April-May Twitter Archive

[endymions_bower]

Two months worth this time.

@t3dy: "What are the differences between Christian theosis+the Platonic or pre-Platonic notions of divinization?" (G.Shaw on NP e-list)

Prof. Shaw is so much better equipped to answer this than myself. In the first place, my knowledge of Christian theosis is scant; secondly, I must confess to what some might regard as a peculiar lack of interest in the very question of theosis, but then, I am most well versed in Proclus, who does not use this terminology. Point of departure, at any rate, for Platonic notion must be Theaet. 176b, where homoiôsis theôi is "to become just, holy and wise". For pre-Platonic Hellenic notion, the relevant body of thought is certainly Orphic, and this point of view informs Plato, too.

(See, incidentally, this recent discussion of the Orphic theology by my friend Sannion: http://thehouseofvines.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/an-orphic-digression/)

I don't find the term theosis anywhere in Iamblichus or Proclus' surviving works; it seems to occur once in Damascius, but this seems the exception that proves the rule; at De princ. III, 64, he says that most of the philosophers prior to Iamblichus spoke of the supra-essential God as one, and that the others were substantial, being made Gods by illuminations from the One, and that the supra-essential manifold of the henads was not composed of self-perfect hypostases, but of the "divinizations" (theôseôn) illuminated from the sole God and imparted to substances (7-14). So D. uses theôsis to refer to a doctrine that (1) neither he nor I. nor I.'s successors agree with; and that (2) does not even seem to mean what theôsis does to Christians. I think that I might infer from this that the Dionysian usage of the term comes from extracurricular sources, even if some of what he means by it is consonant with what Platonists say about theurgy, or about divine participation (methexis). Is the novel terminology a tip off that something like a Gnostic source is influencing Dionysius? Also, one would wish to know if Dionysius displaces ordinary participation (methexis) in the divine in favor of theôsis.

***

@t3dy: What's your take on Dillon's argument that Iamblichus was the first theorist of magic vs. religion? seems like a big mistake.

(Dillon’s article, “Iamblichus’ Defence of Theurgy: Some Reflections” is available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6052147/Jdillon-Iamblichus-Defense-of-Theurgy)

I agree it is utterly wrongheaded to rehabilitate the discarded distinction between "magic" and "religion". Dillon attempts to align Porphyry with "religion" and Iamblichus with "magic", but in reality, Porphyry is simply an intellectualist, while Iamblichus attempts to preserve a distinct role for religion as such. I think that there is a basic misunderstanding at work in Dillon's comment on the quote from DM 2.11.96-7 (p. 37f). Iamblichus draws a sharp distinction here between act and thought, but Dillon reimposes intellectualism: "informed through and through by the higher conceptions which the theurgist brings to bear" (p. 38). To have a better understanding of the ritual acts one performs is to have one's soul in a better condition; it doesn't alter the act's synthematic value, but may alter the outcome, as expressing a different reception of the divine. This is the point of the "necessity" at 1.14.44 (p. 35f). The agent who would constrain the Gods himself acts according to necessity. The greater my insight, the more I become a conscious agent in the service of the Gods, the less an instrument. I am quite baffled by Dillon's claim at 39f that Iamblichus has "given away the game" at 5.9.209-210. Iamblichus is saying here that the Gods are operating on each level of reality in the manner constitutive of that plane, and so the sacrifice is honored by the Gods inasmuch as it is integrated into a social context and a certain mode of being. Thus Proclus didn't eat meat, except as a participant in sacrificial public rituals, according to his biographer. For Proclus, the sacrificial ritual is his sole contact with the social assemblage of consuming animal flesh, while for another, the sacrificial ritual is the spiritualization of something more integrated into their way of life.

***

Been reading some Birger Pearson; I'm quite sympathetic to his attempt to prevent the erasure of the category of "Gnostic religion"; reminds me of the attempts to erase the category of "polytheism". In common: the demand that these categories be justified only historically, with no recourse to phenomenology. This is a strategy to prevent the revaluation of existing concepts, deny the possibility of reappropriation.

***

@cratylus: Anaxagoras believed Mind was a .. rotation?! maybe this is the first awareness of emergence

When Aristotle in Metaph. XII (1091a30-1091b16) speaks of thinkers such as theologoi & Speusippus for whom the Good is not present at the beginning, but rather comes about with the increasing complexity of the cosmos, I believe this is emergence, too.

@cratylus: sounds plausible - did they have a notion of complexity like ours though ?

I think that the principle is the same. For Speusippus the concept of goodness cannot apply to the unmixed and elemental just because of its simplicity. On the other hand, we have the theologoi, for whom the goodness of the Olympian order comes from its harmonious balancing of conflicting claims, in contrast to the domination of the primordial sovereignties.

@cratylus: not sure whether anaxagoras means the action of mind on matter is rotation or it _is _ rotation

Anaxagoras posits mind as "initiating" motion, and as "controlling" and "arranging" rotation, says mind is separate and unmixed, thus I don't think we can identify mind with the rotation, but rather rotation is the primary physical manifestation of mind. Motion, and particularly cyclical motion, does what mind craves: it differentiates potentialities. Mind is identified more with the mover than the moved: "when Mind initiated motion, from all that was moved Mind was separated." But at the same time, "Mind is all alike … while nothing else is like anything else", Mind is "where everything else is too, in that which encompasses and in what has been aggregated or separated." (In this distinction, incidentally, we see the roots of the late Platonic distinction between the noetico-noeric and the noeric. The noetico-noeric ("intelligible-intellective") is "encompassing", the noeric (intellective) aggregating/discriminating.) Perhaps the most accurate description, if anachronistic, would be that Mind identifies with motion, and especially the mover. As for rotation specifically, it might be proleptic of later Platonic doctrine that the motion peculiar to soul is circular. Rotation is already epistemic in Parmenides: "It is indifferent to me where I begin, for there again I shall return," (f. 5). Arendt interprets opposition of cyclical and linear motion in Aristotle as concerning the nature of mortal vs. immortal agency. This is already in Alcmaeon of Croton: "Humans perish because they cannot connect the beginning to the end." Also note epistemic connotations in Alcmaeon's quote: "beginning" is also archê, "principle", while "end" is also telos, "goal". The continuation of the species is Aristotelian cyclical motion, as opposed to the linear agency of the mortal individual. When Aristotle or other Greeks speak of cyclical motion, I generally read it to mean the natural cycles down here as well as in the heavens. So Alcmaeon's point is that the individual perishes because they cannot do for themselves what the species does for itself. Plato makes a similar point in the Symposium.

***

@t3dy: do you know what the most literal/faithful translation is of the "above is like below" line from Emerald Tablet of Hermes?

Don't know specific translator, but key would be to work directly from Arabic texts, with an eye toward reconstructing Greek original.

@t3dy: Parallels in Platonists?

It doesn't look Platonic to me at all; it feels just like the Corpus Hermeticum—composed in Greek with a strong Egyptian influence.

@t3dy: "That which is above is from that which is below,+that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one." J.Ibn Hayyan

(See Jabir’s version of the text here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/emerald.htm)

That version is much richer than the one with mediating "likeness".

@t3dy: somebody on the NP elist is claiming Proclus on the Sacred Art as a parallel to the "as above so below" concept. your thoughts?

No, because as you can see from the Arabic version the idea isn't about likeness, participation, operations of mediation.

@t3dy: metaphor rather than simile? (i.e. IS vs Is Like)

Yes, metaphor rather than simile, but really something more primitive than either, I think.

@t3dy: what's more primitive than metaphorical identity?

The process by which one thing becomes sign for another could be seen as more primitive than either metaphor or simile.

@t3dy: so it's the kind of mystical identity with the One that we don't see in Proclus?

The unity here is the unity of the act, the event, not a hypostatized One, any more than in Platonism. Any "One" that is more substantial than the act of appropriation is too gross to be of much interest to anyone with sensitivity. "Working the miracles of one" does not mean some one thing, but any unit as such. Otherwise, it would be banal, equivalent to "I'm thinking of a number…". In this way, it's just like Platonic henology. A "One" that is some one thing, or a "mystical union" of all things, is no more interesting than a material substrate. Hence, it is first and foremost a matter of hermeneutical charity not to render these doctrines banal.

@t3dy: So all this religious/mystical/"alchemical" interpretation of the "Hermetic Maxim" as revealing mystical unity is built on sand?

It looks to me like an operation to be performed on a variable subject; so the emphasis is on the procedure, rather than the subject.

@t3dy: What's the religious relevance of this henology in the Hermetic context? Why do we need a Tablet?

Henology is relevant to the Hermetic because s/he is concerned with integration and rectifying existences and essences, I would say.

@t3dy: What does this miracle of units tell us, or inspire us to accomplish? How does it help us think about our own individuality? So it's not about likeness, and not a mystical identity, how should I understand this connection between above and below?

The text seems to subordinate the distinction between "above" and "below" to the procedure involving sun, moon, earth, wind, fire. It seems processual, as though "above" is purely relative to "below" and vice versa.

***

(From an email exchange:

Empty "the One" of semantic value in order to reveal its syntactic value.)

***

A series of tweets on Damascius

I'm back to Damascius for my new project, so perhaps I will tweet my thoughts as I work through De principiis. Damascius is not a system builder in the manner of Proclus: this text is appropriately called Aporiai kai Luseis peri tôn Prôtôn Archôn, or "Impasses and Releases concerning First Principles," to be more literal and colorful than the standard "Doubts and Solutions". The text has a certain rhythm of a rising tension of paradox, issuing in a resolution that is never quite complete. In this fashion, Damascius works through the system he inherits from Proclus, and which he actually does not, I feel, substantially modify. Damascius does, however, subject the Proclean system to a sustained and intense critique.

Damascius begins his treatise with a critique of totality (to pan). Is there a principle of all things? he asks. If the principle of all things is external to all things, then there is no totality, for the totality lacks something. What if the principle is immanent to the totality? It cannot then be something discrete, Damascius argues. "Hence the coordination prior to all things, which we call 'all things', is without principle (anarchos) and without cause (anaitios)." As a logical matter, everything (pan) must either be a principle, or from some principle(s). Can we move from this universal logical determination to a universal ontological determination? That is, are all things (panta) a principle or from a principle? Neither. In the first case, their effect would lie outside totality; in the second, their cause lying outside totality, no totality exists. "Therefore all things are neither a principle nor from a principle." The crucial moment, I think, is when Damascius blocks the move from the logical universal (pan) to a determination of all things (panta). It is a question of two different kinds of disjunction: first, everything is either principle or from principle. This is something we determine with regard to each thing: is this thing a principle, or from a principle? The second is a disjunction applied to all things together, as if one thing: are they collectively a principle, or from a principle? If we can't follow through successfully on the latter operation, Damascius says, then there is in effect no "totality", no "All" as such. In rejecting a principle of all things, Damascius is motivated in part by his uncompromising polytheism. For Proclus, all things are in each God or henad; Proclus rejects a principle other than each God as such. Damascius accepts this, but draws a further conclusion: totality as such, then, is "anarchic".

Damascius affirms a conception of the One as "a simplicity that consumes all things" (C-W I 4) over two alternatives: (1) A Speusippean conception of the One as "minimum"; (2) a conception of the One as all things prior to their being many. The Speusippean One is each thing as the limit of its differences from everything else. The notion of a totalizing One is, of course, one of the two most common misapprehensions about Platonic thought. The other prevailing misapprehension is to treat the One as though it is a singular deity veiled by apophasis. The way Damascius describes the One as "swallowing up all things" shows that it is fundamentally an operation, not an object. Damascius says that the transition to the One from any posited unit, and especially our own unit nature, is "easy". This is likely to surprise those invested in the cottage industry of apophasis.

Damascius concludes that totality is not something integral; instead, it is a perception of multiplicity and its coordination. The One is the cause of the Many and of its coordination, but the Many is prior to its coordination. Coordination (suntaxis) is "a certain common breath and unification with one another" (C-W I 6). Hence the relation of the Many to one another is not presupposed as a totalizing unity they are carved out from to begin with. There are two processions, according to Damascius: that of the Many from the One, and that of the Differentials from the Unified (C-W I 7). These are, structurally, henads and monads. Damascius likes to speak of these in terms of the kind of manifold they form. Henads are elements of "the Many", units in a polycentric manifold; monads are elements of a differential organization, purely relational. For Proclus, the differential, monocentric organization, with its virtual mediator, reduces smoothly to the polycentric order. For Damascius, the totality is a more unstable reciprocity of unit-multiplicity and differential-multiplicity. "Either of the two [unit- and differential-multiplicity] is All, according to coordination, or according to the nature of each thing. But the All cannot be first, or a principle."

Here, one must understand the Proclean derivation of the terms. "Totality", the "All", is a characteristic of each henad. It is the presence of all the henads in each one, more specifically, the positing of that presence by each henad for him/herself. For Proclus, this positing is the emergence of the cosmic paradigm and the existential ground of cognition.

Once the henadic individual becomes formalized, a paradigm, it becomes possible to virtually separate the ontic and existential registers. Damascius wonders if this separation can ever be completed, if the sublimation of form from existential particularity really occurs.

Two incomplete totalities in Damascius (C-W I 3): (1) The monad as number, even if not yet unfolded (i.e., counted); (2) The one as each (hekaston) of the many, yet not a determinate one (ti). Damascius' "Ineffable" is essentially a figure of the incompleteness of totality. The "Ineffable" expresses the inability to reduced the "Unified" (relational being) to the "Unitary" (henadic existence) without remainder. The Ineffable, which would circumscribe everything, "is unknowable by divine knowledge" (C-W I 19). What this means in practice is that a God's cognition of himself is a mythic and symbolic act, and that the relationship of intellective and intelligible object rests atop a reciprocal desiring. Intellection, cognition, lose thus some of the transparency they had for Proclus.

There is no difference between Proclus and Damascius theologically; the difference lies in their understanding of the intellective. There is a lack of closure to the intellective in Proclus as well, because it is founded on the henad's transition to being. Damascius keeps the intellective in the henadic domain, at the cost of making it a movement of desire, a mythical and relative event. This effectively means that for D., knowledges are the local result of culturally-specific moments of foundation.

***

A user quotes the Liber XXIV Philosophorum, “God is the infinite sphere the center of which is everywhere, its circumference nowhere,” attributing it to Empedocles.

That's not Empedocles; it comes from a 12th c. pseudo-Hermetic text. There is one medieval writer who attributes it to Empedocles, but this is almost certainly a misattribution. I wonder, though, if one could imagine Empedocles saying such a thing? It would have to refer, not to "God", but rather to the nature of the sphere constituted by Love at the zenith of its power. Among Presocratics, it resembles most closely the thought of Anaxagoras, who said that "All things are in all things, but appropriately in each."

@won_haeng: 'The nature of the sphere constituted by ‪love‬.' Beautiful. No 'God' necessary...

It is beautiful. The misattribution is actually very interesting if one has worked through Empedocles a bit. The spirit of the quote is redolent of the best of antique thought. There's also a notion, which has been advanced mainly by Peter Kingsley, that the Arabic tradition preserved some Empedocles otherwise lost to us. Could it be? The "everywhere and nowhere" part of it can be found in Augustine, who vacuums up a lot of stray bits of Platonism; but without the geometrical analogy, it becomes somewhat generic, I think. The original quote is an anonymous masterpiece of axiomatic thought. *If* the quote were originally Presocratic, it would not most likely be about the divine nature. They tend not to write of it in the manner of the quote, the voice of definition.

The pseudo-Empedocles tradition is intriguing; it seems to arise from a late antique Platonizing interpretation. [On the Arabic Empedocles: http://tinyurl.com/csugkeu] I would guess that it would have gone something like this (this is totally hypothetical): Empedocles would have said something like this about the form the cosmos takes on under the influence of maximal Philia, which some Platonizing interpreter would assimilate to a statement about the nature of the One, which some Islamic interpreter, in turn, would assimilate to a statement about the Abrahamic God, and in this form transmit it to the Latin tradition. Problem is, no evidence of it in the existing ps-Empedocles corpus.