Proclus on Dionysos
Feb. 4th, 2009 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerFurther Platonic reflections on the Olympians from Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.
Here Proclus is commenting on the Timaeus psychogony (Tim. 35a & sq.), that is, the account of the creation of the soul of the cosmos and, ultimately, individual souls by the Demiurge (Zeus, according to Proclus’ interpretation of the Hellenic theology).
The Demiurge fashions the soul of the cosmos out of Being, Sameness and Difference. First, however, he blends a kind of Being which is “midway between the Being [or ‘essence’ or ‘substance’, ousia] which is indivisible and remains always the same and the Being which is coming-to-be and divisible about bodies.” Then he creates similarly ‘mixed’ forms of Sameness and Difference midway between the ‘indivisible’ and the ‘divisible’ forms of Sameness and Difference. The cosmic soul is a blend of these blended or mixed forms of Being, Sameness and Difference. Individual souls are subsequently made out of the leftovers from this cosmic mixture. (Faithful readers of this blog may recall that the mixing is done in a kratêr, a cup or bowl, that Proclus identifies with Hera.)
Notice that the soul is made out of the raw material of judgments: something is; something is the same as something; something is different from something. Thus the contents of consciousness are irreducible when taken on their own terms. It’s irrelevant what sorts of physical explanations there are for the substrate of consciousness; the soul is made of the form and the contents of consciousness, not its substrate(s). And so the existence of the soul in this sense is neither incompatible with natural science, nor could any information about the soul in this sense be derived from natural science.
The sense of indivisible here is not that Being, Sameness and Difference are indivisible from each other; rather, Plato means that each one has an indivisible form and a form divisible ‘about bodies’, peri ta sômata. That peri + accusative construction is always a little tricky to translate. It means ‘around’. So it’s a matter, not of being divisible in bodies, but of being divisible in relation to them, which is a broader notion. The soul’s type of Being, Sameness and Difference, in turn, are somehow ‘midway between’ these extremes.
I think the best explanation is that ‘indivisible’ Being, Sameness and Difference are the pure ideas as we see them analyzed (along with Motion and Rest) by the ‘Eleatic stranger’ in the Sophist (254b & sqq.), whereas the ‘divisible’ versions of those are found attached, so to speak, to specific forms and qualities in everyday judgments (e.g., ‘That is the same dog I saw last week’), and the ‘mixed’ versions that pertain to the soul itself go to make up the multiplicity of the soul’s own faculties or powers. This interpretation derives some support, I think, from the mythological discussion that follows.
At In Tim. 2, 145f Proclus asks where we might find in “the Orphic doctrines” the doctrine of the indivisible and divisible elements pertaining to the soul. ‘Orpheus’, he explains—meaning the anonymous and pseudonymous authors of the Orphic texts—sets up Dionysos as the Demiurge of the fully particularized, or ‘divided’, cosmos, analogous to Zeus, who is responsible for its universal structure. Moreover, the locus for the opposition between the indivisible and the divisible is in Dionysos himself, as the things he creates are “distributed into parts by the dividing [or ‘distributing’] deities [tôn diairetikôn theôn],” by which Proclus means the Titans—in my recent post on Hera, I quoted a passage where Proclus associated Hera with the forces of “Titanic division” in the cosmos—with the exception of his heart, “which alone was undivided through the providence of Athena.”
This refers to the Orphic myth in which the Titans, conspiring with Hera, dismember the child Dionysos, who is to be Zeus’s successor as cosmic sovereign, and either scatter or devour his parts, with the exception of the heart, which is saved by Athena and from which Dionysos is resurrected. This myth seems also to have been a psychogony or anthropogony of sorts, at least in the version in which the Titans devour him, since Zeus blasts the Titans with his lightning, rendering them into ash out of which he then moulds the human race, with the result that we have a Titanic and a Bacchic nature joined within us.
[It has been noted that the language used by Olympiodorus, the principal source for the anthropogonic version of this myth, uses terms recognizable from alchemical practice, referring to that from which humans are created as the ‘sublimate’ (aithalê) of the Titans’ ‘vaporization’ (atmos). It has also been argued that the anthropogonic interpretation of this myth is late and should not be regarded as fundamental for Orphic theology.]
Proclus goes on to explain that the myth indicates that “since he [Dionysos] constituted intellects, souls, and bodies, but souls and bodies receive much division [diairesin] and separation into parts [merismon] in themselves, and intellect remains unified and indivisible … hence he [‘Orpheus’] says that the intellectual substance alone and the intellectual multiplicity [arithmon, literally ‘number’] were preserved by Athena,” and then he quotes an Orphic fragment that says “Only the intellectual heart [kradiên noerên] remained.”
“If therefore the undivided heart is intellectual,” Proclus continues, “it will evidently be an intellect and an intellectual multiplicity [arithmos again; manifold, set], yet not every intellect, but that which is encosmic [‘mundane’, in the world rather than ideal]. For this is the undivided heart, since of this also [i.e., of the divided world] the demiurge was the divided God [i.e., Dionysos]. Orpheus, therefore, calls the intellect of Dionysos the indivisible substance of the God, while calling his genitals the life which is divisible about Body, this being biophysical [zôên phusikên] and productive of seeds [i.e., spermatikoi logoi, the forerunners in ancient Greek science, one could say, of our concept of genetic code]. This latter he says Artemis, who presides over all the generation in nature and is the midwife for natural forms [tous phusikous logous], extends as far as to the subterranean realms, distributing Dionysos’ prolific power. But all the remaining body of the God forms the physical composition [tên phusikên sustasin], this being divided into seven parts,” and he quotes another Orphic fragment, “All the seven parts of the boy they [the Titans] scattered,” identifying this with the analysis of the soul into seven parts (Tim. 69c-73d), which has inspired comparison with the system of Indian chakras. Finally, he remarks that Timaeus “perhaps too … reminds us of the Orphic Titanic distribution into parts when he says that the soul is extended through the whole world, through which the soul not only circularly covers the universe as with a veil, but likewise is extended through the whole of it [Tim. 36e].”
So then the undivided heart of Dionysos here is the encosmic intellectual multiplicity, that is, the pattern for the faculties existing in the world soul, while his genitals—there is obviously reference here to a further Orphic doctrine concerning Artemis and the genitals of Dionysos parallel to the doctrine concerning Athena and the heart, but I have not been able to trace it—represent the plane of the spermatikoi logoi, the immediate corporeal formative principles of living thing. Note that the indivisible portion is nevertheless a multiplicity, and in this way different from the intellect of Zeus. There is no ‘mixed’ term in the myth, because Dionysos himself incorporates the indivisible and the divisible in his person.
Here Proclus is commenting on the Timaeus psychogony (Tim. 35a & sq.), that is, the account of the creation of the soul of the cosmos and, ultimately, individual souls by the Demiurge (Zeus, according to Proclus’ interpretation of the Hellenic theology).
The Demiurge fashions the soul of the cosmos out of Being, Sameness and Difference. First, however, he blends a kind of Being which is “midway between the Being [or ‘essence’ or ‘substance’, ousia] which is indivisible and remains always the same and the Being which is coming-to-be and divisible about bodies.” Then he creates similarly ‘mixed’ forms of Sameness and Difference midway between the ‘indivisible’ and the ‘divisible’ forms of Sameness and Difference. The cosmic soul is a blend of these blended or mixed forms of Being, Sameness and Difference. Individual souls are subsequently made out of the leftovers from this cosmic mixture. (Faithful readers of this blog may recall that the mixing is done in a kratêr, a cup or bowl, that Proclus identifies with Hera.)
Notice that the soul is made out of the raw material of judgments: something is; something is the same as something; something is different from something. Thus the contents of consciousness are irreducible when taken on their own terms. It’s irrelevant what sorts of physical explanations there are for the substrate of consciousness; the soul is made of the form and the contents of consciousness, not its substrate(s). And so the existence of the soul in this sense is neither incompatible with natural science, nor could any information about the soul in this sense be derived from natural science.
The sense of indivisible here is not that Being, Sameness and Difference are indivisible from each other; rather, Plato means that each one has an indivisible form and a form divisible ‘about bodies’, peri ta sômata. That peri + accusative construction is always a little tricky to translate. It means ‘around’. So it’s a matter, not of being divisible in bodies, but of being divisible in relation to them, which is a broader notion. The soul’s type of Being, Sameness and Difference, in turn, are somehow ‘midway between’ these extremes.
I think the best explanation is that ‘indivisible’ Being, Sameness and Difference are the pure ideas as we see them analyzed (along with Motion and Rest) by the ‘Eleatic stranger’ in the Sophist (254b & sqq.), whereas the ‘divisible’ versions of those are found attached, so to speak, to specific forms and qualities in everyday judgments (e.g., ‘That is the same dog I saw last week’), and the ‘mixed’ versions that pertain to the soul itself go to make up the multiplicity of the soul’s own faculties or powers. This interpretation derives some support, I think, from the mythological discussion that follows.
At In Tim. 2, 145f Proclus asks where we might find in “the Orphic doctrines” the doctrine of the indivisible and divisible elements pertaining to the soul. ‘Orpheus’, he explains—meaning the anonymous and pseudonymous authors of the Orphic texts—sets up Dionysos as the Demiurge of the fully particularized, or ‘divided’, cosmos, analogous to Zeus, who is responsible for its universal structure. Moreover, the locus for the opposition between the indivisible and the divisible is in Dionysos himself, as the things he creates are “distributed into parts by the dividing [or ‘distributing’] deities [tôn diairetikôn theôn],” by which Proclus means the Titans—in my recent post on Hera, I quoted a passage where Proclus associated Hera with the forces of “Titanic division” in the cosmos—with the exception of his heart, “which alone was undivided through the providence of Athena.”
This refers to the Orphic myth in which the Titans, conspiring with Hera, dismember the child Dionysos, who is to be Zeus’s successor as cosmic sovereign, and either scatter or devour his parts, with the exception of the heart, which is saved by Athena and from which Dionysos is resurrected. This myth seems also to have been a psychogony or anthropogony of sorts, at least in the version in which the Titans devour him, since Zeus blasts the Titans with his lightning, rendering them into ash out of which he then moulds the human race, with the result that we have a Titanic and a Bacchic nature joined within us.
[It has been noted that the language used by Olympiodorus, the principal source for the anthropogonic version of this myth, uses terms recognizable from alchemical practice, referring to that from which humans are created as the ‘sublimate’ (aithalê) of the Titans’ ‘vaporization’ (atmos). It has also been argued that the anthropogonic interpretation of this myth is late and should not be regarded as fundamental for Orphic theology.]
Proclus goes on to explain that the myth indicates that “since he [Dionysos] constituted intellects, souls, and bodies, but souls and bodies receive much division [diairesin] and separation into parts [merismon] in themselves, and intellect remains unified and indivisible … hence he [‘Orpheus’] says that the intellectual substance alone and the intellectual multiplicity [arithmon, literally ‘number’] were preserved by Athena,” and then he quotes an Orphic fragment that says “Only the intellectual heart [kradiên noerên] remained.”
“If therefore the undivided heart is intellectual,” Proclus continues, “it will evidently be an intellect and an intellectual multiplicity [arithmos again; manifold, set], yet not every intellect, but that which is encosmic [‘mundane’, in the world rather than ideal]. For this is the undivided heart, since of this also [i.e., of the divided world] the demiurge was the divided God [i.e., Dionysos]. Orpheus, therefore, calls the intellect of Dionysos the indivisible substance of the God, while calling his genitals the life which is divisible about Body, this being biophysical [zôên phusikên] and productive of seeds [i.e., spermatikoi logoi, the forerunners in ancient Greek science, one could say, of our concept of genetic code]. This latter he says Artemis, who presides over all the generation in nature and is the midwife for natural forms [tous phusikous logous], extends as far as to the subterranean realms, distributing Dionysos’ prolific power. But all the remaining body of the God forms the physical composition [tên phusikên sustasin], this being divided into seven parts,” and he quotes another Orphic fragment, “All the seven parts of the boy they [the Titans] scattered,” identifying this with the analysis of the soul into seven parts (Tim. 69c-73d), which has inspired comparison with the system of Indian chakras. Finally, he remarks that Timaeus “perhaps too … reminds us of the Orphic Titanic distribution into parts when he says that the soul is extended through the whole world, through which the soul not only circularly covers the universe as with a veil, but likewise is extended through the whole of it [Tim. 36e].”
So then the undivided heart of Dionysos here is the encosmic intellectual multiplicity, that is, the pattern for the faculties existing in the world soul, while his genitals—there is obviously reference here to a further Orphic doctrine concerning Artemis and the genitals of Dionysos parallel to the doctrine concerning Athena and the heart, but I have not been able to trace it—represent the plane of the spermatikoi logoi, the immediate corporeal formative principles of living thing. Note that the indivisible portion is nevertheless a multiplicity, and in this way different from the intellect of Zeus. There is no ‘mixed’ term in the myth, because Dionysos himself incorporates the indivisible and the divisible in his person.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 06:12 pm (UTC)http://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Reader-Hermes-Trismegistus-Newton/dp/0521796628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233943623&sr=1-1