83, 103–17 Lakoff, G. 80, 83 Lamberton, R. 182, 184, 187, 235, 246, 249 Laurent, J. 212, 222, 224, 225, 226 Leibniz, G.W. 12, 15, 211–27, 317 Lesky, E. 80, 83 Lévèque, P. 185, 187 Levinas, E. 266, 270, 271, 317 Levinson, R.B. 239, 249 Lewy, H. 300, 301 Lloyd, A.C. 16

Index of Names Locke, J. 193, 195, 198, 213, 222, 306, 317–8 Long, A.A. 182, 187 Longinus 143, 145, 147, 148, 154, 157, 158, 304, 322 Lorton, D. 139, 140 Louth, A. 15, 16 Lovejoy, A. 185, 187 Lovelock, J. 269, 271 Lysimachus 31, 33, 304 Manchester, P. 45, 63, 66 Manetti, G. 220, 224, 226 Manolea, C.-P. xii, 12, 174–87 Mansfeld, J. 156, 158, 286, 287 Marcellinus 153, 156, 157 Marinus 171, 172, 235, 239, 242 Markolefas, E. vii Mary Magdalene 36 Matthiessen, F.O. 232, 245, 249 Maximus 118, 318 Mazur, Zeke xii, 10, 67–83 McEvilley, T. 15, 16, 114 Megasthenes 108, 110, 114, 318; Megasthenian 109 Melville, H. 240, 249 Menander 145–8, 151, 154, 158 Metrophanes 144, 148, 149, 154, 155 Miles, R. 2, 16 Miller, M.H. 64, 66 Mills, J. 274, 278–80, 287 Milne, E.A. 55, 66 Minucianus 147, 148, 155, 157 Mohr, R. 58, 66 More, H. 273, 307 Mortley, R. 77, 83 Moses 279, 285; Mosaic 274, 278 Most, G. 255, 269 Mother Shipton 289 Mott, W.T. 231, 232, 246, 248 Muller-Ortega, P.E. 81, 83 Myer, I. 236, 249 Naess, A. 253, 269, 271 Narbonne, J.-M. 222, 225, 226 Naydler, J. 126, 139, 140 Nicholas of Cusa 60, 65, 209, 319

335

Nicomachus 41, 43, 80, 175, 319 Norris, J. 273 Nostradamus 289 Numenius of Apamea 30, 31, 32, 42, 83, 239, 303, 304, 319 Nussbaum, M. 269, 271 Nut 126, 131, 134 Nygren, A. 77, 80, 83 O’Daly, G. 80, 83 O’Donnell, J.J. 16, 17 O’Neill, W. 47, 66 O’Meara, J. 16, 21, 116, 158 Odysseus 178, 179, 320 Oehler, K. 209, 210 Oenopides 65 Ockham, William of 260, 261, 319, 320 Olympiodorus 153, 157, 177, 184, 229, 304, 320 Onians, R.B. 81, 83 Origen 3, 4, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 78, 83, 148, 238, 241, 256, 281, 304, 311, 320 Ormsby, E.L. 99, 102 Orpheus 177, 181, 241, 320 Osiris 122, 126, 129, 131, 133, 134 Ouranos 41 Pancratius 148 Park, D. 65, 66 Parmenides 55, 177, 181, 212, 320–1 Parmentier, M. 256, 269, 271 Patrides, C.A. 286, 287 Paul of Tarsus 4, 256, 282, 323 Pausanias (character) 255 Pépin, J. 182, 187, 224, 226 Pericles 152, 153, 238 Perczel, I. 77, 83 Phanes 32, 41 Phanes Press: see Fideler, D. Philo of Alexandria 4, 281, 291, 296, 301, 321 Philoponus, John 5, 180, 321 Philostratus 108, 114, 155, 321 Phrynichus 150 Pigler, A. 77, 83

336 Index of Names Plato 3–17, 29, 30, 67–8, 74, 104, 119, 122, 135, 145, 147, 148, 149, 151, 156, 161, 168, 176, 177, 191, 193–8, 200–2, 209, 216, 222, 228, 233, 239, 241–3, 251, 254, 273–88, 293, 296, 321 Apology 150, 275, 278, 279, 280 Cratylus 170 Crito 275 Euthyphro 275 Gorgias 150, 152, 153 I Alcibiades 235, 275, 286 II Alcibiades 275, 277 Ion 165 Laches 275 Laws 121, 123, 165, 300 Lysis 28 Parmenides 41, 51, 53, 66, 105, 124, 201, 255, 269 Phaedo 134, 209, 254, 275, 284 Phaedrus 69, 77, 79, 126, 136, 150, 165, 170, 230, 266, 270 Protagoras 275 Republic 23, 27, 29, 41, 53, 65, 152, 153, 164, 165, 168, 171, 207, 209, 255, 269, 303 Seventh Letter 96 Sophist 192, 201, 202 Symposium 36, 67, 69, 77, 79, 81, 254, 269, Theaetetus 296, 300 Timaeus 3, 32, 33, 37, 48, 54, 79, 80, 81, 170, 262, 277, 326 Pliny 150 Plotinus 3, 4, 6, 10–17, 31, 41, 45, 47, 67–83, 103–17, 133, 162, 191–210, 211–27, 228, 234, 242–3, 250–72, 289–301, 322 Ennead 77, 118, 136, 137, 246, 254, 300 Ennead II 300 Ennead III 32, 35, 42, 83, 197, 300 Ennead IV 271, 300, 301 Ennead V 115, 133, 197, 229, 240, 300 Ennead VI 77, 115, 300, 301 Pluhar, W.S. 269, 271 Plutarch of Chaeronea 79, 83, 156, 158, 163, 170, 322

Plutarch of Athens 152, 322 Polychronopoulou, K. 171, 173 Porphyry 3, 4, 9, 21–9, 31, 32, 40, 41, 48, 63, 67, 80, 81, 103–17, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 238, 249, 254, 261, 272, 289, 293, 303, 322 Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics 48, 63, 66 Commentary on Rhetoric 147, 148 Commentary on the Timaeus 40 De Abstinentia 106, 108, 114 De Antro Nympharum 249, 303 De Philosophia 21–4 De Regressu Animae 21, 29, 106, 107 Epistle to Anebo 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 315 Fragments 27, 28, 114, 143, 148, 154, 155, 158 Isagoge 8, 187 Peri Stugos 107 Pros Gauron 79, 80, 83 Vita Plotini 31, 32, 40, 41, 77, 81, 105, 149, 293, 300 Poster, C. xii, 12, 13, 273–88 Preminger, A. 170, 172 Priestley, J. 280, 283–5, 286, 287, 288 Proclus 4, 9, 11, 13, 15, 32, 34, 41, 44–66, 145, 152, 154, 160–73, 174, 176, 177, 181, 182, 184, 187, 206, 209, 228–49, 261, 266, 289, 304, 308, 309, 315, 319, 321, 322–3, 327 De Decem. Dub. 65 De Magia 237 Elements of Theology 65, 115, 165, 170, 235, 240 Hymn to the Muses 236, 242 In Alcibiaden 235 In Parmenidem 66 In Rem Publicam 41, 43, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 303 In Timaeum 32, 33, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 63, 64, 65, 135, 163, 170 Institutio Physica 63 On the Chaldaean Oracles 245, 249 Platonic Theology 122, 126, 132, 165, 167, 170, 171

Index of Names Prohaeresius 148, 149, 310 Ps-Dionysius (of Halicarnassus) 145, 146, 154, 156, 157 Ps-Dionysius (the Areopagite) 4, 162, 171, 172, 209, 256, 263, 266, 267, 323 Ps-Elias: see Elias Ps-Menander 146, 147, 154 Ptah 122, 125, 130, 132, 133, 137 Ptolemy 8, 48, 66, 323 Pythagoras (of Rhodes) 24, 25 Pythagoras (of Samos) 6, 108, 175, 241, 277, 279, 319, 323 Quintilian

150, 153, 155, 158, 159

Radhakrishnan, S. 115, 116 Rahman, F. 101, 102 Raine, K.: see Harper, G.M. Ramesses II 124 Rappe, S. 15, 17, 209, 210 Reale, G. 222, 224, 226 Reichenbach, H. 55, 64, 66 Richard, M. 182, 187 Rist, J. 77, 83, 111, 115, 116, 117, 224, 225, 226, 244, 249 Ritzenfeld, A. 63, 66 Roberts, A. 139, 140 Roberts, J.D. 286, 287 Robinet, A. 224, 226 Robinson, J.M. 80, 83 Robinson, T. 251, 269, 271, 272 Rogers, G.A. 286, 287 Rosan.L.J. 239, 242, 243, 247, 248 Russell, B. 63, 66 Sambursky, S. 44, 66 Sanborn, F.B. 238, 249 Sán˙ kara 103, 115, 324 Schleiermacher, F.D.E. 235 Shaw, G. 15, 17 Sheppard, A. 15, 170, 173, 182, 187 Sheppard, O. 246 Shestov, L. 299, 301 Shorey, P. 210, 239 Simon Magus 81 Simplicius 5, 17, 64, 66, 156, 157, 180, 324 Siorvanes, L. 15, 17, 51, 63, 66

337

Siva 83, 107, 324; Sívait 109 Smith, A. 15, 17, 22, 27, 29, 80, 116, 154, 159, 224, 227 Smith, J. 273, 307 Smith, R. 80, 83 Socrates 13, 116, 152, 254, 255, 266, 273–88, 293, 321, 325, 329 Solomon, R.C. 209, 210 Sopater 156 Sorabji, R. 15, 17, 64, 66, 209, 210 Soranus 79, 83 Speusippus 74, 325 Spinoza, B. 15, 198, 222, 223, 227, 253, 271, 325 Stead, C. 15, 17 Steinmetz, P. 182, 187 Sterry, P. 273, 308 Stewart, C. 270, 272 Stobaeus 107, 114, 245, 325 Strange, S.K. 269, 272 Striker, G. 8 Stroumsa, G. 81, 82, 83 Swedenborg, E. 232, 233 Symmachus 14, 16 Syrianus 48, 66, 144, 145, 149, 152, 154, 155, 159, 174, 177, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187, 309, 315, 322, 327 Tarrant, H. 158, 286, 287 Tatarkiewicz, W. 162, 170, 173 Taylor, C. 15, 17 Taylor, T. 228, 230, 234, 235, 237, 239, 240, 245, 246, 249, 286, 327 Tempelis, E. 182, 183, 187 Terezis, C. 171, 173 Thales 179, 279, 327 Themistius 180, 325, 327 Themistocles 152, 153 Theodosius 2 Theon 151, 152, 158 Thesleff, H. 77, 83 Thoreau, H. D. 13, 230, 231, 232, 245, 253, 328 Thoth 122, 125, 126, 131, 132, 134, 136, 314; see also Hermes Tiberius 144, 154 Tigerstedt, E.N. 286, 287 Tress, D. 252, 269, 272

338 Index of Names Troilus 152, 153, 156 Trouillard, J. 65, 66, 115 Turner, J.D. 81, 82, Uzdavinys, A. xii, 10, 11, 118–40, 244, 249 Vaihinger, H. 266, 272 Valentinus 81; Valentinian 38, 80 Vassilopoulou, P. vii, xii, 1–17 Verrycken, K. 182, 187 Viellard-Bacon, J.-L. 209, 210 Vorwerk, M. 247 Wagner, M. 250, 272 Watts, E. 15, 17 Wehrli, F. 115, 182, 187 West, M.L. 182, 187 Westerink, L.G. 66, 139, 140, 155, 159, 170, 173, 182, 187, 286, 287 Westra, L. see Robinson, T. Whichcote, B. 273, 307 White, D.G. 81, 83 Whittaker, J. 60, 65, 66

Wilder, A. 234, 235, 236, 240, 241, 242 Wilson, M.D. 222, 223, 227 Wittgenstein, L. 197, 209, 210, 329 Wolters, A.M. 78, 83, 114, 117 Wordsworth, W. 234, 309, 310 Worthington, J. 273, 308 Worster, D. 252, 253, 269, 272 Wurm, K. 269, 272 Xenophon Yahweh

277, 281, 284, 325, 330

118, 119

Zebrowski, M. 286, 287, 288 Zeno of Citium 325 Zeno of Elea 49, 51, 63, 114 Zeus 31, 50, 167, 176, 178, 295, 305, 310, 330 Zoroaster 232, 233, 245 Zosimus 135, 151, 156 Zostrianus 32

Subject Index Aeon 42, 302; see Time, Eternity Aesthetics 12, 160–73, 302, 306, 309 Allegory 9, 12, 34, 37, 69, 71, 174, 181, 182, 185, 186, 241, 281, 291, 295–6, 303, 326 Animals 24, 35, 93, 109, 121, 176, 230, 231, 255, 256, 265 As If 112, 230, 266, 296; see Metaphor Astronomy 54, 229, 250, 294, 295, 312, 323

Empiricism 193, 197, 201, 204 Ennead (Egypt) 124, 128 Enneads: see Plotinus Eternity 9, 10, 37, 44–66, 73, 76, 101, 123–4, 213, 232, 235 Fate 25, 56, 178, 238–9, 294; see also Determinism Geist 12, 191–210, 312 Gnosticism 6–7, 9, 32, 37, 38, 44, 74, 75, 80, 81, 106, 121, 241, 302, 306, Gods 11, 14, 21–9, 30, 33, 34, 37, 106, 110, 118–40, 177, 229, 233, 239, 243, 268, 283, 293–4 Good: see The Good

Beauty 12, 13, 36, 68, 69, 72, 78, 124, 128, 134–8, 160, 167, 169, 171, 211, 218, 224, 228, 234, 254–5, 267, 294–6, 298–9, 306 ‘Beyond Being and Intellect’ 10, 12, 47, 91, 206, 244, 266, 296 Bhagavad Gita 112, 115, 307 Bodies 24, 31, 35, 36, 54, 55, 68, 70, 77, 78, 119, 121–2, 125, 135, 196, 217, 219, 221, 247, 258, 294, 297 Buddhism 104, 106–9, 297

Hellenistic Period 7, 8, 36, 40, 155 Hermetica 44, 232, 236, 302, 311, Humanity 260, 265, 274, 277, 281, 283 Hypostasis 44–66, 70–2, 111, 179, 192, 212, 216, 220, 262, 264, 315

Cambridge Platonists 273–88, 307–8 Causation 51, 52, 91, 95, 165, 178, 198, 213, 216–21, 241, 255, 262, 292 Christianity 1–6, 15, 21–9, 30–43, 119, 171, 209, 228–49, 273–88 Dancing 56–61, 65, 229, 231 Determinism 12, 62, 211–27, 290, 309, 325; see also 178 Dialectic 7, 50, 73, 129, 156, 199, 201, 204, 207–8, 255 Dianoia 50, 203, 255, 310, 319 Dualism 111, 191, 204; see also 265 Dunamis 48, 50, 90, 71, 78, 212, 263, 264, 310 Egypt 11, 118–40, 274, 277, 279 Emanations 40, 42, 74, 75, 93, 96, 97, 274

Iconoclasts 119 Idealism 193, 196, 197, 198, 206, 207, 209, 213, 223, 230, 238, 248, 307, 316 Idolatry 118–19, 274–5, 279, 282, 283, 285 Imagining 2, 7, 118–40, 165, 199, 229, 232–8, 292, 308–9 India 10–11, 75, 81, 103–17, 118, 120, 245 Intellect 316; see Nous Islam 1, 2, 5, 10, 87–102 Jews 10, 68, 106, 109, 119, 276, 279, 281, 299 Late antiquity, definition of 1–5 Logic 24, 48, 61, 175–7, 202, 240, 262

339

340 Subject Index Logos 9, 30–43, 45, 208, 221, 224, 256–7, 259, 266, 314; see also Principles Magic 7, 9, 22–5, 44, 118–40, 292, 293, 297, 299, 313 Materialism 12, 13, 88, 94, 211–27, 297, 318 Matter 32, 34, 35, 36, 196, 211–16, 220 Metaphor 7, 9, 10, 67–83, 94–5, 110, 112, 136, 165, 171, 176, 218, 223, 291–2 Music 48, 57, 161, 163, 229 Myths 7, 37, 59, 69, 71, 109, 119, 120, 127, 133, 165, 168, 171, 245, 254 Narrative 1, 37, 59, 87 Nature 33, 42, 211, 219, 232, 238–9, 257–9 Neoplatonism 318; and passim Neopythagoreanism 31, 74, 109, 119, 184, 234, 237, 240, 241, 245, 277, 281, 303, 319, 320, 323 Noêsis 197, 202, 209, 231, 255, 319 Nous 6, 12, 34, 47, 59, 70, 74, 111, 121, 127, 130, 133, 191–210, 213, 220, 221, 229, 238–9, 245, 263, 316 Nous Poietikos 194, 195, 200, 256 Ockham’s Razor 260–1, 319–20 One: see The One Oracles 9, 21–9, 119, 120, 122, 128, 228; see also Chaldaean Oracles Phantasia: see Imagining Poetry 11–2, 160–73, 174–88, 229 Principles 22, 26, 44, 52, 59, 71–3, 77, 79, 120, 123–5, 136–7, 178, 202, 205, 209, 213, 228, 237, 295; see also Logos Procession 37, 45, 50, 60, 63, 71–2, 73, 80, 128 Pronoia 51, 56, 60, 65, 256, 323 Proodos: see Procession

Prosopography 143, 144, 156, 323 Pyramid Texts 122, 131, 139 Return 37, 50, 52, 53, 71, 255, 259–61, 265, 312, 326 Rhetoric 11, 143–59, 174, 229 Ritual 6, 11, 23, 74–6, 81, 124, 125–32, 171, 239, 243, 299 Sacrifices 9, 21–9, 41, 129, 130, 132, 282, 293, 313 Sakti 107, 112, 324 Sannyasin 108 Science 5, 150, 160, 161, 211, 237, 240, 250–72, 294 Shaivites 10, 75, 302; see also Siva Self 12, 94, 96, 111–12, 124, 191–210, 253, 290, 296–7, 302 Sex 10, 67–83, 255 Signs 12, 95, 165, 212, 220, 232, 297 Sodomy 274, 285; see also 68, 255 Soul 33, 44, 45, 47–52, 58, 61, 69, 71–2, 111, 119, 206, 212–13, 216, 219–21, 229 Stars 14, 54, 58, 123, 132, 134, 218–21, 230, 292, 294 Stoicism 4, 30, 33, 34, 74, 99, 224, 303, 326 Substance(s) 24, 72, 93, 96, 107, 122, 128, 192, 197, 211–27, 241, 259, 262–5, 266 Sufism 10, 87–102, 121, 302, 303, 326 Symbola/Sumbola 135, 241, 326; see also Allegory Sympatheia 56, 231, 237, 242, 253, 326; see 10 Syncretism 44, 104–5, 107, 230, 235, 236, 240–2, 327 Sunthema/Sunthemata 327; see also Symbola Telestikê 11, 118–40, 171, 318, 327 The Good 56, 61, 62, 67–83, 263, 265–6; see also The One The One 12, 51, 53, 55, 60, 67–83, 105, 107, 111–13, 121, 197–8, 205–7, 220, 231, 239, 246, 257, 261–2, 263, 294

Subject Index Theurgy 25, 118–40, 236, 241–4, 294, 297, 327 Time 9, 37, 44–66, 107, 126–7, 213, 235, 302 Transcendentalism 13, 228–59, 310, 328 Trinity 13, 266, 274 Truth 6–8, 10–12, 14, 26, 50, 58, 91, 100, 150, 152, 166, 174, 195, 200, 207, 229, 235, 265, 284, 290, 299

Upanishads 103, 105, 108, 112, 324, 329 Virtue 72, 136, 164, 283, 296 World Soul 40, 42, 213, 221, 258, 259, 313, 329

341

Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth

The Archaeology of Late Antique 'Paganism' (Late Antique Archaelogy)

Epistemology, Realism and Truth

Tropical Truth(s): The Epistemology of Metaphor and other Tropes

The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople

Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography

Housing in Late Antiquity - Volume 3.2 (Late Antique Archaeology)

Truth and other enigmas

Truth and Other Enigmas

Truth and Other Enigmas

Truth and Other Enigmas

Introduction to objectivist epistemology

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

Introduction to objectivist epistemology

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

A Companion to Epistemology

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

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Introduction to objectivist epistemology

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Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

A Companion to Epistemology

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

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25 Ways To Suppress Truth - The Rules of Disinformation

Introduction to objectivist epistemology

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Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World

The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch

Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions

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Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World

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Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Late Antique Archaeology, Volume 3.1)

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