(21 May 2023.)
For all we know about Greek mathematics, very few works have survived: there's Eukleides's Elements, a few eclectic works by Arkhimedes, Apollonios's Conics, Nikomakhos's Introduction to Arithmetic, Ptolemaios's Almagest, and that's basically it. And yet, we consider ourselves to have a pretty good picture of the achievements of the Greeks! This is not because we have much information about who figured out what and when they did; it's because Eukleides's Elements is the single most comprehensive textbook in any field of study ever devised. It teaches everything that the Greeks knew about mathematics up to that point in a beautifully didactic way: master each step, and you will have all the tools you need to understand the next step. It's not elegant—there are usually simpler ways to prove all of the things it tries to—but it's almost superhuman in it's ability to teach: consequently, it was the premier textbook of mathematics for the next twenty-two hundred years.
Few books can even approach it in ubiquity—indeed, few even try! But there's at least one book that set out to do for metaphysics what Eukleides did for mathematics, and that's Proklos's Elements of Theology. Its proponents—Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example—consider it successful in doing so; its detractors reasonably point out that while every educated person knows who Eukleides is, only philosophy nerds have even heard of Proklos, let alone read him.
Whatever. I'm not here to worry about what anyone says, I'm here to master theology. In the same way that I've done read-along series on Sallustios's On the Gods and the World and Plotinos's Enneads, I'm going to go ahead and commit to doing one on Proklos's Elements, too. The Elements consists of some two hundred short propositions, generally grouped by a theme, working from basics such as "one has to come before many" to the likes of reincarnation and the shapes and sizes of souls. I will be irregularly posting summaries and commentary on a group of propositions at a time. The usual warnings that "I'm a student" and "I'm as prone as anyone to tripping over myself" apply.
I will be working from three translations: Thomas Taylor's (I have a very handsome hardback copy from The Prometheus Trust which I can recommend), Thomas Johnson's, and E. R. Dodds's. I expect to generally follow Dodds, but I trust Taylor's understanding of the material more than the others and will be double-checking against him heavily. (Johnson has the merit of frequently referencing other works by way of explanation.)
Ultimately, my goal here is to better understand Plotinos, whose model of metaphysics has been very useful to me (both theoretically and practically); but Plotinos was such a major undertaking that I was radically transformed by the process of studying it. Who can say where we'll end up with Proklos? Nonetheless, I embark, and I hope you'll follow along.
(22 May 2023.)
Those of you who were paying close attention during my Enneads series know that I like to get a sense of the people I'm having a conversation with before I try to get too engaged. (Who wants to get into the mind of a crazy person?) So let's take a quick look at the authors and translators we'll be looking at before we get started on the Elements proper.
Proklos (412–485) was the last major philosopher of classical antiquity. Our only source for his life is a biography written by his student, Marinus. Evidently, Athene appeared to Proklos in a dream early in life and urged him to pursue philosophy; he did and also worshipped Her particularly. I suppose She indeed had Her hand on his life, as he became the head of the Academy in Athens while still a young man, and taught and wrote prodigiously there for the next five decades—never marrying, just like Her. Soon after Proklos, the institution declined and was forced underground by the (now-Christian) Roman emperors, but it seems clear that much of the philosophic tradition survived and was transmitted to posterity through the efforts of this pious man.
Thomas Taylor (1758?–1835) perhaps needs little introduction around here: he was a tireless student who translated every single scrap of Platonism he could lay his hands on into English and was reviled for doing so, both by Christians (since he was a pagan) and by his fellow scholars (since he was an autodidact). He favored Proklos over all other philosophers and even named his youngest son after him. His translations are fussy and difficult, and his footnotes are never-ending, but he spent an entire lifetime mastering the material, and there's no doubt that he both understood it and lived it.
Thomas Moore Johnson (1851–1919) was a lawyer from Osceola, Missouri, who happened upon some of Taylor's translations while a student and became obsessed with mastering Platonic thought, producing a number of translations and founding journals called The Platonist and Bibliotheca Platonica. Jay Bregman considers him an awkward-but-enthusiastic amateur who nonetheless understood his material, and he played an influential part in the brief-but-brilliant Neoplatonic revival instigated by the Transcendentalists.
Eric Robertson Dodds (1893–1979) succeeded Gilbert Murray (yup, that one) as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. I'm generally distrustful of academia post-1930 or so, but Dodds seems to be something of a black sheep: appointed on the recommendation of Murray over more influential peers, a student of Neoplatonism (which made him unpopular), and interested in the scientific study of the paranormal. On the other hand, it seems that he was not completely convinced by philosophy and remained an agnostic observer. So while he may be, perhaps, better than the common academic, it seems an academic he remains, and I should judge his work to require sanity-checking against more invested students.
I have also a couple interesting notes from when I was working my way through Porphurios's Sentences. I favor Thomas Davidson's translation of the Sentences, and this same work was an early and major influence on Thomas Johnson. Second, while I found Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie's translation of that work to be poor, he has an account as fascinating as it is brief of how he was led to translate Proklos by the mystic visions of an uneducated California miner.
(31 May 2023.)
Since Proklos's Elements is named after Eukleides's Elements—a book entirely composed of geometric proofs—I think people may get the wrong idea that it's meant to prove anything. It's not. The word "elements" is meant in the sense of "elementary:" Proklos's work might better be called "Introductory Metaphysics." It's a book meant to teach, to give you a tour of the big principles of metaphysics from beginning to end, so that once one has mastered it, they are conversant in it and can start discussing it sensibly.
We human beings are embodied souls, and according to Plotinos, "reason" is the power of the embodied soul—we need to think things out, since we are detached enough from the essential Reality that we can't make use of higher powers. Proklos, here, is going to be working with the tools of logic to show that the pre-eminent metaphysical principle is Unity itself. But it must be made clear that this is only meant to be by way of explanation: it's an analogy, and the Unity that we can think about is just a construct within our souls—it's not the actual Unity that rules all things. That may only be experienced, not thought about, which is what Laozi was talking about when he said, "the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao."
In the same way you are a "one" (a body) made up of "many" (systems, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, etc.), so is everything, up to and including the cosmos. In between the cosmic One and all the various "manies" are a middle rank called "Henads" which share the characteristics of both, since they are technically "many" but are indivisible (and so "one" in a sense).
I. Every many participates in one.
Every thing must be one or many. If every many was only made up of manies, then each of those (lesser) manies would be made up of (still lesser) manies, and so on and so on forever, which is absurd. So, the process must terminate eventually and every many must, directly or indirectly, be composed of ones.
II. Every thing that participates in one is both one and not-one.
One is already one, and can't participate in itself: this is just identity rather than participation. But for a many, note that we are still calling it "a thing:" it has some measure of unity by which we refer to the pieces that make it up as one, like how an "army" is somehow a unity of "soldiers." So, that many is one but with something added, and this is in fact what we mean by "participation."
III. Every thing that is united is so by participating in one.
One is already one, and can't become what it already is. But when a many is united, that many hasn't gone anywhere and still exists, but one has nevertheless somehow been added to it, and so we say that that united many now participates in one.
IV. Every thing that is united is different from one itself.
If something is united, it participates in one [III], and is therefore both one and not-one [II]. Suppose the participated one to itself be united: then we can just repeat this process again and again forever, which is absurd. So, the participated one must not be united (e.g. must be simplex). [This establishes one's uniqueness: so, in order to be explicit, we will henceforth refer to it as "the One."]
V. Every many is posterior to the One.
We have previously established that every many participates in the One [I, II]. Suppose that the One also participates in many such that the two are co-dependent. It cannot be the case that the One and many naturally come together, since that is not the nature of contraries. But neither can there be a third principle prior to them forcing them together: such a third principle must be zero, the One, or many; it cannot be zero, since nothing cannot bring something together; and it cannot be the One or many, since we have already supposed these to be posterior to the third principle. So, our supposition must be false and the One and many cannot be co-dependent. Therefore, since many participates in the One but not vice versa, the One must be strictly prior to many.
VI. Every many consists either of Henads or of united groups.
Every many must consist of ones [I]. These ones can't all be united groups, since if there is the One [IV], there must be some first united group: if there weren't, every group could be divided and subdivided forever, which is absurd. [We will call the (many but indivisible) members of this first united group "Henads."]
It's impressive that Proklos managed in two pages what took Plotinos dozens, but that sure didn't make it any easier! In particular, I had a devil of a time with V, and while I think the idea is intuitive, I'm not sure I understood the logic correctly. Dodds points us to Proklos's Theology of Platon II i for a fleshed-out version of the argument, but I honestly found it just as confounding.
I begrudgingly use the terms "the One" and "Henads" in deference to tradition, but frankly they frustrate me. I couldn't change "the One" without making the whole section confusing (it's very convenient to go from "a one" to "the One"), and translating "Henad" to English (as "Unit" or "Atom") would, if anything, be worse than importing a loan word (we'd end up with sentences containing "one," "the One," "Unit," "unity," "united"—sheesh!). If I had my druthers, I would probably call them "the Absolute" and "Primaries."
There seems to be some disagreement about the nature of Henads: are they ones (not "united things", but unities plain and simple) that participate in the One but aren't the One itself, or are they manies that are indivisible? Dodds seems to assume the former, Taylor and Johnson seem to assume the latter. Plotinos certainly asserts that the One is the only unitary thing in existence (even the first Henad, the Intellect, is many) so I've assumed this reading of the text, but it's entirely possible Proklos and Plotinos disagree, and I suppose we'll see as we proceed.
Finally, Johnson quotes Oscar Kuhns in The Sense of the Infinite:
There exist no more beautiful lines in English poetry than the following, taken from [Shelley's] Adonais [§52], lines in which the whole system of Plotinos [and Proklos] is summed up in exquisite words:
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
(8 Jun 2023.)
What is "good," anyway? To the philosophers, "good" was simply the object of desire: that is, every thing pursues what seems "good" to it, which in turn pursues what seems "good" to it, and so on. (Moderns might find this odd: maybe one finds sex to be good, but we don't tend to think of sex as a thing that itself has agency; the Greeks did, however.) Obviously, then, some things are more "good" than others, and identifying the greatest "good" one is capable of is, I suppose, what ethics is all about. Here, Proklos skips all that and goes right to the top: if something can be considered "good," there must be some prototype "Good" which acts as the standard and measurement of all that is considered "good." What can we say about that prototype?
Every thing that exists desires its own good, lacking it and therefore dependent on it. Good itself transcends existence, lacking nothing and desiring nothing. In between dependent things and the Good, there is a middle rank of independent things which exist but desire only themselves, acting as their own good.
VII. Every productive cause is better than its products.
First, let's suppose a cause to be equal to its products. Then all things would be exactly the same in productive power, but we don't see this in the world around us.
Next, let's suppose a cause to be worse than its products. But if a cause can produce something in others, surely it must be able to produce it in itself? It can't lack the means, since we have supposed that it has them; and it can't lack the motive, since it is the nature of every thing that exists to desire its own good. Therefore a cause must certainly make itself better rather than make products better than itself.
So, since a cause is neither equal to nor worse than its products, it must be better than them.
VIII. Good itself is better than every thing that participates in good.
As we have said, every thing that exists desires its own good: this implies that every thing that exists lacks some good, or it would not desire it. From this we must assume that good itself transcends existence: if it existed, then it would lack some good, but how can good itself lack any good? If it did, it could not be the good of every thing! So, good must be nothing but good: to qualify it, by identifying it with any existing thing, is to remove its universality. [This universality establishes good's uniqueness: so, in order to be explicit, we will henceforth refer to it as "the Good."]
IX. Every independent thing is better than every dependent thing.
Every thing that depends on some external thing for its good participates in the Good through that thing: that which it depends on acts as an intermediary between the thing and the Good. But if some thing depends only on itself, it has no intermediary between it and the Good. Since something is good in proportion to how close it is to the Good, a direct participant must be better than an indirect participant.
X. The Good is better than every independent thing.
For a thing to be independent is for it to have the cause of its own good within it. But to have a good is to participate in the Good, and the Good is better than every thing that participates in it [VIII].
Dodds groups VII through XIII into a single section (which he calls "Of Causes"). I agree with his sectioning, but I have broken it into two halves for the sake of my sanity. Those following along from home might reasonably ask "hey, why did you switch gears from the One to talk about a different principle?" and we'll get there shortly. I should warn you that VII is unrelated to the rest of the propositions here, and it will only be used in the next section: I considered moving it to that post, but no, I think it's better to keep the propositions in order. Just be aware that it isn't used in sequence here!
Our translators all use the term "self-sufficient" for what I am here calling "independent;" I justify the change because "independent" has an obvious contrasting term—"dependent"—while "self-sufficient" has no such contrasting term.
Lofty though he may be, Plotinos is a very intuitive sort of person and I tend to do well when guided by feeling and analogy; Proklos is all cold, hard logic, and I'm finding him very difficult. VIII in particular was this week's great challenge: short as it is, I spent hours and hours on it alone, and I don't think I quite nailed it. Part of what makes it tricky is that we are taking "every thing desires its good" as an axiom: this means the good cannot not exist, but we're here showing that it cannot exist, either. Normally, in logic, one would suppose there's a problem with your axioms rather than needing to posit something above existence! Plotinos made a good case for why this is—the Good exists, but it's "special" somehow because we can't predicate it—but I'm not understanding how Proklos can get there implicitly (since he doesn't seem to say anything about that here). Maybe he returns to the properties of the Good later on.
(10 Jun 2023.)
Let's finish up the section, "Of Causes," shall we?
Dodds astutely notes here that we have established two fundamental principles: the One, which works "downwards," giving existence to that which is below it; and the Good, which works "upwards," showing how every thing attempts to return or be united with its source. In this section, Proklos establishes that these two are, in fact, the same principle: in effect showing that where we come from is where we ultimately go to.
The One and the Good are in fact two ways of looking at same principle—unity is good and good is unity—and this principle is the transcendent cause of every thing that exists.
XI. Every thing that exists is produced by one first cause.
We have previously established a strict ordering of causes [VII], which means that causation cannot be cyclic. Now, to know something is to understand its causes, and obviously we can be said to know some things; but this means that it cannot be the case, on one hand, that everything is uncaused (since there would be no causes to know) or, on the other, that there is an infinite regression of causes (since there would be no way to get to the bottom of anything and therefore knowledge would be impossible). So, there must be some number of first causes; but since we have previously established that one is prior to many [V], the first cause must be one.
XII. Every thing that exists is produced by the Good.
We have previously established that there is a transcendant principle, the Good, above everything that exists [VIII]; either it or something prior to it must be the first cause [XI]. But for something to be prior to the Good must mean that all things possess some higher character than "goodness," and what could this be?—by "higher," don't we just mean "more good?" And if the Good is universal, what could it mean to be "more universal" than the universal? So, to say there is something prior to the Good is nonsensical: therefore, the first cause must be the Good.
XIII. The One is the same as the Good.
The reason things desire good is that it conserves them and makes them whole. Conversely, unity is a good to things since if a thing lost its unity, it would dissolve into its components and cease to exist as a unified entity. But this is to say the same thing in two ways: if the Good implies one and the One implies good, then they must be the same. To become divided is to fall away from good; and to fall away from good is to become divided.
XIII is simple boolean logic: ((A→B)∧(B→A))↔(A↔B). (In fact, this is the usual way to prove equivalence.)
As I spend more time with the Elements of Theology, I continue to be convinced that it is not a systematization of Neoplationism: it's proofs aren't rigorous (indeed, many of them aren't proofs at all, but rather merely assertions), and Proklos was well-versed enough in mathematics to have known this. I'm also starting to think that it is not an introductory textbook of metaphysics, either: when one introduces a student to something, one wants to so enchant them with the material that they can't help but engage with it, but the Elements of Theology is off-putting in it's austerity—it contains only the bones of Neoplatonism and none of the meat (and certainly none of the animating fire which made Plotinos and Porphurios so fascinating). So what can it be?
I am coming to think that the Elements is a syllabus: a series of lecture notes which one could use to teach a course of metaphysics. None of the lessons is really given in any depth, but why should they be? They're just the prompts, as complete as the format requires, and any competent teacher would be able to flesh out these notes to the degree necessary and as the classroom requires.
(14 Jun 2023.)
Dodds calls the next section of the Elements of Theology, running from XIV through XXIV, "Of the Grades of Reality." Once again I think his choice of sectioning is reasonable (and I continue to favor it over Taylor's and Johnson's), but once again I am going to break it up into smaller parts for the sake of my sanity.
The first of these parts is XIV through XVII, which is about motion. I would have found this nonsensical without having first read Sallustius (OTGATW VII) and Plotinos (Enneads II ii and VI iii). The idea is that in the section "On the Good," we talked about desire, and desire prompts motion; but, crucially, "motion" to the Greeks does not refer to a "change in position" like we mean it today; rather, it refers to a more general "change in state." So what we're really talking about, here, is whether or not things can change, and what the nature of those changes are; this is so that Proklos can build up to differentiating various levels of reality by comparing those natures.
The first cause is unmoved (e.g. changeless). Below it are things that are self-moved (e.g. can initiate change); these are incorporeal and capable of returning to themselves (e.g. self-direction). Below those are things that are externally-moved (e.g. are subject to change); these are corporeal and incapable of returning to themselves.
XIV. Every thing is either unmoved, self-moved, or externally-moved; each is better than the next.
We see externally-moved things in the world around us. Since all effects have a first cause [XI], there must ultimately be an unmoved thing to move them. But suppose everything is initially at rest: what will be the first thing to move? It can't be the unmoved (since it doesn't move), and neither can it be the externally-moved (since nothing is yet moving to move it). So, we must suppose a middle rank of self-moved things, some one of which will be the first thing to move.
XV. Every thing capable of returning to itself is incorporeal.
For a thing to return means that it must be unified with that which it returns to. But a body has many separate parts: for it to return to itself (as a whole) would mean all those parts would be unified, but this is impossible since those parts must occupy different spatial locations.
XVI. Every thing capable of returning to itself has an essence separable from every body.
Suppose a thing was capable of returning to itself but was inseparable from a body. The thing's activity must be inseparable from the body's activity, since it's absurd to think that a thing is posterior to a body in existence but is prior to a body in action [VII]. But if the thing returned to itself, its body (acting inseparably from it) would also return to itself, which is impossible [XV]. So, if a thing is capable of returning to itself, it must be separable from every body.
XVII. Every self-moved thing is capable of returning to itself.
If a thing is self-moving as a whole, then the mover and the moved are one and the same. (If something is self-moving but not as a whole, presumably some part of it is self-moving and the rest is externally-moved.) If one and the same thing moves and is moved, then its activity is directed upon itself; but this is simply what we mean when we say "returning to itself."
I find XIV lacking, as it doesn't indicate why the first cause is unmoved (rather than, itself, self-moved). Plotinos explains why in Enneads II ii: the Good lacks nothing, therefore the Good desires nothing; but motion is caused by desire; therefore the Good does not move. (As we'll see in the next section, Intellect also does not move: this is because It desires Itself, but It already has Itself, so no motion is necessary to attain Its desire.)
In XV, Proklos introduces the term epistrophe ("return"), but annoyingly, he defers defining it until XVII. It simply means for a thing to be self-directed, turned inwards. ("Return" is the whole idea behind Plotinos's mysticism: gathering oneself back up into a little, microcosmic One.) The proof of XV looks a little strange at first blush, but I always liked how Alan Watts put it: "What you are in your inmost being escapes your examination in rather the same way that you can't look directly into your own eyes without using a mirror, you can't bite your own teeth, your can't taste your own tongue, and you can't touch the tip of this finger with the tip of this finger. And that's why there's always an element of profound mystery in the problem of who we are." But a soul is not like a body: it has no sensory apparatus, no parts, and so no problem.
(17 Jun 2023.)
After "On Motion," this is the second subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of the Grades of Reality." Now we're really getting somewhere: having established the One and various kinds of motion, we can now differentiate various "levels" of reality by those kinds of motion. I suppose I should note that these "levels" aren't the same as the "planes" discussed by modern Western occultism. (For example, the level of "bodies," here, corresponds to the "material," "etheric," and "astral" planes in occultism.) It is important to understand how each level is distinguished from the next in order to map it to other systems!
From the previously-established propositions, we can deduce four distinct levels of reality: first is the One, which is unitary; second is intellect, which is unmoved; third is soul, which is self-moved; fourth are bodies, which are externally-moved.
XVIII. Every thing whose presence lends a quality to some thing must essentially possess that quality.
Suppose a fire causes a pan to get hot. It cannot be that the fire only communicates heat from some third thing to the pan, since the cause must be better than the effect (rather than the same) [VII]. It also cannot be that the heat of the fire and the heat of the pan are the same in name only, but differ in every other respect, because how can an effect be completely unrelated to its cause? No, the fire must cause the pan to get hot because fire is hot: the cause must essentially possess the quality that it lends to the other thing.
XIX. Every quality which is essentially possessed by things in virtue of their nature is present in every thing with that nature.
If only some things with a given nature possess a quality essentially, then the other things with that nature must possess it only accidentally; but if a thing only sometimes possesses a quality and sometimes not, then it cannot be a part of its nature.
XX. The soul's essence is prior to every body; intellect is prior to every soul; the One is prior to intellect.
We see some bodies move on their own (e.g. animals) while others don't (e.g. rocks); indeed, some move at one time (e.g. while alive) but not at another (e.g. while dead). It is clear, therefore, that self-movement is not an essential quality of bodies [XIX]. Self-movement must therefore be a quality lent to bodies by an external thing: we call this "soul," which must possess self-movement essentially [XVIII]. Since bodies are externally-moved and souls are self-moved, souls are higher than bodies [XIV].
Because souls possess self-movement, souls are capable of returning to themselves [XVII]. But since some souls are directed towards bodies while others are self-directed, self-direction is not an essential quality of souls [XIX]. Self-direction must therefore be a quality lent to souls by an external thing: we call this "intellect," which must possess self-direction essentially [XVIII]. But self-direction implies a lack a movement, since a thing directed upon itself already has itself and therefore has no need of moving to get it. But since intellect is unmoved while soul is self-moved, intellect is higher than soul [XIV].
Finally, despite a lack of motion, self-direction still implies a subject and an object: even if it loops back on itself, the "arrow" of direction must have a starting and ending place. This makes intellect have an essential duality; but every many participates in the One [I], so the One is higher than intellect. We can stop here: since the One is the first cause [XII, XIII], there is nothing higher than It.
I have altered the form of XVIII from that of a logical argument to that of an analogy, since frankly this was the only way I could follow it: Proklos says nonsense words like "thing" and "it" so many times that my head spins and I get lost. I took the analogy from Plotinos (Enneads I ii §1).
While most of the Elements has been a bit of a slog thus far, XX was genuinely fun and I enjoyed trying to work it out on my own from all the pieces given to us before reading the body of the proposition. I'm glad I did, since I think Proklos skips steps: in particular, I think incorporating XVII is necessary to glue everything together, but Proklos doesn't explicitly reference it. Dodds, too, says it's not used until CLXXXVI and speculated about how it must be placed so early in the text in order to refute the Stoics or something. Whatever—I think the logic of the proposition demands it, so either Dodds is off in outer space or else I'm missing something. Proklos himself speaks of intellect in terms of "thinker" and "perpetual thought", and says that this is how it differs from soul, but I'm pretty sure this is equivalent to self-direction (e.g. Plotinos calls it self-contemplation, and notes intellect's intuition is only possible when subject and object are unified), and anyway switching terminology like that makes the logic of the proposition harder to follow. Either a copyist made a mess of an early manuscript; or else Proklos is bored with this introductory stuff and rushed it; or else, again, I'm missing something.
Incidentally, Proklos likes to work from the top down: for instance, in his Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Platon, he says that "it is always requisite that demonstrations should begin from things more universal, and proceed from these as far as to individuals. For this mode of proceeding is natural, and is more adapted to science." So, I think it's interesting that, while he establishes the One first, he demonstrates the various levels of reality from the bottom up! (This is all the more striking since Plotinos started in the middle!) For whatever it's worth, though, I think bottom up makes the most sense in this context.
Despite a lot of playing around during my Plotinos read-along series, I keep the usual term "intellect" for the second-highest principle. (I don't like the term since intellect doesn't think: rather, it intuits or knows. Dodds notes that the German intelligentsia of his day had drifted towards translating it as "spirit," but, if anything, that seems worse. If one twisted my arm, I might suggest "consciousness," but this is cumbersome, and anyway if we're going to learn a weird term, we might as well use the weird term everyone else uses.) It is not capitalized (like it was for Plotinos) because—spoiler alert!—we have not yet established it's uniqueness. (I assume Proklos does this later on, anyway. We'll see!)
(27 Jun 2023.)
After "On Motion" and "On the Levels of Reality," this is the third and final subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of the Grades of Reality." We've established that the structure of reality itself consists of a series of levels, and now we're going to talk about how those levels are structured.
Every level of being begins in a transcendent Monad, which is the cause of all the various things in its level; these things are what are participated in by the next level of being.
XXI. Every level of being begins in a Monad; every many within a level of being may be traced back to a Monad.
Every level of being is distinguished by some quality, the cause of which essentially possesses that quality [XX]. [We will call this cause a "Monad."]
Each of the things within a level of being, similarly, exist in a causal chain: one thing causes another, repeated many times, ultimately determining how each of the things relate to each other and to the whole; but since all at least in potential carry the same quality, all of them derive from the Monad which essentially possesses that quality [XX], even if a thing proximately has additional causes as well.
This specifically means that the One is the Monad of Henads, and that the Henads come from and return to the One; that the Intellect is the Monad of intelligences, and that the intelligences come from and return to the Intellect; that the Soul is the Monad of souls, which come from and return to the Soul; and that Nature is the Monad of natures, which come from and return to Nature.
XXII. There is exactly one Monad in each level of being.
Suppose there are many Monads in a level of being. These must differ in some respect, or else they would be one rather than many; therefore, the quality by which they differ is not their essential quality [XIX], and there must be a thing prior to them that essentially possesses the quality by which they are distinguished [XVIII]; but then the Monads are not Monads at all, but rather the thing prior to them is and we have simply misidentified the defining quality of a level of being. So the supposition must be false, and there can only be only one Monad in a level of being.
XXIII. Every Monad is transcendent, but produces things that can be participated in; those participated things are drawn back towards their transcendent.
We have already established a Monad is prior to the nature of the next level of being [XX]. But it is not possible for that Monad to be divided amongst them all, since then the Monad would be many (but it cannot be) [XXII], and anyway would require a unifying principle (but cannot have anything prior on its level of being) [XXI]. Neither is it possible for there to be a single participant in the Monad, since then the nature of a level of being must be common to all (not merely one) [XIX]. So the Monad must be transcendent.
So we must suppose that the Monad produces participable things out of itself, which things from the next level of being participates in. [(That is, the Intellect must produce intelligibles, which are the things that souls participate in; similarly, Soul must produce souls, which are the things that bodies participate in; but Soul does not directly participate in Intellect, neither the universal Body in Soul.)]
XXIV. A Monad is better than its participle products, which in turn are better than the things that participate in them.
A participating thing is incomplete without its participation: it is only made complete by the participation in some other thing. Therefore it is dependent on that thing, and worse than it.
But any participated thing is only participated by some number of participants, while the transcendent is common to all. Therefore, the transcendent is better than every participated thing.
Boy, Proklos sure is disagreeable today! There's quite a few apparent differences from Plotinos in this section, and trying to make sense of them made it very difficult for me to work my way through. I doubt I've properly grasped the implications of what Proklos is getting at, here, and I apologize if I've made mistakes.
I dislike the term "Monad" for the same reasons I dislike the term "Henad." Oh well: Proklos distinguishes the two, so I follow him. I was wondering how Henads and Monads differ, since my reading of Plotinos was that they were the same—but skipping ahead a bit, it seems that what Plotinos called a Henad (that is, the Intellect, Soul, Nature) is being called by Proklos a Monad; Proklos's Henads are something else entirely—they are the gods that exist above (!?) the Intellect. I haven't the slightest idea what that might mean: to Plotinos, the beings we call gods exist at the level of Soul; the Intellect is something far too great to be called a god (he and Porphurios call it "the father of the gods"), and only the One is above the Intellect. (I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm pretty confident that these are all what Plotinos said!) So it seems that Proklos insists on a very different cosmology than Plotinos did! I didn't dig very deeply into what Proklos does with Henads: we'll just have to see what it means as we proceed.
Proklos says in XXI that Nature produces natures (and that bodies are suspended from natures); my read of Plotinos was that Nature is the Monad of bodies (e.g. Nature, itself, is the visible cosmos of which bodies are parts). I'll need to reread Enneads III viii with this in mind to see if I misread Plotinos the first time through or if Proklos is disagreeing with him.
In his corollary to XXII (which I did not summarize), Proklos gives examples of things things which exist primitively in each level of being. First is Being, which must refer to the One, even though the One transcends Being; but this was a bit of a technicality even with Plotinos, so we'll let that slide. Next is the Intellect, fine. Next is the Soul, fine. But after that he starts listing various intelligibles: Beauty, Equality, Animal-ness, Human-ness. I think it's reasonable to assert that there is an original, unique thing possessing any given quality; but I don't see how we get there from the argument he employs, which hinges on a thing being the first cause within a level of being. Dodds notes the disagreement with Plotinos, but I don't even think it rises to the level of "disagreement" as it doesn't even appear to be self-consistent: I wonder, rather, if the text we have is corrupt.
Finally, while the discussion of "transcendence" in XXIII isn't really a disagreement between Proklos and Plotinos (Dodds notes that the dilemma of reconciling transcendence with imminence goes back to Platon), it does seem to reflect a difference of approach and emphasis. To Plotinos, deductive reason is a property of the soul, since deduction is a sequence and the world above soul is nonsequential. So, it is impossible to try and logically reconcile the super-logical (see also Tarski): if you want to understand realities higher than soul, then you can only do so through mystical experience. But Proklos is determined to take everything step-by-step! He's obviously doing so knowing full well that it's impossible, since he understands Plotinos backwards and forwards, so he must have felt it was important to make the attempt anyway. (Dodds notes that later authors criticize Proklos for inconsistency on the basis of this proposition, but as Gödel tells us, this is the necessary consequence of the attempt at completeness.) The question in my mind is, "why attempt the different approach?"—but I suppose such a thing is unknowable; maybe it's simply that Plotinos was an Aphrodite sort of person, while Proklos was under the guiding hand of Athena.
(A tip of the hat, by the way, to Thomas Taylor for his footnote to XXIII, which I have more-or-less reproduced. I wouldn't have followed it otherwise.)
(25 Jul 2023.)
I apologize for the long gap since the last section, but it's been a difficult month. Back to work! Dodds calls the next section of the Elements of Theology, running from XXV through XXXIX, "Of Procession and Reversion." Again, that seems reasonable to me—more reasonable, at least, than Taylor's and Johnson's very odd sectioning—but fifteen propositions is a lot to bite off at once, so I'll once again be breaking it up. Logically enough, we'll be dealing with procession, first.
This section is less of a series of propositions leading up to some conclusion, and more of a set of fundamental laws of Neoplatonist cosmology.
Every complete thing produces lesser things that are as similiar to itself as possible, given their diminished potency. This production isn't like an artificer who makes something by craft, or like a mother who gives birth; rather, the producer radiates its productions like the sun radiates light, and it is undiminished by doing so.
XXV. Every complete thing produces all things of which it is capable of producing in imitation of the One.
Every thing that exists is produced by the Good [XII]; but the Good is the One [XIII], so the production of every thing possible must be the act of the One. But every complete thing is a one, and so in a like manner to the One, it's act must be to produce every thing possible for it to produce. These productions will be inferior to it [VII]. From this, we may see that the One has the greatest productive power; it's productions, even when complete, are less complete than it and have lesser productive power; and the productions of those productions are lesser still, and have even less productive power; and so on all the way down to the least things which are sterile and have no productive power whatsoever.
XXVI. Every productive cause produces changelessly.
Since the One is both productive of all things [XII, XIII] and changeless [XX], the productive act of the One must not require change. But all causes derive their productive power from their parent cause and produce in the same way [XXV]; therefore all causes produce changelessly. Further, because being diminished is a kind of change, a cause is not diminished by its production.
XXVII. Every productive cause produces not out of itself, but as a byproduct of its completeness.
Suppose a productive cause is not complete. Then, unable to produce in like manner to the One [XXV], it produces out of itself somehow; but this is impossible, since every productive cause produces changelessly [XXVI]. Therefore every productive cause is complete, and produces from its completeness and without change, and its product is a separate existence beside it.
XXVIII. Every productive cause produces things like itself in preference to things unlike itself.
When comparing a cause and its effect, they must either be the same in every way, different in every way, or the same in some ways and different in others. They cannot be the same in every way, since then the would be equal, but a cause must be superior to its effect [VII]. Similarly, they cannot be different in every way, because a cause must have some relation to its effect, since the effect would not exist without the cause. So the cause and effect must be the same in some ways and different in others.
Now, every effect participates in the Good through its cause [IX], and so the more similar an effect is to its cause, the more closely linked it is, and therefore the better it is. Since a cause would prefer better effects to worse ones, a cause will prefer to produce effects as similar to itself as possible.
XXIX. All procession is effected through similitude of cause and effect.
Procession is the process whereby productive power is diminished [VII] but similarity is retained [XXVIII]; so it is by similarity, and not difference, that every thing is produced. [So, the highest level of reality is the Good itself [XX], but each level below it is the best possible given the constraints it operates under.]
XXX. Every thing produced by a cause is both part of and separate from that cause.
We have already shown that a cause is unchanged by its productions [XXVI] and is both the same and different from its productions [XXVII]. That part of the effect which is the same has identity with the cause and is not to be distinguished from it; this common part must remain in the cause (or else the cause is not prior to the effect). Conversely, however, the part that is different ensures that the effect cannot be identified with the cause and is a separate thing. So, in a sense, the effect is a part of the cause from one perspective; and it is separate from the cause from another perspective; but both of these relationships are inseparable.
Proklos may have been disagreeable last time, but here he seems to hew quite closely to his predecessors! This section is essentially an explicit formulation of some of the axioms used in the Enneads, and in fact it seems rather similar to On the Gods and the World XIII.
Dodds calls XXV "the law of emanation." Bishop Nicolaus of Methone (c. AD 1150) pithily ridicules it (and, by extension, Neoplatonism generally) by saying that "men beget men, not pigs." The obvious retort to this is that men beget neither men nor pigs; souls do. Bodies are the limit of causative process and are not able to produce anything: hence why only the living have children, and not the dead—the presence of soul is crucial. (There, I have criticized a cleric and done my good deed for the day. *pats self on head*)
Dodds calls XXVI and XXVII, together, "the law of undiminished giving." He quotes Shelley's Epipsychidion [§11] as exemplary of it:
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity.
He also references a poem by (Robert?) Bridges: "Immortal happiness... a gift whose wealth is amplified by spending." I was unfortunately unable to locate the poem containing this line despite much searching.
Dodds calls XXVIII and XXIX, together, "the law of continuity." I like how he summarizes them: just as the physical universe abhors a vacuum, so too does the spiritual universe—but spiritual objects are not separated by distance but rather by quality. That's the kind of statement one could ponder for a lifetime and still not exhaust its possibilities! Part of the reason I like a simple Neopythagorean (?) approach to souls (assuming it washes—I haven't dug too deep yet) is that it makes the explicit formulation of this law unnecessary: it is implicit in the relationship of numbers to each other. (But if I'm right that the Elements is meant to be a syllabus, then perhaps being explicit is the point!)
XXIX is notable for being the first proposition where I think Taylor is easier to read than Dodds! Dodds calls it a "rather superfluous corollary" to XXVIII, but in my opinion the emphasis is warranted as it's the answer to a very common question: "Why is the world so horrible?" "Give it a break, it's trying it's best!"
Dodds calls XXX "the law of immanence," the idea that more sophisticated levels of reality are built out of and on top of simpler ones. The Greek conception and description of this feels pretty clunky to me, but I think it's pretty easily grasped in this age of computers: nowadays we would simply say that each level of reality is simulated by the one above it. It's the same idea I was trying to analogize using Conway's Game of Life and my nested boxes of virtual numbers. (And see, Br'er Wolf? I did get there eventually! It only took me two years!) It's interesting to consider your body as a simulation created by your soul. (However, an equally-interesting corollary is that your soul is not simulated by the gods: your soul is no less divine than the gods are, just much smaller and dependent upon them.)
(28 Jul 2023.)
After "The Laws of Procession," this is the second subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of Procession and Reversion." Last time we talked about where every thing comes from, and now we're talking about where every thing goes.
In the same way that every cause produces things as similar as possible to itself, every effect is drawn towards and returns to its cause by identifying with it. This cycle of procession and return is not two distinct motions, but merely two ways of looking at the same eternal, continuous process.
XXXI. Every thing that proceeds from a cause returns to it.
Every thing that proceeds from a cause depends on it and participates in the Good through it [IX]. This means that a cause is good to its effects. Every thing that exists desires its good [VII], and desire prompts motion: so every thing that proceeds from a cause desires its cause and moves towards it.
XXXII. All return is effected through similitude of effect and cause.
Things are united by similitude and separated by difference. So when a thing attempts to return to its cause, it attempts to unify with it, and therefore attempts to be as similar to it as is possible.
XXXIII. Every thing that proceeds from a cause and returns to it acts cyclically.
If every thing that proceeds from a cause returns to it [XXXI], then its beginning and end are one and the same, and thus its action is a cycle. Some things make small cycles from and to their immediate prior, while others make large cycles from its ultimate cause; but all are cyclic.
XXXIV. Every thing that is capable of return will return to its cause.
Because return is effected through similitude [XXXII], a thing that can return will be similar to the thing returned to. There are three ways that two things can be similar: they can be identical, they can both have a shared cause, or one can be the cause of the other. If they're identical, they are already one thing and so already returned. If they have a shared cause, then we can repeat this analysis between the cause and each effect. If one causes the other, then the effect will return to its cause [XXXI]. So every thing returns its cause.
The One is the cause of everything [XII, XIII], but transcends existence [VIII]; the highest cause that exists is therefore intellect [XX]. Therefore it is apparent that every thing capable of return will ultimately return to intellect.
XXXV. Every thing remains in, proceeds from, and returns to its cause.
We have already established that every thing both remains in and proceeds from its cause [XXX] and that every thing that proceeds also returns to its cause [XXXI]; so every thing must simultaneously remain in, proceed from, and return to its cause.
This is where Proklos's mention of "return" way back in XV through XVII finally comes into proper discussion: recall that souls are that which are that which are capable of returning to themselves. Pseudo-Iamblichus notes in the Theology of Arithmetic that the number one (that is, the One) is the source of identity (that is, remaining), that the number two (that is, the Intellect) is the source of difference (that is, procession), and that the number three (that is, souls) are the source of harmonization (that is, return), which is another way of looking at what Proklos is talking about here.
It is important to note (and Taylor—bless him—is unable to help himself and does in his usual grandiose style) that both procession and return, despite being cyclic, do not occur in sequence or in time: they happen simultaneously and eternally. So when Proklos notes that every thing returns to intellect in XXXIV, this doesn't mean the material universe has a beginning or an end, but rather that it's in a constant state of continuous unfolding. Dodds notes that Proklos never formally states or proves the eternity of the world in the Elements; but since Plotinos and Sallustius made such a big deal of it a hundred years prior, I wonder if the Christians stopped trying to hasten the apocalypse in the intervening interval?
Speaking of which, Proklos's corollary at the end of XXXIV is a little bizarre. Firstly, he has not established that intellect is a unique thing, just that there is an intellectual nature above the soul. Second, he never established that its the first existent but assumes it without proof! I have attempted to supply the gap myself, but it strikes me as a significant omission.
I recommend reading XXXV in the original: Proklos gets really cute and considers every possible binary case of a thing remaining in, proceeding from, and returning to its cause, with a very brief proof of the impossibility of all but the desired case. The result is a nice summary of XXV through XXXIV. I have greatly truncated it since the logic follows that previously established.
Of this section generally, Johnson cryptically notes that "there are three primary forms of return, viz. through essence, through life, through knowledge." I am not sure what he's referencing here (unless he is obliquely referencing the One, the Intellect, and Soul), as I haven't seen these three paths discussed elsewhere in Platonic sources, but it sounds remarkably reminiscent of the three yogas mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita or the three paths up from Malkuth in the Tree of Life. Possibly it's from later in the Elements?
The triad of imminence, procession, and return between levels of existence is, of course, Plotinos's whole thing; Dodds notes that Iamblichus and Proklos consider it to be true within a level of reality, too—that is, souls also reside in, proceed from, and return to their prior souls. This is something I've been thinking about a lot, since I personally try to keep myself intently fixed on my angel, which the Neoplatonists (and I) would consider my immediate prior; this is something that obviously seems good to me, and is bearing good fruits, but Plotinos (being obsessed with love for the One) didn't discuss it and the Christians (similarly obsessed, but with a different "one") would consider it somewhere between misguided idolatry and outright blasphemy. But it seems to me that the direction one's looking is what's important: are you looking up or looking down? As long as you're looking up, does it really matter too much if you're looking at something close or far away? Anyway, it's nice to see prior authority for something I've been considering on my own.
(2 Aug 2023.)
After "The Laws of Procession" and "The Cycle of Procession and Return," this is the third and final subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of Procession and Reversion." This part explains the degree of goodness which things possess as they go through the cycle introduced previously.
As things proceed from a cause, they gets worse; return retraces each thing's path step-by-step back to the cause, getting better again as it does so.
XXXVI. Of things that proceed from a cause, those that are primary are better than those that are secondary, which in turn are better than those that are tertiary, etc.
Procession is the process by which causes produce things that, while worse than themselves, are as like themselves as possible [XXVIII]. From this it follows that the fewer intermediates an effect has, the better it is.
XXXVII. Of things that return to a cause, those that are primary are worse than those that are secondary, which in turn are worse than those that are tertiary, etc.
If procession is a cycle [XXXIII] in which a thing returns to its cause [XXXIV], and things become worse as they get more distant from their cause [XXXVI], then it follows that they become better as they get closer again to their cause.
XXXVIII. Every thing that returns does so through the same terms that it proceeded through.
Because procession [XXIX] and return [XXXII] are both effected through similitude, that which proceeds immediately from a cause returns to it immediately, because it is already as similar to it as possible. But if something requires an intermediary to proceed [XXXIV] it will also require an intermediary to return, since the intermediary will be as similar as possible to the cause and the effect will be as similar as possible to the intermediary.
XXXIX. Every thing returns either by existence; or by existence and life; or by existence, life, and reason.
Recall that the levels of reality are the One (the cause of existence), intellect (the cause of life), souls (the cause of reason), and bodies (which do not cause anything) [XX]. Since every thing that returns does so through the same terms it proceeded through [XXXVIII], those things that proceed from the One return by means of what the One gives them, which is existence; those things that proceed from the Intellect return by means of what the One and the Intellect give them, which is existence and life; those things that proceed from souls return by means of what the One, the Intellect, and that soul give them, which is existence, life, and reason.
As terse as the Elements is, this section strikes me as a longwinded version of Porphurios's Sentences XI: "Incorporeal realities, in the process of descent, fragment and multiply into individual things by reason of a diminution of power; on the other hand, in the process of ascent, they unify and become whole again by reason of a superabundance of power." I am grateful that it was much easier to work through than previous sections, as my mind is not strong this week.
If you'll recall in the last section, I was bewildered by Johnson's note about how return is either through essence, life, or knowledge. Well, turns out it's from right here in XXXIX! My summary follows his and Taylor's translations, from which it is very obviously the application of XXXVIII to XX; Dodds gives a very different sense of it and goes on to comment about how this proposition is all about defending theurgy from its detractors or something. Whatever—once again, either he's off in outer space or I'm missing something. The use of the term "life" here simply refers, I think, to "motion" rather than life in its true sense, since—as Porphurios notes in Sentences XII—the One and the Intellect also live, though their life is quite different than the familiar sort! I have changed Taylor's "gnostically" and Dodds's "by way of knowledge" to "by reason" since we're talking here specifically about a soul's deductive knowledge and not the Intellect's intuitive knowledge.
So what's the point of all this? If each cause is better than its effects, why proceed and return in the first place? Plotinos explains in Enneads III iv §1 ff.: the experience of having bodies is how a soul comes to understand how it is unique among souls. If it didn't, there'd be no self-recognition, no identity. Without identity, the soul wouldn't exist at all. This, in turn, is how the Intellect comes to understand its relation to the One: all souls that can have identity, must have identity, since the Intellect must be complete in order to be "one."
(12 Aug 2023.)
Dodds calls the next section of the Elements of Theology, consisting of propositions XL through LI, "Of the Self-Constituted." I very tentatively disagree with his sectioning: the last two propositions of this section seem to me to be better suited in the next (concerning time). But that's a problem for another day: twelve propositions is too much to tackle at once anyway and so we'll start with the first few for now. (Even these were too much!) Here, Proklos introduces the concept of self-constitution and shows that incorporeals are self-constituted.
We will call independent things "self-constituted." Intellect is essentially self-constituted, and souls are lent self-constitution by their participation in intellect.
XL. The Good is better than self-constituted (e.g. independent) things; self-constituted things are better than dependent things.
The Good is not self-constituted, since the Good is the One [XIII], and if the One caused itself it would be not-One [II], which is a contradiction.
Suppose nothing below the Good was self-constituted. But then there would be nothing independent, because the Good is not independent [X] and we have supposed everything else to be dependent. But with nothing independent, there would be nothing to mediate between the dependent and the Good [IX], and so nothing but the Good would exist, which is obviously incorrect.
So something below the Good must be self-constituted, and it must be those which are immediately below the Good, since the Good depends on nothing [XII] and produces things as like itself as possible [XXVIII], and being independent is better than being dependent [IX]. Therefore self-constituted things are better than dependent things.
XLI. Every thing that exists in some other thing is caused by that other thing; every thing that exists in itself is self-constituted.
When we say "exists in," we means "depends on as a cause." So if something exists in something else, it is caused by it, and it cannot be self-constituted. But if something exists in itself, it is caused by itself, therefore independent, therefore self-constituted.
XLII. Every self-constituted thing is capable of returning to itself.
Every thing that proceeds from a cause returns to it [XXXI], so if a thing causes itself, it will return to itself.
XLIII. Every thing capable of returning to itself is self-constituted.
It is the nature of every thing to return to its cause [XXXIV], so if a thing returns to itself, it must be its own cause.
XLIV. Every thing capable of returning to itself in activity (e.g. is self-directed) is capable of returning to itself essentially (e.g. is self-constituted).
Suppose that a thing can return to itself in activity but not in existence. Since every independent thing is better than every dependent thing [IX], the thing's activity is better than its existence. But this is impossible, since a thing must exist before it can act, and so its existence must be better than its action. So if a thing is capable of returning to itself, its essence is inherently independent.
This section really kicked my ass! Why does Proklos introduce a new concept ("self-constitution"), only to immediately prove it the same as as an old concept (capability of self-direction)? Why does Proklos equate self-constitution (and therefore capability of self-direction) with independence (e.g. self-causation), when he has already proved the existence of counter-examples (e.g. soul is capable of self-direction but is externally-caused, see XX)? Why does Proklos seem to demonstrate the same thing repeatedly (IX and X vs. XL, XLII and XLIII vs. XLIV)? In the end, I didn't manage to make heads or tails of it and had to give up.
I was opining to my angel about all this, and They said, "Remember, the trying to understand is more important than the understanding." They're right, of course: the point here is growth, and growth comes from making the effort, so we'll just have to proceed as best we can! The good news is that I started studying Proklos in the hopes that he would fill in the gaps in my understanding of Plotinos. And he is, in a round-about sense: he agrees in the main but disagrees in all the details—literally almost all of them!—and in trying to understand those details, I'm having to go over Plotinos and Porphurios again with great care. So the gaps are, slowly, getting filled in... I suppose I'm just frustrated, and I wish it was easier, but that's not how it works.
As far as I can tell, Proklos's proofs rely on self-constitution being the same as independence (introduced way back in IX), so despite his use of the new term, I simply treat it as a synonym. (Dodds seems to suggest that this is an error and the new term is used for a reason, but most of his commentary is in Greek and unreadable to the likes of me. Evidently self-constitution is related to free will, but then I don't see how it can be equated with ontological self-causation as Proklos has previously defined it.) Either way, though, it seems to me that there are a number of glaring contradictions now present in Proklos's model, and I'm unfortunately unsure where those originate: is it me? is it our translators? is it the manuscript copyists? is it Proklos? is it Proklos's antecedents? Maybe things will fall into place later on as we see how these propositions and concepts get used.
(14 Aug 2023.)
After "On Self-Constitution," this is the second subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of the Self-Constituted." Proklos continues by discussing the nature of self-constituted things, particularly their atemporal nature.
Self-constituted things exist perpetually, having neither a beginning nor an end. They are also simple, not being made of parts.
XLV. No self-constituted thing has a beginning.
If something has a beginning, it is incomplete—in time, at least—and requires something else to complete it. But if a thing is self-constituted, it is independent and made complete by itself [XLI]. Therefore, a self-constituted thing cannot have a beginning.
XLVI. No self-constituted thing has an end.
A thing's cause is that which conserves it and makes it whole [XIII]. Therefore, "to end" means "to be severed from a thing's cause." But a self-constituted thing is its own cause, and it is impossible for a thing to be severed from itself. Therefore, self-constituted things do not end.
XLVII. Every self-constituted thing is simple (e.g. without parts).
[We present three separate proofs of this.]
If a thing has parts, these parts must be different (or else they would not have separate identities). But since self-constituted things return to themselves [XLII, XXXIV], these parts must be one (that is, the same). This is a contradiction. Therefore, self-constituted things must not have parts.
If a thing has parts, some parts will be better and others worse. But since self-constituted things return to themselves [XLII, XXXIV], the better will depend on the worse (and vice versa), but this is impossible because causes are better than effects [VII]. Therefore, self-constituted things must not have parts.
If a thing has parts, those parts must exist before the composite that depends on them. But self-constituted things are independent. Therefore, self-constituted things must not have parts.
XLVIII. Every thing that is not perpetual is either composite (e.g. made of parts) or has an external cause.
Things that are not perpetual can end in one of two ways: either they dissolve into their constitutent components (which would require that the be made of parts), or else they cease to be by dissociating from their cause (which would require it have an external cause, since a thing cannot dissociate from itself).
XLIX. Every self-constituted thing is perpetual.
Every thing that is not perpetual is either composite or has an external cause [XLVIII]. But self-constituted things are simple [XLVII] and exist in themselves [XLI]. Therefore, self-constituted things are perpetual.
After how difficult the last section was, I was pleasantly surprised to find this one to be nice and easy! Here we have two proofs of the perpetual nature of incorporeals: XLV and XLVI, and XLVII through XLIX. Dodds notes that both proofs are traditional: the first is from Platon, and the second is from Aristoteles, and apparently Proklos wished to include both. (I can't confirm this myself, as I've only read maybe a quarter of Platon so far, and none of Aristoteles. But as I've noted, the Elements seems to me to be a course syllabus; it makes sense to want to emphasize the history of what you're teaching; perhaps this is the answer to one of my questions in the previous section, concerning why Proklos seems to prove the same thing multiple times. I should note that one would not do this if they were trying to construct a logical system!) Plotinos and Porphurios, at least, favored Aristoteles's proof—in fact, the lack of parts of incorporeals is something of a linchpin in Plotinos's system, from which many other things are derived; whereas, to Proklos, it seems almost an afterthought, something that one gets out of the way to get to the real conclusion. I think Plotinos's way is the far more elegant: it would have been prettier if Proklos proved (something like) XLVII first, and then derived XV (and a bunch of other things) from it. Oh well—maybe someday I'll have polished my Neoplatonism 101 until it shines and that'll be a part of it.
Thomas Taylor, no less pernickety than Proklos, draws a very sharp distinction between "eternal" (which is outside of time) and "perpetual" (which is connected to time but always exists). By way of example he says that the demiurge is eternal, but the world is perpetual. (Obviously eternal is a much stronger constraint than perpetual is.) I don't see the point of being so precise, but I've kept his distinction just in case it matters later on.
Amusingly (to me, anyway), Dodds noted a few sections back that the Elements does not contain a proof of the eternity perpetuity of the world, while Taylor and Johnson note that this is exactly what XLVIII and XLIX prove. I disagree with Taylor and Johnson, here: the world is not self-constituted, as it is corporeal and self-constituted things are incorporeal [XLII, XV]. No, all this self-constituted business is talking about intellect and souls.
(27 Sep 2023.)
Oof, my health is always a complete disaster come late summer, and this year was no exception: despite my best study habits, it literally took six weeks of grinding my head against this section to make it through! I had similar trouble last year with Plotinos. I got there in the end, though, and I guess that's a reminder that all it takes to move mountains—or, erm, a single page from a textbook—is patience.
(That said, I apologize if this section is less intelligible than the rest: I tried my best, but it's hard for me to gauge how my present best compares with my usual best.)
After "On Self-Constitution" and "On Perpetuity," this section completes Dodds's section titled "Of the Self-Constituted," and also continues on into his next section, "On Time and Eternity." (I think the last couple propositions fit better here than either in the previous section or on their own.) Here, Proklos discusses the high-level nature of time.
Every thing is either eternal (in which case it always is and never changes) or temporal (in which case it always changes and never is). Every eternal thing and some temporal things are perpetual (e.g. exist for all time), but other temporal things only exist for a part of time.
L. Every thing that can be measured by time in essence is in the process of becoming in essence. Every thing that can be measured by time in activity is in the process of becoming in activity.
We distinguish two categories of things: those for which "past" and "future" are identical, and those for which they are different. Of the first, we say they are because they have a complete, whole existence, lacking nothing of themselves; but of the second, we say that they are always in the process of becoming, since they are not yet what they will be. Those things that have identical future and past cannot be measured by time, since how would we distinguish any given moment? Therefore, everything that can be measured by time is in the process of becoming, with respect to the way in which it can be measured.
LI. Every self-constituted thing is greater than things which are measured by time in essence.
Every thing measured by time in essence is in the process of becoming in essence [L]. Now, the process of "becoming something" means that that something is "beginning," but no self-constituted thing has a beginning [XLV]; therefore, self-constituted things cannot be measured by time and so transcend it.
LII. Every eternal thing is a simultaneous whole.
For a thing to be eternal means it cannot be measured by time, therefore it is not in the process of becoming [L]. Since it is not becoming, it cannot be broken up into parts (e.g. that which was and that which will be). Therefore, it must be whole.
LIII. Eternity is prior to all eternal things. Time is prior to all temporal things.
Recall that all qualities are threefold: there exists a transcendent Monad of that quality, which produces imminent participable things, which are finally participated in by things bearing that quality [XXIII]. From this it is obvious that, since "being eternal" is a quality, there is an Eternity, which produces eternities, each of which is participated in by a particular eternal thing; similarly, there is a Time, which produces times, each of which is participated in by a particular temporal thing.
LIV. Eternities are the measure of all eternal things. Times are the measure of all temporal things. There are no other measures.
A measure may either measure with respect to parts (e.g. like a ruler) or with respect to wholes (e.g. like a scale). Temporal things have parts [L] and must therefore be measured by parts. Eternal things do not have parts [LII] and must therefore be measured by wholes. Since this is a binary condition (having or not having parts), there are no other possibilities.
LV. Some temporal things are perpetual, while others are transient (e.g. only exist for a part of time).
Suppose all temporal things are transient. Then, they differ from eternal things in two respects: first, they are made of parts [L] while eternal things are not [LII]; second, they are subject to time while eternal things are not [L]. But recall that each degree of procession produces things as like itself as possible [XXIX]: this implies that there must be a mean term which differs in only one way from both eternal things and transient things [XXVIII]. So the mean term must either be eternal but not perpetual or else it must be perpetual but not eternal. The first is impossible, however, because eternal things are not subject to time at all and thus cannot be bound by it [L]. So the mean term must be perpetual but not eternal.
Therefore, we may observe that the greatest things bound by time are those that exist for all time, having neither beginning nor end; these possess perpetuity like eternal things do, but it is an ever-changing perpetuity of process, rather than an eternal, static perpetuity.
Proklos goes out of his way in L to distinguish between things measured by time in essence, and things measured by time in activity. He doesn't make use of the distinction here, but I assume it has to do with the difference between bodies (which are measured by time in existence) and souls (which are measured by time in activity, but have a timeless existence). I suppose we'll see as we go!
In LIII (and the corollary to LII, which I did not summarize), Proklos once again stakes out a position quite at odds with Plotinos. To Plotinos, every soul creates its own time as a byproduct of its sequential mode of consciousness, a position that prefigures Einstein's theory of relativity. Proklos, on the other hand, considers Time to be a monolithic entity under which temporality is bound (e.g. a god). Dodds notes that Proklos is following the Chaldean Oracles in this, which is, to my mind, rather unfortunate: while Plotinos's and Proklos's conceptions of time have the same explanatory power, Plotinos's is far simpler and more elegant, and so Occam's Razor would suggest we favor it.
But, ignoring my misgivings, you might recall that I was wondering what the deal was with Henads and Monads. This proposition gave me a chance to ponder it again and I think Monads are the term for the general principle, while Henads are a particular that apply only at the top of the chain: that is, the One is the original transcendent Monad; the Henads are the imminent things it produces, and finally the various levels of being—Intellect, Soul, Nature—are those things which participate in the Henads. At least, that's a guess: Proklos hasn't really talked about Henads yet, so we'll revisit it when he does.
The ruler/scale analogies in LIV are mine, not Proklos.' At least, that's how I understood what he was talking about... but if they seem confusing or worthless, feel free to ignore them.
In LV, we've finally discovered why Thomas Taylor is so very persnickety about eternity and perpetuity in the footnotes to literally everything he ever translated. That's a milestone of a sort—yay! Dodds notes that this proposition is crucial for establishing—in stubborn opposition to the Stoics, Gnostics, and Christians alike—the perpetuity of the world. Oddly, Proklos never makes that final leap anywhere (or, if he did, it didn't survive in the manuscript tradition), though it's easy enough to add ourselves if one assumes the world is the greatest temporal thing.
With that, we're a quarter of the way through the Elements! I started this read-along series four months ago, which means that if my pace holds steady, I can expect to finish about a year from now—longer than it took me to read the Enneads. I think I can safely conclude that the Elements is a more difficult work than the Enneads, and not one I'd recommend as a starting place.
(21 Oct 2023.)
Dodds calls the next section of the Elements of Theology, consisting of propositions LVI through LXV, "Of the Grades of Causality." I'm going to take it in a few parts, since ten propositions is a lot. In this first part, Proklos elaborates on the relationship of causes and effects, particularly with respect to how many effects a thing has, and how complex a thing is, given its relative position in the causal chain. Despite it taking me nearly a month, this section isn't terribly difficult: most of that time was spent just waiting for a day when my mind was sharp enough to work at it!
The higher up something is in the chain of being, the more productive power it has. The more causes something has, the more complex it is. These together mean that the middle of the chain of being tends to be more complex than the extremes.
LVI. Causes produce to a greater degree whatever their effects produce.
If a secondary thing is capable of production, it is clear that it gets this power from its cause, since all productive ability is communicated to it through the connection to the One mediated by its cause [XXV]. Since the thing is being lent its productive power by its cause, it's cause must contain this productive power inherently [XVIII]. Therefore it is evident that the secondary thing produces in the same manner as its cause, but that the cause possesses that productive power in a greater measure.
LVII. Causes themselves produce a greater number of effects than any of their effects do.
Causes produce to a greater degree what their effects produce [LVI]. But since the cause and the effect produce in the same manner, how shall we distinguish these except by number? So a greater cause produces a greater number of effects, and equal cause produces an equal number of effects, and a lesser cause produces a lesser number of effects. Therefore a cause will itself produce a greater number of effects than any of its effects do.
LVIII. The more causes a thing has, the more complex it is.
Every cause lends some quality to its effects [XVIII]; so if a thing has more causes, it has more qualities, and therefore it is more complex.
LIX. The chain of causation tends towards simplicity in its extremes and complexity in its center.
The more causes a thing has, the more complex it is [LVIII]. It is obvious that things near the top of the chain of causation have fewer causes than things in the middle, and so are simpler. [Indeed, we have already demonstrated the One as limit of this, being both totally simple [I] and the first cause [XII, XIII].] But it is also the case that things near the bottom of the chain of causation have fewer causes, because greater causes are capable of producing more things than lesser causes are [LVII], meaning ultimately that the last things must be produced by the greatest producer, which is the One itself. Therefore things in the middle of the chain of causation have more causes, and so are more complex.
I think LVII is incorrectly applied. While it's certainly true that higher principles are more powerful than lower ones and have more "children," I'm not certain VII and LVI place us on safe ground to assert whether those "children" are produced directly or indirectly: it seems to me at least plausible that more complex causes (see LVIII) can produce effects in a more complex manner, thus acting as a secondary constraint on the number of things they cause. Plotinos apparently thought so, too: he gives a concrete example in that the One is much more powerful than the Intellect, but the One's productions are all produced indirectly through the Intellect, hence the One only has a single direct effect but (infinitely?) many indirect effects.
LVIII seems a crucial principle. Proklos argues for it from the ground up, but (once again) part of why I like Plotinos's Neo-Pythagorean approach is that it's implicit in it: highly composite numbers simply have more prime factors, and that's just the way they work. Note that Proklos is not speaking strictly about vertical causation (e.g. any soul must depend on the Intellect and the One): he's talking about any causation (e.g. a soul will depend on some number of "higher" souls as well, thus lesser souls are more complex than greater souls). This is important to avoid an apparent contradiction with LIX.
I've mentioned Wolfram's A New Kind of Science before, and LIX is highly reminiscent of it: Wolfram says all the "interesting stuff" (e.g. things resembling what we recognize as "alive" and "intelligent," which is to say, the things resembling us) happens at the intersection of simplicity and complexity; because if something is too simple, it's too crystalline and repetitive to admit complex behavior, but if something is too complex, any behavior it could have dissolves into randomness. While Wolfram's argument isn't rigorous, and Proklos's is (IMHO) unsound, I think both are good at capturing the intuition that we, as rational beings (souls), exist somewhere in the middle of the chain of being rather than at either extremity.
(27 Oct 2023.)
After "Power and Complexity," this is the second subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of the Grades of Causality." I'm taking it a little easier this week and only covering three propositions, in which Proklos continues by discussing the creative power of different things in the causal chain.
The One is perfectly unified, perfectly good, and produces all. The further from the One a thing is, the more divided, the less good, and the less productive it becomes.
LX. Creative power is proportional to goodness.
Suppose we have two things, one which can produce many effects and another which can only produce few effects. Every number of effects the second can produce the first can as well, but the first can produce a number of effects that the second can not. Thus the first is more comprehensive than the second, and in that sense is closer to the universal cause than the second. But the universal cause is the Good [XII], and to be closer to it is to be better. Therefore, the cause of a greater number of effects is better than the cause of a lesser number of effects.
LXI. Creative power is proportional to unity.
Unity and goodness are equivalent [XIII]; therefore, since creative power is proportional to goodness [LX], the same is also true of unity.
LXII. A many which is less remote from the One is less divided, but of greater potency, than a many which is more remote.
The One is productive of all things [XII, XIII] while remaining wholly unified [V], and all procession is effected through similitude [XXIX]; therefore, even though everything that is not the One is many [I], those that are closer to the One must be more similar to the One, in that they are more productive and less divided.
Further, we have previously described the four levels of being [XX] and noted that each level of being begins in a Monad [XXI]; this means that each Monad is more divided than the prior one, and so there are a greater number of bodies than souls, a greater number of souls than intelligences, and a greater number of intelligences than henads.
These made me double-take when I first saw them—they seem to follow on so immediately from XII and XIII that I figured it was already settled! Interesting that Proklos didn't think so and delays making it explicit for such a long time.
Proklos's corollary to LXII—the part where he states that bodies outnumber souls, and that souls outnumber intelligences, and that intelligences outnumber henads—is logically sound within Proklos's framework, but strikes me as problematic. After all, every body has a soul (or else it wouldn't have a connection to the One—that is to say, it wouldn't exist), but not every soul has a body (the gods, for example); therefore there must be more souls than bodies. I don't remember what Plotinos said about it, but Porphurios at least seems to agree with Proklos (Sentences XI). Proklos's way around it seems to be that bodies come from the Nature Monad and are merely modeled on or animated by (rather than given existence by) souls? Another way around it is if multiple bodies can share the same soul (though this seems problematic, too). Going into this, my "gut feeling" was that souls were the most numerous existences, as the Intellect is creative in a way that souls can't be (e.g. Intellect creates everything at once, souls create one things at a time), and that the world of soul was the "most vast" in the sense of being both infinite and diverse (while Intellect is infinite but not diverse and the sensible world is finite and diverse), but maybe I just made a mistake somewhere. I'll have to keep this in mind as I go back over Plotinos...
(22 Nov 2023.)
After "Power and Complexity" and "Power and Unity," this is the third and final subsection of Dodds's section titled "Of the Grades of Causality." In this subsection, Proklos jumps back to the material we discussed way back in "On Monads" and fleshes it out with respect to the nature of participation of the things produced by each Monad.
We have already stated that each level of being begins with a transcendent Monad, continues with things that can be participated, and finally with participants. We add that the first of these subsists within it's cause; the second of these is participated always, is self-complete, and is self-subsistent; the last of these is participated sometimes, is incomplete, and subsists only in reflection upon a lower level of reality.
LXIII. Transcendent things produce two grades of things that can be participated in: those that are always participated in, and those that are only sometimes participated in.
It is self-evident that there are things which are only sometimes participated in. [(For example, the form of Beauty is always participated in by some things, like angels, but only occasionally by other things, like human bodies.)] Recall that things which can be participated are produced by a transcendent Monad [XXIII]. However, something which is only sometimes participated in differs from its transcendent cause in two ways: first, that it can be participated in; and second, that it is temporal. Because causes produce effects as like to themselves as possible [XXVIII], we must suppose that there is an intermediate term which varies from each in only one way. Therefore, there must also be things which are always participated in.
LXIV. Every Monad produces two grades of things: one which is self-complete in substance, and one which is dependent on external substance.
It is self-evident that some things depend on an external substrate for their completeness. [(For example, some souls inhabit bodies.)] In this, they differ from their transcendent Monad [XXIII] in two ways: first, that it can be participated in; and second, that it is incomplete. By similar reasoning to LXIII, we must suppose there to be an intermediate term which can be participated in but which is complete.
Therefore, per XX, we may assert that the One produces both self-complete Henads and to lesser unities that merely give completion to intelligences; Intellect produces both self-complete intelligences and to lesser intelligences that merely give intellection to souls; Soul produces both self-complete souls and lesser souls that merely animate bodies.
LXV. Everything either subsists within it's cause; within itself; or without itself as if by reflection.
We assert that there are three ways a thing may be given substance:
Since every cause possesses the character it lends to its effects [XVIII], if this character is "existence," then a thing may have its subsistence within its cause.
If a cause has too tenuous a character to be apparent on its own, it may be seen in its effects for the same reason; therefore, we say that it subsists in those effects, since it is unable to act without them.
Since we have just supposed that some things subsist above themselves, and others subsist below themselves, then surely there must be some things that subsist within themselves to complete the set.
Proklos is really leaning on the "principle of mean terms" today, which he uses to "prove" each of the today's three propositions. Each of them outline independent, threefold models based on the model already sketched in XXIII. (As noted, Proklos departs pretty widely from Plotinos in "On Monads," consequently he is here as well.) Proklos doesn't say so anywhere, but I assume that all four are linked:
| Prop. | Top | Middle | Bottom |
|---|---|---|---|
| XXIII | transcendent | participated | participant |
| LXIII | transcendent | always participated | sometimes participated |
| LXIV | Monad | self-complete | dependent |
| LXV | subsists within cause | self-subsistent | subsists as a reflection |
So if my assumption is right, it seems like all the Monads are somehow the same, as if all the lower ones are actually what the higher ones are potentially. (That is how everything works to Plotinos, but it seems Proklos limits it to Monads.) After that, they give rise to a self-complete series that exists strictly within it's level of reality, and to an incomplete series that is merely an image or phantasm and depends on a thing in a lower level of reality to reflect off of. (That is to say, a "lower soul" is a reflection of a "higher soul" off of the "mirror" of a "body.") This would all clarify at least some of how Proklos is (re-)interpreting Plotinos, but it is nothing if not fantastically complicated! In addition, it opens up a number of questions that haven't yet been answered: what are unities? what are intelligences? where do forms, which Proklos treats separately from unities and intelligences and souls, fit in?
Hopefully he'll get into those questions later on, but even as it stands, I think it'll take me a lot of thought to make sure I've got all the pieces straight...
(11 Dec 2023.)
Dodds calls the next section of the Elements of Theology, consisting of propositions LXVI through LXXIV, "Of Wholes and Parts." I'm going to take it in two parts, I think: in this first part, Proklos describes the ways in which things can relate to each other, which seem to me to be building blocks leading up to something in the future.
Everything (except the One) is a part of something else, but there are three different categories of parts: a part may participate in a transcendent whole, a part may be a constituent in an imminent whole, or a part may have the whole reflected within it. The nature of wholeness a thing has is related to its degree of creative power.
LXVI. There are four ways in which things can relate to each other: the first can be a part of the second, the second can be a part of the first, the first and second can be identical, or the first and second can be wholly different.
Of two things, either the first is a part of the second, the second is a part of the first, or the two are not parts of each other. In this latter case, either the two are both contained within some third thing (in which case they are the same from the perspective of that third thing), or not (in which case they are different from the perspective of that third thing). [Because one's choice of third thing matters, these last two cases are relative: everything is identical from the perspective of the One, but everything is different from the perspective of a body.]
LXVII. There are three kinds of wholes: the whole which pre-exists its parts [(e.g. like the form of Beauty which allows its participants to be beautiful)], the whole which is made of its parts [(e.g. like flock is made of sheep)], and the whole which is implicit in its parts [(e.g. like geometry is implicit in each of its various theorems)].
In any whole, either the whole comes first (in which case the whole pre-exists its parts), or else the parts come first. Of those wholes in which the parts come first, either a lost part will diminish the whole (if the whole is defined as the collection of parts), or not (if the whole is implicit in each individual part).
These three cases reflect the relationship of things described in LXV: if effects subsist in a cause, the cause is a whole which pre-exists its parts; if things subsist within themselves, then the whole is a whole made of parts; if things subsist as a reflection of another, then the reflection is a whole implicit in its parts.
LXVIII. Every whole implicit in its parts is itself part of a whole made of parts.
Every part of a whole implicit in its parts is a part of something; but if it is only the part of the whole implicit within it, then it is only part of itself, which is absurd. So, it must also be a part of something else.
LXIX. Every whole made of parts participates in a whole which pre-exists its parts.
Every whole made of parts is a whole, but the wholeness can't come from its parts, since, with respect to the whole's own wholeness, they are parts. So we say the whole participates in the form of wholeness. Now, this form can't itself be a mere whole made of parts, since participants must have an unparticipated prior [XXIII]. Therefore, this form of wholeness must be a whole which pre-exists its parts.
(No matter how many times I type the word "transcendent"—and, thanks to Proklos, there have been many!—I always, always, always spell it wrong before spell-check catches me.)
I don't think the concepts that Proklos is getting at are too complicated today—even if his logic to get there is a bit specious—but his terminology is quite opaque and it took a lot of unpacking: Taylor's and Johnson's very inconsistent translations, and Dodds's very dense translation, were all working against me, here. I have added a number of clarifying remarks and examples in brackets. These are all my attempts at understanding the material, and so any errors or confusions are mine, rather than Proklos's!
Thomas Taylor—bless him—would ask me to underscore LXIX thrice: to him, it is a teaching of the greatest importance, and the beating heart of Platon. I'm not so sure I would go so far; as far as I understand Plotinos (and this isn't to say I'm correct, only that it is my understanding), only the One and Intellect are unitary: there is no one Soul-Monad (the World Soul being "merely" the first and greatest soul), and bodies are, of course, essentially indefinitely divisible (and hence illusory). (Further, I'm not sure I'd say the One is transcendent: everything is the One! Only the conscious experience of it is transcendent, I think, since "consciousness" begins with the reflexive Intellect.) Nonetheless, I would be remiss if I didn't point out just how big a deal he regards LXIX and it's association with LXV.
(8 Feb 2024.)
After "Wholes and Parts," this is the second half of the section Dodds calls "Of Wholes and Parts." It is not a difficult section—certainly not difficult enough to justify taking two whole months to complete—but today is the first day in a long time my health has been good enough that my brain isn't completely fogged over, and so I leapt at the chance to finally study some philosophy again. Proklos has already discussed the creative potency of various grades of being; in this section, he discusses some of the ramifications of this from the perspective of the qualities lent to lower things by their creators.
The qualities lent to a thing by its various causes reflect the same ontological structure as the causes themselves. Furthermore, we can divide these qualities into three categories: existence, wholeness, and form, each greater than the next.
LXX. The qualities lent to a thing by a higher cause are in effect both before and after the qualities lent to a thing by a lower cause.
Let us begin with the example of a human being: it must exist before it has life [(e.g. it is conceived before it is born)], and it must have life before it has reason [(e.g. it is born before it matures)]; similarly, reason departs from it before life does [(e.g. it becomes senile before it dies)], and life departs from it before existence does [(e.g. it becomes a corpse before it decays)].
As in the example, so in every case; this is because higher causes are more efficacious than lower ones [LVI], and a more potent cause has primacy over a less potent cause [LVII]. So, a higher cause must act before the lower cause can, because the lower cause is present in the higher and can only act concomitantly with the higher. Therefore, the lower must come into effect after the higher, and withdraw before the higher.
LXXI. The qualities of lower causes lent to a thing are made out of the qualities of higher causes lent to a thing as a byproduct of the same process by which the lower causes exist within the higher causes.
Recall that higher causes produce a greater number of effects than lower causes [LVII]. Since higher causes operate prior to lower causes [LXX], we must presume that a thing's receptivity to a lower cause is, in fact, among the effects of the higher cause; because of this, the effects of the higher are foundational to the effects of the lower, which are built on top of them.
LXXII. The more fundamental a quality a thing possesses, the more universal its cause.
The cause of more numerous effects are closer to the One than the cause of less numerous effects [LX]. But the effects of this more numerous cause are foundational to the effects of this less numerous cause [LXXI]. Therefore, if one effect is foundational to another, its cause must be closer to the One, which is to say, more universal.
From this we can make a couple inferences:
Matter is devoid of form because it is a universal substrate. Therefore, it must proceed from the universal Cause.
Inanimate bodies [(e.g. corpses)] exist, therefore the body must proceed from a cause prior to the animating soul.
LXXIII. Existence is prior to wholeness.
Either existence and wholeness are the same thing or else one must be prior to the other. But every whole consists of parts [XLVII], and those parts exist even though they are not whole; therefore, existence and wholeness are not the same, and one must be prior to the other. Suppose wholeness is prior to existence: then, every thing that exists is a whole; but then there would be no parts to compose those wholes, since those parts would already be wholes. Therefore wholeness cannot be prior to existence, and the only possibility remaining is for existence to be prior to wholeness.
LXXIV. Wholeness is prior to forms.
Forms are wholes, as they are composed of the many things which exhibit that form. [(For example, the form of Beauty is composed of all beautiful things that exist, which we say participate in Beauty.)] However, we have also posited ones [VI] which are wholes but cannot be forms (since they are atomic and cannot consist of anything). Therefore, wholeness and formness aren't the same thing, and since forms are wholes, wholeness must be prior to forms.
From LXXIII and LXXIV, we may say that wholeness occupies a middle position between existence and forms.
If you think my title to LXXI is bad, you should see Proklos's. Yeesh.
Proklos is at odds with Plotinos in his corrolaries to LXXII as a direct consequence of his doctrine of Monads. Proklos is deriving Matter directly from the One; while to Plotinos, Matter doesn't even exist, rather it is an abstraction representing the limit of what does. Similarly, Proklos places the Body Monad above individual souls; while if I understand Plotinos aright, souls emanate bodies, but those are sluggish and take a while to catch up to the state of a soul, and hence a body lingers for a while even after the soul withdraws. With all that said, while I think Proklos is misapplying the principle, I think the principle itself is a very useful one and worth bearing in mind.
Regarding LXXIV, didn't Proklos say that wholeness was itself a form in LXIX? So I guess what he's saying here is that everything participates in forms, but forms themselves participate in the special form of wholeness, in the same way that all things participate in the special thing of the One.
[This study series is paused for the moment, as my angel has me focused elsewhere.]
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