Damascius Tweets (3)

[endymions_bower]

Here's the next three days of Damascius tweets. Thanks, everybody, for the interest you've displayed in these notes.

 

3/5

Proclus on relation btwn One and Being for Damascius (Rappe 91/CW I 36): Being is "something that functions with the One as its measure…

…its elements … projected far enough that the One … is already substance instead of a henad…

…the inferior together with the superior and from the superior and in the superior." The One and Being thus "each … dependent on the other."

The henad measures itself, projecting its elements so that something inferior—substance—is produced in/with/from it.

This model leads for Damascius to the dependency of the One, and hence of principle as such.

The One is "the so-called first, or rather … that which transcends everything that can be posited in any way," (93/39).

One of the remarkable things in Damascius is the critique of transcendence as a form of dependence. Already in Proclus, but less explicit.

3/6

Damascius: (93 Rappe/39 CW I) 2d method of ascent. The first came through "valu[ing] the self-sufficient before the incomplete and inferior"

The 2d comes from "valu[ing] that which is dependent on the superior … after that which is superior."

Subtle; the former is about the superior term subordinating the inferior, the latter about the inferior positing for itself its superior.

This choice determines the ascent. The 1st went from qualified body, to quality, to nature, to soul, to intellect, to being and the one.

Each was determined to be superior in some way.

The prime example of the second method of ascent is from the potential to the actual; the potential posits its own dependency.

The 2d ascent seems to go from matter, to form, to the moving principle in nature, then in the irrational soul, then to self-motion as such…

…which is perhaps the hypostasis of Life, then the intellect as unmoved (i.e., intelligible intellect), then being and the one.

The first thing D. wants us to grasp through these ascents, I think, is the dependency of the hierarchical structure on some dialectic.

There is no simple chain of reified hypostases, like we see in books about Neoplatonism.

The chain is so similar in its terms, makes it difficult to grasp the difference D. wishes to assert.

Key to the first was reciprocal dependency; key to the second is motion.

3/9

Rappe 95ff/CW I 42ff: Damascius' "digression" on the irrational soul—is it self-moving?

Irrat. soul "moves itself with respect to desires and impulses," but "concentrating on external things … sees external things," not itself.

Irrational soul does not "desire itself, but desires something desirable … so it does not move itself." (96/43f)

Why is Damascius so concerned with the irrational soul? The concept of the animal a workshop for nature of the ultimate beings?

The irrational soul projects itself in seeing, desiring; so too the henad projects himself as substance, the intelligible.

It moves itself to project itself; but in projecting itself, allows itself to be moved by another. A paradox of self-motion.

Must bear in mind that "self-motion" is in the irrational soul from the hypostasis of Life (Zôê), hence trace of the supra-intellective.

There is a wide sense of self-motion available, applying to all substance insofar as it "generates its own individual activities," (97/45).

This would be the basis for a phenomenological transcendental aesthetic, à la Merleau-Ponty?

"The living being [zôion] has become a unity [hen gegonos], a body that is capable of perception or … perception that has become embodied."

Just as for Damascius the henad desires to become intelligible, the animal desires embodiment, projection.

There is a kind of self-motion in perception, and even in each particular faculty, yet self-motion of the animal as a whole is "apparent"?

In the animal, form "is the mover, not because the form does move the other element, but because the composite moves as the form," (99/47).

The animal somewhat alienated in its form?

The importance of self-motion (i.e. Life) may be that it is here a distinctive kind of duality ("co-arising separation", 98/47) arises.